It’s almost May long weekend in Canada, which means some of us are already optimistically throwing swimsuits into duffel bags, buying tanks of gas that cost more than an entire MALM bedroom set (in BC at least), and forgetting that mosquitoes are still a thing.

But while some of us will enjoy open roads, blue skies, cold beer and feel like we finally understand country music, others won’t have such easy rides. Because embarking on a road trip ill-prepared, then banking on the kindness of strangers to see you through the storm, can be a bit like jumping into a ball pit with a bunch of wild animals: you might have the time of your life with some unlikely new friends, or you might get your ass kicked by a combination of nature and society as the adults of the world nod and say, “told you so.”

When VICE asked people for their weirdest road trip stories, we weren’t exactly surprised that the reality of The Road can be even stranger and more far-fetched than the (slightly stupid) metaphor above. For example, you might befriend a pathological liar and end up in jail, be conned into selling your vehicle for a loonie (only in Canada), or encounter a steely-eyed border patrolman named Gomez who won’t rest until justice is done on a certain dope-smoking young man hoping to attend a music festival.

In the words of Carrie Bradshaw, who has nothing to do with this article but everything to do with life: “So many roads. So many detours. So many choices. So many mistakes.”

Rusty, 33

I was 18 and working at Sunshine Village. I had a kitchen job with this guy, Ace*, who was always talking about how rich he was, saying he was the CEO of this company I’d never heard of. He said he liked to take time off to work as a cook because it was less stressful. I guess he wanted to get to know me better, and so he moved all his stuff into my room and we started living together. Then Ace found out I had a car and said that we should drive down into Banff for a pub crawl. When we got there he started buying tons of drinks—really throwing money around—and so I started to believe he actually was rich. When the bars closed, he insisted we take an impromptu road trip to Calgary because he was hungry and Calgary had a Denny’s. My memory pretty much stops there.

The next memory I have is opening my eyes, looking at a steel toilet, and seeing Ace peeing into it. He’s like, “Hey buddy,” and I’m like, “Where are we?” He says, “We’re in jail,” then tells me we got in a bad car accident and that I had been driving—which I really don’t think I had, because I didn’t even have my license at the time. Then he gets down on the floor, grabs me, and says, “Look, there’s cameras and microphones in here, so watch what you say, but last night I told the cops that we met two guys named Hugo and Maximillion from Montreal. They wanted to go to Calgary, and since they needed a car and we needed a sober driver, we decided to team up. But on the way we hit a patch of black ice and rolled the car. Then Maximillion and Hugo ran away.” Then Ace told me that, to back up the story, he and I had gotten out of the car and ran around the woods and made footprints to make Max and Hugo’s escape believable. He said, “Just tell the cops that you don’t remember anything except for picking up these two guys and that neither of us was driving. Now, they’re going to come in and separate us, but don’t crack and neither will I.”

Neither of us did. They suspected I was driving and said they’d take my prints off the wheel as evidence, but at this time I was kind of pissed because I really didn’t think I’d been driving. I told them obviously they’d find my prints on the wheel because it was my car. They kept saying, “We think you were driving, and if you don’t tell us the truth, you’re going to be here for a very long time.” I said something like, “I hope you’re cooking burgers for lunch because I’m hungry.” And then one of them slammed his hand on the table, ushered me outside to the street, and let me go. Ace was already outside having a cigarette, waiting for me.

We went to wash our clothes because, during the accident, the front windshield had broken and a bunch of dirt and stuff had flown in the car. We were sitting outside the laundromat and that’s when he told me the “true story,” which was that I had been driving while “Ghetto Supastar” was playing in the car. When the song ended, I apparently shouted “one more time!” and hit the back button, and that’s when we hit the ice and rolled into the ditch. He also claimed he saved me by pulling me out of the car before we ran into the forest to fake Hugo and Maximillion’s running away.

The weirdest part was the way he left. He was like, “Ah man, this accident made me realize that I’ve got a girlfriend and a good job and so I’m just going to go home.” I said, “So you’re not going to come back to finish the work week or get your stuff?” He said, “Nope, I’m gonna go.” And so I went with him to buy a bus ticket, and then he was gone.

After a few days back at work, I decided to see what he’d left behind. He had a garbage bag full of stuff, and there wasn’t even that much in it—just some weird track suits, a wig, sunglasses, a toy gun that looked super real, and a Russian passport that he had glued his own picture to. I never heard from him again.

Nadia, 26

For awhile I worked on the midway—the carnival, essentially—and so I spent two summers roadtripping between major cities. The first summer, I was in Edmonton and got into a really stupid car accident. I was turning left on a green light, but the car on the other side of the intersection suddenly accelerated and hit the passenger’s side of my car. There was no physical damage to the car except for it started making a weird noise. I was like 20 years old, and brought the car to a mechanic. He was like, “Nope, I absolutely can’t fix it. This car is too unsafe to drive, and I can’t let you leave the property in it. You can either pay for a tow truck or you can sell it to me for one dollar.” I was freaking out because I thought he’d call the cops on me if I left the lot in this car, and I didn’t want to get a tow. So I sold him my car for a dollar. Literally a loonie. I still have it.

I ended up taking the bus back to Vancouver, but once I got home I realized I left my radio in the car, which was worth some money. When I called the mechanic, he was like, “Well, the car is in the shop right now and I won’t be able to reach the shop until tomorrow.” So this asshole totally cheated me out of my car for a dollar.

Brad, 27

When I was a teenager, my friend and I went on a two-month trip across Canada and back. We decided to hitchhike. On day two, we were just outside Lloydminster, Alberta, standing in the pouring rain. Then about 30 yards down the road, a pick-up truck glides off onto the shoulder and flashes its lights at us. We walk over to it, and inside the truck is this ageless old man—you know, he could have been anywhere from 50 to 80 with this leathery old quality to him. Hands wrapped around a leather steering wheel, he’s wearing these large wrap-around sunglasses and staring straight ahead. He rolls down the passenger window, and without looking at us he mumbles: “I don’t normally pick up hitchhikers, but you boys were looking so pathetic out there that I decided to relax my own rules.”

So I hop in the front, my friend gets in the back, and this man pulls off the road and starts driving ahead. He doesn’t say anything, just keeps driving in silence. I’m getting progressively more unnerved, and I can’t put my finger on why until I realize that, this whole time, the radio of the cab of this very expensive pick-up is set to a dead air channel. Just plain air static as we drive through a thunderstorm. And just as I’m starting to get pretty creeped out, he peels off the highway onto a dirt road and heads into the middle of the forest. He says, “I hope you don’t mind if I take a little detour”—again, totally monotone and with no eye contact. So I’m thinking, Well this is the beginning of the end.

He drives through these progressively darkening woods for about ten minutes until we come to a clearing. And in the centre of the clearing is an old, beaten-down, white, abandoned church. The shutters are hanging off the windows and it probably hasn’t been painted in 40 years. I’m thinking, This is his kill site. This is where he does the business.

He pulls up to the front of the church, peels his hands off the steering wheel and, still looking straight ahead, says, “I like to make charitable donations sometimes.” Then he gets out of the vehicle, walks around to the back of the pick-up, and grabs four huge trash bags that I think have to contain human body parts. He walks up to the front of the church, opens the door, and throws it all inside. This whole time my friend and I are looking back and forth at each other thinking, how do we get out of this?

Then all of a sudden he gets back in the truck, turns it around and drives back towards the road. We drive for about 15 more minutes in silence before we reach the top of a hill near North Battleford. He says, “I think I’ve driven you two about far enough for today” and we get out of that car faster than we’ve ever moved, even forgetting our raincoats.

Tyler, 25

My friend and I were on a cross-mountain bike trip that we’d started on a whim. We didn't even have tools or a patch kit or anything like that. Around day eight, my friend’s tube popped and it was a literal Band-Aid fix—we wrapped extra strength Band-Aids around the hole. He could get about two kilometres at a time before the tube needed to be inflated again. He did this for about 30 kilometres. By the time we arrived in Blue River he just threw his bike down in the parking lot, completely over the trip.

We went to a restaurant, sat down, and asked our server if anyone in town knew how to fix a bike tire. She went to go call "Nick, the helicopter pilot” because apparently we had arrived in a resort town known for its world-class heli-skiing. Our plan was to tent, but there were bears everywhere so the server let us stay with her and her roommate for the night.

When we got to the house we were staying at—after biking 120 km that day—a house party was already in full swing. The workers of the town—who all worked for the owner of the mountain and town, a guy called Mike Wiegele—fed us and got us drunk and gave us this whole incredible night. By the morning, apparently the story of these two idiots with Craigslist bikes heading across the mountains had reached Mike Wiegele. Wiegele, who turned out to be an avid biker, descended down from his mountain and gave my friend a new set of tires that were easily worth more than his bike. We were back on the road.

Roy, 33

My girlfriend, her brother, my friend, and I were driving from Canada down to Bonnaroo, a music festival in Tennessee. When we were in line for the US border, my girlfriend asked, “Does anybody have anything in their bag that we need to know about?” We were all like, “Nope, nope, we’re fine.”

When we got to the border, the agent asked if we had anything worth over $10,000 in the car, and my buddy made some cheap joke about how he wished he was richer but, sadly, no, he didn’t have any money in the car. Right away the agent was like, “Pull up here,” and we knew we were getting searched. As we pulled into the parking stall, I had this feeling like, “oh my god,” because my backpack had a secret pocket and I was pretty sure there were some crumbs of weed and rolling papers in there. The weed was from a snowboarding trip years ago—dry and old and shitty—but I was still like, “Oh no, what if they find it?”

After they searched our car, they brought us back individually into rooms for questioning. When they asked me if I’d ever smoked weed, I lied and said, “No, I’ve never really tried, never been into that kind of stuff.” So then they brought us all together again, made us wait, and then asked who owned the grey backpack. I was like “Oh fuck.”

Two officers—Gomez and Gunderson—took me to a back room for more questioning. Gomez was clearly the bad cop and was like, “So, you’ve never tried any marijuana, ecstasy, or cocaine?” and I was like, “No, never.” And then he was like, “Oh, so what’s this then?” and pulled out this little bag of papers and three little lint-sized pieces of pot. I stood up and said, “oh my god I did not know that was in there!” and started pacing around. Gomez yelled, “Sit down!” and then asked me a few more questions. At one point I couldn’t help but stand up with my hands on my head, because this was the USA and I was probably going to go to jail for smuggling drugs. Anyway, Gomez kept pointing to a sign on the wall, which listed a $10,000 fine for deceiving an agent. So I said, “Honestly, I know exactly where the weed is from. It’s from a ski trip years ago. Sorry, I wasn’t trying to deceive you.” Then the good cop—Gunderson—was like, “Yeah, you could probably get that at the music festival anyway!” But I said, “Sir, I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

The officers started getting looser after that, but they wanted me to sign this paper that said I had 0.5 grams of marijuana. I don’t know if that’s the smallest amount you can charge a person for or something, but I definitely didn’t have 0.5 grams, and so I said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I can’t sign that piece of paper unless you show me on a scale that it weighs that much.” Eventually they said, “You can sign this, pay a $500 fine and we’ll let you and your friends into the country, or else we won’t let you in.” And so I signed it.

It only took a couple of days for the fear to wear off. I bought some pot at the music festival, stored it in the tent, then forgot about it when we rolled up the tent to leave. Fortunately I remembered to take the pot out of the tent before we got to the border, but the smell was still pretty bad. At the Canadian border, they pulled us in for questioning again—probably because we were on some list—and had us all stand in a line while a dog sniffed our bodies and our stuff. When the dog got to the tent he started nodding like “Yes!” The border guy was like, “My dog likes your tent. Why would he like your tent?” I told him that, at one point, I’d had some weed in there from a camping trip. The border guy said, “That’s good enough for me,” and let us go.

Jean, 61

It was 1975, and my best friend and I drove to Tucson to visit another friend. When we got down to Tucson, we decided we wanted to go to Mexico because it was closeby. We’d just planned to go for a week or something. But when we got there it was so much fun, we had a great place to stay—like I think our hotel was 60 cents a night or something—and so we decided to stay for a couple more weeks. We sent a postcard to our friend in Tucson right away (because she was expecting us back) but I guess it didn’t arrive. In those days in Mexico, I heard it was common to take the back off postcards and sell them again. But I’m not sure if that’s true, or if that’s what happened.

So of course our friend is expecting us back but we don’t show. She pushed the panic button and phoned my friend’s dad, who decided to come down to Mexico and look for us himself. But he ended up arriving in Tucson the same day we arrived in Tucson, and so he decided to drive back with us towards Regina. On the way, we stopped in Vegas and he took us to see Elvis Presley. It was pretty fun. Of course, when we got home there were all sorts of rumours that we’d been in jail and that. Back then, we didn’t have cell phones. It was a different world when you traveled because you just couldn’t stay in touch.

Laura, 32

I used to be a performer as part of this cast of 12 people. In the summer of 2012, we had a van full of people and a car full of people, all driving from Toronto to Edmonton. We stopped at this rest stop and gas station in Schreiber, Ontario—really in the middle of nowhere, blink and you miss it kind of thing. So we go into this rest stop, and there’s a gentleman behind the counter. It really feels like we’re walking into the past because this place is very vintagey—like a ma and pop shop. And there’s a bunch of photos on the wall of this guy who looks like some 60s or 70s crooner. There’s also a record player.

Then the guy behind the counter starts chatting with us and tells us his name is Cosimo Filane. Apparently he’s a Canadian-Italian crooner from the 70s. He’s got all these commemorative water bottles with his name on it and we’re like, “What the hell is this?” Then all of a sudden he puts on a record, whips out a microphone and starts singing to us—I think it was “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.” After a while, we had to leave because it was late and we had to get to our hotel or something. But he gave us all commemorative water bottles. I felt like I was in a David Lynch movie.

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In early 2019 the L train in New York City will shut down for 15 months to repair damage caused during Hurricane Sandy. Leading up to the closure, VICE will be providing relevant updates and proposals, as well as profiles of community members and businesses along the affected route in a series we're calling Tunnel Vision. Read more about the project here.

While the list of New York’s subway woes is long and depressing and a source of pain for all, those with disabilities have more reason than most to gripe about the MTA. Strikingly, only 24 percent of the system’s 472 stations are ADA-accessible, which makes New York subways the least accessible major mass transit system in the country. And the elevators that do exist, as most riders know, are all too often broken. On a daily basis, that means scores of riders have to maneuver through a vital transit network that largely doesn’t work for them.

But there has been news to celebrate lately. A lawsuit filed by disability advocates against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)—which alleges that the agency violated the ADA by building a staircase at the Middletown Road 6 train station, and not an elevator—added a new plaintiff in March: the federal government. The new president of New York City Transit, Andy Byford, also publicly stated that paratransit is a main goal of his tenure, having led successful efforts for Toronto’s metro system. He announced that a system-wide study is under way to determine what it will take to make New York’s subways fully accessible.

Yet that is a long way in the future. And with the L train shutdown quickly approaching, many advocates argue that the mitigation plan put forth by the MTA creates a zero-sum solution for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. To find out more, VICE spoke with Colin Wright and Chris Pangilinan at TransitCenter, a major transit policy organization. Wright, an advocacy associate, and Pangilinan, a director of tech and rider engagement and former MTA planner, are behind its Access Denied campaign; Pangilinan himself uses a wheelchair.

VICE: So first off, what’s the issue here?
Chris Pangilinan: The issue is that with the New York City subway, less than 25 percent of the stations are accessible to people with disabilities. This really limits the amount of city—and all the economic and social opportunities that come with it—to people with disabilities. Especially in New York, where jobs, housing, and our lifestyle are built around transit. Car ownership is the lowest of any major city, and it's expensive to drive. A lot of times people bring up the buses, which are fully accessible, but if you look at speed, they’re much slower than the subway and they don’t cross boroughs as much. Really, this city was built around the subway, so to deny access to the piece of infrastructure that the city was built around for hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities, it really does exclude a large part of the population from living normal lives.

Nationally, we passed several laws, the most famous being the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), in 1990. New York City has followed that up with the Human Rights Law that prohibits discrimination against any set of people for any reason. If we're going to adhere to those values and live up to those ideals, then the subway’s inaccessibility is a huge black mark on us.

Thinking of the comptroller's report that came out in July—which said subway delays were costing New Yorkers jobs, and money—what are the economic implications of inaccessibility?
Think about housing for a second, where a large percentage of units here in New York are inaccessible already to people with disabilities, because of the stairs to get to them. That leaves pockets of housing now that are available to people with disabilities. Then you have to couple in the fact that there needs to be a subway station nearby that's accessible, and all of a sudden, you're down to three or four neighborhoods where people can realistically live. The affordability of those neighborhoods is very low, and the cost of living is very high, because they're new buildings, and near an accessible station. We're talking downtown Brooklyn, Hudson Yards, lower Manhattan, Long Island City; all places that are going to have 50 to 75 percent higher rents than the median rent.

Tell us about the Access Denied campaign. How did it come about?
At Transit Center, we engage in numerous activities to advance public transit around the country, advocacy being one of them. I, personally, moved here four years ago, and was quickly stunned at how many times I personally had encountered, as a wheelchair user, an elevator outage, and realized that this issue didn't have a galvanized message. When I worked at the MTA for two years before coming here people knew about it, but it wasn't a priority in anyone's workload. Yes, elevators break, and yes, we don't have money for them. That's just the way it is. So coming here, we saw an opportunity where we can really make this an issue that affects many New Yorkers, and hopefully put some pressure on the MTA, and those who control the agency, to make the subway more accessible for people with disabilities.

An activist from the Elevator Action Group with Rise and Resist speaking to NYCT President Andy Byford. Photo via Pacific Press.

We started in January of 2017 by interviewing the players—the disability advocates who have been in the game since the 1970s, and fought for the first set of 100 stations to be accessible back in 1994. We tried to find out what battles they fought, and where they saw the situation today, and really tried to grab the flag with their blessing, and run with it. Coincidentally, there was a lawsuit also being filed against the MTA by other folks—and I, myself, personally outside of my work, happened to be involved with that. That made a splash in the media in April of 2017, and we launched in July 2017, which was around the 27th anniversary of the ADA.

Since we broached the topic, asking on behalf of countless subway riders who probably have this same question: why do the subway elevators break down so much?
This will happen to me a lot: on Sunday night, I was coming home from Penn Station, I get to Jay Street, and there was a big yellow gate blocking the street elevator. How am I supposed to get out of the station at that point? Luckily, I had built a relationship with the booth person, and she was able to get the maintenance person to immediately open it for me. But I shouldn't have to have a special favor done for me.

I keep a log of every elevator outage I've encountered since I moved here in November of 2014, and I'm already at 282. Which is an average of about two or three a week. That's obscene. Especially when I'm coming from San Francisco, where I encountered maybe one a month.

Colin Wright: The MTA's bids aren't competitive when it comes to maintainers. They don't have enough maintainers to do the preventative maintenance. The comptroller’s report last year said that something like 80 percent of preventative maintenance [for elevators] is not occurring on time. Byford has said that the agency needs to be paying more, and employing more people, but they haven't been able to because they've been going into the private sector. And new elevators cost tens of millions of dollars. Old technology is another issue: the controllers that they use to operate these elevators, which are only going like two stories, are using the same technology, so they can standardize it across the whole fleet. The problem is, this technology is from the 1980s. It's not current stuff, so there are fewer people who can really work on it or are familiar with these particular parts, the parts cost more, and they have to make new parts to fix things. So it takes forever to fix.

[In response, an MTA spokesperson told VICE that $400 million is included in the agency’s current capital plan to replace 69 elevators, and escalators. The hiring of workers was also accelerated under the MTA’s ‘Subway Action Plan.’]

So what has the MTA done so far on the issue of accessibility?
The brief history is that today, where we stand, the MTA is operating under their 'Key Station Agreement,' which was finalized in 1994 after a decade of negotiations with the disability community and the passage of the ADA in 1990. That called for 100 key stations—places that are highly trafficked, and near destinations—to be accessible, which is why you have a lot of stations in Manhattan that are accessible. That plan was supposed to be completed in 2020, and it looks like they'll probably hit that goal.

Now, what we are upset about is that there is still no plan to go beyond that. It's like the agency is saying, 'Well, we're done. If we ever build a new station, then of course they'll be accessible, but forget about Bay Ridge or the Bronx.' Which just seems like backward thinking, especially when you look at cities that are also old. Toronto has a plan to get to 100 percent accessibility in seven years. You also have Boston, which had a lawsuit 12 years ago, but they're at 70 percent now. Chicago, same thing: 70 percent, and marching to 100. Here in New York, we have more riders per station, which means more dollars, yet we make the excuse constantly that we don't have money for this. It kind of rings hollow when you look at what the other cities are doing.

[In response, an MTA spokesperson referred to a recent press release, which announced a capital plan amendment for increased investment in ADA accessibility projects. “Nearly $5 billion has been invested to make subway stations ADA-accessible, including the nearly $1 billion already approved for the 2015-2019 MTA capital plan,” it reads.]

Do you see the lawsuit as a way of moving forward?
Chris: Definitely. I think there needs to be a multi-pronged approach, where it’s advocacy, political pressure from Albany and city leaders, but also, sometimes you just need a backstop. You need the force of the law of the court, saying, 'Look guys, you just need to do this.' I think the ADA in 1990 was supposed to be that law, but we've seen time and time again here—and now with the L train shutdown—that it just gets ignored. We need this series of lawsuits to backstop their actions. We've heard a lot of good things from Byford, who made accessibility one of his four main pillars coming in, but he's not going to be here forever. You can't guarantee that the next president will have the same voice on accessibility as he does. And we haven't seen the action yet, just voice.

Let’s talk L train shutdown for a second. We know that the MTA is adding elevators to two key stations—Bedford Avenue and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. But what’s the issue there?
Colin: The issue is that the tunnel is going to shut down, and a huge portion of the 275,000 riders are expected to transfer to other train lines, which are largely not accessible. The MTA gave no thought to, 'All right, these are going to be critical transfer hubs. Are they accessible?' And they're not.

There are three things wrong here: from a practical perspective, for folks who need elevators; the whole moral issue, of, yet again, we're neglecting the needs of riders who are disabled during an emergency shutdown; and then the legal aspect, where, at Broadway Junction and Court Square, they are only creating new stairways and widening existing stairs. The problem with that, as the federal Department of Transportation has told New York City Transit, you cannot only focus on stairs as a point of entry without making the station accessible for folks who need elevators, and you cannot use cost as an excuse in that scenario. You can use technical infeasibility, which the MTA often does, but they never showed it.

[In response, an MTA spokesperson said the agency is “improving accessibility at stations impacted by the L tunnel reconstruction,” and referred to the project’s website for further details.]

So what is Access Denied calling upon the MTA to do?
Chris: We have two outcomes we want to see with the campaign. One, we want to see 100 percent subway accessibility, meaning elevators at every station, or some other kind of accessibility platform. And two, we want to see 99.9 percent uptime on elevators across the system. Very simply asks, if you will, but how do you get here?

With the elevators themselves, we want the MTA to take a systematic look, starting with maintenance, on what is it with their maintainers and how they operate their internal agency to achieve this. Do we need to contract it out, if internal staff isn't getting it done? Do we need to hold internal staff more accountable? Possibly pay them more, train more, maybe; that's up for them to decide. In the short-term, it’s really just setting the bar higher than 96.5 percent uptime, and working our way to 99.9.

That aside, our argument is to first have a plan beyond 2020 that gets up to 100 percent accessibility. Yes, we acknowledge that some stations will be more difficult to build at than others. This is an old city, and the subway was built in 1904. We all understand that. But there also is a lot of low-hanging fruit around there that we could attack today. We also really want them to take advantage of the station shutdowns. With no elevators planned, we really see the billion-dollar Enhanced Station Initiative as a huge missed opportunity

So developing that plan, and taking advantage of the capital cycles in order to put elevators in there. They've only been building at a rate of about 2.5 elevators a year, to achieve the 100 stations over 30 years. They're still 372 stations to go. At this current pace, it's going to take 100 years to get there. That's not acceptable. We need a plan that gets us there much sooner.

This interview was condensed, and lightly edited.

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Timotheée Chalamet had an incredible run last year—chatting with Frank Ocean, being namechecked by Tyler, the Creator, and getting nominated for a fucking Oscar at just 22—and he isn't slowing down in 2018. It looks like his upcoming follow-up to Call Me By Your Name, Beautiful Boy, started pulling in Oscar buzz basically as soon as footage from the film premiered at CinemaCon, with critics saying that "it's going to be hard for anyone to top" Chalamet when awards season rolls around.

On Friday, Amazon Studios released the first clip from the film, and while it's impossible to tell if this one is legitimately Oscar-worthy based on the strength of a 30-second clip, the teaser makes one thing abundantly clear—the thing is going to be an emotional gut punch.

The film is based on a pair of memoirs; Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction, by David Sheff, about Sheff's struggle to help his meth-addicted son, Nic, and Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines, by Nic Sheff, telling the story from his perspective. The adaptation has been floating around in development for a few years, with Mark Wahlberg attached to play the father at one point, but thankfully, the finished film settled on casting Chalamet as the younger Sheff and a heart-wrenching Steve Carell as his father.

"Who are you, Nic?" Carell asks in the trailer, tears in his eyes.

"This is me, Dad," Chalamet shoots back. "Here. This is who I am."

The movie's directed by Felix Van Groeningen and produced by Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B. It also stars Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan, and Timothy Hutton, alongside Chalamet and Carell. It's set to hit theaters October 12, so get the tissues ready.

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Here I am, 29 years old and still single as fuck.

On Easter Sunday, I was ghosted by a man I’d been dating for two months. How the fuck am I still being ghosted? By men over the age of 25 with like, real jobs and shit?

I started wondering why this keeps happening to me, and that sent me into a crisis. Though I didn't feel like I'd done anything wrong, I began asking myself whether it was possible that, in some way, I might be the problem? Is it possible that my perception of myself and my actions has been completely off, and I’ve been doing something to drive people away all along? I feel like I present myself as a stable and emotionally available woman, but am I actually just coming off as a scary hot mess?

I decided to put my thick skin to the test. I surveyed friends, men I’ve had sex with, even my mom, and asked them to be brutally honest in answering this very simple question: What the fuck is wrong with me?

Here’s what some of them had to say:

Jordan [Friend of a year who I briefly hooked up with, but is now back to just being a friend]: “To me it’s kind of like a standoffish judgy vibe… you just read as like, ‘I hate everything’ and ‘why am I here’ at all times, and sometimes you can be not fun. I haven’t seen you ever enjoy anything or be happy.”

Jules [Close friend since high school]: “You're simultaneously self-deprecating and also self-assured, but maybe both of those stem from insecurity. [You’re] determined, but fearful and sometimes dismissive, but of your own personal responsibility, not of other people.”

Katherine [Close friend of 8 years]: “I think your in-person vibe is very different from the vibe you give off on the internet […] in person your vibe is still ‘take no shit,’ but you're more sensitive and warm. If I were a dude who matched with you on an app and then went looking for your work, I can see being overwhelmed by the number of jokes about how bad men are.”

Max [Met on Tinder and dated for around two months]: “Been thinking about this… you’re too committed to your brand? Because of the fact that you make (certain aspects of) your dating life so public, there were moments when I wondered if you were partly with me for the story/for material.”

Matt [Went on a few dates back in 2015, then he ghosted me. Reconnected as friends like a year later]: “You come off pretty ‘normal’ until you feel wronged and then you can be kinda scary.”

Alexandra [Close friend of 3 years and co-host of my podcast]: “You tend to bend over backward for dudes who don't deserve it. Try to get to know someone and slow it down instead of idealizing them in your head. Don't dive in head first, and really think about if this person is going to be a good partner and a good fit for you.”

Anita [my mom]: “You need to dress better. I hate everything you wear. You can be so stubborn, like you always know what’s best for yourself. You don’t always know that.”

So does the stuff these people said about me ring true? Honestly, no.

However, as Mark Leary, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, explained, we tend to be biased in our perception of ourselves.

“We have stake in what we are like,” he told me. “We’d rather see ourselves as competent and moral rather than incompetent and immoral, so we interpret our actions in self-serving ways.”

Which makes sense. But still, with that in mind, there are still some things said here that I refuse to believe are true.

“If you look at things as honestly and non defensively as possible, and then conclude that others have an inaccurate view of you, that seems fine,” he added. “But too often, we automatically dismiss others’ views of us just because we don’t like the implications.”

Alright, fine. Looking at my criticisms as non-defensively as possible, I guess I can own up to a few of the flaws listed.

Maybe I do have a tendency to be overly judgmental, and I suppose I can tone down how scary I get when I’m not texted back in a timely manner. I probably am a bit too career focused, or as Max put it, too committed to my brand. I suppose I do tend to catch feelings a little too fast, and my soft side isn’t really the part of me I openly display online. Fine, you all can have that.

However, there are still some things in there that I refuse to believe are true. Like Jordan saying I never have fun, I strongly disagree. I just wasn’t having fun at the stupid events he was inviting me to, where the majority of people in attendance were under the age of 23 (wait, is this being judgy?).

This actually brings up another thing about perception. We also have biased views of others, meaning nobody can ever actually know anything about anyone or themselves.

As Leary noted, “Other people’s impressions of us are filtered through their own personalities and views of the world. Each person we interact with can influence us to act in slightly different ways as we respond to what they are like and the kind of relationship we have with them.”

So, to Jordan, I’m boring and a downer because he never saw me in environments I was happy to be in. My mom thinks my sense of fashion is awful, but that’s because every time I visit her I am wearing my IDGAF clothes, because who am I trying to impress at my mom’s house?

So, what did I learn from this? I guess that we're all flawed, emotionally stunted idiots in our own fun little ways, and we can never be fully aware of how, because we all perceive things differently. And that's OK. I was actually happy to read some of these negative comments about me, because oddly enough, it just more deeply solidified who I am. I think my biggest problem is turning to self-blame—something I think every perpetually single person does at least once, or twice, or 80 times in their life. My biggest hurdle is to stop feeling like I’m some sort of freak or outlier just because I don’t have a stable romantic partner.

After this, there are a few things I feel compelled to improve on, but I am also not going to obsess over it. It seems to me that the healthiest outlook of yourself is one that knows exactly what you’re doing right but also exactly what you’re doing wrong, and loving yourself anyway.

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At least eight people were killed in a mass shooting Friday morning at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said.

The suspected shooter, believed to be a student at the school, has been taken into custody and another individual has been detained, according to Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, whose department is assisting Galveston County in the investigation. One police officer was injured.

President Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, addressed the shooting late Friday morning.

“Unfortunately I have to begin by expressing our sadness and heartbreak over the deadly shooting at Santa Fe High School just took place moments ago,” Trump said. “This has been going on too long in our country, too many years, too many decades now.”

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

It shouldn’t be a surprise how much people adore glitter after doctors had to issue a warning not to put it in vaginas last year. But, truly, there is no more iconic duo than that of butts and glitter, which have gotten together in a rising trend called glitter booty (#glitterbooty).

Glitter booty is exactly what it sounds like—the adorning of butts with sparkly things. The hashtag #glitterbooty already has over 1,600 posts on Instagram, many of them close-up shots of colourful and intricately bejeweled asses. And with the summer approaching, it’s quite possible we will be seeing even more glittery butts as people continue to cover themselves in what haters tiredly refer to as the “herpes of craft supplies.”

To try to find out how this whole trend got started, I reached out to a company called The Gypsy Shrine. In 2017 a “glitter artist” at the company, which markets itself as “turning free spirits into colourful pieces of art,” sparkled up the butt of a woman named Sophia Moreno at a festival in the Sahara Desert. A photo of said glittery butt amongst the sand dunes went viral online, propelling glitter booty into a full-blown trend.

“That’s the one that initially started the trend,” Katrina Luder, marketing manager of The Gypsy Shrine, told VICE.

“It very much hit a presence last year,” Luder said, adding that they were also doing a lot of glitter-adorned “disco tits” last season. “We’re recreating, trying to make them more innovative and sort of crazier,” Luder said of the current beauty trends involving glitter.

The company, which travels around the world to festivals to decorate the bodies of attendees and has a line of products for sale, recently stepped up the glitter booty trend by adding a jewels to the mix.

“Of course, a glitter bum is not always the most practical to sit down in because it’s going to transfer,” Luder explained. The jewels, she said, may be best suited for photos.

Though the photo of a golden glitter bum in the desert seems to have propelled the trend in the festival scene, a photographer posted a photo tagged #glitterbooty on Instagram in July 2016. So, perhaps the phenomenon dates back even further.

Glitoris, an Australia-based company that offers body glittering at events, has also been playing host to the glitter bum trend. Three friends who “loved putting glitter on and dressing up” started the company over four years ago.

“We readily and happily provide consensual glitter bumming,” Ali Gay, director of Glitoris, said.

“Everyone goes all out. They walk in, and they’re like ‘I want that!’... Glitter bums and glitter butts are definitely a part of what people want covered and what people see,” Gay explained. Gay said it’s not just women who are interested in glittering up their bodies—they often have male customers as well.

Gay recalled one of their first glitter butts, which occurred at a “bush doof” (aka forest rave in Australia) Glitoris was attending: A dude was face-down getting glittered on his back with a G-string on. She said a chant then started “Glitter butt! Glitter butt! Glitter butt!”

“He got his whole butt glittered in his little G-string!” Gay said.

Gay explained how sometimes putting glitter on certain parts of the body can help with confidence: It’s almost like having another layer of clothing."

If you’ve ever had glitter on your body, you are well acquainted with the challenge of removing it. Gay recommends using a credit card to scrape off as much of the glitter as possible when you’re done being sparkly for the day, then using soap and water to wash it off. Then, rinse off with water, dry off, and use sticky tape to dab remaining glitter.

So what’s next—is there anywhere glitter shouldn’t go?

“Keep it out of dangerous places… We always say to keep at least a centimeter away from the eyes,” Luder said.

Gay said Glitoris advises against putting glitter on the mouth and lip area on the face, as well as “anywhere inside the underwear.”

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Earlier this year an exhibition opened at the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí's Púbol Castle revealing a version of the iconic surrealist as seen through the eyes of female photographers. The photos in the show, titled Women Photograph Dalí, are fascinating. Curators Bea Crespo and Rosa M. Maurell selected shots of the artist in private photos never meant for the public. Surrealist Denise Bellon and Vogue regular Karen Radkai's iconic magazine prints hang alongside behind-the-scenes portraits of Dalí directing In Voluptate Mors, shot by collaborator Philippe Halsman's wife, Yvonne. The jewels of the collection, though, are rarely-seen photos by Gala Dalí, Dalí’s wife and muse, taken at the dawn of their 53-year relationship.

Gala Dalí, Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2018

Gala was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova in Russia in 1894. She met Dalí in 1929 while married to the French poet Paul Éluard and sleeping with the German Dadaist painter Max Ernst. By the end of the year, she and Dalí were living together, and entered an open marriage in 1934. Her photos in the exhibition were captured during their early years together in Púbol, where Dalí would later buy her the castle in which the photos are displayed today.

Taken between 1930 and 1932, Gala's photos of her frenetic early relationship with Dalí have never been displayed before publicly. They add a counter-visual to one of the most mysterious artist-muse relationships in recent history. They cement Gala's place as more than a famous object of the artist's attention, immortalized in paintings like The Madonna of Port Lligat and Portrait of Galarina. Dalí biographer Ian Gibson tells VICE Gala never spoke to the press about their relationship, so her impact on Dalí’s art must be decoded through his incredibly performative memoir, public appearances, and gossip from those who passed through their famous parties and orgies. But in Women Photograph Dalí, her gaze directed back at him is on display.

Gala Dalí, Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2018

“Although Dalí and Gala had a strong emotional bond, it was not a mature relationship," Dr. Zoltan Kovary wrote of the couple in an email to VICE. A clinical psychologist, creativity researcher, and associate professor at Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University, Kovary took a close look at the couple when he began writing a psychological analysis of Dalí’s artwork called The Enigma of Desire: Salvador Dalí and the conquest of the irrational.

There’s plenty of eros in Gala’s photos of young Dalí, especially the ones of him sunning himself at their home in the Spanish beach town. But Kovary said their love, “Was more like a mother-infant affair; Gala sometimes called Dalí, ‘My little son.’ They never had a ‘real’ sexual relationship. Dalí, although Gala raised deep desires in him, had fear of physical contact.”

Gala Dalí, Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2018

Nevertheless, these photos are full of the excitement of early romance. Dalí stands in front of a weird shop they found, or lies down, barely looking at the camera. His poses look casual and unassuming. We see Dalí as he wanted Gala to see him, years before he became famous for attention-grabbing stunts like walking his pet anteater in public and making cryptic statements on game shows.

No one understands how hard it can be to sort fact from fiction and exaggeration in Dalí’s life better than Gibson. The biographer behind The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí said in an email, “He’s a biographer’s nightmare. What can you do with an individual who is always acting, always playing a part?” Gala's photos create empathy for the woman married to such a confounding man.

Anna Laetitia Pecci-Blunt, Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2018

Denise Bellon, Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2018

Gibson’s advice to those still fascinated by the man who painted the fantastical vision of The Elephants and the transcendentally anxious Persistence of Memory is straightforward. “The main clue to Dalí, I think, is that he was pathologically timid deep down and constructed his exhibitionistic persona as a protective device,” he said. “The tragedy is that we don’t have Gala’s side of the story.”

Women of Dali gets us closer than we’ve ever been before.

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This article contains spoilers for Climax and The House That Jack Built.

With his formally bold, often violent and drug-fueled movies, the Argentinian filmmaker Gaspar Noé has been shocking cinemagoers for years. Following the traumatizing Irréversible (2002), the trippy Enter The Void (2009), and the daringly explicit Love (2015), this year sees his return to the Cannes Film Festival with Climax. Co-produced and co-financed by Vice Studios, the film is a techno musical set entirely at a dance rehearsal space in Paris. Shot in 15 days, Climax sees an assortment of real-life dancers losing their minds over the course of the film due to a mysteriously-spiked sangria. What begins as a fun trip quickly descends into a surreal and exhilarating cautionary tale.

VICE talked to Noé at Cannes, where the film recently screened in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs ("Directors' Fortnight") section, and won Noé the Art Cinema Award, the top prize in the section. During our conversation, the director talked about his love of dance, the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and his refusal to do what is expected of him.

VICE: How did you get the idea for the film?
Gaspar Noé: It was a bit like for Irréversible. Sometimes you set up a lot of different projects at once—ideas for a documentary film, for a film about a bad shamanic trip, for not a musical. I can’t stand musicals, but I love dance because it’s a corporeal language that can be so rich and sometimes so unusual. Some dancers, like the ones I’ve filmed, really hypnotize me. I love looking at them. And to make a successful film, you have to love the people you’re filming, so I thought of a film with just dancers and in a context of petty crime. I got the idea at the end of December, and in early January we started preparing the film.

That’s fast!
Yeah, we got it ready in four weeks, we did the casting, and we shot it in 15 days in February. So from A-to-Z, the film was pre-produced, shot, and post-produced in four months.

Is that the fastest feature production you’ve ever done?
Yeah, and today’s technologies allow you to edit the sound and the image so much faster than before. If I had shot the film years ago on film, it would have been a lot different.

Did you do a lot of rehearsals with the dancers?
No, and we got a choreographer that had been recommended by Sofia Boutella but she arrived the Wednesday before shooting, then rehearsed Thursday and Friday with 15 of the 21 dancers. Six more arrived only on Monday morning and she integrated them, and we shot that opening sequence that same night, on that Monday. We had no time, all was done urgently.

Are they professional dancers?
No, they’re kids between 18 to 23 years old and they only do sorts of krump dance-offs or voguing balls! A lot of the dancers were straight, the voguing dancers were mostly gay, so I brought together dancers from different families. At first, the voguers were suspicious. They were like, “What is this film? You’re mixing together krumpers and waackers?” But as soon as the shoot started, they respected each other so much that it made it all the better, since it’s not one style of dancing but several.

That’s what we see in the first sequence, which is so great.
A lot of people have said it’s their favorite sequence, and that they’d never seen that in American dancing.

There were some dance styles that I’d never heard of—I didn’t know krump.
Krump is on the rise. It’s more men that dance it. And waacking is kind of the feminine response to krump. There’s also a dance from France called electro; that was a group of five dancers including the one character called David, played by Romain Guillermic. I had also seen videos of a Congolese contortionist called Snake. We managed to find him through Facebook and we got him a visa and made him come from the Congo. At first I didn’t know how many characters would be coming from foreign countries. I was thinking that maybe half of the dancers would be, but in the end only three are foreigners. And I also thought that there would be more Caucasian girls, because if you go looking into that type of dance, they are rarely white people. It turns out that black and mixed-race people make up more than half of the cast because I picked them according to their talent as dancers, and their sympathy. Some of them were so nice that I was like, “Let’s see what we can improvise together.” I just wanted to film them!

Courtesy of Wild Bunch

The film is a real showcase for a youth scene that we rarely see in cinema, especially the French youth but also foreign.
Yeah, it’s a bit like the French soccer team! There a very few Caucasians there! But that’s the reality. If you go look for these dancers, most of them live in the banlieues ("suburbs"), have no money, and have those dance battles once per month where they explode. Those are killer! Sometimes they even look like ritual dances, from like Haiti or African countries.

Your camera is so joyous when it is on the dancers.
I did all the camerawork myself! Benoit Debie did the lighting, but I was always carrying the camera running after the dancers! But yeah, a film is like a ghost train: you know nothing bad will happen to you! The first part of the film is like a happy rollercoaster, and then you get to the scary part. Even when I saw Lars von Trier’s film [The House That Jack Built] last night, there were loads of violent sequences but I couldn’t stop laughing—because you just know that it’s a film, and the kids that get shot in the film, they’re not dead! You know that the duckling didn’t actually get his legs cut off! You know that no one got hurt during shooting, and that’s why it’s joyous too. It’d be so awful if it were a documentary!

In this first sequence, the relationship between all the dancers is so idyllic, but as the film goes on, everything breaks down.
Alcohol makes you stupid… Everyone says wine is the blood of Jesus, and maybe it opens up your mind when you have two glasses, but when you have two bottles, most people become stupid. They have blackouts, they become cruel towards everyone, they become aggressive. For me, my worst memories of collective or personal tragedies are all linked to alcohol abuse. Alcohol makes you stupid, stupid, stupid!

And drugs too?
Some drugs make you more stupid than others, but there are some that put you to sleep and others that wake you up. For instance, people who take cocaine become so pretentious, you just want to shove them in a cupboard so that they can look at themselves in a mirror!

There can also be a more political reading of the film, since at the end, it’s the German girl who "wins"…
It’s the Nazi who wins! A tall, blonde, Aryan girl…

It’s a bit strange to see things end badly for these young people who are at first so happy. Do you not have much hope for the youth or for the future of France?
It’s more about human beings, whatever the color of their skin or their nationality. Before being a person, man is an animal, with all its reptilian compulsions. And if at some point you block the conscious part of the mind, you’ve got all the reptilian compulsions that come out. It’s like in [Sam] Peckinpah or [Stanley] Kubrick movies—they start from the idea that the reptilian brain is the strongest of the three brains. You got the hypophysis, which is the reptilian brain. Then you have a second one, the mammalian brain, which is the one that makes you protect your kids and your social group. And then, the neocortex allows you to talk and to plan for the future, to build cathedrals, etc. Alcohol kind of switches off the other two, and all you’ve got left is the reptilian brain, which is about dominance and survival instinct, and therefore about sexuality and reproduction.

You mention Peckinpah, but at the beginning of the film, we see this television surrounded by VHSs of Possession (1981), Suspiria (1977), some other horror films, and some books.
These are all the films and the books I would watch and read about 30 years ago. Some people have told me they recognize my personal collection.

We also recognize motifs from Possession in the film itself.
Yeah, all these films I loved in the 1990s. Possession is a great film, and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), which all takes place in a closed environment, is a bit like in my film…

What did you tell the actors to prepare them?
I told them not to prepare, but I showed them loads of videos of people under the influence of crack, of LSD, all kinds of drugs, and we made a playlist of those videos of these people completely fucked up and dancing. So for the end of the film, I asked the dancers if they could dance in such a deconstructed or psychotic way. We trained to act crazy!

Since they’re all dancers, I can imagine that they’re very much aware of their bodies.
They are, and they’re also very playful, they love to play.

Courtesy of Wild Bunch

It’s kinda perfect to have them play people who are high.
Yeah, although I made the mistake, I think on the second day of shooting, of giving them alcohol to wake them up because they were starting to get tired. But afterwards, they were just like drunks who can’t walk straight! So I stopped that very quickly, and we started giving them only coffee and eventually playing some pieces of music that excited them. In the end, the best way to wake them up was to ask Kiddy Smile [who plays "Daddy" in the film] to take the decks for 20 minutes and to make them dance like crazy. After that we were able to shoot for two more hours, then had another break with music that wasn’t related to the film.

That’s reassuring! So there's a bit of a dichotomy between dance as a way of expression and drugs that destroy that.
It’s one thing to use drugs recreationally, knowingly, with the correct dose, and another thing to have something put in your drink against your will, when you don’t know neither what it is, nor if you’re overdosed. The same thing that can be pleasant can turn nightmarish if it’s a forced experience.

It’s interesting how your films often have drug use and its consequences.
Maybe it’s because I live in Paris and know so many people like that! And in Berlin, it’s even worse. The number of people I know who went to Berlin to be creative because they had funding, and after six months said, “I can’t take it anymore, everyone is high on ketamine, on ecstasy, 24/7!" That’s why it made me laugh that the pretty blonde girl would be from Berlin and that she’d inject drugs through her eyes!

It’s also interesting how in the end, your films often present a rather negative view of drugs, yet when people think about your films, they think of them as amazing trips…
I don’t promote drug abuse—I’m not a crook! With both alcohol and drugs, there’s good and bad, you gotta know how to manage them. The problem is, if it’s you who’s riding the horse, you’re good, but if it’s the horse that’s riding you, your butt hurts!

I love the series of scenes where only two characters talk to each other.
That was totally improvised. One after the other, anytime we had a minute, I was telling the dancers to come and talk about the others for those asides. I asked them to gossip, to say good and bad things about the others, to talk about depression… I was throwing ideas at them and just recording, and because I shot in digital, I could film for 20 or 30 minutes without interruption. After awhile, they were getting more comfortable, and I was telling them to try and be as funny or as cruel as possible, so they had fun improvising on a bunch of topics. Afterwards, I kept the best bits. The one I had the hardest time cutting was between Cyborg and his friend. I had, like, 25 minutes of dialogue, and it was the last thing I edited because everyone was telling me it was too much. Finally I cut out four-fifths of it and it broke my heart! Because it was fucking hilarious!

This conversation is amazing, too, because it’s hard to know how serious they are…
They’re playing the bad guys yet they don’t want to harm anyone!

How did you get the idea to do those asides?
I wanted to introduce those people, because it’s different to introduce yourself in front of a camera for a job in front of the choreographer like at the beginning of the film, and another thing to be a bit comfortable and have the human tensions in the group show. You see there are rivalries, desires, frustrations…

It really makes the film into a snapshot of today’s youth that we rarely see.
Yes, and I liked how the American publications said that it shows that I have a lot of love for all the characters. It’s true! For me, there isn’t one in the bunch that is better than the others. Even the character of Selva, played by Sofia Boutella, has two faces, and you see that she tries her best, she has good intentions, but as soon as alcohol and that mysterious product get to her head, she becomes extremely cruel with the boy who’s supposed to be her lover.

But him too, he’s horrible! And he’s the only white man…
Yeah, and he’s a bit of an extension of all the male characters I’ve had. In Irréversible, you have Vincent Cassel who plays a dude with a shaved head, then in Enter The Void you had another one, and in Love you also have Karl Glusman who played a guy who ran after his dick with his shaved head! I feel like for me, that’s really the prototype of the guy who’s kind of nice but only thinks about his dick…

The film is called Climax, so everyone expected there to be a lot of sex.
Climax isn’t just sex!

But I think that people, after Love, expected something different…
I found that really funny! The word can have a sexual connotation, so people may have expected to see some explicit sex sequences, but it was never gonna be the case at all!

Did you consciously decide to put less sex in this film? Was it in answer to Love ?
You don’t want to make the same film again. Plus, there was an erect penis in I Stand Alone (1998), there were some more in Irréversible, there were some in almost all my films, so that was the main reason. It had diverted the attention so much from Love, too, especially with the American press who was like, “Why did you show a male sex [organ]?” As if there was a difference between the ear of a man and his hand or his dick! You see, I didn’t want the press to once again focus on that alone. But maybe in the next one I’ll put back some sex scenes!

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Last year, when my roommate went to see Ali Wong in San Francisco, this was the comedian’s opening line: “Wow, thank you to all the Asian American women of the Bay Area who brought their white boyfriends tonight.” Bits like that are why I love Wong. Her jokes make me, a half-Taiwanese woman with a white boyfriend, feel personally attacked. And I love the feeling.

If you are an Asian American you probably remember the first time comedy made you feel personally attacked, and by this I mean the first time you ever related to comedy. I didn’t think I liked stand-up until a few years ago, when I realized the problem was the lack of comedians who look like me and tell jokes that I “get.” Asian Americans, like most marginalized people, have spent years consuming media that racially profiles or ignores us. We have endured the crusty rhetoric that diverse movies can’t be made because people won’t enjoy media that isn’t centered around them—a rhetoric that assumes the default viewership to be white.

Wong’s biggest onscreen credit is probably as the main character’s friend on the ABC sitcom American Housewife, but she’s amassed an impressive following since her 2016 Netflix special Baby Cobra. She was the first artist to sell out eight shows at San Francisco’s Masonic Theatre, she’s set to star in a Netflix romcom this summer, has a forthcoming book of essays for Random House, and will co-star with Tiffany Haddish and executive produce the upcoming animated show Tuca and Bertie. She’s been profiled everywhere from the New Yorker to the Guardian. In the two years since her first special, she’s gone from a relative unknown to one of the most famous female Asian American comedians in the country—which speaks to how few Asian American women have reached the A-list. (Quick, name one who’s not Margaret Cho or Mindy Kaling.)

But Wong’s greatest triumph extends beyond her personal fame. As the media has made space for her, she has created space for other women of colour. She has also made space for female comedians who want to joke about motherhood the same way so many men, perhaps most famously Louis CK, joke about fatherhood. Baby Cobra helped usher in a trend of what we might as well call “momedy,” which has led to other motherhood-centric comedy specials, like Christina Pazsitzky’s Mother Inferior.

In Hard Knock Wife, Wong's new Netflix special—like Baby Cobra, filmed when she was very obviously pregnant—Wong unpacks the double standards of motherhood by leaning into the objectification of the female form in ways the patriarchy never intended, which is to say in ways that are utterly unsexual. She likens the challenges of breastfeeding to parallel parking despite the nurse assuring her she’d have “a particular easy time since [her] nipples look like fingers.” Since giving birth, she tells the crowd, her body has “turned into a cafeteria.” (She calls it “the Giving Tree.”) It’s a reclamation of vulgarity—she slings pussy jokes with a portentousness that is usually reserved for male comics talking about their penises.

Wong also uses this brazenness to unpack the double standards of childcare and gender writ large, opening a bit with, ““I love my baby girl so much, but I’m on the verge of putting her in the garbage.” The riff ends with Wong screaming, “YOU’RE IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT ALL DAY LONG WITH THIS HUMAN TAMAGOTCHI!” The women in the audience are roaring.

At another point, Wong observes that people ask her, “How on earth do you balance family and career?” Her shouted response: “Men never get asked that question because they don’t!”

I love Wong, but I wasn’t enamored with her entire set. She makes some offensive and tired racial jokes, linking an excellent bit about affording a nanny to a joke about Hispanic communities having built-in childcare due to the size of their families. She riffs about the toxic idea that women try to trap men into marriage by delaying sex, but then turns the joke around by sharing the time a man delayed sex “to trap” her because “he had a small dick.” The kicker? “He was black,” a punchline that relies on an obviously gross bit of racial stereotyping.

Wong’s strongest stuff is when she critiques racism she’s suffered as an Asian American woman. A standout bit is about being asked , “What do your parents think?”—shorthand for, Don’t your oppressive Asian parent(s) think poorly of your financially unstable career? This is the part of the set where I start crying, because I get asked this question about my career every time someone learns I’m half-Taiwanese. Then there are the small touches: Wong describes post-birth mesh underwear as the “same material that they package those fancy Korean pears in”—a bit that anyone who has shopped at an Asian grocery store will instantly understand. There is power in this resonance, in hearing a joke made for people who look like us.

Wong’s upcoming TV and Netflix projects—and a stand-up tour set for 2019— disprove the fallacy that a market does not exist for creatives of color. The rocket launch of her success is proof that the problem isn’t that consumers aren’t interested in diversity—it’s that financial gatekeepers aren’t willing to support representation. The entertainment industry needs to wake up to that.

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The crack era of the 1980s and 90s was a uniquely vicious time in American life. With gun violence at historic levels, it was a free-for-all on the streets, with drug lords fueling an overdose epidemic on one hand and horrific gang violence on the other. In 1990, murders in New York City peaked at 2,245 for the year. Meanwhile, many politicians demanded more prison time for suspects, even those uninvolved in violence. African Americans were locked up at an unprecedented rate, thanks in part to the 100-to-1 crack to cocaine sentencing disparity.

Along with his longtime partner, Erika “Reika” Carter, Kevin Chiles, the founder of Don Diva Magazine and a former Harlem kingpin, was in the thick of it. Chiles was charged with operating a Continuing Criminal Enterprise after the feds alleged he masterminded the sale of thousands of pounds of cocaine from 1987 to 1994. Carter ultimately avoided prison time, and Chiles has since married another woman. But in their time together, Carter saw both the spectacular highs and devastating lows of being implicated in the drug game in America. This is her story.

The Rooftop was the most popular skating rink in Harlem in the early-to-mid 80s. It was right down the block from the Polo Grounds. The guys would pull up in the flyest cars, jewelry, and fashion. Street guys from all over New York would make their way to The Rooftop to stunt, show off, and pick up girls. I loved to skate as a teenager and was there every Wednesday for ladies’ night.

My friends and I were well known by all the attendees and especially the DJs: Brucie B, DJ Hollywood, and Lovebug Starski (RIP). They used to call us “The Go Girls,” as we skated our asses off around the rink. Being in the spotlight at the rink, it was expected that dudes would check for me. It was there where I met my first love, Kevin Chiles (KC), in the summer of 1984. I was 15 years old.

KC never skated. He was quiet, in the cut, and very observant. I could tell he was getting money and on the rise, and one night, as I was getting off the skate floor, he asked if he could buy me a cup of Kool Aid. I thought that was hilarious and kind of corny, but cute. I liked that he wanted to get me off the floor to talk to me.

KC was sorta slim, up to date in fashion, and loved his Reebok classics. He was very soft-spoken, didn’t curse at all, and was super respectful. KC was sweet and knew how to talk to me—definitely different than most guys. He wasn’t loud like the other hustlers, thugs, and drug dealers. He had a sense of confidence about him, a can-do attitude that intrigued me.

After he bought me something to drink, he said, “I'm gonna come back and get you when it’s over.” He did come back, but I’d had prior engagements, so I ducked him. Still, KC was persistent and returned to the skating rink every week until I finally went out with him.

It wasn’t long before we were together all the time.

He would come pick me and my son up and take us to his aunt’s deli, L & N Deli, off of Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. KC was the manager: he went to the market, stocked the store, and assisted the customers. He took me there our first time hanging out, giving me the impression that’s what he did for a living. I later learned he was involved in the drug trade, moving kilos of cocaine, but he wasn't loud with it.

I remember he was driving a gold Quantum. Everybody on the street had their sports cars, but his car was just so unique. That was just him. Volkswagen made some with Audi engines at the time. It had gold rims with a boxey-kind of-look. There weren’t too many of those around. KC loved driving us around in that car. We were both teenagers looking for love, success, and adventure.

I’m Brooklyn-born, Harlem-raised. My upbringing was a little raw: At the age of 25, my mother had a husband, a boyfriend, and a significant other who was said to be my biological father. She was murdered when I was two. I found her dead in our apartment with her boyfriend. My siblings and I had to relocate to my aunt’s apartment in the Polo Grounds Towers, right across the street from Rucker Park. I went from being the youngest of four to the youngest of eight, in a house where space and unconditional love were spread thin.

My brother had a spot he hustled out of, and he kept me very close. I was able to watch and learn things that would later become of use to me. Shortly after, I found out I was pregnant. My aunt put me out. Being just 14 years old when my first son was born, I knew I had to provide for him by any means necessary. When I first got with KC I actually showed him how to cook crack, something that I learned from watching my brother.

A few months into dealing with KC, I met his parents, who treated me as their own. My son and I moved in with them at Academy Gardens in Soundview and we truly became a family. His mother always said that I was her daughter and KC was her son-in-law. She made me finish school, taught me about unconditional love—especially when it came to loving your own children—and showed me how to save and manage my money. It was a blessing living there. KC later ended up getting us our own apartment.

I was never involved in his criminal activity, but I knew what was going on in the streets. I dated street dudes before I met KC. When he came home, I would wake up and help him count the money. It happened so much I would tell him that I needed 10 percent for counting. It started out in the tens of thousands, but quickly progressed to hundreds of thousands of dollars at times.

Back then I didn’t have any reservations about the lifestyle. I didn’t know what my life would become. I was young and it was an opportunity to live a better life then the one I was living. I lived in the projects with my aunt and seven other kids. I was shipped between the Virgin Islands and the States. I had a newborn and was trying to provide for my child. Anything was better than my circumstances at that point. Kevin and his family provided me with a sense of family and love that I didn’t have, but of course needed.

Our son, Little Kevin, was born in February 1987. KC was excited, but he didn’t tell me that he had another baby with another girl. I was devastated, but KC showered me with diamonds and cars. I was one of the first people in the United States with a BMW station wagon, one of many vehicles, as I got a new one every year for ten years.

The BMW was black with chrome. It had the double sunroof that opened from the back and front. The interior was black leather and I had the chrome BBS wheels. I used to drive around the city like a boss, with my two baby boys and money to spend. I would shop until my heart was content, dropping tens of thousands on clothes, furniture, and household items.

KC lived through me. He was not boisterous, but I was. He was okay with it because it allowed me as his woman to speak for him. He got a thrill out of it. KC wasn't a partier. He wasn’t too interested in being in the mix. He would do appearances every now and again, though he preferred to stay out of the way. A lot of the hustlers from New York would attend concerts with their girls, something we’d do on occasion.

I went from being a young girl from the projects with a baby to the first lady of an empire. Side by side we ran businesses—legal and illegal—and started a family. KC loved the music industry and started his own record label, Big Boss Records. He was trying to create his own avenue. We had a store, Boss Sneakers, then we moved up the block between 7th and 8th on 125th and opened Boss Emporium. Until this very day, people still talk about the store being made to look like a street corner and the BMW parked inside. Our store had a pay phone too. Even though KC was hustling and doing his thing, we were trying to make everything legal.

There were always chicks coming for KC that wanted to be in my position. There was this one chick that slept with every hustler one summer. I saw KC in the car with this broad. I parked my car in the middle of the intersection in Harlem, jumped out—leaving the door open—and walked over to his car. I started screaming at him in the middle of the street. I made the girl get out of the car and went off on KC right there in the middle of traffic. That girl was lucky I didn’t whip her ass.

I was so pissed at him, I took his entire safe out of the house. The safe was upstairs—I pushed it down the stairs and broke every tile on the floor. I managed to get it in the car, but I threw my back out and was gone for two days while my back healed, holding his safe hostage. Can you imagine the fury that he felt? We laugh about it today.

Life has a tendency to balance out the highest highs with the lowest lows. You couldn’t live this type of lifestyle without some expected casualties, but we never could have imagined how great the loss would be. In 1989, KC's mother got murdered. That devastated me. I felt like I lost my mother all over again. Little Kevin was only two at the time, and she’d never get to meet her only granddaughter.

One evening in 1994, KC got arrested and charged as a drug kingpin. People knew, but nobody called me and told me. The next morning at the crack of dawn my phone rang and it was the FBI. I hung up on them. I thought it was a prank call, but it was really the FBI. They were like, “We have your house surrounded. Don’t try to flush anything. We turned your water off.”

When I opened the door they shoved flashlights in my face. They swarmed in with guns in hand. I remember yelling, “My kids, my kids.” Little Kevin had come to the upstairs railing and they got him. KC’s aunt and cousins were arrested as well. They told me to call someone to come and get my kids and threatened to call child services. It was a very hectic time.

Both KC and I were going back and forth to court. He was remanded to custody, but I was out on bail. During the trial, an informant testified against me, pointing me out in the courtroom. He stated that there were secret compartments in my cars containing guns that belonged to me.

KC was anxious to get me off the case. He told his lawyers, whatever time they were going to offer me, he would take it. So they removed me. I took a plea. They originally wanted to give me a felony, but I copped to a misdemeanor. Kevin didn’t want me to have a felony on my record.

KC had two mistrials, but his lawyer told him the government spent entirely too much money trying his case to ever let him go. They would continue to try until they got a conviction, and it would be the maximum penalty. In his circumstance that meant natural life. KC weighed his options and copped out to ten years.

The feds seized everything and KC's family took what was left. They took my jewelry, furniture, and clothes. I was fed up; I got my kids and got out of there. I moved to the Bronx to a one-bedroom. I let the kids sleep in the bed. I slept on the floor on a mattress. I was robbed two weeks after I was there, mostly losing my money and electronics.

My kids couldn’t understand how we went from a nice house to a one-bedroom apartment. Then they had to visit their father in prison for the next decade. Our lives completely changed. God stripped me of everything and I had to start all over again. There definitely wasn’t a whole lot of money left, but even with him being locked up he still provided.

Throughout the years I faced some hardships. My children and I had to move often. They experienced emotional trauma, and I was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer. Even still, when KC came home from prison, I had what he gave me, and I gave it right back to him.

While my children and I were all we had, KC and I remained very close. I was his best friend, ride or die, and his children’s mother. More importantly, I hold the memories of his mother. Our children are grown now at 28, 31, and 34 years old. We’ve lived to be grandparents, and 30-plus years later, our bond is still unbreakable.

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Alas, some of us were holding out hope that dating Grimes would turn Elon Musk into a "woke bae," but so far it seems like he's the one changing her. First, the singer showed up to the Met Gala wearing what appeared to be a Tesla choker. (Musk and Grimes reportedly designed her look together.) Now, Grimes has announced she's seriously considering changing her legal name, Claire Boucher, to something suggested by her new boyfriend.

On Thursday, the musician tweeted that she's thinking of nixing "Claire" for a lowercase, italic letter c—a reference to the speed of light.

Despite her fans' collective freakout over the tweet, the name change isn't as insidious as it seems. Apparently, her friends already call her "c" and Boucher has been wanting to change her name for a while. She tweeted that Musk simply said he liked her current nickname—and gave it a science-y twist.

Gotta say, this latest chapter of the Grimes and Musk saga makes a lot of sense. The duo clearly gets off on philosophical space-time banter, so Boucher merging her boyfriend's intergalactic aspirations with her identity seems pretty on-brand. She also assured fans that the name change wouldn't affect her stage name and that she'll still produce music as Grimes.

The jury's still out on the celebrity odd couple since news of their courtship broke earlier this month. But the musician did acknowledge the legion of memes they've inspired, retweeting a video poking fun at how the couple communicates as "accurate."

There's just one last question: since Boucher seems down with nicknames, can we all just agree to call the couple "Grusk" already? Or will we have to revert to something dumb, like "c-lon?"

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In the 1970s, the streets of New York were crumbling under the weight of the systemic denial of basic government services under a policy of “benign neglect.” As white flight took effect, landlords hired arsonists to torch their buildings, knowing they could collect more for insurance than from rent checks, while Nixon's White House criminalized and disrupted the city under the guise of the "War on Drugs." Then, when all hope seemed lost, President Ford dropped the death knell, refusing to bail the city out of financial crisis.

Yet within the waves of destruction, a new world began to take shape, one created by the youth who understood that necessity is the mother of invention. With nothing left to lose, they began to create grassroots cultures that would take the world by storm in the form of hip-hop, graffiti, punk, and No Wave. During the late 70s and early 80s, these scenes came together, mixing and remixing into original new forms, spawning a new breed of artist best exemplified by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Although he died in 1987 at the age of 27, his legacy looms large, inspiring new generations who recognize that the issues he addressed 30 years ago—like police brutality, erasure of African-American history, and the commodification of art—remain unresolved. Driven by a desire to unearth the roots of Basquiat’s creativity, filmmaker Sara Driver created the documentary BOOM FOR REAL: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which explores the artist’s life and legacy through those who knew him best.

Driver also teamed up with culture critic Carlo McCormick and Mary-Ann Monforton, the associate publisher of BOMB magazine, to curate Zeitgeist: The Art Scene of Teenage Basquiat, a group art exhibition featuring Basquiat’s friends and contemporaries, including Nan Goldin, Kenny Scharf, Al Diaz, and Lee Quiñones at Howl! Happening gallery in New York.

Driver spoke with VICE about Basquiat’s New York, a playground for visionaries from all walks of life that continues to speak truth to power today.

L: Jean-Michel Basquiat R: Jean and friends. Photo Credit: © Alexis Adler. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

VICE: Could you describe what life was like downtown in the late 70s?
Sara Driver: Many of us came to New York because of the Factory. Andy Warhol was involved in so many things: film, painting, and music—and the idea was that you could do anything. We were trying everything and we were willing to fail.

It was inexpensive to live in the city so you could have a job in a Xerox shop or sell postcards on the street. Also New York was very dangerous. When I was going to film school at New York University, I had to walk from Little Italy to the East Village. I had my hair cut an inch long and started walking like a boy so I could own my part of the street without being harassed. You were always aware of who was around you and as a result, you got gifts from the things that you observed. You’d see Ornette Coleman walking down the street beautifully dressed or William Burroughs in a three-piece suit and you knew he had a derringer in his belt and his cane was a sword.

How did the physical decay and financial dissolution of the city create new spaces for artists?
We had a drive to get our signals out one way or another. It wasn’t about money. It was about communicating, doing our art, and being around other people. We could take over an abandoned space or go to a club for a dollar. All these different art forms were all interconnecting and we were all learning from one another. New York wasn’t that heavily populated and there weren’t that many people. It was natural that we would all mix.

It was not an organized community; it was organically forming and morphing with the downtown world meeting uptown. There was a lot of posters on the streets, announcing different events with incredible artwork. Everyone would run into each other at the same place, like Dave’s Luncheonette on Canal Street and talk about what was happening the next night.

A SAMO© tag in BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo Credit: © Jane Burell Yadav. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

What was Basquiat like when he appeared on the scene?
Jean had an amazing sense of style at a very young age. I think Rene Ricard said it well when he called Jean the “Radiant Child.” He was beautiful, charismatic, and had this very strong sense of being. He was a very advanced poet by the time he was 18. I remember seeing those SAMO© [tags] on the street that he did with Al Diaz. They were always one thought that you would consider and think about. Jean is one of those figures like J.G. Ballard or Burroughs: he is like a prophet. His paintings and commentary on things like police brutality are still so relevant today.

Could you speak about how this era helped reinvigorate the art world?
The art world, like the film world, gets very stuck in their way of being and who they should focus on. The Times Square Show got the ball rolling and the art world realized there were new voices, got excited, got behind them. Artists like Kenny Scharf, Keith Haring, and Jean sprang from that. Jean and many others brought in Neo-Expressionism and figurative work back into the art world. It was a breakthrough and a much-needed infusion after Minimalism.

L: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1979. Featured in the Zeitgeist art exhibition. R: Jean-Michel Basquiat in BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT, a Magnolia Pictures release. Photo Credit: © Alexis Adler. Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

What was the impact of drugs at that time?
Drugs were all around us and you witnessed it constantly. So many people fell victim to heroin because it was socially acceptable. No one judged anyone for doing it. I remember on Rivington Street, there was a spot where dealers were selling, with a line going around the block. The police, who were just as in it as anyone else, would announce the name of the labels selling that day on their bullhorn.

When you are a kid, any kind of drugs can be a fuel for the creative process, whether you are doing acid or smoking pot. I read a lot of science magazines and one was talking about how your frontal lobes are not fully developed until you are 27 or 28, so you are still into risk-taking until then. Jean was only 27 when he died. He was a kid but he had the weight of the world on him.

Jim Jarmusch, Untitled, 2017. Featured in the Zeitgeist art exhibition.

How did the idea for an exhibition come about?
So many people are curious where Jean came from and how he developed as an artist. We called the show Zeitgeist because it just happened as this weird moment in time. That’s why I wanted to keep it from ‘78 to ‘81—all these young people descending onto this part of New York that was so forgotten and so dangerous.

Alexis Adler was one of the very few people who kept a body of [Basquiat’s] work from that time, when he was very transient. I first saw it in January 2013, after she pulled it out of a bank vault when Hurricane Sandy had hit the Lower East Side and she was concerned about flooding. When I saw his drawings, his writings, his notebooks, the clothes that he had painted on, and these wonderful photos she had taken of him, I thought, this was such an insight into not only to him but the New York that nurtured him.

The film was made in the same spirit as we made films in the late 70s: I went out, bought a camera, and started shooting. I felt like a portal for all these wonderful artists who shared things with me for the film, let’s also share their work in an exhibition. I went to Jane Friedman and Ted Riederer at Howl! Happening and they got on board right away. How often do you really see what nurtured an artist at the beginning of their process?

L: Alexis Adler, Untitled (Shaved Head #10), Naked Lunch From Basquiat on East 12th Street, 1979-80. R: Ted Barron, Tire Shop, East Houston Street, 1985. Featured in the Zeitgeist art exhibition.

What do you see as parallels between the New York of Basquiat’s youth and the city today?
Jean was such an advanced thinker. He’s echoing things that were problems then and are still problems now. In ‘79 we had the Iran hostage crisis, the restart of the Cold War with Russia going into Afghanistan, and then we got the D-movie president, Ronald Reagan. We felt very isolated on the island of Manhattan, which no one in America wanted. One of my favorite graffiti pieces of the time was “USA OUT OF NYC.” I feel the same way today.

There’s a human need to be in a room with people and talk about ideas. I love when Lee Quiñones says at the end of the film, “And what can you do?” We are all possible. We all have a voice. Young people have to realize that the power is in your hands. We were the ones who stopped the Vietnam War: high school and college students. We have to empower youth to defy this system.

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As first reported by iPolitics, Ontario Liberal candidate Amanda Yeung Collucci (who is running in the Markham-Unionville riding, just outside of Toronto) took to Facebook on the 2012 anniversary of 9/11 to share a YouTube video and express her doubts about what happened that day 11 years prior.

“911, was it really a terrorist attack or another conspiracy for cover-up? As soon as it happened back in 2001, I thought: ‘how can the US Defense be so weak?’ I thought the US had LET it happen so they can declare war,” Yeung Collucci wrote. “But after watching this video, it really made me think: ‘what is the real story behind 9/11.’”

In case you are wondering, the typical truther view is that the United States either orchestrated or let the terrorist attack happen, meaning that the country has the blood of almost 3,000 of its own citizens on its hands. The theories, at times, can stray into extreme anti-Semitic territory.

The YouTube video Yeung Collucci linked to (it’s always a damn YouTube video) has since been removed. In an emailed statement to iPolitics, Yeung Collucci offered a rather weak apology stating that it was not “representative” of her views and apologized “to anyone who might have been offended.” Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne told iPolitics that she stands by her candidate and that Yeung Collucci “was taken to task for what she posted.” Neither of them offered any details to further explain the post.

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A few years ago we might have had a thinkpiece bonanza on this subject. But now in 2018, the year of the melted brain, it’s been but a small dip in the roller coaster that has been the Ontario provincial election. If I’m going to try to explain it, I suppose it’s because there is just too much going on, frankly, we’re all goddamn exhausted and you know. Besides, it’s not the first time this kind of thing has happened. Canadian politicians and candidates have occasionally been expressing, shall we say, questionable views regarding 9/11 over the last several years.

In 2015, Maria Manna, a federal Liberal candidate, actually dropped out of her race in BC after saying, on the 2013 anniversary of the terrorist attack, that “she knew the truth.” “So today we remember the tragedy of 911,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Today we will talk about who did it and why. Today most people will continue to believe the lie, and again, THEY continue to win. Thank God I know the truth! LOVE is the answer!!!”

Manna dropped out shortly after her comments came to light, saying that the 2015 election the Liberals would eventually win was “far too important to have my past opinions and comments detract from that goal.”

One of the highest-profile politicians in Canada to be connected with truther views—while not endorsing them—is longtime Green Party leader Elizabeth May. In 2014, May was criticized for presenting a petition that called upon the body to reinvestigate 9/11. May said that she did not support the truthers ideas and was rule bound to present the petition.

It’s no secret that in recent years conspiratorial thinking has been growing increasingly mainstream. One expert recently told VICE that trust in authority has never been lower.

“Unfortunately a lot of what you see in conspiracy theorizing is a symptom of this larger breakdown of trust in things like the government and, in many cases, it's not entirely unjustified,” Colin Klein, a researcher at the Australian National University who conducted a massive study on Reddit’s conspiracy page told VICE.

At this rate, we can all look forward to when, in the 2024 New Brunswick election a politician comes out as a Sandy Hook truther and, again, we’ll just be too tired to care.

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On Monday, as the United States celebrated moving its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thousands of Palestinian protesters were shot by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the border fence separating Israel and Gaza. At least 60 Palestinians died as a result, and the seemingly never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine was once again at the top of the international news. On May 16, the front page of the New York Times displayed a poignant image of the Gaza landscape, the sky a striking yellow with blue smoke surrounding the border fence. Beneath, the headline read, “Israelis Reflect: ‘I Hope at Least That Each Bullet Was Justified.’”

Supporters of Palestinians were outraged. “Even as #Palestinians are massacred NYTimes finds a way to humanize the #Israelis,” James J. Zogby, the founder of the Arab American Institute, wrote on Twitter. “Completely disgusting,” commented Jacobin’s Alex Press. “The NYT soft on the criminal Israeli shooters and has no heart for Palestinian victims in Gaza,” another Twitter user remarked.

Meanwhile, on The Onion, the nation’s other paper of record, this was the headline:

“IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child.”

This was a shockingly brutal joke, but it fits with the satirical website’s tone when it comes to Israel. In April, The Onion published “Teen On Birthright Trip Hadn’t Expected To See So Many Dead Palestinians.” On May 10, as the conflict between Israel and Iran heated up, the paper wrote a story headlined “Netanyahu Begins Calling For Israeli Return To Ancient Homeland Of Iran,” presumably a follow up to its May 1 article, “Netanyahu Provides Stunning New Evidence That Iranians Planned Sacking Of Babylon In 539 B.C.”

For the left, which is often frustrated by the pro-Israel tone of mainstream media coverage of the region, The Onion’s stance feels like a small win. “The Onion's scathing, relentless mockery of Israeli propaganda reflects a radical shift in US political discourse,” journalist Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept explained in an email. “Even as recently as ten years ago, it was only a small fringe willing to denounce Israeli aggression, militarism and increasing devotion to apartheid.”

Noah Kulwin, a senior editor at Jewish Currents (who formerly worked at VICE News), had a more terse response when I messaged him: “It's funny,” he said.

The Onion has generally leaned left, but its Israel-based satire hasn’t always taken sides so dramatically. In 2015, it released a video guide to the conflict, which, as the opening voice-over informs, is meant to provide the viewer “with the knowledge to land yourself in an extremely uncomfortable conversation at a party with a very opinionated acquaintance.” The root of Israel-Palestine issue, the video explains, “began in the devastating wake of the violence in World War II, when international leaders came to the sudden realization that the world no longer had a nonstop, carnage-filled conflict with which to entertain itself.”

Avid readers of The Onion and its offshoots—Clickhole, Patriothole, and Resistancehole—expect the satirical newspaper to darkly joke about politics, but its Israel coverage, especially contrasted with the mainstream media’s framing of the conflict, strikes a different tone than their usual hijinks. (The Onion declined to give comment for this story.)

Some on the left take these jokes very seriously: "While media critics have blasted U.S. media for using their reporting to whitewash and otherwise sanitize by deflection and word choice what human rights groups say are Israeli war crimes," Jon Queally wrote on Common Dreams, "The Onion's approach goes to the heart of the issue by obliterating the logic that unarmed protesters demanding an end to their own subjugation should be met with deadly force or somehow deserve to be killed."

Queally's sentiment was echoed by Sean McElwee, a writer, progressive activist, and VICE contributor, who told me in an email, "The Onion says what basically no other publication in the US dares, which is the deaths of people who are not American should weigh as heavily on our consciousness as Americans. I'm genuinely surprised they haven't been drone-striked by the CIA and I'm reasonably certain that 25 years from now we'll learn the FBI has a file on every one of their writers.”

“Humor is a powerful way for us to sometimes talk about the most complex issues out there,” the activist and writer Shaun King explained. “I am glad that The Onion is leading with very biting satire, but it's outrageous that they are pretty much standing alone in the mainstream media space with their critiques of Israel—which is greatly disappointing.”

But for Israel supporters, The Onion’s Israel coverage seems downright sinister. “Israel’s enemies have used disinformation as a weapon of war,” David Frum, a senior editor at the Atlantic and one of the country’s most prominent never-Trump conservatives, explained. “Forty-eight hours after the May 16 battle, for example, Hamas now acknowledges that 50 of the 62 killed were its own gunmen. But truth is always slower than falsehood, because truth catches the facts.”

The way Frum sees it, in our current social media dystopia that is fueled by half-truths and straight up lies, “We are all vulnerable to weaponized falsehoods that exploit our prejudices.”

“We are all called to be responsible with the amazing communication power that smartphones place in our hands, and calling ourselves ‘comedians’ does not exempt us from that duty,” Frum added. He doesn’t see the assertion that Israel gunned down peaceful protesters as any different from the false stories shared during the 2016 election, like the claim that Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s disease or that the pope endorsed Donald Trump. The Onion’s Israel coverage, Frum told me, doesn’t “become any less false when shared with a smirk or a snicker rather than the talking head’s face of feigned concern.”

But one person’s propagandist is another person’s truth-teller. “The internet, and social media in particular, has made it impossible for Israel to maintain its stranglehold over information,” Greenwald told me. “Israeli propaganda has collapsed, and its mask has fallen.” In his view, “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu single-handedly destroying support for Israel as a bipartisan policy by openly aligning with the Republicans against Obama” was one of the biggest political mistakes of the last several decades.

As a result, Greenwald said, there is now a space “to talk about Israel as what it really is rather than the fairy tales we were forced for so long to recite. The Onion has rested comfortably in that space with its Israel satire.”

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Most people who find themselves face-to-face with an armed robber don't think twice about giving the perp whatever they want. It's a life-or-death situation, and no phone, wallet, or prized piece of jewelry is really worth getting shot over. But Jerad Kluting isn't like most people—nothing, apparently not even the threat of death, could ever come between him and his Louis Vuitton handbag.

On Monday, Kluting was out for a walk in Holland Township, Michigan, when a thief allegedly ran up on him, pulled a pistol out of his waistband, and demanded his bag, local NBC affiliate WOOD reports. On the one hand, Kluting was staring down the barrel of a gun, and—if he refused—he could easily wind up dead. On the other hand, however, was his prized knapsack: a $1,700 Louis Vuitton handbag. Faced with a choice between his life and his beloved murse, Kluting didn't think twice.

"I was like, ‘You’re not getting my Louis Vuitton,'" Kluting told WOOD. "I worked very hard for this, and this bag I’ve had forever, and it means a lot to me. I wasn’t about ready to relinquish it to some thug that was going to demand it from me.”

Kluting told WOOD the thief fired two warning shots, and kept on pressing him for the bag. But somehow, this brave everyday hero was so hell-bent on holding onto it, even flying bullets couldn't make him give it up. The forces of evil were locked in a tense battle with the divine, fabulous forces of good, and Kluting had no intention of giving in. The perp fired a third shot—this time allegedly aiming right at Kluting—and still, he stood his ground.

"I love Louis Vuitton, and I saw this bag long before I could buy it, and I saved up my money to buy it,” Kluting told WOOD. "It means a lot to me… It represents me."

Eventually the thief ran off, and Kluting called the cops to report what had happened. Pretty soon—presumably with otherworldly, spiritual assistance from the ghost of Louis Vuitton himself—the cops managed to catch the perp. He's since been arrested and charged with armed robbery, felony possession of a firearm, and receiving and concealing stolen property. Kluting, meanwhile, is still out here accessorizing like a goddamn legend.

"I got my bag," Kluting told WOOD. "You can pry it out of my cold, dead hands."

Yes, paying $1,700 for a bag is wild, and yes, straight-up telling a man with a gun "no" when he's threatening to kill you is insane, but you know what? It worked. Somehow, Kluting's commitment to his cherished murse is so pure, so strong, the fashion gods intervened on his behalf, and he escaped with his bag and his life. For that, he is a legend. Let his style, his confidence, and his bravery be a lesson to us all.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

The opioid crisis continues to devastate the United States and Canada, the coverage of which can be seen in copious headlines and on the news on a near daily basis. Lesser known is that Africa has an opioid crisis of its own, albeit featuring a different pharmaceutical villain. Many Africans have become dependent on a pain pill called tramadol, which is milder than Oxycontin, though it can still get users quite high. The opioids of abuse in America are highly regulated, but in Africa nearly anyone can get tramadol—and not just from street hawkers, but from legitimate pharmacists.

And there’s another distressing wrinkle: In Africa, the affected population are largely children.

“It's easier to ask who in our state schools is not taking kobolo,” a music teacher in the country of Gabon recently told Kenya’s Capital News, referencing a slang term for tramadol, adding that her students start taking it as young as 12. The former director of the drug enforcement agency in Nigeria estimated in 2016 that seven in ten boys in northern states were abusing drugs like tramadol.

Nigeria is by far Africa’s most populous country, and the problem is particularly acute there. “About three years ago I started noticing that a lot of people would come and ask for it without prescription, especially young people, young boys and girls,” Oluwatosin Fatungase, a Nigerian pharmacist and youth counselor, told VICE. “I was wondering, ‘Why is everybody coming to look for tramadol?’”

African authorities have tended to focus on marijuana, the traditional drug of choice in many countries on the continent, where it often grows wild. Drugs like cocaine can be hard to come by, and are expensive when found. But pills of tramadol—which are made by the boatload in Indian factories and distributed in Africa through both legal and illegal channels—are incredibly cheap, roughly 30 cents for a pack of ten. “If you’re a drug distributor, what you want is something cheap that can easily to cross borders, that has a broad, desirable effect profile and that you can make money off of quickly, with little risk,” said England-based addiction specialist Adam Winstock, who runs the research company Global Drugs Survey. “Tramadol ticks all of the boxes.”

Kids like them because they’re discreet (no smoking required), and can be taken between classes. “When you ask young people why they take it, they say ‘to get high,’ or ‘it makes me work longer,’ or ‘I can have sex for many hours,’” Fatungase told VICE. “But they are not looking at the side effects. They go into a coma and they die. It’s really alarming and heartbreaking.”

In Africa, tramadol is causing massive amounts of deaths, overdoses, and lives derailed, as well helping fund the efforts of ISIS. (It’s also believed to be a favorite of Boko Haram fighters.) The problem has been exacerbated because African people usually lack access to naloxone—the lifesaving antidote that can reverse opioid overdoses. The crisis has escalated so quickly death statistics aren’t yet available, not even from Bawa’s own organization, which is otherwise the world’s foremost authority on drug abuse. “We don’t have enough information to reply to your questions,” one of the organization’s West and Central Africa representatives, Hélène Moussou, told VICE. “Contact us around the end of November, or early December.”

“The problem has, in my opinion, reached beyond the fentanyl-type epidemic we are witnessing in North America,” Jeffrey Bawa, program officer for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Sahel Programme, told CNN late last year. “The difference being that this is affecting the most vulnerable countries of the world.”

But the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. In Egypt, in March 2017, nearly 70 percent of people in rehab were there for tramadol. In Cameroon, the level of addiction can best be understood through a bizarre herbal medicine story: in 2013, scientists believed they’d discovered that a plant called Nauclea latifolia naturally produced Tramadol. Instead, it turned out that farmers there were using it in such large quantities, and gave so much to their cattle—so both could work harder in the hot sun—that their waste got into the soil and was being absorbed by the plants.

Tramadol was first developed in the early '60s by a scientist named Kurt Flick from the German pharmaceutical company Grünenthal. It wasn’t brought to market as a pain medication until 1977, however, by another Grünenthal chemist, Ernst-Gunther Schenck, who believed it would be a milder, less addictive substitute for traditional opioids.

During World War II, Schenck served as a doctor for the S.S., and became Nazi royalty. He bunkered down with Hitler and Eva Braun at the very end, before being captured by the Red Army. Though he is believed to have tested an “experimental protein sausage” on concentration camp prisoners, killing many in the process, he was never prosecuted as a war criminal, though he was barred from medicine. He was nonetheless given a job by Grünenthal and lived out his days in Germany.

As for his claim that tramadol was safe, many agreed. It wasn’t scheduled in the U.S. until 2013, and only then as a schedule IV drug (“low potential for abuse.”) The World Health Organization’s drug committee has steadfastly recommended that it remain unregulated internationally, so that it is readily available for legitimate medical use in Africa, where suffering patients tend to lack access to narcotic pain medication. Even as the reports of widespread African tramadol abuse have emerged, the committee’s advisors have held their ground.

“No, we are not reconsidering our decision,” Marie Nougier, Head of Research and Communications for the International Drug Policy Consortium, told VICE. Last year the group formally recommended against tramadol’s scheduling.

Nougier continued: “Scheduling of tramadol in Africa would probably have a very limited impact on use, but create a huge and uncontrollable black market for the substance, and would most probably have a significant impact on the availability of tramadol for medical purposes.”

African governments don't seem clear on how to address the problem either. “[T]he silence of health authorities is deafening,” the director of a state-run hospital in Gabon told Kenya’s Daily Nation. Nigeria has seized millions of the pills, and promised to mount a large public awareness campaign.

In the meantime, the tramadol epidemic continues to ravage youth populations throughout the continent. And while the drug is often portrayed as a party lubricant, it’s quite possible it’s serving another function entirely. The Global Drug Survey’s Adam Winstock suggested high rates of poverty and other societal ills throughout Africa had left millions of young people with trauma or even PTSD, and that they may be turning to tramadol to cope. “Lots of patients describe opioids as basically the best antidepressant in the world,” he said. “Like being wrapped up in an emotional cotton ball.”

Ben Westhoff is the author of an upcoming book on fentanyl and the opioid crisis, for Grove/Atlantic.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.

On Saturday, as Prince Harry prepared to get hitched to Meghan Markle, British expats and Anglophiles in Los Angles faced a problem—it was still Friday night their time. Thanks to the eight-hour time difference between California and the UK, if you wanted to watch the Royal Wedding here you had to watch a recorded version (lame) or stay up until 4 AM local time, when the ceremony was scheduled to begin.

But where some see a problem, others see an opportunity to throw a party. As Friday night became Saturday morning, a group called BritsInLA held a "slumber party" at the Cat and Fiddle pub in Laurel Canyon. The scene included huge hats, elaborate costumes, multiple camera crews filming the event, Union Jacks everywhere, and a lot of tired, emotional guests. But why describe it when we can just show you Rozette Rago's photos?

Rozette Rago is a photographer based in Los Angeles. View more of her work here.

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands and VICE Belgium

There isn't too much to know about the Belgian city of Kortrijk. It has a nice little shopping street, Saturday nights are about Grey Goose and dancing, and any time a local square gets renovated it's all anyone ever talks about for a month.

But twice a year, this relative calm is brutally disrupted when flocks of young and old gabbers in Thunderdome-branded tops and joggers walk out of the Kortrijk train station and head straight to DC's Special – one of the last brick-and-mortar shops dedicated to gabber.

The shop's owner, Dimitri Christiaens, 36, has been organising these bi-annual meet-ups since 1999. What started out as just ten friends having a beer has grown into a sizeable get-together of passionate gabbers from all over Europe, who come to Kortrijk to share memories of the glory days.

Gabber fans outside DC's Specials.

As a teenager in Kortrijk, this annual procession of shaved heads freaked me out, but later my fear turned into fascination. What makes this tiny store so special that people from as far as Japan come to pay homage?

Last month, I decided to head down to the latest gathering to speak to some of the world's most committed gabbers about how they're keeping their subculture alive.

The front of DC's Special is hidden behind a pillar in the corner of the square. The crowd is a mix of men and women, most of them wearing shiny pairs of Nike Air Max, bright pink tops and suspenders. I see pit bulls of all shapes and sizes lurking around, while gabber parents pushing strollers excitedly greet their old rave buddies.

Off to the side, a few guys are doing gabber's iconic hakken dance in the sun, their tongues hanging out of their mouths. I hear people speaking French and Dutch, and occasionally someone will shout something in English, like "Once hardcore, always hardcore!"

The person here who seems most in her element is Antilla, a mum who brought her seven sons with her. She's such a raver, she tells me, who once danced so hard she tore her Achilles tendon.

While proudly stroking her 17-year-old son's hair, she tells me, "I almost cried this morning when I shaved the sides of his head for the first time. They grow up so fast." Her youngest is still a toddler, but Antilla shows me a video on her phone of him pumping his fist up and down to a beat. "You see, it's in their genes."

"Only die-hard gabbers who were there in the early days come here," a man who drove three hours from France to be here tells me. "Some only come once a year, while others are here every week. It doesn't matter if you're in a group or you're on your own. The beauty of our scene is that as long as you're a gabber, you're never really alone. We're one big family, for life."

Left: Antilla proudly poses with one of her sevens sons. Right: Her eldest son shows off his new haircut.

When discussing their favourite memories from raves together, they all recall the same details that made the whole package so special to them. They chat about chants, worn out sneakers and mind-blowing sets from years ago. Conversations are only briefly interrupted when the DJ plays a classic, or when an old friend walks past – a friend like the universally loved Bjorn. He's a Belgian who proudly refers to himself as "rolstoelgabbertje" (wheelchair gabber).

"I was 12 years old when I went to my first rave, in 1997 – Thunderdome in Antwerp," Bjorn tells me. "I still see people here that I met on that day. It's like we're all coming back to a place we never really left."

Bjorn has partied at most of the major raves of the past 20 years, in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. At events, he and his wheelchair are often lifted up in the air, and DJs invite him on stage. Everyone in the scene knows him.

"The friendship, love and acceptance in this scene will get you through anything," he tells me, before describing how, at 19, he contracted a virus that left him in a wheelchair. "This is the only place where people didn't suddenly start to treat me differently. I remained a part of it."

Bjorn in his wheelchair.

Shop-owner Dimitri was 13 and camping in the Dutch province of Zeeland when he was first introduced to gabber music. After falling in love with it, he started attending as many raves as he could, before opening DC's Specials when he turned 18. Back then, his collection consisted of only a couple of racks with a few caps, shoes and tracksuits, but today it's a true celebration of gabber culture.

"If there's a big festival happening in Belgium or the Netherlands, like Dominator or Defcon, people will fly well out of their way just to come here," Dimitri tells me. "We get visitors from all over the world – Switzerland, Chile, Japan, Australia."

Bjorn and Dimitri inside DC's Specials

Dimitri's success came partially from being one of the first to work with big brands to produce merchandise specifically for women. But the shop also reached cult status thanks to what's plastered on its walls – his personal collection of flyers and posters from legendary raves, like Thunderdome in 1998, and Mysteryland that same year. Some of the memorabilia, Dimitri tells me, is now worth thousands. "Collectors go crazy when they come here," he adds.

Of course there's a flyer from Dimitri's first rave: Global Hardcore Nation in Antwerpen in 1997. "Twenty-thousand heads bouncing up and down," he remembers. "Every now and then they'd open the stadium roof to give us some air so we could breath properly." And he still has the bomber jacket he wore that night, a "collector's item that's now worth €700".

Left: Dimitri as a teenager on his way back from a rave. Right: Dimitri today.

Almost all of the other gabber shops that were around when he first opened DC's Specials have shifted to an online-only model. Dimitri could make a lot more profit by doing the same, he explains, but the shop means too much to too many people, so he's working as hard as he can to keep its doors open.

"When the new collections come out, we organise a fashion show and broadcast it live on Facebook," he says. "We invite DJs like Noisekick and Bass to come and play at the store, while we keep a collection of Nike Air Max BW that are so unique, people come here just to take pictures with them. And, of course, we continue to organise these meet-ups. A shop like this is an important part of the culture – I'll do everything I can to make sure it lasts."

This article originally appeared on VICE NL.

A young couple got married in Windsor on Saturday, and 18 million people tuned in to watch.

Wandering the streets around Windsor Castle during Harry and Meghan's big day were a mix of bemused American tourists; hardline Royalists who'd been camping out for a spot since 5AM; blonde boys in Hollister button-ups chatting about how Harry is "just one of the lads, really"; and a contingent of international Princess Diana super-fans – who, apparently, do still exist.

From the first hiss of lukewarm cans of Pimm's opening at 8AM, to the tourists and D-list celebrities still hanging around hours after the procession, here's the most ridiculous stuff we overheard in Windsor on the day of the Royal Wedding.

"I'm so excited about this wedding it's breaking me right now."

"I won a Prince Harry lookalike competition and get free flights for a year. Going to Tenerife next month."

"Do you think the Queen eats Nando's, though?"

"I play at Windsor cricket ground, so you could say this isn’t my first time around the royals."

* referring to police getting cheered by the public * "If we were in the States right now they’d be throwing rocks at them for sure."

"How does that photo look? Do I look like a Royal tart?"

"I've got a shit-load of weddings to go to this summer. This isn’t even the one I’m most excited about."

"We just saw The Princess Diaries on a big screen and now we're ready to watch it for real."

"You can't walk around wearing a Prince George mask as a grown-up, that's just wrong."

"I just paid £4.99 for an ice cream."

"What's all this about queue-jumping, then?"

"I'm just thinking about how many people need to die for Meghan to become Queen."
"It would be a bloodbath."

"There's a lot of people here crying about Trump, and I don’t have time for it. Meanwhile, in America, we're obsessed with the royals and Meghan."

"It’s all going to end in divorce, you know."

@jackcummings92

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

It’s the end of the week, and you are both mentally and physically exhausted. Your boss has “asked” you to work overtime on the weekend and your colleagues are shirking on their duties, only for you to come home to a nagging partner who is resentful of your busy work schedule.

All of a sudden, you realize that that the big trip you and your partner are taking is only a month away, and you still haven’t done any of the planning you were put in charge of. The flights are not booked, you vaguely remember the specifics of the sightseeing activities you talked about, and you certainly haven’t mentioned anything to your boss. By the sound of it, the trip is most likely to be a total disaster unless you get yourself together and start doing your research.

And even though you fully understand the consequences of messing things up, you just can’t bring yourself to figure it out. You suddenly feel a strong aversion to the thought of having to plan things ahead of time.

Why does this happen? Why does it become so difficult to plan as pressures mount in our life? We’re learning from a new line of research that the ability and willingness to plan is directly disrupted by stress-induced failures in self-control. There’s even more reason, according to the research, to resolve personal stress in the name of maintaining self-control and making good decisions for the future.

Planning is an extraordinary ability that distinguishes us from nonhuman animals. As opposed to other species who live out their instincts in the present moment, we can think about and flexibly anticipate future events, tailoring our current thoughts and actions to fit our long-term goals.

The ability to forecast ourselves and our lives into the future allows us to exercise self-control, to strategically delay our decision-making in hopes of securing a better reward down the road. One famous study that looked at delayed gratification in children found that those children who were better at resisting the immediate rewards were more successful as adults, both occupationally and socially. Likewise, there is evidence that countries that value future rewards more than immediate ones fare better economically.

Planning and self-control work in tandem. Both mental activities involve not only thinking about the future, but also making decisions in the present that will lead to a better, more desired outcome, while avoiding any possible obstacles and temptations along the way. In short, they require a degree of mental effort.

If we fail to engage in these activities, it is because such effortful cognition consumes a very limited mental resource. When that resource has been used up by other demanding tasks, such as stressful situations at work, we may be more reluctant to think about the future. In other words, because stress is depleting, it uses up the cognitive reserves needed to effectively plan ahead.

Given that the capacity for self-control differs across both people and situations, the researchers in the present investigation conducted a number of studies to examine the link between self-control and planning, as well as what happens when the fatigued individual experiences a reduced capacity for self-control. They hypothesized that people high in self-control engage in more planning, and that being depleted and fatigued of ego reserves will make people less likely to plan.

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In the first study, the researchers wanted to see if the people who had higher levels of trait self-control engaged in more planning and more intentions to plan. Of the recruited participants, 201 were first instructed to complete a brief self-control scale, and then report how much planning they had done earlier in the week, as well as how much planning they imagined they would do in the following week.

As the researchers predicted, people who scored high on trait self-control reported more planning, both in the preceding and upcoming weeks. Studies two and three experimentally measured the effects of impaired self-control, or ego-depletion, on people’s willingness to plan. In the second study, 105 student participants were randomly assigned to either the ego-depletion condition or the control condition.

The experiment included a writing exercise in which participants were told to change their writing in a way that would involve either very little or a lot of self-regulation. For example, while writing their essays, participants in the ego depletion condition were instructed to avoid certain commonly used letters such as ‘A’ or ‘N.’ This would require constant habit inhibition and effort, depleting participants’ self-regulatory resources.

Next, to measure their willingness to make plans, participants were presented with a choice. They could either “take a relaxing ‘time out’” or “make a plan for the next four weeks.” They then expressed how much they wanted to do each task using an 11-point response scale. In line with the researchers’ predictions, people were much more mentally exhausted in the ego depletion task, and as a result were less willing to make plans than those in the control condition.

The third study was a field experiment that looked at how decision fatigue, as a result of shopping at IKEA, influenced people’s willingness to plan. In the study, 112 people were approached either right before entering the store or right after leaving, and were asked to complete a survey that measured their exhaustion, and whether they wanted to relax or make plans for the next four weeks.

Again, as predicted, the decision fatigue associated with the IKEA shopping experience made people less willing to make plans, as compared to those people who were just entering the store. And just think, they hadn’t even begun the most depleting process of piecing together all that IKEA furniture.

Based on the above findings, it seems that planning is in fact a demanding cognitive task that uses up the same resources associated with other executive functions such as self-control and decision-making. When these resources are depleted by prior tasks that require increased effort and concentration, we can experience a deep-seated aversion to planning, knowing that it would require the mental energy we simply can’t expend.

That’s why after a tough work week, the idea of making plans—even fun ones—can be so unappealing. It doesn’t mean that you are lazy or a bad person; it simply means that you are too tired to put in the mental effort needed to plan ahead. So rest up your brain, and plan not to make any plans until you’re back to your regular, rested self.

Nick Hobson is a research psychologist and lecturer at the University of Toronto. You can find more of his work at Psychology Compass.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.