Netflix's fourth season of Arrested Development was, by all accounts, a total slog. The season's interlocking, character-specific episodes were supposed to come together to tell a single story from multiple angles, but it wound up feeling more like trying to read a choose-your-own-adventure novel from cover to cover. Now, it seems like even show creator Mitch Hurwitz realized he made a huge mistake.
On Tuesday, Hurwitz announced that he had recut all the footage from season four into more traditional, chronological episodes—basically, that he untangled the entire narrative mess of season four and tried to hammer it out into something that actually feels like Arrested Development.
"The original season four of Arrested Development on Netflix, as some of you know, experimented with a Rashomon-style of storytelling—with each episode dedicated to the adventure of one member of the Bluth family," Hurwitz wrote in a statement.
But as he was waiting to start production on the show's upcoming fifth season, Hurwitz decided to take a stab at "shuffling the content from 15 individualized stories" from season four into "22 interwoven stories" in order "to see if new jokes and a new perspective would emerge from a remix that features all the Bluths in every episode, and where the simultaneity of the story plays out chronologically."
It also, presumably, would give fans a chance to get caught up with the show before the new season drops, without anyone having to suffer through the original version of season four again.
The remixed season, which Hurwitz has dubbed Fateful Consequences, is set to drop on Netflix this Friday, in honor of the Bluths' made-up holiday, Cinco de Cuatro. "I'm really excited about the final result," Hurwitz continued. "It's funny in a whole new way, and I believe it creates a really entertaining and hilarious new experience."
Over the weekend, about 200 free-thinking individuals descended on a three-star hotel in Birmingham, England, to discuss a revolutionary theory: Contrary to 2,000-year-old science, common sense, and elementary school textbooks, they believe, Earth is actually flat. It's an idea that's becoming disturbingly popular—and now that enough folks are buying into it, the conspiracies about what our planet might "actually" look like are only getting wilder.
No longer content with the idea that Earth is a flat disk with a giant wall of ice around it, the flat earthers at last weekend's convention presented all kinds of innovative ideas about what's really going on with our planet, the Telegraph reports. One of the most shocking insights came from self-proclaimed Flat expert Darren Nesbit, who hypothesized that the planet is standing on a set of pillars (supported by what, who knows), and that it's actually shaped like a diamond.
"I'm not saying this is definitely what is going on, but I think it is a plausible model," he said.
He also explained away a question that's stumped countless flat earthers—"How come no one's ever fallen off the edge?"—with something he called the "Pac-Man effect." The idea is that once you reach the end of the Earth, "space-time wraps around," and you're magically teleported from one edge of our planet to the other, or something like that.
Taking a less theoretical approach, speaker Dave Marsh explained how he spent a year in his backyard experimenting with a digital camera, an app on his phone, and the moon to prove that so-called "gravity" is a bunch of bullshit.
"My research destroys Big Bang cosmology," he said at the conference, according to the Telegraph. "It supports the idea that gravity doesn't exist and the only true force in nature is electromagnetism."
With flat earther conventions in the US and Canada slated for later this year, we can only expect more incredible theories on the shape and video game-likeness our world truly holds.
America has a “youth bulge” and it is about to burst. At least that’s according to Chuck Palahniuk, in his first novel in four years, Adjustment Day.
A sprawling burial pit is under construction near the National Mall slated to be stuffed with the corpses of our country’s surplus young men who, before they can stir up trouble at home, will be sent off to fight in the next Middle Eastern war. Yet a cadre of America’s misbegotten youth have another plan. After a mass slaughter eviscerating democracy as we know it, the nation will be divided into three states: Caucasia for whites, Blacktopia for African Americans, and Gayasia—well you get the idea. What could go wrong? Turns out a lot.
If Adjustment Day’s premise sounds like something Richard Spencer or someone of his ilk might dream up, you aren’t far off. The Fight Club author tells me he hung out with all manner of extremist sects while completing the novel, which hits the shelves May 1. In it, Palahniuk toys with our cultural dividing lines—race, class, sexuality—and all the fears, myths, and conspiracies that come along with them. The result is a novel that straddles both the horrific and the absurd, kind of like present-day America, though from our conversation the sense I got from Palahniuk is he’d like us to get over ourselves. And into more Pornhub.
VICE: So what prompted you to write a comedy about genocide in America? I take it you aren't worried about offending people. Chuck Palahniuk: Don't believe all the jacket copy you read. If [George] Orwell's 1984 premiered nowadays the dust jacket would probably promise, "A zany sex romp that takes place right under the prudish nose of Big Brother!" No, what I've penned is a searing indictment of our politically charged times—but with a couple laughs to offer the reader respite from the constant stomping of boots on the human face, forever. Frankly, Orwell could've used similar comic relief.
What have you been up to these past four years in between now and your previous novel? Was Adjustment Day informed by recent events, the 2016 presidential election and its ongoing aftermath? Have you heard of Pornhub? Golly, that site can eat up your whole lifetime. Was there an election? What year is this? Why does my computer run so slow now? Did you know that draconian condom laws are driving all the major porn studios to little 'ol Portland, Oregon? Hereabouts is like Porn Star Central.
I’m curious if you’d have anything to say about what President Trump, this ghastly and farcical figure with the world at his fingertips, represents about the American psyche. It's sweet how my generation had Reagan and Thatcher to protest, and now the youngsters have Trump and Putin. I await the new incarnation of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. But am dreading the return of pleated pants.
What is it like to write horror-adjacent fiction when every day is a kind of waking nightmare? A waking nightmare? Hyperbolic, much? Not to name drop, but I talked to Max Brooks [author of World War Z] about this waking nightmare. He says that so many generations have been raised on bird flu, swine flu, Y2K, Ebola, housing collapse, ozone holes, and peak oil panics that we wouldn't know how to live if we weren't constantly expecting our annihilation. In effect, "waking nightmare" is the new normal. Therein lies the comfort of Pornhub: You always know how it's going to end.
You seem to be pointing to something deep within us that has been around long before Trump, even though he is an outlandish representative of, to borrow a phrase from Adjustment Day, the “pornography of power.” Enough about Trump. We're supposed to foisting my new book on an innocent populace. Take a page from [Michel] Foucault and remember that the more you protest and resist a thing the more power you bestow upon it. Escape lies in presenting a better option. Did you notice I name dropped again?
At times, reading this book, I was reminded of Terry Southern, also Kurt Vonnegut whom you mention in the novel, were they some of your influences? What other material did you draw on that maybe readers won’t immediately pick up on? For structure, I studied The Grapes of Wrath and The Martian Chronicles. Did you know that Bradbury patterned his book after Steinbeck's? Well, now I've mimicked them both. And I became dissatisfied with classic American fiction that ends on a defeatist note. Why can't Jay Gatsby leap from the swimming pool, grab the gun, and shoot Tom Buchanan? Why can't the Joad family motor to California and get rich cooking meth? That's the secret of Ayn Rand's long, long, long, overly long novels—the protagonist kicks ass and wins. So a Steinbeck beginning with an Ayn Rand end. Then, straight back to Pornhub.
Is it fair to interpret Adjustment Day as a kind of inverted Fight Club? Both novels deal with destroying society. In some ways, the aims of the revolutionaries in each book overlap. Fight Club was about empowering the individual and setting him on a path toward his personal vision. And that requires destroying the existent powerless person. Adjustment Day is about presenting a pattern for gathering men together. My books are always about the individual. The triumph of the individual man or woman.
The media has really struggled over how to cover the “alt-right.” On the one hand, its adherents are ridiculous; on the other, the implications of their political program are despicable. Was it your intent to tease out these contradictions, taking them to the extreme? To write the book, I hung out with separatists of every stripe. From the racial realists to the Hotep Nation to the [Louis] Farrakhan people—being the Fight Club guy opens lots of doors—and I wanted to grant a little wish fulfillment to every group. That's my mission in this life, to make dreams come true.
You’ve had a bit of an influence on the “alt-right,” crowd, not to mention the men’s rights folk. I’m guessing these are not affiliations you intended your work to have. Don't overlook the Antifa's college-based Fight Clubs, where they train one another to punch Nazis. I am beloved by both the right and the left. My strategy for world domination is right on schedule.
What's been the most surprising encounter with a cultural meme from your writing so far? The most frightening? I love how "snowflake" has replaced "faggot" as the ultimate put-down. Foucault would be proud of me. Score one for our team. Nothing frightening, yet.
You’ve released a couple of coloring books recently. Usually, people use those to relax not to feel their pulse quicken. What drew you to the genre? Whether it's comics or coloring books, I love to work with artists. Who knew the collaborative process was so fun? After a couple decades of lone wolf keyboarding it's such a joy to partner with visually creative types.
Do you have any pranks or parties in store to promote Adjustment Day like you have for past novels? My big plan was to pose for a photo, holding the bloody severed head of Kathy Griffith, but my publisher put the kibosh on that idea. Some people have no imagination.
Anyone who has spent a modicum of time in airports knows that the great secret to having a decent time in them is to find your way to a lounge. These closed-off spaces typically provide free WiFi, food, and drinks—even alcoholic ones, which is vital since the other great secret to airports is that it's surprisingly fun to get drunk in them. Depending on the lounge in question, the chairs might be more comfortable than the ones near the gates, and there might even be amenities like showers—which sounds ridiculous until you have a long layover between flights and have acquired that airplane-specific smell of peanuts, cheap blankets, and farts. Lounge access can cost $45 or so, but if you have a few drinks and snacks, it's obviously worth it.
Better yet, some of the fancier credit cards out there give you access to lounges as a perk, meaning you don't have to pay at all.
But increasing crowds at lounges has created a problem, according to the Wall Street Journal—lounges are no longer as fancy as they used to be. "What was once an oasis now is more like a mall food court," the paper reported. "Losing that '1%' feeling has been jarring. Grousers say gourmet meals once on offer are now finger foods, and beverages are more likely to be guzzled than sipped. Overcrowding means seats often aren’t available."
The piece went on to describe horror story after horror story. One flyer experienced a real nightmare before his flight to Ukraine: "A packed room with no available seats. A buffet with barely any food left. Toilet paper on the bathroom floor." A 63-year-old who has been lounging at airports for 25 years said the dishes on offer weren't as nice as they used to be, and that old flourishes like staff actually serving him a beverage were no more. Some lounges had become so crowded you had to wait a bit to get in—and even when you did, you might have to watch people load up on free food and drink like “farm animals," according to one traveler.
Here's another tale of woe:
Bill McGuinness, a 57-year-old real-estate developer, was at a Centurion Lounge, which is open to certain American Express cardholders, in Seattle in April when a woman placed her toddler on a bar table. She stripped him down to his diapers and changed him into his pajamas. Mr. McGuinness said the woman then ordered a cocktail and talked on her phone while her son was “running laps” around the lounge for the next hour.
The Journal even found one lounge user who admitted to using the lounge in what I think we'll all agree was a truly abominable manner:
Garett Ng admits to getting carried away. He had drunk three glasses of free “bottom-shelf whiskey” he said at a Priority Pass affiliated lounge in Boston last November when he realized his flight to San Francisco was boarding. The 36-year-old health-care analytics manager ran to the snack bar and stuffed five granola bars into his jacket—“the chewy ones for kids.”
Of course, getting a little sloshed and grabbing some chewy granola bars isn't getting "carried away," just like the incidents highlighted in this story barely qualify as nuisances. I have been to airport lounges myself and concede it's a bit annoying sometimes when they are crowded—maybe you can't get a free outlet to charge your computer, or maybe the bartender is busy and you have to wait a while. Maybe the croissants are less flaky than you'd like. Maybe a kid runs around while you're trying to get a little blotto on mimosas and clean out your work inbox, ruining your Don Draper fantasies.
But still, it's fine.
What's at stake here is not creature comforts but class privilege, the sort of thing Americans don't really like to discuss but nonetheless think about all the time. The thing that historically made airport lounges desirable for a lot of people wasn't really the comfortable chairs or even the free booze but the fact that those people were kept outside the doors. Once they started coming in, grubby hands all over the champagne flutes, stuffing cheese into backpack pockets, sweatpants and small children and neck pillows worn all the time, there was bound to be some resentment, and it was bound to get a little ugly.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this kind of thing is happening in a lot of different places all at once. A group has had a space for a long time that it has come to regard as exclusive. Then things change—in this case, credit card companies tweak their perks programs—and that space is now a semi-common area. It's hard to quantify the resulting loss of status in ways that don't sound ridiculous, because the newcomers have paid the same dues you have. Still, they aren't the same, the old guard insists.
The fix when it comes to airport lounges is easy. More exclusive lounges can always be built, and the true 1 percent will inevitably retreat into them. (Wealth, like life, finds a way.) Or those perks will shift—the Journal reported that Priority Pass, the service that gives lounge access to many credit card holders, was offering some flyers a $28 dining credit at airports instead of a lounge ticket.
What about all those other instances of privileges being eroded, of newcomers displacing the old guard and stirring up anger? Well, those are trickier problems to solve. But while we consider those issues, hopefully we can all agree that if you complain about once-exclusive lounges not being as good as they used to be, you're probably at least a little bit of an asshole.
The point of Socialism: The Game was actually to convince people that socialism could never work. It was conceived of in March 2016 by a trio of conservative and libertarian-leaning friends who wanted to respond to Bernie Sanders's rise to prominence by skewing the idea of wealth redistribution. What started as a riff in a group text became an incredibly involved joke, as the board game enthusiasts wanted to make sure their game, an expansion pack for Monopoly, was as robust and fun to play the original and not some one-note diss.
“One of the play testers was actually my son. He and I are avid Monopoly players,” John Elliott, one of the game’s creators, told me over the phone. “The potential for not going bankrupt, but also the diminished potential for returns was dramatically changing his attitude toward investment… [He’d] take a step back and say, ‘Yeah I’m not going to invest because there could be a buy-back on this, and I’m going to lose my property, and I’m going to have pay more taxes,’ and he’s just coming up with this on his own. So, it was really fascinating to watch someone who was otherwise a very aggressive Monopoly player change his play style because there’s really no motivation for a cutthroat game.”
The finished product that came out in May 2016 included new Monopoly game pieces like a canoe, bus, and smartphone; Fat Chance and Communist Chest cards to replace their capitalist counterparts; and, most importantly, a revised rulebook teeming with humourous jabs at proponents of big government.
The leftist in me wanted to point out that a lot of the game's nods to gulags and Maoism were technically references to communism, not socialism. But even I had to admit that with quips like the original Monopoly having “enough printed paper to make the Fed blush,” these guys had already pulled off a minor coup in delivering decent right-leaning comedy. But to verify their claim about everybody being able to have fun and laugh with the game, I decided to put it to the test by inviting some real socialists to play.
With my Socialism cards and tokens all set up atop my vanilla Monopoly board, I put on my finest Obama as Mao T-shirt and welcomed Max Belasco, Arielle Sallai, Rachel Reyes, and Kelsey Goldberg— four leaders of the LA chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America into my home on a Saturday afternoon.
Immediately upon seeing the game box, there was some chuckling from the young lefties. “Ha! Hillary… as a socialist? Hilarious,” chortled Max.
We dove into the rulebook, reading through it twice before everyone felt confident enough to begin play. (Socialists love rules.) Though everyone was starting with $1,500, the object of the game was to “achieve total fairness and equality through renting and selling of property under a modern, progressive, and populist public policy,” meaning the game only ended once nobody was bankrupt and everyone had less than $300. Acting as the Federal Directorate of Redistribution (FDR), the socialist version of the banker, I’d be collecting taxes, holding auctions, fining players for microaggressions like rolling three doubles in a row, and—the wildest rule of the game—passing out $100 bills in perpetuity whenever an asset-less player had insufficient funds to pay a tax or fee. In other words: nanny state welfare.
Socialism cards. Photo by the author
As players acquired property only to have me, as FDR, permanently capture it back via eminent domain Fat Chance cards, the game's lesson became quickly apparent. Still, as we each took our turns being incarcerated in “rehabilitation” and paid more than our fair share of taxes, the proletariat players remained chipper.
“I really like some of these rules,” remarked Rachel as she passed GO and collected $200 dollars, only to immediately return $100 in taxes. “I’d actually want to see this happen in the real world,” said Arielle after a Communist Chest card placed public housing pieces on all the state-owned property. A small cheer even erupted from the group when a card nationalized every utility on the board.
Not all of the game’s jabs at socialism elicited this sort of reaction, however. After a player was penalized $100 for a “Bernout power grid failure on a cloudy, windless day,” some complained about the card’s confusing insinuation. “That doesn’t even make any sense,” huffed Kelsey. “Being anti-green energy is a libertarian thing now?”
Max took similar issue with the card that forced him to pay $200 for his “neighbour’s gastric bypass surgery” courtesy of an Obamacare expansion. “In what socialist world are we still utilizing Obamacare?” he asked. “This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how universal healthcare works."
These occasional annoyances aside, the socialists appeared to be having a good time, even cheering at my habit of unlucky dice rolls sending me to frequent rehabilitation center visits. “We’re punishing your corruption and keeping you honest,” said Rachel.
Hours later, as we progressed into the late game and increasingly broke players began looking for ways to leverage their remaining properties, another novel twist from Socialism's rulebook emerged in the form of the People’s Action Committee on Commerce and Equity (PEACCE), the governing body that oversaw all permit requests, purchases, and sales of property. As unanimous consent was required for the approval of any transaction, holdouts and bribes soon became commonplace. But since the social safety net of another $100 was always on hand, these moments of voting sabotage seemed more like friends messing with each other for the sheer fun of it as opposed to legitimate game strategy.
As the instructions had warned, this big government handout was a double-edged sword and one that prevented the game from ending as fast as everyone would have liked. We circled the drain for a while, everyone locked in a perpetual cycle of handouts and fees while waiting for Rachel, the lone fat cat with over $300 and tons of property, to be cut down to size by the game’s ruthless rules.
Players scramble to loot Rachel's redistributed wealth. Photo by the author.
Only once an unlikely roll of back-to-back identical doubles triggered a “spontaneous utopian uprising” that “retired” Rachel from play and redistributed her wealth via a scrum in the center of the game board could the game finally come to an end. Those who’d survived the revolution had reached equality in their shared dependence on the state.
“If there are no winners, there are no losers,” mused the rulebook. But as the socialists packed up to go, they made it clear that they sort of felt like they had all won.
“That was the least stressful game of Monopoly I think I’ve ever played,” said Max. “Not having to worry about the constant threat of everyone else made it easier to just enjoy the ride.”
When I followed up with the game creators to say that real-life socialists had actually enjoyed the game, they seemed heartened. “I think American politics benefits a lot from just laughing a little bit more and just enjoying it,” said Elliott. “People are really too serious, and this was a lot of fun to make and there were a lot of folks across the political spectrum involved all along the process.”
But the arch-capitalists who created the game haven't developed any sympathy for the ideology they lampooned. When I asked Adam Williams, another of the game's creators, if maybe, just maybe, he'd developed the tiniest of soft spots for a single big-government policy over the course of this game's inception, he was quick to shoot me down.
“If you’re asking me whether I think there are aspects of big government that are good, the answer is absolutely not,” said Williams. “Stay the hell out of my life. I see absolutely no redeeming qualities in anything we did in this game.”
The first open mic I attended was during a snowstorm in January. Despite the weather the basement bar was fill to the brim with people all vying for the opportunity to entertain. My plan that night was to try out some new material. I had written a series of humorous anecdotes performed from the perspective of the lamp in my father’s hospital room. All the anecdotes were about my pop’s recent aneurysm. Looking back I was clearly trying to work some stuff out, though I don’t think any of that stuff was comedy.
As I waited my turn I watched person after person bomb. The jokes were mostly banal. How come anybody uses voicemail? Don’t they know about texting? Don’t you guys hate Tinder? Where’s is the G spot, am I right? That type of stuff. But about midway through the night there was a guy who got up. He was handsome in a late-nineties boy band kind of way. He gave off a Nick Lachey vibe. So, O-town saunters to the microphone and proceeds to berate the audience: why aren’t you dickheads laughing!? It’s a motherfucking Tuesday night!? WOO!? The crowd greets him with indifference, barely acknowledging LFO as they mentally prepare their sets. But Soul Decision was undeterred by the ambivalence. He continued: You motherfuckers ready for this? I am going to take off my pants! Yeah!
Take That then proceeded to unbuckle his belt, jump in the air, and almost take off his pants. They get caught around his ankles and the change in his pockets goes flying across the room. Standing in his underwear Boyzone attempts his first real joke: Do you think gay dudes know about prison? They’d love it. There is lots of gay sex in there. Silence in the room. The audience continued to be silent for another four minutes and thirty five seconds, the entirety of the guy’s set. Eventually the dude just waddled off stage, never taking the time to pull up his trousers.
Reflecting on that moment made me think about all the other terrible things that happen in the cesspool of sadness that is the stand up scene . Below I asked some comedian friends to tell me about the worst things they’ve ever experienced at an open mic. I also took their photos.
The worst open mic I ever attended was at Zanzibar, a strip club in downtown Toronto. I went in assuming it would be a bunch of comedians performing sets, then maybe a strip show after. I was wrong. The way it worked was a stripper would go on stage, perform for two songs/dances, then a comedian would go up and perform five minutes of material. It was a disaster. This may seem obvious but I can promise you people waiting to see women get naked do not want to see comedians talk about getting naked. Also, the show was set to run approximately five hours!
A couple hours in a woman did a striptease to “Aqualung” by Jethro Tull (it was surprisingly sexy!) then I got called to the stage. I was fairly new to comedy, working on my five minutes, and I got heckled. Repeatedly. One man screamed: bring back the strippers! Another man, who was a friend of a comic, screamed: you’re fat! That wasn’t shocking. I had heard that all before. What was shocking? After the first few hecklers a stripper screamed, “Hey Lady! I've got something funny for you!” Then she spread her legs and pulled her underwear to the side, showing everyone her vulva. To be honest, that was the best joke of the night.
I was on the stage at the Comedy Nest In Montreal. It was my second time doing stand up. Things were going mostly OK. I did a joke about how a mother abandoned her eight-year-old kid during a tsunami. Then I did this bit about how—like the rest of the audience—I also have white friends. You know, relatable everyday material. A couple of minutes into my set this guy in the front row starts having a loud conversation with his friend. Like, not just quietly chatting about how the beer is over priced or how the “Syrian refugee” on stage seems really angry. Like full on, loud, conversation. Everybody could here. Eventually I stopped talking and started staring at the dude. But he was still completely oblivious. So I did the only thing I could think of doing. I said: “YO, shut the fuck up!” The crowd all cheered. My first applause break.
The guy became instantly irate. He stood up and screamed, “What! What! What!” He jumps on stage and starts doing that ape intimidation move, literally smashing his chest with his arms. Instantly we are pacing back and forth as if we were in elementary school. I’m clutching the mic and just yelling obscenities. He’s not stopping. He gets all up in my face, about to hit me. Instinctively I yell, “Attica! Attica!” Then I hit him with a swift headbutt. Everyone swarmed the stage and the dude and his crew were thrown out. I didn’t finish the rest of my set.
I was at a mic years ago, getting ready to perform with a couple of friends. This guy walks into the cafe wearing a shirt that said “I love my foreskin.” Right on the front. In big letters. I love my foreskin. We all thought he might be a problem but for most of the night he was harmless. He drank quietly in the back. I get on stage and start doing my jokes. This guy looks at my hijab and starts yelling out: “Ramadan sucks! I hate ramadan! RAMADAN SUCKS!” The host was nice enough to kick him out but, like, really? I have nothing against foreskins but he clearly thought I hated....his?
I went to see my don’t-call-me-your-boyfriend-in-public boyfriend at an open mic a couple years ago. He was “working on some new material.” Because our riffs made me laugh and the sex was incredible, I went. Every comedian bombs, sure, but his set was like Hiroshima. Devastatingly bad. His first joke netted scattered laughs (something about a bad childhood, natch), his second joke got a quiet rumble, his third joke didn’t exist. There was no joke. Just rage whispers into the ether. When we all realized he’d run out of material with four minutes to go, my not boyfriend ramped up to nuclear. Hot-rage embarrassed at his own performance, he threw a chair, kicked a mic stand, and stormed off the stage in a noxious mushroom cloud of fuck what you plebes think. He exploded right out of the bar and onto the street. Everyone watched him go. We dated for another six months.
It was my first standup set ever. I was the second last person on at an open mic. It was two in the morning. I had spent hours watching a bunch of acts make dick jokes of different flavours, which I expected. I also saw people do a bunch of sexist, racist, and plain hateful material, which I did not expect. I felt uncomfortable but I stayed. I had my game face on and I wanted to do what I set out to. Besides, the host can’t control what the people say. It’s an open mic.
My set lasted a total of three minutes. I think I got one laugh. I get off stage feeling kind of defeated and the host says to me, “don't worry about it, you're a woman we'll just stare at your boobs.” Oh, great. Finally someone who sees my potential. I thought, it's official, nobody wants me here. I didn't do stand up again for another six months. I don't remember what made me start again, I was very drunk during this time in my life. I do remember thinking: fuck it, I'm gonna do it anyway.
Thought you were done with those ridiculous viral #challenges? Well, think again, because VICELAND's Desus and Mero have started their own stunt to Make America Great Again once and for all.
The Bodega Boys' questionable new viral challenge, the #ConstitutionChallenge, asks you to embody your inner Nick Cage and steal the Constitution of the United States of America. (DISCLAIMER: Nick Cage stole the Declaration of Independence in National Treasure, but whatever.) Send a video of your heist to Desus and Mero and you could win an appearance on the #1 show in Late Night! (DISCLAIMER: Please do not actually steal the Constitution.)
On Tuesday's episode of Desus & Mero, the hosts introduced their new challenge and then went on a long tangent about Nicolas Cage, who has apparently made some pretty insane purchases over the years.
You can watch the latest episode of DESUS & MERO for free, online, right now. New episodes Monday to Thursday at 11PM on VICELAND.COM.
Chris Jordan began by shooting piles of rubbish. He went to the port, in his hometown of Seattle, and photograph the big mounds of plastic flotsam washed up around. He then hung the images in his studio, where he admired the strangely beautiful forms with a photographer friend. The friend, who also happened to be a respected humanitarian and activist told him: “I love all those elements, but what I see is a macabre portrait of America.” For Chris, a switch flicked.
Chris decided to photograph the giant island of garbage apparently floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But when he searched for it in 2009 he was surprised to learn it didn’t exist in island format. Instead, Chris stumbled upon something sadder.
The Midway Atoll is located in the North Pacific Ocean—the furthest you can get from any continent on Earth. This cluster of little islands is a sieve for trash and Chris found the bird life paying with their lives. We got in touch with him to hear more.
VICE: Hi Chris, what are we looking at here? Chris Jordan: Thousands of dead baby albatross. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast and polluted Pacific Ocean.
Where you the first to discover their littered insides? No, when I first learned of the island I found there were already maybe 25 photographs of bird’s bodies filled with plastic. They’d been on the internet for more than 10 years, but nobody was interested, nobody was paying attention.
How is your approach different? You can always tell when a photographer faces his subject with reverence. You can see it in their photographs. It didn’t feel like the others had done this. I just wanted to go there and see if there was a way to tell the story of that tragedy in a way that honoured it.
What’s it like being on the Island? I think the name of the island really says it all, “Midway.” Of all the names that island could have, it's been given a name that’s an entire philosophy of life in one word. I was midway, kneeling over the bodies of tens of thousands of baby birds filled with plastic, and at the same time, in a colony of these magnificent beings who have no fear of humans. It's like being exactly midway between hell and paradise and it reflects where humanity is at right now. We're midway to our own destruction, but we’re also midway to creating a new world together. And it's up to us to decide.
So there are two sides to this. Do you think you captured both? Yes. I think of myself as a documentary photographer, my whole job is to accurately document what is in front of me. Everywhere I go, even when I am looking at the most horrible thing, there is almost always a tremendous beauty there. So to only look at horror, or sadness, would not be documentary photography. To really document the reality of our world, you have to show it all, including how beautiful it is.
Are you worried about our future? Since people first became aware of ocean plastic pollution in 2008, there’s been a massive shift in global consciousness. It’s pretty clear if we stay on the same course we’re on right now, there will be a lot to be afraid of. There is nothing changing the course we’re on but us, so there is simultaneously reason to be hopeless and hopeful. We get to collectively decide what our future is.
First time I land I'm all fingers and thumbs. You— hold on. You axe through the—? Hold on. I very clearly should have landed on the roof of this building. That way I can dig down, and through, collecting resources as I— ah, no, someone has shot my head off with a shotgun.
Okay, so we go again. Suppose this time I can land on the roof of th— no, there’s already somebody here, before me. And they’ve— that’s my assault rifle! And they swirl around me, in smooth liquid movements, peppering me with bullets while I swing my axe at the air, until I succumb bloodlessly to them and die.
Games three through five I basically figure out the main controls in the 50 or so seconds it takes between me landing and me being shot to death. I cut down a tree, that sort of thing.
About game ten I get an exceptionally weak pistol kill.
Game 20 I finish in the top ten and only get my head shot out while crawling – slowly, silently – up a well-guarded hill as the storm closes in. Nobody behind me, nobody above me, and then: pop, pop, pow. In an instant, a leaping opponent swirls around me, shotgun boom, and I am dead, collapsed, my bounty pouring out of me in a heap, and I watch as they dab the air where my corpse just was. My blood has never been more alive in my body. My heart is beating so hard I can feel it. I have never been more exhilarated by a game, ever. I’ve never been more exhilarated by… anything? Ever?
Fortnite: Battle Royale is the free-to-play game that your boyfriend, your brother and Drake are all obsessed with, and now also me, I am obsessed with it too. The premise is simple, and ripped absolutely directly from the grittier Xbox-and-PC behemoth PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds: 100 players drop from a parachute into a sprawling island map, where they salvage and forage for guns, health power-ups, ammunition and shields, before taking out every other player on the map. You have exactly one life in the game: when you’re dead, you’re dead. You can watch whoever killed you if you want (this ability – to watch the movements of the man who killed you – will become vital to us later). The last man standing claims the Victory Royale. That is the entirety of the game.
It is totally un-winnable, and therein lies the tension. Players are crammed into ever-decreasing circles of the game map by an encroaching electrical storm, and that means each 20-to-25-minute battle starts as a breezy, cloudless sunny day and turns into a tight tense fight for blood: three or four final players, leaping around the same small square of map, each of them rendered paranoid and deranged by the constant shuffling of footsteps, then violent gunfire, then death. Some evenings when I play it too close to bedtime I have to go and brush my teeth for an extended period of time before my heart rate slows.
I am, as a 30-year-old man, far too slow and trigger-clunky to ever win a game. Teenagers, who have been suckling on iPads since they were in nappies, regularly destroy me and dance on my corpse. I cannot win. I cannot win. I will never, ever win. I still keep trying to win.
Fortnite became a phenomenon over the last six months in ways that have been detailed far better here. Essentially, it’s a triple-A game given away for free, which makes it enormously popular with cash-poor teens and cash-poor adults alike, and means they can play at killing in a big gang with all their friends, and also the game is addictive like a drug is. Folklore dots the game if you look close enough: the newly-landed Season 4 has seen a much prophesied comet land on the island, which is very exciting for everyone (me.) who has seen their life slip from a position of almost-competent almost-cool into being generally obsessed with Fortnite and constantly thinking about Fortnite.
But what makes the murder-game so compelling? The easy answer is [gestures, generally, at everything]. Consider our current reality: not great. Nobody can place a finger on the exact feeling of fraughtness and anger and loss we all feel, constantly, the Earth tearing itself taut and flat, stressed to death like a rubber band, and we look everywhere for symptoms and the source: are too many apps the problem? Are not enough apps the problem? Do we need vitamins, do we need self care?
Be good to yourself because the world refuses to be. Be kind and soft in a world of harsh and unfair. And what I am saying is: yes, good, but have you tried my kind of meditation? Have you been to the bloodless fields of Fortnite, and killed, and killed, kill, kill, kill, kill in loops until it becomes mantric. Real-world violence counteracted with a cartoon of violence. It is soothing, almost, to take a YouTube streamer's head out with an epic-rated sniper gun. I am hypnotised by it.
I had a dream last night. I don’t remember dreams, normally, but I remember this one – and it went like this: I landed on the top of that wooden house you can edit up a bit from the Flush Factory. Another Fortnite player landed on the top of the house, with me. And neither of us had weapons, so we just swung our axes, swish swish, swish swish, neither of us either really connecting, both of us leaping and dodging, and this went on for dream-hours, dream-weeks, and then I got two good hits on and killed him. That was it. That was the first dream I’ve remembered vividly since 2016.
"Hey," I said to my flatmate, one day. "I just followed a meme page on Instagram. A Fortnite meme page. That’s bad, isn’t it? That’s bad."
And he looked at me like I’d run a dog over and said: "That’s bad, mate."
And then I looked at the Fortnite memes for a second and he said—
Show me the meme page.
I'm dying more. One good time was when I thought I was doing really well and then – ptchoo – shot in the head to death by a sniper, instant kill.
Another time I had just looted a chest and got a blue assault rifle and then – boomph, boomph – some lad with a shotgun just took me right out, just took me down to bits
There’s this nice little house I like to land in – just up and over a crest, just out of the way – and I was quietly going about my business and searching the place for ammo when I heard a creak, and then another creak, and then the soft rustle of footsteps, and now I was on my guard: I tiptoed, backwards, carefully and silently, step-by-step retreating under the stai— no, my mistake, they’ve found me. One shot kill.
When you think you have exhausted every possible way to die, Fortnite invents another way for you to die. Clunk: metal trap chomps me to death while I’m searching an innocuous outhouse. Fyiooooo—pang. Wooden staircase I am building to the top of a mountain is shot out from underneath me, and I flutter down towards my death. Fwob–fwob–wob–wob–wob. Inexplicably, I have jumped out of the Battle Bus and directly into the sea. I no longer fear death, because I know what it is to die. Again, and again, and again and again. Press circle to return to lobby. The Battle Bus departs in 0:10. And then we float, and land, and get shot in the head, again, to death.
Watching professional Twitch streamers play Fortnite, I realise there are two main ways to play the game: a laissez faire waltz through the island’s buildings and forests, gunning down whoever you see, close or far, collecting their bounty and consuming their health packets – these players often end a game with six, seven, eight registered kills, maxed out wood resources, a special little dance animation that they bought especially. Then you have the builder: as soon as they see action, they either build a ramp over towards it, build a fortress against it, or – on the occasion you see two builders go toe-to-toe in a to-the-death battle – a complex set of interconnecting buildings, one twined within another, both combatants hunkered down in various anonymous blocks of it, armed with a shotgun, waiting. The storm encroaches and the sound of planks being built closes in. And then someone scores a shotgun kill and: victory.
I, however, have pioneered another, third, and deeply unsuccessful strategy, and I call it "cowardice". The first step of the plan is to land as far away from the path of the Battle Bus as possible (you can do this by tapping and un-tapping the umbrella button to jet yourself away to a distant corner of the island. We are in very real danger of ruining a controller, this way). Then pop into a silent crouch and quietly start collecting guns and ammunition. Work your way into the centre of the storm by taking the least populated route you see. If you spot an enemy combatant in the distance, veer in the exact opposite direction of them and run away. If you hear the faraway put–put of gunfire, try to hide in a bush. If you encounter a town and someone has already visibly built a ramp up to one of the buildings to loot it, run away from that town. This way, you can make it to the top ten or even top six of the game without ever really seeing anyone. Essentially, I have turned Fortnite into a high-tension walking simulator where somebody always, always shoots me at the end.
The Fortnite map includes an overgrown prison and a number of upturned police cars. You see the problem: the artefacts of the world we kill and die in suggest this once was a land where crime, and punishment, existed. And yet: 100 of us, in masks and suits, parachute in to murder each other. I want to know: if murder is not illegal – if murder is a game, here – then what kind of crimes were the prisoners who were locked up here once guilty of?
I’m Top #10, and I feel electric, I feel alive. The storm is closing in on us, purple and impenetrable. Location-wise I’ve done astonishingly: on the top of a central building, in a perfect wooden fort made of ramps and floors and walls, occasionally just popping my head out of the top to stare down my sniper rifle, perfectly aware of every remaining player on the map. And then: clnk, clnk, clnk clnk clnk clnk. The sound of a grenade quietly tiptoeing down to meet me. And then I explode, and watch my loot fall out of my body, and watch my fort collapse under its own weight, and know that the last 20 minutes I spent collecting wood were totally and utterly in vain.
The statistics page on my profile says I have now played 300+ games of Fortnite and so far won zero of them. This is not for lack of trying. The Cowardice Offence has turned into something more: I start to creep out from cover more, run with my head up, occasionally fire shots in anger. In one particularly frantic game I clock four entire kills. I have died so many times now that I am immune to death. I do not care if I die because I always die. "ARGGGGH," I shout, leaping over the crest of a hill and onto a battle-wounded combatant below, peppering them with machine gun fire. "ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGH!" I actually say this out loud with my mouth. And, obviously: they turn their head towards me, slink to one side and finish me with two shotgun bursts, pump–pump. Why do I keep playing this game if I never win it. What am I playing for. How does this end.
The map is the same but always different. It evolves with scars and bumps of the fights that came before it. A small clot of low-level weapons and some leftover bandages suggests an early-game kill happened here. Two vacant fortresses face one another, their wooden fronts iced-out and incomplete. The map is marked with remnants of the action you just missed. Touch the soil and bring it to your lips. A gold hand cannon glitters in the distance. Is this weapon left here as a… trap? Check your inventory. You don’t have anything powerful enough to compete with it. The coast seems clear. Sneak towards it. Clunk. You have died. You have obviously died. There was someone standing there, around the corner, with an entire grenade launcher. You have obviously died. Of course you have died. It is 1AM, man. You have a job and a life. Stop getting tricked into dying by cackling teenagers.
Finally it happened. I don’t even know it happened, but it happened. The past few weeks I’ve been getting more kills with the assault rifle and cared less and less about dying. This game has defeated my spirit entirely. I have given up. Mind and body, exhausted. I land by the junkyard. I get every weapon I want and a full shield. I fell a couple of trees. I build a ramp to the top of a tall hill. I put a pyramid over the top of the ramp to trap anyone coming there, and that’s where I get my first kill – pew, pew, fire five rounds down into them while they are trying to come up. Then I work my way into the storm, and in the distance two builders are battling – one fortress against another, with the whirr of rocket grenades in the air – so I ramp up to another one and gun him down while he’s pre-occupied. Then I build a quick fort to heal in, and hear footsteps while I’m in there, and glance to the map, and—
It’s the final two. I’m in the final two. It’s me vs. one other player. I have made it here before but only gotten killed: a ramp over the top of me; a rocket in my face as I clumsily try to build; me, running for cover, while a sniper guns my back. But this time it’s different: I breathe deep, I move around the fortress I’m in silently, and shoot them in the head four times – pew–pew, pew–pew – and they collapse, and I have won. A guitar chord clangs. Victory Royale. I have finally done it. I know what it is to win.
I scream so loud and for so long that the neighbours start thumping on the ceiling above me.
The next game I get brained out by a shotgun and finish #83rd.
I hate this game, I hate this game. I love this fucking game.
Castle Rock, Hulu's upcoming anthology series about Stephen King's fictional Maine town populated by demon junk shops and guys who you shouldn't shake hands with, finally has a release date. On Wednesday, Hulu announced that the first season of the show will hit the streaming service on July 25 and dropped a brand-new trailer that proves that, yes, this is going to be a terrifyingsummer.
The new King adaptation won't be based on any specific book by the author, but will instead cherrypick characters and ideas from King's catalog and wrap them up into a single, fucked-up universe. Going off what we can glean from the firstfewCastle Rock trailers, that means we'll get to see prisoners at Shawshank, a very unhappy pooch who may or may not be Cujo, and gratuitous nods to the number 237, though it's still unclear what the show will actually be about—aside from, like, death and horror and stuff.
Wednesday's trailer still doesn't give us much insight into that, but it gives us another peek at IT star Bill Skarsgård's prisoner character in the new series—no, he's not playing Pennywise this time, since Pennywise lives in Derry, Maine—and once again proves that Maine is an awful place to live if you're a Stephen King character.
"Everyone's got a theory how it started, about Castle Rock's original sin," the trailer's narrator says in the new clip. "Whenever it began, whoever's sin we're paying for, we're trapped in a cycle that stretches back centuries. There’s blood in every backyard, inside every house. People say it wasn’t me; it was this place. And the thing is, they’re right."
Along with Skarsgård, Castle Rock is set to star Sissy Spacek, André Holland, and Scott Glenn, who will play the town's sheriff, Alan Pangborn, in a role originally brought to life by Ed Harris in the old Needful Things adaptation. It looks like we'll have to wait until July to find out why all the Castle Rock townspeople don't just move the hell away and relocate to Burlington or whatever, but until then, watch the trailer above.
Early this week, Darren Martin was doing something totally normal that people do without thinking every single day—he was moving into a new apartment.
What happened next to him probably seems outlandish to most people. Six police officers showed up to investigate him. Apparently one of his neighbours in Manhattan’s Upper West Side had called 911 and reported his move-in as a burglary in progress. This person told the dispatcher that “somebody was trying to break in the door” with a “possible weapon” or “a large tool.” (Was it a massive novelty-sized key?)
If all this sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens so regularly that it’s basically white noise (haha, bad pun). A large part of being black that other people have so much difficulty grasping is how quickly and easily the fear of blackness can transform the most banal everyday activities and objects into justification for your harassment, arrest or death.
Martin—a social justice do-gooder who worked for the Obama White House, was just trying to move into his apartment. But thanks to the funhouse mirror of anti-blackness he got treated like a Wakandan cat burglar trying to knock down a door with his spear (or something like that). For myself, a social justice do-gooder guy who worked for the Obama campaign in ‘08, spent five years living a few blocks away from where Darren Martin had the cops called on him, and who opens the door to my apartment daily—sometimes as many as two or three times a day!—this hit close to home for me.
So, I thought to myself… why not offer some helpful hints for other black folks hoping to not get harassed, have the cops called on them or be murdered? Now that would be a public service!
So, here we go! Ten simple things to avoid doing if you're black:
1) Don't move into your new apartment. We just learned this one! But it’s a rookie mistake, really. But did you know about this next, more advanced tip?
2) Don't enter a house you own. Even the most seasoned black people can mess this one up. Even Professor Henry Louis Gates—who is so seasoned and black he’s basically a smoked southern brisket in a bowtie—got caught slipping here. But everyone knows you can’t scare your neighbours if they never see you. Now you might look at this, throw up your hands, and wonder how you're supposed to be safe in your home. Well you'd better figure it out, because the next thing on the list is non-negotiable.
3) Don't be homeless. Brendon Glenn was homeless when he was shot by LAPD officer Clifford Proctor in 2016. And considering the fact that research shows racialized people are disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness, this is really important to keep in mind.
4) Don’t have mental health issues. Whether the example is Pierre Coriolan in Montréal or Andrew Loku in Toronto, this is pretty cut and dried. As someone living with anxiety and depression, I’m still trying to figure out how to make this one work. Maybe we can crowdsource tips at the next Black People’s Assembly?
5) Don’t sit in a multi-national coffee shop. I don’t know why I’m reminding you about this—don’t you watch the news? Plus who wants to pay $6 for an iced tea? That is not one, not two, but three bottles of Ting from the Chinese-Jamaican corner store. Use your head, people. And while we’re on snacking…
6) Don’t eat or drink in public. This week Emile Wickham made the news for winning an anti-discrimination lawsuit against a Toronto restaurant that asked him and his friends to pay for dinner up-front. Feeling suspicious about the situation (always trust your Spidey sense), they asked other non-Black patrons and found out they were the only ones who had to pay before being served. But this isn't new.
From the days of the The Negro Motorist Green Book to Christopher Beatty and iced tea to Trayvon Martin and Skittles to Chikesia Clemons at a Waffle House, the verdict is clear. Black people need to stop eating and drinking out in the world. Don’t y’all know that white people eat and drink in public, too? You eating a patty and coco bread on the corner is reverse racist appropriation of white public spaces. Stop it.
7) Don’t drive. This is another total no-brainer. Jordan Davis got shot to death in his car at the gas station. Jessie Thornton got arrested for driving because he had red eyes from swimming in a chlorinated pool. Even well-known broadcasters like Marci Ien get pulled over for driving while black. The obvious solution—don’t drive. Ever. Don’t even *look* at cars. While we’re at it…
8) Don’t bike (Dante Parker). Or walk through alleys (Rekia Boyd). Or walk down stairs (Akai Gurley). Y’know what? Just don’t walk (Bobby Wingate). Also, don’t take the subway (Oscar Grant). Or take the streetcar (this means you, 15 year olds in Toronto). Or take the school bus (Raliek Redd, Deaquon Carelock, Wan'Tauhjs Weathers). And while I’m talking to the kids…
9) Don’t go to school. Especially not if your immigration status is in question, as you might get deported. Also, if you’re a 6 year old in Mississauga you might get handcuffed. And if you’re a teenaged girl you might get body-slammed by a full-grown man. Also kids, if you want to avoid the whole being body-slammed thing, best to avoid pool parties too. Ask Dajerria Becton.
10) Don’t. Hold. Anything. Seriously? Anything?! Eh-nee-thing. So if all these rules are giving you a headache, don’t reach into your pocket for a painkiller (Rumain Brisbon). Or cigarettes (Eric Garner). If you’re in your own backyard—C’mon, what’re you doing? We talked about this in number 1 and 2!±—don’t hold a phone (Stephon Clark). Or an iPod (Reginald Wallace). Or keys (Joseph Fennell)—didn’t we *just* talk about opening doors to houses and cars?
Well there you have it! But remember that this list is not exhaustive. In fact, I’ve left out a lot of gems that might be helpful to more advanced readers. But it should help some of you beginners navigate the ubiquitous sinkholes of anti-Black fear and suspicion that could turn into mortal danger at a moment’s notice.
And if you happen to be a white person reading this thinking about how incredibly exhausting and traumatic it must be to have to live with this every day… Yeah. It is.
Jared A. Walker is a writer and communications consultant. He was communications director for Jagmeet Singh's leadership campaign and speechwriter for the NDP.
Amanda Knox made headlines for years when she was accused of murdering her roommate in Perugia, Italy, during a study abroad program. It was hard to look away from the story the police had created about her: a young, attractive woman who had allegedly convinced a local Italian to rape her roommate so she could kill her and get away with it. After a drawn-out, eight-year trial, Knox was convicted of murder, sent to prison, and then released after four years when the verdict was overturned.
Now Knox wants to turn her experience into a message to the media and the public who consume it. She says it's time to stop vilifying and shaming women—making it impossible for the actual truth to show through these narratives. Her new series on VICE, The Scarlett Letter Reports, is focused on changing the dialogue around gendered public shaming. She talks to women like Anita Sarkeesian, Amber Rose, Daisy Coleman, Brett Rossi, and Mischa Barton, all of whom were, in one way or another, framed or shamed in the media.
On the podcast, Knox opens up to Dory Carr-Harris about the trauma of her past, her new mission, and how a poetry class changed the way she saw her story.
When Newfoundland and Labrador’s House of Assembly sat for the first time in 1833, it took up residence at a tavern in downtown St. John’s. The owner, Mary Travers, was less than impressed by the behaviour of some honourable gentlemen. When the colony’s first democratic government failed to pay her rent, she unceremoniously kicked them to the curb and confiscated all their furniture as damages. When the government summoned her to the bar of the new House to demand their things back, she laughed in their faces and told them to pack off unless they paid her rent.
The House of Assembly eventually got its stuff back, but there are no records that Travers ever got paid. She died in 1854 on Prince Edward Island.
As it turns out, the government caucus in 2018 apparently still operates much like a barroom brawl, and a number of women involved still aren’t getting their due. But the wayward daughters of Mary Travers may have finally come to collect on the back pay owed by the old boys club of the provincial government. And if Premier Dwight Ball isn’t careful, he might find himself washed out into the gutters of Duckworth Street along with the rest of the trash.
For those of you blissfully unacquainted with the cut and thrust of political life at the eastern fringe of North America, here is a brief recap of the (still unfolding) madness:
On Tuesday, April 24, former premier and PC opposition leader Paul Davis spent question period alluding to harassment and bullying problems within the Liberal cabinet. Premier Dwight Ball categorically shut him down: “no, there has been no allegations that have come to me on any issue facing our caucus.” So far, so good. Outside the House, Davis revealed to the press that he had been approached with complaints about colleagues by Liberal MHAs who felt they could not raise the issue publicly—or presumably in caucus.
A formal complaint was filed the next morning against Municipal Affairs Minister Eddie Joyce, a former boxer and boorish firecracker from the west coast of the island. Joyce then (unintentionally or otherwise) revealed the identity of his complainant while talking to media, prompting that person—who turned out to be Service NL Minister Sherry Gambin-Walsh—to come forward publicly. In a legendary interview shortly afterwards, Joyce insisted that he had no idea what Gambin-Walsh was talking about, identified another potential complainant (PC MHA Tracey Perry), and insisted that he could not be considered a bully because he had given out municipal funding to people. (There is no purer expression of Classical Newfoundland Politics than “I control the patronage, so I can do as I please.”)
Premier Ball turfed Joyce from cabinet the morning the complaint was filed. That afternoon, he hastily booted him from the party after an outraged opposition demanded to know why Joyce was still sitting in caucus next to the woman he’d spent most of the day mocking on camera. According to Ball, the morning of April 25 was the first time he ever heard a complaint about his caucus. Leaks to CBC confirmed that a least two members of the premier’s staff—his executive assistant and his chief of staff—had been already fielded complaints about Joyce.
Meanwhile, the day that allegations were first hinted by Davis in the House, Education Minister Dale Kirby sent a panicked email to everyone in caucus demanding that anyone leaking information outside the party come forward immediately, as “there is no greater violation of political trust!” (This is an especially rich line coming from the architect of the failed 2013 leadership putsch in the NL NDP that effectively destroyed the party.) For his trouble, Kirby got a shoutout from Democracy Watch for his bald-faced effort at intimidating whistleblowers.
So on Monday, April 30, the House sat again, this time without Joyce or Kirby. The education minister had been removed that morning following a new complaint from Liberal MHA Pam Parsons. She alleged that Kirby had spent the weekend calling party members and urging them to boycott a fundraiser she was hosting, which is an astonishingly petty powerplay to attempt while cabinet is under the microscope for bad behaviour. Along with another Liberal MHA, Colin Holloway, Parsons also filed a complaint with the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary over an abusive anonymous Twitter account named “WackjobNL” that was rumoured to be operated by Kirby to slam his colleagues online. (Those allegations have yet to be confirmed.)
Speaking of Holloway—as of Tuesday, he officially upgraded the situation at Confederation Building from a “problem” to a “gongshow.” Holloway filed four harassment complaints against other MHAs: not only Joyce and Kirby, but Paul Davis and NDP leader Gerry Rogers because they insinuated in the House that Holloway was himself being investigated for harassment. (As it turns out: the Town of Port Blandford had complained about Holloway in an email that CC’d Davis, Rogers, and the premier’s office, but a) it was not a harassment complaint, and b) the agency charged with looking into all these complaints has not concluded whether or not they’re going to investigate Holloway. Everything’s fine!)
But most damning of all (so far) was former Finance Minister Cathy Bennett’s exclusive interview with CBC Radio on May 1. She said that she regularly experienced bullying, harassment, intimidation, ostracism, and gaslighting from other MHAs during her time in cabinet, which was her main reason for resigning last summer to sit as a backbencher.
As these complaints keep piling up in public, questions have naturally turned to Dwight Ball’s role in all this. Bennett stopped short of implicating the premier himself in problematic behaviour, but she did observe that “the leader of an organization has the right and responsibility to set the tone and also set the values by which the organization needs to operate [and if] they don’t, the bad behaviour will continue.”
For his part, Ball denied any knowledge of Bennett’s troubling experiences, simply stating that what she describes was “not my experience” and that Bennett simply told him she was resigning for “personal reasons.”
Throughout this whole trainwreck, Ball has continued to assert two things: that he never knew about any of these issues until complaints were formally filed in the last seven days, and also that he’s “in charge” of his caucus and his government. Unfortunately, these positions become more and more mutually exclusive every time new information emerges.
This kind of ruthless self-owning has become the premier’s stock and trade. Remember May 2016 when Ball accidentally-on-purpose gave the most hated bureaucrat in the province a golden parachute and then spent a month denying it against all evidence? This is a different crisis, but involved the exact same defence from the premier: it wasn’t me; I didn’t do it; I have no idea; this is the first I’ve heard of it.
Now, of course, the premier includes a major caveat: even though I didn’t know about this, I’m still the guy in charge.
Let’s take him at his word. Say the premier is firmly in control and on the ball. He works alongside finance minister Bennett for 18 months but has no idea what she’s going through and never bothers to ask her, even when she suddenly quits cabinet. His ministers are (allegedly) stalking through the corridors of power to flex on their backbench colleagues for fun and/or profit, and we are assured that this was an unforeseen defect of Dwight Ball’s controlled chaos. The premier is sitting on a throne high above the capital city, white-knuckling his sceptre and sucking on his ring while his staff scurry around in the shadows fielding secret complaints against cabinet ministers from other cabinet ministers. He commands a caucus room full of MHAs he cannot see and hear. This person is not a leader; this person is barely a boss.
Alternatively, Ball commands nothing but his title. This seems more likely than Ball cosplaying as Tina Turner every time his cabinet meets in the Thunderdome. If the premier really does operate a regime where the left hand knows not what the right is doing, then maybe he did rely on a cohort goons to browbeat uppity backbenchers into their proper place. This is maybe not so different from other Canadian legislatures—as the slow tsunami of harassment claims making its way across the country can attest—except perhaps that our own House of Assembly is more culturally and institutionally underdeveloped and an alarming number of its Big Men on Campus can’t or won’t draw a line between being “forceful” and being abusive. In this kind of environment, anyone feeling they were on the receiving end of bad behaviour would likely feel unwilling or unable to involve their party boss.
Or, maybe, there is the third and probably saddest possibility: that Dwight Ball (and many of his colleagues) do not understand what workplace harassment looks like, and doesn’t care to find out. It could play out before his eyes and he would never see it. He may genuinely just assume that most complaints and criticisms are just weak people unused to the “intensity” of political discussion. This is more or less how he shrugged off the questions raised about his toxic caucus by Bennett’s public interviews.
This is probably closest to the truth, because the dysfunctional environment of the current government caucus goes far beyond the Liberal party. The opposition Tories might have a field day digging up dirt about Dale Kirby’s bad behaviour, but they forget that “bullying” was their modus operandi for 12 years in government. They drummed Gerry Rogers out of the House back in 2013 over the dumbest social media scandal of all time; they browbeat the legislature and the public into the disastrous Muskrat Falls project; they let Premier Danny Williams smash anyone and anything he felt like smashing for any slight, real or imagined. Pigheadedness is a point of political pride in this province and being the loudest asshole in the room is often a mark of greatness. Ask the average person why John Crosbie is considered a great Newfoundland statesman and you are more likely to hear about the quick wits he used to burn opponents than anything he actually did. Our political system is built out of personality conflict, not policy dispute. Until we address this, we are only ever going to get garbage in, garbage out of the People’s House.
Likewise: only God knows whether or not premier Dwight Ball will survive the next month. (Odds decrease every time some fresh harassment hell breaks loose.) He has somehow survived all previous exposures of his gross unfitness for the office he occupies, and calls for him to resign started almost immediately after he took office in 2015. This present legitimacy crisis may be uncharted waters for our parliamentarians, but it’s par for the course for this premier.
When asked about it, Ball maintained he’s not going anywhere. “Leaders don’t resign in challenging times,” he told reporters the day Bennett’s interview aired. “They stand up, and we will lead this province through this.”
Aye aye, captain. We respect your decision to go down with the ship. But that’s the thing about a mutiny: the captain doesn’t get to call the shots anymore.
This may suit Dwight Ball best anyway, as he barely seemed to call them in the first place.
Toronto police issued a traffic alert on Wednesday morning during rush hour about a car hanging from a bridge in the city. The dominant theory, supported by a statement from authorities, claimed it could be part of a movie set. But, now, even if that is the case, police are saying the dangling of the car would have been unauthorized.
Said car, a blue sedan that seemed to be missing windows and looked tattered if not burned-out, was seen hanging under a bridge in the Don Valley. Police had to cordon off part of the roads in the area, as well as the space under where the car was.
Though the spectacle was deemed not hazardous by authorities, we have some questions.
If you are a filmmaker without a proper permit to order a car dangled off a city bridge, how did you ever expect this to go unnoticed?
Toronto is known for being a location for filming movies, so the explanation that this car could be related to a shoot is not all that surprising.
Still, dangling a car off a bridge from a cable in plain sight without proper permitting sounds like an unequivocally bad idea. Perhaps that is part of your plot and you hope it will lead to publicity, so congrats if that’s the case! But also, seems at least moderately shitty that emergency services and other resources had to be used for this.
How many people on their morning commute did this scare the shit out of?
Driving in the area along the Don Valley, while it at times provides beautiful vistas of Toronto, can be stomach-churning enough. Rush hour in Toronto can easily turn into a nightmare that makes you question why you chose to live in this city in the first place, but when a car is inexplicably being dangled off a bridge before you’ve even finished your morning coffee? No thank you.
Is this an elaborate plot by a marketing company to get media attention for something?
Honestly it seems like pretty much everything unexplainable in our modern world could be one of these stunts at this point. Hopefully if this is one of those overwhelmingly annoying stunts it turns out better than that the times companies’ guerrilla marketing ploys have caused bomb scares. Here’s a litmus test: If your marketing plot is going to potentially spark police and emergency response, it might not be worth it.
Is this art?
This is almost always a possibility. Perhaps this particular one is a commentary on humanity’s reliance on gas-powered vehicles, pollution, and climate change?
Could it be a student prank?
Engineering students may possess a skill set that would be helpful in such activities. High school students in Grimsby, Ontario, who planned to study engineering and computer science after graduation managed to get a Jaguar S-Type on top of a roof (or rather, the exterior of it built around a wooden frame) in a graduation prank in 2016. The student prank theory really doesn't seem too far-fetched.
Whoever dangled the car, Toronto’s mayor, John Tory, has suggested they be held accountable.
“If it’s something else, if it’s a prank, then obviously the law should apply to people who are doing things like that,” Tory told reporters on Wednesday. “So, we’ll have to see.”
All it takes is one dingus with a terrible idea to get the country hooked on some new, dumbass craze. Make a joke about eating Tide Pods, and the next thing you know, dozens of people are calling poison control because they swallowed one of them. Snort one condom, and all of a sudden parents are convinced the "Condom Snorting Challenge" is a full-blown thing. Now, it looks like we've got a new inane, dangerous trend sweeping the nation: "paintball wars." And according to the cops, it all started with rapper 21 Savage, somehow.
In cities across the US—Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, Charlotte, Greensboro, and beyond—people armed with paintball guns have been shooting at one another in the streets, USA Todayreports. They're using everyday obstacles like cars, houses, and trash cans as makeshift bunkers—and unsuspecting citizens are getting caught in the crossfire.
In Milwaukee, cops responded to 65 reports of folks getting hit with paintballs in the last week, according to the Journal Sentinel. Meanwhile, cops in Detroit received 95 paintball-related calls over just one week, and police in Charlotte, North Carolina, have gotten more than 150 calls since January. Cops in Atlanta confiscated more than 7,500 paintball rounds and nine guns when they broke up a war earlier this month.
According to police, the whole fiasco began with none other than 21 Savage, who's credited with starting what's known as "paintballs up, guns down." Apparently, the idea is to cut back on gun violence by encouraging people to mess around with paintball guns instead—but, obviously, it's not working out all that great. Aside from all the houses and cars getting covered in paint, some people are actually getting injured—and according to the cops, the wars might have claimed at least two lives.
"He started the movement in an effort to stop the shootings in the inner cities,” Melissa Franckowiak, a sergeant with the Milwaukee Police Department, said at a news conference Monday. "It’s kind of morphed into something other than what he anticipated, I think. Now these kids have been shooting unsuspecting citizens as opposed to their friends during these paintball wars."
In early April, a group of paintballers unloaded on a 15-year-old kid at an Atlanta gas station, the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionreports. Ticked off and covered in paint, he allegedly grabbed a real handgun and fired at the cars that had ambushed him—accidentally striking and killing a three-year-old inside. (21 Savage ended up paying for the funeral.) A few weeks later, police found a 19-year-old in Greensboro shot to death in a car that was splattered with paint, in what police claim was a killing connected to the city's paintball war, FOX 8 reports.
Do your colleagues ever tire of your constant complaining about work? Is your "negative vibe" around the office getting people down?
Well, too bad for them. Science has shown that griping is actually good for office morale. New research from the University of Melbourne backs the idea that whinging to colleagues not only lets staff work through their problems, it also helps them bond.
The research comes from Dr Vanessa Pouthier, who embedded with a group of doctors and nurses a hospital oncology department in America's midwest. She attended 50 morning staff meetings, conducted two rounds of interviews with hospital staff, and found griping at work can be just as important for coping as joking around with colleagues.
According to Pouthier, whinging isn't just about having a good vent. The important thing is for colleagues to empathise with you. These back-and-forths are referred to by Pouthier as rituals or "little ceremonies."
“One of the best things in the team I observed, was that these griping rituals helped doctors and nurses realise they were feeling the same way about situations, and they weren’t that different," Dr Pouthier told Pursuit. "It allows people to recognise how similar they are in the challenges they’re facing every day and how they feel about them."
But (there's always a but...) Dr Pouthier says there are important rules to keep productive griping from quickly devolving into full-on workplace bullying.
“You can only gripe about people that are not in the room, and you need to externalise the gripe," she explained. "The gripe’s target needs to be something everyone can agree on, like the structure in which the team is working, or difficult practitioners working in other services. Never individuals in the team."
Tourists flock to nature parks all over Australia to get up close and personal with the country's national animal, the kangaroo. But things have taken a violent turn in the town of Lake Macquarie, about two hours from Sydney, where mobs of carrot-addicted kangaroos are clashing with tourists on a daily basis. According to experts, carrots are like chocolate bars for roos.
“There are people getting kicked and scratched at least every day,” said Shane Lewis, who operates a shuttle to and from the unlikely tourist hotspot outside Lake Macquarie's Morisset Hospital. According to the ABC, “travel blogs promise ‘adorable wild kangaroos’ [outside the hospital] that are ‘tame enough to get close to and take photos with.’”
But the kangaroos aren’t happy when visitors dangle carrots in front of them, attempting to get the perfect selfie. Despite multiple warning signs to not feed them though, the tourists keep coming.
“The kangaroos see at least 2,000 tourists a week and they don’t need 2,000 carrots or bananas and bread, chips, and biscuits,” Lewis said.
He recalled the story of one woman who needed 17 stitches in her face “from her eye to her chin,” and a man who had his stomach gashed open by a kangaroo after it smelt the McDonalds he had eaten before entering the site.
The park outside Morisset Hospital is advertised on the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services website as a popular picnic area. But the service begs guests not to approach or feed the marsupials “as they are wild animals and can become aggressive.”
However, trip planning websites hail the conservation area as one of the best spots in NSW to get up close and personal with the animals. One review on TripAdvisor in 2016 says that the “kangaroos are not violent” and “will eat the carrots directly from you” if you “don’t act like crazy near them.”
Recently, attacks have gotten so bad local MP Greg Piper addressed the matter in state parliament, and posted a warning video online.
Piper doesn't think tourists should be stopped from visiting the kangaroos though, instead pushing for more rangers and better signs, in multiple languages, throughout the park. It might be worth including that unlike feeding, say, ducks, a six-foot tall, carrot-addicted kangaroo would have no trouble knocking you out for an easy meal.
Roo danger is by no means limited to Lake Macquarie, though. Between August and October 2017, there were 38 kangaroo-related calls to ambulance services in New South Wales. One 80-year-old man who fed the kangaroos in his backyard jam and cream toast every morning, called 000 after one got "in a bad mood” and pushed him over.
And it looks like all that hard work finally paid off: On Tuesday, he won Knox County's Republican primary, setting him up to go all the way in a district known for voting red, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. The "Devil's Favorite Demon"—whose given name is Glenn Jacobs—edged out two county commissioners for the W, squeaking past his closest opponent by 17 votes. And he didn't even have to light anybody on fire!
Knox County still has to sift through 43 provisional ballots before the vote becomes official, but it's pretty much a done deal, according to the Sentinel. Even if the commissioner right on Jacobs' tail, Brad Anders, does happen to miraculously come up with a win, it shouldn't be a problem. The Big Red Monster can always just chokeslam him into a casket or whatever and call it a day.
Jacobs propelled himself to victory on a promise to cut taxes, eliminate government waste, and help more Knox County kids make it to college—that last piece being a particularly interesting agenda for a guy the WWE describes as "a monstrous abomination that seems to have been extracted directly from your childhood nightmares." He's also been buoyed by a few celebrity allies, like his brother, the Undertaker, who tag-teamed an event with Jacobs in March to help raise money for his campaign. And then there's this, for whatever it's worth.
Jacobs shouldn't have much trouble come November, when he's slated to face off against Democrat Linda Haney—Republicans have held the office for more than 15 years, so Kane should be a shoo-in. Unfortunately, his WWE career isn't looking so hot. He's been pulled from all of the WWE's upcoming live events after he was "destroyed" by Braun Strowman in their Last Man Standing match, whooped so hard he purportedly wound up in the hospital. According to the WWE, he "sat up on the examining table and crawled his way out of the medical facility" before the doctors could check him out—presumably rushing back to Knox County, throwing on a suit, and getting busy winning that primary.
Welcome to Evesplaining, politics writer Eve Peyser's column about why everyone else is wrong and she's right.
Kanye West has made it abundantly clear that he knows nothing about politics. In 2009, he told Reuters, “I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.”
Kanye has been living the shit out of real life as of late, introducing “new ideas” and “free thoughts” at a bewildering pace. He’s praised right-wing figures, gotten a Twitter shoutout from Donald Trump, and become a kind of conservative icon. The low point probably came in a bizarre appearance on TMZ Live on Tuesday where Kanye said, "When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice.” Luckily, he was set straight by TMZ’s Van Lathan, who told him , ”Frankly, I'm disappointed, I'm appalled and, brother, I am unbelievably hurt by the fact that you have morphed into something, to me, that's not real.”
Kanye's recent antics, in one sense, can be boiled down to typical Kanye antics. But his comments have understandably riled up a lot of people. The New Republic’s Jeet Heer wrote on Twitter, “This is hurtful... It's handing racists a weapon they can & will use against other Blacks, who aren't insulated by wealth & status the way Kanye is. Is it time to give up on Kanye?”
It is absolutely time to give up on Kanye—as a political commentator. In fact, it’s about time we stopped placing inherent value in the political opinions of famous people who know jack shit about fuck-all.
Celebrities have always wielded political clout—just ask Ronald Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Politics makes sense as a second career move for movie stars and their ilk. It allows them to have a second, slightly more dignified second act, and running for office utilizes a set of skills most celebs have, like smiling in front of cameras and not accidentally saying anything racist.
And a celeb’s fame shouldn’t disqualify them from running for office. Cynthia Nixon is running for governor of New York on a solidly progressive platform, calling for marijuana legalization and ending corruption in Albany. If you agree with her politics, it would foolish to discount her because of her stardom; at the same time, it’d be a mistake to vote for her solely due to your affinity for Sex and the City.
When celebrities get politics right, there’s no harm in applauding their efforts—but in the Trump era, when many a scared liberal has transformed overnight into a political activist, it’s important to refrain from elevating some rando famous’s two cents on the political controversy of the day. Case in point: The “about” page of the Palmer Report, a compilation of nonsense liberal conspiracy theories, thanks Debra Messing, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Arquette, Rosie O’Donnell, and other Hollywood stars for sharing links to the website. Messing has found herself at the helm of Twitter’s celebrity resistance warrior community for tweeting alarmist political messages like, “We are going to war. Trump wants to play general and we are going watch our country’s security & place in the World be destroyed.”
Should we scold celebrities like Messing for her fearmongering? Maybe, but it would be more productive to stop valuing Messing’s political ideas more than the ramblings of any other resistance warrior.
Celebrity ignorance is also on display nearly every time a male actor is asked about sexual assault. When Matt Damon was asked by ABC News about the #MeToo movement in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein exposés, he said, “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?” The backlash was swift, and Damon apologized, but it made me wonder why anyone gave a shit what Matt Damon had to say.
I’m not here to bury celebrity culture. I can’t, because it’s already buried all of us. Stars occupy a demigod-like status in our cultural consciousness: We read about their personal lives in the tabloids, watch them on a thousand different screens, and can’t help but hang on every comment they make. The pop culture and art you consume is inherently political; it unavoidably shapes your worldview. So when the people who create that culture stand up and express their views, it’s powerful: When the Dixie Chicks spoke out against the Iraq War in 2003, their message of peace was received with such fiery vitriol that their music was taken off airwaves. In 2005, the left celebrated when Kanye said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In 2011, Hank Williams II got shitcanned from Monday Night Football because he compared Barack Obama to Hitler. (Now he’s back. Oh well.)
So how do we, as a culture, grapple with the reality that sometimes celebrity have good opinions about politics, while other times they have bad ones? A good start would be not losing our shit every time a celebrity comments on politics. The more outrage and praise Kanye elicits every time he tweets about politics, the more legitimacy he earns. Whether you agree with a given celebrity or not, remember that they don’t know more than anyone. Stars, they really are just like us—they mostly experience politics as a set of emotional impulses and half-formed thoughts.
“I don’t have all the answers that a celebrity’s supposed to have but I can tell you that when [Trump] was running I felt something,” Kanye said in an interview with Charlamagne Tha God he posted on Tuesday. “It’s like the fact that he won...proved that anything is possible in America… Remember when I said I was gonna run for president? I had people that was close to me, friends of mine, making jokes, making memes, talking shit. Now it’s like, ‘Oh its proven that that could have happened.’”
Kanye’s not wrong—but if Trump proves that anything is possible, that’s terrifying. And let’s remember that Trump is above all a celebrity who leveraged his fame to defeat a host of unquestionably more qualified politicians. It’s not so much an ideology as a cult of personality. That’s fine if you’re stanning for Chrissy Teigen or Serena Williams—two of my personal faves—but dangerous when your instincts as a fan are guiding your votes.
With Trump in the White House and Hollywood becoming increasingly politicized, we are reaching a point where we expect our cultural idols to be political sages, and vice versa. This is a bad impulse—not only because many celebrities are politically ignorant, but because we shouldn’t idolize politicians and pundits to begin with. That might be an obvious point, but if we had that lesson learned already, Trump wouldn’t be president.
As a kid growing up in Pakistan, Farhad* says he was unabashedly flamboyant.
The 29-year-old programmer, who now lives in Vancouver, loved playing with barbies. One of his four sisters was in a dance troupe and one day she caught Farhad dancing to the song she was meant to perform to. She scolded him.
“She said ‘don’t ever do that in front of mom and dad, they would be really mad at you,’” Farhad told VICE.
Farhad (not his real name) is gay, but he realized early on that he would have to keep that a secret. He says both of his parents are conservative Muslims, and likely wouldn’t have even understood what he meant if he came out to them.
Being gay is still illegal in Pakistan, and is technically punishable by the death penalty, though that punishment is not applied in practice; Farhad said public vigilantes are the greater concern. So he decided to “butch up.” Terrified of being outed and bullied, or even disowned by extended family, his strategy was to become really quiet and present himself in as masculine a light as possible.
“I would try to keep my mouth shut,” he said. “I was afraid to do or say anything that would be perceived as gay.”
Farhad said moving to Canada in 2009, “was like winning the lottery in terms of the people you can have sex with.” At first, because he lived with his sister who didn’t know he was gay, he would meet men for hookups at their houses.
When he started reading about the case of alleged Toronto serial killer Bruce McArthur, who has been charged with killing eight men, many who went missing from the city’s Gay Village, he said aspects of the horrific story struck a chord with him.
“At 20 years old when I moved out here I found it easiest to sleep with older white men because of a weird sense of security, and also no one knew I was doing it,” he said. “If it was in Toronto and not in Vancouver, and I ended up talking to this monster, I don't know what might have happened.”
McArthur has been charged with eight counts of first-degree murder and so far police have discovered seven sets of human remains they believe belong to his victims. McArthur’s alleged victims are: Andrew Kinsman, 49, Selim Esen, 44, Majeed Kayhan, 59, Soroush Mahmudi, 50, Dean Lisowick, 47, Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40, Abdulbasir Faizi, 42, and Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam, 37. The remains that have been identified belong to Kinsman, Mahmoudi, Navaratnam, and Kanagaratnam.
It’s not yet clear what McArthur’s relationship was with each of the men. Police or friends have said he had sexual relationships with Kinsman, Navaratnam, and Kayhan. Navaratnam, Faizi, and Kayhan’s disappearances from the Gay Village were investigated in 2012 as part of Toronto police’s Project Houston.
While it certainly appears that McArthur allegedly targeted South Asian and Middle Eastern men, the case raises questions about the unique challenges of being “out” to your family when you’re brown. As previously mentioned, it's illegal to be gay in Pakistan, as well as India, Iran, and Afghanistan to name a few, and social taboos can be even more pervasive than the laws.
"Homophobia is of course alive and well in our communities. And the impact of this is huge," Toronto social worker Rahim Thawer, who is gay and Muslim, told VICE. "There are implications for self loathing, self concept, shame, access to support networks and adequate sexual health services"
Kayhan, Faizi, and Mahmudi were married with families. Esen had moved to Canada three years ago from Turkey, while Kanagaratnam was a Sri Lankan refugee whose family thought he’d gone silent because he was in hiding for fear of being deported. Media outlets have repeatedly referred to some of the victims as having led “double lives” but Farhad said that term sensationalizes the lives of the missing men.
“There is also obviously a difference in leading a ‘double life’ and being closeted and the former pathologizes men’s, especially brown men’s, needs to explore their sexuality without repercussions from familial ties, dishonour, etc.,” he said.
“Some of them were probably just brown dudes figuring out their sexuality, letting their guard down just a tad to dabble, and then ending up dead because they thought they were safer here than where they came from.”
The McArthur story has also sparked a backlash towards police, with many LGBT advocates wondering if the disappearances were ignored for so long because the victims were men of colour, or had come to Canada from abroad.
Haran Vijayanathan, executive director of Toronto’s Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, told VICE he was “angry” when McArthur was first arrested, because it appeared the investigation intensified only when Kinsmen went missing last summer.
“Why did a white man have to go missing for anything to happen with the other men?” he said. “We suspect homophobia and racism to have played a role in the investigation.”
Police have launched an internal review into how the McArthur case was investigated, though Vijayanathan and others, including Mayor John Tory, are calling for an independent investigation as well.
Vijayanathan said there are any number of reasons why a person may not feel safe coming out, and that having that knowledge could put an attacker in a greater position of power.
“People who are preying on these individuals know that there’s a secret there,” he said. Infamous killers such as Robert Pickton, who murdered sex workers, many of them Indigenous, in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, have also targeted marginalized people.
In light of the McArthur investigation, the South Asian AIDS Prevention recently launched the SAFE program, through which people who have no one else to tell can email the organization and give their phone number, and describe where they’re going (e.g. a date or hookup) and who they’re meeting. If the organization doesn’t hear back from the person, they will follow up to make sure the person is safe.
“If after three or four times we can’t get a hold of you, within a day we’ll go to police.”
Thawer told VICE there’s an element of victim blaming in describing McArthur’s alleged victims as having led double lives.
“Saying someone has a double life is to say that as a result no one can… find out information about them if they go missing or are in harm’s way.”
Farhad noted that being "out" means different things to different people.
He's has told two of his seven siblings that he’s gay, including his brother who is also gay. But he said he’s unlikely to ever tell his parents.
“The concept of coming out in Canada is… you come out to everyone and come out to society and you project who you are into the world wherever you go. That’s not a concept that a lot of South Asians or people in Pakistan will ever benefit from.”
Nonetheless, he considers himself out. He has a group of gay friends, and a boyfriend, and said his life is fulfilling.
“It’s what works for me. It’s what keeps me safe.”
