Young Diego is an MC who hails from Baltimore, a city known for red tops and astronomical murder rates. Directed by A$AP Ant, the video follows Ant, Diego, and the rest of the Marino Gang as they show you what it's like living on Lake Trout. Flexing with jail poses, a coke-white Mercedes, praying hands, and trigger fingers—these kids make it clear they're not just keyboard gangsters with ghostwriters.

Enjoy the video, but make sure your girlfriend doesn't hear you sing the song's ratchet-ass hook: "She come through, I get the neck and kick her out." But if she does, at least you'll have some dope tunes to listen to while you are spending the night sleeping alone on the couch. 

More new hip-hop:

A$AP Ant and Young Shaka Want Internet Thugs to Know It's "On Sight"

The RZA and Adrian Younge Are Supreme Mutant Beings

Here Is Action Bronson's New Video, Featuring Riff Raff and Some Pit Bulls

Mr. Ghostface himself.

The rap game is no country for old men. Still, 20 years after Dennis Coles first donned a hockey mask and hit it big as the Ghostface Killah of rap’s most influential group, he continues to strengthen his legacy as one of the most revered solo stylists in rap history. Equally beloved by proselytizing hip-hop purists, swag generation streetwear bros, mouthbreathing bloggers, and stodgy old music critics, Ghostface has long parlayed his cult hero status into mainstream notoriety. He’s appeared as himself in two episodes of 30 Rock, affected a vague accent for a much-discussed cameo in Iron Man (depressingly left on the cutting room floor), and been immortalized as an action figure draped in a real 14 karat-gold chain.

His latest album, 12 Reasons to Die (co-created by composer and producer, Adrian Younge), is an audio movie that trades on his penchant for dizzyingly evocative bars that could easily double as true-crime fiction. After wrapping up a 49-date tour in support of the album, and nearly a month and 50 emails after our initial contact, the Wallabee Kingpin called us to drop knowledge on what he’d do if he was forced to retire from rap, the power of starting now, the (sometimes exhausting) fervor of European fans, lessons he wished he learned in the 90s, and why molly is wack.

VICE: Your latest album, 12 Reasons to Die, is an audio movie influenced by Blaxploitation films, mob movies, and Italian horror films. What horror movies do you remember liking as a kid?
Ghostface Killah: I wasn’t into horror movies.

OK, cool. I caught your recent performance Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and it was great. It’s obvious you take pride in performing live. How do you feel like your performances and shows changed over the years?
Well, you know, you feel more comfortable. You’re comfortable with the songs that you’re doing. A lot of times it just depends on the vibe of what’s going on, you know what I mean. I just started working with the band again for 12 Reasons, and it’s different from having a DJ. To me it’s just a vibe. You gotta be comfortable. I’m comfortable with my music. ‘Cause some days going into the crowd might not be right, the mics might not be right, and that can just throw everything off, so you’ll just be like, ‘Let me get this shit over with.’

But if you’re with it and you’re feeling it and the crowd is with you and the energy you’re giving them, they’re giving it back to you, it makes a huge difference. I just can’t say it’s an everyday thing on a regular basis you’re going to fuck around and get a good performance. I would appreciate it if I was a fan. But for me, personally, it shifts. It just depends.

I hear that. You’ve been around the world for the last twenty years, from Ireland to Japan and back. Where was the place you experienced the biggest culture shock?
What you mean by culture shock?

A place where you felt weird or out of place, or you found it hard to acclimate yourself to a new place.
Everything is quite the same to me, you know what I mean. They might have a different culture, how they eatin’ and certain shit, and how they live, but as far as going on stage—it is what it is. Music and a microphone. I’ve been to all the way to Japan and Hawaii and all parts of Europe. Russia, Czechoslovakia, and all that other shit. Everything is the same. When you get overseas, it gets better for you. Because they appreciate it more than what the United States and other places I’ve been to. So I can’t even shit on them.

The only thing about going overseas is that they just want more. They want you to fuck around and be up there for three fuckin’ hours and shit.

[Laughs]
They don’t want you to stop.


Ghostface is now available on cassette, comic, and compact disc formats.

Do you remember the moment you had where you sat back and felt like, “Damn. I guess we made it.”
[Long silence] I don’t really have a moment like that. I remember when we got on, when we first got our record played. I remember that. That was a very, very good feeling, hearing yourself on the radio. We was living in a house together and shit. We were happy. That’s about it.

Everything else has been a day-by-day thing for us. I don’t think we take it too, too, too seriously. Especially back then when we couldn’t recognize the blessing that was going on. Even right now, we know that it’s a blessing but I don’t even think it really, really sunk in.

You seem very spiritual and peaceful. How do you stay so zen?
I’m just a regular person, like any other ordinary person is. Things is real around here, you know what I mean? God is real. You have a lot of prophets, angels, everything is real, you know. You know me, I’m a deep person, so my mind goes really, really deep. It’s like when I look into the depths of things, dealing with my spirituality and the most high, it’s serious. It’s nothing to play with, nahmean. I try my best to be as humble as I can be. It’s very hard to try to stay humble in this world that we’re living in right now. But I don’t have a choicebecause I could wild out and get twenty-five years to life, easy.

Yeah.
I’m talking about the way I think and everything like that. It’s a process. But you gotta love the most high more than anything. Because the more love you have for that energy, it’ll stop you from a lot of the bullshit you might be getting into because you don’t fear no one but the most high, nahmean? And that’s where I am in my life right now.

But I ain’t no sucker, though. I know that when it’s all said and done, we all gotta answer to the most high. And I just want my slate to be as good as it can be. Sometimes your impulse is to wild out and do the dumb shit that enters your mind based on somebody else’s ways and actions. That can get you in a lot of trouble. Or you can just chill out and let it blow past. You know, I’m just at that stage right now.

I hear you. At this point in your career, you’ve had an action figure, you’ve had a book, the World According to Pretty Toney, you were a video game character in Def Jam: Vendetta. What’s the one Ghostface product that doesn’t exist that you’d like to make?
You know, I have a few movie scripts that I wrote. I would love to see that come into play when the most high grants us with the chance. I would love that.

If you had to stop rapping, what job do you think you would you be best suited for?
That’s when I would have to be on my deen and just follow the ways. I gotta live like a prophet and just work for God. You know, just go around feeding people, and making sure that the sick is okay and things of that nature.

Is there anything that you know now about the industry that you wish you knew when you were younger in the game?
There’s a lot of things. I wish I learned to know the business better. Write as much music as you can now. To not be around certain people, you know. Hang out less with your homeboys and spend more time with business-minded motherfuckers.

But you know, you can’t dwell on that. Because now is the time to do what you gotta do. We’re not done yet. So whatever it is I wanted to do then, we can do it now. It might take you some time, but you know what, a lot of us ain’t really doing nothing with our time. Just sitting back, getting high, talking bullshit and cracking jokes all day, when you could just be focused. ‘Cause now…time is just flying, yo. One year seems like six months now. It don’t seem like a whole 12 months. You just gotta not let that shit pass you by. And whatever you got going for you or you’re trying to do, you lay it out right now and even if [it doesn’t work out], you just say, “Alright, fuck it, I did it. I’m just going to let everything manifest itself.”

At least you did it, nahmean. And it’s like, okay, whether it comes into play or not, you ain’t skip it. That’s what we do a lot of times. We say some fly shit, we say we want to do shit, but we’re just fucked up. We’re wishing. Damn, I wish I would have did that. This motherfucker came out with it and now he’s rocking with it. It’s like, yo, I had the idea, all we had to do was get in the door somewhere.

You know, we fuck up a lot of shit like that, though. But it is what it is. It’s life. Ain’t nobody perfect.

Word. I’ve heard you talk about how you feel like younger kids in rap and outside of rap don’t have the same kind of respect that you had coming up. What’s the kind of message that you’d like to instill to young rappers or young kids who may be out there and directionless?
I mean, yo, try to listen to the people that are—I’m not just going to say important—but listen more, nahmean. When somebody telling you something, it don’t mean somebody is trying to hurt you and shit like that. It’s like a lot of times when somebody is telling you something, they’re telling you that because of what they experienced and what they went through. What is it—babies having babies and shit. These little kids are coming up ‘cause their mothers were into drugs and the streets and in all the clubs. They’re young. A little motherfucker that’s 18 right now… they moms is probably 38, 40. Or whatever the case may be. They’re young. They were 18 to 20 when they had them, nahmean? That’s what it is. Babies having babies, so they mentality is on some other shit. They don’t listen. They’re more disrespectful now because their parents ain’t really chastising ‘em no more. And even those that do try to chastise, since the kids are so much up to date now, they’ll fuck around and call the police on you.

Second of all, they don’t got God in they life. If they knew what the most high was really about, you ain’t just living here just to be here. There’s a reason why we’re here. There’s a reason for everything. But the kids don’t know that. They just think they were born free and this is what it is. Not knowing that yo, all this is going to catch up with you in your later years.

The kids gotta learn more. They gotta listen more. Be to God more. Listen to your parents, man. Fuck that molly shit. Even the lean and all that other shit. I’m not telling you to stop it and shit, but don’t let that become your whole life. Don’t let that become you, nahmean? Word.

Thanks a lot, Ghostface. I really appreciate it.
Alright, yo. Hold it down.

 

Follow Jordan on Twitter: @jordanisjoso

More from Jordan Sowunmi:

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Photo via Facebook

The above photo of a Taco Bell worker licking a stack of taco shells was posted to the official Taco Bell Facebook page a few days ago.

The image went viral, and the kid in the photo is now in the process of being fired. 

A year or so before that happened, I found three images on a plus-size dating website called Biggercity.com that seem to show two Subway employees having sex while at work. I saved them and filed them away in my "weird, but probably not weird enough to warrant writing about" folder. 

But seeing as fast-food-workers-doing-grim-stuff-on-the-job stories seem to be all the rage these days, here you go:

The first image appears to show a guy wearing a red Subway uniform having bareback anal sex with a guy in a green Subway uniform, in a time and location that the caption identifies as "the work bathroom during hours."

I've protected the young men's modesty with a six-inch Turkey Breast & Black Forest Ham© sandwich.

Image #2 appears to show Green Uniform performing oral sex on Red Uniform. Which, food-service-hygeine issues aside, probably didn't taste all that nice considering where it was in the last photo. 

The final image appears to show Red Uniform ejaculating in the sink. The image is captioned, "me cumming in the bathroom sink at work."

I'm not sure if this series of photos is more or less concerning than the Taco Bell ones. I guess it all comes down to which kind of bodily fluids you prefer unknowingly ingesting. 

@JLCT

Read more gross stuff:

Medieval Slimes: Two Weeks of Living Disgustingly

I’m Empty Inside: Pooping Toxic Stones Makes You Feel Great

Carnivores vs. Herbivores: Whose Farts Smell Worse?

Hi I'm Bertie, this column is basically a place for me to call bullshit on girl related things I think are stupid.

I'm sorry that you've almost definitely already seen that and now, for the second time in a week, you're probably puking all over your desk at work or too turned on to stand up and run for the fire drill. But there’s a reason why it’s important you re-watch the EXPLICIT version of the Robin Thicke song which just went number 1 in pretty much every country in the world, and that reason concerns the future wellbeing of the entire planet. Or, depending on how you look at it, the future wellbeing of half the global population, because this video is really, really, really sexist. Really.

I'm aware I'm not blowing any minds here. That the video would be interpreted as an offence against women should be obvious to anyone who’s ever met a woman, because feminism is about equality, and watching naked girls dance awkwardly around fully-dressed predatory men while they sing “do it like it hurt” is an incredibly obvious visual imbalance. Think of it as being like equality maths: if X has <1 items of clothing, and Y has >5 items of clothing, then Y is a disgusting creep and should be incarcerated in the PGB jail for morally corrupt scum.

What's worse is that Thicke and his gang of likely lads probably think they're doing something really great for women's rights because their song is all about emancipating a "good girl" from the patriarchal constraints of a domineering partner: "Okay, now he was close, tried to domesticate you / Just let me liberate you / That man is not your maker." So cute, right? So fucking Jimmy Dean. So thanks, Robin! Evidently your song topping the charts all over the planet will free the world's women from the kind of violent or abusive relationships which, hold on, sorry, I got distracted by the, why are they... What are you doing with that... Why isn't she wearing... oh. *dial tone*

I’m not losing my shit and getting all righteous for no reason, I’m serious, this is basically the reckoning and if we don't do something we're going to get sucked down into the void, and then we'll be stuck in a huge, fiery canyon with Hunter Moore and every other douchebag misogynist. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days trapped with men who think it's OK to fart and burp in public and wear the same "comedy T-shirt" for three days straight? Hell is being a woman surrounded by "female body inspectors". (Actually, hell is probably being anyone surrounded by FBIs, but whatever.)

Below is a list of all the reasons why we should all be deeply ashamed that Thicke’s video made it to number 1, or even out of the edit suite. In an ideal world, Thicke and the video’s director, Diane Martel, would read my rundown, recognise all the different ways they just metaphorically burned every single copy of Female Chauvinist Pigs, and apologise. Unfortunately, that’s about as unlikely as the man in question taking the time to explore the difference between female empowerment and exploitation. Who wants to bet he has that model’s nude thong in his pocket right now? Ultimate sadface.

THE VIDEO MAKES ROBIN THICKE LOOK LIKE A PREDATOR

I'm not saying that he is actually a sexual predator in the sense that he might spend his days following women through the underwear section of M&S with his hands in his pockets. But there is something so infuriatingly smug and knowing about his demonic half-smirk and hangover stubble. Somehow, it used to be fully acceptable to stagger around nightclubs raising your eyebrows in a Justin-Timberlake-in-"Senorita" kind of way, but silently tailing naked models, while wearing black aviators, a full suit and that sort of astonished/aroused face reserved solely for perverts makes you look like a sexually aggressive creep.

WHY ARE THEY BRUSHING THEIR HAIR?

What is this about, TI? Is this you misguidedly clawing at what you think might be intimacy? A reference to incestuous father-daughter relationships? The infantilisation of a clearly sexualised model? Ooh, how about a reference to pet maintenance, because "you're an animal", remember? So, IDK, maybe after this TI's gonna clean your pen out, too, Emily Ratajkowski. But only if you're a good girl ;)

I'm sorry, it just makes me think of TI having sex with an animal.

WHAT'S WITH THE NAKED ANKLES?

This just happens to be the only example of male nudity in the whole video, and manages to simultaneously make everything else in shot look 100 times more sinister. There's no acceptable way to wear patent dress shoes with no socks; it creates a pervading sense of unease in the viewer, think of the potential for blisters, odour and squeaking. On top of the sockless masochist's list of already undesirable traits, is the air of the naughty schoolboy who didn't get dressed properly in the morning. Presumably because he was too busy thinking about the naked models he was going to pay loads of money to stand next to him later in the day and whether or not it'd make him look a bit like a pervert. (It does.)

THE TOTAL LACK OF AESTHETIC CONSIDERATION

There’s one thing that might be more annoying than the smug moron prancing around in this video, leching on women who are pointed and wielded at the viewer like animatronic Japanese sex dolls. And that is the design. It is by far the most awkward piece of video footage I’ve seen since poor Victoria Beckham had to go through this. A background the colour of Archers vomit, desperate hashtags (Follow Me? I bet you will) and tons of balloons that look like they were stolen from a Christian prom.

Now we’ve somehow made it to the conclusion with no mention at all of the gigantic injection Robin administers (possibly a MMR vaccine?), the stuffed animals, the giant playroom toys, the huge clumpy school shoes and the endless "O" faces – which basically turn the set into a creche. (Albeit one with the legend: "ROBIN THICKE HAS A BIG DICK" spelled out in massive capital letters with balloons. Which, I don't know, is not the kind of creche I'd be willing to leave a child at.) It’s a masterpiece of idiocy and the level of stupidity and arrogance required in order for a video this banal, offensive and unimaginative is almost impressive. Except, it's not impressive at all, is it? It's ugly sexist unispired bullshit dressed up as naughtiness, and it's creepy, creepy, creepy. Put some fucking socks on.

Follow Bertie on Twitter: @bertiebrandes

Previously – The Weird Devotion of Beyonce's Danish Bum Slapper

Catch up on a whole year of Pretty Girl Bullshit

An image from the Gay Aryan Skinheads (G.A.S.H) VK page.

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed someone from the Malaysian neo-Nazi scene. The whole concept of Malay neo-Nazis was confusing, because a pretty dominant part of the Nazi shtick was hating anyone who wasn't white, and people from Malaysia normally aren't white. However, it turned out that the notoriously strict Nazi ideology wasn't too much of an issue in this case, and that the Malay Nazis could carry on sieg-heiling and wearing swastikas despite the fact they aren't Aryan because they really hate immigrants, or something.  

Another group of neo-Nazis not bothering to adhere to Hitler's guidelines on who to hate are those involved in the Russian gay neo-Nazi skinhead movement. As you might recall from being within spitting distance of any history textbook ever, the Führer and his Third Reich buddies weren't too keen on either Russians or homosexuals – an estimated 100,000 of the latter were arrested between 1933 and 1945, with 5,000 to 15,000 eventually being sent to perish in concentration camps.

Much like the Malays, minor historical details like rampant persecution and horrific genocide have apparently been forgotten by the Russians. The first such group I came across were the Gay Union of Patriots of Russia, whose members spout bizarre theories about how only gay men can be true Russian patriots. I also learned that there was a group called Gay Aryan National-Socialists and another called G.A.S.H – "Gay Aryan Skinheads". That last one had the best ring to it, so I tracked down a member, Balu, on VK.com – a Facebook equivalent that's big in Russia – and had a chat about the gay Russian Nazi scene.

Balu.

VICE: Hi Balu. Can you say a bit about the ideology behind G.A.S.H?
Balu: Our ideology consists of clearing the planet of "dirty" nationalities. We fight for purity of blood, for white skin colour and for strong and beautiful people. We don’t accept white guys or white girls who hook up with black men. It is disgusting to observe such interracial unions. Why share your life with such rejects when there are healthy white guys?

Because there are also healthy people from lots of different races. So, most people don’t equate Nazism with homosexuality. Why do you think this is?
I think it's based on a stereotype and, initially, heterosexuals prevailed in the nationalist movement. Also, public opinion calls nationalists rough barbarians, murderers and so on, so observers from outside probably think that the nationalist has to be a strong, fearless street fighter, and gays represent gentleness, kindness and harmlessness. In the public imagination, it doesn’t make sense that men who prefer the beautiful and glamorous side of life can fight for their rights and ideas.

How long has G.A.S.H existed for?
Our movement has existed for more than 20 years in Russia. It's relatively young, but quite well developed nevertheless. We're lagging behind other places in Europe and the States a bit, but we possess strong will power and fighting spirit for the sake of the white cause.

The logo of the Gay Aryan National-Socialists.

So there are similar movements in America and other European countries then?
Yes, of course there are. They suggested to us an idea that we had pined for for so long. They helped us to be defined and direct our activity to the necessary course.

Is G.A.S.H the only gay racist skinhead group in Russia that you have come across?
At present, it is the most widespread movement among gay Nazis. The fact is that the majority of gay skinheads don’t attach themselves to G.A.S.H but have the same purposes and method of asserting influence. They simply don’t focus people’s attention on them. We don’t like excessive attention to our subculture at all either. However we want it so that everyone knows who we are and what we fight for.

Are you linked to any other gay groups?
We cooperate with the normal gay community a little bit, yeah. Sometimes we despise them, though, because each of our actions yields a result, and the actions of normal gay communities in Russia only exacerbate the situation with regards to society, homophobes and gays.

So you consider the existence of G.A.S.H to be a positive thing for Russia? And for gay rights in Russia?
We don’t consider ourselves as heroes or particularly positive characters. We have severe methods, but they really work. We fight for everyone, not just for ourselves. We're trying to clear this world of unnecessary people who aren’t worthy of this earth.

Wow, OK. What's your opinion of homophobic Nazi skinheads?
Not all heterosexual nationalists are homophobes; they are often latent homosexuals, actually. We fight nationalist homophobes in the same way that we fight against any other homophobes. They're nothing special to us.

You get into fights with homophobic Nazi groups?
Yes, we fight against homophobes irrespective of the colour of their skin or their nationality. We don’t understand why our brothers oppose us. After all, we have nothing against heterosexuals and we have no plan to make the entire planet gay.

How many members does G.A.S.H have?
It's very hard to say the exact quantity. About one in 50 gays are nationalists or have tendencies towards this movement. In the group I'm in, there are about 1,500 to 1,700 other permanent members in Moscow or nearby areas. Then there are other communities of gay nationalists scattered all over Moscow – there's a G.A.S.H group in each area.

Does G.A.S.H have any lesbian members?
Sometimes lesbians reach out to us, but we explain to them that they don't have a place in our ranks.

What about transgender Nazi skinheads? Do they exist?
Transsexuals aren’t present among us and I don’t see that it's possible for them to be.

Why’s that then?
We believe that we're at war and that there's no place for women and men who consider themselves to be women. The fact that it's specifically a man’s fight is an integral part of our ideology.

You seem to place a strong emphasis on manliness. What's your view of less masculine gay people? Are they still accepted by your group?
This is a controversial question. I can’t give a definite answer, as all members are assessed as individuals. The person has to have certain qualities and believe in our idea. He has to understand that it might be necessary to give his life for an idea and for the community as a whole.

Okay, so what qualities are they on a sexuality level?
Our sexual life generally consists of BDSM, especially sadomasochism. Our brothers aren’t engaged in tenderness on silk sheets – we commit truly manly acts.

Yeah, you've said. Is BSDM closely linked to G.A.S.H’s ideology then?
Oh yes, they are as closely connected as smoke and fire. Almost all nationalists have a piercing, traditional leather skinhead jackboots and blue jeans, which became a sexual fetish for us long ago, as well as shaven heads. By our nature, sexual intercourse is rough. This is similar to primitive passion. Some of us have slaves, but they often aren’t nationalists. We treat sex as something sacred. This is similar to how believers treat God. Sex is a transmission of passion, emotions, pleasure and – last but not least – sperm into the body of a brother. We give part of each other. This is a very important part of our sexual life. From outside, it can seem as if we treat sex too thoughtlessly, but this isn't the case; each act of sexual intercourse between brothers bears a deeper meaning. It is a secret ceremony between the devoted.

How do you respond to people who say that homosexuality and Nazism aren’t exactly bedfellows?
Our sexual orientation isn't a barrier to being nationalists. The spirit of nationalism can be present in any of us irrespective of this. In Russia, the rights of gays are hugely restricted, and we can’t sit back quietly when a person is killed just because he's gay. Many people from the Caucasus [a region at the border of Europe and Asia] furiously oppose gays. Someone has to reject the pressure that they exert by real brute force.

Okay. Finally, how do you respond to people who say that Hitler wasn’t particularly fond of gay people?
At that time, very tough measures were in place, but they really worked and were bountiful. I don't think Hitler even personally wanted to gas gays, but the ideology demanded it.

Enjoy reading about neo-Nazis? Try these:

Meet the Malaysian Neo-Nazis Fighting for a Pure Race

I Spent the Weekend Watching Topless Feminists Piss Off Neo-Nazis

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See more of Will's work on his blog.

Dylan DeRose hails from Orlando, Florida, which sounds like it would totally suck, but Dylan has taken lemons and made lemonade. Or should we say oranges into orange juice. After getting the hell out of that town, Dylan bravely ventured back to create his project, aptly titled "Orlando." In it, he documents the lasting effects of taking an empty swamp and building it into a mecca of tourism, consumerism, and fantasy. Dylan was especially drawn to the influence of themed experiences on the city as the whole. Check out his photos of the creepier side of living in the shadow of the mouse above.

@christianstorm

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The “diss” is an art that has lost some of its potency after being wildly disseminated through social media. However, a great diss can still break through all the bitchy tweets and self-aggrandizing Facebook posts that clutter up our mindspace. In 2007, Todd Rohal was given the opportunity to diss Variety movie critic Robert Koehler, who wrote a scathing review of his debut feature, The Guatemalan Handshake, the day before it premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. Feeling that the review had a direct impact on the reception of the film from industry professionals, Rohal built a grudge that would, one year later, become a $99 Slamdance produced short film. He titled it Sins of the Nude.

Composed of outtakes from a different short film starring Danny McBride and produced for the Dutch Online Film Festival, Rohal weaves together a sordid, upsetting, and hilarious alternate version of critic Robert Koehler. The actual footage has nothing to do with Koehler. In fact, they don’t even reference films in general, save for the the campy Star Wars title crawl that kicks off the film. That and the soundtrack are actually more of an homage to George Kuchar, the king of camp, than anything else. But the film's own campiness helps soften the blow of the diss and makes the spite bubbling underneath the short palpable. The longer you watch Danny McBride fumble in these outtakes framed as a representation of critic Robert Koehler, the more you understand the cartoonish nature of being a film critic. Funnily enough, The Guatemalan Handshake went on to win the Special Jury Prize at Slamdance.

Watch Todd Rohal and Danny McBride below, lampooning an unsuspecting and probably still unaware film critic for a beautifully ugly seven minutes.

Todd Rohal is a graduate of my alma mater, Ohio University. He's made a number of offbeat music videos and short films before taking on features—he's directed three, the latest of which was Nature Calls, starring Johnny Knoxville and Patton Oswalt. He’s got a peculiar eye and is a fun guy to follow, in my opinion. Below is a short interview I did with Todd about Sins of the Nude.

VICE: How did you come to the conclusion that you wanted to make a hate film against film critic Robert Koehler?
Todd Rohal: I premiered my first feature film, The Guatemalan Handshake, at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2006. Before the film had screened to the public, Robert Koehler of Variety printed a short and snarky review of the movie before anyone had a chance to see it. I spent years making this movie—we shot it on 35mm anamorphic film, and I had saved up for years working shitty jobs to pay for it. This guy watched it on a DVD on his laptop and dismissed it before any audience got a chance to see it. Needless to say, that was frustrating. It felt like we were the smallest kid in the class at Park City and this dude found us to be an easy target to pick on. We did a lot of work inviting some industry people in town for Sundance to come out to Slamdance and nearly all of them were no-shows after Koehler's review. After being rejected from Sundance, this felt like someone punching you in the dick after getting your pants pulled down the school cafeteria.

Since you restricted yourself to only using previously shot outtakes from your film Sweaty Salesman, did you find the narrative difficult to construct?
I was one of five filmmakers invited to go to Amsterdam to make a short film for the Holland Board of Tourism. We were allowed to bring along one crew member. Danny McBride had just premiered his film The Foot Fist Way at Sundance and nothing was happening with it yet. We were both living in Virginia, just waiting for our phones to ring. I asked him to come along as my crew, and we both went overseas for the first time in our lives. We were supposed to shoot a poetic think piece about tulips and windmills, but we got tired of that and came up with a fake TV series called The Sweaty Salesman and shot that instead. The Sins of the Nude was just reconstituted foul outtakes that we couldn't send to the Holland Board of Tourism. Slamdance asked me to make a short film in 2007, so I pulled that old footage out and figured there'd be other filmmakers in Park City that year needing a therapeutic moment.

Has Robert Koehler ever seen the film?
He's got other fish to fry.

How do you feel about this short now? Has your ability to deal with poor reviews gotten better or worse?
I just love watching Danny go off. There was never any intent to make a movie about that critic. That was just added in later for Slamdance. Even so, it was a totally childish thing to do, but it worked for me as a connecting piece between this footage and the time I had at Slamdance the year prior. If anybody were to print a review before a screening like this guy did, I don't think I'll need to make Sins of the Nude 2, but my feelings would be the same.

What are you working on now?
I'm brewing up a movie to shoot in Austin this fall called Sweet Cheeks. 

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously - I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Successful Alcoholics'

At the back corner of the top floor of a little office building in London’s East End, around the corner from the Tesco down Mile End Road from the Whitechapel subway stop, sits the one-room Somaliland Mission in the UK. Yes, Somaliland, not Somalia (as the pamphlets in the office make painfully clear). In 1991, right after the ouster of the Cold War-era military dictator of Somalia, Mohamed Siad Barre, and just before the descent of the country into 22-and-counting years of chaos and violence, the northern stretch of the nation softly declared its independence as the Republic of Somaliland.

No countries have officially recognized the independence of Somaliland, however, and few provide it much support. In fact many countries, America included, officially back the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, a party that periodically denies the independence of Somaliland.

Yet since declaring its independence, Somaliland appears to have experienced less insecurity and violence and developed more effectively than the rest of Somalia. Most of the recent (extremely limited) news coverage of the region has applauded heartening developments like the 2010 presidential elections, in which the opposition party defeated the incumbents by a razor-thin margin of a few hundred votes in elections dubbed free and fair by international observers, and power transitioned with nary a Molotov cocktail thrown.

After that changing of the guard, the new president, Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo, appointed Ali Aden Awale as the new head of Somaliland’s Mission in the United Kingdom, a fully functioning diplomatic outpost issuing Somaliland visas and promoting the cause of recognition. After visiting the Mission recently, I spoke to Awale to figure out how exactly he conducts diplomacy in a world that has yet to recognize the reality of his nation.  

VICE: How did you get a mission in the UK despite the fact that the government doesn’t recognize the independence of your region?
Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo: Let me first correct you. We have never been a region and we are not a region. We are a country called Somaliland. We became independent before Somalia even came into being. And then there was a unification of the two states. Then, in 1991, we cancelled that unity.

The office came into being because of the Somaliland community that was already here. It was a very strong community. During the civil war of the 1980s our country organized itself from here. It was a very strong part of our struggle against the dictatorship of Barre.

After the successful toppling of that dictator we turned our office into a diplomatic Mission. Because on May 18,1991, [when they got rid of the dictator] we decided to look back upon our history [to the existence of an independent State of Somaliland in 1960] and withdrew from the union and declared the re-assertion of our independence again. At the same time we decided that we needed an outlet where we could conduct our day-to-day activities and convey our message to the world.

Why did you choose London for that?
London was our biggest community and our main channel of communication with the outside world. This office has grown over the years and we now have 13 posts and representatives’ offices outside of Somaliland in places like Belgium, France, Ethiopia, Norway, and the USA all functioning and representing the nation.

How did you get involved in all of this? How does one become the ambassador for a young and unrecognized country like Somaliland?
At the time of the struggle I was one of the members of the community who was supportive of the cause. I was living in Saudi Arabia at the time, financing the operations back home. Later, I became a member of the current ruling party, before we won the election in 2010, and after we won I was appointed by the president.

When you went from being an office supporting a movement against the Barre dictatorship to a diplomatic mission—keeping in mind that Somaliland had been badly damaged in the civil war—how did you function? How did you practically communicate with and speak for Somaliland?
It was one of the toughest and most difficult situations. It used to take us a fairly long time to get in touch with the people back home. There were some satellite telephone systems, which were very expensive. But there were no postal services at all and not even a telephone system. It took us about three years to establish the first telephone contact with a few imported satellite phones.

What’s the learning curve like, transitioning from being the organizers of a resistance movement to diplomats?
The way we see it, we are still struggling for our nation. We were able to establish our government systems. But it is a learning curve, as you say. We started with disarming the militias, then bit-by-bit we transitioned to a multi-party system. We have endured a lot of ups and downs and I think we have been very good at dealing with situations as they arise.

The main issue is that we are now able to understand how the world works. And now we are pushing our case in the world and we also started to engage talks to officially end the union with the people in Mogadishu, although it professionally ended in May 1991.

What’s it like talking with the Somali government, which believes in the unity of the nation, including Somaliland, and doesn’t approve of your independence?
The conversation, as you can imagine, is different on their side. They have their own reasons for being in that mood. But as we see it, it is our country and our decision to end that union. We know they may be very unhappy with it. But that’s their problem.

Do you have any problems with the British government, given that you’re conducting diplomatic work in their country for a nation they don’t officially recognize as existing?
In fact we haven’t got any sort of difficult situation in this regard. We have had a very strong and long relationship with the British government. And most of the time the people who are representatives have dual nationalities with the country they work in, so we don’t have trouble with visas. Also, we are not the only country here with an office that is not recognized by Britain. There’s also Taiwan, which has a big representative office and strong economic relationship here.

You’ve gone ahead and just developed your state—currency, passports, all of that—without recognition. Have you gotten any blowback for doing that?
We haven’t had any problems with blowback from the rest of the world. The Somalis do talk about things that are very illogical and annoy us, but we get used to this kind of rhetoric from them and we know how to deal with that.

And what about your diplomatic relations with the UK? Why are they so unsupportive when it comes to the recognition of your independence and so stuck on the notion of Somalia’s unity?
I don’t think that’s the case. I think that is the case in the view of people who have not studied the history of Britain in Somaliland. Britain has problems with piracy and terrorism, which we help them with, and Britain wants to help Somalia, which we as Somalilanders have no problem with.

We believe Britain is not pushing us into anything [i.e. union with Somalia], and they have good communications with us. I believe that they know exactly the reasons why we have decided to stay away and we hope they respect that, and we respect their decisions as well.

So you’re happy with neutrality? Just as long as the UK doesn’t force you into unification, you’re OK with that as opposed to hoping for outright recognition?
We are not happy with neutrality, but this is the fact of the situation now. And we are happy dealing with our situation with Britain on that basis so far. But we are not happy with their position currently. We wish they could have done more for us like the Americans did in South Sudan and the Portuguese did in East Timor.

You know, Somalialand has been doing well for the past 22 years with little help from the international community. We hope the British and Americans and the rest of the world will reward good behavior and people who are doing a good job in rebuilding their country. Because right now they’re spending billions in Somalia, which is proving to be fruitless.

The security of Somaliland has been built by the Somaliland people and we’ve established a government with a fully functioning parliament, a central bank, a constitution, police and military forces, currency, passports, and so on. We have everything a modern nation needs and we’ve done this by ourselves. Somaliland is one of the countries in the Horn of Africa where there is no piracy. We use the army and security forces to maintain security and control terrorism. Somaliland is doing its part and more. And currently it looks like the world is ignoring all the good things that Somaliland is doing.

You did mention that the British have provided some support, though. What specific things have the British done without providing recognition?
Britain supports our country in some areas like the training of our security forces, health, and education. But in our eyes that is not enough.

So when do you think some nation, any nation, will grant you recognition?
I don’t want to say names but there are many countries that are impressed with our progress and achievements and they have discussed it within themselves. I think it will be in the very near future.

Why has it taken so long? Why haven’t you been recognized by any nations yet?
I don’t know. I think that is to be answered by the rest of the world. But the way I see it, we couldn’t yet get the support of those we thought should support our cause.

Somaliland has no problems with its independence legally. We just cancelled our union like Syria and Egypt cancelled their union.

The fact of the matter is we were expecting that Britain and America would do more and say to the rest of the world that it is time to grant the Somaliland people what they deserve, which is their political recognition. That is what they did for South Sudan and East Timor. What did South Sudan prove that we cannot prove? Nothing. They were never independent. We were.

It is time for them to realize that it is in their interests to give Somaliland’s people what they deserve. Otherwise we are really worried about unemployment and our population growth and the young people who are graduating from the universities and are not able to find jobs.

What do you think people should be investing in?
The most important thing that we as Somalilanders expect the world to help with is the road network. Somaliland has a very poor road network hindering the movement of people and trade. We have no doubt that as soon as that road network is improved there will be even better economic growth in Somaliland. Also, there are a lot of resources that are unexplored and we have been inviting international organizations to look into our minerals and oil prospects.

Many places in Africa have gotten that sort of development—roads and such—by striking deals with China, where the Chinese get access to mineral rights and build infrastructure in exchange. Are you looking at anything like that?
I think China is a very cautious country and will be considering a lot of things before they make a decision. Also because of the Taiwan factor they will not be quick to react to Somaliland—but that is my personal view. There are countries discussing this with us though.

How fatigued and frustrated are you as a mission after 22 years without recognition?
That’s a very good question, but let me say this: The people of Somaliland have had a very difficult history of oppression under Barre in the late 1970s and 1980s, and the elders remember that those days were days of hell which we do not want to see again.

The President of Somaliland said just a few months ago in an annual speech to the house of parliament that the country is ready to wait, to work hard, and to do its best to get what it deserves, even if it takes a hundred years. That is the people of Somaliland’s mindset. We do not expect any of our people to get fatigued.

We are doing our day-to-day business better than Somalia and better than many other countries. We are living in a country where there is democracy, free press, rule of law, elected government, a justice system, and a legal system.

More pseudo-countries on VICE:

This Guy Wants to Start His Own Aryan Country

The Country That Doesn't Exist

Jonas Bendiksen Takes Photos in Countries That Don't Exist

via CBC & Correctional Service Canada

Remember that prisoner who escaped while serving a life sentence for beating and killing a woman? Well, despite a national warrant for his arrest, 56 year-old Jean-Pierre Duclos is still on the loose and police don’t seem to be any closer to finding him. So, I thought I’d grab my magnifying class and try to find the murderer myself, but it turns out finding a murderer is much harder than I expected. Maybe if I paid $49.95 on a “how to become a bounty hunter or fugitive recovery agent” course, I’d be pro enough to find him, but I’m too cheap for that.

So, I asked a professional.

“The only way you’re gonna get somebody like this is through informants” said Remi Kalacyan a private investigator with spyvip.com.

Damn, thought I had him there.

If I were Jean-Pierre, where would I go?

According to Corporal Luc Thibault of the RCMP, many who flee Canada go to Central American countries where they don’t require passports, like the Dominican Republic. Maybe he went there?

Judging by his past, I wouldn’t put a tactical southern escape past this guy. Back when he was arrested in 1991 for killing 33 year-old Danielle André, Duclos found a way to slip out of Quebec and down to Columbia for 3 months before being captured. At the time, police were alerted by an informant the day after the murder, but refused to act. Why didn’t the police arrest him then and there?

“There are too many unanswered questions,” said the victim’s brother Paul André as quoted in the Montreal Gazette back in 2000. He and his sister Helene spent ten years and over $50,000 fighting with the courts to get the police officers charged for not arresting Duclos while he was in Canada and letting the hunt go on so long. After a $480,000 high profile case, all charges were dropped against the veteran officers from Laval when they insisted that they were protecting their informant.

If I were Paul André, I wouldn’t be too happy Duclos is out there, nor would I feel very safe.

Duclos wasn’t even handcuffed or wearing his prison uniform when he escaped from the Verdun Hospital, 56 km from the Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines federal minimum-security penitentiary at 2pm on May 27. According to Correctional Services Canada spokesperson Serge Abergel, he eluded not only his prison guard, but also several SPVM police officers who happened to be in the hospital at the time.

“This is not supposed to happen,” said Abergel, who said the investigation is ongoing and there is no news to report.

However, he did say that Duclos had been offered release on day-parole on March 13, 2013, but he declined. Day-parole would have given him the ability to spend his days outside of jail before returning to a halfway house every night.

After 20 years in jail, Duclos could have really been rehabilitated and simply saw a small window of opportunity (perhaps even a real window in the hospital) and jumped through it. Or, maybe he had this planned all along.

Without money or a car, Duclos probably didn’t do this alone. He has a recorded history of heavy drug-use, and usually heavy drug-users know dealers who have ways of smuggling things or people across unprotected regions of the US/Canada border—one local route being along the Saint Lawrence river past Cornwall, Ontario and into the US.

If he happens to take that route (fingers crossed he’s not reading this) and is not caught by night patrols from the RCMP, it is up to the US Protection Agency, local police or any other law enforcement agency in the world to look up his “pictures, contacts, details, and habits” through Interpol according to Abergel.

Interpol came in handy when the escaped psycho killer Luka Magnotta was picked up in Germany, or when corrupt businessman Arthur Porter was nabbed in Panama. But those cases were media circuses with an international manhunt angle to keep people interested. In the case of Duclos, the media has been silent since his escape, and at the time of this blog post’s publication, the RCMP hasn’t even put him on their most wanted list.

It’s unclear what, exactly, the police strategy for catching Duclos is. Perhaps they are hoping he will simply wander back to jail. Given the mainstream media’s blindspot for covering this escaped murderer and the lack of protection placed around Duclos during his hospital visit, it doesn’t seem like anyone is all that concerned about this man’s premature freedom. That is, of course, except the family of his victim, who are probably not very pleased about all this. 

Follow Joel on Twitter: @JoelBalsam

More on Montreal Crime:

Hey Montreal, Your City has an Escaped Murderer in it.

The Beginning of the End for Dr. Arthur T. Porter IV

The Bloody Return of Vito Rizzuto: Canada’s Mob Boss

What is the sound of 1 million yuan flapping?

While most nouveau riche happily spend their new money on shit the old money has already deemed acceptable, China's spoiled young princelings aren't content with horses, sports cars, and insanely tacky watches alone. In tribute to the intrepid bootleggers who've propped up their country's market economy, China's rich have taken arguably the worst bird of all time, the pigeon, and slapped a Louis Vuitton logo on it. Racing pigeons are the new thoroughbreds here, with birds auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece and races netting millions for the championship flock. Which sucks for the old timers, whose balcony-bred birds don't stand a chance against these million-dollar superflocks. And which just sucks in general because, well, pigeons. Fucking pigeons.

One of the creative spaces inside the Binz.

On Friday morning, Zurich authorities entered the Binz, Switzerland's most infamous squat, with the intention of ending its seven-year run by turfing out every living soul they could find inside. However, when they turned up at 111 Üetlibergstrasse, they were in for a surprise – instead of being met by a horde of Molotov-wielding anarchists, they discovered a fully barricaded, but completely deserted building. Where had all the squatters gone?

This was not meant to happen. The bourgeois papers who cater to the fears of all the old, fat, rich, boring people in Zurich – and believe me, there are shitloads of them – had predicted fire, riots, street war. Instead, they found a fully vacated premises, completely still and silent but for a dog and a single stereo blaring Swiss radio.

The Schoch Family – as the collective living in the Binz had taken to calling themselves – had packed up and moved house to the Koch area of the Altstetten quarter of Zurich. This has not been received well by the owners of the squatters' new home, the multinational bank UBS. They are said to be "not amused". But then these are multinational bankers, they probably weren't even amused that time the Binz's ex-residents led a convoy blaring techno and hardcore through the centre of the city, led by one car carrying a huge, dancing shoe.

Razorwire barricades blocking access to the Binz.

So the squatters had gone peacefully, shocking those who'd labelled the Schoch Family as violent agitators after the riots following that rave-convoy protest. They left Thursday night, though not before blockading all the entrances with vehicles and scrap metal. As a testament to the quality of local Swiss newspapers, their coverage focused more on the blockades left behind than the peaceful closure of what had been one of Zurich's most unique and culturally significant public spaces. It could have ended far differently, but since the squatters chose to leave quietly, it's hardly registered in the public's imagination at all – most likely due to the lack of police going around blasting crusties with water-cannons.

Despite the anti-climax, our photographer still managed to get himself arrested after photographing a civilian officer. He was detained for an hour, before a police spokesperson cleared the matter up and the officer apologised, presenting a croissant as an olive branch.

This angry pooch didn't want to leave the Binz.

The clearing of the Binz was one of the last official acts of outgoing police superintendent Daniel Leupi. The timing of the planned mass eviction is hardly a coincidence, given that a day after it took place, Leupi's replacement, Richard Wolff – who's known to be more sympathetic towards the squatters, mainly because he used to be a squatter himself – was due to take up office.

In any case, as far as the Binz is concerned, the jig is most certainly up. The austere post on the Schoch Family homepage reads only: “Show's over, we're out.”

A squat in the Koch area of Zurich.

Over the course of seven years, squatters first created then defended their own cultural public space at 111 Üetlibergstrasse, offering opportunities beyond the legal framework of a Swiss society stiff and suffocated by regulations. It also provided an affordable housing and commercial space to its residents in a city that has seen its rental rates increase by more than 25 percent in the last 20 years. For the squatters, it was never about taking anything away from anyone, but rather about showing the absurdity of construction and housing politics in the city of Zurich.

As it was put by one anonymous squatter: “We see it as more anti-social to own living spaces and leave them empty than to occupy empty living spaces and make them available to people who want to operate outside of financial incentives and legal restrictions.” On Friday morning, Zurich lost more than just a refuge for creative thinkers; the city lost an irreplaceable part of its own history.

Inside the Schoch Family's new squat.

The squatters themselves made their exit relatively calmly. They came together the evening before the big move to have one last dinner and a small party to give their cherished home a final send-off. At 2AM, it all came to a close, and the squatters said goodbye with a fireworks display put on by their neighbours.

The end of the Binz is not, however, the end for Zurich's squatters. A large part of the Schoch Family began transporting their belongings, under the close watch of police drones, to the new place in Altstetten two weeks ago. They are optimistic that they have found a place where they can continue their fight against the wealth-serving and overbearing politics of Zurich, even if UBS would have preferred to start tearing the vacant building down this Friday and begun taking bids from architectural firms. In a move meant to deter squatters, UBS has already ordered all sanitary facilities on the grounds to be destroyed.

Only time will tell whether the squatters in the Koch area can anchor themselves for the long-term, or if they'll once again be moved on by those with more power. Rather than be deterred, the Zurich squatters actually seem more galvanised than ever after their exodus from the Binz. Or, to put it in the words of the Schoch Family: “We are away and yet still remain! BINZ REMAINS BINZ.”

More stuff about squatting:

The Swiss Squat March That Ended in Tear Gas and Rubber Bullets

Shitting In Bin Bags With London Squatters

Waiting for the Cops at a Squat Resistance Party

The Miami Heat is not a team that aims to win by brawn alone. Head coach Erik Spoelstra knows that in order to be competitive, his team must be rigorous in brain machination as well as in driving the lane. As such, each member of the Miami Heat is necessarily a voracious reader, with their input primed even more so during the dominate-or-die barrage of the playoffs.

This year, some of Miami’s best and brightest were kind enough to share what they’ve been immersed in, both on the bus and on the bench as they prepare to take home the championship ring.

Ray Allen

Photo via Wiki Commons

The Selected Poems of Mary Ruefle by Mary Ruefle
The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Souls of the Labadie Tract by Susan Howe
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

Ray Allen reads mostly before bedtime, in the nude. He is the kind of reader that can’t help but share a sentence he finds beautiful, often reading passages at length for anyone who’ll listen, and thereafter can quote from memory lines he’s read aloud for months after the fact, as if the spoken words have somehow been traced into his brain. He prefers poetry, or prose that was written by a poet. He sees the snap of his wrist when shooting free throws as a line break that connects his body to the basket, taking the ball through its eternal location in the hoop like a verse tattooed on the air.

Dwayne Wade

Photo via Flickr user Keith Allison

Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney
VALIS by Philip K. Dick
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
The Supermale by Alfred Jarry

There’s nothing Dwayne Wade hates to see more than a book with a bent spine. He reads carefully, holding the book open at the smallest possible angle he can while still allowing him to see the sentences. He likes a book to look untouched, absorbing its information like a stranger who leaves no trace. Often, having finished a great read, he will leave a book in a public place for someone else to find and enjoy. For six years he worked on a collection of his own prose poems, titled The Actual Heat, which he has out on submission with several small presses; sometimes he can be caught checking his email during time-outs to see if he’s heard anything back.

Chris “Birdman” Andersen

The lyrics to Crazy Town’s “Butterfly”
The Wikipedia page of Chris Andersen
Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis
Babyfucker by Urs Alleman
“Like, anything about sex”

Birdman considers himself a speed reader, preferring not to be given the whole story at once, but to be allowed to fill in what he understands as gaps with his own color. He tends to stick with what he already knows he likes, which results in his having read every book he’s ever read at least several dozen times. As a result, each book he owns is heavily marked up, highlighted, and scribbled on in the margins to the point that any other person trying to read it would find it difficult to concentrate on the original text. He loves to read while taking a shit, and it makes him sweat, and he likes that, too. Because he always licks his finger before turning a page, the edges of his books are rounded, dark in the margins, and have a very specific stench. He loves to buy books about birds, but never reads them, instead taking pleasure in ripping them apart at parties with his teeth on all fours, like a dog.

Mario Chalmers

Photo via Flickr user Keith Allison

The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Murder, My Sweet by Raymond Chandler
The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme
The Eclogues by Virgil

Mario Chalmers is always reading at least ten books at the same time. He likes to be able to jump from one storyline into another, seeing the interweaving of the narratives as a kind of larger book in and of itself, like life. He is frequently losing books, leaving them in the locker room at an away game, or on a plane, and he sees this each time as a gift, allowing the narrative to continue widely out from where he’d left it into total potential, no longer trapped in its forced continuity. Chalmers’s favorite place to read is in the bathtub, in water up to his neck, so he can feel the way the water hydrates his face and hands, followed by the wonderful feeling of setting the book down and going fully under.

Chris Bosh

Photo via Flickr user Keith Allison

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Tinkers by Paul Harding
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

Chris Bosh is a wide and adventurous reader, one willing to try any kind of thing. He often likes to read books being discussed in popular media outlets so he can form his own opinion. He often posts anonymously on literary blogs, frequently vehemently deriding critics with whom he disagrees while quoting Viktor Shklovsky and Alain Robbe-Grillet. In person, he is a considerate, thoughtful reader, interested in discussing the physics of a sentence, the use of dreams in creating plot, and irregular meter. He has a tattoo of William Carlos Williams on a part of his body he can’t see. For several years he kept a reading diary on LiveJournal under the username BigUpsBoshMane, which he later deleted, finding as he aged that he no longer agreed with the opinions he had formed as a younger reader.

LeBron James

Photo via Flickr user Keith Allison

A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
a: A Novel by Andy Warhol

LeBron James prefers long books, ones that you must devote long periods of time to. He will often carry a book throughout the day, taking advantage of small pauses in action to push through another few pages when he can. He is private about his reading, and when asked about a book he’s holding, will mumble and turn away, finding the pleasure of the experience predicated on an intense link between the author and the reader, not to be obscured with conversation or analysis. When he particularly likes the function of a page in a book he’ll rip it out and tack it to the inside of his locker, reading and rereading it before a game to get pumped. His favorite way to read is in the dark with a flashlight under the covers in a hotel room by himself in silk pajamas. He has had Christmas dinner with Don DeLillo four times, and with Thomas Pynchon twice.

Erik Spoelstra

Photo via Flickr user Keith Allison

Bellefleur by Joyce Carol Oates
Son of the Morning by Joyce Carol Oates
Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
Garfield Eats His Heart Out by Jim Davis
Des bleus à l'âme by Françoise Sagan

Erik Spoelstra consumes literature primarily by listening to audio books. He finds that language being fed into his ears while his hands and eyes are free to move around is by far the most effective way to interact the written word. He often listens to audio books during the games, which is why you always see him staring as if transfixed into the court with his mouth slightly open and eyes wide. He is listening. He enjoys popular French literature and haiku and often weeps while reading. He brings a hard copy of the book with him courtside, so that during TV breaks he can reread passages he’d like to see in print. He finds the way his tears rumple the paper somehow moving. For the playoffs, he has decided to make a run at filling in the gaps of his Joyce Carol Oates experience, for which he hires his mother to record herself reading to him, as she did when he was a child to help him sleep.   

Previously by Blake Butler: Fence Has Been Reconfiguring the Literary Landscape for 15 Years

@blakebutler

Tonight in LA, at the The Gallery Next to the Burgundy Room (that's the name), our buddy Nick Sethi will be having a brand-new photo show, called Nome, featuring work made during his stay in India. When most Western photographers shoot in far-off, exotic places (read: anywhere that's not North America or Europe), the pictures usually look like they came out of the same, tired issue of National Geographic. Nick's work, however, feels more natural. This is probably because he just hung out with the locals for a couple months, snapping shots along the way. We asked Nick to write a short intro to explain the work, but he was so burnt out from a nonstop show hanging marathon, that all he could send us was this:

"Kissing kids. Stretchy dicks. Snotty noses. Yoga poses. Opium. Playing in traffic. Desert fever. Bare asses. Sand. Shelter. Street chai. Shitting by the roadside. Home. Dirt.  Panhandlers. Pilgrimage. Holy water. Skate sessions. Junkie muggers. Holy men. Three brothers. Time. Place. Us. Alone. Everynothing. Nome."

Check out the gallery above for some choice images from Nome. Because we want to give you an extra incentive to see out the show, we left  the stretchy dicks out. But if you're in Cali, go to the show and see all of those wonderous yanked Indian schlongs in person. 

Nick Sethi's Nome Opening
The Gallery Next to the Burgundy Room
1621 N. Cahuenga Blvd.
Los Angeles, California
June 6 from 6 to 8 PM

The VICE Podcast Show is a weekly unedited discussion in which we go inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we come across. This week, host Eddy Moretti talks with actress Greta Gerwig about the film industry and her new movie, Frances Ha, directed by Noah Baumbach.

Here is just the audio from this week's discussion:

Previously on the podcast we spoke with American Apparel founder Dov Charney about reforming the global garment industry.

More about film on VICE.com:

‘American Psycho’: Ten Years Later/Twenty Years Later

A Chat with Janicza Bravo (and Brett Gelman) About Her New Short Starring Michael Cera in a Wheelchair

Joshua Oppenheimer and Indonesia's Murderous Playboys  

You might know Andrew Zimmern from his Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods in which he wolfs down unsightly things halfway across the world. Maybe you've wondered what eats when he's out with friends in New York. For this episode of Munchies, Andrew chose to start at Osteria Morini, where the most bizarre food on the table was an amazing prime rib carpaccio that had been aged for 120 days. Then they headed to Marc Forgione for one of the more interesting meals we've ever seen. We ended up at the kitchen of Barbuto, where Zimmern made Chinese chicken drumsticks for the legendary chef Jonathan Waxman. Enjoy.

I am a firm believer that there’s a joke to lighten the mood of any situation, no matter how grim. Many would disagree with me, but I say fuck 'em. Crying is easy. Wallowing in sorrow is even easier. True mental fortitude is when you can look at an awful situation and laugh in its ugly face.

When my wife was pushing out our first born on 9/11 as they read the names of the World Trade deceased and she screamed to shut the TV off, I pretended I was an airplane crashing into her vagina to make her laugh.

When the shitty kid before that kid died in my wife’s stomach, I told her she didn’t want that kid anyway because he was too lazy, that if he didn’t want to grow on his own, how the hell was he going to ever get a job or do anything on his own? If that kid would have lived he’d end up 40 years old living with us and I’d still be using the pillow as a silencer over my wife’s face at age 70!

On April 15th, 2013 two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon. I immediately texted all my friends in the Boston area and apologized for what, “Those motherfucking Yankees fans did.”

Some people with a bug up their ass would find such talk inappropriate, but I know from experience that I have always been thanked for bringing a bit of levity to awful situations.

Last October my home state of New Jersey was decimated by Hurricane Sandy. The assessed damage is $70 Billion, of which the government has offered very little. If that’s not laughable I don’t know what is.

Knowing that financially there wasn’t much I could do to help, my partner and I in NJ Skateshop started collecting warm clothes from people in the skate industry to distribute to those in need. Fifteen-hour days of delivering clothes turned into weeks and the daily dose of sadness and destruction was really starting to take its toll on my mental well-being. I had forgotten how to laugh entirely.

And then I received a donation box of clothes from a stripper in Vegas and I collapsed in joy and laughter. Just as winter was setting in and temperatures were drastically dropping and most people were still without heat, a sexy saint with impeccable comedic timing sent us a box of string bikinis and used thongs. It was the best gift ever and exactly what all of us on the delivery crew needed at that very moment. Thank you, funny Vegas stripper, whoever you are.

That said, I am not so far removed that I can’t relate to and feel true sorrow for what the people of Oklahoma are gong through after the rash of heartless tornadoes mangled their world. But the only thing I can really offer other than donating some money and clothes is the gift of laughter.

And so I flew to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida last weekend for the Exxotica Porn Expo to ask some of the top adult film stars what sexual act they’d be willing to donate to my fictitious auction to help raise money for the victims of the Oklahoma tornadoes. If the comical responses of these porn stars don’t help raise spirits then I fear we, as a country, might be beyond saving.

Watch the video at the top of the page or on YouTube. 

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

Also, check these out from Chris:

Meet the ATL Twins - Part 1

Battle of the Butthole Tattoos

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Divorced

The author, hanging out in the probably-safe-to-stand-in LA River. Photos by Nate Miller

A few days after the LA River got reopened for recreation on Memorial Day, people in LA started RSVPing to an event getting advertised on Facebook called the “LA River Regatta Club’s Maiden Voyage!” It was a confusing week. Finding out about an ostensibly navigable river in the middle of Los Angeles was like discovering an awesome place for carne asada tacos in China—so counterintuitive it must be true. Damned if anyone had any clue how to get to the river, or whether the storm channel from Terminator 2: Judgement Day even qualified as a river, but if there was going to be a party on a riverboat in LA, that wasn’t as shocking as there simply being a river in the first place.

When I saw the boat on the ad, and noticed that “RIVER REVELRY” was one of the listed activities, my mind filled with tantalizing possibilities. Would there be a big Huck Finn–style log raft? Would I be cruising down the river drinking a mint julep from the open bar while looking up at the US Bank Tower? Would gambling be legal on the river? Damn the cost! A $20 donation to something called the LA River Revitalization Corporation (whatever that is) is a pittance on the historic night of LA’s first party barge.

As it happened, getting people to make their $20 donation in advance was a pretty shrewd move, and one that would help me understand what “revitalizing” the Los Angeles River actually involves.

The Party

I must have looked like Chevy Chase in Vacation finding out Walley World was closed when I drove by the event and saw people kind of milling around a warehouse nowhere near any rivers. I was a little too on time, so it was empty. It can’t feel good for a party’s hosts when one of the first paying guests shows up with a facial expression that says, “My mistake. I thought something fun was supposed to be happening.” Still, the “lite bites,” "Berlin ping-pong," and “open bar” parts of the flyer weren’t lies.

Over the course of the night, the party got crowded at least. I talked to a group of young women who turned out to all be lawyers, you know, educated folk, but their questions were the same as mine: “What does LA want with a river?” “What’s an LA River Revitalization Corporation?” “Where are the boats?” The lawyers didn’t actually want me to mention that they thought there were going to be boats, but what are they going to do, sue me?

Four lawyers who thought this was supposed to be a boat party

But what about the actual river?

Near a projector screen showing old-timey footage of the river when it was more river-ish, Miranda Rodriguez, the corporation’s events coordinator, explained that the name of the party wasn’t a lie but an inside joke. “Of course there isn’t actually going to be a rowing competition,” she said. There actually was a rowing competition in 1990, and it was called the LA River Regatta.

When the LA Times wrote about the regatta back then, the paper asked, “Who's responsible if [the racers] drown or become sick by accidentally ingesting the water? The answer is somewhat murky, although it will probably become clearer as studies are done and hearings are held.” There apparently have been enough studies and hearings in the past 23 years, because part of the river is now open to the public. 

Omar Brownson, the head of the four-year-old LA River Revitalization Corporation was also at the party, and he made a mercifully short appeal for donations to his organization shortly after our hosts played a commercial for the brewery whose beer everyone was drinking.

Afterward, I elbowed my way over and bugged him with my dumb questions. He had just been in Washington, DC, he said, going over schematics with the Army Corp of Engineers. They were going to start building a bridge in July, and the federal government was allocating $1 billion to the project, he said. Omar didn’t seem eager to answer my questions about water quality, but he was excited about improvements along the banks that would bring in businesses and investements.

“They’re going to get rid of the concrete on the sides?” I asked.

“They’ll never get rid of the concrete,” he said.

I guess the bridge is always going to look like a storm channel, but at least there will be one more bridge.

Is it safe?

Earlier this month a volunteer group conducted its annual clean-up-the-river event, which takes care of what debris can be lifted out by hand. You’d still have to dodge the odd shopping cart if you brought a boat in and started rowing around, which would look like this:

Debris aside, those who enter the river should know that at the river’s start, there’s a public works facility in Van Nuys called the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant that pumps 60 million gallons of former sewage into the river every day. You should also know about the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a few miles from the Tillman sewage plant. In 2007 the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board found that the SSFL was letting “chromium, dioxin, lead, mercury and other pollutants,” flow right into an LA river tributary. Cleaning up that particular problem is expected to take until 2017.

The safety page of the city’s official river recreation site is all about vests, helmets, and the buddy system, which suggests to me that they’re not worried about someone getting sick from the water. If they’re not worried, then I’m not either.

I went down to the river a few days after the Regatta Club’s “Maiden Voyage,” and legally splashed around in the questionable water. You can too. Just find your way to a bike path that runs along the river and look for a break in the railing with "RIVER ACCESS” painted under it, mind the red lines that demarcate where on the embankment you’re allowed to stand, then climb down and enjoy the city’s natural beauty. 

The water’s warm, almost piss warm, but still refreshing on a summer’s day, and it flows pretty fast. It’s no wonder they only encourage people to launch kayaks and rafts. An inner tube would be great, but I doubt the city would like seeing you floating in their river with a beer resting on your belly.

As I was drying off, there were some guys setting up fishing gear. They said it was the first time they’d fished down there.

“If you catch anything, are you going to eat it?” I asked.

“You’re allowed to. We probably won’t though, because...” and then he just kind of trailed off and made a face.

@MikeLeePearl

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