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

Cry-Baby #1: Judy Cox

via KUTV - hat tip @jiveaficionado - screencaps via PacSun and WGNTV

The incident: A woman saw a shirt she found offensive on display in a store window.

The appropriate response: nothing. 

The actual response: She spent almost $600 buying out the store's entire stock. 

Earlier this week, Judy Cox was shopping with her 18-year-old son at University Mall in Orem, Utah.

As she walked past a PacSun store, she saw several t-shirts printed with images of women in various states of undress (the most explicit of which can be seen above).

Judy was offended. She told 4Utah News, "I was most concerned about the youth and the children that would be viewing this."

She went into the store and spoke with the manager about taking the display down.

The manager told Judy that, though she agreed the shirts were offensive, she was unable to do anything about the display without permission from Pac Sun's corporate offices.

So Judy decided to buy up all of the shirts to remove them from public view. There were 19 left in stock, which cost her about $600 to buy.

Judy says she plans to return the shirts to the store on the last day of PacSun's 60 day return policy. She also intends to meet with city officials to try and figure out if the shirts violate any local laws. Doesn't Judy seem like a super fun and chill lady?

Cry-Baby #2: Chung Kim

Michelle Jackson, Jamie Stafford and Chung Kim - via Reddit

The incident: A man got sick of his neighbors constantly getting dog poop on his porch.

The appropriate response: complaining to the landlord or property manager.

The actual response: He murdered them.

Mother of five Michelle Jackson and her fiance Jamie Stafford, both 31, had lived above 75-year-old Chung Kim for two years in an apartment complex in Dallas, Texas.

According to neighbors, Chung had been involved in an ongoing argument with the young couple over them brushing dog poop off their balcony on to his porch below. 

Earlier this month, Michelle was out on her balcony using a hose to clean away poop from her dog. This caused water and feces to drip down on to Chung's porch below. Which is, most certainly, a dick move.

This, apparently, caused Chung to snap. Using a hand gun, he allegedly shot up through the bottom of the balcony, killing Michelle.

Police say he then went upstairs, entered the apartment and shot Jamie.

Upon being shot, Jamie fell over the railing of the balcony and on to the grass below. Chung then allegedly went back downstairs, stood over Jamie and shot him again, killing him. 

Witnesses heard about eight shots. Both victims had been shot in the head.

Chung was arrested and convicted of capital murder. He faces life in prison. He claims that he suffered a blackout and doesn't remember the shootings. 

Which of these guys is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll right here:

Previously: A guy who stabbed a girl in the face because she called him "Harry Potter" Vs. Drake

Winner: Drake!!!

@JLCT

Photo courtesy of Daan Roosegaarde

The fashion world can be pretty frustrating if you’re a futurist—synthetic fabrics aside, we’re still pretty much swaddling ourselves in dead animal skins and fur. Where are the dresses made of LEDs, the WiFi-enhanced onesies, the outfits you can pour onto your body a la that killer liquid robot in Terminator 2?

Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde is at least on the right track with his Intimacy line—these haute couture outfits are made of leather and smart opaque e-foils, and become more or less transparent in response to the wearer’s heartbeat. Put simply, these are items of clothing that become transparent when you get turned on.

The Intimacy 2.0 dress, unveiled in 2012, drew lots of media attention, though it seemed more like “techno poetry,” as Daan has described his aesthetic, than something people would actually wear. But according to the designer, he’s sold at least some of the initial run of four dresses and has made others on commission at his studio in the Netherlands. (He won’t reveal how much these dresses cost.)

When I contacted him to see whether he was going to create mass-market versions of his see-through clothes, he told me that Intimacy 3.0 was “in development with a high-end fashion brand” and wouldn’t say any more, but did talk about the dresses he’s made for a select, wealthy clientele.

VICE: How did you get the initial idea for Intimacy?
Daan Roosegaarde: [People in my studio] have always talked about technology as a second skin. One day, while I was standing in the shower, I sort of skipped the metaphor and thought we should do that literally. I traveled to a few electronics manufactureres, and at one of them I saw something lying in the corner, covered in dust, and I asked what it was. My guide told me, “It’s rubbish, all this fabric does is turn from white to transparent.” I bought it and started from there.

How did it go from a piece of technology to a piece of fashion?
I realized I had no idea how to design a dress, so I teamed up with young Dutch fashion designers to make different versions. We're currently talking to big fashion chains such as Louis Vuitton. But I don't really care how the dress looks; more important to me is how the whole mechanism works.

What sort of people actually wear these dress?
We made a version for a wealthy lady who lives in Los Angeles. She's married but has a secret lover. Basically, we made a dress that looks completely normal but recognizes the voice of her lover. When he says a particular set of words—which, by contract, I'm not allowed to repeat—the garment becomes transparent.

We’re also designing a version of the dress for Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, who’s a complete fashion freak. She said, “I’ll wear it, but you should also make a version for men.” That's why we started the Intimacy suit for men—it’s a perfect fit for the banking world, [because] it becomes transparent when they lie!

How can the machine even tell the difference between someone who’s lying and a sincere person?
You have indicators like sweat and heartbeats that slightly differ according to the wearer's feelings. We put a lot of sensors [into the clothes], you can measure a lot in that way. We develop our own software to fit it to any of our consumers.

What other technological advances do you think could be useful in a fashion context?
Look at Amazon: You buy a book online, it says, “Thanks for your order, and by the way, 28 of your friends have bought these books.” Recently, when I got to an airplane to go to Singapore, one of the stewardesses said, “Hey Mr. Roosegaarde, two sugars in your coffee?” She had no idea who I was, but she knew what I liked. When it’s the government saying, “You visited that particular square more than five times in a week,” we don't like that. It's an ethical discussion—we have to know what we want. But what happens if you connect this type of thinking with fashion? I'm still amazed that somehow, the fashion world seems to be quite immune to technology. It's only a question of time though.

Fashion week is like being on an acid trip that never ends. From the first day of going to shows onward, you become a style warrior. Figuring out an outfit every morning is hard enough, but trudging through the snow trying to take photos while writing notes of shit you see brings fashion to a whole new playing field.

Just like too much acid, too much fashion in one week rarely ends well. In fact, fashion and I have a love/hate relationship. Last fashion week, I got so sick I took myself to the ER. The goal of this fashion week was to power through the copious amounts of drugs, smoking, not eating, and trudging through the arctic cold without getting sick. Clearly, I failed. I do love fashion, but not enough to stand another hospital bill. Not sure how I did it, but thank God I survived. I’ve become another fashion warrior in the NYC power game. Here are a few photos I took throughout my hectic-ass journey of a week.

Miyako Belizzi is an NYC-based photographer and stylist. She works as an editorial assistant and fashion week correspondent for VICE.
 

A group of uniformed Cossacks in Sochi attacked members of the protest group Pussy Riot with pepper spray and horse whips. Just moments earlier, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and a handful of other members headed out of a café toward the Sochi seaport, where they prepared to perform. As they were putting on their neon ski masks, about a dozen Cossacks descended on the group, thrashing them with whips, throwing them to the ground, and kicking them as police officers stood by. The police allowed the mini-pogrom to continue for about ten minutes.

Russia has fielded hundreds of Cossacks in Sochi for the Olympics to help the police maintain public order. This state-supported militia force, with its signature fur hats and riding boots, can be seen all throughout the Olympic host city during the Winter Games.

The incident took place against a backdrop of arrests and detentions of opponents of the Russian authorities and the Olympics. These critics have alleged that massive corruption and environmental damage took place during preparations for Sochi 2014. Pussy Riot said that they came to the city to record a protest song to draw attention to the detention of Yevgeny Vitishko, an environmentalist. Vitishko was recently sentenced to three years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he received for painting graffiti on the fence of the local governor’s residence, which was built in a national forest. Amnesty International maintains that Vitishko’s conviction was politically motivated, and it considers him a prisoner of conscience.

Pussy Riot finally accomplished what the group had come to Sochi to do—record their first protest song since being released from prison, "Putin Will Teach You to Love the Motherland." In an interview with VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky, Tolokonnikova responded to detractors who claim that she and Alyokhina are no longer true members of the protest group by saying, "Anyone can become a member of Pussy Riot, including any one of you. The only thing you have to do is be passionate about politics, make up a song, record that song, find a place, put on a mask, and perform."

To keep up with Simon's coverage of the Winter Olympics follow him on Twitter @simonostrovsky

McFoxy next to McDonald's. All photos by Séan Schermerhorn

My friend Séan recently moved to Kiev, Ukraine, to experience what it was like to work in a foreign country, but he might have gotten more than he bargained for. The EuroMaiden protests that have been taking place since November in Kiev’s Independence Square have gone through a terrifying, bloody week. Last night, protesters and police agreed to a shaky truce, but by this morning, the ceasefire was broken. The death toll continues to rise, with reports from the Kyiv Post that at least 37 people have been killed—mainly from police gunfire.

Séan is safely outside of the violence. He’s a San Francisco transplant who decided to move to Kiev to teach English to Ukrainian students between the ages of 18 and 25. His ambitions of creating a pop-up burger restaurant in Kiev were quickly crushed, however, as he realized that the global heavyweight champion, McDonald’s, is dominating the Eastern European fast food scene. Despite the protests—which are in favor of building stronger ties with the European Union—the Ukrainian youth isn’t embracing the Western “foodie” movement, but people do love them some American fast food chains. According to Séan’s students, you’re more likely to find “beautiful young people displaying their affections—sucking face—in and around every McDonald’s in Ukraine.”

McFoxy menu.

In Kiev, McDonald’s is perpetually swamped with people, and riding, somewhat sadly on Ronald McDonald’s coattails is McFoxy, a Ukrainian knockoff version of the Golden Arches. Sterile and seemingly neglected, McFoxy looks like a Detroit motor company on the brink of extinction, but what it lacks in the quality of its offerings it makes up for in catching the traffic overflow from its monolithic Western neighbor. I recently spoke with Séan to get the American combo-meal connoisseur’s perspective of what’s going on in the McFoxy kitchen.

Séan eating a McFoxy burger.

VICE: What were your first impressions of McFoxy? 
Séan Schermerhorn: Fuck, it’s so bad. Nothing tastes real there. How could anything be that bad in a fast-food restaurant? Take the bread, for example: At McDonald’s, there’s a chemical element to it, like something perfectly engineered so that you don’t really notice that the chemicals make the food taste good, but at McFoxy, you’re like, "What the fuck did they do this bread?!"

McFoxy is known for menu items like chicken balls, chicken sticks, and the “burger chicken barbeque.” What did you order?
We only tried the chicken sticks and the burger, which were both very weird. They weren’t even hot, and were probably stuck under a heat lamp forever because the crispness wasn’t there. There was a sponge-like texture instead. It tasted vaguely like chicken in a strange but familiar way, like that familiarity of cheap, prepackaged ramen where you put the artificially-flavored chicken seasoning packet into the boiling water. The burger was really sugary.

Sugary?
McDonald’s has the same shit, but you mostly taste it in their ketchup—there’s so much sugar in theirs that it’s overwhelmingly sweet. The McFoxy burger was overly sweet in each of its elements. To make things worse, the bun wasn’t toasted, which kind of contributed it to being…

The saddest sandwich?
The saddest sandwich.

McFoxy burger and chicken sticks.

Did anything stand out about the burger? I’ve also heard that McFoxy is acclaimed for its sauces.
The cheese is runny, almost like a sauce, but the sauce itself is seemingly neon. It didn’t taste good. 

Did you discover any benefits of eating at McFoxy over McDonald’s? 
You can get a beer at McFoxy for a dollar, which was the best part of the meal. They didn’t fuck that up. Overall, it might be cheaper, but most of the McFoxy menu costs the same as McDonald’s. It’s weird to me that the chicken items are much cheaper. 

Is there any reason why Ukrainians should choose McFoxy over McDonald’s? 
The McDonald’s by the Vokzalna train station is always insanely busy and packed at lunchtime. It’s the grossest McDonald’s because of the volume of customers coming in and out, the disgusting bathrooms, and the trash that’s everywhere. I guess in a way, McFoxy is more peaceful because there’s a patio where you can sit and not be bothered.

Peaceful? Do you think there is anything uniquely Ukrainian about McFoxy?
No.

How would you describe the food culture in Ukraine?
There’s a food culture here, but it doesn’t exist—or at least not in the same way as it does in the US. For younger people, it’s a lost generation. There’s an existing cooking tradition here, but it’s mostly older people who partake in it. The food culture is not trend-based like it is in the West. Food is primarily considered sustenance here. 

The best part of the meal is the Ukrainian beer.

Do you think the accessibility of fast food is a quality that’s still relevant and appealing to people?
Fast food is really popular here. Most young people work all the time over here, so it’s hard to find the time to make your own meal. That sort of thing might be specific to Kiev—the grab-and-go lunch—but in every city across the country, it’s a similar scene at every McDonald’s: busy. The only other quick lunch option around here is a Middle Eastern burrito, which is mostly cabbage, street meat, and a weird spicy mayo that’s only good when you’re completely wasted. It’ll save you from vomiting. 

Do you think Ukrainian culture will ever reject fast food?
I don’t think so. The biggest fundamental difference from my perception of the situation as an outsider from San Francisco is that young people don’t have the luxury to make certain decisions here, and they don’t have the time or money to really think about food in the way that Western food culture does. If you’re already eating at McDonald’s or McFoxy on a weekly basis, you’ll probably continue to eat at those places for a very long time until the negative health repercussions catch up.

Savanna Samson and the author

Back in 2000, one of the first videos I “reviewed” for my VICE column, Skinema, was Rocco Siffredi’s American Angel in Paris starring Savanna Samson. Now, more than a decade and probably a few thousand video reviews later, I still can’t shake the graphic scenes from my head. While the internet is basically a bottomless box of porn where an intrepid googler can find all kinds of holes being filled with numerous wangs and whatnots, in the majority of those videos all parties involved appear to be willing participants. That is not the impression I got from American Angel, which also happened to be Savanna’s first movie.

The backstory is that her ex-husband very much wanted to see her get fucked on film, so she wrote to the legendary director Siffredi and asked to star in one of his films. Fast-forward to a hotel room in Paris. Savanna and another girl are enjoying themselves and giving Rocco a blow job when suddenly he attempts to aggressively choke Savanna with his cock while smacking her in the face. And we aren’t talking light, playful smacks—these are solid, jarring hits to the jaw. The look on Savanna’s face quickly turns to fear as Rocco mercilessly plows her butthole until a spot of blood can be seen. He is smacking her in the face this whole time. The scene feels more like a raping than consensual sex.

Yet somehow the final scene is more disturbing than the first. After Savanna gets casually DP'd by two other fellows and her face shellacked with semen, a doorbell rings. Rocco, standing up on a balcony, jokes, “Oh, I wonder who that could be?” Enter five strapping black men—dicks out—whom Savanna clearly was not expecting. They grope Savanna’s tits and ass as they force their dicks in and out of her mouth. I was disturbed. The rawness and unflinching brutality was like no other porno I’d watched before or since, and I can remember it clear as day simply because it made me so unbelievably uncomfortable.

I didn’t think Savanna Samson would ever make another film. I mean, who would show up for work again after a first day like that? And yet a few months later American Angel in Paris was nominated for "Best Foreign Release" by AVN, and the following year Savanna became a Vivid Girl and went on to make over 90 films for the reserved and tasteful porn company. Although she hasn't done a film since 2010, Savanna has made numerous appearances on 30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, and The Daily Show.

I first interviewed Savanna in 2005, inside a dim Manhattan lounge. I wanted to ask her about that experience with Rocco, but since it was my birthday and my wife was with me I decided to keep things light. I learned that she was on the verge of launching her own wine label, and the next year her first offering from Savanna Samson Wines garnered a 91-out-100 rating by the Wine Advocate’s wine critic, Robert M. Parker Jr.

Yesterday was once again my birthday, and once again I chose to spend it with my wife and Savanna Samson, this time tasting Savanna’s own wine (which was actually quite delicious) at the new Vivid Cabaret strip club on 37th Street. (FYI, I'm told all the dancers make over six figures a year there. So ladies, if you’re looking for a lucrative career…) We discussed her return to porn, making wine, the dynamic of taking on five guys, and that very first scene with Rocco Siffredi so many years ago.

Chris Nieratko, Savanna Samson, and Cris Nieratko

Follow @Therealsavanna or go to Svannasamsonwine.com

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

Who said romance is dead? Photo by Peter Ryaux-Larsen 

Few things are more contrived and emotionally psychotic than Valentine’s Day. People buy each other material tokens of appreciation not out of love, but because it’s marked on a calendar and drilled into our collective consciousness. Everyone runs around with their heads cut off, desperately comparing themselves to social standards that are designed to commercialize and package their love for profit.

But anyone can shit on Valentine’s Day with words. I decided to spend my Valentine’s Day with two of the least romantic things I could think of: porno theatres and Tinder. To be more specific: I planned to ask a random girl from Tinder to go on a Valentine’s Day date to Cinema L’Amour, Montreal’s notorious adult film theatre.

I've never been in a porn theatre before, but I’ve always been extremely curious. While most people write them off as creepy homeless masturbation chambers, I think they’re shrouded in secrecy and synonymous with sin and forbidden sexuality, like a box with a bow around it saying, "PLEASE DON'T OPEN."

Going to a porn theatre is easy. Finding some random girl on a dating app who’d want to come with me would be difficult. Or at least I thought it would be. After a few days of unfiltered speed swiping on Tinder, I met Dominique (not her real name), a pretty engineering student from McGill. We had a quick pre-Valentine’s meetup, and over a drunken conversation at a burger joint, I popped the question. She burst out laughing. After confirming that I wasn’t joking, and presumably deciding I was definitely not a rapist, she surprisingly agreed. Under two conditions: the movie “can’t have any big black guys and no girl-on-girl action.”

Beggars can’t be choosers, I thought. Luckily, the shows playing on Valentine’s Day were The Teacher’s Pet: Grade A and Breakin' Em' in #16 – Part 2. Neither suggested any scissoring or colossal black penises. I went with The Teacher’s Pet: Grade A because the idea of watching someone “breaking someone in” made my foreskin shrivel.

Before the show, we met at my house around the corner from the theatre, hoping to share a moment of innocent reality and—I don't know—establish some trust. It wasn’t too late for her to back out, and if she had, I wouldn’t have held it against her. But she was all in. As a result, I had a good feeling about the date. Any girl who was willing to go this far out on a limb would probably wind up being pretty cool. I put on some neutral clothing and we set out into the snowy streets of Montreal’s Plateau.

We didn’t talk much on the way to the theatre. When we got there, I put my hand on the door to open it for her and took a deep breath. This was the official point of no return. I knew that whatever was in there, whatever happened, when we came out we'd be different. Was I ready for that?

I pulled the door open and we walked up to the ticket counter.

The highest porn theatre praise, from a satisfied fan.

“2 for The Teacher’s Pet: Grade A please.”

The ticket lady's name was Heather. She appeared to be in her 50s, but who knows what this place might have done to her. Her bloodshot eyes were sunk deep in a sea of wrinkly skin and her scowling facial features were partly obstructed by fraying gray hairs. She eyed me suspiciously as the sound of genitals smacking each other drifted out of the theatre and filled the room.

“$10.50 for you. Free for her.”

Behind her were normal snacks like popcorn and Kit Kats, with handwritten combo deals on a hanging sign. It smelt like stale cigarettes and spray cleaner. Even though the floor was black rubber and there were Porno DVDs lining the left, the place sort of looked exactly like an old movie theatre. For a moment, there was a glimmer of hope in my mind that this could be way more normal than we had expected.

Heather told us sternly that upstairs there were private booths for an extra $35. Dominique and I looked at each other confused.

“Why, is downstairs really bad? What happens down there?”

Heather waved her hands hysterically in the direction of the theatre, “Oh, I know what happens in there. I don’t go in there, but I know.”

Well, weirdness and perversion is what we signed up for, so we figured we might as well get the full experience. Plus, how bad could it really be? Porno theatres are just film theatres that happen to be playing adult movies, right? Sure, maybe you’ve got a few dudes in trench coats lurking by themselves in the corner and perhaps one or two guys rubbing one out quietly in their seat, but if it was worse than that, it wouldn’t be in business. Right?

We decided to stay on the first floor and Heather led us through some red leather doors and into the theatre, explaining that they can also provide a tour of the place as well. She brought us to a section with a white plastic chain on either side.

“Nobody can sit beside you here," she whispered. “Sit anywhere else, and they’ll try.”

There were about a dozen of men scattered around the room, some of them sunken into their chairs with baseball caps drawn and some pacing around ominously. I glanced around the room to create a mental map of the creeps lurking in the shadows. I became painfully aware that my date was the only female in a very sexually charged room. The tension was thick. We took our seats and started to watch the movie.

Suddenly, I noticed the men had slowly started to migrate around our chained off section one by one until we found ourselves surrounded. They had completely converged on us from all sides. The air reeked of piss.

I put my arm around Dominique, not to be romantic, but for some kind of mutual security. She clutched my hand so hard that I could see the whites of my knuckles. I abruptly became very aware of the back of my neck. I turned around as the screen went bright, lighting up the face of a toothless hobo two rows behind us grinning at me. I whipped around and looked to my left, where a guy leaning against the wall gave me a creepy Cheshire cat smile. Nobody was watching the movie. We were the all-you-can-eat buffet for lonely perverts. I didn’t feel unsafe, but I definitely did not want to get jizzed on by a stranger.

I sunk down into my seat and tried to focus on the movie. It appeared that Daisy hadn’t done her homework again, but was willing to work out some kind of arrangement with her teacher Brad. Then came the close-up HD asshole shot. The thing was the size of a giant pulsing monster-truck tire, and they kept zooming in to show how gaping and cavernous it was.

“This is like a fucking sci-fi movie," Dominique whispered in my ear.

We laughed nervously as I glanced around at the walls and ceiling. It was actually really well designed. The place was built in 1914, and the neo-classical interior and terrace wrapping around the second floor was more or less as it must have been a hundred years ago. I wanted to break the tension and share my little observation with Dominique. Then we heard belts unbuckling.

I shot up onto my feet and pulled her out to the lobby to take Heather up on that tour. A forest of heads and hungry eyes turned slowly in the darkness, following us out. We were really glad to see Heather again, and she called for her associate to give us a tour.

“Alex?” She said. “Alex!”

Alex crept up to her side and gave us big, creepy grin. He appeared to be Russian and somewhere in his 40s. He had a lazy, foggy eye that drifted around the room as he spoke.

“You guys wanna spend your Valentine’s Day upstairs?”

Before we could answer, he was walking upstairs and we followed as the sound of slapping and over-the-top moaning bounced off the walls. We got to the terrace, and the giant asshole was now being probed with a giant tongue. Alex burst out laughing, which was probably the best response to the whole thing.

“After a while it just gets funny.”

Alex seemed like a good dude and perhaps the only other sane person in the building. He showed us the private booths, which were pretty much a little couch with a curtain around them and an open front to see the screen. He told us about the history of the building and then told us that tomorrow would be a better time to come back, not because of the homeless pervert squad there today, but because Saturdays are busier.

“It’s Valentine's Day. Most people are home with their families.”

He brought us into the old projection room. The room had hooks hanging from the ceiling where the projectionist could hold the reels of film, a TV set from the 80s, a toilet in the corner, and a smell like soggy woodchips. Even though Alex had somewhat won us over, I still kept my distance because getting killed in this room seemed like a vague possibility.

“Why did everyone downstairs surround us?” I asked

“They want something from you. If you come in here and you’re the only couple, they expect a show.”

My temperature rose dramatically. They had been fiending us at a level that went well beyond voyeurism to a form of aggressive entitlement. Their crusted, drooling mouths and steaming ballsweat had been triggered by us simply walking in. The trembling excitement was based on absolute faith that we were going to fuck each other in the theatre, in front of everyone.

“They’re used to it. This girl came in yesterday, blew everyone, and left. Another time a girl just stood up and said, ‘Who wants to go upstairs with me?’ She picked one guy who wouldn't fuck her, so she came back down and got a second guy to do it.”

Dominique couldn’t handle it.

“Who are these girls?” she said.

“Well, they don’t look like you.”

Dominique seemed to be shaken up a bit, but the same confusion and disbelief that held my attention seemed to be holding hers. We went back downstairs and to my horror, I had to pee. There were two doors, one that said MEN and another that said WOMEN ONLY.

“You should come with me.”

“No, no, no, I’ll be fine,” she said, “I’ll go hang out in the lobby with Heather.”

I walked down a dimly lit spiral staircase to the washroom. I had to duck to fit under the low ceiling, and I kept my head on a swivel as I unzipped. Somewhere, a faucet was dripping. When I was done, I hurried up the stairs and stopped in my tracks near the top of the steps as I saw someone’s shoes. I looked up and it was the Cheshire cat guy.

“What is your name?” He said in a stilted accent.

“Stephen.” I squeezed past him.

“I am Laurent. You have a beautiful girl with you.”

“Yeah. I have to go”

“Where are you from?”

“Toronto.”

“I am from Africa. I have been here for nine years. When people come, I like to watch them.”

“OK, nice to meet you.”

What the fuck just happened? I thought. I burst through the door and saw an exceptionally pasty guy in a winter coat trying to talk to Dominique. She grabbed me and we rushed back to the lobby.

“How are you feeling?” I said.

“This place is like a twisted wonderland for perverts.”

At that point most people will have taken the cue from the world of dark fucked-up perversion and hightailed it back to normalcy. But however insane it sounds, we didn't want to leave. I didn’t want to let this place win. Maybe it’s my competitive nature, but I didn’t want to admit to myself that there are some spaces in Montreal and some walks of life that are too much for me. Dominique had a look of determination behind her panicked eyes as well, so without a word, we went back in. We sat at the back, so we could keep track of everyone in front of us. The league of extraordinary shadow lurkers caught wind of our move and started swooping into our area, trying to make eye contact. We warned each other in hysterical whispers.

“Holy shit, yeah, he’s coming over. Fuck. Don't look. OK, no, he’s gone.”

“Yeah, he’s coming back on your left right now, right there. Fuck! I can see his dick!”

We held each other like two hostages as Daisy continued to get pounded by Brad at full volume. Laurent came over and I was about to tell him to back off but all he said was:

“Can I take your picture?”

It seemed better than being stabbed so we let him take a few awkward photos of us sitting together.

The author, with his Valentine's Day Tinder date.

“OK, that’s enough we’d like to be alone now.”

After a few minutes, the strategic swooping stopped, and the theatre looked cleared out. I tried to figure out what was happening. My heart sank and my body went limp with abject horror when I realized that everyone had just drifted creepily to the back to watch us from behind. Leering in the darkness, feet behind us was a row of eyes fixated on the back of our heads. They darted back into the darkness when they saw me.

Suddenly, The Teacher’s Pet: Grade A was over. We made it to the other side. We looked at each other like, Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here, and stood up to leave. On the way out, Laurent stopped us and tried to kiss Dominique. She dodged it expertly and we ran out into the lobby. We ran past Heather, the snacks, and the porno DVDs and went outside. We took a moment to catch our breath.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Can I have a hug?” She said.

“Yeah.” I needed one too. “Let’s never do that again.”

I looked around at the softly falling snow, people holding hands, and children jumping around and felt a wave of relief wash over me. Even the sketchiest looking guy on the street was fine, because I knew he didn’t want to cum on me. Nobody wanted to cum on me.

“Hey,” I said, “Do you want to like make pasta and drink wine at my house?”

“That’s the most romantic thing I’ve heard all day. Yes.”

After the dinner we went up to my room, and she ripped her clothes off. She undid my belt and fucked my brains out.

Afterwards we lay there on my pile of torn apart sheets, panting and looking up at the ceiling.

“What was today like for you?” I asked her.

“I felt uncomfortable the whole time,” she said. “But I knew it was never going to get that bad because you were there.”

“I kinda felt bad for bringing you into this, but you dealt with it all really well. Very well.”

“Happy Valentine's Day.”

“Yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

@keefe_stephen

All TIME parody covers supplied via a call on Facebook. Thanks, friends!

Barack Obama stopped in the city of Toluca, Mexico, this Wednesday to have a “formal trilateral meeting” with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto. The topic officially was energy and trade, but I can bet you that for a bunch of mainstream news outlet north of the Rio Grande, this meeting was really be about how Radically Awesome Cool everything related to Mexico is right now.

That’s right. In tourism, trade, and most especially in oil, there isn’t a single better place on the planet today than good ole Mexico when it comes to prospects for North American investment interests.

Why, just take a look at the forthcoming cover story of Time magazine’s international edition, a stirring example of the kind of news we could use about Mexico. Nevermind that some portions of the piece sound strikingly similar to a paid advertorial about Mexico that appeared in a December issue of Time (more on that here), this recent cover story is a confirmation of everything we’ve been told about how Radically Awesome Cool Mexico is.

Sure, the story breezily avoids delving into the kind of shitty shit that most Mexicans confront every day—poverty, violence, impunity, stagnant wages, lack of social mobility, and the utter lack of a rule of law. Yet, the cover shows Peña Nieto in a suit, a red tie, and a stern frown, which is meant to demonstrate how he is “Saving Mexico.”

That is the actual headline on the cover, and it makes a lot of sense after you read the story. I mean, how else could a president who represents the return to power of an autocratic “official” political party be anything but good news for the country?

Peña Nieto, Time suggests, is the only hope for salvation for the tens of millions of Mexicans living in poverty in Mexico, and maybe even for the millions of Mexicans who desperately abandoned their country for a better life in the U.S. because they couldn’t get a job or couldn’t afford school here, or because some drug cartel killed everyone in their family. Wanting to make sure it was all true, I wrote to Time and asked for a response to the nasty payola rumors that have circulated about their relationship to Mexico’s presidency. All I got was this canned reply:

"TIME does not accept payment in exchange for editorial coverage under any circumstances. Rates listed on TIME's public media kit refer to the cost of advertising with TIME and have nothing to do with editorial content."

But just to make it totally clear, let me break down the most majorly idiotic portions of the Time piece, written by Washington-based writer Michael Crowley. Here’s how he starts off...

At 9 o'clock on a February night, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was still working inside Los Pinos, his official Mexico City residence, where camouflaged soldiers with assault rifles stood guard outside. For the 47-year-old President, it was a reminder that the presidency is a deadly serious business--especially at this pivotal moment in Mexican history.

No idea why the president of a large globalized economy like Mexico’s would regard being at a desk at 9 p.m. on a February night as anything less than “deadly serious business,” or as most other big-time presidents say, just another day at the office. But I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about, so let’s listen in!

Five years ago, drug violence was exploding, the Mexican economy was reeling, and a Pentagon report likened the Aztec nation to the terrorist-infested basket case Pakistan, saying both were at risk of "rapid and sudden collapse." As Barack Obama prepared to take office in 2008, one of his senior foreign policy advisers privately nominated Mexico the most underappreciated problem facing the new U.S. Administration.

This is serious, guys. We’re talking “basket case” states here.

Crowley continues.

Now the alarms are being replaced with applause. After one year in office, Peña Nieto has passed the most ambitious package of social, political and economic reforms in memory. Global economic forces, too, have shifted in his country's direction. Throw in the opening of Mexico's oil reserves to foreign investment for the first timei n 75 years, and smart money has begun to bet on peso power. "In the Wall Street investment community, I'd say that Mexico is by far the favorite nation just now," says Ruchir Sharma, head of emerging markets at Morgan Stanley. "It's gone from a country people had sort of given up on to becoming the favorite."

Wait a second. Did this reporter just fly in for this story and fly out? Apparently he did. Hmmm.

Did he get any research done for this assignment? Did his local assisting reporter not tell him that the “ambitious package” of reforms is more or less copied or modeled on various reforms proposed in the past by the conservative and leftist rivals that sit on both sides of the president’s PRI party?

The PRI—Mexico's monolithic ruling political party, sort of like if you combined the Democrats and Republicans into one coalition—sparked an entire grassroots movement aimed directly at preventing their own party's ascent back to Los Pinos during the 2012 presidential campaign. That movement failed in its main goal but its very existence sorta maybe might be indicative of the kind of distrust the PRI engenders among Mexicans across the generations who remember its 71-year grip on the country—especially among those who survived it, or those who didn’t flee to the United States out of purely survivalist instincts.

Thank goodness an analyst at Morgan Stanley, one of the dark lairs of Wall Street, is the voice of reason here.

Hold on. It isn’t made clear how or why global economic forces have “shifted” toward Mexico, although, as speculation, it’s certainly an idea you can sell, as The New York Times recently did (and keeps doing, like this spectacular piece of journalism from 2011 about a giraffe spreading joy in Ciudad Juarez during the peak of its most atrociously violent period).

Want proof? On Feb. 5, Mexico's government bonds earned an A-- rating for the first timei n history when Moody's revised its assessment of the country's prospects, ranking it higher than Brazil, the onetime darling of international investors, and making it only the second Latin American nation after Chile to get an A.

I do want proof, and an elevation in Moody’s rate on Mexico’s bonds is precisely the piece of information that I needed to make it clear to me that Peña Nieto is “saving Mexico.” Nevermind that Mexico’s economy actually stagnated in 2013, growing far less than the average for the years previous, an estimated 1.3%, compared to 4.3% on average between 2010 and 2012. Mexico, yes, slowed down last year. It was the worst result for Mexico since the sad days of the global downturn in 2009—and the first full year in office for Peña Nieto, coincidentally.

"I believe the conditions are very favorable for Mexico to grow," Peña Nieto told TIME in an interview at the Los Pinos compound. "I'm very optimistic."

These quotes by Mexico’s president sure do tell me a lot. They tell me that the reporter met with Peña Nieto, in person, and that’s important. The quotes also tell me the reporter couldn’t get the president to say anything more argumentative or articulate than, “I’m very optimistic.”

He'll share that optimism with Obama when the U.S. President arrives in Mexico for a North American leaders summit on Feb. 19. Obama will likely nod in approval: a booming Mexico--integrated with the U.S. economy in myriad ways--would put wind in the sails of U.S. economic growth and further reduce an already declining flow of immigrants illegally crossing the shared 1,933-mile (3,110 km) border.

Aha! So that’s what this is about! This story isn’t even about Mexico, when it comes down to it. It’s rrrreally about the United States. Our economy will grow, Crowley surmises, and all those Messsicans will be crossing the border yonder no more!

But "Mexico's moment," as many are calling it, could still disappoint. Corruption and mismanagement are endemic to Mexican politics. Some of Peña Nieto's reforms are engendering fierce resistance. And drug trafficking, with its related crime and violence, remains a defining fact. After his interview with TIME, Peña Nieto went straight into a meeting to plan his trip the next day to Michoacán, a nearby state where vigilante groups have formed to fight drug bosses who have seized control of their towns.

Now for some qualifications, for some of that fair and balanced flavor.

Michoacán is effectively a failed state within Mexico, where cartels, the armed forces, and Chinese mining interests are battling a soft war for control of the state’s precious commodities. It should come as no surprise that Peña is having lots of important meetings about it. While little changes there, armed citizen vigilantes expand their territory against a cartel that calls itself the Knights Templar, like some bloody cult, and that’s how they behave, chopping off people’s heads when they deem it necessary—which is often.

This is where the story gets weird. If corruption and mismanagement are “endemic” to Mexican politics, meaning a part of the DNA and here to stay, why isn’t this really important Time cover story telling us more about that pesky dilemma holding so many Mexicans back? And if the drug war is a “defining fact,” why not tell us more about what that fact means for everyday folks like you and me?

Weirdly, though, I don’t know of anyone who is calling this “Mexico’s Moment,” other than people who stand to directly benefit from the construction of an impression of an economic boom in Mexico, a boom which actually has not manifested, and has certainly not “trickled down” to the average Mexican. So...

Officials and experts in both Mexico and the US describe a country at a pivot point. "This is dramatically different from what we've seen before," says Gordon Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center. "I reserve judgment for the time being on whether this is all going to work out."

Reserve judgement? Whether it will work out? What kind of pessimistic, negative-thinking “friend” of Mexico are you, Mr. Gordon—I mean, Duncan—Wood? I thought we were “Saving Mexico” here.

Peña Nieto casts himself as a fresh, young reformer. But he is also a product of the ruling elite that helped lead Mexico to the brink of ruin. His uncle and godfather were both governors of the state of Mexico, a position he assumed in 2005 when he was 38. He is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico for 71 years--often with the help of election results widely considered fraudulent--until it was knocked out of power in 2000. Peña Nieto revived the PRI's fortunes by promising bold and tangible results to a country largely resigned to corruption and stasis. "Between 2000 and 2012, the opposition parties deliberately blocked major reforms that were necessary," says Wood. Peña Nieto promised to overhaul the state-run energy sector and the tax system and contain the drug war's savagery.

Oh, right, this. Peña Nieto does belong to one of the oldest and most shadowy political power nodes in Mexican history. I said so myself shortly after he “won” the election in July 2012. You can buy people’s votes and favorable media coverage in one of those, right? Because that’s what the PRI did.

When you were born to win, what’s a little pay-off gonna hurt to make it happen?

Yes, the PRI, or Institutional Revolutionary Party, uses red, green, and white as its party colors, because those are the colors of Mexico’s flag, and that means the PRI believes it is Mexico. If you oppose the PRI, according to the party’s logic, you’re basically opposed to the country. And who wants to be on the side of losers like that? Certainly not America, and not Wall Street.

But this isn’t making sense anymore, so let’s back up. Between 2000 and 2012, when Peña won, the PRI was the opposition. The story itself tells you: the PRI lost the 2000 presidential election to the right-wing opposition, known as PAN, which means that at that point Peña’s party lost the presidency and joined the opposition. And as the opposition, yes, the PRI blocked reforms proposed by the PAN and then turned around and proposed versions of those same reforms themselves, once they returned to power in 2012.

Now, Mr. Wood, this quote here—which I admit might have been taken out of context by Mr. Crowley—makes you sound like a cynical twat. Even for someone who works at a neoliberal think-tank.

Adding a glow to the ambitious promises were the candidate's famous aesthetics: Peña Nieto's rallies were sometimes charged with subtle sexual energy. Or not so subtle: "Peña Nieto, bombón, te quiero en mi colchón" ("Peña Nieto, sweetie, I want you in my bed"), women would chant.

This is where I can imagine a fixer or a mid-level advisor inside Los Pinos winking at Exeter- and Yale-educated Mr. Crowley during the reporter’s short visit, nudgingly dropping this salacious but stale detail from the 2012 campaign, hoping that he’ll find it charming, and thus include it in his story.

Or as I like to say, force a few million face-palms.

Peña Nieto's opponents did their best to turn this against him by tagging him as a shallow pretty boy. They were particularly gleeful when, during an appearance at a Guadalajara book fair, he struggled to name three books that had shaped his life ("and that's spotting him the Bible," says a former US official with a chuckle).

I have a feeling this “former U.S. official” is the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico who gets quoted a little farther down in this story, because this is shaping up to be the laziest piece of journalism on Mexico in the history of mankind. And yes, when a man who wants to lead one of the world’s largest economies for six whole years and can’t successfully name-drop three books he’s read, three books, it was kind of a red flag.

Eventually, in a three-way race in the summer of 2012, Peña Nieto won just 38% of the vote--hardly a mandate for generational change. The secret to his recent success lies in the way he then built a powerful legislative coalition. After meeting secretly with the two leading opposition parties, he struck the kind of legislative grand bargain that has eluded his counterpart across the northern border. The resulting Pacto por México gave liberals higher taxes on the wealthy and conservatives an end to Mexico's ban on the re-election of politicians, while Peña Nieto won support for a raft of other reforms, including opening up the country's oil monopoly.

The PRI won a virtual majority in Congress after the 2012 race, ensuring that whatever it wanted to do, it could. None of it had to do with Peña Nieto’s “powerful legislative coalition,” but rather the strict administration of discipline among the legion of young PRI legislators who coasted to office across the country under the onslaught of the soul-crushing PRI media machine. The Pacto por México was window-dressing for the power brokers, little more. Everything according to plan...

Even after the deal was announced, jaded observers doubted that Mexico's political system could deliver. But whatever he may lack in literary erudition, Peña Nieto compensates for in political prowess. He is assisted by a group of young technocrats, many with advanced degrees from outside Mexico, who together put a decidedly more modern face on a very old and very distrusted PRI machine. Among them are the President's longtime top adviser and now Finance Minister, Luis Videgaray Caso, a 45-year-old economist with an MIT doctorate, and Emilio Lozoya Austin, the new 39-year-old chief of the state oil company, Pemex, who holds a Harvard master's degree. Running the powerful Interior Ministry is 49-year-old Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, Mexico's new point man on the drug war.

To be a reputable Mexican leader, it’s always better to go college in the U.S. or U.K. than inside Mexico. Wait up, though … Peña Nieto only went to a little-known religious university called Panamericana, and speaks terrible English. But this is about MIT graduate Mr. Videgaray, so listen up.

Sitting in a personal office near a bright red phone that connects him directly to the President, Videgaray says talk that he is the true mastermind behind Peña Nieto's reforms is "not at all the reality." Instead, he says, "the time was right. Mexico needed fundamental changes."

OK, Mr. Crowley, you just let Mr. Videgaray do absolutely nothing to refute the legitimate claim that he is the mastermind behind all of Peña Nieto’s policies. Here, Mr. Crowley and Mr. Videgaray probably chuckled heartily, before or after the complimentary tequilas, and moved on.

"Traitors! traitors!" came the shouts from inside Mexico's Congress on Dec. 12. Opponents of a measure allowing foreign investment in Mexico's oil sector had barricaded and padlocked the lower house of Congress, forcing the debate into a nearby auditorium. One legislator stripped down to a pair of black underpants as he railed at the lectern about the stripping of his nation.

What? Voices of protest? Some people aren’t believing enough? Pants down?

But national pride meant that Mexico missed out on the global energy boom. While oil prices have roughly quadrupled over the past decade, enriching big producers, Mexican oil production dropped by 25%, thanks to the sclerotic federal oil enterprise, Pemex, which lacks the capital and expertise to tap the country's reserves.

[…]

Under the new [oil ] law, foreigners will again be able to explore for oil in Mexico and extract Mexican crude for profit, even if the oil technically still belongs to the people--a point Peña Nieto is careful to underscore. "The world has changed, and especially the energy sector has changed," he says, rebutting the suggestion that he has allowed his country to be stripped to its skivvies. "The state does not compromise in its view that the property continues to be owned by Mexico. It belongs to all Mexicans."

Foreign companies will be able to extract crude in Mexico for profit, but somehow, all of it still belongs to all of us Mexicans, or at least, “the view” of the state is that it will always belong to Mexicans. The view; you can forgive some Mexicans for not sharing it. The last time a private entity was permitted to take over a national utility in Mexico, the deal quickly produced a Carlos Slim, known for years as the world’s richest man.

But... trust us!

Factor in a law that rejiggers the tax code and an end to single-term limits for all federal politicians, and you have what might be the most productive legislative session anywhere in recent history. "You have to give them extraordinary marks for both political instinct and management of the process," says Tony Garza, a U.S. ambassador to Mexico under George W. Bush.

There he is! Tony Garza, the biggest Mexico booster ever to come from the great state of Texas! He reads Ayn Rand and also happens to consult for the private sector, according to a recent interview he gave to Milenio. My guess is his infectious enthusiasm for the privatization of Mexico’s oil industry is due to the likelihood that some of his consulting clients stand to profit from the opening of up of oil production in Mexico to foreign companies.

For all its drama, the oil reform might not even be Peña Nieto's most important victory. In fact, the uproar against his education reform was even more intense than the battle over oil. A law overhauling Mexico's absurdly deficient public-education system--in which teaching jobs are handed down through generations and are sometimes even sold--enraged the powerful teachers' union, whose members paralyzed central Mexico City with mass street demonstrations last September.

Uh, apparently no one told Mr. Crowley that the vaunted education reform pushed by Peña Nieto was in fact a labor reform aimed mostly at weakening the rotting teacher’s union. Kids, infrastructure, and reforming instruction first? Whatever.

There's also evidence that Peña Nieto will challenge Mexico's entrenched powers. Last year he ordered the arrest of the longtime and powerful leader of the teachers' union on charges of embezzling millions in union funds. And some observers say his telecom-reform plan doesn't please telecom mogul Carlos Slim, the country's richest man.

Yes! Word up, Mr. Crowley! Peña Nieto jailed the seemingly untouchtable Elba Esther Gordillo, leaders of the teachers’ union. But … what about the other big wigs of corrupt labor in Mexico? Carlos Romero Deschamps, the de facto leader of the Pemex oil workers union, is a millionaire and also a senator, and member of the PRI since 1961. His daughter Paulina loves yachts.

In 2000, Deschamps was implicated in “Pemexgate,” a scandal in which the union’s membership fees were revealed to have been funnelled to the campaign of the PRI’s then-losing candidate for president. Yet Deschamps remains free and untouchable. There are other labor bosses who represent little more than decadence and abuse for Mexico’s workers, of course, but who’s counting?

Credit Peña Nieto with good timing too. Rising labor costs in China have made Mexican wages cheaper by comparison, reversing a dynamic that held for most of the 2000s. Meanwhile, a slowdown has dampened foreign enthusiasm for Brazil's economy, making Mexico look more appealing. Even Peña Nieto's critics don't deny that he has delivered changes that could transform Mexico's economy. "The question," says Manuel Camacho Solís, a member of the Mexican Senate, "is whether that will create the outcome they want."

Forgive me, but it’s hard not to point out that Mexico is a win for Wall Street because labor costs here are now dropping below those of China. How on Earth? For starters, minimum wage in Mexico is approximately $5.18 a day, and that’s after an increase that just went into effect in January.

Of course, not everyone makes minimum wage in Mexico. Others make whatever they can get as laborers in Mexico’s massive informal economy, where about 60% of all laborers in Mexico toil, with no safety net and no taxation. I know all the Polly Positive stories on Mexico mention a “growing middle class,” so why do a majority of Mexicans still self-identify as belonging to the “lower class,” as this recent poll shows? (Probably because most Mexicans still functionally reside there.)

Camacho is suspicious that Peña Nieto's agenda seems to be a bigger hit in Davos than in Xico. "Investors applaud. Newspapers outside the country applaud. So why does the image of the President keep falling?" asks Camacho, noting that Pe*a Nieto's poll numbers have fallen several points below 50%. (Some trace the poll slump to a recent pause in economic growth that economists call temporary.)

Temporary, guys, temporary!

Peña Nieto promised to tackle the violence. But once in power he seemed to de-emphasize the drug war. U.S. officials worry that drug lords understand that the pressure will ease on their trafficking so long as the heads--so to speak--stop rolling. "The government's messaging outside the country is about changing the conversation from the cartels to Mexico's economic potential," says Wood.

I agree: ignore the problem, mask it, rearrange it, and package it as something else, and it will just go away. Right?

Chong insists otherwise. "We are not mixing security with politics," says the Interior Minister, who, it may be worth noting, has a political background as a former governor of the Mexican state of Hidalgo. Speaking from his private office--the better to avoid a part of town paralyzed by street protests--he adds that the drug fight has been focused by centralization of authority under his control and that his government has captured some prominent drug lords, including the sadistic leader of the Zetas cartel, Miguel Ángel Treviño Morales, in July 2013.

It has been shown time and time again that the capture of cartel chiefs only fuels violence in Mexico. Or is it all those assault weapons the U.S. willingly and knowingly smuggled into Mexico that’s causing all the bloodshed?

Skeptics scoff at this sunny narrative. Murders have slowed in some areas, but other crimes have spiked. In late January, the President unveiled a new initiative to combat a recent epidemic of secuestro, as kidnapping for ransom is known.

Kidnapping indeed skyrocketted to unprecedented levels in the last decade in Mexico, and grew significantly in 2013 as well, according to official numbers. But that’s the problem. The official numbers likely reflect a miniscule fraction of the reality, meaning many more kidnappings likely occur than are reported. Live here a while, and you start to hear of random kidnapping stories from friends or acquaintances, even in “relatively safe” Mexico City.

But we’re the lucky ones in Mexico’s megalopolis. If you live in the surrounding states, good luck!

And then there is the crisis in Michoacán, where the emergence of armed vigilante groups is a disturbing echo of Colombia's descent into a kind of low-grade civil war in the 1980s. "Nobody knows who the hell these people are--whether they are honest, bona fide vigilante groups or whether it's one cartel fighting another," says Jorge Castañeda, former Mexican Foreign Minister.

We’ve covered the crisis in Michoacan before, and I can assure, even as I sit here in Mexico City, the precise nature of the situation there is beyond the grasps of any outsider who manages to engage with the field for a few days or weeks. We really only get hints of the problem, and since reporters here are routinely killed for doing their job, you can’t expect much truthiness from the day-to-day news here.

"What's happening in Michoacán is really worrisome," says Shannon O'Neil of the Council on Foreign Relations. "If you can't fix rule of law, I don't see how the economic side can thrive."

  […]

"Sometimes people see the events but not the statistics," says Chong.

[…]

A senior Obama Administration official expresses sympathy. "It's a big country," he says, recounting a nervous call from a U.S. auto-industry executive headed to a large Mexican city for a convention. The official's advice? Relax. "It's the equivalent of, you're going to L.A. for a convention and you hear about a big shoot-out or hostage taking in Alabama. Would you feel unsafe?"

Wow. An incredibly flippant and offensive thing to say to the survivors of the violence of Mexico’s drug war. In this “senior Obama administration” official’s opinion, I guess, you could also say that it’s like going to the “hip” and “trendy” Condesa neighborhood in the middle of Mexico City for some drinks, where any night of the week you could end up witnessing a shooting death or a kidnapping at the next table.

And I’m not exaggerating. Largely because of petty crime concentrated in the most tourist-heavy districts of the city (places that attract some U.S. and Canadian nationals, but primarily tourists or transplants from other parts of Mexico and Latin America), the central Cuauhtemoc borough of Mexico City is the most of unsafe of all 16 city boroughs in total, according to government figures.

Even if some reforms fall short, it has been a long timesince Mexico experienced grand political bargains, a growing economy and optimism about the future. The idea might have been laughable until recently. But is it possible that America's leaders could learn a thing or two from its resurgent southern neighbor?

You mean, “Saving the United States”? Imagine that. The deeper problem with Time's cover story on Mexico's president is that it reveals a coddling, apologetic, and painfully out-of-touch stance on the part of U.S. news media outlets covering Mexico's current government agenda. That is opposed to the confrontational, skeptical stance that as news consumers we should expect from all our reporters covering the world from dangerous places in the field.

If not, Time and other (usually respectable) news outlets risk joining the ranks of the stenographers and PR brainiacs who already work for the government as it is. So far, they're winning. They do have a wider point, if darkly communicated: Mexico is not all doom and gloom. But my belief is that if we all love Mexico, as most people who visit here eventually find themselves professing, we must hold Mexico to the highest standards possible, in justice, transparency, equity, and the rule of law.

None of those privileges at the moment are enjoyed in their entirety by any of us. So we don't need "saving," necessarily. Maybe what we need is a rebirth.

Daniel Hernandez is an editor at VICE Mexico. Follow him on Twitter.

Photo by Jake Lewis

Florida, as you'll probably know from the cannibalistic drug casualties and mother-daughter porn duos, is a lot of things. One thing it's not, however, is a US state where you can buy weed from a licensed premises rather than from a teenager's drawstring backpack.

But that could all be set to change. As the state's gubernatorial race heats up, medical marijuana has become a key issue, and in ten months Floridians will be asked to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment permitting the prescription of medical marijuana. The amendment needs 60 percent of the vote to be passed, and considering public support is lingering somewhere around the 80 percent mark, it looks pretty likely that it's going to happen.

Anticipating the arrival of a new green economy, Jeremy Bufford is setting up Florida's first cannabis university—Medical Marijuana Tampa—to help anyone hoping to get into the weed industry gain the skills they'll need. I gave Jeremy a call to find out what exactly he'll be teaching his students.   

VICE: What made you start a cannabis university?
Jeremy Bufford: Well, honestly, it was a way for us to be a first mover in the space, because we won’t be able to actually operate our treatment centers and our laboratory facility until mid-to-late 2015. We have the opportunity from now until then to operate under our business name to go ahead and brand ourselves as the trusted place to get your education around medical cannabis. Hopefully we’ll be able to parlé that into a brand image where people will see us as the trusted place to get their medicine [when] we’re able to operate our treatment centers.

OK. What’s the syllabus going to be?
So, the syllabus is available for download on the website. We basically teach about the plant from a historical perspective, from a legal perspective, from a botanical perspective, and from a pharmacological perspective—what it will actually mean to the patients and the caregivers who are going to be involved with it. Realistically, the vast majority of students taking our classes perceive it as job training. They want to pick up new skills in a new industry so they can provide a fair life for themselves and their families. We teach them about the career opportunities that they could experience, both independently and as a member of our company—as an employee of our company.

So you'll teach medical marijuana classes while also selling medical marijuana?
Absolutely. Honestly, I think both sides have to be there. I believe that we have a role and a responsibility to be an advocate in the community. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about medical cannabis and what it’s going to mean for everybody involved, so we have to be the institution that brings the facts to bear.

Jeremy Bufford (Photos via / via)

Isn’t advocacy a bit at odds with educating? Education should be impartial; if you're selling it as well as educating people on the subject, surely any negative information about cannabis would affect how much you sell?
I suppose there’s always going to be an amount of bias there, and I’ll be the first to admit that. Everyone approaches a subject with a certain amount of bias, and to be honest you must admit that. So I’m certainly happy to put that on the table. What we try to do to overcome that is, when we're teaching about medical cannabis, we're pointing to third parties—we're pointing to research that’s been done by trusted and independent firms or individuals who are active in the state. So we're relying on the strength of their research and their credibility in terms of explaining what cannabis can do.

Also, there is a  portion of our class that's designed to train our next crop of employees. We're going to create a skilled labor force to draw from for our shops that doesn’t exist yet in Florida. There is obviously that ulterior motive, but I see that as a strength.

So it’s a cannabis graduate scheme?
Absolutely, yeah.

How many campuses are there going to be?
There will be different campuses. Our first location is on the eastside of Tampa, and we’ll also be in Orlando and Miami. So we’re going to cover the state by range.

Do you have ambitions to operate nationally?
At this point, our program is designed to address the peculiarities of the model in Florida, and should there be other opportunities we’ll certainly have conversation.

Do you smoke yourself?
I’m personally not a smoker; I’ve never really been a part of that culture. My father has had a series of surgeries that went poorly, and I've seen the power of medical marijuana to relieve pain, to increase appetite and to increase quality of life. That was what sparked my interest, then I went on to study about the effect it had in a variety of different conditions, and I traveled to different states where it's legal. I've learned from growers, I've learned from doctors, I've learned from caregivers and I wanted to take that model to Florida because I believe, truly, that medical marijuana is an inevitability. It’s not a question of "if," it's a question of "when." I personally believe that to be 2015 in Florida, so we’re creating the infrastructure for our company to take full advantage of being the first mover in the space.

How do students enroll?
It just so happens that, as of this morning, we sold out our last class for March and haven’t had an opportunity yet to load up the classes for April. But, basically, people can go to the website, pick their location they want to attend, the class they want to go to and check it out right there.

Cool. So are you going to be teaching people how to grow?
Yes. We're going to teach them what the best practices are in other states, and we're going to be teaching them about what’s going to happen in Florida in the future. We're obviously not advising anyone to break any laws, state or federal, in that regard. We're completely coming at this from a thought experiment standpoint. We are raising, for example, peppers and tomato plants with similar nutritional requirements, but we're absolutely going to teach the advanced hydroponic and aeroponic techniques necessary to produce medical-grade marijuana, because there's a big difference. It’s not as easy as putting a seed in the ground.

So how do you vet out the guys who just want to grow better weed for themselves?
I get that question a lot. It makes sense. Everybody’s worried about this “bad actor.” How do you keep the drug dealer from gaining access to this information and using it for bad? My response is this: You can go to Harvard University and you can get an MBA, and guess what? You can do bad things with that. If you look at our economic history over the last decade, you can see that in spades. Nobody is arguing that Harvard shouldn’t have a business program. So, for us, yeah—I understand that some of the information we provide can be used for ill purposes. But our mission is to provide an incredible value for the patient, and we’re not going to let those kinds of considerations stand in our way of delivering that knowledge.

What kind of qualification do you get at the end of the course?
You receive a certificate. Everybody says, you know, "What does the certificate mean?" Well, obviously this is a new industry and there aren’t centres of accreditation that you can look at that have prestigious histories, but we’re trying to be one of the first, and you do receive a certificate after completing the training, and that certificate allows the student—at the very least—to do business with us at Medical Marijuana Tampa. I believe it will only be a matter of time before others in the medical marijuana space recognize the legitimacy of our certificate. Think about it like going to bartending school—you can go and learn to be a bartender and you get a little certificate. That’s just from a company that decided to do it, but what it shows employers is that you had the initiative and the wherewithal to take this course, to do the deep dive. 

@bainosaurus

Photo via Flickr User Peter Hutchins

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

-Kanye West, wealthy black man and alleged "God," has taken up the fight for racial equality in the only way he knows how: screaming about TMZ in the middle of a concert people paid actual money to see.

In the middle of a performance at New Jersey's Prudential Center on Saturday night, Kanye said that the media tries to make him look like a "maniac or an animal," because we're afraid of interracial relationships. His absurd all-caps Twitter account, predilection for stoking controversy, and deeply self-righteous attitude probably have nothing to do with that, right?

I will give Kanye credit for pointing out America's lingering discomfort with mixed race coupling. Last year's infamous multi-racial Cheerios commercial exposed how many Americans feel about the joining of two people with different skin tones. They just plain don't like it.

Kim Kardashian has been having sex with black guys for quite awhile now though. You could say it's her most lucrative skill. She's pretty good at it, and does it with regularity, verve, gusto, and panache. Most people hear Kim is having sex with a black man and ask where they can buy the DVD. We know she does it. We also know Kanye dates white girls. No one is surprised when this shit happens.

I'm not quite sure that the bleeding heart, super PC media elite are the ones that are after Kanye and Kim. The bigots he should be worried about are the people he's beating up and paying $250,000 to placate. The media just wants Kanye West to continue doing wacky shit so that they (excuse me, "we") can continue profiting from how much traffic is generated by his antics. Here's to hoping Kanye breaks something, punches someone, gets a swastika tattoo (for his art, of course), converts to Scientology, or reveals he's a Martian. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes! 5

-Last Saturday, a Florida jury convicted licensed gun-owner Michael Dunn of three counts of attempted murder for using his legally obtained firearm to shoot at a car full of black teens because he thought he saw someone was pulling a gun on him. That someone, Jordan Davis, died as a result of Dunn's fear. He was charged with Davis's murder, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on that count. On a vote of 9-3, the jury threw up their hands and went on their merry way.

For those who don't know how this whole mess started, Michael Dunn approached the car with the victims inside and asked them to turn down their music while both parties were parked at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida. They refused and proceeded to engage in an argument. Dunn testified that Davis threatened him with violence, then flashed the top four inches of a shotgun. This caused Dunn to take his gun out of his car's glove compartment and shoot at the car. Davis's car pulled out to escape the gunfire, but Dunn opened his door to continue shooting. Davis was struck in the legs, lung, and aorta. Dunn fled the scene and did not turn himself in to authorities. No weapons were found in Davis's vehicle.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty fucking scared. There are some parts of the United States where vehemently disagreeing with someone could mean I might get shot. If I get shot, that person might not be convicted of my murder. Michael Dunn faces up to 75 years in prison for the three counts of attempted murder, but justice that means he can avoid a murder conviction is flawed justice. At the center of all of this is Florida's stand-your-ground law, and embattled District Attorney Angela B. Corey, the woman who failed to convict George Zimmerman of an eerily similar crime. I interviewed Corey about Florida's gun laws last fall, and she doesn't see a need to repeal stand your ground, regardless of the message that it sends to the citizens of her state. Corey is going to attempt to retry Dunn, but good luck getting a clean, orderly trial now.

Whether or not you believe that Michael Dunn was guilty of murder, it should disturb any logical person to see yet another case of an unarmed teenager dying because someone got scared. I truly am terrified of the prospect of pissing off the wrong person and getting capped. Should I start carrying a gun? If I do, how soon until I turn into the very person I'm afraid of? 

Dunn was quoted in a prison phone call the police secretly recorded saying, "I got attacked and I fought back because I didn't want to be a victim and now I'm in trouble. I refused to be a victim and now I'm incarcerated." Who isn't a victim these days? In Florida, you're encouraged to stand your ground and protect yourself from threats both real and perceived, but with more latitude to use deadly force comes more reason to be afraid. Black people will start carrying guns more often to make sure they don't end up the next Trayvon Martin or Jordan Davis. How does that sound to white America? Not great, I'm sure. When does this cycle of escalation and overreaction end? Not any time soon and not without more dead bodies, I'm sure. RACIST

The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:

FUCK YA!!!!!! FUCK YOU U.S YOU AND UR NIGGER PRESIDENT !!!!!!!

— Markou Rizk (@MarkouRizk) February 20, 2014

Roses are red Violet just blew Some dude in Hollywood Who must be a Jew

— Schnizzy (@VictorJHB) February 14, 2014

Press 1 for english and 2 for sand nigger.

— bucmachine (@bucmachine) July 18, 2013

Kanye West said that he is still a slave I say if you are a slave then go pick my cotton nigger

— BRYAN GARRETT (@POWDERTHUG008) February 19, 2014

If #Redskins are awarded a 2014 Thursday Night Football game in, they will play in front of a bigger audience: http://t.co/5vAZEZ4mT1

— Washington Redskins (@Redskins) February 5, 2014

@dave_schilling

Hello the Internet,

Have you heard the good news? VICE is increasing the amount of comics we run online! We've published great comics since 1994, when you were probably either a tiny baby or tying sweatshirts around your waist, but now we are ushering in what I hope will be a golden era for VICE as a stage for new work by the best comic talent within our price range.

We have enlisted a few of our favorite cartoonists, comickers, and artists to create original series for us. We will run a new installment of each series once a week, eventually getting to the point where we have a new comic every day.

I'd like you to imagine me christening this new VICE comics initiative by smashing a bottle of champagne across the bow of my Macbook Pro as I introduce you to Anya Davidson and her new series for us, BAND FOR LIFE.

Anya is an artist, musician, cartoonist, and luddite from Chicago who most people just learned about this year from her graphic novel School Spirits, still available from Picturbox Booxs. Her color work is what initially blew me away, and I'm really excited and proud that she's doing comics for us.

I hope that you like the stuff I run on the site but if you don't please keep it to yourself because I'm running the work of almost universally lauded artists and you'll just look like a jerk.

Comically Yours,

Nicholas Gazin

An individual identifying himself only as Josh holds a sign in front of Multnomah County headquarters in Portland to protest the county"s decision to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Photo by Erik R. Bishoff

On January 17, 2013, a small Gresham, Oregon, bakery named Sweet Cakes by Melissa turned away a wedding couple looking for a wedding cake. The owner, Aaron Klein, claims he did this because selling a cake to gays would have violated his religious beliefs. Portland activists exploded with outrage, and the bakery responded with the following note, posted to their Facebook feed:

“Fuck the Niggers, Spics, whores, sodomites, fat bitches, ugly cunts, hypocritical hoes and overweight hippos on our feed. We try so hard to bake cakes and all you ungrateful bullies hate on me and my beautiful family after these articles were written, shame on you! If you don’t like our business then don’t stop by! More cake for our fellow Christians!” 

The message posted on Facebook by Sweet Cakes by Michelle. It was almost immediately removed from their feed.

Under Oregon law, it is illegal to discriminate against someone based on sexual orientation. Today, that law is in danger of being obstructed. There is a growing movement to get a measure on the ballot called the Protect Religious Freedom Initiative. This measure, proposed by the Oregon Family Council, allows businesses to refuse service to homosexual couples on the basis of faith, including businesses that service weddings. Oregon is the only state likely to be voting on gay marriage in 2014, and it seems likely to be one of the only states voting on measures like the Protect Religious Freedom Initiative as well.

I spoke with Rob again recently, and he told me that the Protect Religious Freedom Initiative is a desperate attempt to distract and confuse otherwise supportive voters in order to take votes away from November’s Marriage Equality Initiative. He believes supporters claim to be protecting religious freedom, yet, in reality, the bill gives businesses a license to discriminate against LGBT consumers based on a religious exemption to the Oregon Equality Act.

“This initiative specifically defines any legal entity, whether it be a business, corporation, nonprofit, association, or LLC as a ‘person,’” he told me. “In addition to this being about legalizing discrimination, this is also very much about corporate personhood. Nobody denies that people have a right to religious freedom and to practice their religious beliefs. As do churches and clergy. No one forces a vegetarian to run a butcher shop. If this initiative passes, not only would it turn back the clock 50 years as far as civil rights go, but it would be a tremendous embarrassment to Oregon and, in my opinion, to those in the religious and spiritual community—many of whom support the freedom to marry for all loving and committed couples.”

Rob Cochran protesting Sweet Cakes by Michelle.

“We think it’s a deliberate effort to move the conversation away from love and commitment and the issue of marriage, and to move it towards allowing discrimination based on faith,” said Mike Marshall, the campaign manager at Oregon United for Marriage. The absurdity comes from a basic fact: There are already laws in Oregon that prevent a religious leader from having to be involved in gay marriage. According to Mike, the initiative is an effort to assert the alleged rights of businesses claiming to be driven by the faith.

Mike says that religious groups in Oregon have all but given up on trying to stop gay marriage from happening—this is their next move. He also told me that since Oregon’s initiative became known, South Dakota and Kansas have both introduced bills with almost the exact same language. What began in Oregon seems to be spreading to the rest of the nation.

“In Oregon, there are only about two complaints per year based on sexual orientation or identity,” says Thalia Zepatos of Freedom to Marry. That includes all cases of people claiming to have been discriminated-against based on their orientation for the whole state. “These folks basically talk about the same three or four or five complaints,” she says, in reference to examples being used to fuel the fire for the initiative. Thalia seems to think the law is unnecessary and a step in the wrong direction. “A Protestant baker can’t refuse to bake a cake for a Catholic couple… Why a gay couple, then?”

Portland may be a liberal city, but it is an island in a largely conservative sea of towns. The Oregon Family Council and their supporters seem likely to get their initiative on the ballot, but if they can’t win the marriage debate, they seem unlikely to make their new movement into law. If it does become law, Oregon will be wandering in a strange no man’s land between progressive values and discriminatory business practice. The king will let you be with your lover, but the architect won’t build your home. 

Photo via Flickr user timlewisnm

The global clown population is in peril. Not unlike the Mexican wolf or Wyoming toad, clowns find themselves increasingly alone, partly because they’re are almost deliberately terrifying, and partly because this has never been an acceptable career path in the first place. 

The World Clown Association, which is one of the largest clown trade groups, has seen its membership drop by nearly 30 percent in the last ten years, from 3,500 members in 2004 to a depressing 2,500 today. Clowns of America International president Glen Kohlberger claimed that clowns are a dying breed, with very few young clowns to fill their giant, squeaky shoes. “The older clowns are passing away. What happens is they go on to high school and college and clowning isn’t cool anymore. Clowning is then put on the back burner until their late 40s and early 50s.” Or in other words, nobody goes clowning until they’ve completely failed some 30 years down the line.

Perhaps it’s because clowns have a bad rap in youth circles. Chances are that if you had to name three clowns off the top of your head, two would be in the Insane Clown Posse, and the other one murdered 33 young men in the 70s. Clowns are inherently scary and fear of clowns is known as coulrophobia. A University of Sheffield study of 250 children ages 4 to 16 “found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable.” Bestival, a music festival on the Isle of Wright, had to scrap their “circus” theme in 2006 after festivalgoers demanded refunds, insisting they were too afraid of clowns to attend.

Besides the fun of clowning around, it’s really no surprise that career-driven kids don’t want to be clowns anymore. The average “event” clown can earn up to $150 an hour, with salaried Cirque de Soleil performers able to make anywhere from $45,000 to $200,000 a year, according to a Reddit AMA with a former acrobat. This is following an intensely difficult bout of clown college, which leaves clowns with a limited skillset applicable almost exclusively to the circus. Although the hardest part is probably not being able to look your own father in the eye for 15 years after telling him you’re going to become a clown.

All hope is not lost, however. Following the original New York Daily News story, aforementioned CAI president Kohlberger contacted Gothamist to clear up a serious misquote. “There is NO fear of a clown shortage in the US. Clown of America International is doing very well, and so are the clowns that are members of it. We are an educational organization that is supported by our members. We are getting new members every day. The economy has effected every organization across the board, and we may have lost a few members because of the economy, but we have thousands of members in the US and worldwide.”

Despite Kohlberger’s reassuring words on the endangered status of clowns, it doesn’t seem to be far off that clowning is on its way out; the statistics on membership speak for themselves. The most important question still remains: What will we as a society do without clowns?

Laugh.

@jules_su

A man relaxing in a tropical environment who is ready to party with you. Photo via

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

We all need to get away sometimes. This week, I decided to take us on a food video journey to warmer climates closer to the equator—the places where fresh fruit, fun drinks, and absurd resort proprietors rule the land. As it turns out, people don't film that much when they're on vacation in the tropics, and when they do, it's not always the best footage. Even though we hop around a bit on the themes here this week, mix yourself a rum and Coke with crushed ice, kick off your shoes, and enjoy. 

Dinner on the Beach at Pink Shell Beach Resort & Marina

Love crab napoleon? Me neither. But Craig Pension, the executive chef at Pink Shell Beach Resort and Marina, will make it for you in beautiful Fort Myers, Florida. He will also bring some tables out to the beach and set up parasols for a very private setting near the salt water. Of course, you’ll also receive coconut-fried shrimp, a tossed salad, filet mignon, or grouper Oscar. And don't forget the perfect tropical dessert, uh, apple cobbler.  

Crestview—Tropical Palm Restaurant Broken Into

Uh oh! Trouble in paradise! Crestview, Florida, is home to this very beautiful restaurant, Tropical Palm. Here, the local news channel interviews the proprietor's daughter, Ruby Kervin, about the restaurant's cash register, which has apparently been stolen. The only real issue besides a bunch of money being robbed from some people is the fact that no one from the restaurant seems to know how much was in it at the time of the crime. Poor cash management, yo. They also have no idea who did it. The news channel tactfully interviews Ruby while what sounds lik a chainsaw is blaring at full power nearly five feet away from her, but this video's shining moment is the footage of the old people dining inside the establishment. Watching them eat truly reminds me of the tropics.

Dinner in Barbados

Get whisked away to Barbados at this empty table in a basement. YouTube cinematographer Nick Betts sat here while recording this video, staring at someone singing "I Will Always Love You" in the far corner by himself. The music isn't tropical and the food is nonexistent, but I this counts as a tropical video because the title says "Barbados."

Tropical Forest Garden

YouTube user "naturalhomesteader" is here to tell you about his tropical forest garden. I thought this would be a very funny video, but it's actually kind of interesting, though I think this guy must be a retired math teacher because he's got that ability to deliver information in a way that makes your eyes close agaisnt your will. Luckily, you are kept awake by the soundtrack of the piercing screams of the local insects that surround him.

Tropical Food Machinery—Pineapple Processing

This video has a really nice soundtrack and is incredibly mesmerizing to watch. It's like staring at the sun. Luckily, they silenced the sounds of the factory so we can really bask in the corporate soft jazz. If you've ever wondered how pineapple is processed—and I'm sure you have—look no further. There's something quite touching about the bright tropical colors of the raw pineapple contrasted against that cold, stark, stainless steel factory line. New to factory porn? Well, this is a great start! Just don't get into the meat processing videos, because it will fuck you up. Forever. 

Day at the Beach Dinner Dinner at Morimotos

Here's a killer video featuring some great music and amateur video work. Pointing at whatever he thinks matters, this cinematographer really takes us on a tour of his vacation. I really appreciate the editing here because it's a visual journey of a lot of people doing absolutely nothing. 

VICE News was with Pussy Riot when they were brutally whipped in public.

Apparently, Woman Beating And Horse Whipping Is Russia’s Jam

This video of Cossack militia whipping members of Pussy Riot makes my skin crawl with shame for all of humanity. How is it that we can judge and hate others so ferociously?

This happened a mere 30 kilometres away from the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. I wish people were awarded gold medals in this world for protesting injustices as often as they are for being good at ice skating.

I also wish police would stop abusing women and getting away with it. And I’d like a unicorn, too, please.

Screencap via.

I Don’t Want Sex/Give A Fuck About Your Ex/I Don’t Even Want A Text

And in femme goddesses of the week, can we just talk about this for a second?

Nicki Minaj loses the pink hair and glitter and unleashes a tirade of rage-sharpened verses in this witchy and amazing video for “Lookin Ass Nigga.” I was blown away on my first watch. And second. And third. My man called it “No Scrubs 2014,” but this woman’s power usurps even that, and is quickly ascending to the stuff of feminist and rap legend

Minaj is a queen amongst women for making her emotional self defense public, making her face strong, and turning her bleeding soul into powerful lady-art.

As you were, Nicki. As you were.

Screencap via.

The Feds Want Your Opinion On Sex Work Laws (But Not Really)

Want to have your say on laws governing “prostitution” in Canada? Go fill out this terrible, anonymous little form on the Department of Justice website. I’m sure your point will be taken into careful consideration.

But likely only if you’re in favour of re-criminalization.  

The department opened up the option to submit answers to its sort-of loaded questions Monday. One of them reads: “If you support allowing the sale or purchase of sexual services, what limitations should there be, if any, on where or how this can be conducted?” None of them reads: “What are some of the ways in which the laws could help create safe work places for sex workers?”

These forms make me froth at the mouth in a homicidal mania. There’s no accountability, no promise of a response. How many carefully crafted, well-researched little notes have I written into one of these faceless voids, knowing I wouldn’t get a response, but also knowing that it was my only hope?

It’s a sad tactic. There’s not even a hint that an actual human will read your message.

You have until St. Patrick’s Day to fill it out, but if you want your voice to be heard when it comes to sex workers’ rights, this is not the way to do it.

Photo via.

White Women Walking

Fashion Week confirmed this year, yet again, that not only must women be entirely devoid of curves in order to be beautiful; we should also avoid being any shade of brown.

Jezebel crunched the numbers, and while they’re not water tight, per se, it found that 78.69 percent of the models who walked in New York last week were white. How can an entire industry be so stubborn as to ignore the very real and obvious composition of humanity by continuing to shove the same basic white faces down our throats?

Let’s just say that treating entire races as though they are invisible could probably be safely summed up as “racist.” This shit needs to stop.

We should all just wear garbage bags and protest fashion until it stops being racist. It’s long past time to put the full, beautiful rainbow of humans on display, people.
 

@sarratch

Fashion is a lot of things. It's glamorous and beautiful; it's hard to pin down and hard to talk about. It's esoteric and readily available, heady and supremely simple, rarefied and widely appealing. It technically effects everyone but, in the grand scheme of things, doesn't really affect shit. And we like that.

In a world with increasing transparency, it's cool that we still have something a little opaque. You know, something that you can't quite put your finger on. We like wondering if we should be mindless hacks ooh-ing and ah-ing with shifting eyes every time a look comes down the runway, or if we should be making fun of people who look better and smell nicer than we do. 

Maybe we just don't get it? But what if we did? That's pretty trippy (about a seven on the tripter scale) if you ask us. So naturally, when we had all this B-roll eye candy left over from our fashion week coverage, we got stoned and made this video.

Image via. 

Last night, during the Olympics' figure-skating event, Cosmopolitan asked readers to tweet pictures from their childhood skating careers. Girls posted pictures of kids in ballet tutus and top hats, with captions like, “My Britney Spears 'Stronger' routine from 2001 #CosmOlympics.”  The tweets presented figure skaters as real-life Disney princesses, but most figure skaters have more in common with Lindsay Lohan than Princess Anna from Frozen.

Although the media tend to present Tonya Harding as the sport’s only bad girl, People magazine is filled with stories about tragic figure skaters' battles with addiction, depression, and financial issues. Authorities arrested Michelle Kwan’s archrival Nicole Bobek for her involvement in a meth ring in 2009, Oksana Baiul drunkenly crashed her car into a tree three years after she won the Olympic gold medal, and icon Dorothy Hamill entered a deep depression when she nearly went bankrupt in the 90s after purchasing the Ice Capades ice-skating tour.

Many skaters have battled addiction while touring professionally. Tai Babilonia, of the famed “Tai and Randy” skating duo, told Life After 50 that she turned to drinking while touring. As her drinking increased, she became erratic and unpredictable. In 1988, she abruptly dropped out of a tour she was headlining. Later that year, she overdosed on sleeping pills and alcohol. Miraculously, she survived, but not all skaters have been as lucky as Tai. According to the Los Angeles Times, after the svelte world medalist Christopher Bowman finished touring, he battled addiction and weight issues, eventually ballooning to 300 pounds. Although he made decent money touring, he struggled to find work after he quit skating, and he eventually ran through his entire life savings. At age 40, he was found dead in a Budget Inn hotel room in West Los Angeles. 

Life after skating is just as grim for athletes who never make it to the Olympics. Figure skating lacks the stigmas of beauty pageants and child acting, but the sport fosters mothers as vicious as dance moms and leaves skaters with little financial opportunities when their ice years end. Only a few skaters compete at the Olympics, but hundreds quit high school to train, making their only professional options after skating—if they fail to win the gold medals that can lead to endorsement deals—coaching, judging, and Disney on Ice.

Annika Danielson figure-skating during her teen years

Nobody knows this better than failed figure skater Annika Danielson. As a successful young skater, Annika looked like a possible Olympic candidate. Her parents noticed her talent and sacrificed thousands of dollars so Annika could leave their native Michigan to practice with legendary coach Gene Heffron in Rockford, Illinois. Yet when Annika hit puberty, grew curves, and was no longer fit to skate, she was forced to quit and return home, where she became depressed, started drinking, and ended up in rehab.

It's been six years now since Annika hung up her skates, and during that time she has lived in limbo—attempting college, bouncing around jobs, and partying in Miami. “Unfortunately, there is nothing I can truly see myself wanting to do for the rest of my life,” Annika told me. “I’ve done modeling; I’ve been a personal assistant for a club owner out here; I've dated rich guys—just done different things. I’ve dabbled in everything. At the end of the day, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do best [was skate].”

Annika’s only hope is the same thing that ruined her figure-skating career—her big butt. Last year, after men started calling her and her friends “whooties” (white girls with big booties), Annika and her girlfriends formed a video-vixen-like group to profit off their rear ends. Last week, as Gracie Gold competed in Sochi and attempted to avoid becoming another skater without a future, I sat down with Annika to discuss abusive figure-skating moms, depression, and how she hopes her big booty can save her life.

Since Annika quit skating, she has found solace in Florida's party scene. 

VICE: How did you get involved with skating?
Annika Danielson: It was back when Katarina Witt and Michelle Kwan first came out. I remember watching them skate, and I just fell in love with them. I wanted to do it so much, so my parents brought me to the local ice rink, and I started taking small, little classes, and I loved it. I excelled really fast, but I am from a small community, so they realized I would have to commute every day, and they wanted me to train with better coaches. They sent me to go live with a family down in Rockford, Illinois, so I could train all day, every day, with one of the best coaches in the world, Gene Heffron.

How expensive were the coatches and the traveling?
Choreography for my programs, when I needed a choreographer, was like $75 or $80 every 15 minutes. My parents sacrificed a ton.

Because your parents sacrificed so much, did you feel guilty when you lost competitions?
Looking back, I feel a lot worse about things than I did at the time. As great an experience as it was, I don’t think the money ever came back to them or to me.

When did you quit skating?
I was about 20. By the time I was 16, things were not really going as needed, so I moved back home with my parents and started training at the local rink. My parents would buy [skating time] for me in the morning, when it was cheaper—I think it was a couple hundred dollars—so I could train by myself. I graduated high school early because I was going so hard, and I transferred to college early, and I moved down to Chicago. I thought I’d give it one more chance, but your body peaks by the time you’re 14. You hit a growth spurt, and it gets harder. It’s a sport for young, skinny girls.

When girls’ bodies started to change, would they go to radical measures to stay thin?
I remember when I was down skating in Rockford with Gene, one of the girls, who was about a year older than me, had really, really big breasts. She had D's, and at that age, her mom took her and got them completely removed because it’s such a problem [to have big breasts when you’re figure-skating]. She never went on to the Olympics. I guess it was for nothing, but that was her dream, and you have to sacrifice [for what] you want.

Do you think this pressure is what has led many skaters to drink and become depressed?
The pressure is crazy. The people who I was living with in Rockford had two little girls who also trained a lot. They were a lot younger than me, and they were really good for their age, and their mom was crazy. [Those girls] didn’t want to do it. I was there because I wanted to, but they didn't want to do it. They were in third grade. What third grader wants to go to the rink at 5 AM?

Do you keep up with anyone you figure-skated with as a child?
I don’t. I know one of the boys I figure skated with when I was younger is doing Disney on Ice, and he absolutely hates it. It’s such a competitive world—you’re kind of like frenemies. You can’t get too close. Girls would put coins in your skates. No one wants you to succeed except your coach.

How did this affect you?
When I was going into my senior year of high school, my parents actually put me in an alcohol rehabilitation program. I showed up to school drunk and had some problems with that. I live in the party world now.  It’s fun—it prevents you from having to figure out what you have to do for the rest of your life.

How do you plan to profit off partying?
All my friends, for some reason, are very pretty girls with big butts. So whooty is [a term for] a white girl with a big booty, so a couple of my other girlfriends and me, when we go out we would joke, like, “Oh, hey, whooty! How are you, whooty?”  At the clubs, they’d start shouting, “Whooty!” at us in the microphone, and it took off. Now we’re in the branding process trying to get the name out.

Do you think your life would have turned out differently if you had succeeded as a skater?
Skating doesn’t set you up for the rest of your life even if you do end up in the Olympics. I see [gold medalist] Tara Lipinski at parties out here. I was in love with her [as a kid], and now I see her out in Los Angeles partying, and she’s a train wreck now. You peak so young, and it leaves you with nothing unless you want to be a coach. I looked into Disney on Ice, but you get paid $30,000 a year, and that’s like not even what you spend. I don’t know where the payoff comes except for the self-satisfaction.

@mitchsunderland

The Final Member is a documentary chronicling one man’s quest to complete the largest collection of penises in the world. Sigurður "Siggi" Hjartarson, the founder and curator of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, had a specimen from every mammal in Iceland except one, the Homo sapien. In 2007, filmmakers Zach Math and Jonah Bekhor heard about Siggi’s missing link and decided to document his search.

Aside from Siggi, the central players in this story are Pall Arason, a rapidly aging Icelandic explorer who agreed to donate his penis to the museum upon his death, and Tom Mitchell, an American so eager to have his dick immortalized that he is willing to chop it off and mail it to Siggi in order to beat the Icelander to it. Talking to the filmmakers about his offer, Tom says, “I've always thought it would be really cool for my penis to be the world's first true penis celebrity."

Just as Bob Ballard was driven by his hunt for the Titanic, or Indiana Jones by his search for the Ark of the Covenant, Siggi’s primary goal in life is acquiring a human specimen for his museum. The Final Member is an epic tale that spans continents and involves obsession, death, struggle, and penises.

While VICE is not involved in the production of this film, we recently premiered its trailer on our YouTube channel, so I called up Matt and Jonah to find out more about the project.

[Due to scheduling conflicts, Matt and Jonah were interviewed at separate times. We have edited the conversations together here.]

VICE: How did you first hear about Siggi and his search for a human dick?
Zach Math: I was driving down the highway listening to [Canadian public radio program] As It Happens, and Carol Off was interviewing the creator of the only penis museum in the world, and I was completely taken aback. How does someone have this museum where he has a specimen from every mammalian species except for one? How come he’s missing a human? And then he spoke about the men who had stepped forward to try to help him fulfill the last missing piece of this puzzle, as it were. I was completely transfixed. A couple days later I was talking to Jonah and told him I wanted to go to Iceland to interview the curator of the only penis museum in the world.

What is the museum like? I know it officially opened in 1997, but Siggi had been collecting long before that, right?
Jonah Bekhor: Yeah. He has been collecting since around 1974. The thing is, it started off as a joke. He was the headmaster of a school, and during the off-season his teachers went to work at a whaling station, because, back in that era in Iceland, whaling was a part of the culture. One of them brought him back a whale penis as like a gag.

Zach: The museum is presented like a natural history museum, and I think the film mimics that tone. He treats everything very seriously on a surface level. There’s nothing lascivious about it, yet there is a man who is missing something. A part of what started as a joke has now sort of snowballed into being a key part of his legacy. And ultimately all the men in the film, what they are trying to do, relates back to their own legacy at a very broad or central level. That was an interesting theme. It becomes this film that is very shocking, very funny, but also a very moving story.

Why do you think Siggi became so obsessed with penises? If someone had given him a whale's eyeball, would he have become obsessed with eyeballs? Or do you think there is something about this specific organ that interests him?
Zach: He was already sort of an obsessive collector, so I think it appealed to that side of him, but I think he’s also a great educator, and great educators have a keen sense of where the society is at. And at the time when he came along he was very aware of the taboo around the organ and how that played out in our society—and how it still plays out. Why is something so central to human life such a taboo? It’s sort of ridiculous on a lot of levels. And then there was the other half, which is that he was already an obsessive collector. So it was a perfect storm that just started to snowball. He says, when you’re an obsessive collector, you can't stop. I don’t believe it's in the movie, but he goes on to say, “I’ll go on collecting. The base collection will be done, but there could be a Chinese penis, an African penis…” In his mind, there’s so much more to explore.

One day, this glass will house a human penis.

Do you think the idea of having a museum devoted to penises is more or less taboo in Iceland than it would be in the US?
Jonah: I think it’s much less taboo. It still feels like there are places in the United States where you could not do this. Could you do this in the Deep South? Could you do this in Alabama? I think there are places in the United States where the puritanical thought process is still prevalent. In those communities, it would not be as welcome as it is in Iceland.

Why do you think Siggi has had such a hard time finding a human specimen? Perfectly good penises are being buried in the ground every day.
Jonah: The thing about Siggi is, he is a really moral and wonderful man. He wanted things to be done the right way, so they needed to be donated. He was never going to do anything that was untoward. He did a lot of press internationally. He’s done radio interviews on an annual basis all over the world, and he always puts it out there, but he’s going to do it in a respectful way. He’s not the type of guy who would pummel people with his requests. So, that’s it—put it out there, mention it, but don’t push. There are ways to get penises that are not legal, but they would never be entertained [by Siggi].

On a moral level, what’s your take on Tom’s desire to chop off his own penis while he’s still alive?
Zach: That’s a great question. When you’re making a film with a guy who is doing something you don’t agree with, you have to have the utmost respect for your subject matter. We try to impart that in the film. We don’t impose any judgment on them, and I think that’s reflected in the tone of the movie, but it’s very tricky. We were very clear with Tom. We couldn’t have any part in his attempts to further his goals. We were very, very firm with him, and I think that from a moral stance—as a human being and a filmmaker—you have to be objective and at the same time be very clear with your subject as to what you will and will not do.

Do you think Pall and Tom are cut from a similar cloth in that there is a certain amount of swagger that a man has to have to want to donate his penis to a museum?
Jonah: I think they have such significant things in common with each other. They’re both iconoclasts, and I think they’re both pioneering in the way they’ve lived their lives. Both of them want some version of the same thing. Both of them are guys who are going toward a dream. It’s amazing how much they have in common—whether it was Pall pioneering with adventure tourism, going into the highlands of Iceland where no man had gone before, or it was Tom on this journey with Elmo [his penis’s nickname] and wanting Elmo to be the most famous penis in the world, and the lengths that he’s willing to go to do something so unique and exceptional. These guys really do have a lot in common.

Tom Mitchell stands next to a diagram of his penis, Elmo, which he wants to chop off.

Do you know if any other people have come forward and offered their penises to the museum, or is it just Tom and Pall?
Zach: Yes, there are other guys. There’s a German guy who's come forward, and he is a wonderful guy. He runs a tourism company but is also a big mountain climber and marathon runner. And then there’s a British guy who is also very interesting. He’s a documentarian, sort of a filmmaker in his own right. His college roommate was Icelandic—and I could be getting the story completely wrong here—but he always joked that his only wish was for [the British guy] to go to Iceland and donate his penis to the penis museum. Tragically, his roommate died in a car accident when they were in college. So, almost as a final way of grieving, he took this pilgrimage to the museum and said that he would donate his specimen when he died. Those two guys are really interesting, but the main guys are obviously the three who became the focal point of the film.

Did you know there is a museum in Russia that claims to have Rasputin’s penis in a jar?
Zach: Yeah! I do.

Tom left a comment on one of the photos I found of it online.
Zach: Yeah, I mean… once you start getting into it with Tom—he’s an exhibitionist. He’s a very sweet guy on a certain level. He’s hurt. The thing that really made him an extraordinary character in my mind is, toward the end, he says something like, “I’m so taken by women. It leaves me so vulnerable, and I’ve been hurt so many times, but I need them so much that I need to remove this organ.” For someone to say that is… there’s so much depth going on there that’s so counter to how we think of that organ.

I think that is one of the most fascinating points of the documentary. The fact that he feels the need to remove his penis so he won’t be taken advantage of anymore…
Zach: Yeah. It’s sort of remarkable. That’s when you really sort of see him as a three-dimensional human being and you can’t dismiss him as a guy who’s just a joke. That was the interview for me that was like, Whoa. My mind was blown.

When the film ends, Siggi is preparing to step down from the museum and hand it over to his son, Hjörtur. Does he have big plans for it?
Jonah: Yes. His son has relocated the museum to Reykjavík and is now in charge of it. That was sort of the coda of the whole thing.

Zach: I think it’s actually a really good thing. It was sort of hidden up there in this little community, this little whaling community up in Húsavík, 30 miles from the Arctic Circle, and so it kind of got [covered] on news blips here and there, but no one really fully explored it. Now that it is in Reykjavík I think more people will be exposed to it.

Do you think Hjörtur's role in the museum is going to be maintenance? Or does he have his own white whale of obscure penises that he wants to find?
Jonah: I don’t know. I don’t think he has the same passion for collecting as his father. I’m sure they are adding collections nonstop, but that museum is so much a part of Siggi, so much the man, that it’s never going to have that same character. When you walked in, he would take you all around and explain things with such knowledge and passion. It’s going to miss him. It’s still going to be great, but it’s not going to be the same.

@Jonathan_Smth

We've been all over Toronto-based Vancouverite Seth Fluker's photos for a while now. Seth has a way with turning everyday mundane experiences into amazing abstract visions, like the series he did of the sink when he washed dishes at Whole Foods. A self-taught photographer, he's recently branched out to shooting more portraits and experimenting with digital photography (he's a die-hard analog film guy) the results of which have been collected in his latest book Earth People. We recently caught up with him to chat about it.

Hey Seth! Tell me about naming your book Earth People. Any relation to that Kool Keith song?
I kind of just went through all my scans and negatives and was pulling stuff that I liked, and jotting down notes. Random stuff like ‘earth’, ‘people’, ‘abstract’, anything to see if I could bring together a cohesive body of work. That song ended up coming on a couple days later, and I went back to my notes, and I was like oh fuck, Earth People. It was just really coincidental that that happened. It was kind of like a sign that I should use those two words. The title was actually the first thing that really stuck, and then it kind of evolved on its own from there.

Normally you do more abstract and landscape type work, how has the transition to portraiture been for you?
I really enjoy photographing people, and it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. It just took time for me to get there, to have the confidence. I’m a pretty shy person naturally, but it’s just been in the last three years that I’ve been super stoked to be given these opportunities. To show up and photograph Sheila Heti where she wrote How Should a Person Be and spend time working on that. Or going to Shary Boyle’s studio where she was doing all her work for the Venice Biennale.

I want to make sure I’m representing who I’m photographing… I enjoy that pressure of trying to find those moments, in the 30 minutes that I may have with these people.

There’s a sort of difference with the aesthetic quality of the photos: some of it looks more filmic, other stuff looks grainy and digital. I know you’re more of a film dude…
This is the first time I’ve actually incorporated digital work into my work. I wanted to include it because that’s the kind of personal project that I’ve been working on that I didn’t think was ready to show people. There’s a couple screen graphs throughout the book. For me they just help balance the film photos out, because everything else is just shot on film.

I love shooting film because it slows everything down. You only have 'x' amount of shots, it’s not like I just have a memory card and I can shoot like 1000 photos, you really have to concentrate and look for that moment. What I’ve always done with my photography is tried to show people that this is exactly how I saw it, how I came across this object or person, even with the abstract work I’ve done.