Call Me By Your Name has been in theaters for less than a week, and already it's managed to make peaches, Armie Hammer's dance moves, and absurdly short shorts iconic among audiences. But according to an interview Hammer (now everyone's new internet boyfriend) gave Monday, the length of his trousers turned out to be a real problem—a garment so minuscule, his balls apparently popped out of them repeatedly during filming.
Hammer's CMBYN co-stars Timothée Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg, along with director Luca Guadagnino, sat down with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM Monday to talk about the film. Aside from ostensibly discussing the movie's more serious merits—the queer love story is, after all, arguably one of the best films of the year—the crew spent a solid minute going over the intricacies of Hammer's wardrobe malfunction.
"There was a few times where they had to go back and digitally remove my balls from the movie," Hammer said. "They were short shorts. What’re you gonna do?"
The film—about a professor's son (Chalamet) and a visiting scholar (Hammer) who fall in love in Italy—takes place in the 80s, so the short shorts were a must for the costume department. And according to Guadagnino, the fault wasn't all in Hammer's britches—as he told Cohen, "it's both things."
"Short shorts and big balls is what you’re saying," Cohen guessed, which sounds about right.
Lucky for him, Chalamet doesn't have a problem with the size of his shorts, since he's traditionally been a bigger fan of giant sweatpants.
On January 7, 1980, journalist Gay Talese received an anonymous letter in the mail. It was from Gerald Foos, the proprietor of the Manor House Motel in Aurora, Colorado; in the letter and subsequent ones that followed, Foos described his life as a voyeur, using his motel as a “laboratory” to spy on guests at their most intimate and banal moments. For years, he kept a detailed diary of the things he observed in the unsuspecting motel rooms.
Since then, Foos and Talese kept in touch with the intent that a book would emerge from their communication—and that book, The Voyeur’s Motel, was released last year. However, controversy swirled around the book when The Washington Post published an article detailing timeline discrepancies in this single-source book. The blow-up led to Talese publicly denouncing it, then eventually going back on his denunciation.
Myles Kane and Josh Koury’s documentary, Voyeur, begins as The Voyeur’s Motel was in the process of being written. Using a combination of talking head interviews and hyper-specific miniature models to replicate the motel and its rooms, the documentary is more about the ethically grey and slippery relationship between an author and its source. We chatted with the filmmakers over the phone about the evolution and gradual shape of Voyeur, as well as the different levels of voyeurism.
VICE: Given Talese’s individualism and pride in his reporting, how did the documentary come about? Did you approach him? Myles Kane: I met Gay during my time working at The New Yorker as their video producer. I made a little profile video about his quirkiness and obsessive research. I think he quite liked that. While shooting the video, he was openly talking about gearing up to write this new book that had been long in the making about this voyeur. Based on that, Josh and I decided that there might be a doc here—certainly about Gay Talese as a writer, but also about the idea of doing a present-day narrative about Gay Talese in his early eighties writing a piece in real-time.
Since the book was about voyeurism and how that [term] relates to Gay and his whole career, we thought a documentary would be a perfect way to examine both him and his work. The film evolved from there to being more about journalists and subjects, which happened as we got more access to Gay and Gerald.
The first part of the documentary covers material in The Voyeur’s Motel , but it also sounds like the documentary organically came about by interviewing Foos and Talese. Did you look at the book and decide what to include in the film and what to leave out? We started in 2013—nothing had even been written yet. We didn’t meet Gerald until about eight months into the production. Anything you see in the film about Gerald and Gay describing these stories was told to us before they were formally written. We weren’t going backwards—we were capturing the stories in the moment, as they were being told. The story is more about watching the article and the book be produced. It was all organic— Josh Koury: Which is why there’s a slight tonal shift in the film. In the first half, the story that Gay and Gerald weave has a kind of romanticism to it, where nothing’s gone sour yet. They’re still formulating versions of stories they want to tell. But as you get closer to the [book’s] release and the article’s publication, you see Gerald’s intense reaction to Gay upon discovering his true form for the first time. When the book’s facts are called into question, you see Gay’s negative reaction to Gerald. Their relationship starts to crumble. We wanted the film to reflect that experience. At its core, what the film’s really about is the complicated subject-artist relationship.
At one point, Gay even remarks on your access to Gerald in the film. Why do you think Gerald wanted to be filmed? Kane: The reason why he reached out to Gay in the first place is that he thought, Here’s a guy who’s well known for controversial subjects. He’s written about sex. People love him or hate him, but I think of him as a god, and I think he’ll legitimize me. From the beginning, Gerald wanted to be known. He was a complete secret that only Gay knew. Theoretically, Gerald let us film him because we were with Gay. We were making a film about Gay, and afterwards it evolved to include him.
There’s a moment in which you reference Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho on one of the miniature model TVs in the film. Do you see a parallel between the voyeur and the general film spectator? I like the part where we show the Psycho clip a lot. It hints at this cultural connection between cinema and voyeurism—this sexy element to the concept that I feel is in the collective unconscious. While we were shooting and editing, it became increasingly clear that there were multiple levels of voyeurism, starting from Gay through Gerald through us. But then we also realized that it was important for us to become characters based on our presence near the end of the film.
Apart from the fact that Gay called us out on camera, we felt it was important to show our hand to say that, any criticism that comes Gay’s way, we’re just as guilty of in terms of watching, as well as the responsibility that you take with telling other people’s stories and the manipulation that happens. But there was this fourth angle, which was thinking about who we were making this film for. Hopefully, millions of people are going to want to watch this, and that’s its own sort of voyeurism. We wanted to end on that note.
Wyclef Jean has gained the riches and acclaim that come with being an icon, but the hip-hop artist actually came from very humble roots. When he visited Desus & Mero on Tuesday, he told the hosts how growing up in a hut in Haiti shaped his worldview, starting when he moved to the projects in Brooklyn when he was little.
As Jean explained, the moment he arrived in Brooklyn he was amazed by everything: Food stamps were magic, government cheese was a delicacy, and cheap cars seemed like limos. He shared a story about how his dad let him buy ten pairs of cheap skippy sneakers—called jeepers back then—and it was a dream come true. Although kids made fun of him in school for wearing the cheap kicks by chanting "jeepers creepers," he didn't feel bullied at all. Instead he turned to his brother and said "man, jealousy will kill a person."
He told the VICELAND hosts his history is how he put everything into perspective today, and even inspired him to run for president of Haiti back in 2010.
"Once you're from that reality, there's nothing a man or woman can do to break you," he said.
You can watch Tuesday night’s Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
While Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" is a well-known template for rock music, very few have managed to follow it well. Three whole decades passed from its 1971 release and no one bested it, not even Guns N' Roses' "November Rain" or Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" or, uh, Live's "Lightning Crashes." It was only in the 2000s that rock bands got their shit together and produced several candidates that lived up to "Stairway." But like the Highlander, there can be only one. Friends, today we're going to discover which of these 00s alt-rock slammers is the millennial successor to this classic rock not-slammer (the live versions are the true gospel).
Now, it's not like we're in an anthem-deficient time in music. The new lighter-wavers are just rap and trap and pop singles, which is great! But the nature of, say, "Black Beatles" is wholly different from a "Stairway" or its imitators, the likes of which we may never see again. These largely straight and white men made these songs because they wanted you to feel their very important feelings, dammit, and they were going to use all the tools in the arsenal of rock to do so. There's a pure, innocent beauty in that kind of obliviousness, and it's that magic we're trying to remember and tediously rank today. Seeing as how sports and competition are the basis of everything now, we're going to do this as a bracket tournament.
So you may ask yourself, "what makes a song a 'Stairway'"? That's a great question, so let's define what a "Stairway" is.
A "Stairway to Heaven" is...
1. Almost always a rock song, typically a ballad 2. Recognizable within the first few seconds 3. Already emotional from the jump, but eventually reaches a point that has all living things weeping openly
While there are definitely many giant, cathartic rock songs from the last decade, very few of them are actually known by regular people, and that ubiquity is what's really needed (i.e. "All My Friends" and other indie classics are not eligible). And yes, this will pool from songs released mainly in the last decade, as this gives the minimum amount of time for nostalgia to ferment into uncritical adoration. Cool? Cool. Let's meet the contenders, divided between American and UK conferences.
As a Canadian, let's go with North America first. Songs are seeded by runtime from longest to shortest.
USA: MATCH 1KANYE WEST - RUNAWAY VS. MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE - THE BLACK PARADE With their legendary piano intros and epic structures, these songs are behemoths among the giants of this list. Both Kanye and MCR have a claim for artist of the decade, too. "Black Parade" is emo's crowning moment, but "Runaway" made emo consumable for hypebeasts, which is the real pioneering moment here. Kanye wins!
USA: MATCH 2GREEN DAY - BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS VS. MAROON 5 - SHE WILL BE LOVED "Boulevard" may have kicked off emo's mainstream dominance in the aughts despite Green Day having nothing to do with the genre, which is some crazy impact. "She Will Be Loved" only just manages to match that by birthing Adam Levine (note how in the video, he's hairless, like an infant) into the larger public consciousness. This battle may seem like a tough call, but in fact, it's quite simple. One song rips off "Wonderwall" and the other was written by Levine, the modern-day Robert Plant. Maroon 5 wins!
USA: MATCH 3THE KILLERS - MR. BRIGHTSIDE VS. YEAH YEAH YEAHS - MAPS "Maps" is the one of the few songs to ever have a distinct opening drum riff, akin to those of the late, great John Bonham. This, along with the rest of the band's equally Zeppelin-esque and powerful performances, should make it a shoo-in. Alas, it's up against "Mr. Brightside," which has a much more complex riff that is more desired among the novice guitarists that turn music stores into hellholes of sound every day. The Killers win!
USA: MATCH 4LINKIN PARK - IN THE END VS. KELLY CLARKSON - SINCE U BEEN GONE The soundtrack to a thousand AMVs faces off against the soundtrack to the actual lives of people. "Since U Been Gone" is much shorter than "Stairway" but it does that song's quiet-to-loud thing not once but three times in as many minutes, making it numerically superior to Zeppelin's one piddly climax in an eight-minute song. This also makes it better than Linkin Park, who didn't even have the balls that to put a guitar solo on "In the End." You know who actuallyhad the stones to do that? That's right, Kelly did. Kelly Clarkson wins!
Now we move across the pond...
UK: MATCH 1MUSE - KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA VS. COLDPLAY - FIX YOU Glad to be in the land of messy-haired dudes singing at the top of their registers. Anyways, "Knights of Cydonia" is possibly the best song ever recorded but it also makes no fucking sense. "Fix You" has the most extreme slow-burn and release structure of any song on this list. It culminates in actual lyrics about crying, while "Knights" ends with a trio of Bellamies screeching about chemtrails. Coldplay wins!
UK: MATCH 2SNOW PATROL - CHASING CARS VS. FLORENCE + THE MACHINE - DOG DAYS ARE OVER This one's hard. Who among us isn't reduced to a blubbering mass the second Gary Lightbody's guitar and voice being to lead us on a slow, painful journey to the depths of our hearts and/or wallets? Likewise, Florence Welch's wailing chasm of a voice and her knack for writing fire songs about pagan rituals makes her a prime candidate for the "Stairway" crown. The catch is that "Chasing Cars" is more self-important than "Dog Days," which is what rock 'n' roll is really all about. Snow Patrol wins!
UK: MATCH 3FRANZ FERDINAND - TAKE ME OUT VS. KEANE - SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW As good a riff as it is, "Take Me Out" is far too cool and self-aware for this list. Tom Chaplin is so lame, he took a taxi into the goddamn woods for your ungrateful ass. But no, you already left him, and now he weeps into the arms of woodland sprites. Alex Kapranos and his perfectly-curated Soviet kitsch stand no chance. Keane wins!
UK: MATCH 4GORILLAZ - FEEL GOOD INC. VS. M.I.A. - PAPER PLANES This division has more songs with rapping in it than the US, the birthplace of rap, which is unsurprising seeing as how the English perfected the form with the genre of grime. Both these songs are flawless, but the fearless Maya Arulpragasam is a bigger rockstar than Damon Albarn, a man who has hidden behind both Graham Coxon's incredible guitar playing in Blur and cartoon apes in Gorillaz to sing his songs. M.I.A. wins!
Let's bring it back to the States and see how they're doing in the semi-finals.
USA SEMIS: MATCH 1 RUNAWAY VS. SHE WILL BE LOVED 'Ye made Adam Levine sing the hook on "Heard 'Em Say," meaning he technically owns him. Kanye wins!
USA SEMIS: MATCH 2 MR. BRIGHTSIDE VS. SINCE U BEEN GONE What "Brightside" lacks in "Since U Been Gone"'s dynamics it more than makes up for with the lack thereof. It starts at a 10 and reaches a 15 when the whole band kicks in, eventually surpassing human comprehension at the chorus. The world's face when they hear this song is every single one of those "when u nut" memes at the same time. Killers win!
USA FINAL
RUNAWAY VS. MR. BRIGHTSIDE Think of the great matchups in American history. Ali vs. Frazier, Golden State vs. Cleveland, Moonlight vs. La La Land. This fight can be counted among them, and we're not even at the end yet. This is so exciting, guys! One song is a poetic ode to how being an asshole will ruin your life, the other is... the same thing, pretty much. "Runaway" follows the "Stairway" model to the hilt, and also has a verse from Pusha T, who raps like Jimmy Page plays guitar. But alas, "Mr. Brightside" avoids Autotune, which "Runaway" makes extensive use of. Autotune is the sound of music now and its rebirth as an artistic tool will be Kanye's lasting legacy. But it isn't rock 'n' roll and that's all that matters in this town. Which town is that, you ask? Sam's Town, of course. Killers win!
Congrats to the Killers and their ever-changing hair. Now we must figure out who the greatest Brit is. It will most likely be a sad man.
UK SEMIS: MATCH 1 FIX YOU VS. CHASING CARS Yeesh, these are basically the same band and song, eh? "Chasing Cars" is one of the definitive remains of Grey's Anatomy's wide but often-unanalyzed cultural footprint, having been used in a pivotal scene where the Comedian from Watchmen dies. Not only has "Fix You" been in even more works of media, but it also was played to commemorate the life of Steve Jobs when he died. The ghost of the man who made the thing you're probably reading this on heard "Fix You," said "aight, I'm good" and gave the band phantom props before vanishing into the Thunderbolt-only flash drive his consciousness is stored on. Powerful. Coldplay wins!
UK SEMIS: MATCH 2 SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW VS. PAPER PLANES "Paper Planes" is an extremely creative tune that still stands as one of the weirder hit singles of the last decade. Weird is not what we want here. We're looking for simple, banal, straight-for-the-gut wuss-rock. No one fits this description better than Keane and this is why they will always be great. Keane wins!
UK FINAL
FIX YOU VS. SOMEWHERE ONLY WE KNOW With pianos, keys, and organs of all kind taking up breathing room in this match, it comes down to guitars to settle the score. "Fix You" features Jonny Buckland tearing all nine circles of Hell a new asshole with his Telecaster, and yet instead of daemon feces, out comes the angelic voice of Chris Martin promising us that everything's not lost. Keane went many years without a guitar player after not bothering to replace their first one and this is why they will always be mediocre. Coldplay wins!
*sigh* Told you it would be a morose guy. Give it up for Coldplay. At last it's come to...
THE ULTIMATE SHOWDOWN
MR BRIGHTSIDE VS. FIX YOU Since this is a much tougher contest than what came before, let's break it down, all the way to the base criteria, to learn who will truly walk away with mid-00s alt rock's greatest prize.
RIFFINESS: Both intros provoke that desired "oh God, THIS song" feeling. But "Brightside" is the only one where that initial eye-rolling gives way to elation about the time Brandon Flowers imagines the woman touching the dude's chest. "Fix You" sounds like church, and not even in a really lit way. If one goes further into the core catchiness of each of the central guitar riffs, they'll find that "Brightside" is far more memorable despite nobody being able to hum it without sounding like they're imitating R2-D2. Oh yeah, the opening lines: "When you try your best but you don't succeed" is a classic simp bar, no doubt about it. However, no one's able to talk about doing just fine these days without coming out of their cages first. 1 point to the Killers!
EMOTIONS: Man, what feelings aren't contained within "Brightside?" It's a package of lust, anger, sorrow, and triumph, all wrapped up with a bow and given the magic kiss by a man named Flowers. "Fix You" is just "You are sad, but ooooOOOOH NOW IT'S OKAYYYYY!" This is shit. Also, it's impersonal as all hell. By making "Brightside" first-person, Flowers becomes us and we become him. "If you gaze long enough into the Killers, the Killers also gaze into you." Jesus said that. 1 point to the Killers!
EPIC: A reversal! "Fix You" just plain has "Brightside" against the ropes here. It's 5 minutes long and boy does it make use of that sprawl. The audience has enough time to get used to things before that guitar riff arrives, and then there's a whole back half of the song they have to somehow survive emotionally intact. Coldplay put together a real journey, and the Killers can't hold up with what's still structurally a pop single. The London boys get an extra point for following "Stairway" so nicely. 2 points to Coldplay!
Tie game. But, we're ignoring the biggest question of all and that is...
IS IT ANY FUCKING GOOD? The problem with "Fix You" is that it's ultimately dishonest. Yes, Chris Martin literally wrote it to comfort a grieving Gwyneth Paltrow, but the song tries so hard to be Important that its craft comes to the forefront. You know you're supposed to find it powerful, you can tell you're supposed to ugly cry at the climax, you can hear the shit-eating grin in Martin's falsetto as he thinks "I'm gonna get these guys good." You can't enjoy "Fix You" without feeling like a fool.
There is no such guilt when it comes to "Brightside." Every second of this song feels like the first of a possible alternate life. This was one of the first songs the Killers wrote together, and their earnest enthusiasm is evident in every 16th-note hi-hat hit, open guitar string, and Flowers' wonderfully unchanging vocal performance. It was good even on the original 2001 demo, so why change it? Flowers truly believes in the soapy words he sings, much like how Robert Plant truly believed in the nonsense of "if there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now" on "Stairway." These songs unite listeners because they're uncalculated and lack the inhibitions of self-awareness. They're only interested in providing a thrilling, memorable, emotional experience.
To take things to their logical conclusion, The Fast and the Furious series as a whole is the "Stairway" of film. This is all besides the point, however. As one emotionally astute Youtube commenter put it, "The one thing that unites every American [is] knowing all the lyrics to Mr. Brightside," and while their comment doesn't matter in the larger scheme of internet discourse, they hit on a universal truth. Suffice to say, if you're unmoved by "Brightside," you don't believe in world peace. Let's finish this. 100 points to the Killers!
"MR. BRIGHTSIDE" IS THE MILLENNIAL "STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN"
Glad we got that sorted out so efficiently.
Cover artwork by John Garrison. All other graphics by Devin Pacholik. Phil will gladly hear any debates. Follow or slander him on Twitter.
At a time when every film franchise seems hell-bent on “world building,” the producers of Alien have made some particularly dubious attempts to create a rich mythology for its titular monsters, the xenomorphs, in the prequels Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Rather than go back and explain the things nobody needed an explanation for, the series would benefit from a forward-looking perspective, building on what made Ridley Scott’s 1979 original Alien such an iconic masterpiece of both sci-fi and horror cinema. But then Alien: Resurrection did just that 20 years ago, and nobody cared.
There’s no debate about the low standing of Resurrection within the Alien canon. It sits at a cool 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (with an even cooler 39 percent audience score). Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel included it in their end-of-year list of worst movies of 1997—a year, it’s worth noting, that included the release of Batman & Robin, The Postman, Anaconda, Jungle 2 Jungle, and Speed 2: Cruise Control.
Resurrection stands alongside Alien 3 as bastard children of an otherwise phenomenally popular film franchise, with Neill Blomkamp even claiming that he’ll ignore the two in his own contribution to the series, if that ever actually makes it into production. Even the highly divisive Prometheus has its loudly faithful defenders (Ebert was in fact one such champion of the prequel).
So why do I stand by Resurrection? In part because it takes the time to engage with the ideas and deeper meanings of the original film, and it features great performances by Winona Ryder, Brad Dourif, and Ron Perlman, directed by French auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet from a screenplay by Joss Whedon.
At its core, Alien is about corporate power and the disposability of the working class—and more obviously about the vulnerability or our gross human bodies and their ability to bleed, to expel other nasty fluids, to be invaded, to be ripped apart in different ways. Every Alien movie plays with the latter idea, but Alien: Resurrection is the only film that seems to fully acknowledge and embrace the fact that Alien is completely bland space pulp without the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (named for the first time in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens).
Known simply as “the company” in Alien, Weyland-Yutani is responsible for everything that goes wrong. Their desire to study the aliens found on a mysterious planet supersedes any safety protocols. Human life is literally secondary to that imperative. The crew of the ship Nostromo doesn’t know that though. They naïvely cling to the idea that doing their jobs will keep them safe and in the company’s good graces. The few grumblings from the union mechanics who want to stay safe and just do what they’re paid for are met with contractual loopholes that effectively fuck them over. Eventually, we learn that “standard operating procedure is to do whatever the fuck they tell you to do.” That means dying in service to a mandate kept secret in a super computer.
Aliens doesn’t do much to keep the series fresh, though it offers up a xenomorph queen, bigger and tougher to kill than the first film’s monster. It may be the fan favourite, but Aliens is pretty much a beat-for-beat remake of Alien, replacing the suspenseful tone of the original with gun fights and machismo. If Alien is horror/sci-fi, Aliens is the same movie reframed as action/sci-fi. Then Alien 3 mostly abandons the corporate message of its predecessors altogether in favour of a space prison narrative, in which the xenomorphs wreak havoc on a bunch of criminals. Which brings us to Alien: Resurrection.
Resurrection takes place 200 years after the death of Alien protagonist Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien 3. After becoming a xenomorph host, Ripley killed herself, but she’s now been cloned by the United Systems Military, who stand in for Weyland-Yutani as a kind of corporate military conglomerate, intent on studying Ripley and every xenomorph they can get their hands on. Ripley’s back, but she’s changed. The cloning process has linked her to the xenomorphs, giving her new strength and a psychic link to the aliens—and acid blood that can burn through a ship’s hull. Weaponizing the deadly aliens, and Ripley, is now the military’s end-game.
When the military’s captive xenomorphs escape, Ripley teams up with a group of space pirates, including the robot Call, played by Winona Ryder. The rag-tag team of rebels fights their way through the monsters, while Ripley tries to figure out exactly what her relationship to the xenomorphs is now.
There are a few fun touches that superficially play on the original film. Call is part of a group of robots who rebelled and won back their freedom. It seems the top-down structure of Weyland-Yutani was so oppressive that even the previously obedient machines couldn’t stand it. And the military’s central computer now has a male voice and is referred to as “Father,” cementing the patriarchal role of those in power, in contrast to all the maternal imagery of Alien and the “Mother” console.
Ryder, who didn’t manage to use her 90s “it girl” rep to make Resurrection a hit, is one of the few people who actually remembers the film fondly, and is largely responsible for making it “kind of like a really cool art film,” as she described it in a 2013 interview with the Huffington Post, praising the direction of Jeunet, who was gaining fame for his offbeat French films and would eventually become an international star with Amélie.
It turns out Jeunet was Ryder’s idea, and he gives the film an eccentricity that may dull the horror a bit but gives Resurrection a really distinct style. At times, it feels like a vaudevillian theatre troupe putting on an Alien play, and I mean that in the best way. The actors playfully dive deep into their roles, and camp things up for a director who can appreciate the absurdity of it all.
And thematically, Alien’s preoccupations come roaring back after taking a backseat to commandos and killers in the last two films. That dark humour and clever evolution of plot comes courtesy of the film’s screenwriter, geekdom’s filmmaker-in-chief Joss Whedon.
Or maybe former filmmaker-in-chief. It’s admittedly not the best time to be a Joss Whedon stan right now, but his contribution to pop culture is still undeniable. 1997 will rightly be remembered more for the premiere of his Buffy the Vampire Slayer than for Resurrection, but both Buffy and Alien fans should do themselves a favour and revisit this one with an open mind—even if Whedon himself has rather unceremoniously disowned the thing, shifting the blame for its failings on pretty much everyone else.
The Whedonesque signatures are all there, and maybe more apparent in hindsight. For one, the crew of space pirates feels like something of a prototype for Whedon’s space cowboys in his short-lived cult series Firefly and its follow-up feature Serenity. His later brigands are more likeable and heroic, if still flawed, but the seed of an idea seems to be planted in Resurrection.
Then there’s Ripley herself, whose transformation has all the hallmarks of a Whedon heroine. Nearly every Whedon project seems to have a woman with special abilities given to her by one shadowy cabal of men or another. Inevitably, she rebels and takes back her autonomy with force. This happened with Buffy, it happens with River in Serenity, and it happens with Echo in his later series Dollhouse. Ripley’s rampage in Resurrection is textbook Whedon patriarchy smashing, but it’s also a fitting conclusion to her relationship with Weyland-Yutani.
The company is replaced by a galactic military, but it’s all part of the same consolidation of power. The aliens represent the line corporations, governments, and armies (are these three even distinct?) are willing to cross to achieve their own ends, so Ripley’s resistance is always essentially pitted against the same thing. In Resurrection, they accidentally empower her through the very process that was meant to use her up. By reducing her to the level of meat to be experimented on, she and the xenomorphs literally become one. Everything and everyone is just a plaything for those in power.
In one of the film’s most cathartic (and disturbing) scenes, Ripley torches a lab full of failed Ripley clones, one of which painfully begs her for death. One of Ripley’s new crewmates, played by the always scene-stealing Ron Perlman, doesn’t get why she’s so angry as to be wasting ammo. He chalks it up to being “a chick thing,” which is a fitting final note. The control over human bodies has always had gendered undertones in the Alien films. Ripley is a woman whose physical autonomy is always under threat, either from the aliens or from her patriarchal corporate overlords. Here, she takes back control more divisively than ever before.
The movie still leaves plenty of room for Ripley to keep waging her war on her oppressors though. Maybe when Scott wraps up his prequel series he can check in on Ripley again and make the franchise actually evolve some more. And if he doesn’t, we’ll always have Alien: Resurrection, like it or not.
Nestled in the backwood jungles of Cuzama, which is a tiny hamlet a couple hours outside of Merida in the Yucatan region of Mexico, there are a collection of Cenotes—naturally occurring subterranean swimming holes filled with fresh water and rainwater, and surrounded by stalagmites.
To get there required a 40 peso Collectivo ride along rocky, unpaved thoroughfares that broke my ass apart, after which I was dropped off next to a horse and rail station. The cenotes (pronounced say-no-tays) are so inaccessible that they are only reachable by horse-drawn rail wagons small enough to squeeze through the underbrush. Another 15 minutes deep into the jungle and suddenly the foliage cleared to reveal the gaping wound in the ground. Entering the cenote is not for the faint of heart, it's a vertiginous descent down a rickety wooden ladder held together with horsehair rope and rusted nails.
Once at the bottom, only a small, water-slick plinth is your resting point before diving into the dark, quiet blue. Unlike swimming in the unforgiving waves of an ocean or the echoey stillness of a swimming pool, what I found remarkable about swimming in cenotes is how calming the darkness can be. Light only streams through one beam, so as I did laps down to the end of the rock face, it was like swimming through the velvet black of midnight. Underneath the water's surface, the light would illuminate people's bodies as if they were in neo-classical tableau.
Here is a bit of what I experienced below from the viewfinder of a disposable underwater camera.
After months of build-up, Marvel finally released the first teaser trailer for Avengers: Infinity War Wednesday morning—and the thing was well worth the wait.
The two-and-a-half minute trailer is everything you would want the Infinity War trailer to be. At last, the film brings just about every planet-spanning character Marvel has introduced over the past decade together to duke it out with galactic rock collector Thanos and stop his quest for the Infinity Stones.
The trailer features everybody from Iron Man to Black Widow to Hulk to Spider-Man to Black Panther to goddamn Peter Quill himself and a ton more in an overwhelming melee of superpeople. And as brain-bleedingly brilliant as it is to see the Guardians of the Galaxy stopping by to join forces with Iron Man, Captain America, and the rest, this first Infinity War trailer really shines in the individual character moments.
There's Peter Parker on a school bus with his Spidey sense tingling, a stoic Captain America sporting a well-groomed beard, Black Panther ordering a city-wide evacuation, and Tony Stark looking reasonably shaken up by the whole Thanos thing.
"In time, you will know what it's like to lose," Josh Brolin's Thanos warns in the trailer. And this being the beginning of the end of Phase Three, losing could be a real option.
Infinity War will be the first of a two-part finale to this chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe—the second being the yet-untitled fourth Avengers film, scheduled for 2019—so it's anyone's guess how things will conclude. With this era of Marvel stars like Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johansson nearing the end of their contracts, there's no telling which heroes will or won't live to see the end of Avengers 4.
Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters next May. In the meantime, give the first of probably many trailers a watch above.
Jill Stein was looking for her cat. Inside her suburban treehouse of a home, slightly north of Boston, the two-time Green Party presidential candidate had been wandering around for about ten minutes, peeking in closets, disappearing into her bedroom. “Lily!” she called, but the feline refused to emerge. “She’s just shy,” she reassured me.
Stein is no stranger to losing things. When we met again a couple months later, we spent 15 minutes looking for her car, a blue Prius with a green "JILL STEIN" bumper sticker, after she forgot where she parked. She’s also lost the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial race, a 2004 Massachusetts House of Representatives race, the 2006 Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth race, the 2010 Massachusetts gubernatorial race, the 2012 presidential race, and the 2016 presidential race.
In the process, she’s become both a punchline and a scapegoat. Despite receiving a mere 1,457,050 votes nationwide last year, she became the perfect patsy (alongside many other targets) for devastated Hillary Clinton supporters to project their post-election grief onto. In Clinton’s election memoir, What Happened, she writes, “Stein wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except for the fact that she won thirty-one thousand votes in Wisconsin, where Trump’s margin was smaller than twenty-three thousand. In Michigan, she won fifty-one thousand votes, while Trump’s margin was just over ten thousand.”
The logic of Clinton’s claim is easily disputed—as recounted in a Politico profile of Stein, “National exit polling that shows the majority of [Stein] voters would have stayed home rather than vote for Clinton, while others would have sooner voted for Trump.” Nevertheless, Clinton loyalists and other mainstream liberals have eagerly echoed the former secretary of state’s talking points—one Salon article asserted that Stein “spoiled the election for Hillary,” and an editor at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report called her “the Ralph Nader of 2016.” Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden, a former Clinton aide, is a notable Stein adversary who once tweeted, “I know I need to let this go but I hope Jill Stein does not so much as whisper a rebuke of Trump pulling out of Paris. #shebuiltthis.”
“She’s human eczema,” Teen Vogue politics columnist Lauren Duca mused on Twitter. She's "a right-wing tool” according to Dan Savage. The famously unhinged political gossip blog Wonkette, which touts itself as the “Official Blog of #THERESISTANCE,” once called Stein “so cunty.” Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald wrote a post-election account of an interaction he had with a fan after learning he voted for Stein: “I interrupted him and said, ‘You’re lucky it’s illegal for me to punch you in the face.’ Then, after telling him to have sex with himself—but with a much cruder term—I turned and walked away.”
Stein herself is not bothered by this hate. In fact, she seems to get a kick out of it. When I told her that she got a mention in What Happened—along with Bernie Sanders, Vladimir Putin, and James Comey—she smiled and said, “I'm honoured to be among the list of heavy hitters. Wow, bring it on.”
The Green Party leader doesn’t worry whether any of the hate could perhaps be justified. If Democrats hate her, it’s because “they’re threatened by voices of integrity that go much farther than they're willing to go in their kind of window dressing solutions.” If people misunderstand her intentions, that’s thanks to “the sponsors, the powerful special interests [that] are controlling the politicians, and unfortunately the corporate media.” She is not the type of politician who backs down if one of her platforms is widely unpopular or nonsensical or unrealistic. She considers herself an activist, a radical idealist who believes this country and the rest of the planet are about to totally collapse, and incremental change simply will not suffice.
But when I spoke to her she didn’t seem to be considering another quixotic run in 2020. While she’s “not unshakably opposed to” to running for president again, “it’s certainly not the default plan,” she told me. “It’s good for the party to develop and build new leadership.”
To hear her tell it, she ran for president in 2012 and 2016 because she’s a “mother on fire,” and “when you and your family are backed into a corner, you will fight and do everything in your power… to do the right thing.” She described the current political situation as a “Hail Mary moment,” and told me, “I'm not running for political office for trivial reasons.”
There are other things you could do to fight the impending collapse of the United States besides repeatedly running for an elected office that you have no chance of winning. But thoroughly disillusioned with the two-party system and highly mistrustful of anything and everything establishment, Stein is trying to save the world. At least, that's how she sees it.
The question for her and like-minded leftist do-gooders who want to avoid the quagmire Democratic Party politics can sometimes be is whether good intentions can do much of anything.
In person, Stein is hardly villainous. She’s slender, with short and unkempt gray hair and a motherly attitude any offspring of liberal Jewish baby boomers will recognize. Despite my objections, she foisted a bowl of grapes on me, which I happily ate while she dissected a pomegranate. She can seem fragile and birdlike and charming, all at the same time.
Her house is exactly as you’d picture it: a little dirty, cluttered with antique furniture, musical instruments, and hippie art. Atop her piano sits a framed collage with silhouettes climbing up a landscape of cut-up newspaper headlines, the most prevalent words: “PALESTINE,” “A LIFE OF WAR,” “CRISIS,” “COVER UP,” “RADICAL,” “MISCALCULATIONS.” In the office area adjoining the living room, about 100 copies of a newsletter called Practical Sailor were messily stacked. By the computer there was a glass lamp that bore a stunning resemblance to a bong. Her bathroom, impressively enough, was dirtier than my own, towels unfolded and the toilet unflushed, maybe because she’s one of those “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down” type of environmentalists.
I couldn’t help but love her just a little bit, in the same way you love your friend’s hippie mom who let you smoke weed in the house in high school—you’re relieved she’s not your mom because you know deep down that that behavior is inappropriate, but you can’t deny the weed she grows in her backyard is dank as fuck.
Not that I came close to voting for her. During the election, I participated in a deluge of negative media coverage she received, writing one article that ridiculed her refusal to confidently state that vaccines don’t cause autism—“I'm not aware of evidence linking autism with vaccines” is the furthest she’ll go. (When I pressed her on this, she attributed her careful language to being a “scientist” before delivering a monologue on the corruption of the “medical establishment.”) I also mocked her concern about the “possible health effects of WiFi radiation on young children,” comparing her saying that she doesn’t have “a personal opinion that WiFi is or isn’t a health issue for children” to not having a personal opinion on whether reptilian shapeshifters did 9/11. (“We need to study it. I use WiFi, and the concerns are about young children,” she clarified to me, launching into a spiel mentioning a study about the effects of cellphone radiation on rats. There is no credible evidence that radio waves cause adverse health effects in humans.)
She then informed me that “people like to lie” about what she says and scolded the press for “cherry-picking” her comments on WiFi while ignoring her actual campaign platforms. Or rather, she did her to best to scold—she has preternaturally gentle way of speaking, her voice smooth and low in a way that is almost soothing enough to rock you into a soft slumber.
In person, Stein is the biggest sweetheart—but she’s also a cautionary tale for leftists trying to build a movement. To understand who she is and why she does what she does is to understand the left at its absolute wackiest, what happens when a rigid mistrust of establishment politics goes too far, and what it means to be a joke.
Stein was born in Chicago in 1950 to two Jewish parents—her father, Joseph, was a small business attorney and her mother, Gladys, was a stay-at-home mom. She had a childhood that she described as “idyllic” in Highland Park, a predominantly white, Jewish, upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago. “I was part of that generation growing up in post-war suburbia that was waking up,” she told me. “That this was a really crazy world and the suburbs are just lifeless and the whole war mindset was criminal.”
Like many a baby boomer, the Vietnam War awakened the activist within Stein. While attending Harvard in the late 1960s, she participated in anti-war protests and occupied University Hall. But she didn't launch her career in electoral politics until much later. First, she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in anthropology, sociology, and psychology, went to Harvard Medical School, and worked as a doctor for decades. She became involved in environmentalism because she witnessed “an epidemic of asthma, cancer, developmental disabilities, obesity, diabetes, you name it,” much of which she attributed to pollution. In 1998, she joined a campaign to close the "Filthy Five" coal plants in Massachusetts. (The last of the state’s dirtiest power generators was finally shuttered earlier this year.)
She found the Green Party the way many do, after feeling her efforts to protect her community were continually stymied by larger establishment forces. After she spoke at a Ralph Nader rally in 2000, the Green Party approached her to run for governor—“I was tricked into running for office,” she likes to say—with the promise of being able to reach a broader audience. Thanks to a 1998 referendum passed by Massachusetts voters, candidates who went without any large private donations got public money for their campaigns, giving her more money than most third-party candidates receive. (The legislature repealed the referendum in 2003.)
Arguably, Stein’s career peaked during the 2002 Massachusetts governor’s race. She loved running for office—”it was so much fun,” she told me, oozing with girlish excitement—and performed surprisingly well, coming in in third place with about 3 percent of the vote. Her biggest moment came in a televised debate that featured her, the two other third-party candidates, Republican Mitt Romney, and Democrat Shannon O’Brien. Compared to the Libertarian who pledged to abolish all income tax and the raspy-voiced and largely incoherent Independent, Stein emerged as the most reasonable member of the third-party crew. Exuding a sort of frazzled art teacher vibe, she held a silver pencil in her hand to punctuate her points as she explained how recent Massachusetts tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy. (In hindsight, many of her ideas were similar to those of Bernie Sanders.)
“When we walked out to where the press was waiting, I was mobbed by the press who told me I had won the debate on the instant online viewer poll,” Stein told me. I was unable to find this poll, but her performance did receive positive coverage in the Boston Globeand the Boston Phoenix, which wrote she “won” the debate.
Inspired by the relative success of her first gubernatorial campaign and armed with a belief that the two-party system was never going to create the radical social and political change needed to save the country, the Massachusetts doctor embarked on a new path as a full-time third-party candidate. She’s now run as a Green in eight elections, six of which she’s lost. Her two victories, in 2005 and 2008, were for Lexington’s town meeting, a group of elected officials that enacts local laws and is in charge of the town budget.
A town meeting official who served at the same time as Stein told HuffPost in 2016, “I don’t think she was active. I can’t recall her speaking on any of the issues or being active in any of the activities of town meeting.” Stein mentioned this “point of attack,” telling me, “I went back and got the records and the articles about it, which show, in fact, the strength of my position in town meeting.” Briefly explaining how she organized “statewide local officials to stop the fire-sale of public lands and buildings,” she then brought the conversation back to her favourite topic, unfair criticism of her. “I said, 'You want to cover my background as a local member of town meeting? Here, here’s something to cover. You’re interested in my background? No, you’re not interested in my background—you’re interested in creating a smear campaign.'"
It’s true that everything she does gets pilloried by national political observers. After Hillary Clinton’s razor-thin 2016 loss, Stein led an effort to recount the votes in the Midwestern swing states that gave the election to Donald Trump, raising over $7 million. The Green Party had called for recounts in previous elections, but the widespread shock among liberals at Trump’s victory gave this one a fundraising boost. It also opened her up to criticism from all sides of the aisle. A report from the right-leaning Free Beacon accused her of pocketing $2 million from her recount fund. Trump referred to her efforts as “Just a Stein scam to raise money!”
Democrats mostly rolled their eyes at the whole thing, which seemed to many like a pointless last-ditch effort to reverse time. “The amount of Democratic energy and money being wasted on recounts instead of trying to win the Louisiana Senate Race is mind boggling,” tweeted former Obama administration staffer and podcast host Dan Pfeiffer. It ended up uncovering nothing beyond a totally routine number of counting errors. Wisconsin, which was the only state to comply with her recount request, found that Donald Trump received 131 more votes than initially counted, while Pennsylvania and Michigan declined to participate.
Stein, characteristically, regrets nothing. “To me, it was being able to show that these issues of corruption are very real, and I think the recount has been extremely validated since then by the findings you know of rampant tampering in a variety of election systems,” she said.
She directed me to a Bloomberg report about how Russian hackers targeted voting machines in 39 states as further evidence that her recount efforts were justified—which is odd considering Stein is not convinced that Russia interfered with the election to begin with. When I asked her about the various reports that indicate there was Russian interference in the 2016 election, she told me she hadn’t read anything to indicate “it was Russians,” but believes that voting machines were vulnerable to hacking.
To many of her critics, Stein’s stance on Russia is her most insidious view—her refusal to acknowledge that perhaps the United States’s biggest foreign adversary interfered in the election is baffling, to put it gently. When I asked her about the infamous picture of her at a 2015 gala in Moscow sponsored by Russian state-funded media platform RT where she was sitting at a table with Vladimir Putin and General Michael Flynn—now the disgraced former national security adviser—she chalked the whole thing up to a misunderstanding.
“What’s Putin like in real life?” I asked.
“I didn’t meet him,” Stein said. “That photograph tells a very different story than the facts. Putin came in with all these guys who turned out to be his most important people. I wouldn’t have known that. The Russian speakers only spoke Russian… There was nothing substantive going on at that table. This was Putin coming in so that he could give a speech in Russian. That’s all it was. And then he did a fast-forward around the table to shake everyone’s hand, but no names were exchanged, nothing."
“It happened so fast,” she said with a laugh. “I was trying to talk to him because I wanted to challenge him with our peace offensive and tell him that bombing Syria sucks. Which is what I said in the conference, which he said that he actually listened to, and he said in his speech, which I learned the next day, that he actually agreed with much of what was said.”
When I asked her what exactly she and Putin agreed on, she explained, “What he said was that he listened to the panel with the foreign diplomats, which I was on, and he said, ‘I was shocked how much I agreed with them.’” Needless to say, it’s pretty clear that Putin isn’t seeking peace in Syria, and Stein seems smart enough to know this. But she talks about Putin with the same carefulness you’d use to talk about your most problematic friend—she won’t praise him, exactly, but won’t condemn him either.
The infamous photo. Photo via Sputnik via the AP
So it comes as no surprise that she welcomed RT’s interest in her 2016 campaign and didn’t have an issue with the Kremlin-backed media company broadcasting the Green Party’s primary debate. The way Stein sees it, RT hasn’t taken a particular interest in her but in “American dissidents in general.”
“That has everything to do with the fact that American dissidents don’t get covered by corporate media,” she explained. “I think trying to demonize RT for covering us is ridiculous. RT is a propaganda tool by the Russian government, in the same way that we do the same thing.”
Bill Kreml, a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina who ran against Stein in the Green presidential primaries but did not participate in the RT debate, expressed disgust at Stein’s seemingly warm relationship with the Russians. “Hell no, I was not going to that… It was just the worst kind of representation of what the Green Party should be,” he told me over the phone. “Jill was desperate—she was being ignored by the mainstream press to be fair, but you just don’t do things like that.”
But Kreml seems to be in the minority in Stein’s party. I spoke to eight Greens, and he was the only one who had a bad word to say about her. Gloria Mattera, who co-chairs the New York Greens and worked on both of Stein’s presidential campaigns, told me that her fellow Greens generally believe that “Jill lifted the party's profile and level of political professionalism to another level.” Jabari Brisport, who ran for Brooklyn City Council on the Green ticket and is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, credits Stein for bringing him into the party after he decided to leave the Democrats when Sanders didn’t win the 2016 nomination. He praised her for doing a lot to help out local candidates, including himself, “through fundraising appeals or her own social media presence.”
She works hard for that approval. Since the election, Stein has been traveling around the country to support local Green Party groups. When we first met, Stein was preparing to fly to Salt Lake City for the official launch of the Utah Greens. Our interview was repeatedly interrupted by Stein dictating text messages to her assistant about her constantly changing travel plans.
Although Green Party membership fell to a 15-year low in May 2016, with only 216,200 registered Greens, Stein’s post-election recruitment efforts seem to be paying off—as of August 2017, there are 257,389 registered Greens throughout the United States, down from the 2004 high of nearly 319,000, but a solid number for an American third party.
Even Kreml voted for Stein in 2016, though he had critiques of her that are shared by many non-Greens. “You don’t graduate from Harvard Medical School if you’re stupid. On the other hand... she’s not very well educated,” he said. “There’s no depth to it.”
Jill Stein is always on the defensive. When I emailed her spokesperson to confirm or deny whether she was a multimillionaire, a claim supported by a 2016 Daily Beast report, she sent me four paragraphs that emphasized how her “time, energy and financial resources have been focused on dismantling economic inequality and a political system serving the economic elite,” so yes, her “family income, being a two-doctor couple, has been very generous,” but make no mistake, her family has “had minimal expenses—driving old and used cars, rarely taking vacations (the last was ten years ago), sending [their] kids to public middle/high schools, eschewing fancy jewelry, clothes, vacation home and private clubs of any sort,” and then going into the “deceptive smears” she receives “from the DNC apologists.”
In short, yes, Jill Stein is a multimillionaire—she’s just unable to answer the straightest of questions in fewer than three paragraphs.
But there was one question I needed an answer on, the thing I simply couldn’t understand: Hillary Clinton had her faults, and would never have earned an endorsement from Stein, but compared to Trump, her presidency would certainly have resulted in less harm being done to middle- and low-income Americans as well as Muslims, immigrants, women, and other marginalized groups. That much seems obvious, even to the Berniest of bros. Why wouldn’t Stein just say so?
In our interview, Stein wouldn’t assert that Clinton and Trump are equally dangerous, but she also wouldn’t say that they’re not. (Classic Jill.) While Stein remains eager to criticize the Republicans, the focus of her anti-establishment vitriol has most often been directed at the Democrats. I chalk it up to, in part, what Freud called “the narcissism of minor differences,” a psychological theory that asserts closely related communities “are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other” which satisfies “a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression.”
“We deserve more than two lethal choices is the bottom line,” Stein told me.
I wondered whether a shift in the Democratic Party to the left would change her mind. After Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic nomination, Stein had wanted him to join her on a third-party ticket (Sanders didn't respond to her overture). With Sanders and other leftists enjoying more influence than ever, would Stein modify her assessment of the Democrats? Would she vote for Sanders in 2020 if he got the nomination?
"He won't be the nominee, you can be sure. For the same reason he wasn't this time," she replied. She didn't think the Democrats would ever make Medicare for all a reality, and though she conceded there were differences between the two parties, she trotted out one of her favorite lines: "Is the difference enough to save your job, to save your life or to save the planet?"
“Yes, it can be, maybe not the planet but at least for your job or your life with the ACA versus how it was before," I replied.
“I think it remains to be seen," she said. "There are fewer people who are uninsured, but there are massive numbers of people who are under-insured. Are we gonna get there? What we find with less than single-payer is that it is a diversion and you always wind up starting over, and this has been repeated time after time."
I told her I agreed that single-payer healthcare is needed, but for all the ACA's flaws, wasn't it better than nothing? Weren't people who had preexisting conditions better protected?
Stein wasn't sure. She thinks that Massachusetts would have single-payer if not for "the inordinate spending of the neoliberals on all sides of the aisle." Then she asked me the question that defined her political philosophy: "Is half a loaf better than a loaf?"
"Half a loaf is not better than a loaf, but half a loaf is better than no bread at all," I said.
"That's right," she said, "but you don't know what the alternative to half a loaf is."
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
Trump Once Again Spreads Hate on Twitter The president shared three videos on Twitter originally posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of the far-right, anti-Islamic organization Britain First. Fransen—who has been convicted of a hate crime—presented them as evidence of Muslims' alleged propensity to engage violence. Fransen tweeted: “GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP!”—VICE/VICE News
Steve Bannon to ‘Fight’ for Roy Moore The former White House strategist heads to Alabama next week to campaign for Moore, despite the ex-judge having been accused of serial sexual misconduct involving teenagers, including assault. Bannon said: “I look forward to standing with Judge Moore and all of the Alabama deplorables in the fight to elect him to the United States Senate, and send shockwaves to the political and media elites.” Bannon is scheduled to appear with Moore at a December 5 rally.—CNN
Right-Wing Pundit Arrested at ‘It’s OK to Be White’ Event Blogger Lucian Wintrich was arrested at Tuesday night’s speaking event at the University of Connecticut after clashing with a protester. He was charged with breach of the peace after reportedly trying to grab a female activist who had removed papers from the podium during his “It’s OK to be White” speech. The event was sponsored by a Republican student group.—ABC News
Man Arrested in Connection with String of Killings in Florida Tampa Police officials arrested 24-year-old Howell Emanuel Donaldson III and said he would be charged with four counts of murder after a series of fatal shootings in the city’s Seminole Heights area. The killings had prompted fears that a serial killer was stalking the neighborhood. Donaldson was detained by police Tuesday after reportedly surrendering a firearm to a manager inside a McDonald’s.—CBS News
International News
Latest North Korean Missile Capable of Reaching Much of US, Reports Say Pyongyang has claimed the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) it test fired early Wednesday has the potential to strike the “whole mainland” of the US. According to state media, the Hwasong-15 is capable of carrying a “super-large heavy warhead.” The independent Union of Concerned Scientists noted the North Koreans had made significant progress, perhaps with the potential to reach almost anywhere in the US.—VICE News/VICE News
Bolivian President Gets Approval to Run for Fourth Term The country's highest court has authorized President Evo Morales to alter the constitution and seek a fourth term in office at the 2019 election. Morales lost a referendum vote on the proposed change last year, but the court judged he had been subject to illegal smears during the campaign.—BBC News
Decapitated Heads Discovered Outside Mexican TV Station Two heads were found in a cooler outside the Guadalajara offices of Televisa, along with a note apparently signed with the Jalisco New Generation cartel’s initials. The gesture was said to be directed at an unnamed official rather than the broadcaster. Suspected human remains were also found at another site in Guadalajara Tuesday, this one apparently meant to terrorize a judge.—Reuters
War Crimes Defendant Drinks Poison in Court, Dies An appeal tribunal at the Hague had to suspend operations Wednesday when Slobodan Praljak—a Bosnian Croat military leader convicted of murdering Bosnia Muslims in the early 1990s—killed himself. Swallowing liquid from a small vial, he said: “What I am drinking now is poison.” He was declared dead soon after.—Al Jazeera/The Guardian
Everything Else
Q-Tip Attacks Grammys for Ignoring A Tribe Called Quest Album The rapper lashed out about Tribe’s final LP failing to make it into Tuesday’s Grammys nominations, pointing out that the group performed at the Grammys earlier this year. “We closed y’all show and we don’t get no fucking nominations?”—Rolling Stone
Price of Bitcoin Passes $11,000 The price of the popular "cryptocurrency" has risen more than 1,000 percent since the beginning of 2017, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange is set to launch a futures trading market for bitcoin next month.—CNN
Daniel Day-Lewis (Sort of) Reveals Why He Retired The actor said he and director Paul Thomas Anderson were “both overwhelmed by a sense of sadness” while making their latest film, Phantom Thread. He said “not wanting to see the film is connected to the decision I’ve made to stop working as an actor.”—W
Eminem Reveals Album Release Date The rapper's latest LP REVIVAL will drop December 15. Dr. Dre shared the details on Instagram by posting a fake medication video ad for the record.—Noisey
Ai Weiwei Says He Has No Home The Chinese artist and dissident has revealed his rootlessness ahead of the release of his film about refugees, Human Flow. “I have no home,” he said. “I’ve never felt like I could go home—not even in the most private situations when I visited my parents.”—i-D
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we're talking about moms who microdose, and how their habit is stigmatized—especially among women of colour.
In a letter to Ontario’s Health Minister Eric Hoskins, the Eye Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (EPSO) has proposed banning the sale of scleral (sclera is the white part) tattooing and eyelid jewelry (ouch). The new rules—an amendment to Bill 160—are currently being debated.
Speaking to VICE in September, Catt Gallinger, 24, said after her ex-boyfriend (they were dating at the time) injected purple ink into the sclera of her left eye, it started leaking and became swollen, causing her to lose her vision. Her ex-boyfriend said it was normal, Gallinger told VICE. Then he dumped her.
Instead of doing the procedure over a few days, with a small needle and ink diluted with saline, Gallinger said her boyfriend put “pure ink” in her eye with a large needle. He completed the “tattoo” in 10 minutes.
Months later, Gallinger told Global News her sight is still blurry, even having undergone several corrective procedures. She said she is considering having the part of her that contains ink removed. But if she waits too long, and the ink solidifies, she may need to have her eye removed.
“The depression has hit very serious, scary moments where I have had to wake people up in the middle of my night because I was scared of what might happen,” she told VICE.
She also said she’s lost weight, quit modeling and is living with her mother.
If the EPSO’s recommendations pass into law, Ontario will become the first province in the country to ban eyeball tattoos. While we normally make fun of our nanny state province, this might be for the best.
There are a lot of ways tourists manage to piss off their hosts in foreign countries, from swimming blackout drunk across historic bodies of water to donning banana suits at some of the world's most revered ancient sites. And while most obnoxious Americans get off with a warning or a few dirty looks, a couple visiting a holy temple in Thailand may face much more serious consequences.
Earlier this week, a couple of American tourists in Bangkok were arrested for taking a photo of their bare asses in front of Bangkok's Wat Arun, a popular Buddhist temple, the Bangkok Post reports. Joseph and Travis Dasilva, a married couple from San Diego, California, have each been fined $153 dollars for the belfie, but they could still face up to 12 years in prison if the police pursue further charges.
The Daslivas ran a since-deleted joint Instagram account called traveling_butts, racking up 14,000 followers with photos of their rears in full view at various tourist attractions across the globe. Apparently baring ass on the Internet had never been a problem for the two, until they got to Thailand. The country has pretty harsh anti-decency laws, especially when its religious sites are involved, the BBC reports.
The Dasilvas were put on a police watchlist after authorities noticed their photo, and were arrested at the airport on their way back to the US. They've already been fined for public nakedness and could be blacklisted from visiting the country again, but according to the Bangkok Post, police are looking to slap them with additional charges. The couple could face up to five years in prison for posting pornographic content online, and an additional seven for exposing themselves at a religious site.
According to the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News (SDGLN), the Dasilvas have hit up their home city's commissioner, Nicole Murray-Ramirez, for help with the fiasco.
"Though I am very disappointed in their actions, I am talking to US government officials to see what assistance we can give them,” Murray-Ramirez told SDGLN.
Predictably, this sent people into a tizzy on social media. Donald Trump's apparent endorsement of Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of far-right group Britain First who has been convicted of an anti-Muslim hate crime, was a legitimately alarming reminder of his bigoted views, if not exactly shocking. But mostly, Trump's desperate scratching at his phone revealed a chief executive who has been historically inept in his first year, has no idea how to right the ship, and is increasingly frustrated by his own impotence.
Trump should have plenty to consume his days. His Republican allies in Congress are working overtime to push through an ambitious (and undercooked) tax reform package. It's a blockbuster effort to make the rich richer that Trump didn't mention on Twitter early Wednesday, though he was scheduled to speak about it in Missouri that afternoon. Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the House GOP was planning to overhaul higher education, according to a Wall Street Journal scoop. Trump and the Republicans need Democratic votes to pass a bill keeping the federal government running by December 8, a situation that has led to opposition leaders theatrically no-showing a meeting with Trump—who responded by calling them "weak." The Children's Health Insurance program somehow remains (cruelly) unfunded. Puerto Rico is still desperately in need of help. The administration has not come up with an adequate response to the ongoing opioid crisis.
Even on the agenda items Trump has pursued—and not just tweeted about—he's been stymied. His proposed budget was greeted with bipartisan derision in Congress. His attempt to bar trans people from serving in the military was once again batted down in court this week. The "travel ban" that would restrict citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the US remains snarled in litigation, though it has been implemented in part. The high-profile effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act cratered this summer, and despite the administration's efforts to sabotage it, more people have signed up for ACA plans in 2017 than at this time last year. During debt ceiling negotiations in September, Trump abruptly sided with Democrats and gave in to their request for a short-term increase—a move that set the stage for this current confrontation over a potential government shutdown. As for Trump's famous wall, it remains unbuilt (though companies have been building prototypes), and Congress allocated no money to its construction in the last government funding deal.
Then there are the scandals. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price had to resign in disgrace after his addiction to private planes was revealed by Politico. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced out barely a month into the administration because he lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, and remains at the center of multiplebizarre controversies that may end with him in prison or testifying against other Trump officials. Presidential son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner may be on the brink of going back to New York City, perhaps to try to fix his terrible real estate deals. And hanging over everything is the Russia investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller that seems to sprawl every day.
Is the president responding to this adversity by bearing down and helping his nominal allies in Congress get stuff done? No, he's tweeting aimlessly at his television, privately spewing nonsensical theories about how the infamous "grab them by the pussy" tape and Barack Obama's birth certificate were both fake, and doing lots of golfing.
Even a half-assed president wields enormous power, of course. Notably, Trump has empowered federal agents to arrest undocumented immigrants en masse (though the number of deportations is not rising) and has apparently endorsed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's hollowing out of the American diplomatic corps. His appointment of arch conservative Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, along with many other judicial appointments at lower levels, will have untold long-terms effects on the country. But on many issues, he's a "paper tiger dressed in a cowardly lion’s costume," to quote Jack Shafer's assessment of Trump's all-bark-no-bite threats against the media.
On Tuesday, congressional Democrats announced they would attempt to negotiate with their Republican counterparts over a shutdown-avoiding budget deal and leave Trump out of it—a bit of posturing to be sure, but Trump would probably sign any bill that came out of Congress, just as he did in April. Cutting him out of the discussion has become a routine tactic for other DC power players—White House economic adviser Gary Cohn reportedly did just that by faking a bad connection to get Trump off the phone during a recent tax reform discussion.
If this month's election results were any guide, the 2018 midterms may signal the end of Republican domination of Congress, making Trump's dreams even harder to realize. If his power does wane even further, expect more and more heated Twitter rants. Even if he never figures out how DC operates, he obviously knows how to work his phone.
On Tuesday, police arrested a 24-year-old in connection with a chilling string of murders that left Tampa, Florida, locals and police afraid they had a serial killer on their hands. The Tampa Bay Timesreports that Howell Emanuel Donaldson III, a former college student, will be charged with four counts of first-degree murder, bringing a 51-day, all-hands hunt for the suspected killer to a close.
The search began after 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was fatally shot in Seminole Heights—a small, working-class Tampa neighborhood—at the beginning of October. Over the next few weeks, three more people were shot and killed within half a mile of the slaying in similar circumstances—including Monica Hoffa, 32, Anthony Naiboa, 20, and Ronald Felton, 60. According to CNN, none of the victims were robbed, and each were seemingly shot at random.
Police received more than 5,000 tips related to the killings, but each led to a dead end until Tuesday afternoon. That's when Donaldson walked into the Tampa McDonald's where he worked and asked his manager to hold onto a bag while he ran an errand, the Tampa Bay Times reports. After realizing that the bag contained a loaded handgun, the manager reportedly alerted a cop sitting in the restaurant. When Donaldson returned to the McDonald's, police were waiting for him and took him to the station for questioning.
According to WFTS, police found clothes in Donaldson's car similar to those worn by the man suspected of killing Mitchell, who was caught on a surveillance camera—including an article of clothing stained with what looked like blood. Location data on Donaldson's cellphone linked him to the sites of the killings, according his arrest affidavit. And police firearms experts said the bullet casings recovered from three of the murders were fired from Donaldson's Glock pistol.
"We've had other guns, but we knew this was the one," Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan said at a press conference. "Now the work begins to shore up the case and get a full prosecution."
The minimum sentence for first-degree murder in Florida is life in prison. If convicted, Donaldson could face the death penalty.
"The real goal is to let the people of Seminole Heights be able to get a good night's sleep," Dugan said. "It's been 51 days that they've been terrorized in their neighbourhood and it is about letting these families know that we're going to bring this person to justice, and letting this neighbourhood get some rest."
Getting a student loan is like getting into a relationship. At the beginning stages it’s all sunshine and rainbows but then four years later your problems that you thought disappeared have inevitably resurfaced. Eventually, you question if the relationship was even worth it but it’s too late because you’re fatter and poorer and you can’t get a job and goddamnit, Ryan, would you please just let me live!!
This familiar decline in (financial) happiness is currently in force for many recent post-secondary grads. In Ontario, students who graduated this spring with government loans and are not pursuing further education will now begin to have monthly payments withdrawn from their accounts, if they haven’t already started paying for them.
And according to Statistics Canada’s most recent report on student loan repayment, over 40 percent of college and university students have had to take out some sort of loan for school.
It’s not exactly typical for friends to discuss just how deep they are in student debt, but it’s a major reality check for those just entering the adult world. Stats Can reports that, three years after graduation, the average remaining debt of a college grad who hasn’t paid off their loans yet is about $12,000, while it’s up around $19,000 for those with bachelor degrees.
The paths of repayment do vary from grad to grad though, and we wanted to know how much money young people are really putting into their student loans. So we met up with a bunch of this year’s newest graduates in their workplaces, their homes or in coffee shops to talk about where they stand on debt.
Jamie, 23
VICE: How long have you been out of school now? Jamie: Eight months.
Where are you currently working? I'm in retail full time. When I went to school for psychology [laughs].
How much did you take out in student loans? I think I have to pay back $36,000. I think they paid me more, but I paid some while I was in school.
Since you've been out of school, have you started paying back your loans? Yes, I got a letter [from the government] last month about my payments. Originally they wanted me to pay back $400 a month but I couldn't afford that so you can fill out a form for them to reassess. You put in your current salary and then they can readjust it. So right now I'm paying around $80 a month, versus $400, which is great.
Are you looking for a better paying job in your field, then? I'll be looking for a different job, but not so much in my field. I also plan on going to college because I feel like it will be easier to get a job if I have more than just a bachelor.
Will you have to take out student loans to do that? Yes. It's a never ending cycle. Just to get a job. “Nine to five just to stay alive,” am I right?
Stephanie, 27
VICE: What have you graduated from? Stephanie: This June, I graduated with a degree in sociology. Before that I got a diploma in early childhood education. Now I'm doing my masters in teaching.
So are you paying back your loans now? No. Because I started this new program, I’m able to wait until I’m finally done to pay everything off. Obviously, the smarter thing to do would be to pay it off as you go. But I haven't been able to pay off a cent yet.
How much do you owe? It's so awful to even say out loud...$28,000. Masters included will be another $12,000.
How does it make you feel knowing that, after you graduate, you’ll have all this debt? It's overwhelming. And it sucks because there are things that I would have liked to pay for by the time I graduated, by the time I’m 30. Years ago, I set this goal that I'd own a place and be married and be having children by 30. I'm not even close to thinking about doing that because I need to figure out this student loan shit out first.
What are some things that you recently spent money on that was not your student loans? Rent, my phone bill, hydro, transportation, food and regular daily things. But also unnecessary things. I take a shit ton of Ubers. Or wanting to treat myself so buying an outfit for a night out. And them coming home after that night out and spending $40 on Uber Eats. It's just avoiding all the things that you know you need to pay back, and doing the things that make you happy. You think, OK, you can just deal with the other stuff down the line.
Danielle, 22
VICE: What are you currently doing now that you’ve graduated? Danielle: I’m working retail. I worked in my field in the summer but my contract for that job ended. And it's really hard finding a new job. I don't know if it's just me, maybe I'm not applying to small enough jobs.
How much do you owe in student loans? I paid it all off this summer. In total, I think it was $18,000.
That's amazing! What did you do to pay that all off? Well, during school, I did work retail. I also had a lot of grants from the government. My program didn't require a lot of textbooks. Even the textbooks I did need, I was able to find them online so I downloaded them for free, technically illegally. And I live with my parents, so I don't have to pay rent or food or anything like that.
Looking back, do you think paying all that money was worth it for your degree? I studied journalism, and honestly, I don't know. Just because I don't think you really need a journalism degree to be a journalist, as harsh as that sounds. I didn't know what I wanted to do after high school, and I just thought, ‘oh journalism,’ because I like writing and I thought that was more practical than English. But nowadays, especially with the internet, anyone can freelance, anyone can get into the field. I don't know if it was worth it.
Michael, 23
VICE: When did you graduate? Michael: October, but I technically finished my degree in May.
What’s your student loan situation? I'm pretty sure I owe $35,000 for the whole loan. The way I have it situated right now is I pay $400 a month over the course of nine years. The interest added on after that amount of time will add up to $45,000 [in total].
$400 a month seems like a lot for many people right out of school — how do you afford that? Well, I've been lucky right now to get three different jobs in my field. And I have a whole monthly expense report. I pay $200 to $300 on food a month, $650 for rent, $200 for travel, so at the end of the day, I end up just breaking over even when I add in my student loans at about $450.
Why do you feel the need to stay so organized? Just from growing up. I grew up with a single mom with three siblings so money was always tight. There were so many times where we didn't know if water would get shut off, and bills were always overdue and stuff. So I realized quickly that I feel best when money is secure. That's my biggest worry—is to not have money to afford things.
Brianne, 23
VICE: How bad is your debt right now? Brianne: In all honesty, it’s not as bad as I anticipated, however I applied for Ontario’s Repayment Assistance Plan last month, which delays it for like six months.
Why did you feel you needed that six-month leeway? At the time that I applied, and still currently, I’m not making enough money to be able to make those payments where it’s close to $300 a month that the government is looking for.
Where does your income currently go on a monthly basis? It just goes to rent and paying bills and food and stuff. I’m not really one to spend much on extra stuff.
How has it been looking for a job in your field? It’s been … very difficult.
When do you hope to be debt free? That’s a great question. Obviously it would be soon as possible, but I hope within the next ten years, ideally. I’m not really sure what the precedent is because I haven’t really discussed with too many people about how long it takes them to pay it off. I’ve heard of extreme cases where people go to school for five plus years and then they keep racking up the debt and are paying it into their 40s, so…yeah.
Josephine, 22
VICE: What’s your student loan situation? Josephine: Good. I've paid off all my loans. I never had much to begin with so it was easy for me to pay it off in one go during the summer. I set aside a couple hundred per paycheque and because I owed $1,500 it didn't take me long to get there.
So how did you afford school mostly without student loans? I always got bursaries and applied for scholarships. My university had a bunch of scholarships that I feel like no one knew about or wanted to put in the effort to apply for. So one year, I almost paid off the entire year on scholarships. And then my parents had an RESP savings fund for me ever since I was little so that helped.
How is post-grad life, without debt? I don't think I can complain about anything. I moved back home and I commute to work at a job in my field. Of course I'd love to just travel for months on end, but right now I'm able to save money. I'm able to save money for the first time in my life.
Michael, 22
VICE: What did you graduate with? Michael: I have a bachelor in media production, which sounds kind of ridiculous on paper. Like, “I'm a bachelor of media.”
So what are you doing now? I'm a production assistant at an animation production company.
How much of your earnings are you putting into student debt? I originally thought my minimum was around $270, but I recently found out I can pay even less. So, it's a little bit under $200. As little as possible so I can have flexibility with my spending every month.
How do you feel about being in debt for the next coming years? Um, well it sucks. It's a trade off, right? I chose to go to university. I chose to live in Toronto. So that made the amount I took in student loans a lot higher than it would have if I went to school in my hometown. I could move back home and there's studios there that I could work at there, but I don't want to do that.
Do you think you'll be going back to school in the future? If something interests me so much where I want to go back to school, yeah. But I really didn’t enjoy school. School to me was like a really good sales pitch that I bought into because I was 17 and I was excited and motivated. But then once I was there, it was up to you to hopefully meet some people who could teach you things. I didn’t learn anything particularly useful in the hands-on courses and in the theory classes, I was a little bored and got perfectly good grades without trying very hard. It just felt like a four-year drawn out thing that I was spending a lot of money on and I actually entirely regret spending all that money.
Cock worship, is just like any kind of worship—it brings people together, says New Zealand photographer Gui Taccetti. Piss play, latex, and glory holes build unity in the gay community just as religious rituals do in the Catholic Church. That's not what Taccetti was taught growing up Catholic in Brazil where the church condemned same-sex relationships as “sinful” and declared sex a utilitarian “tool for procreation between a man and a woman”.
In Seraphim, a series he made for his post-graduate studies at Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts, Taccetti challenges all that by embracing sexuality and desire as a kind of spirituality. “Fetish, like piss play or bondage, which are very present in gay culture, is just a tool to connect people together,” says Taccetti. “I think that’s a function of religion as well.” His photos of naked men—mostly his mates—shot in a combination of Baroque and Renaissance style are meticulously constructed to show the rituals of being gay in reverential glory. “I’m exploring the fact that perhaps there is indeed a form of gay spirituality, which is no less significant or legitimate than traditional religion,” says Taccetti.
Seraphim came out of a series Taccetti made called Red Light, in which he photographed two transgender he met on Auckland’s K Rd. Gui enrolled at university to further research ideas around gender transgression and the project took a detour into sexuality and religion.
Taccetti's not expecting everyone to respond positively to Seraphim, but he’s not afraid of any outrage when it goes on show at the Elam post-grad show. “At the end of the day, this is just my way of expressing a plea for love and inclusion. Hopefully, it will trigger a constructive conversation towards equality and contribute to building hope for queer people.”
Gui constructs entire sets in his West Auckland studio to shoot his images.
From 'Red Light', the project that sparked Gui's work on gender and sexuality.
The exhibition, "Seraphim" opens on November 30 at Auckland's George Fraser Gallery as part of the Elam School of Fine Arts grad show.
Food trends tend to come and go pretty quickly: the humble prawn cocktail, SPAM, foam on everything, rainbow-dyed bagels. But since it was invented some 40 years ago, the world's obsession with salted caramel has showed no sign of waning. And now researchers think they know why.
Essentially, the complex mix of flavours present in salted caramel triggers a very different response in the brain than most foods. Usually, the more you eat, the fuller you feel. But with salted caramel, it's the opposite—each bite leaves you wanting more.
“Food engineers and scientists know that when you put salty and sweet and fatty flavours into food you are going to get a winner,” said associate professor Cammy Crolic of Oxford University, who coined the term hedonistic escalation.
“This can be negative because we are designed by evolution to satiate and then stop eating—but they are subverting that and making you eat more."
Previous research from the University of Melbourne has shown the hypothalamus, which regulates the brain's instinctive appetite for salt, also plays a central role in cocaine and opioid addiction. This means the drive for salt can be as powerful as an addict's drive to score coke or heroin.
“With most foods, because our bodies are designed to seek different nutrients, we get bored of one food and seek others," Crolic says. “With foods like salted caramel, however, the reverse happens. That first taste is okay, but with each taste or sip we find more to enjoy. Each additional bite gives us a chance to learn something new so our enthusiasm for it escalates.”
This might be delicious, but it's something that can be easily exploited by food manufacturers. Because as they say: Once you pop, you can't stop.
Traveling at any time of the year can beawful, but trying to get home during the busy holiday season is a completely different kind of hell. Not only do you have to worry about the threat of flight delays, long lines, losing your luggage, or potential TSA fuck-ups, but now, if you're an American Airlines passenger, your holiday flight may be missing a pretty key component.
According to Reuters, more than 15,000 American Airlines flights scheduled to jet across the country from December 17 to December 31 don't have assigned pilots, thanks to a computer glitch. Apparently, the carrier's computer system allowed all of its pilots to take time off at the same time, regardless of seniority. Now the airline is begging its pilots and crew members to sign back up for work.
"Basically there’s a crisis at American for manning the cockpits," APA spokesman Dennis Tajer told Reuters. "I‘m watching a Grinch that stole Christmas thing happening. And we don’t want to see that happening for our passengers."
Now American is reportedly having to offer any pilot willing to work during the end of December 150 percent of their standard hourly wage, Bloomberg reports. But according to the Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents American's aviators, the solution violates the terms of the pilots' contracts.
American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller insists things are going to work out, telling UPI the glitch in the airline computer system has been fixed, and that the carrier plans to avoid any cancellations over the holidays, though he hasn't specified how. Otherwise, American could find itself with a riot on its hands.
"We are working through this to make sure we take care of our pilots and get our customers where they need to go over the holiday,” Miller told Reuters.
Earlier on Wednesday, Page Six reported that Lauer was fired after an NBC employee complained to HR about an incident that happened during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. But dozens of current and former NBC staffers expanded on the details of Lauer's alleged behavior to Variety. The accusations range from inappropriate comments made about female coworkers' bodies and sexual history to gifting sex toys to colleagues, exposing himself to a coworker in his office, and even inviting NBC employees up to his hotel room while traveling on assignments.
Lauer allegedly made lewd comments to his coworkers in person and via text, and grilled female producers on who they'd slept with. According to Variety, Lauer would frequently "initiate inappropriate contact" with women in his office at NBC, which he could reportedly lock from the inside using a button under his desk—which is apparently a standard feature for executives at the network.
Another former employee told the Times that Lauer had called her to his office in 2001 requesting that she have sex with him. She told the paper that she did not want to report the incident to the network at the time for fear of losing her job.
The accounts paint Lauer as a man who used his power as the network's top-performing anchor to repeatedly harass women. According to sources who spoke with Variety, his misconduct was somewhat of an opensecret: Employees reportedly knew about and discussed his behavior, while executives struggled to make sure he remained on-air.
"They protected the shit out of Matt Lauer," one former NBC reporter told Variety.
Disturbingly, Lauer reported on manypowerfulmenwho have been accused of sexual harassment and misconduct following the Bill O'Reilly and Harvey Weinstein allegations. In September, he sat down with O'Reilly and grilled him about accusations against the disgraced FOX News host, asking "how intimidating" it must have been for women to file complaints "against the biggest star at the network they worked at."
Several sources told Variety and the Times they were scared speaking out about Lauer's misconduct might damage their careers. Like O'Reilly, Lauer was a major money-maker for NBC. Before he was fired Wednesday, Lauer was paid $25 million a year to help helm Today, one of the most-watched programs on the network since the mid 90s.
A cold November wind whips past the Adams County Courthouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—roughly two miles from the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The brisk breeze is giving Gene Stilp a runny nose. But the slim, bearded 67-year-old lawyer and activist has the perfect thing to take care of it: One of his homemade, two-sided flags. It's a Confederate flag on one side and a Nazi flag on the other. He has it draped over a metal trash can on the sidewalk while 40 people are gathered around him.
Stilp brings the Confederate side of the flag to his nose and wipes quickly. “We don’t want you here,” sneers a man clad in Confederate flag pullover and Confederate flag cowboy boots. The man is standing a few feet away, just on the other side of a hastily erected wooden barrier and some yellow police tape. He's holding two flags of his own—a Confederate flag emblazoned with the words “Heritage Not Hate” and a large blue Trump “Make America Great Again" flag.
Undaunted, Stilp plows through ten minutes of prepared remarks. He references Heather Heyer, the NFL “taking a knee protests,” and the racist history of the Confederate flag while fighting to make himself heard over the passing trucks and heckles that rain down on him as a gaggle of sheriff’s deputies and courthouse security look on.
“I found out that a lot of people fly [the Confederate flag] because they have some tendencies toward racism," Stilp says. "They don’t like other races.”
“You’re the one that’s racist!” Confederate Man shouts.
The two sides of Stilp's flag “stand for the same thing—hate, racism, bigotry, white supremacy, slavery, and death,” he explains as a sour-faced woman unfurls her own Confederate flag and waves it in front of him. “They’re two sides of the same misguided value system,” he continues.
“Are you Antifa?!” someone yells.
“What the hell’s your problem?” someone else yells.
With a flourish, Stilp sets his two-sided flag on fire and drops it in the trash can. “I consign this flag to the waste bin of history!” Stilp says as he is dramatically enveloped in white smoke.
“I think it’s ridiculous that he’s saying a piece of cloth represents hate and bigotry,” says the Confederate Man, whose real name is Pete Seville. The 58-year-old grocery warehouse worker is from nearby Greencastle. “It’s not the piece of cloth,” Seville insists. "It’s what’s in people’s hearts."
Later, at a nearby diner, Stilp smiles contentedly and reflects. "Today went well," he says before chomping into a veggie burger. This is hardly his first rodeo. He has been dubbed “the P.T. Barnum of Pennsylvania politics” and is regularly referred to by friends and foes alike as a “master of political theater.” Stilp—who lives in the Harrisburg area—has made a name for himself through a variety of creative, prop-laden, media-courting protest stunts. He's particularly well-known in the largely rural swath between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that folks call “Pennsyltucky."
He once converted a 1963 Airstream trailer into a giant silver toaster, replete with two ten-foot pieces of burned toast and smoke that poured from the top with the flick of a switch. He drove the toaster around the state to protest electric company rate hikes. He once toted a 25-foot-tall inflatable pink pig he built to the steps of the state capital to rail against a midnight pay raise state legislators gave themselves at taxpayers’ expense. He even built a two-story wheelchair out of PVC pipe, paint trays, and spool wheels to warn against cuts to Medicare for state residents. Then he affixed a 25-foot metal screw to the top of a pickup truck and drove it around to again protest utility rate hikes. Last year, he repurposed the truck with fresh paint and “Screw Trump” signs that he parked outside Trump campaign rallies in Pennsylvania. He often posed for photos atop the screw like Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Dr. Strangelove.
Those were puckish ways of bringing attention to serious concerns.
But with his Confederate/Nazi flag-burning demonstrations, Stilp says, “You don’t bring humor to this at all. When you have Heather Heyer dying at the hands of a neo-Nazi, people who are flying these flags to represent hate and white supremacy, everything is 1,000 percent serious.”
“Yeah, this one’s waaay too heavy,” agrees Chip Facka, who joins Stilp at the diner table. He's been Stilp’s righthand man for the past several years. The 48-year-old is in charge of livestreaming Stilp’s protests on Facebook and disseminating video of the events later on various other social media platforms as part of what the pair call an “educational effort.”
“All across Pennsylvania you see the Confederate flag on people’s porches, so we confront them with the true meaning,” Stilp says. “It puts them on the defensive. You know, show me why your Confederate flag isn’t equal to the Nazi flag? Explain to me why. They say, ‘We can’t help it if it’s been adopted by the KKK and white supremacist groups.’ But it’s not my job to walk it back to where you want it to be. That’s the present reality, and it always was a symbol of hate.”
Stilp says he was motivated to make and burn his two-sided flags after seeing white supremacists carrying both flags during the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally. He was also incensed by Scott Perry—a US congressman from mid-state Pennsylvania—echoing Trump in blaming “both sides” for the associated violence and Heyer’s death.
Stilp’s no stranger to flags. He designed the lauded Flight 93 memorial flag to honor those who perished near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on 9/11. (Stilp is also a volunteer firefighter and EMT who rushed to Ground Zero immediately after the terrorist attacks to help conduct search and recovery efforts.)
His Confederate/Nazi flags each cost about $20, two hours of his time, and no small amount of angst to create. “I feel disgusted, disgusted, making these flags, cutting out these stars, gluing a swastika,” Stilp grimaces. “But I gotta do it.”
After a few protest burns in Pennsylvania in August and September, Stilp and Facka decided to take things to another level by taking their flags and fire to the belly of the beast: NASCAR racetracks in the South.
Advance word of their arrival in the local papers and websites drew scores of comments: Desires for Stilp to get a bullet in the head were among the more polite and reserved sentiments expressed.
“We got some real direct threats,” says Facka, who’s in charge of watching Stilp’s back during protests in addition to his usual social media duties.
Were they scared? “Oh God, yes!” Facka says, laughing. “But there were so many law enforcement officers, like 40 or 50, easy. They escorted us in and out. There were a couple people I had my eye on, but I feel like the law enforcement presence discouraged them from doing anything.”
“I’ve been telling him that we’re in a different political climate now than he’s used to,” Facka says as Stilp sighs and bites into his burger. “We’re much more susceptible to that lone-wolf, that one crazy guy. So I do have a lot of fear, to be honest.”
“Maybe,” says Stilp. “So what? I’m 67—who cares?! I just don’t want the police who are protecting us to get hurt, that’s all.”
Stilp plans to burn his flags outside courthouses in nearly all of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties in the coming months, and maybe head down South again when NASCAR season starts back up next year.
“People do email us and say, ‘Thanks for doing that, I don’t have the guts to do that.’ and things like that, or, ‘Please watch yourself. Don’t get shot,’” Stilp says. “We’re just trying to educate. Hopefully we can change some behavior. Maybe get some of these people to take down their flags, whether it’s enlightenment or shame or peer pressure from their neighbors… whatever it takes.”
Academics and other dedicated Reddit users seemed pleased with the project and have given Backforward24 valuable insight and feedback. As with any recommendation, map or list, we must understand that it is necessary to establish a criterion first, and that it is not easy to compile a list that does justice to the entire literary tradition of a country through a single work.
Below, however, we have listed three titles per region for you to see how big of an undertaking this is. You can see the complete list here and obviously add to it as you see fit. Most importantly, take stock and head to your local library or bookstore, 'cause we think the map and the lists will inspire you. If you want to see the enlarged map, click here.
Southeast Asia: This Earth of Mankind, by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Indonesia), Noli Me Tángere, by José Rizal (Philippines), The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia), The Sorrows of War, by Bảo Ninh (Vietnam), First They Killed My Family, by Loung Ung (Cambodia), The Four Reigns, by Kukrit Pramoj (Thailand), In the Other Side of the Eye, by Bryan Thao Worra (Laos), Smile as they Bow, by Nu Nu Yi (Myanmar), Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, by Jillian Lauren (Brunei), The Redundancy of Courage, by Timothy Mo (East Timor)
North and Central America:Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo (Mexico), To Kill a Mocking Bird, by Harper Lee (USA), Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery (Canada).
South America:Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina), The House of Spirits, by Isabel Allende (Chile), Lituma in the Andes, by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru).
Western Europe:Don Quixote of La Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spain), The Count of Montecristo, by Alexandre Dumas (France), The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighier (Italy).
Eastern Europe:War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy (Russia), Pan Tadeusz, by Adam Mickiewicz (Poland), Eclipse of the Crescent Moon, by Géza Gárdonyi (Hungary).
Africa:The Stranger, by Albert Camus (Algeria), The Antipeople, by Sony Labou Tansi (Congo), Misfortune, by JM Coetzee (South Africa).
Asia:My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), Dream in Red Pavilion, by Cao Xueqin (China), Kokoro, by Natsume Sōseki (Japan).
Oceania:Cloudstreet, by Tim Winton (Australia), The Bone People, by Keri Hulme (New Zealand), Death of a Muruk, by Bernard Narokobi (Papua New Guinea).
