Chris Schryer, with his key dietary partner. All photos via Facebook.
As a nice Jewish girl, I got to watch my practicing Christian friends give up goodies for Lent during my youth. It was usually the same no-chocolate-bad-food-or-soap-operas routine every year, and never was there a time when said friends—albeit only two, three maybe, on my very Jewish block—ever gave up food entirely, or decided to chug beer for meals. This Lent, Chris Schryer is doing both.

On Ash Wednesday, which fell on March 5 this year, Chris, a devout Anglican from Toronto, stopped eating all solid food and started up his new diet, which he expects to abide by until Palm Sunday—meaning he’ll be spending 40 days on an all beer diet. His meal plan includes a bottle of beer for breakfast, one for lunch, one as an afternoon snack, and an extra large bottle for dinner. Alongside pal and Brewmaster at Amsterdam Brewing Co. Iain McOustra, Chris created an oat-rich doppelbock (a stronger and sometimes darker remix on the Bavarian Bockbier, in case you don’t speak beer nerd), which he named Brewmaster’s Trithe, that has just enough nutritional value to keep him from dying on his journey towards a repentant, spiritual buzz.

Now that we’re halfway through Lent, I gave Chris a call to chat about his deep love of falafels and tacos, and what his beer-fueled crusade has affected his family and shitting habits. Here’s what he had to say:

VICE: You’ve been drinking only beer for 20 days straight. How has this affected your digestive system? If you’re not consuming solid food, are you shitting at all?
Chris Schryer: It’s funny because my doctor, and actually a variety of other people, were like, “You’re totally going to get constipated because you’re not getting any fibre!” Constipation isn’t the exact opposite of what happened, but it’s certainly not the case.

There’s a surprising amount of solid in beer, and apparently juice, to the extent that I do take a shit a couple times a day. I don’t eat meat, so I’m pretty regular as it is. Particularly midday and later, shall we say, it’s not as solid as it would be because I’m consuming a ton of liquid.

So, is it straight up diarrhea by the middle of the day?
It nearly is. The difference being that I always think of diarrhea being you’re going every five minutes, you gotta go, you gotta go now, it’s coming out whether you’re in a bathroom or not. This isn’t like that; it’s just when it comes out, it’s that consistency.

OK, thanks for the info. What other changes have you noticed in your body?
I’m losing weight. I intentionally didn’t weigh myself and make weight an issue about this, because the focus for me is much more about the fast. But I definitely need a belt now, so I probably dropped three or four centimeters off my waist in 20 days.

Have there been any changes to your skin, or with parts of your body that you didn’t expect?
Yeah, you know what, I got a zit! I haven’t had a zit in like, ten years. The skin on my elbows is a little eczema-y, which is normal because I’m not getting any fat. Skin irritation is a real possibility so I’ve gotten a bit of that, but other than that everything’s pretty well normal.

What kind of changes have you noticed in your energy? You play hockey and managed to finish your season while doing this fast...
I think you take for granted the value of complex carbohydrates until you don’t have any. The first Friday that I played hockey during the fast I was excited, like I’m always jazzed to play hockey, and on top of that I was like, man, I can play! I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to play or not, but I can play!

I went out, did the warm up, and I was rippin’ around the ice on my first two shifts. My third shift, I got out, and my legs were just like lead. I didn’t have any stamina. I was pulling 25 or 30 second shifts at some points. That was the first two weeks. The third week I went in with my head up. I was just guzzling Gatorade on the bench, just trying to keep my energy level up, but I played some of the best hockey I played all season; scored a couple of goals, had an amazing assist with a couple of buddies, it was really good.

What emotional changes have you noticed in yourself since starting the fast?
A big part of this for me is the actual spiritual discipline I get from this sort of pursuit. It requires a lot of self-control. The Christian angle on that is that a lot of that is depending on your community, your family, the people around you. Also depending on God, literally supernatural support. But it’s also about taking ownership for your own behavior. That’s been working, and I’ve been feeling good about it. I’ve been made aware of other parts of my life where I just don’t have the right level of self-control, and been trying to expand it to that. It’s kind of hippie stuff but I feel really positive about that, like it feels really good.

Wow. When I’m hungry, I’m a giant bitch. It’s interesting that your prolonged hunger has not always led to irritability.
I think my natural tendency is still there, but I’m more aware of it, and I’m catching it. Because I’m making such an effort to be so spiritual and holy, I guess that makes it a bit easier, too. But definitely, when I’m hungry, when I haven’t had enough juice or whatever, I’m pretty moody. And then my wife makes fun of me because at mealtime, my kids are kids and they mess around a lot but I’m like, “Eat your food. Eat it! It’s delicious and you can! Just eat your FOOD!”

What do you hope your kids think when they grow up one day and learn about the time that their dad gave up food and chugged beers for meals during Lent?
My daughter’s only two so she probably won’t have any memory of this, but she’s super cute and helps in ways that are adorable and ridiculous.

My boy, Ben, is five. He’s very aware of the fast and talks about it. He told me on the first day he was going to fast from unhealthy food for Lent. That lasted until dessert. But he was aware of the concept and why I was doing it, and he talks to me about it a lot. What I want my kids to understand is that this thing, this faith that we have, it isn’t something you do and then put away. It permeates your whole existence.

Right. So what did your wife say when you told her you were going to give up food in favour of beer for Lent?
[Laughs] You have to understand the dynamic of our relationship. She just kind of laughed and rolled her eyes. She’s been completely supportive of it. Initially, she had some difficulty because she would feel guilty when she was eating because I was there. We really value family meal time, we eat with our kids every meal. When she got over that, there’s been no problems. She did think it was kind of stupid though [Laughs].

You still cook for your family. What’s the one time you’ve been most tempted to cheat from your all-beer diet?
We were having tacos the other night… my wife and I are both self-employed, but she works out of the house and she works some off hours sometimes, so she was out during this particular dinner. The kids and I were eating and neither of them ate all their food and it was looking.

I got up to clear the table and I was walking into the kitchen, I set the plates down, and I think I stood there for 15 seconds, literally. I said “Ben! I need you!” to my son, and he came in and he’s like, “What, daddy?” and I’m like, “I just need you to stand here while I scrape these plates into the garbage, OK?” So I did it and he was like, “Why did I need to be here, daddy?” And I’m like, “Because daddy was really, really close to eating one of the tacos. I really needed you to come and support me, buddy.” So he’s like, “OK, I’ll always watch you when you’re in the kitchen.”

One of my classics is after hockey or if I’m at the bar late—I’m trying to limit how much I’m at the bar—but I love stopping for a falafel or a burrito on the way home. If you’ve got a couple of drinks in you it’s a little harder to stay true. I haven’t broken fast yet, but it’s been tough. I was coming home one night with some buddies and they didn’t even want a falafel, but I made them go in. I was like: “No, you’re fucking eating a falafel because it’s delicious!”

They sure are. So, how has consuming beer rather than meals contributed to your spiritual growth?
There have been times that I’ve been very, very aware that this beer, which I assisted in making, is made entirely out of stuff that was given to us, and that it is a blessing. This is a blessed substance that has been given for me to be able to undertake this.

When I feel hungry I stop and I pray, or I stop and I try and bless someone. When my priest came and she blessed the beer, she read from the Psalms. It talks about how the Lord provides grain and fills the hills with golden grain, and it’s totally true. This is something that’s God-given.

You helped to brew a doppelbock, because it has the nutrients required to stop you from starving. What would have been your beer of choice if all beers had the same nutrient factor as a doppelbock?
I’d take a rock solid American pale ale. I like Sierra Nevada pale, or up here in Ontario we have this brewery called Great Lakes and they make a beer called Crazy Canuck, which is just magic. Or the brewery that brewed my beer, Amsterdam Brewing Co., does pale ale but not American-style pale ale, that’s still light enough in alcohol, you’re only talking five, maybe five and a half percent, but it’s got a big, huge shot of aroma hop. That really West Coast piney, kind of squeaky, almost citrus-y kind of hop, or maybe something like Mosaic that gets a lot of the tropical fruit. I just love that big, fresh, pungent, aromatic IPA. IPA would be a bit higher in alcohol and I’d stay away from that, but American pale ale would just be phenomenal.

What percentage of alcohol is Brewmaster’s Trithe, the beer you’re drinking during the fast?
We don’t know specifically. The recipe is projecting it to be in the mid-sevens, somewhere around seven-five. But we didn’t take a reading and we’re pretty sure it’s higher than that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was pushing eight?

So I bet you feel pretty drunk right now, huh?
I have a pretty high tolerance, to the point where I have to be careful because I still have to do things like drive and pick up my son from school. I could be completely comfortable behind the wheel and still possibly blow over the legal limit. From a breakfast beer, a lunch beer, I’ve never even felt buzzed. I drink a 650 ml bottle at dinner and I’ll drink it from dinner through to the evening, and I certainly wouldn’t drive after that. Sometimes I’m starting to feel a bit of a beer buzz coming on. It’s very, very thick, like literally thick because of the oats in it, so it’s actually difficult to drink quickly.

Are you sick of drinking such a thick beer?
I haven’t gotten sick of it, which has been great, and it was a real concern. I’m not going to be really cheesy and say that I taste something different every time I drink it, but certainly the more that I’ve drank it, the more I’ve gotten to know it. I’m finding out new things about it, I’m picking out different tastes.

The only thing you can even come close to calling a negative is when I’m not aware of how thick it is anymore. Sometimes I’ll share a little with somebody, and they’re like, “Whoa! That’s thick,” and I’m like, “Yeah, it is thick.” I always forget that. It’s syrup-y.

Your family doctor is monitoring this process. I can’t imagine he’s stoked...
His medical opinion is I am doing something dumb and I shouldn’t be. But he also has patients who smoke, and patients who eat endless fast food. We kind of came to terms on that. He was adamant that I take a multivitamin.

He is a fairly devout Jew and does understand the practice of fasting. When I first went in to talk to him he hadn’t shaved in a couple months because his mother passed away, and I said, “Well, you’re doing something silly, too!” although he pointed out that it wasn’t affecting him physically [laughs].

 

@kristy__hoffman

The Central African Republic's capital of Bangui has seen its Muslim population drop from 130,000 to under 1,000 during the past few months. Over the past year, thousands across CAR have been killed, and nearly a million have been displaced. The United Nations recently stated that the entire Western half of the country has now been cleansed of Muslims.

CAR has never fully recovered from France's colonial rule, and it has only known ten years of a civilian government—from 1993 to 2003—since achieving independence in 1960. Coup after coup, often with French military involvement, has led many to refer to the country as a phantom state. The current conflict has now completely erased the rule of law, leaving the UN and international community looking confused and impotent.

In March 2013, the Séléka, a mostly Muslim rebel alliance, rose up and overthrew the corrupt government of François Bozizé, while bringing terror and chaos across the country—pillaging, killing, and raping with impunity. In response, mostly Christian self-defense forces, called the Anti-Balaka, formed to defend CAR against Séléka attacks.

Clashes grew more frequent throughout 2013 as the Séléka grew more ruthless. In December 2013, French and African troops went in to disarm the Séléka and staunch the bloodshed. The Anti-Balaka, seizing on a weakened Séléka, then went on the offensive.

CAR had no real history of religious violence, and the current conflict is not based on any religious ideology. The fighting, however, turned increasingly sectarian in the fall of 2013, with revenge killings becoming the norm. And as the Séléka's power waned, the Anti-Balaka fed their need for revenge by brutalizing Muslim civilians. 

"Too few peacekeepers were deployed too late; the challenge of disarming the Séléka, containing the Anti-Balaka, and protecting the Muslim minority was underestimated," Human Rights Watch said in a recent statement.

The bloodshed has not stopped. The UN is still debating whether or not to send peacekeepers. Even if a peacekeeping operation is approved, it will take six months for troops to be assembled. 

All photos courtesy of Alana La Rose Dancoste. 
Strip Karaoke, aka Bareoke, is just what it sounds like: you choose a song from the songbook, go up on stage, and perform a striptease while you sing. It happens the second Thursday of each month at Cabaret Playhouse, a former strip club, in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. I crossed Strip Karaoke off of my bucket list earlier this year, and learned that there’s more to stripping than meets the eye. People saw my boobs, but they also felt my transformation.

My friend, Leigh Keenan, had told me about their experience. She said it made her feel confident and sexy, and I wanted to know if everyone left the stage feeling the same... so I got myself into the strip-zone, despite feeling unusually self-conscious and timid. When I arrived around 11 pm, Cabaret Playhouse was already packed. This was the biggest Bareoke so far, with about 150 attendees compared to 40-50 in earlier editions. I loitered around the venue for 20 minutes before grabbing a slip of paper from the DJ booth. Pen in hand, I perused the thick songbook. With over 20,000 songs, I realized that the 40 minutes I had already spent looking for the perfect one was a procrastination tactic. I settled on “Piece of My Heart” by Janis Joplin and submitted myself to the experience.

Francis Lebel, Keenan’s boyfriend, said that he got righteously hammered the first time he performed in Bareoke. “It helps to shed the layers of social interaction,” he explained. Taking his advice, I ordered beers and whiskey shots, and after a while I forgot that I had even signed up. I was too distracted by watching people perform. The first performance that caught my attention was from a voluptuous and bold lady named Lesley Reade, who burst on stage (and out of her clothes) with a confidence I found inspiring. When she left the stage, she immediately joined the crowd, cheering and clapping for the next performer. It turned out that Reed is a member of local burlesque troupe Glam Gam, and after chatting with her for a bit, she introduced me to the concept of “body positivity,” which she described as feeling comfortable and confident in your own skin. It’s a notion that Bareoke encourages by allowing people to express themselves through performance. Reed had done some nude modeling while in art school, and was comfortable with getting naked in public. Getting up on stage at Bareoke was different, though, because it meant exposing her fear of performance, and of being judged.

Speaking with her made me notice the audience at Bareoke. No matter who was up there, the crowd responded positively. Three young girls got up on stage together, and I could tell they felt vulnerable by their rigid movements and barely-audible voices. However, the crowd was engaged, attentive and enthusiastic, and by the end all three girls had stripped down to their bras. 

“There was one woman who performed earlier that you could tell—she was shy,” Reed recounted. “But everybody was cheering her on so much that she just wanted to take her clothes off. Even if you’re feeling bad about yourself, you will still want to get up there and show yourself off because for some reason, it makes you confident.”



Lesley Reade at Mile End's Strip Bareoke.

As the night progressed, I tuned in to how open and accepting everyone was. I'd seen plenty of bush, boobs, and boners, but some people removed only a few tantalizing layers before making their exit. There’s no pressure to strip, and after one particular performer took the stage, I realized that there’s no pressure to sing, either. Luc-André D’Aragon is a regular who has attended the last 11 consecutive Bareoke nights. He doesn’t really sing, but rather strips off all his clothes within the first 30 seconds of the song and spends the remainder waving his member around like a flaming baton. Even though his clothes come off in lightning speed, D’Aragon still prepares a special outfit: he wears two golden G-strings for each performance. He comes alone, sticks to himself and, as he told me, just loves to strip.

By midnight, 27 people had put their names on the list. A little while later, Paquet announced: “It might not happen for everyone tonight, but we’re going to try our best to let everyone go up one time.” I breathed a sigh of relief, because although I’d taken the step to sign up, I might not have to go up after all. Fate didn’t work out in my favour though, around 2AM, I was summoned to the strip stage. Luckily I had been sipping a cup of straight brandy, so when I got up in front of the crowd, I was inebriated enough to let go of my insecurities and face my fears. Under my clothes I had on a lacy black thong with a crochet lingerie top, but even as I climbed on stage I was still convinced that getting nude would be too far outside my comfort zone. I starting singing, very badly, and looked down in horror at the realization that I had forgotten to remove my boots. Thus ensued several awkward and unsuccessful attempts at unlacing them—bending over, standing back up, removing one sweater, repeat. Each time it got to the chorus, I sang, “Take another little piece of my heart, now baby!” and took off a piece of clothing. Suddenly the song ended, and I was standing there, having stripped down to my lacy top, with pants and boots still on. The crowd was cheering and egging me on, and I felt like I hadn’t given enough of myself. I pulled off the final top layer, unleashed my boobs into the spotlight, threw my hands up, and looked to stage right where my friends were watching. I saw their proud faces, gaping smiles. They were clapping and cheering. I felt liberated. I built this moment up in my head so much that I was prepared to allow fear to dictate my decisions. It was the crowd at Bareoke that helped me break through that way of thinking. I showed a whole crowd of strangers my tatas. I did something I never thought I would do.

After gathering my scattered clothes, I walked off stage and was welcomed by Keenan, who had bought me a beer. I felt empowered, elated and confident. I felt sexy and accepted. A short, mustached man walked over and handed me another beer, and said my performance was great.

“Just so you know, that’s one of the creepy guys that’s been standing off to the side and eyeing women,” Keenan said. I thanked them for the heads up. At the end of the night, 15 or so people climbed on stage for a free-for-all singing-strip dance party. The same man who bought me a beer appeared and urged me on stage, so I followed. As soon as we got on the stage, he grabbed my shirt and tried to yank it off. I resisted. “Did I say you could take my shirt off?” I asked him. “Everybody’s doing it!” he replied. When I said that I didn’t want to strip again, he turned away and joined the crowd, leaving me alone.

Inappropriate behaviour isn’t common at Bareoke, but there have been instances where people have taken the event out of context and made people feel uncomfortable. McCarthy and Paquet have succeeded in creating a safe space for people to get naked in public, but it takes consistent effort and an open dialogue to ensure that it's maintained. There aren’t too many rules at Bareoke, but respect and consent are values the organizers think everyone should embody when they walk through the door. Just because someone took their clothes off on stage, doesn’t give someone else the right to make assumptions about their intent. As McCarthy and Paquet later pointed out, it’s neither a sex party nor a naked party. Sure, people get turned on, but the intention of Bareoke is to entertain and be entertained. It’s not like at a strip club, where the line between performer and audience is clearly defined. At Bareoke, everyone can experience both sides of the coin.

People who attend Bareoke have a strong sense of how special it is. The event welcomes all ages, colours, body types and genders, and is committed to keeping the cover cheap so that no one feels excluded. “The space that we’ve created is a place where everybody can enjoy a strip club,” McCarthy pointed out. “There are no hierarchies existing there. Everybody’s there to have a good time.” The concept may be simple, but the effect runs deep. This, McCarthy and Paquet confirmed, was intentional. “The first time that I ever performed and decided to take my clothes off on stage, it was an extremely powerful experience,” Paquet revealed. “For me, as a fat girl who often suffered from body image issues throughout my life, all of a sudden I felt powerful and sexy and accepted. I gained so much confidence through performance and I thought that this could be just as transformative for other people.” 

Screencap via Mankato Local CBS News. Thumbnail via Flickr User Lauri Rantala

The four-year-old son of an Oklahoma City woman named Ren Gaulrapp recently got into her supply of e-ciagrette juice and went to town. He was vomiting and had to be hospitalized, becoming the latest statistic in an apparent rash of of e-juice poisonings. He recovered fully.

This was just after a New York Times story had pointed out that there were 1,351 cases of some form of poisoning linked to e-juice in 2013, and that this constitutes a 300 percent increase from 2012. With respect to noticeability, it helped that the article carried the headline "Selling Poison by the Barrel." 

It's possible that the Gaulrapp poisoning case was not notable for anything other than timing, but her account is a little strange. Gaulrapp told her local news station, “I hear a little bit of a noise, come in, and he’s taken the lid off of all of them and has this liquid everywhere. He’s got it all over him. He’s been eating it." It's odd that there'd be enough around for him to take the lids off "all of them," and that they were accessible in the first place. Not to mention the child's ravenous appetite for a toxic chemical, although Gaulrapp mentioned that it was sweet.

Screencap via News 4 San Antonio

I recently asked medical toxicologist Dr. Cyrus Rangan about e-cigarette juice. "It does have kind of a palatable taste," he told me, referring to propylene glycol, the additive that produces the vapor effect. But it's the nicotine that likely does all of the poisoning. "The amount that’s in these e-cigarette preparations is hard to say, because there’s really not enough study on these issues to know exactly how much propylene glycol someone’s going to be exposed to by smoking these things, or being around someone who’s smoking them."

On one hand, maybe e-cigarette smokers are their own worst enemies and don't deserve to have nice things. It's not that hard to keep delicious e-juice away from children, or to just opt for child-proof containers. A Gizmodo article by Mario Aguilar made it clear that child-proofing is common.

Ren Gaulrapp. Screencap via Mankato Local CBS News

On the other hand, e-juice poisoning isn't a menace that should have America spooked. The cabinet under every American's sink contains enough poison to take down the Incredible Hulk. There are plenty of other tasty poisons like antifreeze, which poisons more people than nicotine annually. According to the nutbags who are scared of fluoride, even fluoridated toothpaste directly poisons about 1,000 kids per year, compared to nicotine's 1,351. I don't know whether this shows me that fluoride is deceptively dangerous or nicotine is surprisingly harmless.

But even if e-juice isn't as dangerous as all this sensationalism suggests, e-cigarettes have a huge controversy attached to them, and the media seems to be latching onto every sensational headline about e-cigarettes they can find. So for the type of social libertarians gunning for blanket legalization of all the fun substances, nicotine is a case study in letting the user be in control of the drug—1,351 poisonings is a crummy-sounding record for a new kind of poison just reaching the market.

The Man may be coming down unnecessarily on e-cigarettes, and it may not be fair, but the users of these products could maybe try advocating for themselves through their actions. They could be extra, extra responsible and call for regulations that require, say, that repulsive flavors be added to the liquid, or that child-proofing, and boring, kid-unfriendly packaging be made a rule.

But try and tell vaping enthusiasts what to do. People who smoke in movie theaters are rebels who don't need us telling them how not to poison their kids, man.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter

#cockinasock for @checkemlads testicular cancer awareness !screen shot of donation will follow as it's on my phone pic.twitter.com/zwX0yRMOfn

— Calum Best Official (@CalumBest) March 24, 2014

Above: Calum Best and Gary Lineker's brother, looking like things that come out of the woods at night to terrorise villagers

Last week, 2.6 million women sacrificed their make-up, raised their tired arms in the air, pouted, and took a #nomakeupselfie to raise awareness for breast cancer. This week, boys have found their own inane counterpart: the #cockinasock.

The cock in a sock concept, though probably as old as socks themselves, was most memorably championed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and since then it has gone from strength to strength, appearing in American Pie that time and bringing the homoerotic lols far and wide, from boarding school dorms to stinking holiday flats in Tenerife. That is until now, when it's become the latest weapon in the fight against ball cancer.

If you’re wondering what putting a sock on your dick and posting a picture of it on the internet has to do with raising money for charity, the mechanism is the same as the #nomakeupselfie. Take your picture, text the word "BEAT" to 70099 to donate three quid to fighting cancer and then encourage the giggling co-workers on your Facebook page to do the same. It’s the kind of viral campaign that gakky brand marketeers strive a lifetime to come up with.

Despite the fact that a bunch of the people who did a #nomakeupselfie text the wrong number (which may or may not have anything to do with their interest in the fundraising aspect), it raised more than £8 million in a week for Cancer Research UK. According to the charity’s website, this money will tangibly pay for ten clinical trials, which is obviously fucking great.

Nonetheless, the web has been awash for the last week with rants about how such campaigns vindicate “clicktivism”, which is basically the idea that internet activism is lazy and things like online petitions and charity marketing campaigns are taking the soul out of activism. Obviously there's some truth to this idea, but I think these lefty-evangelists are going to feel pretty fucking stupid if that sweet 8 mill cures a form of cancer.

What I will make a call on, is that #cockinasock seems to have significantly less to do with its charitable cause than the #nomakeupselfie. How do I know this? Because most of the people who've posted a picture of their cock to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram haven’t bothered to include the charity text number, let alone any reference to cancer prevention (have a look for yourself). The only thing these cocks in socks seems to be raising are the eyebrows of bored middle-aged women on their lunch breaks and the erections of gay bloggers revelling in the explosion of this phenomenon. Also: almost without exception, everyone who's doing it is a douchebag.

I like to think that #cockinasock is a parody; cynical boys mocking the #nomakeupselfie’s ironic disjunction between vulnerability and vanity, or its implication that 3 inches of makeup should be the norm for girls and anything less a novelty. But while #titsinmits, the latest hashtag to emerge, is obviously commenting on how absurd it is to stick a body part in a bit of material and post it for everyone from your teacher to your children to see (I’m waiting for #twatsinhats), #cockinasock seems to be little more than pokerfaced vanity. Calum Best did one, for fuck’s sake.

A hashtag is, in its essence, a call for attention – the whole point is searchability; visibility. Hashtagging a picture of yourself, let alone your cock, basically means that you want as many people to see it as possible. I do like to imagine the clinical process of taking this unashamedly vain photo, an experience that must feel a bit like filming a Big Brother application video (and describing yourself as “really outgoing”). When you consider that these boys could always donate the three quid sans naked selfie, you realise that the cock in a sock really is the domain of the wanker. And not even in the traditional sense of the sock.

#cockinasock is to pumped up lads what Movember was to hipsters. As the #nomakeupselfie is favoured by fake tan girls with tattooed eyebrows, so the #cockinasock phenomenon is the refuge of “ripped” boys with “sick" tribal tattoos, the kind of pseudo macho douchebags Clive Martin wrote about in his recent dissection of British lad culture. I suppose that if you’re going to take creatine to pump your body up like a lilo, it’s just the laws of geometry that your cock is going to look comparatively smaller, and that’s without steroids. A legitimised opportunity to photograph your ripped body and cover your tiny cock in a deceptively large appendage must be like Christmas come early. Of course #cockinasock was going to catch on with this lot.

I’m glad that most of the boys who've posted a #cockinasock photo seem to have benefited physically from their overwhelming arrogance, cause if naked selfies are going to clog my Twitter feed I’d admittedly rather look at a six packs than beer bellies. But what really annoys me is the arrogant assumption that anyone actually cares. I don’t have a cock, but I can imagine it’s a lot more gratifying for people to see it when they’ve actually asked.

knobs to small for a sock so had to go with 'cock in my baby sisters ugg boot' #cockinasock pic.twitter.com/KfdcExfQtC

— curtistandy (@curtistandy) March 21, 2014

@MillyAbraham

DONATE TO CANCER RESEARCH UK HERE.

Some Secret Service agents in uniform who are not drunk. Photo via Flickr user Edward Kimmel

Among the many indignities visited upon America’s first black president, we can now add one more: His Secret Service agents insist on raging.

The Washington Post reported late on Tuesday that three agents deployed to the Netherlands ahead of Barack Obama’s visit this week were sent home for drinking after one of them was discovered passed out on the floor of a hotel hallway. That frattish behavior apparently took place early Sunday morning, or about 24 hours before the president was scheduled to arrive. What's worse, these Police Academy–fodder drunks were members of the elite Counter Assault Team (CAT), which is responsible for beating back armed attackers if and when Obama's personal security detail is compelled to whisk him away to safety.

This isn't even the first time the Secret Service has been caught not-so-secretly getting fucked up. Back in April 2012, 11 agents deployed to Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of an Obama visit were sent home for hiring prostitutes—and one of the agents wouldn't even pay his. Oh, and in 2011, Daniel Valencia, an agent assigned to go to Iowa ahead of an official visit, was arrested for drunk driving. Last December, Ignacio Zamora Jr., a supervisor in charge of the president's detail—the most prized assignent in the professional security world—was discovered trying to force his way into a woman's hotel room, supposedly in hopes of retrieving a stray bullet he had left behind during some kind of liason that, I guess, involved him getting his gun (among other things) out.

So what gives? Why are so many Secret Service agents embarrassing themselves lately?

"The Secret Service's main cultural problem has never been sexism or hypermasculinity. It's alcoholism," Marc Ambinder, a journalist who has written extensively about the inner workings of the agency, told me. This is nothing new: Tales of agents getting too drunk to perform their jobs date to at least the Kennedy years—there's even a conspiracy theory that an inexpierenced agent who was on duty because other agents were too hungover to work accidentally killed JFK.

These public humiliations have been more common recently, however. Several experts I spoke to attributed this series of mini-scandals during the Obama administration to a leadership vacuum left by the promotion of rank-and-file agents to senior positions instead of filling those posts with people from the military or other law enforcement agencies, as was common in the past. So while after-hours excesses aren't exactly novel, they've been exacerbated by managers who are nearly as intent on protecting the Secret Service brand (and pleasing the White House staff) as guarding the president.

Case in point is the agency's decision to send the three boozing agents home, a clear overreacton according to Dan Emmett, a 21-year veteran of the agency and author of the upcoming memoir Within Arm's Length. "Sending them home 24 hours before presidential arrival is counterproductive to the mission," he told me. "When you take three CAT agents out of a team, you just decimated that team by 50 percent, thus rendering them ineffective."

Clearly the agency decided to get out in front of this latest PR disaster right away—it didn't want to make the mistake it made after the Colombia incident, when it declined to comment or act even as Ronald Kessler, a veteran journalist and author of In the President's Secret Service, was bringing it to light. Kessler told me that the agency's culture has been corrupted—which, he said, has led to a number of embarrassing snafus. He cited the Salahis, a couple who snuck into Obama's first official state dinner in 2009, as well as special requests during the George W. Bush years for agents to chauffeur Dick Cheney's daughter's friends to dinner parties (and when Cheney's wife, Mary, threw a fit after being told this was impossible, she got her detail leader removed by senior agency officals).

Still, the majority of the more than 100 agents Kessler has interviewed over the years don't imbibe in excess with any kind of frequency. And even though it's not great for the Secret Service's image that an overserved agent mistook a hotel hallway for a bed, no laws were broken and no one got hurt. Back in Dan Emmett's day—which included both Bush presidencies and the Clinton years—untoward boozing like that would have been punished with 30 days "on the beach," which is to say non-paid leave.

In this era of 24-hour media coverage, however, every time an agent gets too drunk to stand it's a news story and a black eye for the Secret Service. Its long-simmering alcohol problem can't be hidden from the public anymore, and bringing the hammer down on the agents hapless or unlucky enough to get caught isn't going to solve anything. Clearly, the guys in charge of protecting the president need to be protected from themselves.

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Mr Pimp Goodgame, king of the Instagram selfie

Recently, the assembled hacks at the Sunday Mirror’s headquarters were deciding how best to cover the story of Danny Bowman, a teenager diagnosed with "selfie addiction." Taking the sensitive, appropriate route, the British tabloid sent a photographer to take lots and lots of photos of him.

Selfies are the latest trend in popular art—the cave paintings of the Age of Aquarius, only much less inspiring than anything our ancient ancestors ever produced. They combine two of the most potent forces in the modern world—computer technology and celebrity-fueled narcissism—to create a form of expression so powerful that it can literally cure cancer.

However, with great power comes great danger, as anyone who’s watched the popular New Zealand hiking documentary Lord of the Rings will remember. In it, a ring becomes so powerful that a small man is forced to walk a very long way for reasons that are never made entirely clear before throwing the offending piece of jewellery into a volcano. Someone else becomes so corrupted by the ring's power that he starts talking to himself, loses all his friends, and ends up developing a pretty nasty skin condition from the stress of it all.

But is it possible to be addicted to taking selfies, the way you can be addicted to alcohol or nicotine or the One Ring? The case of Danny Bowman is certainly extreme. According to the Sunday Mirror article, "He dropped out of school, didn’t leave his house in six months, lost two stone [28 pounds] trying to make himself look better for the camera, and became aggressive with his parents when they tried to stop him. Finally, in a drastic attempt to escape his obsession, Danny took an overdose—but was saved by his mum Penny.”

The article goes on to say that Bowman was treated for “his technology addiction, OCD and body dysmorphic disorder,” and breathlessly reports that “the top psychiatrist [Dr. David Veale] at the clinic where Danny was treated revealed ­addiction to taking selfies is becoming so widespread it is now a recognized mental illness.”

Recognized by whom? That isn’t said, and it’s worth pointing out that "selfie addiction" doesn’t appear to be recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), or any other diagnostic manual.

In fact, neither is "technology addiction" or "internet addiction." That isn’t to say that the symptoms suffered by people like Bowman aren’t very real and debilitating, but they can generally be explained as signs of an underlying condition, rather than a condition in their own right. There’s no need to invoke a whole new addiction to selfies to explain the behavior of someone with OCD and body dysmorphia.

The truth is, internet addiction isn’t in the DSM because there’s no good evidence that it exists as a condition in its own right. A meta-analysis of ten years’ worth of studies published in 2009 highlighted some of the problems with research claiming to find evidence of it, which sounds eerily familiar to anyone who's studied similar attempts to find, say, the harm caused by pornography.

In the words of the authors, “The analysis showed that previous studies have utilized inconsistent criteria to define internet addicts, applied recruiting methods that may cause serious sampling bias, and examined data using primarily exploratory rather than confirmatory data analysis techniques to investigate the degree of association rather than causal relationships among variables. “

In other words, researchers were so focused on trying to prove that the condition existed that they couldn’t come up with a coherent, standard description of what exactly the symptoms were. The authors of the meta-analysis “found that prior studies on internet addiction have focused on 'proving' the existence of internet addiction or identifying the characteristics of internet addicts,” rather than doing the kind of rigorous analysis needed to rule out the possibility that these were just symptoms of other conditions.

Again, this isn’t to say that there aren’t instances where internet usage and mental health issues combine in a toxic way. Studies have increasingly shown links between internet trolling and personality disorders, for example, and I’ve spoken to several mental health workers in recent years who claim that groups of patients have joined forums to discuss ways to "beat" their therapists. The point here is that the underlying issue is the same, regardless of what technology is used—as those who checked into mental hospitals for "texting addiction" in the early 2000s will attest to.

A big problem not mentioned in the research, but noticeable in cases like Bowman’s, is that often these cases are being reported by private doctors who make money from treating the conditions they describe. Even if they have the best intentions in the world, Veale and his peers aren’t exactly unbiased observers.

Let’s be diplomatic, though, and assume that the promotion of terms like "selfie addiction" isn’t about profit. Could it be a useful way of getting stories about mental health into the media and raising awareness? Well, not if the comments under these stories are any indication. Of course, most people who leave comments on articles are cretinous morons, but some of the stuff posted on the coverage of Bowman’s case is particularly cruel, even by the standards of the internet's bottom feeders.

One Huffington Post reader offered Bowman life-changing medical advice: “Nothing a few firm slaps in the back of the head won't fix.” For other armchair psychologists, this is another generational problem: “SELFIE ADDICTION. Really? How about we just admit that there are a lot of younger, lazier people who are incredibly egotistical that they need to make everything about themselves?”

So well done on the whole "raising awareness" thing, guys. Sure, comments aren’t the best indication of the impact of a story, but I can’t help feeling that giving faddish names to serious conditions isn’t the best way to get people to take them seriously.

Follow Martin Robbins on Twitter.

Aziz. All photos via Martin Forgues. 

An unwritten rule of war states that no soldier shall be left behind. It seems that the rule doesn’t apply to interpreters and other Afghan civilian workers whom, while technically not soldiers, made a crucial difference on the ground and risked their lives as much as the fighters they worked with. This is an issue that’s been extensively covered when it comes to the American military’s oft-controversial relationship with the translators who assist them in the battlefield, but it’s a complex issue that’s rarely reported on when it comes to the Canadian military.

In October 2009, the Canadian government recognized the risks that interpreters face and implemented the Immigration Special Measures Program, so that Afghans who collaborated with the Canadian Forces during the country’s military stint in war-torn Kandahar would receive special consideration if they wished to relocate to Canada. Canadian troops were first deployed in January 2002 for a six-month combat tour—then returned in 2005 after spending two years patrolling Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, as part of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The Canadian government ordered the troops out of Kandahar in July 2011, and the small 950-strong force that stayed behind in Kabul to train Afghan security forces has been gradually returning home with a March 31^st, 2014 deadline, marking the end of Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan.

The program was aimed at facilitating the immigration of approximately 800 Afghans and their families, which is well over Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s (CIC) estimate of 550 applicants. When contacted, the federal department couldn’t, however, precisely state how many of them successfully came to Canada by the end of the program in July 2011.

Broken promises

For some former workers, the program became synonymous with broken promises and a sense of betrayal. Such is the case of 28 year-old Aziz, who recalls his time siding with Canadian troops on the battlefield, while sipping tea in the garden of an undisclosed location near Kandahar City. Taliban insurgents are constantly on the lookout for “traitors” like Aziz who helped foreign soldiers drive Taliban fighters out of their position, which helped lead to military defeat after military defeat.

Aziz helped the Canadian forces by continually listening to intercepted Taliban radio chatter, and sometimes hearing fighters yelling out their fear while fleeing a Canadian infantry company’s advance on a village. Translators like him also helped military commanders establish links with local Afghan leaders, by translating conversations and acting as cultural advisors. Aziz mostly worked with Kandahar’s Provincial Reconstruction Team, a civilian-military outfit charged with managing rebuilding projects in Kandahar. He started working there as an interpreter in 2007 until 2011.

Aziz applied to the immigration program right away, and his employer wrote him a letter of recommendation, which should have guaranteed his acceptance. “I was already threatened. Masked bikers were following me around as soon as I was getting out of the Canadian camp. And I never trusted the police with helping me,” he said.

Three years later and the threats keep coming, with devastating effects on his well-being: “I feel constantly watched. I get scared when I see someone staring at me while talking on the phone.” His family also receives death threats and are forced to live with his in-laws in a fortified residence on the outskirts of Kandahar City. “I must go hide in other provinces where I stay with friends. I also had to flee to Pakistan for three months. I travel hundreds of kilometers every year and most of the money I earned during my work with the Canadians was spent trying to stay alive,” Aziz said. Interpreters working with Canadian troops earned close to $1,000 CAD a month, in a country where the annual gross national income is under $700 per capita.

Still, he’s unable to come to Canada. As of January 2014, he’s working towards a fourth attempt to immigrate. While the lives of Aziz and his colleagues remain in constant danger, Citizenship and Immigration Canada remains vague on why some Afghans are denied immigration. They insist that Afghan applicants must document the reasons why they feel threatened. The federal department also added in an email that a special committee evaluates whether or not the risks taken by Afghan workers are legitimate, after reviewing their application files. “I don’t understand. The simple fact that I worked for the Canadians should be enough to justify my acceptance,” said Aziz.

When I reached out, the CIC didn’t want to comment any further, but NDP immigration critic Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe finds the situation unacceptable. “The end of the special measures program is not an excuse to leave those Afghans behind,” she said. “They risked their lives alongside our soldiers. The government must keep their promise.” 

A similar situation is currently plaguing 20-something Ali Ahmad, a young Kandahari who worked as a kitchen assistant in a Canadian army camp. His cousin Abdul also worked a similar position at Kandahar Air Field, the large multinational military base built around Kandahar International Airport and ISAF’s southern Afghanistan headquarters. Reached through email, he mentions trying to contact Canadian diplomatic authorities many times at the country’s Kabul and Islamabad embassies only to be stopped at the gates every time.

He also claims to receive night letters on a regular basis from the Taliban. Such letters are a form of psychological weapon, a propaganda tool used to strike fear upon their intended targets. According to him, the threats have been less frequent lately, but the damage has been done and he feels no longer safe unless he can seek refuge in the country for which he risked his life.

It’s hard to determine how many Afghan civilian workers have been killed or at least attacked by the Taliban, but the Taliban does regularly post statements on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s official website—the Emirate being Afghanistan’s Taliban-run shadow government. Their English website features press releases highlighting insurgent activity and attacks on foreign troops, and their “Afghan traitors” or “government puppets.” The Emirate’s Twitter account features similar statement, though they also serve Taliban propaganda efforts and might include disinformation elements.

In the meantime, Aziz and Ali will keep evading danger and threats from the Taliban, while a federal government committee from the country they risked their lives for, slowly decides their fate. 

Jains meditating. Photo via Wiki Commons

In prehistoric times, humans had to hunt for dinner with big rocks—or run away from it when it didn’t die off—if they wanted to survive another day. Fast-forward to the modern universe, and we’re almost effortlessly sourcing meals thanks to the aid of technology, from microwaves to ovens and refrigerators that fuel our gluttonous lives. But despite the world of #foodporn on Instagram and food bloggers who like to showboat the latest food trends, there are many global communities of great self-restraint around the subject of strict dietary disciplines. 

Whether it’s politically or ethically motivated, a concern over health and longevity, the result of some highly questionable sanity, an eating disorder, or the neurotic eating habits of the modern eater, humans—myself included—are notorious for self-imposing restrictions on what we put into our bodies. But one of the most notable motivations for food restrictions stems from religious beliefs.

Piety is all up in our food in terms of influence, with nearly 84 percent of the global population practicing some sort of religion whose principal texts instruct dietary restriction. Aside from the degree to which these restrictions are followed or still seen as relevant, most religions of the world banish certain foods. The looser side of nutritional rules falls into the range of Christianity and Mormonism, while Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism fall into tighter sanctions.

But while keeping kosher, halal, or vegetarian may sound over-the-top to some, there is one particular religion that surpasses all the others in the art of saying ‘hell no’ to deliciousness. Known as Jainism, it’s the religion that’s so extreme in its dietary restrictions that it makes all the primary global religions—even those with the strictest of dietary rules—look like a culinary free-for-all. 

Jainism is one of the oldest and most ascetically extreme Indian-based religions in the world, with a current practicing population of around five million people. The name itself comes from the Sanskrit word Jin, meaning to conquer, and speaks to the Jains’ continual struggle to conquer all bodily needs, sensations, and worldly attachments, which eventually results in moksha (enlightenment) if you stick to the plan. Moksha breaks them out of the cycle of rebirth so that they don’t have to keep getting reborn over and over again into this shitty world. Jain philosophy also stresses the importance of ahimsa, or non-violence, to all living, karmic beings, in order to achieve moksha. But Jains believe that everything is a karmic being—essentially having a soul or whatever. This includes bugs, plants, root vegetables, and microorganisms. 

Jain hierarchy of beings via Wiki Commons

So when you mix a combination of extreme asceticism, extreme non-violence, and and an all-inclusive karmic cycle that even maggots get to be a part of, it results in the world’s most intense diet ever.

This means no meat, no fish, no eggs, no garlic, no onions, no root vegetables, no honey (which is seen as violence against bees), no alcohol, no fermented foods (it’s violent against microorganisms), no unfiltered water (it may have small organisms in it), no mushrooms, no fungus, and no yeast.

For stricter Jainism, there is the additional restriction of avoiding food consumption at night. And consuming any food that has been left out overnight is a no-no because this is violence against microorganisms or small bugs that may now be hanging out in the leftovers. Don’t even think about trying to look at the dairy group.

Shrimad Rajcandra, Jain and mentor to Mahatma Gandhi. Photo via Wiki Commons

Jain eating habits read as an exercise in saying no, because eating anything on the “do not eat list” equals negative karmic points. Besides the basic items that Jains are allowed to eat, their diet is made even more extreme by limiting themselves to eating only enough food to sustain human life, as well as the 30 plus types of partial and total fasting—from the eight-day to the 180-day fast—which act as a killer cleanse for your soul. 

But the most extreme part of all Jain religious dietary restriction is the practice of santhara, a religious vow of voluntary death by fasting. 

Currently undertaken by an estimated 200 Jains per year—typically by the elderly, ill, or those who have surpassed worldly attachment—this final fasting unto death is seen as a blessed approach to purifying the body. By fasting and purging yourself of negative karma, the effort (hopefully) results in achieving moksha. With their prolonged death—a product of complete fasting from all food and water—the individual has ample time to meditate, release all physical and emotional attachment, and come to death in a peaceful manner while being surrounded by fellow Jains who chant and sing over them.

Recently, there has been great debate as to if santhara should be considered suicide or a form of euthanasia, both of which are illegal in India. But talks of making this practice illegal continue to be challenged as an unconstitutional violation of religious freedoms by Jains. It seems that, for now, the right to santhara—and an almost martyric death—is legally protected, which means that microorganisms and maggots are safe from consumption, at least within the Jain community.

Arizona, 1980. An outdoor fitness group in the retirement community of Sun City does exercises early in the morning. The oldest participant was a 94-year-old who had run a 50-second hundred meters in the Senior Olympics.

After stumbling into photojournalism in the 50s, David Hurn acheived fame by photographing the Beatles and other pop-culture icons of the 60s. The British photographer also made much of the original artwork for Barbarella and the James Bond films, and shot fashion for publications like Harper's Bazaar. But that stuff was just a day job that allowed him to pursue his true passion—photographing sublime moments in mundane life.

I recently talked to Hurn about wedding photography, colonoscopies, and the importance of not getting "mystical" about taking pictures of stuff.

VICE: Compared with a lot of photographers, the type of work you've done through your career varies hugely: You've gone from war photography to documenting the pop stars of the 60s to documentary work and street photography. Did you consciously set out to try new things?
David Hurn: It wasn’t that I wanted to try something new every now and then. When I started, in the mid 50s, there weren’t galleries or anything like that. If you were involved in photography you were either a wedding photographer, a science photographer, or you were involved in that word journalism. So that’s what we all did. I wanted to be a vet, or an archaeologist, but I had no qualifications at all. I was in the army doing national service when I first picked up a camera, and realized I quite enjoyed it. I was a shy person and photography’s rather good for shy people; you hide behind something and have an excuse to be somewhere. If someone asks what you are doing, rather than crumpling and jabbering insanely, you say, "Oh, I am a photographer."

So when did it get serious?
I had one of those moments that change one’s life: I saw a photo in a copy of Picture Post. In the army we were led to believe that all Russians ate their children, but I saw this photo of a Russian army officer buying his wife a hat in a department store. And I started to cry. It moved me immensely. My father had been away during the war, and when he came back the first thing he did was take my mother to Howells [a department store] in Cardiff and buy her a hat. Suddenly I realized that I believed much more in the photo than I did in any propaganda. I realized that photography really can move people, just by being accurate.

Budapest, Hungary, 1956. In a lull between fighting, life goes on.

How did that moment transform itself into a career?
I decided there and then that was what I wanted to do. I left the army. It was the mid 50s, and the Hungarian revolution was starting. My instinct was that if I went there I would have something to photograph. So the initial work I did, which I suppose you would say was to do with violence, was simply done because it seemed a good entry to something I knew very little about.

Frankly, I didn’t like it very much. Being shot at has never been my idea of a holiday experience. I got lucky, met some LIFE magazine reporters and followed them. I got some photos published in LIFE and distributed to Picture Post and the Observer. I learned very early that it’s better to start at the top than the bottom. From the top, you can cling on desperately—if you start at the bottom, it’s a long climb.

So your start in photography was in conflict reportage, but you quickly left that behind—is that right?
The reality was that I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to do. Partly because around me were people like Don McCullin, Philip Jones Griffiths, Ian Berry, and all of them, and they were far more interested in the political aspect than I was. So I had to find my niche. I started to work for, primarily, American magazines. I wasn’t making any money and by chance got into that rather actor-y, arts-y world. I met an actor named Richard Johnson, photographed him in ‘6'68 or something, which led to me covering a film, where I met a publicist… It’s all this sort of networking thing. The publicist got me to work with him on big films. But all of these things were very peripheral to my life. I did the original posters for the Bond films and most of the iconic stuff for Barbarella, and most of the original stuff for the Beatles’ films. But they were all things that were done because it was necessary in order to do what I really wanted to do, which was observe the world.

Usk, Wales, 1994. Ladies night in the local pub.

Commercial work was a means to an end, then?
Yes, absolutely. In 1970, when I came back to Wales I then virtually never took an assignment again. I worked on my own projects. That’s not to say that if a magazine wanted to pay for work I was doing I would say no. But there is a difference.

Do you think that too many photographers aren’t as open-minded and malleable as that? That they are unwilling to do commercial work or see it as conflicting with their ideals?
I think it’s one of the bad things that happens during university or a college education. A lot of the people who teach photography have a very mystical idea of what photography should be. They don’t tell the students that the first thing to do as a photographer is not die of malnutrition. If you do, you aren’t going to shoot many pictures. Part of the trick is [finding a balance] between doing what you want and making a living. If someone wants you, early in your career, to shoot a wedding, you should go and shoot the wedding. You can learn a lot from shooting a wedding. You work to a script. You need a picture of the bride and groom. It’s no good shooting a bunch of flowers and saying, "These flowers are lovely, they give me the feeling of spring," or something—it doesn’t work. You learn from doing anything well, whether it's what you want to do or not. Stay alive, concentrate on learning, and when you get the chance to do what you want, you will have the [skill] to do it well. Photography is basically a job. Like any job, you have to understand it—the context, the audience.

Porth Oer (Whistling Sands), Wales, 2004. Enjoying the beach.

Do you there's a level of pretentiousness around photography?
There’s an incredible amount of it about certain types of photography. We hear that if there’s a fire in a house, the first thing people grab is not the Cartier-Bresson on the wall—it's the wedding album. I think that should be discussed more. What it means is that something as simple as a wedding photo is incredibly important to people. If you are going to shoot a wedding, shoot it well. It’s an honorable thing to do—in many ways far more important than somebody taking photos without even observing anything. Photography is about observing. The world is wonderful, go and record it—record what you find wonderful and hope that someone else is going to like it. And maybe hope that the person who likes it likes it enough to pay you for it.

Pwllheli, Wales, 1974. The indoor pool at Butlin's Holiday Camp.

That’s the other side of your work, and really the main part of your life’s work, it seems: Observing everyday life, mostly in small towns, be it in Arizona or Wales. Whithout sounding rude, is it about "small towns," normality, maybe even banality?
I once wrote something: "Life, as it unfolds in front of the camera, is full of such complexity, such wonder, such surprise, that I find it unnecessary to create new realities." Now, that’s rather pompous. But what I meant is it’s more pleasure for me to record things as they are. I always wanted to be a recorder of life as I see it. When I came back to Wales I was fascinated by the word culture. I didn’t really know what people meant by it. But I decided that if I went around Wales, and maybe made some books—one on the places people live, one on the way people live, one on the landscape they live in, and so on—then maybe I could eventually come to understand what that culture is. And that’s basically what I do. I enjoy photographing the mundane.

And that's the work you continue to do today?
I am 80 now, and I tend to be very tenacious, so when I sat down and realized I was getting older, slower, I thought: What can I do that will last me another ten years of working? I was luckily reading a John Updike book, which I enjoyed, and there was a quote in there: "Giving the mundane its beautiful due." I love that.

I decided then that one of the major projects I would do is photograph my village. That’s what I do now. It's so interesting—you go to the Women’s Book Society and see eight women discussing a book they have read. I find it incredibly interesting but incredibly difficult, too. It’s very mundane. And if you aren’t careful you start to play tricks to overcome that, with a new lens, or Photoshop, or whatever, but actually what you have to do is end up with photos that are basically boring—where the only interest comes from small details and gestures.

Llandovery, Wales, 1996. Churchyard maintenance.

So that’s what interests you—normality?
What I am interested in? I don’t really care in a way. You can be a wedding photographer, a war photographer, or someone who calls themselves an "artist"—though nothing flabbergasts me more, whenever you ask someone what they mean by "artist," they take it as an attack. But if you called yourself a "plumber," I know what you mean. If they want to be an artist, fine.

The point is that, for me, anything is interesting as long as it’s done well. I mean, if you want a hierarchy of importance then the most important picture in most people’s lives is often taken by a camera up their arse. You can’t get more down to earth than that. If you want a hierarchy, then colonoscopy or radiography is probably the most important photography there is. The rest is pretty mundane in comparison—but that’s also not what it’s about. It is about a person trying to show someone else what they are personally interested in, in a way that the viewer might not have seen it. Take Weegee’s photos—I love them. I don’t want to be a press photographer, but I see those photos and I just marvel that somebody with a box with a hole in the front could do what he did.

Scroll down for more of David Hurn's photos.

Aberavon, Wales, 1971. Elderly men sunbathing near the beach.

California, 1992. Wheeltree Inn truck stop.

Six Bells, Wales, 1975. The last chapel walk David head of in Wales—congregations would join the procession as the singers passed their chapel.

Arizona, 1979. Monster arm wrestling at the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix

Sun Lakes, Arizona, 1997. The Dancing Grannies are a five-member team in their early 60s to mid 70s.

Arizona, 1979. Two friends pose for their photograph in front of a prize-winning car at a Low Riders meeting on the outskirts of Phoenix.

Barry, Wales, 1971. Barry Island Fun Fair

A photo from David's current project, in which he's photographing his village of Tintern

As a Catholic school student for nine and half years and an altar boy for the first half of those years, I know a thing or two about the best-selling work of fiction known as the Bible. And just like most fans of The Lord of The Rings, X-Men, and other classic works of fantasy in the past, I was a bit concerned when I heard about Hollywood’s adaption of the inspiring Bible story of Noah. Like any other adaptation, there’s a million ways to fuck up that story and very few ways to get it right. Thankfully, most of my skepticism was put to rest when I learned that Darren Aronofsky—the director of the greatest, most spot-on portrayal of New Jersey in film (The Wrestler)—would be at the helm.

Over the past 18 months since my book, Skinema, was optioned to be made into a scripted TV show, I’ve become friends with Darren through my producer/his fiancée, Brandi Milbradt. They were kind enough to invite my wife and me to last night’s NYC premiere of Noah. As a friend, I figured I should give Darren some press (since no one else is talking about it) and write my honest take on the film. But being a real friend means telling someone the hard truths when everyone else is blowing smoke up his ass. That said, I feel it's my duty to let Darren know exactly what he’s gotten wrong with his new film.

So in honor of the 12 Commandments, I offer you 12 things that Noah got wrong.

1. The biggest and most annoying flaw in the entire movie is that they never get to the part where Noah gets eaten by the whale. I hate when movies like The Hobbit and Noah stretch a short tale of fiction into three movies. Are we not going to even see the whale until the third film? What the hell? I felt like such an asshole sitting in the theater in my "Shamu Rules" T-shirt waiting for a whale that never came.

2. Five minutes in I’m asking why Hannibal Lecter has long hair, how he is alive in this time line, and why he didn't eat Noah when he dragged him into the cave. I was confused for the entire rest of the movie.

3. For a movie based on the book of Genesis, they failed to seize the obvious opportunity to use any song by the British rock band Genesis or even one of Phil Collins's solo tracks. I mean, "In Too Deep" would be good but "Against All Odds" seems like such a no-brainer, and I’m quite certain it’s never been used in a movie before.

4. There was no singing. If The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has taught us anything, it’s that all movies should start out with a 30-minute Led Zepplin cover sung by dwarves so that if anyone is running late to the theater they don’t have to risk a DUI to avoid missing anything.

5. I got into the premiere late, so I missed where the movie took place, but with that much rain I assumed it was Seattle. Darren, I can assure you, there are not two black-fronted parakeets in all of Seattle. Now or then. And to go back to my previous point, if the film is set in Seattle, how could they not use a Nirvana tune? Like the cover of "Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam"?

6. Noah is barely over two hours long. At 139 minutes, it falls way below the 201-minute Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which I was certain this would eclipse (especially if they got to the whale). My suggestion would have been to add some more singing (of which, as I mentioned, there was none).

7. Neither Russell Crowe or Jennifer Connelly has a nude scene. (For what it's worth, we do see Hermione Granger with bare shoulders, though.)

8. Sadly, for whatever reason, the role of God was not reprised by George Burns. I’m assuming it was a budgetary issue. We never see or hear God, either. In my opinion I would have had voice-over actor James Earl Jones be the voice of God so we could all pretend the Force and Darth Vader truly do surround and penetrate us while binding the galaxy together.

9. Aside from the Watchers, there are no black guys in the movie. I’m not sure if the story of Noah and the Whale takes place before or after Jesus’ time, but one thing we all know for a fact is that Jesus was black. So even if this story pre-dates Jesus, we should, in the words of Buggin’ Out from Do the Right Thing, “Have some brothers up on the wall.” If it were up to me, I’d have an all-black cast. Sorry, Russell Crowe. You did a great job (and who isn’t a Romper Stomper fan?), but I think Jerrod Carmichael would’ve made a better Noah.

10. Although the pop culture homages were hilarious (like when Noah goes to touch Seth’s glowing finger à la E.T. and when young Hermione gets her magic wand stabbed into her stomach), but I found them completely inappropriate for a religious film. Religion is no laughing matter.

11. Sorry to give away the ending, but in the final scene of the movie Noah eats grapes. Not berries, as referenced the entire film.

12. Finally, I would have made the dove that signifies the end of the flood a little cooler, and by cooler I mean a pterodactyl, one that shoots lasers from its eyes and eats baby girls and ultimately fights Godzilla.

Noah opens in theatres tomorrow.

Go to Chris's website and follow him on Twitter.

UNC coach Roy Williams showing displeasure at a game in 2007. Photo via Flickr user kevin813

The NCAA basketball tournament isn’t quite the “One Shining Moment” montage CBS would have you believe it is, but as a television program you can watch that makes you feel stuff—happy, heartbroken, nervous as hell as a long three arcs toward the rim—it works about as well as any sporting event. The games have a squirrel-loose-in-the-dog-park franticness to them. Announcer Bill Raftery is there, ejaculating poetically. A bunch of teenagers from nowhere occasionally upset a bunch of teenagers from somewhere and do celebratory goofy-slash-gleeful dances. You’ve got an office pool going, and it turns out no one you work with knows anything about college basketball, but it also turns out no one really cares about not knowing. We are, nearly all of us, having a good time.

You know who's not having a good time? Rick Pitino, who's making a face best described as “angry about the orgasm he’s having.” On Friday, with five and a half minutes left to go in the game, Pitino’s Louisville team was beating Saint Louis by 13. It was pretty much over, but Pitino didn’t give a shit about the score—he began berating junior guard Wayne Blackshear like an Olive Garden waiter who has picked the wrong fucking Thursday to serve him room temperature grilled chicken Toscano, all because Blackshear had just turned the ball over, apparently for the sole purpose of infuriating his coach. Once Pitino finished with Blackshear, he went on to harangue the various Newtonian forces that caused his player to fumble the ball out of bounds. Inertia’s playing with its head up its ass tonight.

That sort of scene is common enough that a casual viewer might wonder why all these old white guys are so pissed off all the time. College basketball coaches, as a general rule, could stand to tone it down. Their aggro flourishes are strange enough during relatively inconsequential mid-season rock fights, but the way their perma-peeved demeanors go to 11 during the tourney is particularly at odds with the giddy, carnivalesque atmosphere that pervades it. They are at a concert refusing to look up from the ground. They are at the zoo glaring at a giraffe. They are at the park and thinking about being at the office. They are with their wives and wishing they were dead. March Madness has a single sour note, and it’s Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan’s scowl.

The coaching profession is attractive to psychological Napoleons, the types of people who consider intimidation a management tactic. Some, like Bobby Knight—a chair-tosser and player-choker, a spitting lunatic—become beloved abusive paterfamiliases. In the myths sportscasters tell about them, their unchecked vindictiveness becomes part of What Makes Them Great: Knight once made Steve Alford strip naked while the rest of the team was ordered to pelt him with maple syrup-filled water balloons. That day, Alford learned a valuable lesson about questioning authority. Less skilled pricks, like former Rutgers coach Mike Rice—who struck his players and called them faggots—are banished to the Crazy Asshole bin of history. The difference between these two fates comes down to little more than success. You have permission to be a bully, so long as you recruit well and make a few Final Fours.

It takes a special kind of jerk to act like Bob Knight all the time, but March Madness has a way of bringing out every coach’s most virulent I Am Not Fucking Around tics. The result is a rainbow of dad rage. Florida’s Billy Donovan becomes an aggrieved eagle. Indiana’s Tom Crean transforms into an anguished ham. Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim flails his arms and whines. North Carolina’s Roy Williams does this thing where he’s, like, pooping into an imaginary hole in the ground and also he’s furious about it. Kentucky’s John Calipari makes himself big, like a bear is approaching.

This is what happens when you put unfathomably competitive men in charge of powerless college kids during a tournament in which contract extensions and bonus money are up for grabs. (For the coaches, that is. The players get nothing—oh, sorry, they get an education.) There are occasionally gross overtones of paternalism in this arrangement; coaches are like parents who don’t fret about scarring their children in service of a greater good. They would tell you that greater good is Making Men Out of Boys, but pretty obviously their ultimate goal is Beating Villanova.

Coaching is a peculiar job in that you’re like a superhero whose signature power is planning. You run the practices, you pick the lineup, you set the substitution patterns, you call the plays, and yet, as is painfully apparent when your team blows three straight defensive assignments, there are times when none of this affects the contest you’re hellbent on winning. You can’t will your point guard to stop making dumb passes, so naturally you curse and have third-graderish full-body meltdowns. (Keep in mind, you have a gigantic ego and the self-control of a relapsing addict.) You scream at your players. You scream at the refs. You scream at the concept of imperfect basketball. You simply—fist pounding on the scorer’s table—will not accept your perfect gameplan being thwarted by some slapdick teenager being unable to execute a proper half-court trap. Your life is a series of aneurysms.

All this animal fury should be deeply unpleasant. It probably is, for the players who are on the receiving end of it. James Naismith, who invented basketball, famously took pride in creating a game that, he thought, didn’t require a coach. Mike Krzyzewski drill-sergeanting his team, then petulantly whipping a pen at a chair for an assistant to pick up, makes a decent case for the long-dead Naismith being correct. But somehow, amidst the spectacle of offenses careering like a shopping cart down an incline and Verne Lundquist chortling and the Harvard band making hilariously derpy excitement faces, Coach Anger is not the ugly or terrifying thing it otherwise would be. Instead, these human monuments to fury come off as transparently silly. They are trying to micromanage the apocalypse with a clipboard and a temper, and of course they’re failing.

The tourney is at its most enjoyable when the momentum of a game causes it to hop its rails. Players are losing their nerve and their shit and some are sprouting wings. Some until-now-anonymous sophomore with big balls—onions!—is drunk on himself and has ditched the plan. Fuck the offense: He pulls up from 25 feet and lets fly. The arena inhales. In the background, one blinkered man is performing an unintentional comedy routine. He’s beside himself, kneading his hands into his skull, and he doesn’t understand what’s obvious to everyone else: This is the best part.

Follow Colin McGowan on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr User petersnoopy

Kim Jong-un has reportedly issued a mandate in North Korea that all adult men must now have the same haircut as he has, reinforcing that uniquely North Korean brand of oh-fuck-that's-creepy.

Savvy marketers know that the best brands tell complete, consistent stories in which every consumer touchpoint connects to the bigger brand story arc. In the case of North Korea, we're talking about a nation-brand, so this is a brand that has two different demographics: those within the country and those outside of it. Inside North Korea, the consumer is engaged with content reminding him that the nation is powerful and loving. Outside of North Korea, the reputation is of a country full of brainwashed, malnourished, abused people controlled by a petulant, spiteful, ineffective, and frequently embarrassing leadership. Forcing all adult men to share the same haircut as their dictator is an effective way to reinforce that image to both demographics.

Among brand strategists, the Kim family are regarded as visionaries. They how to control a narrative. North Korea is a special place: As the last example of a cult-of-personality utopia, such as the Soviet Union brand under Stalin or China under Mao, the Kim family leaders are worshiped not just as heroes but as gods. Those in the marketing industry would refer to this as a "controlled brand environment."

Statue of Kim Il-sung. Photo via Flickr User Roman Harek

This environment began with Kim Il-sung, who, after being installed by Soviet leadership at the close of the Korean War, consolidated his power with his core demographic by producing consistent content that stayed on-brand with the message, Your leader is supreme and heavenly, and he is a master of all trades, and he loves you. Some even came to believe that Kim Il-sung controlled the sun and the weather, which is a great example of an especially engaged active user base. At the same time, Kim Il-sung purged any brand detractors from within by force and then—and this part is brilliant marketing—blamed it on his competitors, the Americans. That's just masterful storytelling.

As a result of these efforts, this is a demo that is very engaged with the North Korea brand and the Kim family. The worshipful engagement remains extensive. In 2012, a 14-year-old girl drowned during her attempts to save a portrait of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il from a flood at her school. The North Korean people's brand of fervent worship extended to Kim Il-sung's son, Kim Jong-Il, when he assumed power and then again now, after his passing, to his heir, Kim Jong-un. What we know about Kim Jong-un is only what we infer from his actions. We know that, like his father, he's obsessed with basketball. We know that he loves missiles with nuclear capabilities just as much as his father did. And now with the reported haircut mandate, we know he has a knack for branding like his grandfather.

Photo via Flickr User Roman Harek

North Korean fashion-policing is nothing new. Under Kim Jong-il, in 2005 the state media ran a five-part television special called “Let’s Trim Our Hair in Accordance with the Socialist Lifestyle” (excellent title) that directed viewers to choose from one of a handful of conservative hairstyle options. The special was part of an overall campaign against Western fashion influence, particularly men with long hair, labeling them unhygienic anti-socialist fools and “blind followers of bourgeois lifestyle.”

Men are required to keep their hair no longer than two inches, although older men get a small exemption to allow for comb-overs.

Since science is something the Kim family can and will shape however they see fit, the special claimed that long hair harms “human intelligence development” because long hair takes oxygen away from nerves in the head. It didn’t explain why women were allowed to grow long hair, leaving the viewer to conclude on their own that women are simply less developed, obviously.

A separate but similarly themed special had a hidden-camera segment that caught violators of the rule, like a To Catch a Predator for haircut violations. The show even identified violators by name and address, exposing them to ridicule from peers, as a warning of what might happen if you didn’t fall in line.

Not everyone is on board with Kim Jong-un’s directive, however, making some North Korea brand loyalists into brand questioners. They say it looks dorky. They say the haircut looks like that of Chinese smugglers. Those consumers better think about getting their content to shut the fuck up if they like their personal brand being "not living in a prison labor camp."

Women, however, are still free to choose from any one of the 14 state-sanctioned haircuts.

Follow Grant Pardee on Twitter.

So you want to know what it’s like to put up a play on Broadway? I’ll tell ya. But, I should note, the way a classic play is put on (specifically John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, in which I am currently starring) is much different from the way a new one is produced.

With a new play the playwright will most likely be in rehearsals every day, looking over the director’s shoulder and telling him or her how to manifest the story and themes through the bodies of actors and work of the designers. There are usually rewrites on the fly because new dynamics are found while putting the scenes on their feet. This forces the actors to learn new lines, often through many iterations, and sometimes the night before a performance. Essentially, when mounting a new play, the director is offered the luxury of having a partner by his or her side to help guide everything until it’s just right.

With a classic play—especially if the writer is dead, like John Steinbeck is dead—it’s the opposite. The words are holy; do NOT fug with them. In movies, depending on whom you’re working with (i.e., not David Kelley or Aaron Sorkin) you can often mold the lines to fit your mouth a little better. The upside of this is that performances can be made more natural. The downside is that sometimes the nuances of great writing can be shaved off or dumbed down. Then you have movies like This Is the End, in which every scene involves at least a little improvisation and is often entirely improvised and much of the dialogue is “written” in front of the camera. Of course, this is an art in and of itself, and it can yield great results, but usually only with people like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg who know how to guide such free-form methods into the proper channels of the story so that the overall spine of the film is preserved.

Of Mice and Men includes plenty of slang from the day (California rancher talk, circa 1937): tons of double negatives (“not say nothing”), and plenty of instances of “bastards,” “sons of a bitches,” “goddamn,” “Jesus!” and “hell,” all of which resulted in the novella being banned from many schools when it came out. The successful play arrived soon after the novella, then the black-and-white film, making Of Mice and Men an early trifecta of entertainment-industry success. So, for an actor working on this material, there is an emphasis on learning the lines exactly as written, but often one struggles with trying to remember if at a specific moment a guy is called a son of a bitch or a bastard. (I know, I know, it’s the poetry of the fields, the rhythms of the workingman.)

People who don’t really understand acting might think that the biggest challenge when performing in a play is learning the lines. Although a solid grasp of the lines will help free the performer to deal with his circumstances and movement on stage, learning lines is also just part of the deal, like a musician in an orchestra learns sheet music. But the learning of the lines of a classic play—verbatim, as if the lines were holy—makes an actor approach a role in a completely different way from how he or she might tackle it otherwise. If a line doesn’t make sense, or it sounds awkward coming out of your mouth, you can’t change it. You need to find some way of making sense of it. (And if you really can’t do that, just fake it and say it with conviction.)

As Chris O’Dowd—who plays Lenny in our Of Mice and Men production—has said, if you think your character wouldn’t say a certain line, you’re wrong. Instead of building a character from the inside out as an enterprise separate from the script (understanding what makes him tick emotionally, how he sounds, what he moves like, etc.), one can look to the script for most of this; it’s all in there. Many screenwriters might argue that their writing works the same way as that of playwright, but narratives in movies and television work differently, and often behavior, action, and silence are better. But on stage, the words rule and propel everything (at least in conventional Broadway productions; we’re not talking about the Wooster Group or the Living Theatre, where the tyranny of the script is consciously overthrown). Behavior and action are important, of course, but they both grow from the text. Stage blocking and stagecraft is there to serve the delivery of the meaning of the words.

The thing about plays is that everything is worked on beforehand, meaning that on a film there is an editor, and even though the actors perform the scenes in front of the camera so that they have a rhythm, a filmmaker always knows that the tempo of the scene can be adjusted in post. In addition, films involve the framing of the camera shots, and in this way the attention of the audience is directed very closely. On a stage, the members of the audience can look wherever they please (although it is a stage director’s job to narrow the focus of that attention through blocking, but that could be the subject of an entire article itself). This means that all the work that can be done in post—choosing shots, their order, size and duration—is done beforehand. The piece is designed as a whole, to be performed live, and thus, the rhythms and blocking must be worked out in advance.

In this modern age when there is little time for out-of-town tryouts (or at least in plays featuring movie stars who can’t commit years to a production), there is typically a month of previews for Broadway shows. Before doing Of Mice and Men, I hadn’t realized the importance of these previews. They are like test screenings for movies, except there’s a paying audience. But hell, it makes sense, because even in a preview the performers are live, and that is one of the main things about the theater, as Walter Benjamin pointed out in the 1930s: As opposed to the performer on film, the live performer has an “aura.” So, almost regardless of the quality of the performance, there is already something about having the performers in front of an audience that distinguishes it from filmed performance. Ostensibly previews aren’t judged, even though in this era of instant gratification and social media the word gets out pretty damn fast. Thank goodness we’ve had standing ovations since our first preview.

For Adam Baruchowitz, every t-shirt tells a story—whether or not he wants to hear it.

“People want to explain to you every item, like ‘this is the shirt I lost my virginity in,’” said the 41-year-old founder of Wearable Collections, a Brooklyn-based textile recycling company that retrieved more than 2 million pounds of synthetic rompers, snapback hats, and skinny jeans from New York dorm rooms, apartment buildings, and green markets last year. “People have really close association with their clothing. But when the cycle is done, we’re going to help give it another life.”

That new life, like the life of most clothes “donated” in the United States, bears little resemblance to its previous owner’s, nor what its previous owner’s imagines. Of the roughly 2 million tons of used clothing Americans recycle each year, less than half is ever worn again: 30 percent is cut up for use as industrial rags, and another 20 percent is shredded for couch stuffing and home insulation. Those clothes that continue as clothes — some 860,000 tons valued at nearly $700 million a year, according to the Department of Commerce — are next worn in Phnom Penh, Cambodia or Mombasa, Kenya.

All of which makes recyclers like Adam and his ilk a comfortable, if highly competitive living.

“They always get villainized every time people find out they make a profit from what they do,” Elizabeth Cline, journalist and author of the fast-fashion expose Overdressed, told me.“It’s a funny little conundrum, because all recycling is for profit—as it should be. Otherwise, it probably wouldn't exist.”

Unlike glass and aluminum recycling, which has only been in vogue for the past 40 years, the rag trade has been making American recyclers rich for more than a century. But a new crop of competitors—young upstarts like Adam and old-school scrappers like the Gromans of SpinGreen in Sheepshead Bay, along with quasi-legal operations like New Jersey’s omnipresent Viltex—are stirring up the schmatta business in New York City, where it ranks among the most cut-throat and least regulated industries around.

“This is one of the dirtiest businesses I’ve ever seen,” said recycler Eliot Groman, an ex-Soviet immigrant who sold the used cooking oil processing business he built with his wife Polina to get into the rag trade. “People set fire to the bins, they climb into the bins.”

Other bins just vanish.

“A bin is an ATM; it’s like a reverse ATM,” Adam said. “There’s are reasons people drop these bins all around. They can be lifted with forklifts. It’s very territorial.”

I asked Eliot which laws govern his year-old company and others like it. He scoffed.

“It’s like the Wild West,” he said. “There’s only one law that basically says that you have to put [collection bins] on private property, and that’s it.”

Even that rule, Local Law 31, gets little respect. The City’s Department of Sanitation was called to collect about 70 illegal bins since July 2012, and virtually none before that.

What makes the bins illegal is their wanton placement on public property, not their profit margins. But in New York, as in scores of municipalities across the country, the sudden realization that old clothes are being collected for industry rather than altruism is what has people up in arms.

“A lot of people aren’t aware that textile recycling exists or that 95 percent of clothing and textiles can be recycled,” said Jackie King, executive director of the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles association, which represents recyclers across North America and has recently begun fighting back against proposed bans. “A ban on for-profit bins, that doesn’t help the situation from a collection standpoint for keeping this material out of the landfill.”

Recycled textiles are still barely a drip compared to other consumer goods diverted from the waste stream: Americans recycle about 95 percent of batteries, 70 percent of newspapers and more than 50 percent of aluminum cans, yet, 85 percent of old clothes end up in the trash, a full 5 percent of the country’s annual waste.

The reason, many say, is public perception.

“Americans go around operating under the assumption that there are still all these poor underdressed people in America who desperately need our castoff clothing,” when in reality, “we are drowning in our own textile waste,” Cline said. “It can’t all possibly be reused here and it can’t all continue on as clothing. People have to think about how much they’re buying.”

She said the industry itself is often complicit in the problem.

“These companies are private and they’re very secretive,” she said. “It’s just this really old-school industry that doesn’t have a lot of interaction with the public and it needs to be overhauled.”

The rag-traders agreed.

“It’s been a very underground market,” Adam said. “They have these really strong operations going already, so they don’t necessarily benefit from the higher profile of the industry.”

Although he and others are upfront about their for-profit status, many would-be donors are aghast to learn still where their goods are really going.

“I’m not going into your closet and stealing your clothes,” Adam said.  “We never were a not-for-profit, but the perception of this world is that it’s nonprofit, and you're always giving to nonprofits.”

That argument elides the fact that established thrift-store charities like Goodwill and Salvation Army retail only a tiny fraction of the donations they collect, selling 80 percent “out the back door” to recyclers. The Department of Sanitation’s nascent textile recycling program has diverted castoff clothes to the charity Housing Works, but the nonprofit relies on industrial for-profit recyclers to dispose of the excess.

“It’s too expensive for them. The only way [municipalities like New York] can do it is for a private entity to do it,” Eliot said. “We don’t pretend to be a charity.”

Like panty girdles and JNCO jeans, the donation model may simply have outlived its era.

“Disposable clothing is a reality,” Cline said. “Why can’t [collectors] just say, ‘recycle your clothing here?’” 

Follow Sonja Sharp on Twitter.

All photos by Elizabeth Renstrom

New age music: a genre despised and misunderstood by untold numbers of music fans. Its time has finally come. Douglas McGowan’s 2013 compilation record, I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990 (Light in the Attic Records), recontextualizes the genre brilliantly and has managed to catch the attention of many who previously overlooked it. Simply put, the lifestyle and content associated with new age have acted as a roadblock for secular and serious listeners. Nevertheless, if there has ever been a time for new age, it is now.

I first got into new age by exhaustively scouring every other genre that was of interest to me. In the mid 90s I was dealing in rare records, long before the internet made every obscure but substantial title in every cool genre a known, digitized collectible. My digging partner, Tony, and I would learn what was of value and quality through experience and judgment rather than social media and blogs. We eventually fell into a working relationship with an influential Japanese record dealer who introduced us to thousands of little-known but exemplary titles over the years. Before the internet, there was no easy way to procure the knowledge it took to distinguish a record that should be worth $40 from a $4 one.

This era was a particularly exciting and interesting time for record collectors and sellers. The CD format had a firm grip on the retail market, and vinyl, considered to be the bottom of the market, was being unloaded at an astonishing rate. Many records were sold for a dollar or less, regardless of their scarcity. Even more astounding was the glut of phonographic records of all kinds. Pasadena City College would devote the entire eastern parking lot of its campus to a monthly vinyl flea market. Japanese buyers, both stereotypically relentless and undoubtedly prescient, would search the lot with flashlights in the pre-dawn hours, buying up thousands of rare—and now expensive—items.

In the late 90s, the demand in Japan for the Jackson 5’s ABC, on the Motown label, was so high that I was able to sell hundreds of copies to my buyer for resale. Because this title kept on selling at $15 a copy, regardless of its condition, I finally asked him what was so special about this record, which could be found at almost any music store in the US. He told me that this particular title was being used as a popular fashion accessory in Shibuya, Tokyo. Young people would literally walk around with the LP under their arm, hence the sale of the record in any condition. This reframed my entire concept of the market and the product we were selling.

There was no way anyone could place a firm value on records anymore—evaluation now took place on a global scale, and the information about what was valuable was privileged. Things that looked cool on the outside often sounded terrible, things that looked terrible often sounded cool, things that sounded cool often had little value, and things that sounded terrible might well be worth a fortune for seemingly arbitrary reasons. The demand and trends were always in flux. Successful dealers had very open minds. Even considering long-discarded genres like Christian records and new age music was essential to making new discoveries.

So it was only natural that around this time I was traveling across the country in search of marketable records. I started to come across rare new age albums, many of which were privately pressed by individuals. Most were uncommon and some quite rare, though not necessarily expensive. New age music was in full swing in the late 70s and early 80s, which was a time when you could record an album of decent quality at home. Many of the best new age LPs from this time were self-recorded and made by simply plugging a keyboard into a 4-track, or by playing an acoustic instrument in front of a microphone. Before the internet, the distribution of this kind of album relied on a dedicated network of small, independent book and music stores.

In line with Brian Eno’s descriptions of his late-70s Ambient series of albums, most of these self-released new age collections were recorded for both listening pleasure and more specific purposes, such as meditation, relaxation, affirmation, massage, and self-help. This notion created a genre of music that was both applied and marketed in a very different fashion from mainstream jazz, rock, and soul. The best examples open a window into another world. The most talented and inventive artists of this era include Joel Andrews, Joanna Brouk, Wilburn Burchette, David Casper, J. D. Emmanuel, Iasos, Larkin, Laraaji, Ojas, and Michael Stearns, among others.

What collectively came to be known and marketed as “new age” was in many ways a by-product of the Baby Boomers. It was the distillation of whatever vestige of hippie ideals was left after the haze of the 60s, a hodgepodge of mostly appropriated cultural touchstones that somehow formed a whole when grouped together. After the hangover of the Vietnam War, social unrest, and drug addiction, many of these men and women wanted to get it together in the 70s; they sought answers from human-potential movements, religion, cult situations, recovery programs, self-help programs, and alternative lifestyles.

Music, like most creative endeavors, was primarily seen as a vehicle for self-awareness, meditation, and recovery. New age musicians were looking to have a relationship with something beyond the material world. The notion of cosmically driven creativity was just taking shape, but it was not particularly inspired by familiar genres like spiritual free jazz, psychedelic rock, or socially and politically driven folk. New age was informed by different tones and timbres, incorporating the sounds of everything from synth-pattern oscillation, post-Kraut rock, ambient music, and electronic drums to Eastern composition, drone, field recordings, and a wide range of indigenous music, as well as soundtracks for meditation, musical accompaniment for spoken word performances, and so on.

Some of the finest examples of this somewhat vague genre were made by the Arica School, a human-potential movement that was very much thriving in the 70s. They made three records, the most essential being the remarkable Audition. The group was led by the Chilean guru Oscar Ichazo, whose teachings were based on the early-20th-century spiritualist and thinker George Gurdjieff. The Arica School did incredible things with art, music, dance, psychology, and calisthenics, all created with the ultimate goal of helping people reach their full potential. I remember one photograph from this era that depicts Arica School participants sitting at consoles and staring at a large geometric image known as an enneagram while listening to music through headphones. Many participants were trained musicians, from jazz players to soul and rock dudes. So musically, at these Arica School sessions, you’d have these really long, drawn-out pieces coupled with spoken word that served to guide corresponding exercises and meditations.

At its core, new age was lifestyle music to the extreme. Steven Halpern, who is basically the godfather of new age music, realized this in the mid 70s. A doctor who made minimalist music primarily for relaxation and chakra alignment, he first pioneered the idea of making music that could heal. He was so firm in his beliefs that he advocated for the rejection of the tension-filled music of Stravinsky and others whose work reflected the atrocities of the 20th century. His books, Tuning the Human Instrument: Keeping Yourself in “Sound Health” and Sound Health: The Music and Sounds That Make Us Whole, provide the basis for much of his philosophy concerning sound. His work completely changed my perspective on what music can be. This man had dedicated himself to music that literally healed, bringing his musical salve to sick patients in hospitals and clinics. It was music with a practical application, not just a stylistic one. The model is similar in function to indigenous or ceremonial music—early, purpose-driven forms that are arguably the foundation for why we enjoy organized noise today.

It’s strange, I only think about the big ideas when I’m down in the dumps or high on some drug. I'm never just eating pasta at dinner and thinking what does it all mean? If that was the case, it’d be unbelievably exhausting to be alive. Everyone has a different definition of what “life” is and that’s OK. You've got your thing and I've got mine. I like my life a lot, except when I don’t. I usually think other people’s shit sucks, except when it’s amazing and I wish I had what they've got. Even when you're feeling high and mighty, there's that lingering feeling that right around the corner could be that metaphorical kick in the pants. We've all been there before. The person breaks your heart. You get fired for no reason. It's that moment that sends you to the ground cradling your bruised genitals, the moment where you're looking up at the clouds in the sky and you get a flicker or a notion of your life's purpose. But like everything else, it's fleeting. We are all stuck in an infinite loop of getting knocked down and picking ourselves back up. Few films have managed to capture that better than Rod Blackhurst's short called, you guessed it, “Life.” Kevin Heffernan (Super Troopers) stars as the person living it and it’s rough. Check it out below and then read my little interview with the filmmaker to clear up any confusion about what this whole thing is about. (The film, not life itself.)

VICE: Is this short film autobiographical?
Rod Blackhurst: Sort of. Early last year, I option-ed a short story called North by a writer I like, Matthew Wade Jordan, and spent the first part of the year developing it into a feature film with my friends David Ebeltoft and Elgin James. Everything was looking good. We had some producers who wanted to finance the film, we’d written a pretty good script, and we had a good cast lined up. And then, about a week before we were scheduled to start shooting, we figured out that the producers were jokers. Total ass clowns. So, we were forced to cancel our plans and hit reset on the project. It was really, really frustrating. I was pretty beat down about everything, and needed to go out and make something to break out of the funk. Life is what came out of that. As far as I can tell, trying to “make it,” or whatever, in the arts is like this dehumanizing slog. You get kicked in the nuts.

You're a guy and we get the balls metaphor. But Rod, what's the version of this for the ladies?
In the works. It’s going to be called Life 2, and it’s going to be more or less the same but it’s going to be a woman running, and it’s going to be dawn. Nice symmetries, I think. I have a call into Sandra Bullock about it.

How many takes did it take to get the cinematography just right?
It took seven takes to get things just right, which is good because we only had enough film for eight or nine takes. As for the ball kick, I’m still not certain we got it exactly right.

How did Kevin Heffernan come on board?
Kevin and I went to the same college years apart. We met a few years ago when my friend David Ebeltoft and I started talking to him about starring in You Were Once Called Queen City, which is a dark comedy about high school wrestling. Kevin was going to have a part in North and after things fell apart with that I asked him if he wanted to head out into the desert.     
 
What are you working on now?  
I just made a short with my friends Josh Murphy and Trevor Eiler called PlanGOP, about an abortion pill Republicans can feel good about. I’m directing a feature documentary, which I’m excited about. And I'm working to find financing to make North and You Were Once Called Queen City. Grinding away. 

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.