A pro-pot group called #JeffSesh is selling rolling papers with the AG's mug plastered right on the pack, Newsweekreports. For $5, you'll get 50 of General Jeff's "Old Rebel" Session Papers—perfect for any time you're all worked up about the Trump administration's regressive drug policies and just want to roll up.
According to #JeffSesh's website, the idea of using Sessions's face to sell weed paraphernalia started out, naturally, as a joke. But now the papers are almost sold out, and the group is pushing a social media campaign to let the head of the Justice Department know exactly what they think about his stance on bud.
"We’re not criminals, junkies, or idiots," #JeffSesh wrote on its website. "Regular Jeffs all over the country—good, responsible, patriotic Americans—have a sesh now and then… and it's OK!"
While the group added that when you smoke General Jeff's you're "helping keep the law moving forward," it hasn't said exactly how it'll use the profits. Ideally, all that cash would be going to a nonprofit like NORML or something, but for all we know, it might just be helping a few potheads in Colorado pick up an ounce.
At the end of the day, selling papers might not deal a major blow to Sessions's war on weed, but it's nice to know that, somewhere in America, someone is getting blazed with a guy who once said pot was "only slightly less awful" than heroin.
Matt and his friends leave London every New Year's Eve. His last trip was to the Welsh coast with 21 others at the end of 2017. They were staying in an old manor house full of cobwebs, swords and paintings of fox hunts. Locals had warned them the place was haunted.
"The house had been owned by some sort of Lord, and the family line died with him," Matt remembers. "We stayed in his bedroom and there was a massive framed picture of him above the bed. In fact, there were pictures of him everywhere." The weekend went well, until Matt, 27, got too high on New Year's Eve and removed an antique golf club from the wall. An attempt to swing it ended in the head being smashed off and landing somewhere in the darkness of the garden.
"I think it angered the ghost of the lord," says Matt, who began to see the lord of the manor in his comedown dreams, asking questions about the golf club. "I woke up in a cold sweat freak-out and demanded everyone come into the garden and hunt for the head. He'd been in some of their dreams too." The group took phone torches into the garden and spent the rest of their final night searching for the golf club's head, which they eventually located, haphazardly repaired and returned to the wall. "If they ever move it, it will absolutely fall off. We left the next day."
With nightclubs dying but drugs more readily available than ever before, it's no wonder people are searching for alternative spaces in which to do them. Put it down to an uptick in escapism, or simply the arrival of property rental websites like Airbnb offering cheap stays in amazing locations, but getting away has become the new going out. As the cities have turned their backs on us, hedonists have returned to the wilderness. A curiosity of the post-nightlife age, this is the rise of the rural sesh.
The rural sesh is a simple proposition: you book a big house for two or three nights – one buried far away in the countryside, somewhere none of you have been, somewhere nobody has heard of. Then you throw a massive party in it. The sort of party that starts out properly, with expensive beers and good music, but quickly derails into an existential crisis. The appeal is obvious: there's the dusty magic of arriving in a creaking house for the first time, and all that clean air for when you’re ready to walk off your comedown. You can make as much noise as you want and consume all the illegal powders you like without having to worry about neighbours, bouncers or police interfering.
There is a specific type this appeals to: the older party-goer who can no longer be bothered with the rigmarole of nightclubs or festivals, but still wants that drug-fuelled release. The rural sesh is organised like a holiday – well in advance – making them ideal for large friendship groups to book time off work and reunite after long absences. Rural seshing often happens under the guise of stag-dos and hen parties, or New Year’s Eve celebrations for the nearly-thirties. These bucolic benders are parties for people who want a huge night followed by a group-cooked lasagne. Two pills and a bottle of Sancerre.
This isn't a completely new idea, of course. Slow cooking in a country manor is a fantasy as indebted to Withnail and I as it is the unlikely friendship between Oliver Reed and Keith Moon, who would lose their minds on wild binges in Reed’s country manor. Yet, as both of those examples show, where the rural sesh leads, madness often follows.
David, 24, went on a stag-do last summer to a 20-person house in rural Wales. The group he was with was 30-strong, and while the surrounding open spaces meant sport was originally on the agenda, it quickly turned into a massive tear-up. "It was one of the greatest weekends of my adult life, but it was very extreme," he explains. "A lot of steam was let off and the hedonism was intense."
The cabin fever element of the rural sesh is a recurring theme. Despite the open air, it seems the seclusion encourages the heads to furrow further into unending after-party. David remembers stretching himself too far, being so exhausted and emotionally drained that he nearly cried once the weekend was over and he was back in his own bed. The countryside can be a dark and unforgiving place, after all.
And it's not just an unforgiving place for the party guests. The rural sesh presents a heap of challenges for Airbnb, whose hosts can now find themselves with unexpected problems. As the short-term rental site has boomed in popularity, horror stories of trashed properties have made headlines all over the world, calling into question who has ultimately responsibility for the behaviour of guests.
In 2015, renters in Calgary did upwards of $150,000 (£84,500) worth of damage to a property after booking in with fake credit cards and throwing a house party which left mayonnaise smeared over furniture and floorboards buckling under pools of booze. In 2016, Airbnb user Christina McQuillian discovered her one-bed London flat had been used for a massive rager, rather than "somewhere to stay after a party", as the tenant had promised. She'd been called by neighbours who'd heard grime blasting from her apartment, accompanied by the smell of weed. When she got there, the sesh was still in full swing. She even walked in on a couple having sex in her bedroom, while a third man watched. When she tried to break up the party she was punched by one of the guests.
Obviously this is an extreme case, but it's a vivid example of the potential violation that rural or remote partying can involve. By throwing a party in someone’s house, however good the clean-up, you cross some figurative and literal red lines. People who’ve been burgled often say the strangest, most disquieting after-effect is knowing a stranger has been in their home and violated their space; the same must apply for knowing someone’s been doing blow off your dresser.
In response to this article, Airbnb said the following: "Inappropriate, illegal or disruptive behaviour has no place on our platform, and we permanently ban bad actors from our community. Each and every Airbnb reservation is scored ahead of time for risk to prevent incidents from happening in the first place. Over two million guest arrivals stay in a listing on any given night and negative experiences are incredibly rare."
Of the historic cases – Calgary and London – featured in this article, the company was clear that the guests in question were removed and hosts supported under their "Host Guarantee Programme". They added that hosts are able to specify house rules in advance – including a "no parties" clause – and are covered by their Host Protection Insurance, which offers protection against third party claims of property damage or bodily injury up to $1,000,000 USD.
That said, the onus doesn’t entirely lay on Airbnb; hosts have come up with responses to the threat of parties. Party Squasher is a smart sensor, attached to an app, which provides a remote count of how many mobile devices are in your house at any time. This gives the homeowner a live headcount, warning them if it crosses a certain limit. Many rental sites – Airbnb excluded – feature properties that welcome stag parties and everything that comes with them, provided guests are prepared to pay a much bigger security deposit at the start of the trip.
Outside of that, most rural sesh-heads are happy to do the clear-up themselves. Matt says his friends normally hire a cleaner. "Between 20-plus people it's a no-brainer."
There is everything of the tragic millennial about the rural sesh – so untethered from place and property, we've resorted to renting the homes of others to throw house parties in. What could be a better representation of short-term wealth and arrested development than renting a country retreat only to turn it into an after-party? It's a party style that articulates the fevered aspirations of a work-wracked generation dreaming of countryside retirements they’ll never know. Twenty-four hour party searching for the freedom to do a load of gear and go for a nice walk.
It might sound boujie or claustrophobic, but the rural sesh offers a rare balance: the prangs of a party offset by the serenity of the great outdoors. A Friday night where you can see the stars. The air is cold but clean, so you don’t mind it running loops through your lungs like dental floss. All in front of you is calm; heather, trees, the indiscriminate outlines of neatly trimmed hedges. Hard mud, gravel and snail shells roll and crunch beneath your feet. As David puts it: "Perhaps there’s a wholesomeness inherent to being surrounded by trees and hills – it felt elevated."
It was men like Billy Graham who convinced me to leave the church I attended for nearly two decades. They convinced me to want to renounce my faith, to never again call myself a Christian. And it wasn’t because they were bad, but because they were good in the worst way.
My former church, Christ Community in Conway, South Carolina, was full of good men who patterned themselves after Graham. They were traditional and believed the Bible called men to lead, but also for husbands and wives to submit to one another. They, like Graham, welcomed racial integration when others wouldn’t, and took steps to make it a reality in a church whose congregation was mostly white evangelical Christian but also had a significant presence of people of color.
I found a home among them because of those efforts, and because I grew up in awe of Graham, just like every other Southerner I knew, white and black. I was on my knees in my family’s living room in our tin can of a trailer watching Graham’s crusades on TV and crying and praying along with the tens of thousands in the stadiums he routinely filled. That’s why I know white evangelical Christians aren’t the stereotypes they resemble in too many stories and movies. They disagree with gay marriage and have qualms about the acceptance of transgender people not because of blind hatred, but because these are challenges to what they believe the Bible teaches is best for everyone. In their view, love is the catalyst of their opposition to such societal changes. I disagree with their interpretation of the Bible but understand it well. That’s why I know they’d give me the shirt off their backs if I was cold and protect my kids from physical harm no matter how differently we view the world.
That’s also why I had to leave. These same white Evangelicals pushed for equality because they believed each of us is a child of God—but frequently rejected attempts that would upend a tradition that had long placed white men on the top rung. They were comfortable with interracial hugs and prayers but were often barriers to those insisting upon more than symbolic progress. It’s heartwarming that they establish prison ministries, but heartbreaking that they aren’t outraged by the daily injustice that has led to the incarceration of so many black and brown men. It’s hard to square their love of those in the LBGTQ community with their embrace of laws and customs that would make gays, lesbians and transgender people second-class citizens. I wish they would grieve as much for the unarmed black man shot in the back by police while running away as they express outrage at black football players kneeling in silent, peaceful protest to expose brutality.
More than that, it is frustrating, deflating even, when they chide us for refusing to relent in the face of bigotry, even as they embrace a man like Donald Trump. Late in life, Billy Graham expressed regret for his earlier alliances with politicians such as President Richard Nixon—and related anti-Semitic remarks—and warned his followers to be careful about their involvement in politics. But his son, the Reverend Franklin Graham, did not listen, and has been one of Trump’s cheerleaders despite his deeply un-Christian behavior.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” explained it well; he wrote it for men like Graham.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
Graham responded by saying King should “put the brakes on a little.” His followers have spent the past couple of years telling us the same thing, as though there is such a thing as too much equality, or that fighting too hard to attain it is ungodly.
For a long time, I considered it my mission in life to reach across the aisle and racial divides, even if it meant being a lonely voice. I still do. But I no longer believe that means elevating the feelings of white people bothered more by protest than injustice above my own dignity.
Late in his life, Graham said he regretted not being more forceful on the issue of race, that though he knocked down some barriers—such as integrating his crusades when it wasn’t popular to do so—he “made a mistake when I didn’t go to Selma.”
How much better this world would be had Graham been just as radical for racial justice as he was for Christ. If they aren’t careful, years from now, that question will be asked of many of the white evangelical Christians mourning Graham this week.
Sunday's 90th annual Academy Awards ceremony was long and largely uneventful, save for a few standout appearances by Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph, a brief performance by Sufjan Stevens, and the women of the #TimesUp movement. But among the bizarre Jimmy Kimmel bits and expected Oscar wins—like Guillermo del Toro's Best Picture win for The Shape of Water—there still were a few surprises to round out the night. Check out a full list of the night's 2018 Oscar winners in bold below:
Best Picture: Call Me by Your Name Darkest Hour Dunkirk Get Out Lady Bird Phantom Thread The Post The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk Jordan Peele, Get Out Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Best Actress: Sally Hawkins, The Shape of Water Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Margot Robbie, I, Tonya Saoirse Ronan, Lady Bird Meryl Streep, The Post
Best Actor: Timotheé Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name Daniel Day-Lewis, Phantom Thread Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour Denzel Washington, Roman J. Israel, Esq.
Best Supporting Actress: Mary J. Blige, Mudbound Alison Janney, I, Tonya Lesley Manville, Phantom Thread Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird Octavia Spencer, The Shape of Water
Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project Woody Harrelson, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Original Screenplay: The Big Sick Get Out Lady Bird The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Adapted Screenplay: Call Me by Your Name The Disaster Artist Logan Molly's Game Mudbound
Best Animated Feature Film: The Boss Baby The Breadwinner Coco Ferdinand Loving Vincent
Best Production Design: Beauty and the Beast Blade Runner 2049 Darkest Hour Dunkirk The Shape of Water
Best Original Song: "Mighty River," Mudbound "Mystery of Love," Call Me by Your Name "Remember Me," Coco "Stand up for Something," Marshall "This Is Me," The Greatest Showman
Best Cinematography: Blade Runner 2049 Darkest Hour Dunkirk Mudbound The Shape of Water
Best Costume Design: Beauty and the Beast Darkest Hour Phantom Thread The Shape of Water Victoria and Abdul
Best Sound Editing: Baby Driver Blade Runner 2049 Dunkirk The Shape of Water Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Best Sound Mixing: Baby Driver Blade Runner 2049 Dunkirk The Shape of Water Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Best Animated Short Film: Dear Basketball Garden Party Moo Negative Space Revolting Rhymes
Live Action Short Film Dekalb Elementary Eleven O'Clock My Nephew Emmett The Silent Child Watu Wate/All of Us
Best Original Score: Dunkirk Phantom Thread The Shape of Water Star Wars: The Last Jedi Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Visual Effects: Blade Runner 2049 Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 Kong: Skull Island Star Wars: The Last Jedi War for the Planet of the Apes
Best Film Editing: Baby Driver Dunkirk I, Tonya The Shape of Water Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Darkest Hour Victoria and Abdul Wonder
Best Foreign Language Film: A Fantastic Woman The Insult Loveless On Body and Soul The Square
Best Documentary, Short Subject: Edith and Eddie Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405 Heroin(e) Knife Skills Traffic Stop
Best Documentary Feature: Abacus: Small Enough to Jail Faces Places Icarus Last Men in Aleppo Strong Island
The Shape of Water took home the Academy Award for Best Picture on Sunday night, giving Guilllermo del Toro his second Oscar of the night and Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty redemption from their colossal 2017 mixup.
The Shape of Water beat out The Post, Lady Bird, Get Out, Dunkirk, Darkest Hour, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Phantom Thread, and Call Me by Your Name to take home the coveted golden statuette. We figured The Shape of Water would win, even though we hoped the underdog Get Out would have the Oscars upset of the century.
That concludes the very long, mostly boring 90th Academy Awards. Get some sleep everybody.
Sufjan Stevens may have never seen an Oscars ceremony before he took the stage Sunday night, but his way-too-brief performance turned out to be one of the few highlights that made the long-ass ceremony worth watching.
Stevens performed "Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name backed by an all-star cast of musicians, including St. Vincent, who used to play in Stevens' touring band back before she became a massive star in her own right. Sunday's live version was beautifully delicate and could have been the best Oscars indie rock tear-jerker since Elliott Smith played the Good Will Hunting song back in '98—if the Oscars producers would have let Stevens' perform for longer than just a few minutes.
The recorded version of "Mystery of Love" is a four-minute emotional gut-punch that can reduce even the hardest among us to tears like Elio staring longingly into the fire, but Stevens only got through a verse or two for some reason, leaving everyone at home wondering why two incredible rock musicians were given such a brief time on stage so that Jimmy Kimmel could get on with his Price Is Right bits or whatever. Oh well.
"Mystery of Love" is one of the five songs in the running for Best Original Song, up against "Remember Me" from Coco, "Stand Up for Something" from Marshall, "Mighty River" from Mudbound, and a song from Hugh Jackman's circus movie, too.
"I did it all by myself," the Best Supporting Actress winner joked as she accepted her Oscar. "OK nothing further from the truth. Thank you to the Academy. My fellow nominees, you represent everything that is good and right and human about this profession. You are all extraordinary."
The nominees included Octavia Spencer for The Shape of Water, Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird, Mary J. Blige for Mudbound, Allison Janney for I, Tonya, and Lesley Manville for Phantom Thread. If you look at the online betting pools, the two front-runners in this race were the hard-loving mothers Janney and Metcalf played. Some called Janney's performance "scene-stealing," but others found her portrayal of domestic violence controversial. Now the Academy has spoken.
Janney succeeds Viola Davis, who won Best Supporting Actress in 2017 for her role in Denzel Washington's Fences.
Sam Rockwell won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor forThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, thanking director Martin McDonagh, co-stars Frances McDormand and Woody Harrelson, and "anyone who's ever looked at a billboard."
The race was dominated by McDonagh's Three Billboards with both Harrelson and Rockwell holding down nominations for their portrayals of two very different small-town cops. Christopher Plummer scored a nod for his famously last-minute role as billionaire J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World, Richard Jenkins earned the nod for The Shape of Water, and Willem Dafoe brought home The Florida Project's only nom as softie hotel manager Bobby. We thought Dafoe deserved the gold statue for his empathetic role in Sean Baker's follow-up to Tangerine, but popular wisdom said the smart money was on Rockwell's Officer Jason Dixon.
Rockwell was preceded by Mahershala Ali, whose performance in Moonlight handily earned Best Supporting Actor in 2017.
Peele is also up for the Oscar in Best Director and Best Picture for the film—a massive hit that the 39-year-old director never expected to actually wind up in theaters in the first place.
"I wrote Get Out not necessarily as something to get made," the director told Entertainment Weeklylast year. "I wrote it more as something that would be fun to write and something that would help me get better as an artist."
Peele's screenplay beat out Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird, Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water—all films that are also going head-to-head for Best Picture later in the night. Get Out also beat Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani's script for The Big Sick, based on the true story of the couple's relationship.
"I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible," Peele said in his acceptance speech. "I thought it wasn't going to work. I thought no one would ever make this movie. But I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it. So, I want to dedicate this to all the people who raised my voice and let me make this movie. "
The guy was a little more succinct on Twitter, though:
Every day, university students in North Sinai, a province in north-eastern Egypt, have to deal with the sounds of gunfire, heavy-handed police checkpoints and the constant threat of bombings just to get to their lectures.
The province is home to approximately 100,000 students split across two universities – the government-owned Suez Canal University and the privately owned Sinai University. Many students from cities nearby choose to study in the area simply because there aren't a whole load of options for higher education in the wider region.
Over the past six years, ISIS-affiliated fighters have escalated their attacks against the Egyptian military, often right in the heart of Sinai. The terror group's operations here began in 2011 with the systematic bombing of oil pipelines that pass through the area into Jordan and Israel. In May of 2012, ISIS started directly targeting the military. As a result of those attacks and the army's counter-strikes, hundreds of locals were killed and thousands displaced.
Khuloud
"I've been studying at Sinai University for four years," Media student Khuloud tells me. "In that time I've experienced some of the worst days of my life. It's hard for outsiders to appreciate just how difficult it is to study when you're constantly under siege." The 21-year-old was born and raised in Mansoura, around 300 miles west of North Sinai, but lives in Sinai during term time. "You leave in the morning without knowing whether you'll make it back in the evening," she adds. "We've had to perform the absentee funeral prayer three times last year, in honour of killed classmates. It never seems to end."
Khuloud says she often feels humiliated by aggressive police officers when traveling back to Sinai after spending time at home with her family. "Most university students are expatriates so they're treated pretty well, but we Egyptians are abused and humiliated at checkpoints," she explains. "On the days that I go back to school in Sinai, I leave at 6AM so I can catch the ferry that connects the two parts of the Suez Canal before noon, then wait at least three hours to cross into the eastern bank. At a checkpoint my suitcases will get routinely searched and emptied – it's a complete waste of time, only for the same thing to happen at the next checkpoint further down.
"We're all living in a constant state of fear. Armoured vehicles patrol the streets all the time. I've seen masked gunmen run by, and watched Egyptian soldiers being killed in broad daylight."
Roqaya
Media student Roqaua tells me: "Apart from the daily threat of violence, what's also really annoying is that the internet and communication networks are constantly being cut off either during military operations or as a result of ISIS attacks damaging the infrastructure. Since I do Media Studies, that makes it really hard for me to get anything done. When something goes down, there's no way of contacting our families to let them know that we're OK. Some people have started sending letters home, while others ask taxi drivers to help contact their families and let them know that they're alright. If something happened to me, it would take two days for my family to find out."
"As part of the programme, Media students are supposed to produce newspapers or documentaries, but you can't just walk around the streets of Sinai holding a camera – it's far too dangerous," Roqaya adds. "And when we leave home at the beginning of the term we all say long, emotional goodbyes to our families, like we're soldiers heading off to war. Our fears don't just stop when we return home safely – I'm haunted at night by what I've seen during the day. I don’t know a single person who hasn't been emotionally affected by the conflict."
Justina
Justina, a 22-year-old Pharmacy student at Sinai, has lost a number of friends in terrorist attacks in recent months. She remembers Mohammed Rashid, an Engineering student, and his sister, a fellow aspiring pharmacist, who were both killed in a roadside bomb explosion.
Except for attending lectures, Jamal Eldin very rarely leaves his halls. He can't really afford to – the frequent and lengthy breakdown of the area's communications system means he often doesn't receive the monthly allowance his family sends him from Kuwait. The thought of graduating soon, he tells me, is what helps him get through. But with his family so far away, he's grateful for his Egyptian classmates, who are always willing to share what they have with him and help him navigate local tensions.
Most students I speak to are angry about the poor treatment they say they receive at the hands of the military. Alaa explains how he was arrested at a checkpoint one morning on his way to lectures: "Security officers asked to see my papers and I showed them my university ID, but they still decided to arrest me." From there, he was handed over to the special anti-terrorism security forces, who detained him for two nights without explaining why or giving him the chance to contact his family.
A group of media students at Sinai University
Despite this, Alaa considers himself lucky – he knows a lot of people who have been detained for much longer in far worse conditions. People here believe that locals are often treated worse because they are seen by the army as more likely than expats to be potential ISIS fighters.
Even though Asma's family only lives 30 minutes from the university, the 20-year-old – like many of her classmates – decided to live on campus to avoid the often dangerous commute around the city.
"Before I moved here, it would take hours to get through all the security checkpoints," he says. "I would often just get out and walk the rest of the way."
The front of the main university building after a recent bombing at a nearby checkpoint.
But no matter how many precautions students here take, it's hard to completely avoid the constant danger; just a few months ago, part of the main university building was destroyed when one of the nearby security checkpoints was bombed.
"We all experience the same suffering – students and teachers alike, only we feel responsible for our students' safety," says Amal Nasruddin, Head of the English department at Sinai University. "But it's getting harder and harder to keep them safe. ISIS attacks are getting worse, and have expanded to reach most parts of North Sinai. I've lost so many of my students since 2014. The last was called Mohammad Abu. But based on the recent history around here, I know he won't be the last."
When the organizers of New York City's “Stripper Strike,” Gizelle Marie and Panama Pink, needed a place to meet last year, Poletic Justice was the obvious choice. “Why not a pole studio in the Bronx?” the studio’s owner, Mona Marie said to me with a laugh.
After the meeting, Poletic Justice regulars Marie and Pink took to social media to protest discriminatory practices at a handful of clubs in the city. They called attention to the colorism and racism displayed by club owners, who favor white “bartenders” over the mostly black women who perform. “Most black women are not really speaking out because they’re worried about losing their jobs or getting blacklisted,” Marie told me. Having performed in gentlemen’s clubs for the past decade, she’s aware of the expensive house fees and prejudiced hiring and firing practices today’s dancers face.
Providing support for a movement advocating for women of color isn't weird for Poletic Justice. In fact, that's what Marie had in mind when she opened shop in 2016. The 31-year-old dancer and instructor who's choreographed for Madonna always intended for Poletic Justice to be more than a space for professionals to sharpen their skills. “My studio provides a safe space for women.” To that point, Marie teaches women from all walks of life to love their bodies and embrace their creativity while they build confidence on the pole.
I caught up with Mona Marie recently about creating an empowering space for women and why exotic dancers should unionize.
Mona is wearing a jacket by Ivy Park, archival femme earrings by Gerlan Jeans, chain jewelry by Alexander Wang, the stylist's own jewelry, and a dress, sunglasses, and shoes by Romina Resort.
VICE: How did you get started dancing? Mona Marie: When I was 20, a friend of mine who was doing security for me as a performer invited me to Bada Bing in Hunts Point. I saw these two ladies, who are now very good friends of mine, at the very top of the pole. I was just in awe.
I went a week later and auditioned and they hired me. I would stand in the back of the club in the corner and watch the girls and mimic what they did on the pole. Getting over my fear of heights was the hard part, but it all worked out. I fell in love with the freedom of being able to be my own choreographer. I fell in love with the confidence that I saw building inside of me from being able to do a form of dance that was so enticing, and I had that creative freedom.
There’s a misperception that women get into exotic dancing because of some traumatic event in their life. Can you talk about dispelling that idea? A lot of people think that being an entertainer, we become an exotic dancer because we have daddy issues or we’re struggling in life and this is our last resort. That may be some women’s stories, but that’s not all of us. I can only speak for my own story. I was in college when I first started. I really walked in there wanting to teach myself how to do the pole. It was a struggle in the beginning because I had to gain acceptance from my family and friends to have to tell them this is what I decided to do.
What were some of their reactions? My mom absolutely was upset. She was just like, "So now you’re just going to be promiscuous." My grandmother loves me and adores me so she was just like, “Ah, live your life. If I had your body, I would be doing the same thing.” But the turning point for me was when I did my very first feature performance at a club in the Bronx called The City. It was my birthday performance and I invited my mom, my aunts, and my grandmother to the club to watch the show. This was the first time they saw me on the pole. My mother literally ran to the stage and yelled at me, “Mona, get down, you’re going to bust your ass.” And I’m like, “No, Mommy, I got this.” Once they saw that I was creating art and they saw that I wasn’t just being raunchy and sluttly, I gained their respect.
Do you think Cardi B’s success has legitimized exotic dancing as a respected hustle? I think it was legitimized before she even came about. There’s people that came before her: Amber Rose. Blac Chyna. Nene Leakes. There’s a lot of success stories and it just goes to show you regardless of where a person starts, it doesn’t mean that’s there ending point.
People doubted Cardi and Blac Chyna. But the best thing about our industry is it’s made up of a bunch of individuals who have other things to offer. So it’s a stepping stone. We have full on access to people that most people don’t have access to. If you’re doing music, for example, when you’re trying to break into the industry, you have access to the DJs, the producers, the big power players. And as an entertainer you get to walk right up. I don’t need to make an appointment, I don’t need to talk to an assistant.
How did Poletic Justice become the de facto headquarters for the NYC “Stripper Strike”? I got involved because the women who were leading the strike, Gizelle and Panama, needed a space to have their meetings. And I am an entertainer as well. So of course I was going to say yes. I’m all about women connecting with each other and working together, especially when it’s going to benefit our industry overall. I knew that if I was able to provide that space, then a lot of open sessions could happen about what needs to be changed.
What’s the primary goal of the strike? Becoming unionized. My industry is just like any other industry. While we are part of the sex industry, there still has to be some rules and regulations. Just because we’ve decided to be liberated and chosen to showcase our body, that does not mean that we do not deserve respect or professionalism.
People feel entitled to treat us any which way because of what we’re doing. But we just want to be able to go to work and not have to worry about being discriminated against or being fired for no reason or see other staff not being accountable for their actions. All the women of the stripper strike really want is some rules and regulations and for people to act professional.
The dancers, who are mostly black women, are protesting preferential treatment of club owners towards the “bartenders,” who are mostly white. How is that colour line impacting the strike? Most black women are not really speaking out because they’re worried about losing their jobs or getting blacklisted. The only way this is going to change is in numbers. If we all stand together unified, regardless of skin colour, then a lot can happen. It’s the nature of the industry and it’s sad at times, but at least I’m able to do my part to make sure the women that cross my path are able to work together.
The older generation has to set a better example for the younger generation. Because the younger generation is running amok. We need to lead by example.
Running amok how? We’re taught to compete against each other from a young age, and we don’t know how to be unified. Especially in our industry, everyone’s trying to get ahead of the next person. If we worked all together, we would get better results. Instead of being out for self, we can be out for self united.
Photography by Maroon World Styling: Romina Cenisio Makeup: Wanthy Rayos Hair: Illy Lussiano Nails: Naomi Yasuda for LUAR
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 .
"I can taste ammonia," says Suzie when she can catch her breath long enough to form sentences between hacking coughing fits. "I can't tell you what it tastes like, but I know it's ammonia from where the crack was washed up. It's like it's leaving my body now."
The 24-year-old has been using crack cocaine on and off for the past ten years, but hasn’t smoked it for a few days now. She decided to try to get clean again, this time for good, after a recent stay in hospital made her realise the devastating and likely irreversible effect the drug is having on her health – both physically and mentally.
She is facing a diagnosis of incurable chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – or "crack lung", as it's named colloquially. And if she doesn't stop smoking the freebase form of cocaine, her blood oxygen saturation level – which already frequently drops to dangerously low levels of about 88 percent – will continue to plummet. She will eventually have to depend on an oxygen tank to stay alive.
Smoking crack – which Suzie does with a DIY pipe made out of an empty asthma inhaler and foil that's been punctured with a needle to create a gauze – also doesn't give her the "buzz" she used to enjoy any more, but that doesn't make it any easier to quit. "I just get paranoid now," she says. "It's just the addiction, the routine of doing it. That's hard to stop. Crack takes over your life."
Suzie is one of a growing cohort of users in England hoping to recover from crack, which is two to three times more addictive than cocaine powder. The number of people seeking help to come off the drug has jumped by 23 percent in a year, from 2,980 to 3,657, according to the latest National Drug Treatment Monitoring System figures. This growth dwarfs the much smaller 3 percent rise seen the year before.
The surge in people presenting to services with crack problems specifically is made all the more stark when you consider the wider picture; it comes after a 3 percent fall in the overall number of individuals receiving treatment for alcohol and drugs – the largest drop seen over the last six years.
A young woman who does not feature in this article. Photo: Janine Wiedel Photolibrary / Alamy Stock Photo
The increase in people seeking help for crack addiction over the last 12 months was seen across nearly all age groups, but perhaps most alarming is the huge 30 percent spike in under-25s entering treatment for the drug, marking the first rise in crack presentations in this age group for a decade. Equally, the overall number of young adults seeking help with all types of drug and alcohol addiction has fallen by 45 percent since 2005/06.
These figures, unsurprisingly, sit alongside data that shows more people are taking crack today than in recent years. The latest estimate puts the number of users in England at 182,828, which translates to a 10 percent increase between 2011/12 and 2014/15. And more people are injecting it – up 18 percent over a decade. Police seizures of crack are also at their highest level since 2008, after a rise of 16 percent in a year from 4,718 to 5,484.
Crack’s comeback is being driven by a number of factors, but most crucial is the fact it's getting purer and cheaper. DrugWise says the purity levels for crack are "unprecedented", at an average of 74 percent – but informants suggest they could sometimes be as high as 90 percent. This degree of purity is also underlined as a contributing factor to the 16 percent increase in cocaine-related deaths (the powder and rock form aren't distinguished in the data from the Office for National Statistics) in England and Wales in a year.
Meanwhile, the price of crack has tumbled by 13 percent since 2007; a 0.2g wrap can be picked up for as cheap as £15 to £20 in some areas.
Dolly, 42, who had her first pipe – "on a Coke can" – after an Oasis gig at Manchester's G-Mex in 1997, and ended up using for 11 years solid, now works in the addiction treatment sector. She would spend up to £700 a day on the drug, and notes how the price of a rock of crack has remained unchanged for decades.
"If you look at inflation, crack is the only one that’s stayed the same price since the early-90s," she says. "The price of other drugs fluctuate, but crack has never fluctuated. It’s always consistently been the same price, regardless of how shit it is."
Today's dealers are also marketing money-off incentives when buying multiple bits of crack and heroin. "You can get deals of three bits for £25, six for £50, 12 for £100," says Suzie. "The more you want, the more money you get off. You can do a pick and mix of heroin and crack. I used to get two crack and one heroin, or four and two if I had £50."
Geographical changes in drug distribution networks are also thought to be fuelling crack's growth in popularity. The "county lines" phenomenon, in particular, has opened up new supply routes, with urban gangs branching out and operating through foot soldiers – often young boys aged between 15 and 17 – to deliver both crack and heroin at street level in coastal and rural areas.
Crack's physical constitution makes it an ideal substance for county lines networks to transport easily over long distances. "It’s a stable product," says Ian Hamilton, a substance use and mental health researcher at the University of York. "And seizures indicate smaller amounts are being found, which suggests that police are finding more lots of smaller amounts. I suspect dealers are breaking it up into smaller bits and then shifting it into the country."
Suzanne Sharkey, a LEAP UK (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) board member and former police constable and undercover operative, is concerned this pattern of dealing will continue to see crack use rising. "Children are now bringing high quality crack into sleepy county towns, and the competition is really heating up," she says. "It doesn’t take long for one group to say, 'You get a free rock if you bring me a customer.' Markets always find a way to be self-incentivising. We don’t fully know what influence county lines will have on the market just yet, but it isn’t looking good at the moment, and we need to be accessing options and employing the best evidence. There’s an increasing expectation that crack use will keep going up due to county lines."
While drug trade networks have been advancing their operations, has the drug treatment sector been doing the same to help the growing number of people hoping to recover from addiction and the complex side effects of crack use? Research into treatment is being performed, with one study finding that cannabis – something Suzie has found helpful in easing cravings – may offer some potential in reducing crack use, However, Hamilton says it remains a "tricky one".
There is still no tailored medical or psychological treatment, with benzodiazepine being the main option for prescribers. But benzos come with their own set of challenges, especially in the wake of cuts to drugs services.
"Addiction psychiatrists have been all but decimated – they’re just too expensive for treatment services to employ now," Hamilton explains. "So what you have is nurse prescribers, and they’re a very different bunch. To put it simply, they often don’t go to the same level as doctors can go to. Nurses tend to stick to within the BNF – the British National Formulary guide to prescribing – limits. But that’s of no use to many crack cocaine users."
Rocks of crack cocaine. Photo: DEA
Hamilton is also concerned about the number of crack users finding themselves stuck in a "catch 22", between different services without a proper solution to their problems. Crack and cocaine can cause multiple psychiatric problems, with paranoia occurring in 84 percent of cocaine users, and crack associated with more frequent and intense symptoms. Both Dolly and Suzie describe experiencing drug-induced psychosis, anxiety and PTSD symptoms.
The problem with this is that users, Hamilton says, end up pushed between drug treatment and mental health services. "It’s partly to do with knowledge gaps, but it’s partly vicious gatekeeping," he explains. "Services are underfunded and under-resourced, and this is one of the ways of coping as a unit. If you get someone referred to you in a mental health unit who takes drugs, you refer them back on to the drug treatment team. They land at the drug treatment team, and they sniff out the fact that they’ve got mental health problems and refer them back to mental health. We need an integrated service."
But Dolly, who still lives with the physical and psychological impact of "smashing her system to bits for a really long time", says there is hope and that people can overcome crack addiction.
"I feel really blessed that I survived it, because I shouldn’t have," she says. "I was a raging, using crackhead for 11 years, and if I can fucking do it, anyone can do it. We're stronger than a white lump of chemical."
Greg Gilhooly was a 14-year-old hockey prospect in Winnipeg when he met Graham James, the now-infamous junior hockey coach who sexually assaulted numerous teenage boys, including future NHLers Sheldon Kennedy and Theoren Fleury. While James went to prison for his assaults on Kennedy and Fleury, many of victims would not find justice in court, including Gilhooly. Now a lawyer living in Ontario, Gilhooly has written a new book, I am Nobody: Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life , about his experience and recovery, in which he argues that the Canadian legal system fails victims of sexual assault. In the following excerpt, Gilhooly writes about how James trapped him in an sexually abusive and exploitative situation. Warning: the following contains details that may be upsetting to some readers.
I went back to him—and hated myself for it. Part of me knew I should run away from him, but the rest of me knew I needed to go back and stay with him because my dreams depended on him. I couldn’t run away, because I was locked inside a reality established and controlled by him. I had no ability to step back and rationally assess the situation.
St. James Midget Canadians 1980-81, me front left, in the midst of the worst, but always with a smile for others to see.
Why couldn’t I run? Why couldn’t I just end it? The one truly at risk if our secret ever came out wasn’t me but Graham. He was the adult, he was the teacher, he was the hockey coach, he had everything to lose. It should have been easy for me to tell somebody what had happened, right? It should have been a no-brainer to go to my parents, to a teacher, to my coaches, to anybody, and let somebody know what Graham had done, right?
Wrong. Wrong not because it is wrong, but wrong because I couldn’t even conceive of a world where Graham was at risk for anything, where reality was never anything but what he was telling me it was. I just couldn’t. I saw him as having the power and me as having none, because that’s the way it was. I was alone, I was stuck, and I could see no way out. And so several weeks later, after he contacted me again, I went back to him.
1980, when it was at its worst.
I walked to meet him in a trance, numb, constantly asking myself whether or not I should keep going. I walked with my head down, looking only at my white athletic shoes with red striping (the brand of shoes is lost in the ether of memories long gone, though for some reason the red against aged white remains clear). I didn’t want to see anything or be seen by anybody. I fell into myself, a hulking young man slowly, inevitably retreating as much as possible into nothingness. I barely noticed where I was or what I was doing. I was almost run over by a car, unaware that it was barreling toward me until its horn briefly startled me out of my self-interrogation. I kept asking myself the same questions, over and over again:
Whose feet are these?
Why can’t I control where I go and what I do?
I promised myself that I would ask him to explain what was going on and what he had meant by everything he had said the last time. I convinced myself that I had to see him again so we could talk things through together so he could see that he was doing something that he liked but that I didn’t. I told myself that he would see things from my perspective, that he would understand that if he wanted me to succeed, it could never happen again. By the time I met him, the easily won debating points I had secured when facing only myself in my own head fell away in his presence. So did any resolve I had been able to arm myself with. But it didn’t seem to matter. He acted as if nothing had happened, and for a few brief moments I was able to make myself believe that maybe what had happened before was an aberration, something that would never happen again.
But I was wrong.
Age 16, receiving Winnipeg scholar-athlete award, 1980.
He started by breaking me down mentally. I was too afraid to stand up to him. He said that I needed his help to succeed and that I would risk losing everything if anybody found out what he was doing for me. Just like that I was back to being a puppy dog, an athletic giant, but ultimately nothing more than a toy he was playing with. This time he was less tentative, more confident, and more aggressive. This time I was less surprised but more terrified of him because of what he was doing, more terrified of myself for simply being there in the first place. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I felt total and complete shame for being there, for letting it happen to me.
You stupid, stupid boy. You’re pathetic. You knew this was going to happen. You knew it all along. Big talker, all the things you were going to say to him. What, he’s got some magical control over your mouth? You can’t even speak now? You must like this, you must want this. How awful are you that you would go through this just because he wants this? How weak are you? This is you. This is who you are. He knows it. Now you know it too. He’s the only one who understands you. He knows you better than everybody else. He knows the truth. Stop pretending you’re anything else.
High school yearbook picture in 1980-81 and my High school graduation in 1981-82.
Afterward he was, as before, calming, seemingly understanding, even nurturing in positioning himself not just as a hockey mentor but also as a life mentor who understood who I really was. I hadn’t done anything I had planned to do. I hadn’t stood up to him. I hadn’t asked him to explain. I hadn’t tried to get him to see that this wasn’t what I wanted. No, in his presence I believed everything that he said about me. I couldn’t wait to leave, yet as I was leaving, I also knew I would come back. I knew that he had me. I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to get away from him, even though getting away was as simple as walking through the door and never coming back. I just knew.
I have zero memory of taking the bus and walking home that night. I have zero memory of anything that followed other than that I cried so hard into the afghan blanket that covered my waterbed in my basement bedroom that I didn’t notice until the next morning that I had heaved so heavily that part of it was covered in vomit. Fortunately, Renaissance Man that I was, I was able to do my own laundry as the washer and dryer were in the basement next to my bedroom, and nobody in the house was any the wiser.
An attack followed up with complete capitulation. In these two meetings the template for our “relationship”—for lack of a better word—had been defined. My “mentor” had me in his grasp, he was never going to let go, and I knew it.
Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.
US News
Mueller Subpoenas Trump Campaign Documents Special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly ordered an unnamed witness to hand over emails, texts, notes, and other material related to the Trump campaign dating back as far as November 2015. The subpoena, furnished in February, is said to have sought all documents involving the president and nine of his campaign associates, including Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks.—Axios/NBC News
State Department Spends Nothing to Push Back on Election Meddling Despite the Pentagon being ordered to provide $120 million to help resist election interference attempts by foreign powers, the State Department still hadn't received or spent a dime of the money, a new report revealed. It also uncovered that no one at the department's center designated with tackling Russian propaganda actually spoke the language. The State Department said Monday it would now accept $40 million from the Pentagon.—The New York Times
Frances McDormand Wins Best Actress After winning the best actress award at last night’s ceremony, McDormand used her speech to call for more use of the “inclusion rider”—the contractual agreement stars can demand to help ensure greater diversity on their set. The best picture prize went to The Shape of Water, and Guillermo del Toro won best director. Jordan Peele became the first African American writer to win the Oscar for best screenplay.—VICE/Broadly
ISIS Claims to Release Video of US Soldiers Under Attack The notorious extremist Islamist group shared a clip purporting to show the October 2017 ambush in Niger in which four American troops were killed. Some of the footage appeared to be from helmet cameras worn by US soldiers. The Pentagon planned to publish an official report on the deaths later this week.—CBS News
International News
Parliament Hung in Italy Despite Populist Gains Preliminary results showed the anti-establishment, anti-European Union Five Star Movement winning the largest share of the vote with about 32 percent, but no single party earning a majority in parliament. A coalition of right-wing parties led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, including the anti-immigrant Northern League Party, appeared to be the strongest bloc.—VICE News
Aid Trucks Reach Eastern Ghouta in Syria A UN convoy of 46 trucks carrying food and medical supplies for 27,500 people reportedly accessed the rebel enclave on the edge of Damascus. It was the first humanitarian delivery there since mid February. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, government forces had seized roughly a third of the bitterly contested territory.—BBC News/Al Jazeera
South Korean Delegation Meets Kim for Talks A group of ten South Korean officials traveled to Pyongyang Monday for discussions aimed at establishing direct talks between North Korea and the US. The national security office chief, Chung Eui-yong, said the South Korean government hoped for “better inter-Korean relations created by the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.”—Reuters
Beijing Hikes Military Spending The Chinese government’s annual defense budget will rise by 8.1 percent, a move revealed Monday at the opening of the National People’s Congress (NPC). A spokesperson for the NPC said the increase was “to make up for the low military spending in the past.” Meanwhile, President Trump was looking to bolster US defense spending by 10 percent.—VICE News
Everything Else
Ryan Seacrest Has Weak Night on the Red Carpet Several major stars and nominees appeared to shun the E! host at the Oscars after he was accused of sexual misconduct but allowed to remain in the role. Taraji P. Henson did speak to Seacrest and said: “The Universe has a way of taking care of the good people, you know what I mean?”—Variety
M.A.S.H. Favorite Dies At 75 David Ogden Stiers, best known for playing Major Winchester on the TV series, died at his home after a fight with bladder cancer. “How gentle you were, how kind, except when devising the most vicious practical jokes,” his co-star Alan Alda tweeted.—Entertainment Weekly
‘Black Panther’ Still Dominating Box Office The Marvel movie took in about $65.7 million during its third weekend in North American theaters. Ryan Coogler’s film has earned at least $500 million at the domestic box office—the third-quickest any movie has reached that landmark sum.—AP
Sufjan Stevens Joined by Special Guests for Oscars Performance St. Vincent and Moses Sumney backed the artist for a performance of “Mystery of Love,” his Oscar-nominated song from Call Me by Your Name. Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez took home the best song prize for Coco's “Remember Me."—Noisey
Facebook Pulls Survey Asking People How to Handle Pedophiles The company has withdrawn a survey asking UK users the best way to deal with “a private message in which an adult man asks a 14-year-old girl for sexual pictures." The company admitted the question was “a mistake”.—VICE News
YouTube Denies It's Deleting Alex Jones Content The company said it would not be removing the conspiracy theorist’s channel, despite Jones's suggestion that his videos would be purged. YouTube did, however, recently tell Jones that advertisers had requested their ads be pulled from his channel.—Motherboard
Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we're talking about the wonderful, silly world of underground comics.
Panama City Beach, Florida, is a place I never want to return to. I spent most of my youth living in a small neighbourhood 25 minutes from the beach and attending Bay County schools. I remember Panama City as a small town run on nepotism, Republicanism, racism, and religion. So, I spent the better part of my time in high school figuring out how to get as far away as possible.
Imagine my surprise when, while on the train to Brooklyn one night, I saw a giant-ass poster with a girl from my hometown on it. The poster was advertising the MTV reality show Floribama Shore, filmed in… Panama City Beach, Florida. I was hit with a lot of emotions: dread, shock, incredulity, and rejection. Anyone—literally everyone—from Panama City Beach will tell you that we don’t call it “Floribama Shore.” We call it a lot of other things—Panama Shitty, Lower Alabama, the Redneck Riviera, the Bible Belt, the Panhandle, the Good Ole Boy Network—but not “Floribama Shore.”
I was prepared to keep my distance from Floribama Shore until clips from the show surfaced online. One clip in particular—a street fight—was extremely popular. From what I could tell, it looked like every other fight I’d ever seen growing up. Maybe this show about Panama City got a few things right.
So I reached out to people I haven’t spoken to in years to ask about what they thought of MTV’s approach to portraying our beachside area. Everyone—former art teachers, old drinking buddies, guidance counselors, former classmates—pretty much hated the show, to the point where they refused to watch it. A few uttered phrases: “Not relevant.” “Glorifying stupidity.” “Not something I have any interest in watching.” “I watched a single trailer and was a little disgusted and that's the last I've seen of it,” said one girl I went to high school with. Another friend called the show a “shame,” which, in the South translates directly to “a goddamn disaster.”
Other people I spoke with seemed really disappointed and confused about how MTV portrayed our town. In 2015, Panama City Beach—up to that point known for the wildest, dirtiest Spring Break in the country—banned alcohol on the beach and started enforcing strict bar and liquor laws. The county wanted fewer college kids and more families. “It’s kind of crazy how the county canceled Spring Break but let that show happen,” said Panama City resident Harry Green. “It makes the city seem wild, and Panama City isn’t like that anymore. It’s not a terrible show—it just shows Panama City in a terrible way.”
So my reviews going in weren’t too hot. I sat down, ready to catch up on season one of the show. Before even watching the first episode, I thought its title, “Eat, Pray, Party,” was incredibly accurate. In PCB, you’re either in a church or a bar, and in either case, you’re likely having some food. The debut episode introduces us to the cast, the house, and the town. The B-roll footage includes a shot of a street I once funneled a beer, chugged a half bottle of Smirnoff, and then wandered around until my friends found me and took me to a Taco Bell. Needless to say, it was weird to see this street on MTV.
The mother of Kortni Gilson—the girl I recognized on the poster—was the cheerleading coach at my high school. She's someone I heard about but never really knew. From what I heard growing up, Gilson-on-camera isn’t that much different from Gilson-off-camera, treating every situation as an opportunity to make everything worse—which I find weirdly admirable. The first thing she says in the show is, “I don’t puke,” right before downing her third shot—a lie every Panama City girl tells roughly three hours before vomiting in your bushes or on the sidewalk. In a phone conversation with Gilson, I asked her what it was like to be in PCB after the show aired. She said most people haven’t been too judgmental: “Everyone in Walmart stops and asks me for a picture.”
Candace Rice appears to be the girl who most likely has her shit together. At 24, she thinks that she’s “too old to find a man,” which sounds ridiculous—but Southern girls are taught that they’ve hit their prime by senior year of high school. Rice also always leads everyone in prayer before eating—even at restaurants, a common occurrence in PCB. (If there isn’t at least one family praying before dinner at your restaurant, the food probably isn’t that good.) Her prayers are short and cute, and she would’ve definitely been responsible for saying them if she went to the same Methodist church I attended in middle school. If there’s one thing you can’t take away from Southerners, it’s how good we are at praying.
Aimee Hall is a blond, beautiful disaster from Perdido, Alabama—which, with a population of 50 residents, is more a township than a city. She’s on the show to get over a ten-year relationship that came to an end when her then-boyfriend cheated on her with her cousin, who he subsequently impregnated. Hall is both an Alabama stereotype and an Alabama reality. She’s my favorite.
And then there’s Nilsa Prowant, who got married at 20 and divorced at 23. I feel for her in a way I feel for a lot of girls I knew growing up. I want her to find her happiness, but I want that happiness to be found very, very far away from me. Throughout the show, she proves herself to be an unreliable friend who stirs up a ton of drama. There’s one scene where some random guy (who looks like the type of guy who spends all their time fishing) calls Prowant "ma’am" and "bitch" in the same sentence. My favorite thing about the South is how a man can still consider that respectful.
The boys on the show are pretty funny. Gus Smyrnios cries a lot, learns how to properly use a fork in the first episode, and falls in and out of love just as quickly. Kirk Medas wants to relax with his friends, but is also willing to fight anyone to protect the honour of his roommates. Jeremiah Buoni is a homeschooled meathead from Jacksonville who calls himself “a gentleman and a douchebag at the same time,” because he feels like “that’s what women look for.” Codi Butts is a true chaotic neutral who usually spends his time with senior citizens, often helping his grandmother out at a group home. I like to image that Butts stirs up as much drama in the group home as he does in this beach house that no one in PCB would actually live in.
My favourite scene on the show wasn’t either of the fight scenes, but the first time the group goes to Club La Vela, which might actually be the trashiest nightclub on the planet. It’s this giant white structure right on the beach, it’s got like nine rooms in it, and everyone there is still dressed like it’s 2009.
Gilson leads the group in to Club La Vela and says she’s going to show everyone how to properly go clubbing in Panama City. The next shot is of her double-fisting frozen daiquiris with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. And she’s right, that is clubbing in Panama City. Two of the boys—Buoni, the one who won’t stop dabbing, and Smyrnios, the one who didn’t know how to use a fork—wear “back thongs” to the club. A back thong, for the uninitiated, is a long-sleeve plaid shirt cut sleeveless, with a sort of thong-shaped back. In my opinion, which Hall shared, it’s fucking awful.
By the end of episode four, there are about six arguments, two physical fights, a drama-causing Wiccan named Kayla Jo, a taco soup that gave everyone the runs, and a growing sense of unity in the house. The show is punctuated by emotional conversations and reflections on blessings, which is as much a staple of my hometown as anything else. Everyone is just trying to express themselves honestly, but no one seemed to be very good at it.
The gang fight both an old drunk white lady and a homophobic (and likely racist) man who was either in the military or wanted to be. They have fancy dinners at the places locals go after graduation and prom, and take taxis everywhere, which is certainly new to me.
Gilson told me she believes the show is giving Panama City Beach positive recognition. She acknowledged that her behaviour might be less than stellar, but said she's gotten older and more mature as time has gone on.
Watching the show made me really grateful I got out of my hometown. But it also made me appreciate the fact that people are pretty much insane disasters everywhere you go.
Floribama Shore certainly isn’t a series that puts all of Panama City on display—it left out the ugliest parts and nicest people of my hometown. But it does shed light on a small shred of truth: There’s a part of our town, and a part of ourselves, that we’re all too quick to separate ourselves from in the light of day.
But there were still some exciting moments here and there over the course of the nearly four-hour show, in between the jet ski jokes and Walmart ads. So in case you missed the ceremony or fell asleep halfway through, here's a quick rundown of everything you missed. At least you'll be able to hold your own during the conversations at work Monday morning, if nothing else.
Helen Mirren Downed a Tequila Shot on the Red Carpet
Plenty of people were drinking at the Oscars this year—Jennifer Lawrence scaled a few rows of seats with a full glass of white wine just to get a chance to talk to chat with Meryl Streep, and 86-year-old West Side Story icon Rita Moreno sipped on some champagne before taking the stage. But no one managed to make drinking look as dignified as when Helen Mirren slammed a shot of tequila on the red carpet to kick off the night.
Timothée Chalamet Geeked Out About a Shout-Out from His High School Acting Teacher
The star of Call Me by Your Name didn't end up taking home an Oscar for Best Actor, but he still managed to make everyone at home proud. With his mom on his arm, Chalamet got a surprise shout-out from his former acting teacher, Harry Shifman, and some students from New York's Laguardia High School—his alma mater.
"I literally would not be an actor without that man, without that school, without public arts funding," the 22-year-old said. "I would not be at the Oscars, I would not be nominated without him."
Kimmel roasted Trump and landed a few careful jokes about Hollywood's sexual harassment scandals in his opening monologue. It was fine. Here's a quick cut of the highlights:
Sufjan Stevens's Tragically Short Performance
Stevens's performance of his Oscar-nominated original song "Mystery of Love" from Call Me by Your Name was one of the standout musical segments during this year's ceremony—and it would have been even better if Stevens was allowed to play the whole version of his emotional song instead of an abridged version.
Ashley Judd, Salma Hayek, and Annabella Sciorra Introduced a Time's Up Montage
"This year, many spoke their truth and the journey ahead is long, but slowly, a new path has emerged," Sciorra told the Oscars crowd as the three Weinstein accusers introduced a video tribute to inclusion and equality featuring famous figures from the industry.
James Ivory and Tiffany Haddish Won Best Dressed
James Ivory officially took home an Oscar for his adapted screenplay of Call Me by Your Name, but he unofficially took home the award for Best Dressed, thanks to his white shirt decorated with a hand-painted photo of CMBYN star Timothée Chalamet. The 89-year-old, who became the oldest person to ever win an Oscar, also made a speech that gave everyone the feels.
Tiffany Haddish gave Ivory a run for his money in the Best Dressed category thanks to a familiar-looking white dress that she's previously worn while gracing other red carpets and onstage at SNL. She may be an outfit repeater, but why change what's working?
It may have lost Best Picture and Best Director to a sexy fish movie, but Jordan Peele's brilliant social thriller won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, making him the first black screenwriter to win the award in the ceremony's 90-year history.
"I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible," Peele said onstage. "I thought it wasn't going to work. I thought no one would ever make this movie. But I kept coming back to it because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it. So, I want to dedicate this to all the people who raised my voice and let me make this movie. "
The 2017 Best Actress winner introduced the Best Director nominees as "these four men and Greta Gerwig," calling out the lack of female representation in the category, just as Natalie Portman did at the Golden Globes. The Lady Bird director was only the fifth woman to be nominated in the category, but lost out to Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water.
Frances McDormand Proved Once Again That We Don't Deserve Her
McDormand's Best Actress acceptance speech for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was just as witty and moving as we've come to expect from her, ending in her setting down the award and turning the attention to the other women in the room.
"If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight," she began, calling out Meryl Streep in a nearby row. "Meryl, if you do it everyone else will—the filmmakers, the producers, the directors, the writers, the cinematographers, the composers, the song writers, the designers. Come on!
"OK, look around everybody, look around, ladies and gentleman, because we all have stories to tell and projects we need financed," she said, as women around the room took a stand. "Don’t talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best, and we can tell you all about them."
And Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty Proved They Could Read the Correct Best Picture Winner
The icons redeemed themselves after last year's monumental mixup, successfully awarding Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water the Oscar for Best Picture. Still, that didn't stop the director from double-checking the envelope just to make sure.
That's the 2018 Oscars, everybody. Sure, there was a very awkward Spielberg/weed joke in there, too, but it's best for us all to just never speak of that again. Check out our full list of all the night's winners. See you next year!
My most vivid early memory of my dad is him crouching down to slit open the belly of a deer he’d shot hours before, the stench of death and freshly spilled entrails wafting in the night air. It was pitch black outside, and the pine trees whispered around us as my five-year-old hands kept the flashlight trained on his knife. The smell of the deer’s innards made me gag, which, in turn, made my dad laugh. Once he told me I could go, I ran back through the darkness, clomping along in his big camo boots I liked to wear. We ate well the next day.
I know this kind of scenario may sound kind of nightmarish to some people, but to me, even as a small girl, it was totally normal. Crashing around in the woods with my dad—helping him track deer and setting rabbit traps and splashing in cedar swamps—was my favorite thing in the world, even when I came home scratched up or covered in chiggers. Growing up in a hunting family also meant growing up in a gun family, and that, to some extent, I had the same familiarity with firearms that I did with blood and the wilderness. My dad had dozens of guns, as did my granddad, my uncles, and all of their friends. It seemed completely unremarkable to me then, and I was always taught to view guns as tools—tools to be handled carefully, used responsibly, and respected for the power they held.
This was instilled in me by my father, and reinforced by the training I absorbed via various Buckmasters and NRA-sponsored or affiliated gun-safety programs. “Don’t touch daddy’s guns,” was right up there with, “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” and “Finish your peas,” when it came to canonical childhood lessons. I knew the difference between a standard rifle and a muzzleloader before I learned my times tables, and also knew that if you wanted to pick one up, you first needed to make sure it wasn’t loaded, and that if it was, that the safety was on and you were pointing the muzzle at the ground. Gun safety was drilled into me from a very early age, and as a result, even as mass shootings at schools and other public places became more visible in American culture, I was never scared or uncomfortable around firearms. The people wielding them, sure, but not the weapons themselves.
All that changed at the alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, when men in combat fatigues with ARs slung over their shoulders stalked the streets and threatened to kill me and my friends. If my evolving views on guns hadn’t really budged much before then, they sure as shit did that day. And as the movement led by survivors of the Parkland shooting has picked up steam and gun control roared back into the national conversation, the NRA—a group everyone in my family belonged to when I was a kid, and still does—looks more dangerous than ever.
At the 2018 CPAC confab last month, the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, went so far as to dismiss concerns about gun deaths as an effort to “eliminate all individual freedoms.” He also suggested the Parkland survivors were “opportunists,” and trotted out guns-rights absolutists’ favorite old chestnut: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
But before the NRA converted entirely into a Second Amendment–obsessed blood cult, advocating for responsible gun ownership was at least one of their raisons d'etre. The year I was born, the organization launched its Eddie Eagle GunSafe program, a gun-accident prevention initiative aimed at kids that promises to teach them about safety. Its graphics and branding have grown fancier since then, but the program’s core message still revolves around four steps—“Stop! Don’t touch. Run away. Tell a grown-up”—which are as simple as they are practical (though the efficacy of such programs has been disputed).
My absolute favorite video as a little kid was The Misadventures of Bubba, a goofy hunting safety video starring Jim Varney that was distributed as part of Buckmasters’ Young Bucks kids program; I must’ve watched it nearly every day for years, adding another layer of emphasis to Eddie Eagle’s take on gun-safety education. This kind of cultural conditioning worked for me, but was also reinforced by my family—all the cutesy cartoons in the world are no substitute for what kids are actually taught at home. I was lucky to have been raised in a family that took gun safety seriously, but that’s just it: I was lucky.
Now, when I think about self-styled gun-rights groups like the NRA, it’s impossible to ignore at least some of their members lampooning survivors of mass shootings and advocating for flooding schools with guns to protect kids. Their deep pockets, fervent membership base, and exorbitantly powerful lobbying arm have stymied any kind of meaningful gun reform for decades. Of course, this means my childhood perception was naïve—the group was never, in my lifetime, at least, a harmless collection of hobbyists. In fact, they have long been said to serve as the most powerful (and radical) lobby in America, and when tragedy after tragedy fails to produce any kind of meaningful reform, it’s impossible to ignore the truth in that.
But maybe, just maybe, Parkland is beginning to change that. Some of the NRA’s erstwhile allies in corporate America have started to jump ship, the group’s polarizing primary spokesperson Dana Loesch was recently publicly eviscerated by teens, and social media remains ablaze with calls to #BoycottTheNRA.
This has been hard for me to grapple with just because of how deeply enmeshed the organization was in my upbringing, and how naive I can see I once was. I grew up in an incredibly rural, unincorporated community in the middle of a nature preserve, without cable TV or the internet or any real lifeline to the outside world beyond books and my traveling soccer team. We didn’t have a police force, and state troopers only materialized if you were really speeding. Guns were just a part of life, as was the expectation that you knew how to handle them.
My dad’s been an NRA Lifetime Member for as long as I’ve been alive, and has the hideous brown leather logo jacket hanging in his closet to prove it. My granddad’s been a member for so long that they’ve run out of perks to give him. I remember how pumped my cousins were to get their Junior memberships once they received their first guns (at age 12, on Christmas, as per family tradition). The NRA’s blocky red logo was quietly omnipresent in our home, from the window decal on dad’s grey pickup to the foil sticker slapped onto the side of his favorite rifle case. I was never a member myself—in my family, girls didn’t get guns—but even though I’ve since moved and have lived in multiple major cities since then, I can’t erase my upbringing, or unlearn the lessons that come with it.
But you also don’t have to support the traditionally liberal version of gun control to see that the NRA’s stance on America’s mass shooting nightmare is morally bankrupt.
What people like me can do is recognize a simple truth: The NRA is a problem, and no matter how committed the organization may have been to gun safety in past decades, no matter how pleasant our memories may be of its role in our childhoods, times have changed—and those who continue to support the NRA have blood on their hands.
A masked mob calling themselves the “Ungovernables” chased off cops and marched through Hamilton this weekend, causing over $100,000 in damages.
Hamilton Police said that a group of around 30 people carrying a banner that said “We Are The Ungovernables” marched down a popular strip in Hamilton 10 PM Saturday night. While walking down Locke Street the group set off fireworks, threw eggs, fucked up cars, and broke windows. The Hamilton Spectator reported that the crew also set off smoke bombs during their jaunt through town.
Two police officers initially responded to the call but had to retreat after they were pelted by rocks flung by the group. By the time back up—which included about 30 officers and a K-9 unit—had arrived the “Ungovernables” had fled.
During the chaos some of the patrons dining at Locke Street restaurants said they had to hide under tables. One witness told the Spectator that she was locking up her business when she saw the mob approaching her. Describing the situation as “terrifying” she ran to her car and locked herself inside. From there she could only watch as the group threw a large rock through her storefront window.
In a statement, Hamilton mayor Fred Eisenberger described the “Ungovernables” vandalism as “abhorrent, unjustified and against what we believe as Hamiltonians.”
“What happened Saturday is just plain thuggery & criminal activity,” he tweeted as a response to a question on Twitter. “ I will not condone any of it.”
The reasons why the group marched through the city is still unknown but it has been reported that there was an anarchist book fair occurring in Hamilton that same weekend. Police said that they are actively looking into any connections between the book fair and the vandalism.
The cops are also pouring through video of the incident to try and pinpoint who the perpetrators are but admit that they’re having a difficult time due to the masks.
No one was injured during the “Ungovernables” march through town.
Netflix strategically dropped the first teaser trailer for House of Cards during the Oscars on Sunday evening, a night that featured Frances McDormand's rousing speech about female voices in the entertainment industry and saw a trio of Harvey Weinstein accusers address the #MeToo movement—a movement that ultimately removed Kevin Spacey from the show he starred in.
Now, it's finally Claire Underwood's turn. The last season of House of Cards ended with Claire taking over the presidency from her husband, Frank, and ignoring his desperate calls for a presidential pardon. According to the first teaser from season six, it looks like she's doing pretty well on her own.
"We're just getting started," Claire tells the camera, as the teaser cuts to a title card reading, "Hail to the Chief."
Netflix removed Spacey from the head of its once-flagship political drama last year, following a string of sexual misconduct allegations against the disgraced actor. The future of House of Cards was up in the air for a few months, but the streaming service opted to rewrite the final episodes to center on Claire instead of Frank and not just replace Spacey with Kevin James, no matter how many people may have wanted that.
Although the trailer doesn't reveal much about the twists and turns that are likely to come in the show's sixth and final season, the absence of Spacey's Underwood speaks volumes. According to Netflix, the last run of episodes—a slightly abridged, eight-episode season—will offer a "good, creative conclusion" to one of its first successful original programs, following Spacey's firing. It's not clear yet how the show plans to address its main character's absence, but we can only imagine what creative methods Claire might resort to in order to hold onto power.
There's no word yet on when the final season of House of Cards will drop, but the teaser at least proves that Claire can be as powerful and terrifying as Frank Underwood ever was—if not more.
Last time we heard about accused murderer Marissa Shephard, she had been sentenced to four months for spitting in a jail guard’s face. As of today, Shephard, 22, is facing trial for second-degree murder of 18-year-old Baylee Wylie and for arson. She is known for evading police for ten weeks during a Canada-wide manhunt in 2016.
Wylie was found tied up to a chair, beaten, and stabbed over 200 times in a burned-out triplex basement in Moncton, New Brunswick in December 2015. Shephard appeared in court Monday and pleaded not guilty to both charges.
Two photos RCMP released of Shephard while she was on the run
Also arrested in Wylie’s murder before Shephard were Devin Morningstar, 21, and Tyler Noel, 20. Morningstar was convicted of first-degree murder and arson; he’s serving a life sentence. Noel was convicted of second-degree murder and arson after pleading guilty and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for 16 years.
Morningstar, who was arrested soon after Wylie’s body was found, gave police details about what he said led up to the murder during an interrogation. He told RCMP what began as an argument over who slept with who escalated to Wylie threatening to call the cops.
Morningstar said they’d all been smoking crack that night and that some of them, including himself, were dealers. Noel was "steaming mad" and "trying so hard to be this big gangster,” Morningstar told the RCMP. According to Morningstar, Noel said Wylie was "trying to start shit.”
The trials for Noel and Morningstar have already revealed some brutal details involving Shephard.
Morningstar said him and Shephard planned to frame Wylie for drug possession. Allegedly, this included Shephard hitting Wylie over the head with a glass bong, Noel beating him, and covering his face with plastic wrap.
Morningstar described how they briefly freed Wylie, until Noel allegedly told him "this kid can't leave this house." He said Shephard, Noel, and himself then stabbed Wylie. He said it took an hour and a half for Wylie to die; then, he said, he poured bleach on the body. He claimed Noel and Shephard then set a fire.
Morningstar is on a potential witnesses list in the case.
According to CTV News, 1,200 people were initially summoned for jury selection in Shephard’s trial. Fourteen jurors are set to be selected.
The judge estimates the trial will end between May 18 and June 8.
