If you’re reading this, I’m gone. I’m in a small cabin in the woods of upstate New York, removed from the infinite anxiety of online life. I’m surrounded by trees and small yelping animals in their branches. I don’t have access to Uber or Seamless or Slack or push notifications or even Twitter. I’m here to get away from it all and decompress.
In the Trump era, the internet has become an increasingly vicious place, especially when you (me) happen to have a job covering about the most divisive thing in the world (politics). For every nice note someone might send me, there are people calling me a kike and a whore; for every real friend I make, there are a hundred weirdo men incessantly sending me everything from dick pics to findom requests to thousand-plus word emails about all the ways I’m just like some dude’s bitch ex-girlfriend; there’s the woman who sends me emails calling me “a stupid, stupid cunt” and “filth” every time I write something negative about Hillary Clinton; the assholes who are obsessed with the fact that I’m a close friend with a journalist who they don’t like; the nonstop chatter and outrage every time someone who’s fallen out of favour with the Twitter mob does an ill-advised tweet; there’s the fake news and the real news, and emotions are never not running high.
The whole thing is eerily reminiscent of High-Rise, J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel about a luxury apartment building equipped with everything a yuppie could dream of—its own supermarket, school, hair salon, restaurant, and gym. This wannabe utopia is soon derailed by the petty feuds between the building’s affluent residents, which swiftly turn from inane arguments to violent chaos. The battle between the residents plays out as a sort of class warfare, the inhabitants at the bottom of the building indignant about the top-dwellers mistreating them. The building, vandalized by its own residents, overflows with trash and excrement; rival tribes battle for control of the elevators; food becomes scarce; electricity and running water cease; empty apartments or those that have yet to be barricaded are subjected to raids from warring tribes; the dogs of the building are killed for sport and/or nourishment; women are routinely sexually assaulted; people are beaten and sometimes murdered; and most curiously of all, the residents lean into the whole thing. They shut themselves inside their 40-storey tower of hell, committed to and freed by the unapologetic barbarism of the high-rise.
So here I am, breaking out of the high-rise and escaping into the woods for a week. While here, I will completely forgo using the internet, but my unplugged week in the woods does come with a couple caveats: I’m not allowed to log on, but still have to write a daily dispatch on my five (hopefully) blissful days offline. My boyfriend, who will be accompanying me on my journey, will email my editor a draft on my behalf. I won’t quit posting completely—a third party will tweet out my articles for me—but I won’t be online to see anyone yelling at me about whatever I end up writing.
To be clear, for all the pain it causes me, I am indebted to the internet. I owe the success I’ve had as a professional writer to my social media presence. I started casually writing for the web in 2015, and things took off when I capitalized on a viral tweet, writing an article about it that also made the rounds, eventually landing myself on CNN, which helped me make enough of a name for myself in the digital media world that justified quitting my barista job to write full time.
The marriage of my writing career and my social media brand has been a blessing and a curse—the internet is a prerequisite for the career path I’m on, and being a public person online has, from a macro perspective, served me well. But the intoxicating nature of social media, especially when you have a big audience cheering you on and/or criticizing your every last word, has fucked me up big time. If I calculated the number of hours I’ve spent online over the past three years—my entire work day and a good portion of my evenings and weekends—I would melt into a puddle of shame.
Like any good millennial, I am consumed by self-loathing and depression, so naturally, I exert an exceptional amount of emotional energy chastising myself for wasting my time hypnotized by the alluring blue light of the screen, wondering what type of person I would be if I read more books and drew pictures like I used to, and worried less about what internet randos think of me and who's destroying the world.
My fantasy of getting liberated from the internet and finally finding happiness and peace misunderstands my lifelong mental health problems as external. I know it’s bullshit, but at the same time, I can’t help but believe that if I was able to successfully evade logging on, I will discover who I really am, or at the very least, feel a little more balanced in the chaotic universe I occupy. I dunno, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens...
Sam Zeif had just finished a math test when the shooting started. It was Valentine's Day, and the 17-year-old senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida, was looking ahead to a picnic with his girlfriend. At first, some of the kids around him suggested the noise might be some kind of drill, he said—there was chatter that maybe the shots were blanks. Somehow, Zeif knew otherwise, and sheltered in place with his classmates while texting his younger brother, whom he quickly realized was just one floor above him.
Zeif and his brother both got out alive. But the next day—his 18th birthday—Zeif found out his best friend, 17-year-old Joaquin Oliver, was dead.
Since the mass shooting that killed 17 people made Parkland the latest city to host a uniquely American spectacle of carnage, the nation has watched the teenage survivors take control of the gun control debate. Angry and devastated at the loss of those closest to them—and of their school as an ostensible zone of safety—the teens have been appearing on television, tweeting, organizing rallies, and lobbying legislators. Their message has been buoyed by its simplicity: This can't keep happening. And while these newly seasoned activists know Congress may never be able guarantee unhinged people will not get their hands on deadly weapons, they're confident we can make it a hell of a lot harder than it is now.
It's early, but there's some evidence all of this is having an effect on the public consciousness: A CNN poll released last week found support for stricter gun laws had cracked 70 percent, the highest mark in decades and well above the 52 percent the same survey recorded after the Las Vegas concert massacre in October.
Along with his neighbor Emma González, whose passionate plea for gun control cast her as a breakout star of this new movement, Zeif has been in the thick of it, making the rounds on the cable news circuit. He also appeared at Donald Trump's White House listening session with survivors last week, where he got to tell the president to his face that waffling on gun control, because of fealty to the NRA or for any other reason, is simply unacceptable. I caught up with Zeif over the phone on Friday, as he was catching his breath from the first full week of his new life as a gun-control activist. We talked about his transformation from a relatively normal, apolitical kid to powerful national voice on the scourge consuming America—and how he's handling it. Here's what he had to say.
VICE: Do you mind walking me through the moment that day when you realized that something was wrong? Samuel Zeif: I was watching a show on Netflix. I heard—I thought I heard but I could feel it throughout the building—seven or eight shots. I knew exactly what was going on. There had been rumors the past few weeks before that—we had just had code red training [for] if there was ever a shooter on campus. Thank God we did, because if we didn’t I think the numbers would have been triple.
And then the smoke from the gun set off the fire alarm and we were told not to go anywhere. So we just stayed put. My teacher kept everyone calm. We kept our phones dark to not let any light through. We had been trained to block off the window to the room so no one would be able to see in.
Did you know the shooter, or had you heard anything about him? I had never spoken to him, but I had seen his face and heard stories about him. We had gone to the same schools since I was 12 years old.
A lot of people have been talking about all these warning signs that the shooter was giving off. That failure to respond to warnings is almost a separate issue from gun control, a system failure. Yes. You know, there’s a whole other page that should have already been in place. I don’t understand how anyone could see this person walking to the [gun] store and not see the damage in that person. You can see damage in people. We always saw damage in that kid. I don’t understand how you can see the damage in that person and sell them a weapon. Let alone an AR-15. Any weapon.
I’m sure you heard about the sheriff announcing the armed deputy on campus was there and stayed outside. You bet I heard about that. He could have stopped it. He was not supposed to wait for backup. He watched unarmed security guards run in to save lives while he hid behind a wall. [Editor's note: After this conversation took place, it was reported that three additional Broward County Sheriff's deputies remained outside the school while the shooting was ongoing.]
Had you met him before or seen him around? I’ve seen him. All he really cared about was getting my friends in trouble and kids in trouble for using their e-cigarettes in class. When the time comes to it, he didn’t want to protect us. He just wanted to get us in trouble, and that’s exactly what he did.
You lost your best friend. Can you talk about the moment you realized that and how that’s influenced you? We were on the same basketball team, so we had a group chat together, and his dad was in the group chat as the coach. When everything happened, I tracked all my friends on Find My Friends. His dad said: "Has anyone heard from Joaquin?" I saw that he was on the other side of the school, so I was relieved. But I guess my service must have been messed up because later, I tracked him again and his phone was in the building. And then we heard on the news the next morning.
Everything I’m doing is for him. People see how much I’ve done and they said I’m making such an impact. I can’t imagine the impact that he would be making if he still had a voice. I firmly believe that he’s the one making an impact. I don’t think this is me. I think it’s really him with me.
Before this happened, did you think of yourself as an activist or a politically engaged person? Never. If I see something on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, I will give my opinion about it, but I just assumed I was like everyone else. I still feel like everyone else. I never imagined myself being this involved in politics.
Is gun violence something you heard a lot about locally? No, I had only heard about it in other places. Parkland is—was—one of the top ten safest communities in the nation. That’s why my friend Joaquin moved here. His parents moved from Venezuela because it’s safer here. Now it just—I don’t feel anywhere is safe.
I think people from outside the state have heard about Florida in terms of stand your ground laws and other aspects of the culture as being very pro-gun. Was that something you were conscious of in your part of the state? There wasn’t much of a gun culture in my community. My dad owned a handgun a long time ago—20 years ago, before I was even born. He had been planning a little experience for Jacob, my older brother, and I these past few months, and he never really told us what it was until recently. He was going to take us to the gun range. My mom told me about when he took her to the gun range a long time ago. She took one shot and couldn’t do it anymore because she could see what it does to a person. It’s just not right.
You had a chance to go to the White House to talk to the president directly. I watched. I was very moved. I think a lot of people across the country were very moved by that. There was a lot of chatter before that about how choreographed the whole thing was. Do you feel like you were screened in some way, or could you say what you wanted? I didn’t know it was going to be filmed, let alone live. No, it wasn’t choreographed at all. We said what we wanted to. I didn’t get the chance to meet with my group from Parkland, so we didn’t discuss anything together. I saw some of them with their own written pieces. I had nothing. I wanted it to come from my heart.
Were you nervous? What was it like in the lead-up to asking the questions at the White House? I was extremely nervous. I had no idea what I was expecting. It was extremely nerve-wracking representing my community and making sure I said the right things when it came down to it.
What did you make of the president's response? He was sitting there like a little kid with his arms crossed, nodding his head, saying, "I hear you." After some of the conversations started, [with] words like mental health and background checks—he shouldn’t have to say that because it should already be in place. It should have been in place since Columbine and before. It’s not what I want to hear. I want sensible gun control. I want to feel safe everywhere. He is heading in the right direction with the bump stocks, it’s in the right direction but it’s not enough. That’s why I’m hoping for more. Everything takes time. I’m hoping we get movement soon.
What do you make of how the president has conducted himself since the shooting generally? I understand from his point of view as a businessman, not wanting to turn away money. The NRA as an organization are free to attempt to be lobbyists. But his job as the leader of our country to make the right decision based on money or not. He is already one of the most successful people in the world. I don’t understand why he needs more money from them. He could've funded his entire campaign alone. He wanted to save his millions of dollars? I don’t get it. [Editor's note: The NRA spent over $11 million supporting Trump and nearly $20 million opposing Hillary Clinton in 2016.]
You are obviously in favor of gun control. But is it specifically about banning assault weapons? Where do you come down on the possible solutions in play here? It is about banning assault weapons. I fully respect the Second Amendment. People have the right to a small firearm for self-defense. But in Maryland, they have proved that the Second Amendment does not protect these types of weapons. They banned over 45 different kinds of assault weapons, including the AR.
There are so many things that we need to do. I don’t think age is the issue. How many times have teenagers thrown a party with alcohol and they're supposed to have to be 21 to drink? If they want to get it, they’re gonna get it.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the awful lie that survivors of the shooting—or at least some of them—are actors. I have known Emma González herself since I was six years old. I’ve seen David Hogg in my school everyday for years. I don’t understand. I was in California on the same day that he was with my family on vacation. People just want to shut us down because we’re going to shut them down.
I can assure you that they’re not crisis actors. That is one of the most outraging things that I've heard among many.
Is it weird having such a big platform? How would you describe the sensation? I’m honored to be able to get the word out there. As I said, I would just do it for Joaquin. If I had the option, I would give this back—all this media, all this attention.
What do you think it is that’s making this shooting, hopefully, different from ones in the past? The Sandy Hook children, God rest their souls, they didn’t have a voice. They were just kids. Their friends were just kids. They didn’t know what to do. I’m sure they’re still traumatized to this day. The Columbine children—that was a different time. As you saw with my text with my brother, it’s very easy to spread words. I think that’s why we are out here, because of how many people can interact with us and see what we’re talking about. The Columbine children didn’t get that chance. It was in '99—they could've rallied, but who was going to see it?
What would you tell other high schoolers about how they can get involved and what you have learned from doing it? What advice would you have for them? Keep your voice up. Stay strong. Even if we’re on the other side of the country, we have students and family who know what this is like. We are family now. We’re not going to stop until we feel safe.
Instant karma is, rightfully, one of the most popular genres of videos.
I mean who doesn’t want to see a baddie getting their comeuppance right after they pulled off one of their dirty tricks? It triggers a primal part of the brain that is wired solely for schadenfreude, and, because we’ve seen in real-time that this person sucks, we don’t have to feel bad for their suffering.
This brings us to a little guy riding an elevator in Chongqing, China, who got himself trapped in the elevator after pissing on the buttons. It is undoubtedly the best elevator revenge thriller of the modern era (yes, even better than Devil). The video has been uploaded all over the internet but let’s take a closer look at one called “Chinese boy breaks elevator with his pee pee.”
Siri, embed that shit!
Thanks Siri.
Our short film starts with CCTV footage showing a young man in an elevator. The boy, wearing glasses and a green jacket, takes a quick look around the elevator to make sure he’s alone. After a couple seconds his gaze meets the wall of buttons and a connection is formed. You see, our boy must be thinking, these buttons are not nearly wet enough.
This kid—either on purpose or because he just slammed a bunch of soft drinks—obviously had a pretty full bladder when he got into this elevator and, well, he had to do what you need to do when you have a full bladder. So, this little guy undid his pants and starts to do the business that we all need to do sometimes. Except, he obviously got a little bored and shimmied himself up to the buttons to give them a good soaking up and down—the precision he has here makes one wonder if he’s done it before.
However, when he’s done his deed, disaster strikes! The boy, now with his pants done up right, reaches his destination but alas the door won’t open fully. So, the scamp gingerly reaches up and touches on of the (now piss-soaked) buttons. These buttons, which have I dunno been short-circuited by the piss, start taking on a life of their own by going on and off and pretty much doing their best impression of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
Overhead the lights start flickering ominously. If this was a horror movie, this is when the music would swell. The kid starts to hop around. He knows something bad is happening and his piss has something to do with it. This elevator—sentient or not—is taking revenge on him.
Then, it happens: after the elevator fucks with him a bit more and he panically pushes the buttons it slams into darkness—just pee-induced darkness.
The boy is illuminated by the lights on the buttons which have gone full Poltergeist at this point and our movie ends. If we just had this video we don’t know what happens to the boy next, most likely, when the lights came back on we'd expect our little pisser would be gone.
He would be swallowed by the pissed off and piss covered elevator demon, never to return.
But, this isn’t a movie and according to translated stories from several Chinese news outlets the boy was rescued shortly thereafter by a search-and-rescue team. He wasn’t hurt and was trapped only briefly in his piss-soaked shame. The rescuers found the footage afterwards and shared it with the world, as they should.
At the end of the day, whether you like this artistic found footage film or not, you do have to agree that it’s a whole head and heels better than that flick Shyamalan produced about an elevator.
The dancefloor can be a space of transgression and transcendence. From New York voguing culture to ballroom dancing contests to nights at the club, dance can (and has) taken hundreds of forms, and is constantly being reinvented. It’s a way for us to connect with others and ourselves—and, importantly, have fun.
While the act of dancing is liberating, dancefloors can be intimidating. We worked with Absolut to create a video dedicated to the power of dance and the idea that we're all equal on the dancefloor, which is one of the ultimate platforms for self-expression. You can watch it below (dare you not to bust out some spaghetti arms).
If you need any further reason to hit the dancefloor, we also asked a bunch of VICE friends about what motivates them to move.
Laura Dancing is something really special and intimate for me. I love hearing a soulful or funky beat that gets my hips moving. Recently, my relationship to dancing has become more focused on the way my body moves and how so often fat bodies like mine aren’t able to move in public spaces without constantly thinking about how they present to others.
I use dance as a form of self-reflection and self-care when I’m dancing in private. It’s a different story when I’m out listening to a great DJ. I think there’s something powerful in existing in a fat body and simply moving it without hesitation in public spaces. That’s something radical to a lot of people; just refusing to make myself appear smaller on the dance floor is pretty empowering.
I am definitely still a bit shy if I get pulled up to dance but I don’t deny myself as I used to. I got pulled onstage at a show recently. Five years ago I never would have gone up. I would have felt enormously embarrassed, but I got up and danced with a bunch of other wonderful women in front of a crowded room. It’s captivating to dance with other people. I’m always looking for that feeling of connection, and I don’t think I’d ever deny myself the opportunity to dance my heart out at this point in my life.
Jack Dance has allowed me to move to lots of interesting places and made my life much more diverse. It is a real outlet for my creativity and not something I think I could live happily without.
I love the expressive nature of ballet. Even though it’s technically demanding, the reward of finding individual expression in such tight technical confines makes it all worth it. Ballet is quite raw and exposing, and I like that aspect of it. It humanises people and puts everyone on an even playing field.
Lydia I started dancing at the age of seven, doing contemporary dance classes, where we had the opportunity to perform and create work as a collective class.
I enjoyed these classes, but it wasn't until I moved to New Zealand and started a youth dance company, Pointy Dog, and had the chance to choreograph my own work that I really fell in love with the form. I loved—and I still love—the freedom of expression that it offers.
The body is a map to be read. Your culture and gender are all read through actions, gestures, and appearance. My passion in dance lies in how to understand these maps, and in turn learn how to perform and craft them. For me, being onstage is where I’m most present, and my body, mind, and emotions are alive. I have the ability to stretch time, to craft the audience’s experience, and perhaps make them think about things in a new light.
Lily I started pole dancing because I heard it was good core exercise and I always found it hard to motivate myself to exercise, so I thought I'd try something new. I love how you work so hard but it doesn't feel like exercise at all, you don't get sweaty but I’ve gotten so much stronger.
I feel much more confident about myself and my body since I started pole dancing. I hate the stigma that surrounds pole dancing, because it really helped me and I reckon it could help lots of other people feel better about their bodies too.
Amy I realised a year or so ago that I didn't really have any hobbies. Being 30, I don’t really go out to clubs all the time anymore, so I wasn’t dancing apart from a night out every six months or so. But I really love hip hop and R&B, so started searching for classes in Sydney.
I was really nervous to go to the first class as I was alone and just so self conscious about my body and even being there. I was nervous about not being good, being judged, talking to new people. I stood as far as I could to the back of the room and shuffled around, but in the end the music was great and the teacher was amazing, and I felt like everyone was kind of in the same position as me.
I've been going to classes for just over a year, nearly every week, and now I go straight to the front of the class and care much less about being in front of people. I feel more comfortable in my body and after class I get such a high from it. This has a lot to do with the style of class I go to as there's a huge focus on cultural learning, no mirrors, and just having fun.
This article is supported by Absolut. We’re putting on some dance classes in Sydney on 8th and 9th March, hosted by Groove Therapy and Samuel Beatty. The classes will be held at iconic LGBT venue The Imperial, which has just re-opened to the public. You can RSVP here.
On Sunday, one man's decision to brazenly go bare on the highways of Kansas City, taking cops on a high-speed chase on a stolen ATV, ultimately ended in his arrest, the Kansas City Star reports. Luckily, a local man who was treated to the feat on his Sunday commute managed to capture the whole thing on video, before the guy was taken in and eventually given some clothes.
"Swear to god: White dude, naked as a jaybird, on an ATV, running against traffic on I-29," a passenger says in the video. "This dude is butt-ass necked. Holy fuck."
According to the Star, it didn't take long before cops started to receive calls about the "Bound 2" impersonator from concerned drivers on Sunday. Embracing the raw, powerful sense of freedom that comes with barreling down the road in your birthday suit, the man threw caution to the wind and zipped past the cops, weaving into medians and, at one point, driving straight toward oncoming traffic. With a chopper swirling above him and about a dozen cops speeding after him, he just kept on zooming.
After literally tailing the guy's bare cheeks for about an hour, the cops eventually managed to bring him to a stop and arrest him, reporting that "no dangerous instruments were found" on his person, whatever that means. He was later taken to a nearby hospital and, we imagine, given something to wear.
His pantsless jaunt through Kansas City made a pretty big splash, with untold amounts of incriminating evidence making it onto Snapchat, overhead traffic cams, and the local news.
There's still no line on exactly how or why the guy wound up naked, and the police told the Star that drugs might have been involved. But at the end of the day, the guy might have just wanted to lose his restricting outer layer, and ride down the highway, letting the wind whip through his hair and pretty much everything else.
Italy is allegedly overrun with reports of demonic possession, and overworked priests can't splash the holy water fast enough.
According to USA Today, cases of demonic possession in Italy have tripled over the past few years—almost half a million calls per year—and the Vatican is in dire need of more priests to handle the demand. Last week, the Church revealed a daring new plan to combat the demon uptick and send them back to hell once and for all, with a week-long intensive course to train priests in the art of exorcism.
Italian exorcist and priest Beningo Palilla announced the plan to Vatican Radio, saying that the week-long exorcist boot camp will "offer a rich reflection and articulation on a topic that is sometimes unspoken and controversial"—namely, the idea that evil spirits can take over someone's body from time to time.
Palilla told Vatican Radio that he blames the recent uptick in reported possessions on the use of Tarot cards and fortune tellers, USA Today reports, which supposedly "open the door to the devil and to possession." It's unclear why it would cause such a steep rise in possessions now in particular since Tarot isn't exactly a new trend, but whatever.
While Palilla did admit that, yes, not all cases of demon possession are real and some may be the result of mental or psychological problems, he stressed the need for more trained priests who can accurately diagnose an alleged possession and act accordingly—and warned that a "self-taught" exorcist could easily make "errors."
“We priests, very often, do not know how to deal with the concrete cases presented to us," he told Vatican Radio in Italian. "In the preparation of priesthood, we do not talk about these things."
The conference will take place this April at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome and will include courses on Satanism and lessons in how to liberate people who are possessed, hopefully training enough priests to be able to handle the new onslaught of supposed demons coming after our souls. Until then, be careful with the Ouija board.
Look, I’m going to level with all of you. I am blessed with living outside Ontario so I try to maintain a blessedly spiteful indifference to its inner mechanics as much as possible. So I genuinely don’t know how to make heads nor tails of this Ontario PC Party leadership business. I’ve seen some pretty wild shit happen in provincial party politics during the course of my short adult life, but I won’t pretend to have any trenchant insight into what’s happening in Queen’s Park. I just want to openly marvel at how fucked up all this appears, to me, from a distance.
I mean: wow. Where did they find this Patrick Brown guy? First he’s in, then he’s out, then he’s in again because he secretly never dropped out the first time, then he’s definitely 100 percent for sure in it to win it, and now he’s (apparently) announcing his resignation again this afternoon. I don’t know what his deal is, but he seems like an asshole.
I can appreciate that the Ontario PCs have to accomodate roughly the same uncomfortable mix of ideologues as their cousins in the rest of the country. Blue Liberals, rural populists, libertarian cranks, Christian theocrats—the works of them, crammed together behind a united but deeply dysfunctional electoral front. And I get that losing to the post-McGuinty Liberals was probably deeply humiliating.
So I understand that Patrick Brown was some kind of palatable compromise candidate that’d be enough to secure victory against the widely unpopular government of Kathleen Wynne. Or maybe he had that Harper-esque ability to command and mobilize people despite being a black hole of charisma? The world will never know.
So, OK, sure. The end of January 2018 rolls around and a bunch of high-profile conservative politicians resign in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations. On the same day that Nova Scotia PC leader Jamie Baillie resigned over harassment complaints, Brown preempted the evening news to reveal that anonymous allegations of sexual predation were about to be made against him by CTV, but that he would stay on as leader and clear his name. Then he abruptly quit via Twitter in the middle of the night anyway. Brutal.
(Jen Gerson has the transcript of the first of two caucus calls Patrick Brown took that evening posted at Maclean’s. It is a fun time. I can’t wait for one of the several other party insiders who very obviously hate Patrick Brown to leak more tantalizing gossip to the national press.)
It’s a dramatic upheaval, but it’s not the end of the world. The Tories got to whip up a quick leadership contest before the next election and everyone else got to enjoy a lot of Caroline Mulroney fanfiction in the newspapers. They had a debate and it seemed lacklustre at best but life moved on.
But then—what, Brown returns? He was going to sue CTV and get back into the race? Except he wouldn’t be getting back into the race because he never actually resigned? And maybe he’s going to resign again? And everything is communicated in a conflicting series of anonymous leaks to the media so it’s impossible to tell what’s actually going on?
I don’t know, man. I’m from Newfoundland and Labrador—weird politics are our calling card. The opposition Liberals melted down under the pressure to replace leader Yvonne Jones right before the ramshackle 2011 provincial election. The NDP tried to depose their leader in 2013 but then the party imploded instead. And in 2014, the governing PCs held two leadership races to replace premier Kathy Dunderdale. All three candidates from the first race were either ejected or quit—including Frank Coleman, who by the end had been running unopposed for months.
Utter dysfunction is really normal in my part of the world and yet even I’m blown away by Patrick Brown. He is pulling down the pillars of the PC party like the Samson of (alleged) Sexual Impropriety. Caroline Mulroney or Christine Elliott could be Delilah in this metaphor. Or maybe it’s the emails he wrote encouraging campaign workers to allegedly commit fraud. I’m not sure honestly. Like I said, I don’t really follow Ontario politics. I’m only here to gawk at the trainwrecks.
Follow Drew Brown (no relation, thank Christ) on Twitter.
Over the weekend, Democrats finally released their formal response to the stunt Congressman Devin Nunes pulled by publishing his infamous memo early this month, a document that was supposed to blow up the Trump-Russia investigation. In that original, much-hyped mess, Nunes (or at least his staff) suggested, unconvincingly, that former British spy Christopher Steele sharing his notorious, salacious dossier with the FBI may have tainted Robert Mueller’s entire probe. Not long after, US Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham declassified a bizarre criminal referral of Steele they had assembled back in January, alleging that the ex-spook was a liar. Except they only really seemed to show that Steele might have lied to a British court. Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s response pointed out there’s no reason, at least not based on what we actually know, to believe Steele lied to the FBI.
It wasn’t until Saturday, after a delay imposed by President Trump—who suddenly cared about getting the OK from the Justice Department before releasing sensitive information—that Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff’s retort saw the light of day. Naturally, it was followed by an even more bizarre GOP response to the response.
Throughout this whole exercise, the Republicans have only raised and sustained one legitimate point: the FBI probably should have realized Steele was leaking the substance of his dossier to the press sooner. But as Feinstein laid out in that same note a few weeks ago, there’s no reason to believe the FBI ever asked him explicitly whether he had done so.
The Democrats’ rebuttal to the Nunes memo, meanwhile, is interesting for the way it undercuts Republicans’ claims of FBI and Justice Department impropriety. But if you followed this effort to create confusion and doubt during the period when Mueller rolled out three more guilty pleas and indictments of 13 Russians really closely, what the months-long frenzy—and the Schiff memo in particular—has actually done is make the Trump campaign look sketchier than ever.
For example, the Democrats’ memo argues that even before the FBI team conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russian attempts to influence the Trump campaign obtained reports from the Steele dossier, it had “sub-inquiries” into multiple people linked to Trump (an apparent redaction error makes it seem that the number is “four”). “[T]he FBI would have continued its investigation” against these individuals, the memo says, “even if it had never received information from Steele [or] applied for a FISA warrant against Page.” So the process of arguing about that FISA application for two months has made it look like Trump’s campaign actually had more people the FBI suspected of ties with Russian spies than we knew about previously.
The memo also clearly lays out new evidence that Carter Page, the warrant against whom started this whole memo saga in the first place, remained open to Russian advances between the time in 2013, when he was interviewed in an investigation that led to the identification of three Russian spies, through his tenure as a foreign policy aide on the Trump campaign. Two redacted sections, for example, appear to describe Page activities in 2016 both before and while on the campaign, even beyond a July 2016 trip to Moscow that has attracted so much attention. For example, one long redaction appears between a description of Page joining the campaign in March 2016 and a description of his July 2016 trip, suggesting something happened in between those dates. As the memo states, “The FBI also interviewed Page multiple times about his Russian intelligence contacts, including in March 2016.” That’s the same month the Trump campaign, under pressure to prove it had some foreign policy expertise, named Page as one of its advisors.
The Republican response to the evidence that the Trump campaign named Page a foreign policy advisor around the same time the FBI interviewed him over suspected ties with Russian spies is perhaps the most pathetic thing in here. Among other things, it complains that the Schiff memo doesn’t mention that “a Russian intelligence officer called Page ‘an idiot.’”
So the latest Memoghazi arguments might best be summarized this way: After Democrats convincingly argued Trump made a suspected Russian asset a key foreign policy advisor, Republicans insisted that doesn’t matter because the suspected Russian asset was a moron.
This is supposed to help Trump undercut the Mueller investigation?
Perhaps most important, though, is a detail in the Schiff memo about George Papadopoulos, another Trump foreign policy advisor who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about possible Russian cultivation of him just after he joined the campaign. The FBI accused Papadopoulos of lying, in part, about whether he learned of dirt the Russians had on Hillary Clinton before or (as was actually the case) after he joined the campaign. In a discussion of Papadopoulos’s case, the Schiff memo redacts a long sentence apparently about what George Papadopoulos reportedly told the Australian Ambassador to the UK about outreach from Russians and their agents in a drunken meeting in 2016 (which is what actually led the FBI to open the whole Russia probe in the first place).
A subsequent sentence strongly suggests, however, that the redacted line describes Papadopoulos explaining the “Russians could assist” the Trump campaign “by anonymously releasing” something. So does this tweet about the memo from Adam Schiff stating it shows “Russia was prepared to help you.” As the memo notes, Papadopoulos’s plea made it clear the dirt in question was a stash of Hillary Clinton emails. While it has been public since October that Russians told Trump’s team they had the emails, this new detail suggests they told Papadopoulos specifically that they might help the campaign by anonymously leaking them.
This makes the most damning single event unearthed so far as part of the larger Russia investigation—a June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower—even more so. It implies that, less than two months before Donald Trump, Jr. accepted the meeting with a bunch of Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton by eagerly stating, “If it’s what you say I love it,” someone on the campaign may have learned the Russians were seeking to help by anonymously leaking emails.
Turns out the same people trying to minimize Trump’s own ties to suspected Russian spies somehow managed to force out a ton of new evidence about just how serious those ties were.
Michael B. Jordan never really got his chance to "burn it all down" as Killmonger in Black Panther, but it looks like HBO's new Fahrenheit 451 adaptation will give him plenty of opportunities to spread some flames when the movie drops on HBO in May. The new trailer still doesn't tell us much in regard to plot, but it definitely confirms one thing—Michael B. Jordan looks damn good with a flamethrower.
Jordan stars as Guy Montag in the new film—a so-called fireman in a dystopian future who starts to question his role in controlling the spread of information by rounding up and torching every book. In the new, minute-long trailer, Montag gets to make good use of his flamethrower, lighting up books and then braving some toxic fumes as he melts down a pile of computer hard drives like a futuristic fire demon in a tight-fitting uniform.
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing," Montag's mentor and fire chief, Beatty (played by Shape of Water's Michael Shannon), says in the trailer. "News, facts, memoirs, internet holes... Burn it."
In between the glorious shots of Jordan turning books into smoldering piles of ash, there are shots of the new film's future, which includes some rich people looking dumb as hell in sleek VR glasses and a holographic eagle sporting some very familiar-sounding propaganda. We also get a few glimpses of what we can assume is the resistance that eventually wins Montag to its side.
"We are not born equal," Beatty continues, "so we must be made equal by the fire."
We don't know many specifics about the movie's plot, except that director Ramin Bahrani promises that it'll update the original 1953 book while still staying "true to Bradbury's original themes." If that means giving Michael B. Jordan a flamethrower, we're here for it.
The internet. It’s a catalyst for absurd things to blossom to reality. One of these things was the “Say Wow Like Owen Wilson” event that happened yesterday at Melbourne’s Federation Square.
Say what you will about the event, this heart-warming attempt at togetherness created by the meme page “Owen Wilson Wowposting” went viral. The Facebook event had more than 5,000 people attending, but, more significantly, 600 real people did actually attend.
But that still doesn’t explain the most important question — why?
We went to Federation Square for the event and asked some of the gathered Owen Wilson fans exactly that.
David
VICE:Hey David, why are you at this event? David: For me, it was about embracing the “wow” culture that is Melbourne. It’s a big thing about Owen Wilson that he can just bring so many people together.
What’s exactly is “wow culture”? The best way to define it would be just the fact that everyone can come together to something that seems so trivial, and say “wow” together. It’s something really wonderful.
OK, that’s fair enough. Is Owen an inspiration, or an influence to you at all? Owen Wilson was my favourite actor and my icon when I was younger. It always meant a lot having him there in my life at that age.
How exactly did he help out your life when you were younger? Actually, to be honest with you, I just really liked his movies. He seems like a nice guy.
True. Does 600 people coming to this event show he is still a relevant actor? I mean, you see him now and then in movies. I wouldn’t say I follow him as much as I used to, and maybe he’s not as popular anymore, but because of what he meant to me when I was younger I get a smile whenever I do see him in a role. I’ll never be disappointed to see him every now and then.
Do you reckon he might be due for a big comeback? Fingers crossed! But, I mean, I was hoping Zoolander 2 was going to be better.
Yeah. I didn’t watch it, but it looked pretty shit.
James
VICE: James. Why are you here saying “wow” like Owen Wilson at Federation Square? James: To be honest, I’m just here to support a really old mate of mine who’s put on the event.
That’s nice of you. Were you expecting this to be as popular as it was? It’s a whole lot more than I was expecting. And hey, [it’s a] great thing to see something get the amount of support it has.
There’s got to be more than simply supporting your mate... I’m definitely a big fan. He’s a good guy to watch on Netflix. Been a good one to throw on on a Sunday night.
What defines Owen Wilson as an actor? He’s a pretty good actor in my opinion. He’s pretty funny, and he’s been in a lot of iconic and funny movies.
Has Owen Wilson or any of those movies affected you, your life, or inspired in any way?Nah, not at all.
Nicolas, a.k.a Hatch
VICE: So Hatch, you created this event. Why would you do that? Hatch: I’ve got a meme page about Owen Wilson’s “wow” so originally the idea was to do it as a joke. But after creating the event and seeing how popular it was, I realized people really want the positivity of Owen Wilson wowing in their lives.
What is it about Owen Wilson and his wow that’s so popular? Owen Wilson has an iconic voice. Everyone knows his “wow” and he’s just a wholesome figure. And nostalgia is incredibly popular right now — just look at Stranger Things. Owen represents that early '00s time in Hollywood, The Golden Age of Hollywood, and along with that, people just need the positivity right now that this event brings.
Was that really the Golden Age of Hollywood? You try and tell me Wedding Crashers isn’t a cinematic masterpiece!
Were you happy with the amount of people that turned up? 5,000 people were "attending" on the event page. I was really happy with the numbers. It felt like there were about a couple thousand people, but there were about 600 so I’m told. I was told people came from Ballarat and all over interstate. It was very touching to see how many people came.
Do you have anymore Owen Wilson events planned? I’ve got a few things planned in the works to keep the Owen love going, and who knows what could happen. A public holiday could even be on the cards.
Caitlin and Jas
VICE: Hi guys, why are you here today? Jas: We’ve known Hatch and been following his Owen Wilson page for a while so we thought to come along. And, it turned out to be a really crazy, ginormous event.
I get the impression there’s not a lot of care for Owen Wilson out there. Jas: I don’t know about that. In a way, we all grew up watching his movies and it was something me and my friends were all obsessed with. Caitlin: Yeah, exactly. Owen Wilson is an actor that’s really iconic with our generation.
That’s a big call to make. How is he so iconic Caitlin: It really relates to that whole nostalgic throwback. I’d say that’s why he’s still so popular. I mean, I saw Wedding Crashers when I was 12 in the cinema, and because of that, it’s just one of those movies I can go back to and still laugh about. Even the scenes with Will Ferrell where he’s like “Mom! Meatloaf!” are just still so funny and iconic.
With his movies standing the test of the time, could Owen Wilson become our iconic actor? The Marlon Brando of our generation? Caitlin: Uh… probably not. Jas: I think he’s slowing down at the moment actually. I think bringing it back now is a bit… I don't know. Caitlin: Well he’s started doing more Woody Allen movies, so I guess he’s trying to be more serious. Vince Vaughn is actually trying to be a serious actor too now that I think about it. But I don’t watch Woody Allen movies on the basis that I don’t like Woody Allen.
Could Owen Wilson reinvent himself as a serious actor? Jas: He’s like Adam Sandler. It’s so hard to take him seriously when he’s trying to be serious but good on him for trying. Caitlin: Yeah, he’s just going to stay as the Owen Wilson we see now, I feel.
Cassie
So Cassie, tell me how Owen Wilson is relevant to you. Cassie: He’s just such a big famous person. He’s in Hollywood in all of these blockbusters. He’s just an iconic actor for all of us.
Does he have the same iconic presence as he did 15 years ago? It’s definitely dropped down a bit, and that’s why I think people care more about Owen Wilson now - because he’s become this irrelevant thing.
So this event is laughing at Owen Wilson’s career? Oh no! I think a lot of people still love Owen Wilson for what he was, and this is [us] trying to bring him back.
Do you think it’s possible to really bring Owen Wilson back to what he used to be? Yeah, for sure. He’s such a well-known actor and a lot of people love him, so I don’t see why he couldn’t.
Yeah, why not. Fuck, Marry, or Kill: Owen Wilson, Woodrow Wilson, or that volleyball from Castaway. I’d marry the volleyball because that’d be good company. If it can keep someone company on a deserted island, that’s good enough for me. I’d fuck Owen Wilson obviously because of his nose. And I’d kill Woodrow Wilson because I don’t know who that is.
I was a pretty late start as far as gymnasts go. I went to my first class at seven. I did two or three recreational classes, then the competitive side of the gym asked me to join the team. I started competing when I was eight, which at that gym was already considered pretty old.
I was naturally flexible and strong. I could already do splits and chin-ups before I started. I trained 20 hours every week, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. There was a lot of Romanians yelling and a lot of crying on the beam.
I remember standing as you do, with one foot in front over the other, willing myself to do a back handspring on the high beam. All I could do was shift my feet, or move my hands from straight up back to my hips. I’d stand so long I couldn’t feel my feet on the beam anymore, which of course makes you more terrified. I wanted to get down, but I wasn’t allowed. If I did take time to regroup, the floor would seem even further away. I remember seeing sweat patches where my feet used to be. I was so scared.
Nearly all of the coaches at my gym were Romanian. They would tell us, "You have it so nice—when I was your age I wasn’t allowed to eat candy and I was locked away in the gym so much I didn’t see my parents for years." I always had way more friends at the gym than at school. I couldn’t really hang out with school friends because I had no time outside of training. We went on trips around BC to compete. I was terrified, but I did win medals.
When you got to a higher performance level, the coaching was harsher. Kids would get yelled at for gaining weight. You’d be told to put on two sweatshirts and walk lengths of the foam pit to sweat it off. Someone would cry every day, for sure. It was usually someone who was too nervous to go for a skill, or couldn’t stick a landing. You’d try over and over but get worse because you’re anxious. Sometimes the coach would berate you—like you’ll never make it to nationals this way. They’d say you’re not going home until you do it.
Those early teenage years are a tough time when everyone is going through puberty. Our head coach was reprimanded by the parent association for inappropriate comments. He would say, “Oh, I see you’re becoming a woman,” or ask us about boyfriends. " Do you have a boyfriend? You’re so pretty, you must have a boyfriend." He had some kind of inappropriate nicknames, too. There was a girl with the last name Fox who he called Foxy Lady.
If I was ever asked if I had a boyfriend I would be embarrassed, but I wouldn’t tell my parents or anything. I was more worried about his bad temper. Some girls left because of verbal abuse. But wasn’t every day. Overall I had a positive experience, but I could see some of the other girls might have been harassed more than the others. I think that coach was eventually let go.
When I first read the stories about Larry Nassar I couldn’t believe how long he got away with it. It seems unbelievable how long the US Gymnastics Association didn’t do anything about it. On the other hand, everyone knows a woman who’s been assaulted but didn’t say anything. You brush it off, say it’s not a big deal.
When I read the news I had this sudden image of a high-performance gym I trained at for a few months in Australia. I remember asking what this weird dark room was for, and someone saying, " Oh, that’s for the girls going to the Olympics, they go in there for special treatment." That included physiotherapy and massage therapy. I remember thinking I’d love a massage after training, that sounds great. Not that anything bad happened there—but it’s an opportunity for abuse.
From my experience at my gym in Canada, I couldn’t see sexual abuse happening because there was no place it could have occurred. I didn’t have a physiotherapist or massage therapy. Nobody was ever alone with a coach or anything. I would still say across the sport that sexual abuse is probably rare.
I look back fondly on a lot of things, like how strong it made me. I really liked competing a lot. I always felt a lot of pride when I did floor routines. I really liked to show off to the crowd. I would do a front tuck, step out, round off, back handspring, and probably end the tumbling run with a half or full twist. Even at that level I held back more than other athletes. I think every single girl in my group broke her arm except me. It wasn’t until later when I started doing double twists that I got a back injury and had to quit at age 16.
Probably every gymnast at my gym had thoughts of quitting. Everyone was sort of unhappy. We had a lot of talks between us, about the pressure, saying, "I hate this," but no, we can’t quit because we love gymnastics. It was like that the entire time.
I’ve gone back to the gym as an adult, and I can still do a handspring on a low beam with a huge pad. I thought: Holy shit, this is high for a small child—it’s high for me even now.
What I take away from gymnastics is I think it’s good for you—it teaches you discipline and fitness for life. I would definitely put my kids into it even knowing what I went through. I think a lot of young girls think this is just the way everyone coaches, but it doesn’t have to be. The coaching could definitely improve, but it’s an amazing sport that gave me confidence to try rock climbing, swing dancing, aerial silks—whatever—and feel like I’ll be good at it.
This story has been edited for length and clarity.
Sometimes baggies go missing on a night out. It just happens. They're cursed.
Of course, you're also fairly often quite fucked on a night out, so not the most reliable protector of anything on your person, let alone a transparent bag containing a small amount of white powder. Think: how often have you got a wash out of the machine to discover a now-empty, now-warped plastic bag that had absolutely 100 percent disappeared the night before?
See: cursed.
Mind you, sometimes the curse lets up and you remember where you put your stash – even if it's too late. For instance, if you're the person who recently sold some second-hand shoes online, before realising you'd left a load of drugs hidden in them.
Look, the buyer tweeted your text to them (which, by the way, was not "weird" to send, but actually very kind and considerate):
In case you're not getting it, here's the tragic – and slightly confusing – tale in four parts:
Part 1: Hubris
Person B needs somewhere to hide their stash, so gives it to Person A, who pops it under the sole of Person B's Reebok shoe, seemingly without their knowledge or permission, somehow.
Part 2: The Night Out
A good time was had by all, indicated by the half-munched pill in the baggie.
Also, we have to assume that Person A told Person B they'd hidden their drugs in their shoe at some point? Otherwise, how would they have been able to do that half a pill?
Either way, everyone goes home and completely forgets the drugs are in the shoe.
Part 3: The Comedown
From the looks of it, Person B asks Person A to sell their trainers online for them. Why, we don't know. Maybe they have better Depop feedback? To be honest, that bit isn't hugely important.
Once Person A has sold and shipped Person B's trainers, they come to the horrible realisation that the trainers were concealing what looks like two half pills, a fair bit of MDMA, maybe some ketamine and at least one more bag whose contents we cannot speculate upon.
Person B messages the buyer, Person C: "I suddenly had the worst thought of u taking them on holiday and being caught with them n felt sooo bad hahah"
Part 4: The Plot Twists
Plot twist 1: The drugs could have been in any number of Reeboks Person B has sold on Depop, or somewhere similar, which – if found – could have led to the buyer being arrested, potentially in an airport for attempted drugs trafficking ("haha").
Plot twist 2: Person C, the buyer, is so chill about this misunderstanding that they tweet the entire interaction for the RTs.
Gemma Collins is electric television. This is a fact. I would watch a tightly-edited 45-minute post-teatime show of Gemma Collins doing basically anything, and TV producers know this, and that is how she keeps getting work. Gemma Collins, doing a crossword. Gemma Collins, emotional, trying to jet-wash a particularly dirty garage door ("Arg? Babes, it's Gemma. Yeah. Not being funny but this door is filthy." [Gemma Collins is crying, now] "I just can’t do it"). Gemma Collins, doing things. This is the future of television.
But Gemma Collins dating? Actual humans? In eccentric situations such as "almost, but not actually, going to Paris" and "eating curry" and "wearing diamante eyewear in a middle-of-the-day masquerade ball somewhere indistinct in west London"? Yes, I want to see that. And I want to see Muggy Mike off of Love Island unemotionally trying to shag anything he sees in the mean time. And this is why Celebs Go Dating exists. It exists for me.
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Celebs Go Dating is a TV show where celebrities (*1) go dating. They date normal people – hereby, "normies" – on these dates, and there, I suppose, is the thrill of it all. The dates are overseen by Lady Nadia Essex, a woman who seems to tear at every word she says like a dog trying to tug a newspaper you have firmly gripped in your hand; Eden Blackman, a somehow 50-year-old bloke with sleeve tattoos and the defeated air of a substitute geography teacher, but in the curiously ageless body of some sort of Fashion Week FROW mainstay; and Tom Read Wilson, who I don’t fully understand as a human (like: how did he happen? What impossible stars repeatedly aligned to make the person we now know as Tom Read Wilson?) but I do very much want him to be my frail gay grandmother. They are an ironclad team with a clear hierarchy whose jobs are to cheerfully welcome (Tom), shout the bollocks off of (Eden) and occasionally make "u horny?" eyebrows at (Nadia) our various celebrities (*2). This is the format love now takes. This is our dream team, our dynamos.
Celebs Go Dating opens with our celebs (*3) explaining who they are and why they are so unlucky in love and what they are looking for in a partner, which is the same fucking thing as everyone (someone to make them laugh; someone who is very honest; "someone to have fun with"). For some of our celebrities, we do not need this B-roll because we know exactly their potted shagging and un-shagging history from various other celebrity-based reality TV shows (see below). For some of the other celebrities, we very much do need this intro tape because it is not immediately clear who they are (Tallia Storm). And at this point I suppose we must dip briefly into the Celebrity Reality TV Inter-Shagging Ecosystem, to get an idea of where CGD does actually sit, and how it can make and unmake the celebrities trapped within the web of it—
THE TRADEMARKED™ CELEBRITY REALITY INTER-SHAGGING ECOSYSTEM
Consider: Gemma Collins was pulled up from the clay of normal life into the golem of being a celebrity by the ancient magic of The Only Way Is Essex. Mike Thalassitis was a dead-eyed Essex-based mega-shagger until he went on Love Island, where he went on to be a dead-eyed Essex-based mega-shagger who also moves around the country, now, making nightclub appearances and then shagging. Sam Thompson’s sister was posh and famous in Made in Chelsea before he became posh and famous in Made in Chelsea. Ollie Locke has always been posh and famous in Made in Chelsea. But what unites them all is this: they were all normal people who were fed into the cogs of a reality show machine and came out, ta da, remade as something better: they were pulled apart as civilians and put back together as someone with 100K Instagram followers and a teeth-whitening sponsorship deal. They were forged in reality TV show fires, and that made them impossible to melt with embarrassment, and that’s what makes them such perfect ammunition for a televisual gatling gun such as Celebs Go Dating.
So now Celebs Go Dating falls into the same bracket of "shows reality TV celebrities go on to become more permanent, but not necessarily bigger, reality TV celebrities". Civilians-made-celebrities on reality shows with fixed boredom threshold timelines branch out into other TV to cement their celebrityness, and that is what this is. We have always had Strictly Come Dancing, for real celebrities, and I’m A Celebrity… for former footballers and the fifth most popular person in an otherwise popular band. But now we have a thriving ecosystem of celebrity that is constantly making work for itself: Gemma Collins did TOWIE, then she did Splash!, then she did I’m A Celebrity… then she did Celebrity Big Brother, then she did Sugar Free Farm, and now she’s doing this. Mike Thala has already flipped a Love Island disaster into a Celebs Go Dating disaster. Look at previous participants on the show: Joey Essex, Charlotte Crosby, Stephanie Pratt, Ferne McCann, Stephen Bear, Joey Essex again, Arg, that Toff one, Bobby Norris. Reality TV is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a snake eating its own tail, and Celebs Go Dating is exactly the point where the mouth meets the tip.
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Anyway, I'll catch you up on how this series is going: Gemma Collins is pinballing between a number of firmly-built slightly older gentlemen who have absolutely no chat at all; Jade Jones, Taekwondo Olympian, does not have a single clue how to flirt with other humans but at least hasn’t put anyone in a headlock; London Hughes found her soulmate by yelling at him over mini-golf; Tallia Storm is… well, I mean. She’s there.
Then, boy-wise, you’ve got Ollie Locke, who approaches each date like he’s a highly strung health inspector who cannot believe what he is seeing; Mike Thalassitis, whose dating technique seems to be looming silently near women like a tree before saying "What’s happening" and then cutting to a talking head where, in front of a pink-purple bar, he essentially says "Yeah, I’d shag it"; Sam Thompson, a sort of posh excited puppy who keeps saying he capital-L Loves people because whatever prep school he went to taught him politeness wrong; Jonathan Lipnicki, who keeps getting mad when people call him "Stuart Little" then is just very wholesomely falling in love with a Geordie; then Seb Morris, Tallia Storm’s ex, is also, you know. There.
This is the thing with CGD: packed tightly into a punishing 21-episode schedule with a two-part finale at the end, celebrity storylines alternating with each episode, nothing fundamentally happens – it’s just mixers and people in white rooms being shown faces on a projector while Lady Nadia goes "do you fancy them?", and then a series of Fun Dates – but it happens so relentlessly that you can’t help but look away. Yesterday, I watched rapt as Gemma Collins had a takeaway cup of tea in a canteen with a lad who was wearing racing overalls. Nothing happened. But I could not look away.
So these celebrities and Tallia Storm are all there to fulfil the set roles in the Celebs Go Dating jigsaw as defined by previous series, and which will be in turn fulfilled again by future series: posh person who does not know how to interact with anyone who went to a comprehensive school (Sam, previously Toff); slightly baffled American (Jonathan, previously Stephanie Pratt); the exactly one non-hetero participant (Ollie, previous Bobby Norris); hardened shagger who says he is looking for love but is actually only saying that so he can get more shagging done (Mike, previously Frankie Cocozza); TV presenter you are repeatedly told you should know about but do not actually know about, such a powerful they-are-famous-it's-you-who-is-wrong insistence that actually it sends you a bit mad, like am I out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong (London, previously Sarah-Jane Crawford); someone from Essex who keeps being late to mixer events because their Addison Lee spent two hours in traffic on the way in (Gemma, previously Arg, previously Ferne, previously Bobby).
They go on dates with normal people, and I absolutely cannot understand any of these people's motive for wanting to submit themselves to this. Do you want to go to Wales and do life-drawing with a Taekwondo medallist? Would you like to play crazy golf at 11AM while an entire camera crew watches you do flirting? Do you want to take Gemma Collins to a curry house where she will order "just a bit of everything, and a saag paneer"? How about you shag Mike Thalassitis but then he banters you off about it on primetime TV? Why are you doing this?
Of course, I don’t suppose anyone really expects the alchemy of love to strike this TV show in a single swoop. It’s essentially fun, isn’t it, seeing how hard it is to tessellate two opposing personality shapes over a TV table, then watch ostensibly attractive and charismatic people burst into an office in the cold autumn light of the day and scream with frustration at how hard it is to find someone they connect with. What is love? Is it a game of numbers? Is it a rare and fleeting thing that can only connect two pre-destined souls? Or is it mild mutual horniness and three to four drinks followed by a WhatsApp conversation that goes on for so long you have to meet their dad? Celebs Go Dating doesn’t answer this question, but it does ask it.
This loop of failure is what makes Celebs Go Dating such an enjoyably brainless watch. The entire 21-episode season is crammed into four short weeks of television, designed to be hoovered up on dormant winter evenings by dying Vitamin D-deficient minds.
I’ve still not quite tapped into what makes watching people date or flirt on TV so compelling – is it the feeling of participating in flirting without the jeopardy of rejection? Is it that dual self we show people on dates, at once peeling away the unpleasant layers of ourselves while presenting an artificial sheen of something better, only Gemma Collins is doing it while drinking vodka through a straw? Is it the fact that, even when rich and famous, people who flirt have the composure of a sky-dancer being run over by a truck? – but whatever it is, Celebs Go Dating has it: we watch people we’ve already seen on other reality shows jut against the wrong shapes of various Instagram models and make-up artists, then retire to the show’s central office to be told basic advice like, "Open up", "Ask about them" and "Don’t tell them you love them on a first date".
At first, it seems Nadia and Eden are entirely pointless in a show where every date is pre-approved and scouted out by a production team, but then you realise they are there to keep celebrity egos in check, to stop them all from spiralling out of control, to oversee an uneasy parley between former child stars and unknown fashion students.
That is to say it is fluff, but it is enjoyable fluff, and Rob Beckett does a good job with the voiceover, and very crucially it feels like a firm step in the right direction in terms of the Reality Ecosystem we discussed above. My theory is this: reality TV is circular, and it is on a fixed orbit where it goes close to touching an ever more obscene sun, then oscillates away for a more glossy cycle where it actually becomes quite tame. Example: in 2003, Richard Blackwood had a coffee enema live on This Morning, and arguably we peaked too soon with that. Example: in 2007, Jodie Marsh appeared in a show called Who'll Take Her Up the Aisle, where she literally got married to some lad on MTV. Example: the entire run of The Valleys, 2012. In between those gaps, reality TV has shied away from on-camera anal breaching, and that feels like a shame.
It’s 2018 now, and we have a whole knew breed of celebrity, willing to do a whole new level of cut-yourself-open-and-bleed-in-the-name-of-entertainment, and I guess what I am saying is this: is it so unbelievable, really, that CGD isn’t some sort of gateway drug to a new path of televisual depravity? That, in another year, we won’t all tune in to E4’s flagship reality show Up The Arg, where Dr Christian Jessen slowly inserts a 4K camera into James Argent’s anal canal and analyses what lies within it, while Arg squirms quietly and thinks about how this will pay for his tax bill? If celebrities will hand over the precious intimacy of their love lives to the producers at Channel 4, what else will they do?
Watch Jonathan Lipnicki blankly tell a girl "there’s no Nando’s in America" and know this is the start of something more.
Canadians Melina Roberge and Andre Tamine pled guilty yesterday to involvement in a $21-million plan to smuggle cocaine into Australia via cruise ship. Roberge is currently being held at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre in western Sydney.
Roberge, 23, and Tamine, 64, were arrested in the summer of 2016 when their cruise ship 'Sea Princess' docked in Sydney and police found 95kg of cocaine in their cabins. The drugs were stuffed inside suitcases and wrapped in plastic bags.
Both changed their plea after another women they were traveling with, Isabelle Lagace, was sentenced to seven years jail for her role in the scheme. Lagace, 28, pled guilty within months of the drugs being discovered, explaining that she was trying to clear some debt and thought the trip would be “an easy job for easy money.”
Roberge, left, and Isabelle Lagace. Source: Instagram
The trio of Quebecers spent seven weeks cruising around the world together on Sea Princess, recording the journey on Instagram as they went. The cruise started in England and stopped along the way in Ireland, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and South America.
According to her Facebook account, Roberge worked as the manager of a Pandora store in Montreal before she embarked on the round-the-world cruise.
Roberge and Tamine will both remain behind bars until their hearings, on March 21 and October 26 respectively.
Now, after a year of reflection, the former couple has returned for a reunion even messier than their original encounter. So on Monday's Desus & Mero, the hosts broke down the #HurtBae reunion and added their special brand of commentary that you'd only expect from the VICELAND hosts.
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.
After seeing the international press largely turn its back on Bosnia shortly after the war there ended, in favour of headline-grabbing conflicts elsewhere, journalist Sara Terry decided that post-conflict reporting deserved more support. She set up the Aftermath Project, which aimed to give annual grants to photographers covering the effects of war on people, rather than war itself.
Sara's new book, War Is Only Half the Story, brings together over ten years of post-conflict work and aims to remind readers that the end of war is not the end of trauma, danger or difficulty.
From Refugees of Georgian Villages, by Natela Grigalashvili. Sisters, Kaspi, Georgia, 2005.
VICE: Your work in Bosnia was what led you toward starting the Aftermath Project. Can you tell me what you were doing there and how it informed the work that followed? Sara Terry: I began my project in Bosnia because I was really angry about a report I had read, stating that just as more Bosnians than ever before were finally feeling ready to try to go home again, the international community was getting "Bosnia fatigue" and moving onto the next crisis spot, which was East Timor at the time.
I just thought that was so short-sighted, and such a reflection of the culture that we were becoming. Even 18 years ago, we were becoming this social media-driven culture, thinking in such shallow terms. People thought five years was enough time for people to get over a war that saw the worst genocide in Europe since WWII.
Over the course of my time in Bosnia, the big stories were going to conflict photographers and conflict stories in the wake of 9/11. I think it's really important to know what’s being done in our names around the world in terms of wars, but I had this compelling sense that what was more important than war was the story about aftermath.
Aftermath is where we insist on redefining our humanity. I was amazed by Muslim Bosnians I had met, who had been "ethnically cleansed" from their homes and wanted to go back to the very places where their neighbours had driven them out. I thought it showed an astonishing quality of the human spirit. That's what I wanted to know more about.
Lakotas celebrate traditional life throughout late summer with Sun Dances, Pow Wows and Horse Races. From Surviving Wounded Knee, by Danny Wilcox Frazier.
How did the actual Aftermath Project come out of that time and that work? In the midst of my work in Bosnia I took part in a workshop with the photographer Sam Abell, and he asked us what impact we wanted our work to have. I had gotten awards as a journalist and had seen the impact my work had, but I didn't think that way yet as a photographer.
I remember saying, "It would be so great if other photographers wanted to be aftermath photographers – my work might help inspire that." A day later, I was like, "Seriously? No one knows who you are as a photographer, most people didn't care about Bosnia to start with, and you think your work is enough to start a discussion?" Anyway, I decided to start a grant programme for photographers covering the aftermath of conflict. I have no idea why on earth I thought I could do it – I didn't have money, or foundation support – but I just decided I could. That was in 2003. It took four years or so to build it up. We gave our first grants in 2007.
Luis Lopez Cemetery, Socorro County, New Mexico. Luis Lopez is a town in one of four counties being studied for the health impacts resulting from radiation fallout from the 1945 Trinity Atomic test. Luis Lopez residents say dozens of people in the cemetery died of cancer and wonder if it is linked to the test. Residents within 150 miles of the Trinity site show higher incidents of cancer than in other parts of New Mexico, according to a health impact study released in 2017 by the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium. From Acknowledgement of Danger, by Nina Berman.
After over ten years working in this area, do you feel that aftermath work naturally attracts journalists and artists who are inclined to delve deeper than those who cover war? I came from newspaper journalism, so I understand the news cycle. But I also wanted to challenge it. I wanted to say, "Why is it that death, destruction, disease, famine are the only things that are newsworthy?"
I think aftermath is just as newsworthy as conflict, if not more so. It’s an incredibly powerful story about the human condition. Aftermath absolutely invites work that goes deeper, yes. My Bosnia work took me four years. War itself is obviously physically dangerous, and I have great respect for my colleagues who cover conflict and who see it as something more than a way to make a name for themselves – but it’s obvious what you should be shooting in a war, isn’t it? There goes the bomb, there’s the tank, those people just got killed…
I mean, apart from the physical dangers, war is an easy thing to shoot. But to shoot aftermath, how do you shoot what you can’t necessarily see? That's why I love poetry so much, and why poetry is the narrative thread in the book. Poetry is in so many ways about what you can’t see.
One of the nicest things anybody ever said to me about my Bosnia work was, "Wow, you spent a long time waiting around, didn’t you?" That stuff doesn't happen in front of your face; it takes time to see what happens on the way to reestablishing civil society, what it looks like to deal with sorrow, and what it looks like to ignore warning signs that could lead to a future conflict…
Crows flying over a deserted field in winter. Ukraine, 2007. From Open See, by Jim Goldberg
How do you see the Aftermath Project fitting into the wider news and reporting world? Part of the original mission statement was to change the way the media covers conflict. To broaden the dialogue, to understand post-conflict issues and their importance.
I do think there’s a lowest common denominator factor in daily journalism – how do you grab somebody? Now, historically, we think the best way to grab people is by shocking them, but I am interested in long-term conversations; I am not interested in that. Repeated shock leads to fatigue.
As a journalist and photographer, my view has always been that you can get someone to care about something [if] you reach them. And you start there. Some of those people you reach will think about it more deeply, caring will lead to intelligent thought on the issues, and from that group there’s an even smaller number who do something, who will act.
I think the media buys into clicks. I don’t mean all media – there’s great journalism going on these days – but generally the approach is shortsighted. I've found that people do respond to these more involved, long-term stories. The Aftermath Project is an outlier in the media world for sure, but I think it’s having an impact. I've seen far more aftermath reporting around now, and not always tied to ten year anniversaries and so on, so I do feel that the compass needle has moved a bit.
In a world of news saturation, and social media, it’s important to remind people what it means to be human – and I think that’s what post-conflict work does.
A demonstration at SOFEX weapons fair, the world’s most important weapons fair, which caters exclusively to Special Operations Forces and Homeland Security. It’s held biennially in Amman, Jordan. 2012. From United Colours of War, by Luca Locatelli.
I wouldn’t want to ask you to put the conflicts the project has covered in any sort of "order" – but that said, do any in particular stand out to you as having great capacity to engage an audience in terms of post-conflict reporting? I think we always reference what’s happening in the world as we are growing up. For me, it was Vietnam, but I think – in general – wars that last a long time have an immediate impact on us; they grab our attention because of sustained media interest, which gives you a bit of a window to engage people. For Americans today, that might be Afghanistan, or the Iraq war, which feels likes it’s been going on forever.
When Monika Bulaj won a grant to cover the impact of war in Afghanistan, another photographer wrote to her and said something like, "Oh, that’s aftermath? Are you kidding? That war's still going on!" I wrote back and pointed out that aftermath happens constantly over the course of conflict. Which aftermath in Afghanistan is it you want to talk about, the aftermath of the Soviets being there, the aftermath of the tribal warlords tearing apart Kabul, or the aftermath of the allied invasion?
Lorenzo Cuxil and Felicita Oligaria look at a picture of a victim killed by the Guatemalan Army in a former military base in Comolapa, 80km west of Guatemala city. From Reclaiming the Dead: Mass Graves in Guatemala, a Story Only Partially Told, by Rodrigo Abd.
So what is "aftermath" in terms of the project’s parameters? We take a nuanced position on aftermath – we see aftermath in places where conflict is still going on. We have also extended it to work like Danny Wilcox Frazier’s project on Pine Ridge Indian reservation, Surviving Wounded Knee. That's the aftermath of the US army’s massacre at Pine Ridge, over 150 years ago.
All wars draw attention to their aftermath for a moment in time, but I don't think there’s any one war that's happened while we have been running the Aftermath Project that I would say, "Bam! There’s a slam dunk answer, that one made people aware of aftermath…"
At the end of 2011, Kwinanika Nigerian, 45, Abiya Gil, 45, and Nakambululo Torina, 30, were raped by several soldiers of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [FDLR] while they were going to the fields. From Raped Lives, by Gwenn Dubourthoumieu.
I wanted to ask about your work in Rwanda, which is often held up as a sort of shining light in terms of post-conflict resolution. How does that conflict illuminate what the Aftermath Project is all about? I knew Rwanda needed to be in the project, because often people are all, "Oh my god! Look at the Rwandans! Look at how they have pulled the country back together, look at their forgiving of the past." But I was like, 'Wait a minute, is that all there is to this?'
In the West we really liked Rwanda, because Rwanda got back to business right away. They were a known business haven – Paul Kagame came in wanting to restore the economy, parallel with trying to resolve a million court cases which had to use the international tribunals and then Gacaca courts. Rwanda looks like what the West wanted Rwanda to look like. We poured in money, there were no checks on Kagame’s power, and now he’s laughing.
I had friends, Rwandan ex-pats, who told me things were very weird there… there are a lot of warning signs under the surface. Kagame has become a dictator. He’s made it so that people can’t talk about being Hutu or Tutsi – you are all Rwandan. The press is essentially a mouthpiece for the government, and people are terrified. We supported all the wrong ideas.
Rwanda is a warning place, in terms of the aftermath. Tito kept Yugoslavia together after World War Two with the slogan of "unity and brotherhood" – you could no longer talk about your ethnic background – then he died, and it fell apart. It's like that in Rwanda now: it’s literally against the law to talk about someone being Hutu or Tutsi. Underneath the day-to-day normality there, everyone knows who did what, and it's dangerous.
We need to figure out how to understand a non-western narrative, we need to learn how to listen, and to realise we do not have all the answers. That’s what aftermath reporting should do.
Bibi, Al Hussein, Mohamed, and Akli are part of a Taureg rebels music band, founded by the Niger Movement for Justice, a primarily Tuareg militant group, to spread their message all over the Sahel region. Northern Niger, 2008. From Sahel - The Dynamics of Dust, by Rodrigo Abd.
Most people are at their worst when they're hungry. It starts as a more visceral expression of anger when we're infants, but as we grow older we learn to transform those screams into pure passive aggression towards everyone around us.
Sahra* knows all about hangry people. The 27-year-old has been working as a waitress for a decade and says that she and her colleagues often drink shots to get through shifts with particularly difficult customers.
She started out when she was still a student, working part-time in a pub, before moving on to bars, cafés and several restaurants. Today, Sahra works as the assistant manager of a fine dining restaurant in Berlin, where she serves rich and famous guests and makes around €3,000 (£2,650) a month.
I sat down with Sahra in a café in the city’s affluent Charlottenburg district to find out who the worst guest she's ever served was, whether she's ever spat in a customer's meal and what strategies she has for getting the best tips.
VICE: Do you take longer serving guests you don’t like? Sahra: No. If anything, I work faster so I have less reason to keep going back to their table. If I go too slowly, they’ll get annoyed and keep calling me over.
Why did you decide to become a full-time waitress? At first, waitressing was just a way to make some cash on the side while studying for my A-levels. But once I got into the industry and started making all that quick money, it was hard to break out. With time, I developed a passion for my job – I love eating and being around good food – and I'm proud of what I do; I don't see this as a low-quality job. Almost every week someone tells me that I'm "really intelligent for a waitress", which I find very annoying. Whenever I can, I try to push back against the cliché that waitresses are too thick to do anything else.
Who's the worst customer you've ever served? Our worst guests are rich celebrities who think they're allowed to treat us like shit. For example, there's this one famous guy who comes in, who loves to humiliate the waitresses in our restaurant. He calls us fat and says things like: "Your breasts are so small, I should buy you a boob job for Christmas." You have to be fairly experienced to be able to deal with that, but some of my colleagues can't, and they spend a lot of time crying in our cellar. Once, things got so bad I refused to serve him.
This other time, we had a table of wealthy Russians who were celebrating a birthday. As the night went on they got more and more unpleasant, until one of them literally bit my colleague. The situation only escalated from there – that guest started pouring champagne over her food and throwing sushi around the restaurant. When I asked her what the problem was, she said, "I've got so much money I could buy your life." Eventually, I got the manager and they left. But they trashed us all over Facebook – I couldn't sleep for two days.
Have you ever spat in someone's food? No, but I've worked in restaurants where I've seen it happen. Personally, I could never do that. But if a guest is really shitty, I ask the bartender to "forget" to put alcohol in their cocktails.
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In what other ways do you get back at annoying guests? If guests get too drunk and turn nasty, I just add two or three extra bottles of wine to their bill. But I’ve only ever done that when they've been really shitty, and when I know that they're so rich they wouldn't miss it. Some customers really have a way of making you feel worthless. Last week we had an Emirati prince come in. When he found out that I could speak Arabic he gave me €100, just like that. I thought that was really nice, until later on, when he actually asked if he could buy me. I had to pass the table on to a colleague.
Do you eat the leftovers off plates? Yes, as long as the guest isn't too gross. And if there's anything left in the kitchen at the end of the night, we take that home, too. The food we make here is too good to just throw in the bin. Also, when you're in contact with food all day, you become less picky about what you eat.
What tricks do you use to get more tips? I do this thing that I learned from a business psychology book. It said that if you put a little smiling sun next to the "tip not included" note on the bill, it seems less intrusive. Apparently, the sun is a more positive message than, say, a heart. That little sun works on every single one of my customers.
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What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve seen in a kitchen? In a Mexican restaurant I used to work at, what was leftover in the little sauce bowls from the customers' tables was always tipped back into larger bowl in the kitchen. I've also seen a chef take his hands from down his trousers and then prepare a salad without washing them. But we have an open kitchen at my current restaurant, so disgusting stuff like that can't happen without a guest immediately spotting it.
Do you ever lie to customers who ask if their food is vegan? We used to have this miso soup, and we weren't sure if it was vegan or not, but we still sold it as vegan. Eventually, we discovered that there was some fish in the soup.
What have you learned about dating by observing your guests? Here in Charlottenburg, the best bait is money. Lots of women are attracted to wealthy men. I've developed a talent for immediately spotting couples that are on a meaningful date – there's just a certain energy in the air around them. Sometimes I see couples disappear to the toilet for 20 minutes together. It's always great to know that people are having a special time at our restaurant.
*Sahra's name has been changed to protect her identity and her position.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
Hope Hicks Testifying to House Intel Committee The committee investigating Russian election meddling was expected to question the White House communications director at a closed session Tuesday. Hicks was likely to be asked about her role in drafting a response to the revelation that senior campaign aides met with Russian officials at Trump Tower in June 2016. She was previously scheduled to testify in January, but White House lawyers delated the session.—CBS News
Parkland Police Deputy Responds to Criticism Scot Peterson, the deputy on duty during the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, denied conducting himself like a "coward." Despite his resignation, Peterson’s lawyer called accusations he failed to carry out his duty “patently untrue.” Earlier on Monday, President Trump told a roomful of governors that he would have "run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.”—The New York Times / VICE News
US Envoy to North Korea Set to Retire Joseph Yun will step down from his role as the US State Department’s special representative for North Korean affairs this Friday. “Secretary Tillerson has told me he appreciates my service and did not want me to go, but he accepts it reluctantly,” said Yun. The US still doesn't have even a nominee for ambassador to South Korea.—The Washington Post
Georgia Republicans Warn Delta of Retaliation for NRA Snub Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle, president of the Georgia State Senate, pledged to “kill any tax legislation” benefiting Delta after the Atlanta-based airline axed reduced fares for NRA members. “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back,” Cagle tweeted. Other GOP legislators in Georgia vowed to oppose a bill offering a tax break on jet fuel.—ABC News
International News
Aid Workers Exploiting Syrian Women for Sex Since 2011, Report Says A new report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said women in war-torn parts of Syria have been forced to provide “sexual services” in exchange for aid. It has also been revealed the International Rescue Committee was aware of similar reports of sexual exploitation in Syria back in 2015. Charity worker Danielle Spencer said the issue has "been known about and ignored for seven years."—BBC News
Top Military Chiefs Sacked in Saudi Arabia King Salman removed several key defense officials, including the army’s chief of staff and the commanders of land and air forces. The move came amid skepticism about the effectiveness of the kingdom's military intervention in Yemen. Salman also announced female politician Tamadur bint Youssef al-Ramah will join his cabinet as deputy labor minister.—Al Jazeera
Earthquake in Papua New Guinea Kills at Least 14 The 7.5 magnitude quake struck the country’s Southern Highlands area on Monday, triggering landslides and toppling at least two buildings in the town of Mendi. Local police said at least 14 people were killed, but the provincial administrator put the death toll at 30. The event forced ExxonMobil Corp to close its liquefied gas plant in the area.—Reuters
Canadians Admit to Smuggling Cocaine Quebec women Mélina Roberge and Andre Tamine, accused of bringing $30 million worth of the drug into Australia, pleaded guilty in a Sydney court after their Canadian associate Isabelle Lagace already copped to the crime. Roberge and Lagace have been nicknamed the “cocaine cowgirls” in light of travel photos they shared on social media.—The National Post
Everything Else
Ryan Seacrest Accused of Sexual Misconduct Suzie Hardy, the TV star’s former personal stylist at E! News, said Seacrest grabbed her vagina, pressed his erection against her, and slapped her butt hard enough to leave a welt. She also accused E! of “whitewashing” an investigation into his alleged misconduct. Seacrest has denied the allegations, and an E! investigation into his conduct yielded "insufficient evidence" to support the accusations.—Variety
Stacey Dash Running for Congress The Clueless actress registered to run for the Republican nomination in Southern California’s 44th district, which is currently Democratic turf. She previously teased her bid for political office by posting “Dash to DC” on social media.—AP
Bill Cosby’s Daughter Dies, Aged 44 Ensa Cosby died following a battle with renal disease, a condition affecting the kidneys. A family spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, “The Cosby Family thanks many people for their prayers for their beloved and beautiful Ensa."—CNN
Janelle Monáe Reveals She Worked with Prince The rising R&B star said she was collaborating with the legendary artist on her upcoming album Dirty Computer before he died. Monáe said Prince “helped me come up with sounds, and I really miss him… his spirit will never leave me.”—Noisey
Trump Aide Falls Asleep at School Safety Meeting Photos of Stephen Miller appeared to show him dozing in his chair at a White House meeting about school shootings in the wake of the massacre in Parkland, Florida. He could also be seen yawning and rubbing his eyes.—VICE News
HBO Drops First Glimpse of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ The cable network released a one-minute trailer for the new film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, featuring Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan. “I want to burn,” Jordan’s character tells the chief book burner, played by Michael Shannon.—VICE
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we hear about the up-and-coming animator starting Pakistan’s first ever hand-drawn animation studio.
It was just after 1 PM on a Tuesday, which meant Fat Kid Park in Downtown Brooklyn was pretty vacant. Two guys passed a football while standing on top of their skateboards. Another built up a basketball court's worth of momentum and used it to manual up an incline that ran underneath the BQE. A blonde woman rolled around a bit timidly. That was about it until, seemingly out of nowhere, Dede Lovelace came tearing out from behind her, ready to skate for the first time in a while despite the fact that she hates the cold. When her friend Kabrina Adams showed up about 10 minutes later, the number of men and women at the park was equal.
Despite being an ostensibly egalitarian subculture, skateboarding, like other punk-adjacent scenes, has the reputation of not being the most inclusive. In recent years, the adidas and Nike pro teams have added female and gender non-conforming skaters like Nora Vasconcellos and Lacey Baker to their rosters, which has helped encourage more people who don't fit the mold of a stereotypical bro to pick up boards. Meanwhile, it's mostly been up to all-girl crews on Instagram to evangelize skateboarding to women of color.
The crew that Lovelace and Adams are a part of is probably the most notable at the moment. They were first discovered in 2016 by filmmaker Crystal Moselle, who put them in a short for Miu Miu. The Skate Kitchen blew up on Instagram, where they have close to 50,000 followers who leave comments like "trying to rep this insane movement in Kentucky! I’ve seen so many more girls out at the park and on boards," and "You go girls! My son skates and I never see any girls participating! You are helping to open the door for so many! You should be so proud of your accomplishments!"
Their influence has started to creep into legacy media as well. Vogue and T Magazinehave called them "New York's coolest all-girl skate crew" and "fashion's favorite girl skateboarders." Now, they're co-starring alongside Jaden Smith in a narrative film titled Skate Kitchen about a girl from Long Island who sneaks out to hang with a downtown skate crew despite her mom's wishes. Skate Kitchen just premiered to critical acclaim at Sundance and was subsequently picked up by Magnolia Pictures. It hits theaters this summer.
But between shooting the movie and promoting the narrative feature, skating itself has fallen a bit by the wayside for the native New Yorkers. Lovelace, who is 20, and Adams, who is 24, made sure to sneak in a session when meeting up with VICE for a photo shoot. It was immediately obvious they missed it. As soon as they started kick-pushing around, they were cracking up. After we wrapped up, they pulled their own camera and tripod out of a backpack and started blasting Big Shaq's "Man's Not Hot" from a speaker around Adam's neck. Then they skated away, with Lovelace mugging for the camera. "I wanna take something for the 'Gram to let people know I still skate," she said. "I'm still out here."
VICE: How did you find skateboarding? Dede Lovelace: I went to this middle school called East Side. It was a really popular skate spot for a lot of the locals, so a lot of the boys would go there after school, like after 3 PM and would skate there and it'd just be packed. So I asked my dad to get me a skateboard. He got me the Zoo York board, and I didn't really try to do any tricks because I didn't have any one to skate with. Then one summer, there was this Nike pop-up shop that was going on for about three months straight. I met these guys there who were like OG skaters from like New York City, and they were like super helpful and supportive and they taught me how to ollie.
Kabrina Adams: My cousin had a skateboard, and I thought it looked cool, so I stepped on it. I didn't fall or anything—it just like felt comfortable. And then when I was almost 12, I saw Tony Hawk on television riding like very crazy ramps, and I was like, "I want to be a professional like him." So I asked my dad for a skateboard for my 12th birthday.
How would you describe your skating style? Lovelace: I'm not one of those skaters who do really extreme hardcore shit, because I don't wanna die. So, don't catch me ollieing or kickflipping off eight-stairs. I'm more like, Sebo Walker, but not to that extent. Like really stylish but like simple tricks.
Adams: I like to focus on transition skateboarding, like when you skate ramps and bowls. But I also like to do these old-school kind of tricks. My favourite trick is the 180 Boneless. If you watch Mike Valley, he inspired me to do them, because he does them like really well.
What was it like the first time you tried to go to the skate park? Adams: For a couple of years or more, I would just go to the skate park and mostly watch, because it was like scary. But then I got more confident in myself as a whole, which crossed over into skateboarding. Also as you keep doing it, you get better at like not worrying about what's going to happen if you fall, or what people think about you.
Do you dislike when fashion magazines call you guys fashion's favourite skaters? Do you think the way people write about you diminishes the fact that you guys actually skate? Lovelace: I appreciate the fact that they're actually talking to young kids, who know how to skate who may have a good sense of style, who may be interesting. I like that. But then again, there's too much attention on mainstream fashion and swag. It's like a half-and-half thing. But overall, I don't really care. At the end of the day, I know who I am, and I know I skateboard.
I saw your old English paper on Instagram talking about how you wanted to grow up and promote skateboarding. Is social media the best way to do that? Adams: This is an interesting question because the more you consume something, the more you're hype. But then when it's time to do something, you [don't.] So on the one hand, it's good to have these things that motivate people, but then it's up to them to do it. So I think making content that inspires people will help some people get super pumped and then they'll go out and do it.
Zyahna Bryant was 15 years old when she decided to take down Robert E. Lee. In March of 2016, during her freshman year at Charlottesville High School, Bryant started a petition calling on City Council to rename Lee Park and to remove its monument to the slave-owning Confederate general.
Even at her young age, Bryant was already aware of racial inequities and segregation in Charlottesville. She first took note of colour and class when she realized she was one of the few black students who attended her private pre-K and elementary school. And when she was only seven years old, her grandmother introduced her to political action during the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama. She helped her grandmother work the phones and escort people to the polls.
Bryant’s petition against Charlottesville’s Confederate statues was cited by Councilman Wes Bellamy as a catalyst for the May 2016 creation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials, and Public Spaces. By March of 2017, the City Council had considered the Commission’s report and voted three to two to remove the statues altogether. Several plaintiffs immediately sued and a Virginia state judge enjoined the town of Charlottesville from removing its statutes, pending the lawsuit. That summer, in July of 2017, the Ku Klux Klan protested the City’s plans. On the weekend of August 12, hundreds of alt-righters rallied in town to preserve the statues, leaving three people dead in their wake.
It's February, 2018 now and the statue of General Lee is still standing, covered by a black, plastic tarp. Nearby, in the old Capital of the Confederate States, Democrats in Richmond recently introduced a bill in the Virginia state legislature that would grant Charlottesville the local power to permanently remove its Confederate statues.
In a series of recent phone calls, Bryant told me about her essential role in Charlottesville and American history. The following has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Becoming Politically Active
Honestly, I hadn’t paid much attention to the Robert E. Lee statue when I was young. I remember noticing it in elementary school as I was walking around McGuffey (an Art Center next to the old Lee Park). I asked a student teacher about it who told me it was General Lee. But it wasn’t until 5th or 6th grade, when we started learning about the Civil War, that I started to really understand. Everything they taught us at school about the Civil War was so romanticized. So I decided to do my own research, which is something my family has always encouraged me to do. Once I learned the truth about slavery and the Civil War, I felt disgusted that my city wanted to display a statue that celebrated my ancestors’ pain.
Armed with this knowledge, I started getting into community organization and activism. The biggest catalyst was the murder of Trayvon Martin. I had followed the entire trial of George Zimmerman. I was hopeful justice would be served and start some radical institutional change. Of course, I was wrong. After Zimmerman was acquitted, I felt defeated. But I knew I needed to do something. And I knew that there were other people in my city who shared my feelings. We just weren’t connected or organized.
To fix that, I started making signs and hanging them up around my grandmother’s front yard. They said things like “Honk for Justice” and “Justice for Trayvon.” Some neighbors stopped by and asked if I was planning a demonstration. I wasn’t. But that inspired me. I went on my Facebook and asked people to meet me downtown on the corner of Main Street in front of the Federal Courthouse building. My post was shared by quite a few people. When I arrived that evening, a few people were already there with their signs. There were people of all walks of life, races, and roles in the community—from clergy to council people to local activists. A little over 50 people participated. It was empowering and set me on a path for more activism.
The Petition Against the Lee Statue
I began interning at City Hall during the summer of 2015, which was around the time that Bree Newsome climbed the flagpole outside of South Carolina State House and removed a Confederate flag. When I saw that, I thought, Wow, this is crazy. Seeing Newsome do something so bold helped me realize I could make a difference in Charlottesville. Thanks to a school assignment on “how to make a change,” I took a even closer look at public spaces like parks and thought about how we could change them to be more inclusive.
That paper was where my idea for creating the petition to remove the Robert E. Lee statue came from. In March 2016, during my freshman year of high school, I wrote a letter to City Council. The subject heading was “Change the Name of Lee Park and Remove the Statue.” I sent it to all the councilors. Then I sent it to various local media. Then I shared it on my Facebook.
I wrote the petition. But other people did all the work posting it and spreading it around. It didn’t take long before my petition was everywhere. It caught on like wildfire. A week after I posted it, someone sent a Facebook request for me to speak about the statue at a press conference alongside former Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy, pastors, and community members.
I didn’t expect City Council to bulldoze the statue immediately. I knew it’d be a process. But I never imagined how big of a deal it was going to be, either.
The Unite the Right Rally
The alt-right rally and the subsequent murder of Heather Heyer was really sad. But it wasn’t totally unprecedented for Charlottesville. This city is rooted in white supremacy. We had more than enough evidence to know that really bad things were gonna happen and people were gonna die at this rally. People should have been more realistic from the get-go. Charlottesville is not just some wonderful city and this was not an isolated issue for activists who are here on the ground working for racial equality.
People were also surprised by Donald Trump’s statement that “both sides” share the blame for the tragedy that took place. But I wasn’t. I don’t listen to anything that Trump has to say, I don’t care. I wasn’t expecting a great statement from the President after the weekend. When I saw people on my Facebook page being like, “How could he say that?” I’m like, “Did you not hear everything else he’s said? What were you expecting?”
Where Do We Go from Here
I still think the statues need to go. The longer we take to remove them, the more complicated and complex it gets. But I want people to understand that it’s bigger than the statues.
Black activists or people who work for racial justice can sometimes be seen as one-dimensional. Overall, the work I’ve tried to do is much bigger than the Robert E. Lee statue situation. Our education and community knowledge are more important to me than any statue. Going forward, my energy is focussed on closing the achievement gap and getting more black kids in honors and AP courses.
I’m a junior now. It’s hard to say I wanna be a full-time activist. It’s not realistic for me, because activism is a full-time job that doesn’t pay full-time. But my love is definitely in community and grassroots organizing. Going through the whole process of writing the petition for the statue has shown me as a young activist that one action can have meaning. We can all make change.
This story is a part of VICE's ongoing effort to highlight the contributions of black women around the globe who are making a difference. To read more stories about strong black women making history today, go here.