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80-Year-Old Banned from Every Farm in Britain for Fisting Cow

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A pensioner from west London has been found guilty of two counts of outraging public decency and banned from every farm in Britain after being caught masturbating with his hand fully inside a cow.

Uxbridge Magistrates Court heard that 80-year-old John Curno had twice been spotted assaulting cows at Park Lodge Farm in Uxbridge, west London.

Farmer Susan Howie told the court that, the first time she saw Curno in her field, he "had his left hand interfering with the cow and his right hand on a part of his lower body [...] he was masturbating – you could see it moving up and down, and his trousers and his boxer shorts were at his ankles".

The second time, said Howie, Curno "had his whole hand in the cow", and when he realised he'd been rumbled "he grabbed his trousers and boxers and he ran for the stile and he actually fell over the stile because his trousers fell down when he was trying to get over it".

"I was disgusted," continued Howie. "We gave nobody permission to touch or interfere with our cows. It might seem funny to you, but they are family, they are not just cows."

Curno claimed he visited a church near the farm once a week merely because he "liked the view" – but, according to two more eyewitnesses, he was there for more than just the sights.

After the pensioner had somehow managed to escape Mrs Howie twice with his pants around his ankles, he allegedly went back for more and was spotted by two sisters, who watched him – from 150 yards away – try to have sex with a cow for up to half an hour. After watching, for some reason, for that period of time, they called the police, who apprehended Curno nearby.

Curno was found guilty of two counts of outraging public decency and banned from every farm with animals for the duration of his bail, but has said he's going to appeal the decision and "sue the police", claiming he hasn't masturbated in three years because of the medication he's on.

"Why would I drop my trousers?" he said. "I never did it. It is their word against mine."

Curno will be sentenced in February.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.


A Florida Goodwill Thought Someone Donated a Loaded Grenade Launcher

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Workers at a Goodwill store in Bradenton, Florida, found a little surprise nestled inside the donation box last Sunday—a grenade launcher loaded with a live grenade, according to the Bradenton Herald.

The Bradenton store employees apparently gave it a once-over and shipped the thing to a Goodwill Bargain Barn in Sarasota. But when the folks at the Bargain Barn realized what they had, they quickly called up the police.

According to the Herald, the Manatee Sheriff's Department retrieved "the active grenade" and disposed of it inside a Hazmat locker back at the department. But when police took a closer look, they realized that the thing was just an Airsoft launcher and not an honest-to-God grenade launcher, like the kind that falls out the back of police vehicles, a Bay News 9 reporter confirmed. Airsoft or not, though, a spokesman for the sheriff's department told the Herald that he "would not call [the launcher] a toy."

It's unclear who donated the launcher and why, but Goodwill manager Joe Beshures told ABC Action News that he's seen a lot of weird stuff come through the store's donation box in the past.

"An urn with ashes inside of it, firearms, ammunition, gold teeth," Beshures told ABC, making it clear that his employees are trained to deal with potential hazards and would never let any of it actually go out for sale. "We would never want to put any of our customers or employees in any safety risk at all," he said.

If this was your Airsoft grenade launcher and, for some reason, you actually meant to give it away, maybe you should take a closer look at Goodwill's donation guidelines. It's against the rules to donate any weapons to the thrift store—including guns, crossbows, and, yes, all types of grenade launchers. They won't take your old waterbed, either, so don't even try.

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Related: A Smarter Gun

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask a Pizza Delivery Guy

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This article originally appeared on VICE Germany

For about five months, Joshua has been slinging pizzas around Berlin from the back of his bicycle. The 20-year-old delivers pies to the city’s hungry and hungover, come rain, snow or public holidays, for a basic pay of $11 an hour. But on a good day, he can pick up an extra $50 in tips.

I spoke to Joshua to find out who the worst tippers are, which customers he silently judges and how many of them he's caught having sex.

VICE: How often do people answer the door without their clothes on?
Joshua: My last fully naked customer was about three or four days ago, when I delivered to a hotel room. She didn’t say anything – she just took the pizza and closed the door. The nude ones always do. I'd say 50 percent of the people who order a pizza seem to decide to go for a shower seconds before their food arrives. So I get customers who’ve literally just rushed out of the shower every day.

Do your customers every try to pay with other things when they don't have any money?
Yeah. Recently, this guy who was completely stoned asked if I'd accept an ounce instead. Even though it was worth a lot more than the pizza, I said no because I've quit smoking and dealing. And the weed looked really rubbish, too. Another stoner once made me wait for 20 minutes at his door, claiming he couldn’t find his cash. When he eventually unlocked the door, he confessed that he had actually been looking for the key – which had been in the door the whole time. Another guy invited me in for a spliff and a slice of pizza.

What kind of people are the worst tippers?
It's almost always office workers who call in large orders at lunchtime. They'll order pizza for $100, but they won't leave a single penny as a tip. Also, rich people are not only really tight, but often incredibly rude, too. Sometimes, if you kiss their arse and pretend like there's absolutely nothing in the world you'd rather do than bring them food, you can get a pretty decent tip. The best tippers are our regular customers and couples in their twenties and early thirties who don't have children.


WATCH: 10 Questions You Always Wanted to Ask Someone With Face Tattoos


What other tricks do you pull to get better tips?
When they open the door, I start breathing heavily and say, "Wow, so many stairs!" That obviously only works when they’re actually living on a higher floor – it's always a good idea to pretend like getting to a customer's place has left you knackered. On bank holidays, it's very lucrative to remind people that you're working on a holiday. And finally, if a customer adds a particular request to the order, like asking us to bring along a packet of fags with the pizza, I try to do that, too. But there are always people who, no matter what you do, will never tip.

How often do you catch people having sex?
Lots of customers have that post-sex glow on when I arrive with their order, but I’ve only ever caught one couple. As I was approaching their door I could hear everything, but I couldn’t just leave the pizza outside – so I walked up and rang the doorbell. When it was clear they couldn't hear it, I started banging on the door. It took about 15 minutes before they finally heard me. When the guy eventually opened the door, he just stood there, at "full mast", with his partner sat naked behind him. It took him about ten seconds to realise who I was before he quickly paid me and slammed the door without us exchanging a single word.

Have you ever eaten a pizza that you were meant to deliver?
No, though I’m always tempted. But we're given a free pie every day, so I often take mine with me on deliveries and eat it in the corridors outside the places where I've just delivered.

Have you ever had a date with someone you've brought pizza?
Yeah, three or four times. It works both ways – sometimes I ask them, and other times they’ve asked for my number. I did once get politely rejected, and now I think she’s stopped ordering from us to avoid awkwardly running into me again.

It's clear that some taxi drivers in Berlin also sell drugs. Could you order drugs as a side to your pizza?
I’ve certainly thought about it, but I haven't dealt drugs since I was a teenager. One of my colleagues has talked about wanting to sell on their deliveries, but I don’t know if they've actually done it or not. It does make sense, though. It’s a totally discreet transfer – all the customer needs to do is pretend like they gave a huge tip and nobody would know a thing.

Do you secretly judge customers who are obviously home alone, but still order loads of food?
No, because they're our most reliable customers and they tend to be the nicest, too. I also think some people order to stockpile for later because they can’t be bothered to cook.

What do you think about people who live nearby but still want a delivery?
Some are nice, but mostly they’re arseholes – they think because I haven’t come far I don’t deserve a tip.

This article originally appeared on VICE DE.

A Love Letter to the Smoke Break

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Smokers are the last of a dying breed. For some time now we’ve no longer been afforded the privacy of watering holes or shelter of any kind—forced out into sun or under street lights—made to wear their ashen letter in public for all to see.

This, of course, doesn’t discourage as much as it emboldens. If anything, it’s only managed to solidify one of the habit’s irreplaceable charms: The aside. Even on the best night out, nearly every bar plays host to a steady frequency of pinballing shoulders, shout-to-be-heard conversations, and enough body heat to fog up the windows at the entrance and sweat the glass in your hand. Regardless of if you’re an extrovert or occasionally moonlight as one, proclaiming your intent to “grab some fresh air” is met with raised eyebrows and bobbing chins—few, if any, intended to convey approval.

By itself, the “smoke break” has served as the primary wedge between those who do and those who do not because let’s face it—it’s non-essential. The fact that it’s only afforded to those who smoke further drives the societal wedge between those who do not, therein shining a light on what makes the habit so unique: every benefit that it affords the user compounds the alienation they feel from their peers. The exile may seem stressful at first glance—yet another excuse to reach for your Zippo—but those who habitually spark up know full well that ostracization is part of the deal, a fact that wounds them as much as it heals.

This is the paragraph where I say, OBVIOUSLY, smoking is extremely bad for you and don’t do it and now I’ve done my social and ethical diligence and we can move on.

My relationship with smoking started on the uneven ground navigated by most all recent graduates—a few friends, in similar straits, had rented a house in West Michigan where we’d convene at night, during the Midwest’s ’13-’14 polar vortex, over games of NHL on PlayStation. At the conclusion of each third period (or OTs in the more storied matches), we’d huddle in a tight circle on the front porch in below zero temps and bum Camels off one another, harping on missed opportunities and extolling due praise. I’m still not sure I ever caught a buzz off the nicotine, but I certainly got high on the kinship.

Shortly thereafter, I moved to Santa Monica to work in marketing, where a cigarette would help distract from the hours I spent commuting every morning, and every night. At work, I began jockeying for an open role on our editorial team, campaigning over bummed Marlboros in the company parking lot with editors that were kind enough to take me under their wing. I got the job, and kept the habit.

Then came Chicago, where, to escape the new reality of a gig that crippled me with anxiety and self-doubt, I’d seek out conversations with strangers at night I’d found via mutual right swipes or two or three bar stools down from me. If there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s that wanderers and outcasts tend to seek out and attract one another—and they all carry lighters, sometimes out of necessity, other times out of foresight. They prepare for the best and expect the worse and I admire that.

In each of these conversations, no matter the city, there were two or more people (but never a crowd), with each one of us being some mix of overworked, unsure, and unhappy. Each of us heroes and failures in our own right, I again found that same warmth only afforded to huddled friends on winter porches, when the air was so cold that, from a distance, no one could be sure if our breath was freezing or we were exhaling.

The orange glow gave us away, and we never really cared.

'GoT' Fans Are Secretly Filming the Set and Ruining the Show for Everyone

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HBO is doing just about everything it can to keep Game of Thrones's final season under wraps—whether that's having the stars pose in random positions to throw any spies off while filming, delivering the cast their lines through an earpiece to avoid script leaks, and even going so far to shoot a couple of decoy endings just in case someone decides to spoil the whole thing before it airs next year.

But still, some relentless Game of Thrones fanatics are so desperate to get a glimpse of what's to come that they'll resort to going incognito and snooping around the set. On Wednesday, one fan who was creeping around a filming site in Ireland took some footage that, according to GoT fan site Watchers on the Wall, reveals "a major season eight spoiler."

Facebook user Steven McAuley caught a massive fire burning what Watchers on the Wall claims is Winterfell to the ground. And despite HBO's quest to keep things a secret, the blaze got so big that locals in the area thought it might actually be an emergency and notified the local fire department, Belfast Live reports. When they showed up, they wound up finding a bunch of smoke, lights, and about 500 extras lined up for a major battle scene.

But before you start to make any predictions for the show's final season and try to figure out which fire-breathing monster set fire to the Starks' home, there is a possibility that the whole scene is just one of GoT's decoy endings and the joke's on us. Or, more likely, it's just an indication of all the pain and heartbreak that's to come—something we've already come to expect after seven seasons in Westeros.

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Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Related: Who's the Biggest Prick in Game of Thrones?

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

I Died, Met God, and Came Back as a Roots Healer

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Bishop Dickerson is an 83-year-old healer living in Osyka, Mississippi. As owner of The Spiritual Candle Shop, he creates amulets and other talismanic items using roots, oils, candles, herbs, and various curios that are part of the African-American folk magic pantheon. These are his own words, as told to Justin Fornal over a series of interviews.

I’ve been healing people out of this here shop since 1997. Long before that, folks would come over to my home to get their medicine. Sure, there are a lot of local people, but I’ve had patients come all the way from China to get some particular kind of work done. My main line of business is in healing. This isn’t voodoo, this is roots work. Folks come here to get something bad off of them, not to put something bad on someone else.

I make spiritual baths, candles, and different kinds of mojo bags. I make the products here in this shop, then we ship them up to botanicas and candle shops throughout the country. You can find my baths in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles—a lot of those cities. There are people in New York I have been doing business with for 40 years, and we have never even met. Over the years, companies have wanted to team up with me and expand into a larger market. I always thought about it, but the larger producers want you to cut your product and cheapen it with fillers. I can’t do that. Same goes for folks who have tried to remake my personal recipes. I inherited a gift from my mother. That gift goes into each product, so it doesn’t matter if you know my process or have my recipes. If you weren’t born with the gift, it won’t matter much when you put your hands on the product.


Most days start by opening the shop and getting ready for consultations. Folks who are feeling bad come in and sit down in the waiting area in one of the chairs or on the couch. They can sit wherever they want, except for the chair that has a sign on it that says, “Do not sit in this chair.” My guardian spirit is sitting there watching over the shop.

One by one I call them into the back room for a reading. People might come down for a hundred different reasons. A lady might want her man to stop running around. Or maybe he is a bad person and she wants him out of her life. The right medicine is gonna either keep him at home or push him on down the road. I just help situations, I don’t hurt them. We’ve done six consultations this morning, and it isn’t 10 AM.

A lot people don’t have any particular problem; they just want to enhance themselves. They want better luck with money, love, or just want to give their spirit a stronger presence. They walk in the room and you think to yourself, Hmm, this person has something extra. That’s what the mojo bag does. You can use plant roots for that. High John the Conqueror is an old root—that’s the root they sing about in a lot of the older blues songs. I have always sold them, even during years they were hard to get. Some other roots men would sell Little John to Chew and try to pass it off as High John. That’s not right. You’re gonna ruin your reputation for a short dollar.

The first time I ever heard the name of High John spoken out loud, I was a little boy. On Saturdays, all the men would gather under the big shade tree and talk while the women were in one of the houses cooking food. Children would just sit and listen. I remember one of the real old gentlemen talking about how all he needed to straighten his life out was a High John the Conqueror root. If he could just get his hands on one, he would spark some fresh ginger across that root, like flint against steel. Eating that ginger would give him all the power he needed to really get his situation straight. Yes indeed, I am sure it would have, too.

If you're gonna hold onto a root and have it work for you, you need to take care of it. Once you wake up that spirit, you need to give it a name and take care of it like any other living thing. Once a week, you need to dress it. When I say dress, I mean you need to anoint it with the oils. I make different oils for different purposes. You are what you eat, and your root is the same way. You feed it love oil, it is gonna work for love. You dress it with money oil, it is gonna work to bring you money. If you don’t truly believe and dress that root, it is not gonna work at all.

When we make a bag, I put a few roots in there that work together. Cover the whole bunch in magnetic sand and they’ll be are stronger at attracting what you want. People also come here for those fresh buckeye nuts I get from my own tree and dry out here in the shop. Buckeyes have been used as amulets since the Native Americans were the only ones occupying this land. It looks like the eye of a deer, that’s why it’s called a buckeye.

Different roots, different colour bags, it all makes for different results. For the first week, you need to keep the root next to your skin so it becomes part of you, and then keep it in your left front pocket. The colour of the bag is what you go by. Red is love, but pink out-draws the red. I have found that the combination of colours is more powerful. My spirit will tell me if I missed any ingredients. When you start carrying these roots and the love of your life comes along out of nowhere, you gonna be happy you made the investment.

Candles are the same way. I make them for different situations where someone might have put something on you. Had a young lady come here just this morning, she drives around collecting money for an insurance company. One of the customers she collects from is an older woman who took a disliking to her. That old woman knows the roots and has a spirit she works with. She put the spirit on that girl when she handed her the collection money one day. Handed the money to her in a funny way. Twisted the bills so the faces on the money were towards her. Now all that money that is supposed to go to that girl flows to the old woman instead. That young lady came in here this morning telling me she is having money problems. She can’t make or hold onto nothing.

I made her a road opening candle. Took a tall pillar candle and pushed three holes all the way to the bottom of the glass with my screwdriver. Then I poured in three different oils. She is gonna light that at midnight and let it burn until it’s out. She’ll be all straightened out after that. Send that spirit right back where it came from.

A lot of the baths are for protection, so no one can put it on you in the first place. You take the plant mixture, boil it in a pot on the stove, then you pour that in your bathwater. We had one woman come in who had a bad spirit on her. Her husband had a girlfriend that she got in a fist fight with. The girlfriend ran back towards the front porch with a glass of liquid and threw it on the woman’s face. The spirit in that potion turned the lady’s skin all over her body as ugly as a lizard. We made her a special bath. Took a few times, but she broke that spirit and all that demon skin came off right in the bathtub. Floating in the tub like a snake shedding.

I started laying hands, by that I mean praying on people, when I was 14 years old. I’m 83 now. I've been doing public work since I was eight years of age. They would send me in the woods with the other boys to cut wood for paper and put it on the train boxcar. When I made ten years old, I was in charge of throwing the scrap wood off the slab run into the fire pit. That fire was bigger around than this entire room. I worked a lot of different jobs with the wood mill. I did muscle jobs because I felt I was supposed to, but all this time, voices were coming down asking me, “How long are you gonna run from the gift that God gave you?” I already knew the medicine from my mother. She was a healer in our community and a hard-praying woman. You couldn’t change her from believing in God no kind of way. People started coming to me because they knew I could lay hands like my mother did.

Once I got a little older, the boss man would always ask me about the medicine. Then he would go to his white church and tell them what I said. Then he started asking me to come to his church and teach those folks about the medicine. I didn’t want to do that. At the time, I was running around all over, so I didn’t really have time. Part of me kept running from the call. I kept running until I died. Yes indeed, it took dying to get me on my proper track in life.

I was driving a truck with a ton of steel in the back. Driving down a curvy road and took the curve too hard and crashed into a tree. All that steel shot into the cab, breaking 67 of my bones and busting my liver. It wedged me. It crushed me. It was a bad wreck. Only a divine God can do something like that. Right before I crashed, I called out, “Lord save me.”

An angel grabbed my spirit from the body and took me to a high mountain. Everything there was crystal clear. There was a round ball there. The angel went up top and just stood there.

“Walk up under my right wing. I am gonna show you where Jesus is,” he said.

If you could hear this angel’s voice, it would have shook you to death. He took me to the 12 foundations. It was kind of like 12 floors of a building, but they were open so you could see inside. Little small angels were in these squares and there were bigger angels teaching the little ones. My angel had me stand on the ball with him, and pushed me up in the air with a big gust from those wings. I went past all the 12 floors. He sent me up to what I call the 13th Floor.

And there was Jesus. He was facing a large arched door. He was speaking words, and they were falling out of his mouth. The words became rolling balls of fire going right out through the door. I could see through his skin and instead of blood in his veins like we have, he had fire coursing through his arms and legs. And that belly of his didn’t have guts or nothing, it was a stomach filled with fire. I looked down to see who he was ministering to. You look down and you couldn’t even see the Earth. I just saw lighting striking in the darkness. That lightning from Jesus’s fire was moving all around the world.

I hollered at him, “Lord Jesus, please don’t send me back.” He told me I had to go back and do what I was supposed to do. I have a brother who grew up and became a bluesman. Me, I stayed in Mississippi and became a roots man.

I still lay hands on people. They come here when the doctor can’t fix the problem. They come when they have no other hope.

Every spirit wants to ascend to heaven, or whatever we call it. They want to reach that next foundation. If they lived with that evil, when they die then they just hang around with nowhere to go. These are bad spirits that living people deal with. They will send them after someone they don’t like. They are gonna infect you with that spirit through some bad food or a drink or something else that you touch. That demon is gonna be in your body growing like a baby in your belly. You are gonna get sicker and weaker and when that demon is ready to be born, that’s when you die and the spirit comes out and does it again to someone else. I pulled out a lot of demons. People get so high off the spirit it looks like the skeleton might pull right through the victim’s skin, but we get it out. It's like driving nails with a hammer.

Some people see the demon when it comes out and others don’t. You are better off not seeing it. These demons are about the most god-awful looking things you can imagine. When I pull a demon out, they see me and think I am one of them and want me to come with them and teach them. I had people brought to me hours after death. God told me what to do and how to do it. I pray so hard that when I put my hands on that cold body it jumps with electricity. I have a daughter who has the same gift. She is gonna keep this tradition going. People are still practicing these things I do, but they do it differently now. But if you don’t believe in the old ways, the same power isn’t there.

It’s certainly not something to play with. There are a lot of bad spirits in the world with nothing to do. If you go to the crossroads and make a deal, they might help you for awhile, but after seven years they want you to work for them. And you’ll never be able to do what they ask you to do. Then they are going to kill you, and you won’t be able to ascend nowhere. You’ll be just like them. Stuck.

Playing with bad potions is always gonna come back to you. It’s better to live in the light.

Follow Justin Fornal on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Sorry, Getting Fucked Up When You're Ill Does Not Cure You

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Everyone has a friend who claims that going out and getting on it is the perfect cure for feeling less than 100 percent. The "Miracle of the Sesh" is a topic discussed in smoking areas, on couches at the afters, in Reddit forums and on Facebook harm reduction groups, the general idea being that lots of alcohol and drugs can somehow rid your body of a cold or flu. That you might wake up the following day feeling shitty, but, importantly, no longer actually ill.

I asked users of one Facebook group what they thought of the idea and got varied responses, but a number of them had only positive things to say:

"I've been ill as fuck and had a nice line of K and felt right as rain many times."

"Have been multiple times where I’ve gone into a night with a massive cold or something, and it’s sort of vanished??"

"I felt so shit before a sesh, had been ill for days and got invited to a mate's. Neck a couple of magic beans and I felt right as rain. The powers of the sesh."

But does getting fucked up really do anything other than prolong the inevitable? Surely battering your body with various poisons is only going to make you feel massively worse in the long-run.

The doctors of 200 years ago might disagree. Laudanum – opium mixed with wine or water – has been called the "aspirin of the 19th century" and was used in Victorian England to sort out all sorts of illnesses, from coughs to sleeplessness. Heroin was once marketed in place of morphine for pain relief, and between the 1880s and 1920s pharmacists advised using cocaine to relieve vomiting in pregnancy and toothache. Your nan might have even recommended you drink a hot toddy or three when you've felt under the weather.

Of course, medicine has come on a bit since we stopped sending orphans up chimneys. But some of the recreational drug users I spoke to didn't completely rule out the idea that very bad stuff could, in fact, be good for you. There was certainly a vague idea that drugs will "clear out" your system.


WATCH:


"I once had a cough for nearly four weeks, got on pills and it disappeared," said April*. "Similar things have happened since (if I'm bunged up it seems to 'clear me out'), always wondered if anyone else had had this!"

"I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence especially about spending time with a female friend called Mandy, where if you have a cold, then her companionship for the evening means that the next day you feel a lot better," said Kelly* of the apparently restorative effects of MDMA. "Also, many things give you energy and make you less tired, so while you're involved with them you can feel better."

"I think it really depends on the person," said Ben*. "Because stimulants like MD can raise body temperatures, and usually that's what kills off viruses and whatnot when your body is trying to recover. It can be a double-edged sword, because it can run a course on your immune system recovering from what the drugs did. I can't say something like that has made me feel better. I got sick and stayed sick when I used MD."

Many others pointed out that it's not that drugs and alcohol cure you, obviously; it's that they just temporarily make you not care about your illness.

"What goes up must come down, in my view, depending on the substance," said a moderator of a harm reduction Facebook group. "Some can make you feel better temporarily – an example could be someone is feeling groggy and tired from being ill, and so does a line [of cocaine] and feels better for a few hours due to the alertness, only to feel worse than before when they inevitably come down. The same can be said for weed, opioids and others."

Thing is, these were all just theories based on anecdotal evidence. I needed a professional opinion.

That professional, Henry Fisher, Policy Director at Volteface – a policy innovation hub that explores alternatives to current public policies relating to drugs – basically just laughed when I rang him up to ask about the Miracle of the Sesh. He was, unsurprisingly, ready to debunk the idea.

When it comes to cocaine, he said, there’s no way drug use would stave off a cold or cure it. "It’s a vasoconstrictor, which means it might open up your airwaves to some extent and help you to breathe, but it’s going be a very minor and temporary fix to a bigger problem, because you’re staying up later, your body is exhausted and you’re not fighting the infection properly," he said. "If you’re taking stimulants like cocaine, you’re less likely to eat, so you might not eat as much food, and when you’re ill it's important to eat and drink proper fluids."

When it comes to MDMA, Fisher believes the "sweating out the illness" idea is a bit of an "old wives' tale". "If you have the flu or something, you’re already uncomfortable and sweating anyway," he pointed out. "Being hotter isn't necessarily helpful to you. If you’re in a hot, sweaty club or rave and you’re already feeling under the weather because you’re ill, you’re going to be even more susceptible to picking up other bugs because you’re surrounded by others, so if anything you’re going to compound the problem."

Let's also not forget the framework surrounding a night out: "It might be warm when you’re on your night out, but when you’re on your way or coming home, if it's 3AM and you’re sweaty, you’re going to get cold very quickly and be really vulnerable."

While you might think this is pretty obvious – drugs plus illness equals a world of pain – Henry says many of the same arguments apply to alcohol, too" "It might make you fall asleep or be more relaxed, which a lot of people struggle with when they’re ill and they’ve been in bed all day, [but] alcohol is certainly not going to help you fight any infection."

Photo: VICE

So where does this miracle myth – which, think about it, is truly stupid – stem from? Henry suggests that, firstly, coincidence plays a role – "a lot of colds and flus only last a couple of days anyway, so by the time you’re going out you’re likely on the mend" – and, secondly, that the psychology of the sesh could fool you into thinking you're getting better: "If you do something like go out, that might cheer you up, and that could make you feel better when you’re not."

Often this would only be short-term, obviously. Endorphins and drugs in your system only last so long, before you have to deal with psychological, emotional and physical effects of your night out.

"It's all masking the fact you're ill, so you’re less likely to eat fruit and veg and take on fluids," said Henry. "It comes down to three factors [when you’re going out]: you’re not resting, eating properly or drinking water, all of which are needed to fight any kind of illness, whether it’s flu or a chest infection."

So there you have it: the Miracle of the Sesh, predictably, is bullshit. Going out when you're ill is, ultimately, only going to make you feel much, much worse.

@hannahrosewens

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

What Happened the Day ICE Knocked on My Door

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This article was published in collaboration with the Marshall Project.

It began like any other spring day. I woke up in my apartment in Queens and went about my daily ritual of preparing a batch of coffee and watching the morning news. Then my plan was to wake up my daughters and get them ready for school.

The sun was shining and so was my spirit, because I was just one week away from completing my master’s degree in social work. I had meticulously planned every step toward obtaining it, ever since I had been incarcerated. That included working at various nonprofits, as both an intern and an employee, in addition to my schoolwork.

I was so close I could taste it. This would be the fulfillment of a promise I had made to myself about changing my legacy to reflect who I really was: a person who, despite having been incarcerated, had potential.

But when the doorbell rang at 7 AM, it was Immigration and Customs Enforcement waiting on the other side of the door.



“Good morning,” one officer said. “We’re conducting an investigation and would like to come in, to ask you a few questions.”

“Couldn’t I answer the questions here?” I asked, standing in the doorway.

“It would be easier if we asked you privately.”

The agents resembled local law enforcement in their dress and demeanor—at first, I could’ve sworn they were NYPD. They were armed and wearing bullet-proof vests, but I didn’t have anything to hide, I thought, so I let them in.

Once they entered my living room, where my wife and I sat on the couch, the men told me the real reason for their visit. They were there to arrest me, based on my criminal conviction from over a decade ago: a robbery I committed at age 20 and had already served my time for. Coupled with the fact that I was a legal permanent resident— I’m from Guyana originally but have lived in Queens with my family since I was a toddler—this made me eligible for deportation proceedings.

My heart stopped. The terror and fear that overcame me were deafening. I was unable to comprehend what they were saying. I could only see their mouths moving. I felt sick to my stomach and couldn’t stand.

I eventually composed myself enough to hear them say that I was going to be presented to an immigration judge, who would make a decision on my case.

The only thing I could say to respond was, “How long is this going to take? I have class tonight.”

They told me I’d be home by the end of the day.


By that night, I was at a jail in Kearny, New Jersey, all alone in a double-bunk cell with no idea of what was going to happen next.

Jail cells have a distinct smell. Bleach and concrete, mixed with dirty mop-head. The odor that night brought me right back to the maximum-security prison where I had originally served my sentence.

I also couldn’t stop thinking of my daughters. They had never been separated from me, and I couldn’t imagine what they were going through.

My wife, too. She woke up that day in a two-parent household but had gone to sleep as the single caretaker of two little girls. I had promised never to leave her and my daughters, and here I was, breaking that vow because of a bad decision I had made as a very different person, at a very different time in my life.

Instead of being back at home within a day, that night was the first of a five-month odyssey through the immigration detention system.

The intake housing unit I found myself in was bitter cold; they called this place “the freezer.” It was May, but people were wearing long johns and were covered in blankets because the air-conditioning was kept at chilling temperatures.

The food was horrible. There is not a jail or prison in the country where it’s good, but the first meal I had there after being out for four years was absolutely disgusting. It was “oatmeal.”

If you’ve ever had bad, re-microwaved oatmeal, multiply that experience by one thousand, and you still probably can’t fully appreciate how gross this was. Breakfast was served at 5:30 AM, and all I could think was, Yesterday at this time I was in my own house, with my family, sleeping.

I’m naturally drawn to people. I want to learn about them, about their history, their culture, their stories, their struggles. But in jail you can’t allow yourself to be open. It was hard enough for me to accept that I was not just incarcerated, but re-incarcerated. I couldn’t bring myself to embrace the experience by telling the other people there I wanted to learn about them.

I remember the calls with my daughters. My youngest was no more than three years old, and every time she would get on the phone with me, she’d ask, “Daddy, when are you coming home?”

My wife had done the most humane thing she believed she could do, which was to tell them that I’d gone on a business trip. In a child’s mind, when you choose to leave home, you can also choose to return.

And so my youngest daughter wanted to know when I was going to choose to return to them. I didn’t know what the outcome was going to be; all I knew was that there was a high likelihood that I wouldn’t be coming home to her and that what she was suffering through was going to become her entire life.


But then, after many months, and with little explanation, I was released.

The day I left immigration detention, I remember being awakened early in the morning and getting told simply to pack all of my stuff. The officer didn’t know where I was going. It was 3:30 AM.

By 6 AM, after a bus ride, I was in the courthouse.

By 11 AM, I was released into the custody of my family.

The first person who greeted me was my older daughter, who ran to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me as hard as a seven-year-old can squeeze anyone. I told her that I was sorry—sorry that I had left her, sorry that I had caused her so much pain.

She looked me in the eyes and said, “Daddy, that’s okay. I always knew you’d be coming home.”

When I think back on my time in immigration detention, I think of how much heartache incarcerating someone temporarily but indefinitely, and with so little clarity, can cause them and their family. I was very fortunate to have a tremendous amount of legal and community support that ultimately gave me the opportunity to be released. And in 2014, Gov. Andrew Cuomo granted me an executive pardon to prevent my deportation, which is exceedingly rare in these kinds of cases.

But I am devastated by the fact that there were other people out there, people just like me—and just like you—who won’t get the same outcome.

Khalil A. Cumberbatch is Associate Vice President of Policy at the Fortune Society, a reentry organization based in New York City. He previously served as Manager of Training at JustLeadershipUSA, a nonprofit dedicated to cutting the US correctional population in half by the year 2030. He is also a lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.


Logan Paul Is on an Apology Tour and No One Is Having It

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Now that YouTuber Logan Paul has gotten himself kicked off of the platform, he's wormed his way back on camera to embark on an apology tour. He kicked it off on Good Morning America to explain why he edited and uploaded a video of him and his friends finding the body of someone who committed suicide in Japan's Aokigahara Forest.

On Thursday's Desus & Mero, the hosts roasted the lukewarm apology from the content maker who, even with a torpedoed career, still has more money than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes.

You can watch the latest episode Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

A Guide for Who to Root for in This Weekend's Super Bowl

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This article originally appeared on VICE Sports

Every year, those of us who are fans of the loser teams not playing on Super Bowl Sunday prefer to have an easily identifiable villain to root against and an underdog hero we can pin our hopes on.

Last year, it was easy, as the beautiful Atlanta Falcons dominated the vile Patriots for two-and-a-half quarters before proceeding to puke all over themselves and fall into quicksand while trying to hold up their sagging pants.

The decision this year – between the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles – is much more difficult.

That’s why I’m here, to break down everything about the teams and help you choose who to root for during those three hours. Patriots? Eagles? Let’s look at this logically and solve the riddle of Super Bowl LII.

QUARTERBACKS: Tom Brady vs. Nick Foles

Brady: He was brought into existence in 2001 when a scientist stuffed a football into a jar of mayonnaise and buried it in radioactive waste. While some people can be stupid in a charming way, Brady’s idiocy is more dangerous. He’s Forrest Gump if, instead of chocolates and running, Forrest enjoyed highly expensive potions that give sick people false hope and cheating at football with near total impunity. Brady has so completely shed his human form that he can’t answer a simple question about which Kendrick Lamar songs he likes after saying he likes Kendrick Lamar.

Foles: No idea. Is he lefty? "Nick Foles" sounds less like a quarterback and more like a strategy created by evil hunters. He’s blond, I think. Who is the last blond quarterback to win a Super Bowl? John Elway? That was like 20 years ago. Foles would have to be the blondest since Terry Bradshaw, right? He probably can’t name a Kendrick Lamar song, either.

Advantage: Push

COACHES: Bill Belichick vs. Doug Pederson

Belichick: He’s cold, calculating and ruthlessly efficient at cheating. If they ever make a Horrible Bosses 3, he needs to be a character that’s stalked by Tiquan Underwood. This guy either dresses like he just got done with a three-hour biceps session at the YMCA or he’s travelling back in time to participate in prohibition. He’s a man of few words where the media is concerned because he prefers to save them for love letters to Donald Trump.

Pederson: Wasn’t this the name that Cameron Frye is always using in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? "Doug Pederson, Chicago PD!" Before becoming head coach in Philadelphia, he spent three seasons in Kansas City as offensive coordinator and guided the Chiefs to no better than 21st in total offense in his time there. Don’t you dare say the NFL isn’t a meritocracy! He got a Super Bowl ring as holder with the Packers in 1997, which is like telling people you won an Oscar for Saving Private Ryan because you played a corpse on the beach.

Advantage: Push

CHAIN RESTAURANTS: Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Wawa

Dunkin’ Donuts: Bostonians’ years of defending the watered-down piss coffee they serve turned out to be great practice for defending an indefensible football team. "There’s something about the Dunkies in Boston that’s just different!" No, there isn’t. Someone in 1948 spilled sewer water into a coffee machine in Quincy and nobody had the heart to say they were serving garbage juice. This would be the perfect #brand partnership for Brady if he didn’t think coffee beans contained ligament fibre thetans or some shit.

Wawa: It’s a 7-11 that’s not self-aware enough to realise it’s just a place to get beef jerky on a road trip or a pre-cooked hot dog when you’re drunk. Wawa is to Philadelphians what music is to people when they’re teenagers – it was there in your formative years so you think it’s better than it actually is. "Oh, but they make sandwiches!" Holy shit, sandwiches? Can you get sandwiches anywhere else in the world? It’s a fancy rest stop named for how babies say water. Get lost.

Advantage: Push

RECENT HISTORY: Patriots vs. Eagles

Patriots: This is the Patriots’ eighth Super Bowl appearance since 2002. The Patriots have won no fewer than nine regular-season games since 2001 and have a record of 209-63 over that time. With Belichick and Brady at the helm, the Patriots have become the model franchise across all sports.

Eagles: Donovan McNabb puked on the field during a Super Bowl. From 2001 to 2003, the Eagles lost three straight NFC title games, the last two occurring at home. When they finally got to the Super Bowl in 2004, they lost to the Patriots. They would go on to lose one more NFC title game in 2008, which makes them a less successful version of those Buffalo Bills teams that lost four straight Super Bowls.

Advantage: Push

FOLLOWING RULES: Cheating vs. Not Cheating

Cheating: The Patriots have been caught cheating on two occasions, Spygate and Deflategate. It’s doubtful a team with a history of cheating only cheated twice, so we will likely never know the full breadth of the Patriots’ cheating, but it’s probably wild. If you told me Belichick would get nude and oil himself up so he could slide in air ducts above the visiting team’s locker room with a recording device, I would believe you and hate you for making me picture that image.

Not cheating: The beauty of being a franchise without a Super Bowl is there’s no way anyone can accuse you of cheating. Or trying. Or being good. Man, maybe cheat a little, huh? That town needs it.

Advantage: Push

FANS: Insufferable Pricks vs. Volatile Assholes

Insufferable pricks: The one thing I truly appreciate about the douchebag core of Patriots fans is their unapologetic nature. "Everyone fucking hates you!" "Good. I don’t give a shit. Go Pats." You have to respect it. There’s never any, "Not all Patriots fans are like that!" nonsense. They know the team cheats and the players and coach are trash, but all the winning is so orgasmic they go with it. Bill Simmons is a 50-year-old man who probably has a "hate us because they ain’t us" tattoo on his calf, and it’s damn admirable.

Volatile idiots: Now, with Eagles fans, you never know. You could wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game and either engage in witty ribbing and banter with good-natured fans or have your throat slit while waiting to buy a beer. And unlike with Patriots fans, there are still Eagles fans who play the "every city has bad fans" card. Sure. Every city has people who intentionally puke on children, throw batteries at players, punch police horses, craft large signs that say "FUCK MILLIE" because 100-year-old people should eat shit too, throw snowballs at Santa Claus, boo the franchise’s best quarterback when he was drafted, cheer because Michael Irvin may be potentially paralysed on the field, throw a beer bottle at the best first baseman in franchise history, or climb into a penalty box to fight Tie Domi. You’ll find all that in every sports town, absolutely.

Advantage: Push

TELEVISION SHOWS: Cheers vs. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Cheers: Really funny show about 1980s people in Boston who don’t care about anyone but themselves, hanging out in bar. It stars Rhea Perlman, who is married to Danny DeVito.

It’s Always Sunny: Really funny show about 2000s people in Philadelphia who don’t care about anyone but themselves, hanging out in bar. It stars Danny DeVito, who is married to Rhea Perlman.

Wait, should I be writing a TV show about a bar in … New York?

Advantage: Push

MOST FAMOUS FAN: Mark Wahlberg vs. Mark Wahlberg

Seriously, this moron from Boston says he doesn’t care who wins this year! Why? Because not only is "Come Awn Come Awn Feel It Feel It" a huge Pats bro, he once portrayed some shitty player who only made the Eagles roster because the team was so damn shitty.

Can you imagine this idiot being asked about global warming? "I’m really rooting for humans to survive climate change, but I was in a movie where trees and plants killed people, so I’ve got a special place in my heart for leaves. I’ll be happy no matter who wins."

Advantage: Push

It turns out the lesson here is don’t root for anyone. Don’t even watch the game.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

The VICE Morning Bulletin

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Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Trump Goes After His Own Law Enforcement Officials (Again)
The president went back on the offensive Friday morning ahead of the expected release of a controversial anti-FBI memo, claiming on Twitter that the FBI and Justice Department “have politicized the sacred investigative process in favour of Democrats and against Republicans.” Former FBI director James Comey backed the bureau for “speaking up” against the release. He said “weasels and liars never hold the field.”—VICE News/CNN

Donald Trump Jr. Implies Andrew McCabe Was Fired
The president’s son suggested the former deputy director of the FBI was dismissed, despite White House attempts to distance the administration from word of his official resignation earlier this week. In a Thursday tweet, Trump Jr. said the furor over the memo on FBI surveillance was “good enough to fire McCabe” and “big enough to fire a senior official a month before retirement.”—The Hill

US Airstrikes in Yemen Spike
The US military hit the war-torn Arab country with at least 131 airstrikes in 2017—six times as many strikes carried out in the final year of Obama's presidency. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and ISIS militants were said to be the primary targets. The Pentagon also confirmed there was “a small amount of US personnel in Yemen.”—NBC News

12-Year-Old Girl Booked After School Shooting
Los Angeles police took an unidentified girl into custody after a shooting at Salvadore Castro Middle School on Thursday morning left at least five people hurt. She was booked on suspicion of negligent discharge of a gun. One 15-year-old boy was reportedly in stable condition with a head wound, while a 15-year-old girl was said to be in “fair” condition after being shot in the wrist.—VICE News/AP/LA Times

International News

Roughly 90 Migrants Possibly Drowned in the Mediterranean
A boat carrying dozens of migrants capsized off the coast of Libya Friday morning, with ten bodies discovered on shore. The International Organization for Migration said survivors indicated most passengers had been from Pakistan and gave “an estimate of 90 people who drowned during the capsize.”—Reuters

Hundreds of Trapped Mine Workers Saved in South Africa
More than 900 workers stuck underground at a Free State province gold mine during a power outage Wednesday night were freed Friday morning. The company running the mine said the miners would get medical checks, while the union said corporate management was “doing far too little to prevent accidents.”—The Guardian

Five Immigrants Shot in French City of Calais
A shooting during a fight between Afghan and Eritrean immigrants left five people hospitalized with bullet wounds in northern France. Around 100 Eritreans and 30 Afghans were reportedly involved in a two-hour battle after clashing in a line for food in southern Calais.—BBC News

Fidel Castro’s Son Commits Suicide
Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, the oldest son of Cuba’s late former communist leader Fidel Castro, has taken his own life at the age of 68, according to state media. Cubadebate said Castro Diaz-Balart, also known as “Little Fidel,” had previously been treated by doctors while in a “deeply depressed state.”—AP

Everything Else

Robert Wagner Named Person of Interest in Natalie Wood's Death
Investigators want to talk to the 87-year-old actor about the woman's fatal drowning in 1981. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s office declared the death of Wagner’s wife “suspicious.” A statement from the sheriff’s office revealed “we have witness statements that portray a new sequence of events on the boat that night.”—CBS News

Recording Academy Creates 'Female Advancement' Task Force
Widely criticized for saying female artists needed to “step up,” Recording Academy boss Neil Portnow has announced a new advisory panel for the Grammys. Portnow said the task force would try to address “explicit barriers and unconscious biases."—Variety

Kanye and Solange Sued for Alleged Copyright Breach
Prince Phillip Mitchell has reportedly filed a lawsuit claiming both artists infringed copyright by using his track “If We Can’t Be Lovers.” Mitchell is given a co-writing credit on Kanye’s song “Everything I Am” and Solange’s “Fuck the Industry."—Pitchfork

Fire Department Responds to 'Game of Thrones' Set
A blaze filmed for the final season of the HBO show was so big residents in Northern Ireland called the local fire department. Facebook user Steven McAuley shared footage of the flames, with one fan site claiming the scene involved Winterfell.—VICE

Cryptocurrencies Tank by $100 Billion in a Day
The huge sum got wiped off the digital currency market in a 24-hour period, part of a $400 billion drop over the past six weeks. Bitcoin dropped 14 percent Thursday, falling to $8,100—its lowest price in more than two months.—VICE News

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we're talking about a virtual reality experience that might make you less afraid to die.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

I Bar Crawled King Street to Find the Truth

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Things are dire on Toronto’s King Street. The city’s King Street Pilot Project, which eliminated parking and through traffic on the major street in a bid to improve transit, has turned Toronto’s Entertainment district, home to Canada’s Walk of Fame (shout out to illustrious Canadians Corey Hart and Will from Will and Grace), AHL versions of big-time Broadway plays and clubs that seem like they were designed according to a dying cologne model’s final wishes, into a ghost town.

Of course, this is according a number of local restaurant owners who have been super vocal in their criticism of the project and super into creating “edgy” ice sculptures promising to “Make King Street Great Again” or telling you to fuck yourself.

According to local business owners, the project has devastated business, turning a bustling nightlife into a desolate graveyard haunted by ghouls and patrons of Wayne Gretzky’s restaurant. The criticism has been led by Kit Kat Bar and Grill owner Al Carbone, whose name is the most sandwich-sounding name I’ve ever heard. Carbone was the mastermind behind a series of giant, ice middle fingers facing streetward erected throughout the neighbourhood, in a stunt best described as Banksy if Banksy was actually Robert De Niro from Casino. Carbone claims the gesture was directed at Mayor John Tory but passing streetcar passengers couldn’t help but think they were the intended targets.

I am one of those passengers. I take the King streetcar frequently and am Pro Pilot. It feels as if trips have gotten quicker (and the data says that’s very, very true) and more reliable. In fact, the project might be too successful since the streetcar rides are so packed you feel like a servant being buried alive with your dying, mad king. There is also a giddiness at seeing decisive urban planning that doesn’t cater to the crazed bloodlust of the automobile owner. Perhaps this is the first step in transforming Toronto into the liberal wonderland it promises to be; with efficient, gleaming transit and co-working office spaces for every citizen whose merit is approved by our unbiased overlords at Alphabet Inc.

I am also permanently skeptical of the apocalyptic concerns of the small business owner. For some business owners, any deviation from status-quo, no matter how slight, will lead to absolute destruction. Theirs has always been a desperate worldview, built on the fear and anxiety of knowing that your profligate spending on fancy napkins will lead to yours and your family’s ruin.

Still I don’t really want to see people lose their jobs, so I wanted to find out if this vulgar cry for help is justified or if it’s a product of the permanent, paranoid victim mindset of the small-business owning conservative. The appearance of future failed PC leadership candidate Doug Ford in the thick of things did not reduce my suspicions that this was merely another edition of urban/suburban culture war that dominates Toronto’s politics.

I knew there was only one way to solve this municipal crisis: I would have to do a bar crawl on King Street and investigate the matter for myself, one “what’s your cheapest beer” beer at a time.

630 PM, The Office Pub

Mack, a VICE employee who offered to shoot the evening because it involved alcohol, and I meet at The Office Pub at 6:30 PM, one the bars where an icy, middle finger was proudly extended. As one of the pubs that has had a variety of stand-up open mics running on its second floor like some kind of Gothic novel secret, it was a both a warm, familiar place to begin my journey into the bacchanalia of Friday night on King Street and a location where I could compare how busy it was to my previous visits. The bar, which is actually located a just north of King, had the usual amount of softly-bro dudes out looking for a beer commercial plot to call a life. Not packed but also not more dire than I’ve seen it before. Charming in the way an unexpected belch from a reserved friend is, I think as long as food costs are kept low The Office Pub will be fine until it’s torn down to make room for a condo.

We finished a pint each and headed down to the King and John intersection, where the glamour of the Toronto International Film Festival headquarters/cinema and condo faces off against a strip of tourist-trap restaurants, led by Kit Kat and Carbone, in a race for solvency. We are hungry and there on the southwest corner is a man giving out samples of sushi on the street, which is, God bless him, undoubtedly the grossest food to give out as free samples.

7ish, Maki My Way

The man is Rob, proud proprietor of Maki My Way, a sushi restaurant where the hook is you can design your own roll. Rob, who is an adorably genuine, candid and sweet man, informs us that he came up with the idea after repeatedly annoying sushi chefs with his own substitutions and that he had been given the stamp of approval sought by all outside-the-box-thinking small-business owners—an appearance on Dragon’s Den.

His cuddly friendliness cannot be overstated. He bustled to and fro with trays of free sushi, whistling along to Peter Gabriel before enthusiastically explaining to us how the menu works. After Mack designed a truly horrendous tasting sushi experience, picking cream cheese as a topping in what I can only describe as an act of self-harm, Rob offered a free roll to replace the grotesque experiment my compatriots’ hubris had designed. Which, while incredibly friendly, I feel like letting people design their own sushi and then replacing it when they inevitable fuck-up might not be that hot of business idea. (I can’t bear to tell Rob this, however.)

That said, my deliciously designed roll of tilapia, pineapple, and tempura sweet-potato, on the other hand, would have given Jiro himself pause.

Despite how admittedly foolish I find the idea of his business, Rob won me over. Fuck the TTC, I’m rooting for him, I don’t care if I have to tear this whole city to the ground and exile every member of Broken Social Scene to Brampton, we need this comically inept idea of a sushi restaurant to succeed.

830pm, Kit Kat Italian Bar and Grill

Next we moved to the rebel headquarters itself: Kit Kat Italian Bar and Grill. Outside, the ice middle finger had been replaced by two warped thumbs up, which as of this writing have been replaced again by Trump-inspired ice sculpture asking us to “Make King Great Again.” Kit Kat understands that the content gods are always voracious and must constantly be fed and is happy to provide. We saddled up to the bar, and despite there being a Raptors game on, the TV above the bar is filled with the luminous visage of Guy Fieri. Perfect.

For the past 27 years, Kit Kat has been whipping up pasta dishes that your grandmother who is afraid of the GO Bus station would love, and over that time has acquired a certain amount of charm. The walls are littered with thousands of pieces of kitschy wood sculptures, hand painted pictures of eggplants, and pictures of the owner with various celebs including Shania Twain and legendary improv maestro Ryan Stiles. Considering that every new place on King is all smooth lines and sterile aesthetics it was refreshing to be in a place that resembles live-action version of Uncle Moe’s Family Feedbag. There is even a damn tree that you can make a wish on.

Speaking of the owner, it should be noted that the king himself was in the building. Carbone holds court at the front of the restaurant like Artie Bucco greeting Tony Soprano, welcoming regulars who come in offering support and receiving signed posters in exchange. It isn’t long before he spots the camera and plods over to us. Immediately he presented us with and crowed over the fact that he was the subject of The Star’s editorial cartoon of the day. He then proceeded to emphasize how the project has turned the neighbourhood into a “ghetto” and how, while his stunts have helped his business, his neighbour’s business remains “soft.”

If Rob was my tender-hearted ideal of a small business owner, Carbone is the other side. A shameless huckster, Carbone is a trope we have all become too familiar with over the past year; the greedy, loud-mouthed businessman who carelessly shoves his way into debates without an ounce of data, nominally on the side of ignored “little guy” while hoovering up all the glory he can. Classic improviser Ryan Stiles would be ashamed of the way this guy hogs the spotlight for his own ends.

Much better was our bartender. I trusted her, she was dependable and I felt we had a blue-collar connection given our restaurant industry backgrounds. She was adamant that sales from the past December were down thirty percent compared to last year’s. Worse for her was that their regulars, the kind that would wrack up big bills, had been scared away by the “chaos” of driving on King Street, and the people coming in, she scoffed, “Were not real diners.” (OK, I do have to wonder about your business model if you are relying on suburb clientele when you are located in the densest part of the city.) Anyhoo, to emphasize her point, immediately after saying this, she had to ID three clubland kids who came in looking for underage drinking but were kicked them out after they only asked for water.

While, I found her insistence that the streetcar users who thought the middle finger was directed at them were the immature ones, hilarious, her description of the restaurant’s plight was convincing. The numbers are down, the customers are changing. And she was adamantly not anti-transit, she just wants a compromise, take the cars off the road during rush hour, sure, but at night and the afternoon bring on the Fury Road.

930PM? N’Awlins Jazz Bar and Dining

These messages stayed consistent throughout our increasingly fuzzy evening: drivers are intimidated, numbers are down and there should be a compromise. We heard that at N’Awlins Jazz Bar and Dining, which was actually packed and fun and you should definitely check out if you ever wanted to know what a jazz bar on a space station that is never intended to return to earth would be like. According to the host of the USS Jazz, while Friday and Saturdays have been regular, the daytime has seen a drop and, again, no one there is against transit but they hope for a sweet, sweet compromise. Perhaps the hopelessness that the businesses along the strip are feeling was best expressed by the bartender at The Red Tomato when she informed us the bar was closed tonight with a very ominous and potentially prescient, “You are witnessing the death rattle.”

1030PM, Peacock Bar

Our next stop was at Peacock Bar, a cramped (in a good way!) club, with table top hockey and an aesthetic that can best be described as Graffitti: A History, certainly, if not death rattling, had a nasty cough. It was pretty dead in there and according to the cool-as-fuck bartender Timothy, he had noticed business had gone down, and like Kit Kat, less regulars were frequenting. Timothy, who lived in the neighbourhood, was also unnerved that, “To me, to know I can jaywalk with my eyes closed...it’s scary.”

After promising that we’d come back later on to see if the bar had filled in, we head outside again to see how jaywalkable the street was. The answer is given to us by the grizzled bouncer of Peacock Bar, Rick. He pointed out to us that around this time drivers could give a fuck about the law and as if on cue a line of cars just rolled straight through the intersection. A bike cop I interviewed confirmed Rick’s observation stating that on weekend nights he could give out thousands of tickets and that it would take hundreds of cops to enforce the bylaws.

11PM, Somewhere on King Street

By this time, it’s 11PM and the idea of King Street as a ghost town seemed more and more preposterous. This is not to disagree with the bouncer at Everleigh who stated how the bylaw has affected business, “People used to pull up in their car in front of the club, hop out have a couple and drinks and then get back in the car.” (Note: He meant this as a criticism of the pilot project but I think it may actually be a pretty good reason for it.) But when you are on King in the club area between Spadina and Bathurst the first thought that comes to mind isn’t, Wow these businesses are fucked, it’s: Oh god, I’m old and hideous and Where do these people come from and where do they work out? and Humanity is a worthless endeavor and I fear for our future.

We stop and talked to some ravenous youth in the gigantic line outside of the douche-tastic Belfast Love, a bar that is a mixture of a classic Irish pub and the blood rave scene from the first Blade. After finding out that they got to the bar in an Uber, I asked them if they were always going to come to King Street (an affirmative yes) and whether or not they thought twice about because of the streetcar pilot project (certainly not).

At another line outside of a club I chatted with three gentleman who disagree about the effectiveness of the project. One, who worked in transit, was a supporter, citing the city’s statistics about improved wait times and speed. The other two, who live in the neighbourhood and drive, talked about how frustrating and confusing driving has become. Then one of the drivers said, “In a city this big, you can’t make any moves without hurting somebody.”

Closing Thoughts, 72 Hours After My Hangover Ended

That’s what was so frustrating about this situation; like all tragedies it is inevitable. Nobody is wrong here. Businesses are being hurt, that is not hyperbole. But it’s not because King Street is turning into a wasteland, it’s because the city is tumbling into a future, haphazardly and awkwardly. Old habits and patterns are being shed to make way for the shiny and new. Where suburb drivers once ventured, young gentrifiers now Uber or walk. Forces of finance, demographics and migration are chewing up the past and even as attempts are made to mitigate issues, worse ones emerge.

King Street is not going to die but it’s never going to return to a time when Kit Kat is the spot where one might catch of glimpse of famed improviser Ryan Stiles. Maybe that’s good, although to be honest, I’m not sure I like the places it is being replaced with. It may be that the alcohol dissolved my brain and left only a beating heart but the bile I had for these opponents of my beloved, utopian transit dreams was replaced by fondness and sympathy. I grieve that we may be turning into a city that does not have the room for a tiny, sweet man giving out fish in the rain who just wants to share his dream of customizable sushi with as many people as possible.

Alas, we did go back to Peacock Bar. There were not more people there. But there was a multitude of free-ish shots resulting in a hangover so bad I think it gave me PTSD. If I learned nothing else from this night, it’s that the King Street Bar Crawl make paupers of us all.

Follow Jordan Foisy on Twitter.

You're About to See 'Hamilton' Star Anthony Ramos Everywhere

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Anthony Ramos’s life may have changed in an instant, but his success wasn’t overnight. After ditching his aspirations to be a professional baseball player, the Brooklyn-born performer found himself on a full-ride scholarship for the theatre program at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. He worked at acting, while simultaneously falling in love with making music. (His debut EP, Freedom, was released last month.)

Then, at age 23, Hamilton happened. Landing the dual roles of John Laurens and Philip Hamilton, Ramos worked with Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the Broadway phenomenon, and it was on the stage that Spike Lee entered his life. He came to the show “literally eight times,” according to Ramos, but there’s more to how he became involved with Lee’s Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It. Calling from his home in Brooklyn, Ramos opened up about the craziest year of his life, the advice Spike gave him, and how he’s trying to find balance while everything around him continues to change.

VICE: 2017 seemed like a landmark year for you. What were the highlights?
Anthony Ramos: Riding the bike down the hill in Brooklyn on my first day on set for She’s Gotta Have It, doing a stunt, and crashing into the camera. Another “Holy shit” moment was, “Holy shit, I’m actually making my record.” I was in the studio, it was sounding like more than I even envisioned in my mind, and I was able to work with some dope people. Also, “Holy shit, I’m doing Godzilla.” “Holy shit, I’m on the set of Will & Grace with all of these actors that have been doing this for so many years.” “Holy shit, I’m working with Lady Gaga.”

How’d you meet Spike?
The first time he came to see Hamilton off-Broadway, we were at the public theater and he was sitting in the second row. It’s the end of the show, we go downstage for curtain call, the audience is clapping, and all we see is Spike clapping really aggressively and pointing. Chris Jackson is to my right and he whispers through the side of his mouth, “He ain’t pointing at me.” Next thing you know, Spike comes onstage after the show and we meet for the first time—very brief, wasn’t anything crazy. A month later I get a phone call and it’s the simplest voicemail I’ve ever received in my life: “Anthony. It’s Spike. Spike Lee. Call me back.” It was wild, dude—five seconds. I call him back and he asks me to meet him at his office at NYU, telling me stories about his life and asking me questions about where I was from. He gave me a DVD of She’s Gotta Have It and then he told me about the project.

What kind of advice has he offered you?
Spike’s a man of very few words, but when he does speak it’s usually profound. He would just always tell me—it’s kind of cliché, and you hear it a lot in elementary school—“be yourself.” But his way of saying it was like, “Ant, do you. Don’t worry about what anybody has to say, don’t worry about what anybody thinks about what you’re doing.” The only thing that matters is how you feel in the moment, and what you think is the right choice in that moment. He was one of the people who pushed me to finish my record. Spike is a person that just does—he doesn’t really talk too much, he just does it and you’re like, “Oh, wow. Yeah, he did that.”

Is it strange to play his role in She’s Gotta Have It 30 years later?
Yeah—I mean, I don’t even know if people wore the bike messenger outfit that thirty years ago. People still wear it, but ain’t nobody really wearing it recreationally out in the street just going to the store. That’s what makes Mars timeless—he’s like this imaginary superhero, so I don’t think it’s weird playing this character 30 years later. He’ll live on forever and evolve as time evolves, you know? It’s dope to be able to reinvent him in 2018. When the rest of the world is gone, I think Mars will be the one that’s still here.

With all that’s happened, are you happier with yourself?
With everything going on, I’m happy—but not because of these things, because I get to do what I love. I get to do simple things like take a vacation with my family. I get to go to Puerto Rico with amazing organizations that are doing incredible work. Am I tired? Yeah, I’m tired. There are sad moments—lonely moments when you’re sitting up in your room all by yourself shooting on location, in Atlanta or Vancouver or LA, and your family’s back home. You can miss home. But I’m not doing it for myself. When I get back home and talk to my family about these experiences and have them be a part of it, that’s what makes me happier. I’m learning how to balance all this shit. You don’t have to do everything and you don’t have to try to be everywhere, be at every party. Money will come and opportunities will come, but the only thing we don’t get back is time.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Murdered Billionaires' Case Takes Yet Another Bizarre Turn

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The murders of a billionaire Toronto couple, Barry and Honey Sherman, took another bizarre turn this week.

Enter Kerry Winter, the disgruntled cousin who spearheaded a lawsuit against the deceased couple over the Sherman’s pharmaceutical empire. Winter claimed in the Toronto Star that his billionaire cousin twice asked him to kill his wife and, for their murders, uses Cocaine Anonymous as an alibi and maintains that his family members' demise was a result of a murder-suicide and not a targeted hit as police state.

The Star reports that Winter came forward to talk because of a court document which indicated that, just a week before his cousins were murdered, ordered Winter and his fellow litigators to pay the Shermans $300,000 in legal fees. The judge in the case ordered the payment on December 6.

On December 13, the Shermans were last seen alive and their bodies were found two days later. Last week police confirmed that the two were found in semi-sitting positions, in their mansions pool area, hanging from belts around their necks secured to a railing. Initial speculation that swirled around the deaths was that it was the result of a murder-suicide but police put that theory to bed and called the deaths “targeted killings.”

Now, back to Winter, the construction manager claims that Sherman asked him to set up the murder of his wife twice in the 1990s but that both times they were pulled back at the last minute. Winter told the Toronto Star that at the time of the alleged request he was on the street, on drugs, and “knew a lot of bad people.”

"He said, 'I want you to whack my wife,'" Winter told the CBC’s Fifth Estate. "I called him and said: 'You know, there's no turning back, Barry, if I push the button.”

Winters added to the Star that he is now six years sober and no longer knows people like that. The disgruntled cousin has not yet been interviewed by police but says he welcomes the opportunity to do so. Police have served 20 warrants in regards to the killings but none are for Winters.

For years now, Winters and other cousins were engaged in a bitter court battle with the Shermans. The litigation revolved around funding provided to the cousins and loans that were rescinded.

For an alibi on the night of the killings, the Star reports that Winters says that he was attending a 12-step program for Cocaine Anonymous when the Shermans were last seen alive and was at work the next day. In between work and the cocaine meeting, Winters said that he watched an episode of Peaky Blinders. That said, he told the CBC that he knows this doesn’t constitute a concrete alibi.

“"Very easy for me to have left work at any time because I'm not on the clock,” he told the CBC. “I could easily have driven over to [the Sherman home] and did the deed.”

"I admit to that, but I didn't, I didn't, and that's why I'm not nervous."

To test his story the CBC decided to conduct a polygraph test—although on advice of his lawyers Winter decided not to be asked about the killings. In the polygraph test regarding the other parts of the story, including the requested hit on honey, the CBC said that an expert concluded Winters was lying.

"I mean, why go through this whole song and dance? That's really the underlying question here,” the expert told the CBC.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.

Let's Face It, You're Watching the Super Bowl This Weekend

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Looking for some stuff to catch up on this weekend? Whether it's TV, movies, books, or anything in between—VICE has you covered, from the best movies and the best TV shows to the best music to listen to and the best art events happening across the US. Read on for our staff recommendations on what to take in during your downtime:

Super Bowl LII

"You can't say the words 'Super Bowl' from now until next Monday," my partner told me at the beginning of this week. That's right—this is a no-football household (I'm also forbidden from saying the word "football," just so you know), and yet I've already made plans to saddle up at a bar on Sunday afternoon and take in the biggest game of all. Why, you might ask? Because mass cultural events are like heroin to my stupid, technology-addled brain, and if I feel left out of even the most banal monocultural monolith, I feel like tearing my fucking hair out. I don't want to even think about what kind of person I'd be in the era of public executions—but given football's history of violence and life-threatening brain injuries, isn't the Super Bowl just the biggest public execution of the year? Anyway, enjoy the commercials. —Larry Fitzmaurice, Senior Culture Editor, Digital

A Fantastic Woman

In my extremely humble opinion, the reason foreign films aren't allowed into open competition for Best Picture at the Academy Awards is because it'd be no contest: For every The Shape of Water, there's a hundred Call Me by Your Names that come out every year—but better, just with subtitles. A Fantastic Woman is that kind of film: sharp, sumptuous, and heartfelt, with a breakout performance by Daniela Vega, Chile's first openly transgender actress and model, and a star-making spectacle from director/co-writer Sebastián Lelio. Don't sleep on this one. —Emerson Rosenthal

What Happened to Monday

One of Netflix’s more ambitious attempts at original filmmaking, Tommy Wirkola’s What Happened to Monday, will leave you feeling equal parts excited and exasperated. The premise—that humankind has exhausted Earth’s resources and has therefore agreed to a brutal yet practical one-child policy—puts the protagonists of the film—seven identical sisters (each performed masterfully by Noomi Rapace)—in a precarious situation. If discovered, all but one of them will be taken by the government and cryogenically frozen until a time comes when the planet can once again sustain the masses. And so the septuplets, raised by their grandfather (Willem Dafoe), assume a singular identity when outside the house. Each child leaves the house one day a week; each child is named after one day of the week. It’s all very clever, and falls firmly in the "Fuck, I wish I thought of that" category. —Patrick Adcroft, Copy Editor/Writer, Snapchat Discover

Crimes of Passion: The Erotic Thriller

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Courtesy of the Everett Collection, via Quad Cinema

In the way that the act of peering through a camera is voyeuristic and the edit is incisively violent, every film is an erotic thriller, some just more than others. Starting this weekend at The Quad in New York City is a series of films lustfully devoted to the darker sides of desire. Genre mainstays like Basic Instinct, Cruel Intentions, and Unfaithful here meet lesser-known and tragically under-appreciated titles including de Palma's manic Body Double, Verhoeven's spiritualist The Fourth Man, and Alan Parker's profoundly unsettling Angel Heart. Come for the mystery, or for the intrigue. Most importantly, come. —ER

Crap: A Beeple Retrospective at New York Media Art Center

For the past 10 years, Mike Winkelmann, a.k.a., Beeple, has made a new artwork every single day, including the days each of his two kids were born and the day he flew his family out to NYC for his first-ever retrospective. His short animations are colourful and mesmerizing, and he gives them away for free on the internet—but the best ones are now on display at the New York Media Art Center's gallery. Beeple's work is well worth the trek to DUMBO, and the view of the city from underneath the Manhattan Bridge ain't bad, either. Crap is on display at the New York Media Art Center through February 28, 2018 —Beckett Mufson

Coin Talk

Bitcoin. It's in the news all of the time and is probably important—but gosh is it hard to understand! Luckily, the hosts of Coin Talk know just what to say. The new project by serial podcast host (and Francis and the Lights co-founder) Aaron Lammer and VICE News's Jay Caspian Kang is billed as a podcast for "crypto-noobs." Refreshingly, Lammer and Kang don't claim to be able to make you any money. In fact, they discourage anyone listening to the show from putting even a cent into crypto. While they're mostly-responsible, they're still fun to hang out with as they pick the brains of internet famous Bitcoin investors and behind-the-scenes crypto players. Coin Talk is a harmless way to scratch the Bitcoin itch without losing the shirt off your back, to learn a few new words, and get a Hatsune Miku-sung theme song stuck in your head. —BM

Under the Influencer

Last year the Brooklyn warehouse rave impresarios RINSED decided to flip the script entirely and create Dynamic Alpine Sexual, or, DAS, a play-cum-live music video about the plight of a professional skier, played to the brows by Jordan Sarah, who just wants to get his mojo back. This weekend, Sarah rejoins the RINSED team for Under The Influencer, or, UTI, a not-so-subtle skewering of the subhuman personalities you hate to love, and love to hate, on social media. The 360º nightlife–theater spectacle only runs for two weekends, so grab your ticket, which includes a complimentary drink and a copy of the score, before you get a bummer case of the FOMOs. —ER

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.


A Math Teacher Quizzed His Students About Coke and Drug Dealers

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Ninth graders are an unruly bunch, more prone to playing Candy Crush than actually paying attention in class. So in an apparent attempt to get a roomful of freshmen students' attention, one teacher in Illinois hit them with a set of math problems he hoped might finally pique their interest in algebra.

"You take 600 mg of cocaine," he scribbled on the board. "Your body filters out 40 percent per hour. How high are you in three hours?"

The impromptu lesson even included some real-world financial planning, teaching the kids how to factor in interest if they need their dealer to front them a sack.

"Unfortunately, you can't pay your dealer, so she sets up a payment," the teacher wrote. "You owe her $1,000 at 25 percent daily. How much do you owe one year later?"

According to KMOV, parents of students at Roxana Senior High School were a little concerned when they found out their kids were getting quizzed about a schedule II narcotic in class.

"We don't need to be teaching children how long it takes to filter cocaine out of their bodies. That is ridiculous," parent Christy Scott told KMOV. "We should be preventing this and not teaching them how to get rid of it."

The school sent out a letter apologizing for Wednesday's lesson plan, and promised that it was "taking the necessary measures to ensure that the damage is repaired."

"Unfortunately, unacceptable examples were used in a high school math class causing some parent and student distress," the school wrote in a statement. "The faculty member has apologized to students and parents for this lapse in judgment and has reiterated the intent was never to promote or make light of illicit drug use."

But considering that today's teens don't really party like they used to, some parents figured that the lesson plan wasn't really all that bad.

"The teacher sent out an email explaining that some of the kids were in la la land, so he used an example that would grab their attention," one parent wrote on Facebook. "His example didn’t glorify, promote, or condone cocaine use. I wish some parents cared more about their kids learning math (arguably the most important subject taught in school) than finding new ways to be offended."

It's not entirely clear whether or not the teacher will be fired for his creative lecture. But when you think about some of the wildly inappropriate shit teachers have done in class, Wednesday's ordeal doesn't seem all that bad. It's not like the guy was openly doing coke in front of his students in class or anything.

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Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Related: High Fifth Graders in New Mexico

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Let's End Flannel as a Lesbian Signifier Once and for All

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Earlier this year, I received this text message: “My friend is on set for a commercial where she plays another woman’s wife. This is the shot she sent me.” The picture attached was of two women, one with loose curls spilling down a basic tee shirt, the other wearing a business casual shag and a flannel shirt. A lesbian couple. Get it?

The wardrobe choice certainly could have been a coincidence, but it’s far more likely it was meant as a strategic wink, one that does the heavy suggestive lifting for a primetime American audience. Above all, I felt it was a haphazard stab at “inclusivity” meant to make the brand look good. But whatever the creative team’s intent, they ended up perpetuating a tired lesbian stereotype—the queer woman in flannel—that I can barely believe has survived all the way to 2018.

According to noted queer author and Slate editor June Thomas, the association between lesbians and flannel likely began at the advent of women’s trousers. Because jeans were once the only acceptable trousers women could wear in public, and lesbians spearheaded the trend, the flannel-and-denim look was a natural fit given how well they coordinate. And besides, there are more important reasons. Flannel is “practical, it’s warm, it’s cheerful, it’s comfortable—like lesbians,” as Thomas put it. “And yes, it is a sensible, durable fabric, and my people are known for their practicality.”

The trend likely peaked in the 90s, and has mostly come and gone since then. The fact that the lesbian flannel stereotype has survived this long and become as strong in the public mind as it has is disheartening. It’s tied with U-Haul trucks and guitar-driven female singer-songwriters as the top lesbian stereotypes. And that bond is so tight that movies, TV and other media still constantly lean on flannel as lesbian shorthand. For more than a quarter century, television and film crews across the country have been thinking to themselves, “How will we let the viewer know that this woman is GAY? Might they need a REMINDER?” By now, I think we’ve got it. Officially speaking, we’re good. Let’s take a cursory look at how deeply the cliché has penetrated our cultural consciousness to judge exactly how far the association has been drilled into our minds.

From the very first episode, flannel was a perpetual presence on Ellen, Ellen Degeneres’ 1994 sitcom, far before her eventual coming out. She wore it during a season four bait-and-switch cold open, in which viewers were led to believe she might be about to come out—”The first time, I was, um, I was with a man,” we see her say to an unidentified other, “and, uh, and then I was with a woman for a little while”—before the camera pans out to reveal she’s talking about therapists she’s seen, and that she “can’t keep going from therapist to therapist like this.” Though flannel was ubiquitous in the 90s, we rarely see other women wearing it on the show—and given how often Ellen was seen wearing it, it became a strong, repeated signal to viewers that, if not explicitly lesbian, Ellen’s character was perhaps queer.

Even before Ellen eventually came out, you could catch the lesbian flannel in movies like Claire of the Moon (1992) from gay screenwriter Nicole Conn, who would go on to write lesbian classics Elena Undone and A Perfect Ending. Or movies like Bar Girls (1994), Go Fish (1994), The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love (1995), Everything Relative (1996) and Better than Chocolate (1999), all of which center around plaid-clad women loving women, and most of which have the lesbian flannel front and center on the movie’s cover. It’s here where lesbians were our own worst offenders, either producing, writing, or starring in the movies that drove this stereotype into the new millennia.

Randy Dean (Laurel Holloman), left, with Evie (Nicole Parker) in The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love

The trend died down in the 2000s, partially due to the 2004 premiere of The L Word, with its series-long rebranding of lesbian fashion, but the trend picked up again in 2010. That year was when The Kids Are Alright was released, with Julianne Moore and Annette Bening donning flannels and vests to really drive the point of their queer marriage home for a mainstream, straight audience. Then there was Elena Undone, a classic lesbian flick released in the same year dripping in flannel, and 2014’s The Taking of Deborah Logan, where Anne Ramsay seems to exclusively wear flannel.

And today, in the golden age of television, the stereotype rages on. In 2017 alone, we saw flannel padding Jo’s and Chase’s lesbian storylines on Netflix’s Easy, in Karolina’s on Runaways, and in Danver’s on Supergirl, with a side-mulleted Aidy Bryant in SNL’s Wonder Woman/Themyscira lesbian-island sketch rounding out the group as the year’s most cartoonish offense.

Jo and Chase on Netflix's Easy

And now, more than 20 years after Ellen Degeneres finally revealed what her wardrobe director was really trying to tell us, a newly-out Elena, may god bless her and keep her, sports a good amount of flannel throughout season two of Netflix’s One Day at a Time, and a flannel lesbian commercial—likely not the first or the last—is apparently on this year’s horizon. Please, my family and I are tired.

Lesbian flannel is such an easy mark that it itself became a throwaway joke on shows from Roseanne (“Lesbians are big old truck drivers who wear flannel shirts and faded jeans”) to Queer as Folk (“Flannel. Isn’t that lesbian lingerie?”). At this point, is it even a joke? Where am I? Is this hell? If that’s the case, it’s hard to call to mind a stereotype attributed to another minority used outside of its own community with such impunity, and why, after decades of use, people aren’t embarrassed to so publicly copy and paste their efforts.

Do lesbians still wear flannel, and will we continue to until the ashy skies of nuclear war cloud our collective vision? You bet. And long may it reign! But it’s 2018. To still have this be a lesbian signifier in media is at best extremely corny, at middle lazy, and at worst offensive.

Anticipating this burnout in 2004 was a New York Times article entitled “The Subtle Power of Lesbian Style.” The writer states: “If same-sex unions have proved anything, it is that the old stereotypes are looking frayed. Homosexual social identities turn out to be as plural as those of any other group. And the day seems not far off when gay style, like gay radar, will go the way of any other artifact of minority status.”

While a shift in aesthetics and cultural norms have proven our gay radar to be be more important than ever, the lesbian flannel is well and truly frayed. Let her rest.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

We’ve Already Seen the Future ‘Altered Carbon’ Has to Offer

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While watching the cyberpunk-esque Altered Carbon, it bothered me that it felt nothing like Minority Report. It’s a random comparison, I know, but I wish it did. I still remember just how pimp everything felt in that 2002 movie: The creepy pupil-reciting advertisements, the weird insect-like robots, and the big ass, glove-powered touch-screen screen gizmo. And yes, I couldn’t recall the names of said gizmos, so I took out my BAAP (big-ass-Android-phone) and the epiphany hit: I’M ACTUALLY CARRYING A BIG ASS INTERACTIVE TOUCH-SCREEN GIZMO—nothing is new anymore.

Minority Report | Courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

But the truth is we’ve all felt this way. That moment when new concepts are suddenly faded with time. It’s the natural order of things. Minority Report’s shtick around future crime detections felt fresh in the moment. But “cyberpunk” as a genre, and in the case of Netflix’s Altered Carbon, shouldn’t feel like a convergence of past ideas when its whole identity is wrapped in the future.

In the case of this Netflix series , you get a story based around the “Takeshi Kovacs” series of books by Richard K. Morgan. Our main star is a biracial Japanese dude who lives in a distant future where human bodies (called sleeves) are reusable and habitable. Naturally, the human consciousness can be uploadable and downloadable to any purchasable sleeve in this economy. So for plot reasons, our man has to get killed over a dispute, revived into a white man (whole other issue), and needs to be thrown into some hard boiled crime plot to keep things interesting. It checks all the “cyberpunk” boxes comfortably. And critics have been giving it credit for its stylish cyberpunk-ness. And out of the same bucket of comparisons to the likes of Blade Runner, and Ghost in the Shell, the genre is beginning to lose what separated it from the rest.

Cyberpunk has always wanted to flaunt its new-ness. Just looking at how cyberpunk even came to be, we’d have to look to William Gibson (along with Rudy Rucker, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner and others), whose earlier writings were these near-future stories that explored the effects of tech and cybernetics on humanity. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner with its futuristic neon-orasmic aesthetic, established the Cyberpunk “look” on screen—a Shinjuku, Tokyo reimagining basically.

Illuminated advertising signs near Shinjuku station in Tokyo, Japan 1985 | Image via Flickr user Canada_Good

Flying cars replaced ground cars. Holographic ads replaced billboarded ads and all that good, megacorp, industrial stuff. Katsuhiro Otomo’s anime Akira in 88 followed suit by playing with similar visuals. Slightly more dirty, slightly more Japanese. Government interferences with human life stood as its core narrative. Society upheavals and classism were un-phased by imagined technological advancements. And it’s pretty much in these three visual takes, that ushered in the many copycats that felt comfortable enough to lean in to the aesthetic.

All in all, it was a collectively great and imaginatively dope time. The looks and ideas weren’t just picked from a petri-dish of established principles. These ideas (holographic imagery, cybernetic implants, transhumanism, cryogenetics) were in fact so damn out of the box, and so rebellious against a happy Jetsons future, that they were un-influenced by the ideas of what futurism used to be. They impacted our real-life technology (touch-screen gizmo). And in the same way “punk” came from a progression of earlier rock-n-roll music—an indictment against what felt tired, old and safe—cyberpunk was an indictment against the blossomy idea that the future was safe from the flaws of humanity.

Film and TV shows like Altered Carbon are nothing like that. A story about transhumanism and uploaded human consciousness isn’t so much a rebellion as it is compliance to what’s already been put out there. It’s the “Black Museumepisode from Black Mirror. It’s Masaume Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, it’s Avatar, and to a lesser extent, The Matrix.

What used to be this hard, forward-thinking genre is now a microwave-friendly staple like the rest. A show/film like Altered Carbon will have the whole neon-lit, systematically brooding, flying cars around buildings thing working for it. It’ll have the crystal sheen finish, where metals gleam, screens glow, and street holograms gram all over thing going for it. Hell, it’ll even showcase a trenchcoat wearing, broody don’t-trust-no-cops-but-still-a-good-dude, mystery solving protagonist.

Much of the problem with the lack of new “punk” concepts stems from the fact that everyone is trying to get into this “original content” game. Networks (Netflix, Hulu, etc) in response rarely take expensive sci-fi leaps unless it translates into a series that’ll benefit from what the analytics claim to be working. Creating out-of-mind worlds, concepts and alien motifs take money, patience and time; the kryptonite of industry expectations. The future as a result no longer feels like a “future” but rather, some moment in fiction that’s still using the same damn recipe. It really makes one wonder if we’ve forgotten what tomorrow can still look like.

Star Trek, 1968 | Image via Wikipedia Commons

Star Trek for example was as much punk in spirit as any cyberpunk tale. It broke social taboos and made audiences face a post-nationalist, post-racial hereafter. It was damn risky, and took understandable time to build its ideology and core ideas seperate from the less-progressive 60s. Our current nostalgia culture isn’t about that same build or wait shit. Adaptations like Blade Runner 2049, and Altered Carbon only aggravate a sameness issue through their ease in building on-top of already built fandoms (The Trekkies, Blade Runner fans, and Cyberpunkers). It’s just easier to sprinkle different spices on leftovers, pop it in a microwave, and create something risk-averse.

What does tomorrow look like in a way that revolts against what we know. What’s the off the wall, industrial and visual equivalent to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets in the Cyberpunk space. What’s so punk about a show like Altered Carbon that still holds onto binary ideas about identity (male to female, etc etc) and what’s the alternative to all that?

I’m not saying I have the creative chops to answer these questions. I’m also not saying that shows/films like Altered Carbon are bad for being what they are. I’m just making a damn observation. The futuristic ambition that once had me going “damn” and “wow” is only a fraction of what it used to be. As shows and films enjoy the spoilers of what came before it creatively, this industry can’t afford to forget what made these shows so worthy of their rebellious starts labels. Thinking beyond the norm is always a risk, but fresh food will always taste better than week old leftovers. It’s time the sci-fi industry starts cooking again.

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We Deciphered the New 'Westworld' Teaser So You Don't Have To

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It's been more than a year since the first season of Westworld wrapped up, but it looks like the wait for season two is almost over. Last fall, one of the show's stars, Evan Rachel Wood, tweeted that new episodes will be coming in the spring—April, according to a since-deleted Instagram post from Jeffrey Wright. But aside from those release date rumours and a bloody clip from last year's San Diego Comic Con, HBO has been pretty tight-lipped about what's to come.

But on Friday, the network finally tipped its hand and surprise-released a new Westworld teaser ahead of the full trailer scheduled to drop during the Super Bowl. It doesn't really give us a look at any new footage, but it does hint at the aftermath of last season's bloody robot insurrection. When the show left off, Dolores had murdered Robert Ford in the midst of the Westworld creator's presentation for a narrative called "Journey into Night," and an army of pissed-off androids in the woods were closing in on Delos executive director Charlotte Hale and her fellow execs.

The teaser shows a futuristic Delos computer screen as an "unknown user" tries to frantically call for help. Unfortunately, the urgent messages are quickly overwritten by the system, which boots up a program called "Journey into Night" and displays a cheery away message.

"Greetings into Westworld!" the message reads. "Journey into Night celebrations continue so we may be slow to respond to messages."

From there, the screen glitches, and a message from Hale appears. Hale—or someone posing as the Delos head—says the new narrative unveiling was "successful" and that "all is well."

"Ford took it in stride," the message continues. "Restructuring/Management downsizing on track."

If this is actually a message from Hale, then she must have survived the initial robot siege and is using it as an opportunity for Delos to consolidate power. If it is someone posing as Hale, then it's likely that the androids went ahead and killed everyone and are currently trying to keep the outside world from catching on.

The tweet points viewers to the Delos website, which features a bunch of internal emails from Delos staff. The teaser and the website both raise more questions than answers, but at least they'll help us bide our time until Sunday. Until then, watch the cryptic teaser above.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Happy Groundhog Day, Here Is How to Eat One

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Groundhog day is one of the dumbest days of the year.

It’s the day of the year that we, for some unholy reason, look to a groundhog (ground squirrel, woodchuck or whatever we want to call them) and let it tell us whether we’re going to have six more weeks of winter or an early spring. Now, I’m not here to talk about the history—or even the illuminati conspiracies surrounding the holiday—no, I’m here to talk about how we eat those small, tasty, suckers that fuck up farms and drag out winter EVERY GODDAMN YEAR.

It’s payback time, baby, and that payback is going to include a side of gravy.

Now, full disclosure, while I have eaten/cooked my fair share of weird food in the past I have never cooked or eaten ground squirrel. That said, I am not opposed to it and if you have some groundhogs for some eatin’, holla at yo boi.

OK, so you’ve gone out with your .22 (any larger caliber will just explode the poor thing) or your traps and you’ve gotten yourself some groundhogs. Nice work. Now you have to clean them—for you city folk, cleaning an animal is when you gut and skin it. According to a YouTube video, hosted by a man with a VERY DEEP voice, you should start by stringing it up upside down by its feet. You start at its legs and work your way down peeling the skin and the fat off the meat slowly and meticulously.

Eat it right out of the bucket.

Now that you got the skin off, what do you do? Well, according to a step-by-step guide by Practical Self Reliance, you slice open the belly and carefully remove the organs—the amount will surprise you. Now, comes the most important part, you have to make damn well sure that you remove the stink glands.

“Groundhogs have scent glands that can impart an off flavor to the meat if not removed promptly,” they write. “The scent glands are small kernels a bit smaller than a pea just beneath their skin, located around the back, armpits and tail.”

OK, so you’ve cleaned your groundhogs and gotten about 2.5 lbs of meat per woodchuck—nice work, fam—the hard part is over! Now it’s time to cook them, whhhhhhhooooooooooooo!!!!

So a quick cursory Google search will do you well for recipes. One of the easiest I found involves is by Wildlife Recipes and it’s simply just fried groundhog. For this you will need flour, salt, fat, and the groundhog of course, so, simply you cut your groundhog up into bite sized pieces, boil them for an hour (if you haven’t removed the scent glands, this is where you’ll know) roll them in the flour and salt and fry em up—bonus points if you use the groundhog fat for the frying.

Now imagine this but with GROUNDHOG!

Another one, this time by the fine folk at Mother Earth News, is for the more adventurous of the groundhog eaters out there. It’s woodchuck pie and you’re going to need the groundhog meat, some carrots, potatoes, onions, and a pie crust. Boil your woodchuck meat for an hour and a half, and at the end of that add the veggies and let it go for another half hour. Now, drain that but keep two cups of it and chop up your meat. Take the onions, some butter and flour and start making yourself a stew, when it starts to thicken add in the broth, the other veggies and meat. Mix that together, throw it in the pie crust and bake ‘er up—BOOM, ground squirrel pie.

Now, you eat your fill of the groundhog.

There you have it, you’ve consumed some groundhogs—and you know what, if they called for six more weeks of winter, they deserved it. I hope you enjoyed our journey, my dear readers.

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter

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