Arnold Schwarzenegger, in addition to being the candidate my mother voted for in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election, is a movie star. His latest picture, the action thriller Sabotage, is allegedly a reinvention of the alpha male onscreen persona that made him millions (and, in my mother’s eyes, a viable gubernatorial candidate). According to David Ayer, the film’s director, Arnold chose the role because he “sees it as an opportunity to rebrand himself.”

While I don’t really see how acting in yet another shoot ‘em up qualifies as rebranding (taking on Wallace Shawn’s role in a My Dinner With Andre reboot, on the other hand…), I admittedly know nothing about branding nor the motion picture industry. Hell, I don’t even know anything about journalism. And yet here I am, typing this, and there I was, two weeks ago, attending Sabotage’s press junket at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons.

Dropping off the 2007 Ford Focus my grandparents bought for me, the valet asked if I was checking in. “Oh, God, no,” I replied. After riding up a garishly gilded escalator, I entered the press room, a suite high above the poverty, plebes, and pollution of my Los Angeles.

A group of legitimate members of the press, consuming complimentary branded chocolates, discussed the film amongst themselves. Specifically, they talked about why they viewed the film’s intense, almost pornographic violence as a necessity; according to them, it explained why the picture’s characters were so “fucked up.” It appeared the trio had actually paid attention to (and, in turn, generated opinions about) the film.

I, on the other hand, immediately forgot what I had witnessed after attending a screening a few days prior. (Save, of course, the deeply unsettling image of Arnold’s onscreen wife looking into camera, whispering the line, “I love you, Joe,” then getting brutally shot in the head, which will stick with me for some time.)

Despite such “fucked up” violence, the general consensus among them was that the film was “fun.” They, much like the other pros I encountered at the screening, loved films of all stripes. “Did you see Captain America?” I overheard one ask a colleague at the screening. “It's great! Better than The Avengers!”

Once they tired of lauding the picture, the group in the press room turned to more important matters: Hollywood gossip. Mireille Enos, star of Sabotage, was described as a “great actress” and “fun interview.” They marveled at how “tiny!” she was; the fact that she was married to the guy who played Cameron in Ferris Bueler’s Day Off also impressed them greatly. 

Further hot goss included an anecdote about how Charo ruined someone's interview by loudly “making all her coochi coochi sounds” nearby. “Ugh, she’s pathetic,” one lamented. After a beat, she asked, “Why would Mick Jagger's girlfriend want to commit suicide? Other than the fact that he's 100 and she's 47.” The group silently, solemnly, nodded.

In the corner, two writers of the fairer sex commiserated over Schwarzenegger’s status as a legendary pussy hound. The joke among them was that, in his presence, being a journalist with two X chromosomes would invariably make you a subject of sexual harassment. One recanted a story about the time she wore a leather miniskirt to an interview. Stroking it, Arnie asked, “Is that real leather?” Upon hearing this, I resented the fact that I wasn’t given the opportunity to interview him. I would have sassed his ass but good.

The primary reason I signed on to attending the junket was because I was told there would be free food. The only sustenance to speak of when I arrived, however, was a desecrated tray of novelty chocolates and dozens of liquids. Evian waters, Red Bulls, San Pellegrinos—thinking they were all I could consume, I chugged as many as my bladder could hold. 

Mid-chug, a man sat down next to me and artlessly decimated a horrific looking sandwich. I, naturally, was jealous.  Where the hell did he get that? I wondered. I immediately worried about how much the valet was going to cost. I guess I should tip, right? But how much? And, I mean, you can't get a receipt for tipping. Over-caffeinated and underfed, my mind (and heart) raced.

Highlights from the film played, on a loop, in the corner. As I joylessly drank another Pellegrino and waited to administer the interviews I was grossly under qualified to give with David and Joe Manganiello, one of the film’s stars, I surveyed my surroundings. Other than the gregarious, gossipy trio, everyone else in the room seemed upset and standoffish.

Filling their mouths with sweets and coffees, they seemed to be running on empty. The TV blared in the background—explosions, screams, audible fear, and endless gunfire acted as a soundtrack to the clicking of MacBook keys. The words “FOR JUSTICE” burst onto the TV’s screen, followed immediately by a shot of a man’s brains exploding.

I was finally called into my first interview with Joe, a modern renaissance man the internet informed me has written a bestselling book about fitness, directed a documentary about male exotic dancers, was voted “Favorite Pop-Culture Werewolf of All Time” by readers of Entertainment Weekly, is active with numerous charities, and has played Stanley Kowalski in a staging of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Entering his suite, I was unprepared to encounter a man of such esteem and marketable sexuality. His presence, like his pecs, had weight. I asked if he liked things like this, endless junkets filled with inane questions. “I love it,” he replied. “I live for it.” As he spoke, his pecs jiggled in a manner I found as unnerving as it was unerotic.

Lacking actual (read: professional) questions, I decided to ask ones fans posited during the Sabotage Live Twitter Q&A that had taken place a few hours previously—questions so absurd, I knew the talent’s handlers would never ask. I chose “Does God exist?” due to its inappropriateness. (Who, really, would care whether or not an action star thought God exists?) He took off and ran with it.

After a thoughtful sigh, he replied, “I think God does, but I think it's a personal thing. I'm never gonna tell somebody that they're wrong, nor go to war, nor kill somebody over their view on spirituality. I think that goes against spirituality, personally. But it's a personal thing. I pray. I'm not sure what I'm praying to, but I do it. I learned how to Vedic Meditate—years back—and I think there's the force, or life force if you wanna call it, inside of us that can be listened to and heard if you get quiet enough.”

Good God, I thought. This guy is a pro.

Days later, I turned the television on and saw him, standing alongside Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan, on Monday Night Raw. “I'm really pumped to be here hosting my first Monday Night Raw!” he yelled. “But I’m even more pumped to be in the presence of two icons.”

He was, indeed, a pro.

After a few more Pellegrinos (and a flavorless cheese sandwich, which I found languishing under heat lamps in a room adjacent to the press room), I got some face time with David. Writer of the film Training Day, for which Denzel Washington received an Oscar, and director of the critically acclaimed End of Watch, I immediately felt at ease with him.

Amiable and low key, he emanated a tired charm. I was no doubt the millionth member of “the press” he had seen that day. Known as an LA-centric director, I asked what his least favorite neighborhood in the city was. “I'm in it,” he laughed. “It's called ‘everything west of Western.’”

“Realistically,” I asked, “what would he be doing if not directing?” “I don't know,” he replied. “Probably in prison. Or, I mean, I used to be a house painter and an electrician, so probably working construction. I'm a high school dropout, so I don't have a fuckin' education to fall back on.” To the query “Does God exist?” he responded, “Which one? 'Cause there's absolutely no way to answer that without offending or alienating somebody. Because somebody could be pantheistic, and now I've infuriated the Hindus. And you could be monotheistic, but obviously that's a very loaded question in today's world. Personally, yeah. But, y'know, politics and religion kill movies. Now the athiests are gonna fuckin' hate me.”

I liked him a lot. And I’m sure, had I understood his picture, I would have liked that, too. But that’s not my job.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

Photos courtesy of the author

The night a stranger bitch-slapped me at Burger King wasn’t very different from other nights. I kicked off the night by pounding toxic amounts of vodka, yelling over top-40 remixes at a nightclub, and snapping “candid” selfies of myself dancing on couches, and then I went to my usual after-hours spot—the Burger King drive-thru.

I sat in a car with three other drunks: an Asian club promoter and aspiring actor who would be lucky if he starred in a straight-to-DVD American Pie sequel; a drinking buddy from high school who was now an aspiring model and actress living on the bankrolls of her parents and various men who “took an interest in her career”; and another aspiring actor guy who was really just a math tutor.

Why was I at a fast food joint at 3 AM with three people I barely knew, liked, or respected? Well, because hanging out with binge drinkers involves engaging exclusively in activities that make you hate yourself. You eat crappy food, drink past your limit, and wake up to discover startling bar tabs and overdraft fees.

As we pulled into the drive-thru, the club promoter turned the volume dial all the way up, blasting our anthem for that night, which was presumably a song by Flo Rida, the Black Eyed Peas, or another insufferable musician who records music specifically designed for middle school dances. We probably seat-danced and fist pumped. I don't remember; I was drunk.

The car behind us, having a difficult time ordering their Whoppers over our public display of mediocrity, honked and yelled for us to turn the music down, but we didn't care, because we were having so much fun. Then one of the car’s passengers appeared at my car window, slapped me across the face, and turned on her heels.  

My friends opened their car doors and jumped out. They were ready for a confrontation, the restaurant's employees threatened to call the cops, and the car behind us fled the scene. But I didn’t move. I laughed uncontrollably, thinking, Well, I probably deserved that, and then, Oh my god. This is going to be such a good story. And, finally, Where's my camera?

The road to the drive-thru was a very long road. In high school, I started drinking because drinking was the only thing teenagers did in Delaware, besides playing field hockey and tattooing misspelled Beatles lyrics on friends’ rib cages. I developed a drinking habit in the ninth grade, which is an early time to start drinking, but I was responsible in all other facets of my life. I was at the top of my class, kept a clean record, and cashiered pizzas for my own money, because I wanted to be “someone” later in life. Of course, later was later—I still had a few years to burn before college. After I watched The Fast and the Furious one too many times, I found partying appealing. Drinking was fun, but I enjoyed having stories to tell more than partying. I loved saying, “I hid from the cops for three hours in a bush” and “Remember that time we went mailbox bowling with a trash can?”

These stories were pretty harmless, but they made me feel unique. In retrospect, I realize these stories weren’t very special. (You probably know someone like me, or you actually are someone like me.) I wanted to have a wild party girl image, although I knew better. Alcoholism ran in my family, and I had career goals at odds with an alcohol-saturated lifestyle. But I continued drinking after I gashed open my hand, my chin, and my knee—countless little scars that still speckle my body.

When I was 17 years old, I boarded a plane to become a somebody in Los Angeles. California was beyond intimidating. Everyone around me gave off an aura of beauty and success, and I saw myself, in comparison, as an incompetent, subpar-looking girl with little direction or talent. I no longer had my family or drinking buddies to fall back on in times of loneliness, so when anxiety and depression surfaced, I turned to the bottle to have drunken tales of debauchery that could validate me. I kept collecting stories, like the one about the time I swam in a fountain in Las Vegas and the night I made out with a convicted felon.

I felt special in nightclubs, because clubs try really hard to make their four walls feel exclusive, although their customers are all aspirers:  aspiring actors, producers, writers, executives, philanthropists, and models. People who drug vodka with ecstasy and revel in being a “Pill Poppin Animal” like Lil Wayne. I was a full-blown aspirer, only pursuing my long-term goals in theory. I felt worse and worse about myself, but, because of this, giving up drinking wasn't an option. It brought out the only part of me left that I liked, the only part that I could still recognize. What would staying home alone have solved?

Then I got slapped at Burger King.

I understood that the woman who slapped me was probably trying to get a vapid blonde girl to shut the fuck up, so she could order a Whopper, but I think she also saw that I was a young woman who needed a serious time out. After we left, my friends told the story again and again and again. As usual I was pleased to have another bizarre story in my repertoire, but this time the adrenaline rush wore off quickly.

Instead of relief, I felt hollow, like my liver had disintegrated into dust and only my ribs and skin were left to fill the space. I had nothing but drunken stories to show for the past couple of years, and I looked back on my past with concern. Why did I deem drunk moments an essential part of my personality? I don’t know if there are good reasons to drink, but I do know that drinking for a “good story” is not one of them. 

I wasn't angry with the girl who slapped me, because I wanted to hit me too. I was the girl who couldn't stand being alone long enough to make it through a line at a fast food restaurant. After the Burger King incident, I stopped partying—staying up past 11 is a triumph these days—and I ex-communicated enablers from my life. I’m no longer the loud, drunk girl who is too caught up in her twisted Instagram-based lifestyle to move the fuck out of the way when other people are trying to get their combo meals.

Thank you, bitch-slapping queen. I owe you a Whopper.

The death of Berkin Elvan, a 15-year-old boy who was in a coma after being hit by a tear gas canister in last year's anti-government rallies, prompted large-scale protests in Istanbul over the past two weeks. Violence between the Turkish police and protestors was worst in Berkin's neighborhood of Okmeydani. It was there that we first encountered the Turkish government's policy of media censorship. Turkey jails the most journalists of any country in the world, according to the Committe to Protect Journalists, and they've expanded the scope of this censorship in the week leading up to their local elections. Both Twitter and YouTube were banned this week, along with Google DNS and OpenDNS. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to also shut down Facebook, and there are rumors that Istanbul's internet will be blocked on election day. The bans come in response to a series of leaked audio recordings that implicate Erdogan in a corruption scandal serious enough to threaten his political party, the AKP, in Sunday's elections.

Photo by the author

After exploring art, New York, and skateboards for over a year, Taji's Mahal is ending this week. For my column's grand finale, I caught up with Alfred Leslie, a legendary artist and Renaissance man who has claimed New York as his stomping ground since the glory days of the Beat Generation. From abstract expressionism to Pull My Daisy (the 1959 film he created with Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac) to his new Pixel Scores series currently on display at the Janet Borden Gallery, Alfred has been a New York art-world fixture for over half a century. This month, I met with Alfred to discuss the new series he created with Photoshop.

Bardamu, Alfred Leslie, 2012-2014

VICE: How did you become a part of New York's art scene?
Alfred Leslie: I just fell into it. When I came out of the service in 1945, I met all of the major so-called abstract artists in post-war New York. That was the atmosphere I came into, the post-war art world, filled with hundreds upon hundreds of those who had fled Europe, like Mondrian, many of the Surrealists, and others. They were here mingling with Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock, and all of the other artists who had already been in New York and contributed to it.

Fast forward to 2014 and your Pixel Scores series. You used a tablet and mouse to create your latest artwork. How do you use modern technology to create art?
Photoshop is a tool, like a hammer, and it's designed to mimic what a painter does. It has many limitations, but I twist the tool around and make it do what I want. There is nothing I have to learn about painting or composition, so everything that the designers had to figure out to make this tool work, I already know. There are different types of hammers with different uses, so I've taken a tool that is used mostly for one thing, notably for adjustments and transformations in photographs, but I don't use photographs. I draw using the tablet and the mouse and create images. These images, from a formal point of view outside of the technology, are exactly the same as the paintings I did. The only difference was before I used a stick, with a couple of hairs on it, and some mud mixed with oil.

Miss Wonderly, Alfred Leslie, 2012-2014 

Who are the people you chose as subjects for this series?
They're all fictional characters from books.  

I thought they were real people you knew!
No, but all of the relevant details are from places I knew and grew up with that are special to me. For instance, Miss Wonderly is a pseudonym for a woman in The Maltese Falcon.  When she appears she is a homicidal gangster dame and introduces herself as Miss Wonderly. I always thought it was the most extraordinary of names and that she was a great creature. The setting of my picture is old New York circa 1932.  I can show you in the details of the background of Miss Wonderly the subway station and different characters: a woman aggressively standing with two of her daughters, a man standing with his [mentally challenged] daughter, a newsboy selling the Saturday Evening Post, and a group of women looking down and watching an Indian woman hanging clothing on a rooftop line. 

That's incredible, Alfred. Thanks for sharing your New York history with me for the last Mahal!

Follow Taji Ameen on Twitter. 

As Crimea becomes part of Russia, tensions continue to rise in Ukraine and demonstrators attempt to break into parliament in Kiev. VICE News reporter Simon Ostrovsky joins the protesters in Independence Square as they fight for a change in their government.

Photos by the author

Earlier this year, I joined a small team of doctors, nurses, and volunteers from Physicians for Human Rights, an Israeli non-profit organization, on a trip to Holot Open Detention Center. Situated in the heart of the Negev desert, miles from any major city, Holot was erected in late 2013 to hold 3,000 of the 53,000 African asylum seekers who have made their way to Israel since the mid 2000s, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea.

Asylum seekers at the Holot Open Detention Center are free to enter and leave in between three daily headcounts. Even if people do leave, by the time they reach the nearest city, they will only have an hour or two before they have to report back to Holot. They are prohibited from working, except for low-paying jobs cleaning the prison, and rely on a meager allowance of about $45 every ten days, according to Haaretz, a popular Israeli newspaper. With this money, they must buy clothes, call family members, and pay for transportation.

According to the Guardian, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called the asylum seekers “infiltrators” whose presence in Israel is illegal and a demographic threat to the ethnic identity of the Jewish state. Until they create a path to legally deport the asylum seekers, the authorities maintain that these people must be kept behind bars. In the words of former Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai, “We will make the lives of infiltrators bitter until they leave.”

After Israel's High Court declared the policy of imprisoning illegal migrants for three years unconstitutional, the Israeli government found an original way to ruin refugees' lives. Migrants are now given an ultimatum: indefinite detention, in the newly opened Holot facility, or “voluntary” deportation to Uganda. The 1951 Refugee Convention prevents Israel from deporting asylum seekers straight back to their homelands, where their lives may be in serious danger. To solve this problem, Israel struck an agreement with Uganda for the transfer of African asylum seekers in exchange for agricultural aid. 

The effort to drive the asylum seekers out of the country has intensified in recent months. Hundreds of refugees have received orders to report to Holot. In response to the government’s strategy, a wave of demonstrations has swept the country. The protestors called for Israel to finally review the refugee status of the asylum seekers, which, so far, Israel has completely neglected to do.

When I visited the prison, a young man named Filmon was among the several dozen detainees waiting in line to receive treatment in PHR's small makeshift clinic at Holot's parking lot. He approached me and immediately began telling me about his journey from Eritrea to Israel and his life in Israel's jail system. We exchanged phone numbers and planned to meet at another time.

Three days later, he called. “Please come. I want to talk,” he said. I drove down to Holot with Helen, my Eritrean-American friend, who helped me translate his messages. Filmon stood among a small crowd in front of a preaching Eritrean priest, clutching a small paperback bible. We sat down and discussed the conditions in Holot, life in Eritrea, and his uncertain future. 

VICE: When you crossed the border from Sinai, you were told you were going to prison. Did they tell you why?
Filmon: No. Israeli soldiers just gave us a paper saying we had to go to jail, and took us to Saharonim [the jail adjacent to Holot]. I was there until one month ago, and since then I have been in Holot. Saharonim is ten times worse. You cannot leave at all. When we do something bad, like coming back too late at night, we are sent to Saharonim as punishment. You are put in a small room alone. There is not much light, just a small door for food. They don't tell us how long we will stay there. It can be ten to 20 days and sometimes more.

What are the conditions like in Holot?
We are ten people in a room. The bunk beds are hard. It gets very cold at night—there is no heater, and there are not enough blankets. There is also not enough food. We eat rice, but it is like mud. In the morning we get a small yogurt and bread. We sometimes share to make the portions bigger. No one checks if the food is edible. 

Why did you leave Eritrea to come to Israel?
In Eritrea they forced me to go to the army, so I would not get a chance to have an education. I had been a soldier there for six years. If I had stayed, I would have been in the army until I was 40 or 50 years old. Only after one year and six months can you come home for 20 days. After that, [you can only come home] once a year. 

What is life like in the Eritrean army?
There is no war, but you always have to be ready. All you do is train. If you try to escape and are caught, you go to a prison camp for five to eight years, where they starve and torture you. I had been in a military jail for one year. This is why we chose to leave our country. There is no future when you are in the Eritrean army.

What happened when you left Eritrea?
When I escaped Eritrea, the Rashaida, the bandits, they put us by force into a car and took us to Sinai. It happened very quickly. They were waiting for us in Sudan. They took us to a camp where they tortured us. They heated a piece of iron and burnt me on my face and my arm. They told me to have sexual contact with the girls and with the boys, too. If you don't, they punish you.

How long did you stay at the camp?
I was there for three months. They demanded money from my family, 33,000 dollars. [Such absurd ransom demands are common, according to BBC reports]. My family had to sell the house and the gold. They took money from another family. I don't know exactly how they paid. After three months, they released me. They put me on the road and told me to start walking. That's how I reached the Israeli border. I did not know I was going to Israel when I left Eritrea. I just escaped.

Do you want to stay in Israel?
I just want to be in a free country that accepts me. I will be happy to stay in Israel if they let me, but I don’t know Israel. I don't know Tel Aviv. I've been in Israel for a year and a half, and I only know its prisons.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Victor

During my teen years, the police regularly chased me, but I got away nearly every time. When the cops caught me, they typically harassed me for a bit and then set me free. The cops only arrested me once.

It was the end of a long summer that my friends and I had spent doing drugs in the New Jersey town where we lived. A handful of our friends getting arrested didn’t slow our momentum. Kev, my friend who was busted three times over a couple of months, was in the midst of an ecstasy bender, though he faced a charge for possessing several pills. I was with him every time he was cuffed, but remained unfazed by the threat of going to jail. I had only done ecstasy a couple of times, and though it didn’t seem worth the hangover, I wanted to continue experimenting. Getting pills was a pain in the ass, but one Friday, my friend gained a bundle of pills.

In addition to procuring the drugs, we also had to find a safe spot to experience them. The cops knew most of our outdoor hangout spots, so we tried to find a house to chill at, but everyone’s parents were home. We would have gone to Jerry’s house—his mom never cared what we did—but Jerry and his family were out of town. It was starting to get dark, and we had nowhere to go, but a few of us decided to take the pills anyway. We ended up sitting around a small pond, the least likely place the cops would find us. To my dismay, a terribly annoying kid named Theo showed up to join the party. He was normally pretty jittery and loud, and once the pills kicked in, he started getting on everyone’s nerves. Kev even asked him to leave, but Theo laughed it off and stuck around.

As time passed, the temperature seemed to drop dramatically. I’m still not sure if this perception was purely because of the pills or if it was unseasonably cold that night, but it was real enough to make us move. We were debating where to go when someone suggested we break into Jerry’s house. The back door was always unlocked, so we could easily slip in and spend the rest of the evening in his basement. Kev called Jerry to ask if it was OK. “Fine,” Jerry told him on the phone, “but if I get a call from the cops, you’re on your own. I’m not telling them I let a bunch of rolling kids hang out in my mom’s house.”

We filed into Jerry’s basement as silently as we could and crept to the basement in the dark. Once we were down there, we relaxed a little. My pill finally started to kick in, but it didn’t feel like my previous rolling experiences. For one thing, I was hallucinating pretty hard. I had experienced visual hallucinations on acid and mushrooms, but nothing like this. For the first time, things were appearing out of nowhere. As the effects grew stronger, I began seeing toys, which I had owned as a kid, laying around the room, partially obscured by imaginary piles of leaves and gravel. The illusions screwed with my head. I was having a hard time distinguishing between reality and hallucinations.

I lost all concept of time, so I have no idea what time it was when we saw a cop car roll past the house. We were smoking a blunt in the dark living room for what felt like days, when suddenly panic erupted. Kev told us we should disperse throughout the house and hide in case they decided to knock on the door. I was still fraught with powerful hallucinations, so Theo led me to the basement with a very drunk girl and a first-time roller named Fish. We sat quietly in the basement for about a minute before we heard someone ringing the doorbell. There was a second of silence, and then we heard the door burst open and several men storm into the living room above us. This scared the crap out of the drunk girl. She stood up, yelled, “I’m getting the fuck outta here!” and then ran for the doors leading outside. She didn’t manage to open them, but tried to go through anyway, slamming her head loudly against the door. We heard the footsteps above us stop and then the men began running toward the basement door.

We all knew that we were fucked. The town’s cops rarely dealt with this kind of excitement, so they were definitely going to cuff us. The lights came on, and then six cops rushed into the basement. The main cop said, “Well, well. What do we have here?” All the cops started laughing and smiling. One of them approached Theo and asked, “Now, what do you suppose this little nerd is on tonight?” Theo twitched visibly, which made the cops laugh even more. The same cop turned to me. “Seriously, though,” he said, “you guys just smoking pot, or are you on something else?” I tried to respond, but my jaw was locked. As soon as the cop saw this, he said, “Alright! I guess that answers that.” They led us upstairs to ask us some more questions. Once they figured out that none of us lived there, they got Jerry’s number from us and called him. As he had told us, Jerry denied any knowledge that we were in his house, and none of us blamed him. Then the cops asked for our parents’ numbers and started calling them to tell them what was going on. Fish had recently turned 18, so he was spared this humiliation. Theo had gotten into trouble plenty of times before, so the call to his parents was routine. When they called my mom, she asked to speak to me. I have never been more terrified of my mom than I was at that moment. She asked me if I had done what they were saying. I said, “Yes.” She was silent until the cop took the phone back and told her to come pick me up at the hospital.

“Hospital?” I asked the cop when he hung up the phone. “Yeah,” he said. “You guys are obviously fucked up. We have to take you in for detox and testing.” They cuffed Fish behind his back and cuffed me to Theo. He was twitching uncontrollably, jostling my arm with every movement. The cops brought us outside and put us in the back of a cruiser. They left us alone for a moment, and Theo started freaking out. “You think Kev got away? I hope so. He’ll go to jail if he gets arrested again.” I told him to shut up and used the cuffs to smack him with his own hand. I was sure that the cops were searching the rest of the house and that we’d see Kev walk out in cuffs any minute. Luckily, they didn’t bother. They seemed satisfied with their haul for the evening.

My mom was already there when we arrived at the hospital. Rather than being upset with me right away, she patiently waited through the detox process before disciplining me. I had to drink a cup of nasty charcoal solution, give a urine sample, and wait around while the cops told my mom about the details of the arrest. I grew worried when they told her that I was technically breaking and entering Jerry’s house. After my mom and I left the hospital, we silently sat in her car for a few minutes. She finally broke the silence by giving me a firm smack in the face. My mom has only struck me about ten times in my life when I’ve displayed my worst behavior, and this was the last time. She grounded me and made me take on more hours at work so that there was no way I would hang out with the same group of kids again. I didn’t fight her over it. I still smoked weed and did some mushrooms now and then, but I never touched another pill of ecstasy.

It turned out that the pills barely had any MDMA in them. Instead, they were chockfull of DXM, the chemical found in cough medicine that can make you trip, which explained the hallucinations and the skewed perception of time. It didn’t explain the lockjaw—I think genuine guilt caused that. Because I was under 18, I wasn’t charged with a crime and only had to give a written statement admitting what I did was wrong, but I didn’t feel like I had gotten away with anything. I had disappointed my mom, and that was the hardest punishment of all.

Getting arrested might have been the best thing for me at the time. My experimentation with drugs was getting a bit too wild, and I may have ended up trying something that I wouldn’t have come back from easily. The experience was also a reality check for my mom, who learned something about drugs. She had always seen drugs as a general category of bad things, but over time she has learned to understand that there are all kinds of drugs and the way they are treated by the law doesn’t always reflect their nature. Today, she’s an avid Weediquette reader.

Hi mom!

Follow T. Kid on Twitter.

Anti-government protesters on the streets of Bangkok

After weeks of relative calm, protests took over Bangkok once again this weekend, with tens of thousand of people marching through the city calling for the downfall of the government. Meanwhile, in the north of Thailand, the pro-government "red shirt" supporters are starting to beat the drums of war (quite literally, in some cases) and talk of marching on the capital to defend the incumbent regime. The ongoing standoff is the result of years of political upheaval in the country, ostensibly a battle between North and South, rich and poor. In reality, it is a much more complex, even existential, struggle for control of the Kingdom.

Despite talk of compromise and rumors of backroom deals, it's tough at this stage to see any kind of resolution to the crisis. The anti-government protesters in Bangkok—led by former Member of Parliament, Suthep Thaugsuban—want to replace the country’s democratically elected government and appoint a "people’s council" to enact political reforms that are thus far unspecified. In turn, the government and its supporters argue that protesters are denying the majority their democratic rights and have vowed repeatedly not to kowtow to the demands of what many in the country affectionately (and some not-so affectionately) refer to as "the mob."

Above it all (while at the same time being very much in the middle of it all) are the Royal Thai Army—arguably the most powerful institution in the country at present. In a recent interview, General Prayuth, head of the Army, warned of civil war if Thailand continues on its path. “If there's any further loss of life, the country will definitely collapse," said Prayuth, "and there won’t be any winners or losers.”

So far, the anti-government movement – backed by much of the capital's business community, as well as establishment figures in Thailand’s elite circles—has failed to achieve much of what it set out to do. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra remains in power and though her brother and former PM Thaksin remains in self-imposed exile, there are few signs his influence has been in any way curtailed.

Indeed, prior to this weekend's mass rally, momentum on the streets for the anti-government movement appeared to be waning following the end of the so-called "Bangkok Shutdown," a result, in part, of dwindling numbers. However, developments in Thailand’s courts now promise fresh hope for those opposing the government. Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled to invalidate February's general election, as the vote wasn't held on a single day – something that was largely a result of anti-government gangs blocking polling stations. A new election will be held but scenes similar to the last one are likely to recur.

More imminently worrying for the government and its supporters is this week's National Anti Corruption Committee (NACC). The Prime Minister must attend to face charges that she neglected to act on alleged irregularities in a controversial government-led "rice scheme" that has been dogged by accusations of corruption and mismanagement.

Yingluck recently questioned the impartiality of the committee, but if it does find her guilty—which some believe is likely—she will be suspended from duty and face an impeachment trial in the senate. Her party, Pheau Thai, would be free to choose another Prime Minister, but it would be seen as a major victory for the anti-government movement. Fears would then turn to the red shirts' response.

Recently, under new, more hardline leadership, the red shirts have been carrying out a number of rallies across the country with another scheduled for this weekend, possibly to be held in Bangkok. The new leader, former Pheau Thai party MP, Jatuporn Prompan, said in a recent interview that their tactics would be “peaceful” but added that “the next battle will be big.” The last time the two sides confronted each other in any significant numbers was at an intersection just north of Bangkok. It led to a firefight that lasted several hours and involved small explosives and assault rifles. If they hold their rally next week in the capital, renewed clashes are likely.

For now, Jatuporn and the red shirts are sounding confident: "In 2006, they used a military coup. In 2007 and 2008, they used independent organizations like the constitutional court. Now they used a people's revolution led by Suthep but it did not succeed.” However, if Yingluck is found guilty this week by the NACC, and no compromise or agreement can be found, the government will definitely be weakened and tensions will rise.

In a telling and rather disheartening video recorded earlier this week, red shirt protesters were seen beating a Buddhist Monk who they accused of supporting the anti-government protest. They tugged at his orange robes and punched him repeatedly at a gathering not far from Bangkok. Pictures of the attack, which made the front pages of many of the country's newspapers, were a vivid reminder of where the vitriol spouted from leaders on both sides is leading the country.

Further court rulings are inevitable, rival rallies will take place and both sides will be guilty of more fear-mongering hate speech but where this will lead Thailand is anybody's guess. The country has weathered plenty of upheavals before (although a big part of the problem is that it has never truly resolved them) and may still retain its "Teflon Thailand" reputation. Yet, if the current tensions fail to cool, the fear of a permanent split still lingers in the minds of Thais of all political stripes.

@georgehenton

It's the season finale of Fresh Off The Boat. In Chengdu, Eddie—a.k.a. the Human Panda—returns to his bamboo roots and discovers that pandas watch panda porn. He gets a taste of Chengdu traditions with hip-hop pioneer DJ SuperBestFriend and eats pig-brain mapo tofu at a "fly" restaurant on the brink of demolition.

A billboard promoting the many talents of the Sultan of Brunei. Photo via Flickr user watchsmart

It’s pretty rare that Brunei makes international headlines, unless Prince Jefri Bolkiah has bought another jewelery business or decided to christen his new superyacht Tits (and its tenders Nipple 1 and Nipple 2). In fact, aside from the vast wealth of its royal family, little is known about the tiny sovereign state in northern Borneo.

So unless you’ve worked for Shell at some point in your life, surveying the huge oil fields responsible for the royals’ fortune, you’d be forgiven for not being too knowledgeable about Brunei’s people and government, or for not knowing that, starting tomorrow, it will become the only Southeast Asian country to implement Sharia law at a national level.

But why does that matter? Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa first coined the phrase “the perfect dictatorship” in 1990, in reference to Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). The PRI managed to centralize power through institutionalizing unions and employing the carrot-and-stick method of governing; as workers demanded higher wages, the PRI would suppress their demands with concessions, such as apparently improved health care and subsidies on basic essential food. Once in a while it would shoot or imprison movement leaders just to show people it wasn’t fucking about.

This method of bargaining is reminiscent of the Bruneian way of doing things—only there’s not really any bargaining in Brunei. The majority of the population live extremely relaxed lifestyles thanks to the huge amount of concessions the government grants its people; most work six-hour days and get a bonus every year; gas costs about a dollar a gallon; and the entire nation is tax-free.

And it’s the preservation of that laid-back lifestyle that distracts people from other issues. Even though every citizen technically has the right to free speech, it’s pretty apparent that, in reality, they really don’t—hardly surprising for a country that operates an absolute monarchy. Every Wednesday and Sunday, for instance, an “opinions” page in the Borneo Bulletin—the most popular of the two government-produced English newspapers—aims to provide people with a platform to speak out about whatever’s on their mind. But what seems to be on most people’s minds is how amazing the national police force is, or how fantastic the Ramadan buffet at a certain restaurant has been.

Yet the people of Brunei don’t seem to care too much about the stifling of their free speech, which is mostly down to three reasons: The country is rich; the government is generous; and the population is small, meaning authorities find new projects—as well as new laws—easy to administer and regulate.

A mosque in Brunei. Photo via Flickr user amanderson2

Tomorrow, Brunei will become the first and only Southeast Asian nation to enforce Sharia criminal law. The code—which will only be applied to Muslims (who make up 67 percent of the population)—could ultimately ensure Brunei’s status as the world’s newest “perfect dictatorship.” Googling the topic, the results almost exclusively detail the Sultan’s already “feudal” rule, or describe the severe kind of Sharia law being introduced in Brunei as “barbaric and draconian.” Both of those things may be true, but Brunei's is a feudal rule that people can handle, because the benefits of living there seem to far outweigh the negatives.  

Rather than fearing Sharia law, people in Brunei are instead questioning the reason for its introduction. According to a source from the Telegraph, it may be because influences are brought into the country from students who have studied abroad—but that sounds pretty speculative to me. As far as I can gather, no one really understands why it’s being implemented.

Having spoken to various locals, the most obvious reason seems to be that Sharia will be used as a deterrent for petty crimes. But crime in Brunei is already extremely low, and there isn’t really any reason to steal. The government gives you everything you need, so if you get your hands chopped off for stealing a five-pack of ramen, you only have yourself to blame. Also, the death penalty has always existed in Brunei, so little has changed there, except for the admittedly brutal fact that—if you’re Muslim—you’ll now be stoned to death rather than hanged.

Western opinion has often played upon the fact that people don’t—and won’t—speak out against the implementation of Sharia law, but this usually simplistic assessment fails to account for a number of important local factors. Bruneians have no time to speak up, because, by 3 PM, they’re out of the office, heading to the coffee shop in their new E-Class. And really, would you complain if you were living tax-free with a stable, high-paying job, two cars, free education and health care, and a house rented at close to nothing, all in constant 95-degree weather?

The implementation of Sharia in Brunei doesn’t make a lot of sense—the state is already incredibly safe, and it’s not like altering the criminal code is going to do a huge amount to further guarantee that safety. And while Sharia’s brutal practices understandably draw ire from the West, the people of Brunei don’t appear to be all that bothered—they’re happy living in a peaceful nation under a “perfect dictatorship.”

So while there are clearly problems with Sharia law that can't be excused by any amount of government concessions—and even though you may question the Bruneians' apathy about living under a dictatorship—I'd ask you to look into all the other factors that make Brunei the country it is before taking what Western media have to say as gospel truth.

Photos by Jake Lewis

How has it taken so long for gay wedding to become legal in the UK? Weddings are great; they’re an affirmation of our ability to love one another and a legitimate space for adults to do the Macarena. But for many, the passing of the law allowing gay couples to marry, which went into effect at midnight on Saturday, isn’t about weddings. It's about the principle that gay people should be allowed to do everything that straight people can do—which should be a basic human right.

Sadly, it’s not. Being gay is still illegal in more than 70 countries, and while the UK is making progress, a recent BBC survey found that a fifth of British people would turn down an invitation to a same-sex wedding. On Friday night, I went to one of the first gay weddings in the UK to find out what kind of fun these bigots are missing out on.

The grooms were Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Sinclair Treadway. They got talking on a gay dating site last year and met for drinks at a hotel while Sean was on a business trip in Los Angeles, where Sinclair was living. Clearly someone did something right, because months later, when marriage came up in conversation, the feeling was mutual. Neither Sean nor Sinclair proposed per se, but they both felt certain that they wanted to get married ASAP.

They wanted to do it on the first day the could, meaning Saturday, but local government officials in Camden, London, suggested they marry at the stroke of midnight on Friday in a bid to be the first same-sex couple in the UK to tie the knot, thus making LGBT history. As befitting a serious historical event, the dress code was, “Hot, sexy, and camera-ready.” Sean invited me to his house in Camden before the wedding to watch him get ready and nervously sip champagne. Sinclair was there too, dusting off a blue velvet suit jacket.

“The biggest surprise is the opposition to gay marriage in the gay community itself,” said Sean. “A lot of gay people feel like they've been excluded from heterosexual society, so they think, We’ll keep our culture separate. But I think the fact it’s changed is positive and progressive, and we should support that.”

We arrived at Camden City Hall and were greeted by Jonathan Simpson, Camden’s first openly gay mayor, a giant Mancunian bear of a man who resembles a heavyweight boxer more than he does an elected official. He wrote his speech quickly. “I was speaking from the heart, but I am nervous," he told me. "I think I’ll struggle not to cry, what with the music and importance of the occasion.” I worried that I might involuntarily hug him.

“You can't see this wedding in isolation,” Jonathan said. “Around the world kids are living in fear every day because their families won't accept that they’re gay. They will see this, and it will give them some hope—it’s a political act.” Do gay weddings have to adhere to wedding traditions? “It’s completely up to the individual. If someone wants to get married in an underground gay sex club, that's up to them,” he joked. Would he get married? “If I found the right person.” I wished it were me.

Steven, the registrar (who is also gay) told me that tonight’s wedding would be a race against the clock, because a bunch of other gay couples around the UK had decided to get hitched at midnight, meaning Sean and Sinclair would be competing to be the first. He then began explaining some deeply unromantic process whereby a document had to be printed out at midnight and signed before the couple could be officially wed. I downed my champagne.

We entered the hall to take our seats. The room, all polished wood and green leather chairs, looked a bit like the House of Commons in Parliament, which contrasted nicely with Sean and Sinclair’s pre-made playlist, which was blasting "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey. Sean’s friend Natalie took her place as best man, and the grooms' mothers had come along to lead them in and give them away.

Despite the Mariah and shiny blue velvet jackets, the ceremony itself was much like any other wedding, including that awkward moment of silence when the registrar asks if anyone objects. At about six minutes after midnight, Steven uttered the words, “I now declare you husband and husband.” I cried. Jonathan cried. But no one who actually knew the grooms cried.

The band came in with strings, but those words, “husband and husband,” hung in the air.

Outside the hall, the women of the Camden Council PR team were scanning Twitter on their iPhones, disputing whether Sean and Sinclair had in fact been the first gay couple in the UK to marry. The grooms didn’t seem to care, making out in front of the camera crews like a pair of horny teenagers. A lone guest leaned over to me and said, “There’s been some right munters [British slang for "ugly people"] getting married today. I hope these guys’ looks get them enough press coverage for it to at least seem like they were the first.” Classy.

At about 1 AM we piled into one of those tacky old London buses and headed to the reception. When I walked in, Kylie Minogue's “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” was playing, and the room was shrouded with red silk. The evening had officially just reached peak camp. I sat in the corner with a mustachioed gay man in an all-white suit discussing the "fag hag" stereotype and had a bemusing conversation about David Icke with a guy basically dressed as Jamiroquai.

I drunkenly cornered Mayor Jonathan and asked him annoying questions like, “Are you allowed to go to gay bars if you are mayor?” He cryptically described himself as a "naughty mayor" before slipping off to give an impromptu speech: “Tonight we made fucking history in Camden. Islington might have beat us, but we had the sexiest couple!” Then a man-child in guyliner taught me how to swing-dance.

At about four in the morning, after hours of being asked whether I should be drinking on the job, I surveyed the room. Sean’s coworkers were dad-dancing in circles, 40-something men were sneaking off for a joint, and the best man was drunkenly telling Sean and Sinclair to “never be the one who’s scared to show their love more.”

All in all, it was a pretty typical wedding.

Follow Amelia Abraham on Twitter.

Meet your future vote-counter. Source: reddit user /u/humenbean

Bitcoin’s been in some trouble lately. Every week, it seems like there’s a new exchange going down, social engineering heist, or pronouncement from the IRS to bring the collective spirits of cryptocurrency enthusiasts down. People are understandably worried about Bitcoin’s future as money, including Reddit CEO Yishan Wong, who praised the technology but called out the bitcoin community for being overly ideological in a recent post. The way it’s talked about in some quarters, Bitcoin replacing money will strangle big government, eliminate the federal reserve, and radically change our democracy. So what happens if Bitcoin doesn’t become the new money?

As it turns out, it may not need to completely replace money to shake things up. A number of groups have already begun working worldwide on evolving cryptocurrency technology and adapting it to other uses. So far we’ve seen SolarCoin trying to incentivize renewable energy, Namecoin allowing people to circumvent pesky internet censorship and site takedowns, and the nationalistic AuroraCoin getting handed out to all Icelandic citizens.

One of the most promising applications of new crypto tech lies in creating transparent, efficient systems for making political decisions. For those who are counting on cryptocurrencies to radically shift political power back to the people’s hands, it’s worth considering that decisions about how we organize society and allocate resources are just as important as the currency we use for trading. Enter bitcoin-based voting.

I spoke with Oliver Hinck from the European Pirate Party about Liquid Feedback, their system for internal party democracy. He’s been using their Liquid Feedback system since 2011. Basically, the Pirate Party uses this system to determine its position on issues. For Oliver, this was an important way of crystallizing their platform.

“I was fed up with constantly repeating discussions about copyright—so, I saw that

it's absolutely crucial to find new ways for the process of forming the political will of a group,” he said.

Liquid Feedback works by allowing every member a vote on every issue. If they don’t want to vote or don’t feel qualified to weigh in, they can delegate their vote to a trustee. There’s no need for an annual convention, and the Party could change its platform by quickly polling members in response to new developments.  

The current way you and I vote at different levels of our democracies is by electing delegates every four years or so, and generally staying out of the process in between. Apart from special occasions, we rarely get to decide on an issue-by-issue basis. Instead, we trust our representative to cast a vote for us or otherwise represent our interests. This arrangement isn’t necessarily a bad thing—many of us are too busy, lazy, uninformed, apathetic, or all of the above to decide on a wide range of political questions that leaders grapple with. It’s a relatively efficient division of labour. Up until the widespread adoption of the internet, having a true direct democracy wouldn’t even have been remotely practical. But as connectivity grows, it’s now within reach, and getting closer.

Liquid Feedback isn’t based on the blockchain—the central technology underpinning Bitcoin. But it’s part of a number of pieces of democratic software like Helios or Ethelo that promise to make in-group democracy much more efficient and achievable. These kinds of processes are well-suited to co-ops, community organizations, social enterprises, credit unions—anywhere you want members to have a direct vote on any issue. They use algorithms based on social research to determine the most amount of satisfaction for a group based on the expressed preferences of its members.

Merging this with the blockchain for security and verifiability is where it could get interesting for bigtime, official democracy. This is nicely pictured below in this image from Denmark’s Internet Party.

via internet partiet.

One of the most useful parts of Bitcoin is its blockchain, which is essentially a public ledger of all transactions. It’s transparent, irreversible, decentralized and very difficult (but not impossible) for one party to gain control over. This means that if you base a direct voting system on a blockchain, anyone with a computer and a little know-how could verify the results. It would be possible to see how many votes were cast, voters could verify that their own votes were counted, and the decentralized network would be the best answer so far to hacking attempts. Combined with the political thought that’s gone into systems like Liquid Feedback, there’s a starting point here for putting political questions to the public much more frequently and ambitiously.

A public voting system could be built within and on top of existing or proposed cryptocurrencies. BitCongress, one idealistic idea, builds itself mainly on Ethereum, a blockchain-based programming platform for trustless contracts, transactions, and decentralized autonomous organizations. Even after going to an Ethereum meetup, I’m not entirely sure how Ethereum works, but its developers describe it as “cryptocurrency 2.0” that will enable a wide array of applications of blockchain technology that aren’t possible with Bitcoin alone. If they’re right, then we can compare cryptocurrency today to the internet in 1994—things are just getting started.

A few problems immediately jump out when we picture widespread electronic voting. We’re still human, for one. No matter how optimized our systems get for counting people’s votes and balancing their interests, there will still be people who want to break the rules to their benefit.

Vote-buying, intimidation, and hacking are three big human wrenches thrown into the gears of online decentralized voting. What if someone offers to buy my vote on an issue, and threatens to send goons to my house if I don’t agree? What if my device has a virus on it that will change my vote without my knowledge? What if voters just don’t give a shit, or get tricked into voting against their interests? What if we get results like California, with its massive proposition battles and referendum-riddled budget?

I asked Emil Kirkegaard from the Danish Internet Party to address some of these concerns. In a blog post, he outlined some responses to these fears. Emil addresses the impracticality and high cost of intimidating enough voters to make a difference, the fact that you could already sell mail-in absentee ballots if you wanted to, and the notion that a voting system must be perfect in order to justify trying it out. Our current paper-voting system isn’t perfect: turnout is crap; politicians can already indirectly buy votes by promising development or massive advertising expenditures; and people are for the most part disengaged from politics between elections. But we accept it, problems and all, because it’s the best we’ve currently come up with.

The largest problem with e-voting, even with a blockchain network, is client-side hacks (i.e., some sort of exploit compromising a voter’s computer, rather than the network itself). There’s no solution yet, but Alex Petherick-Brian, a programmer working on a friend-to-friend networked mesh democracy outlined that the solution to this could involve looking for irregularities after the vote, promoting static media like live CDs (which would virtually ensure each voter’s computer was uncompromised by booting into an unadulterated operating system that’s programmed onto a CD), and open voting, where users could verify their vote went as they wanted.

Would e-voting solve all these problems or be perfect? No. Would it be better than our current system? Quite possibly. It’s that chance that makes experimentation worth trying.

It’s probably too soon to embark on a giant national experiment in electronic voting, even when built on a solid cryptographic foundation. But it’s undoubtedly worth starting small, and starting open-source. Canadian cities are already contracting large projects to improve public consultation and make people feel heard, so it’s clear that there’s a demand. What cryptocurrency technology brings to the table is security and openness, two things that are essential to scaling the process up.

Anyone expecting decentralized electronic voting to solve all our democratic problems shouldn’t hold their breath. History suggests that political theory doesn’t match reality. Implemented thoughtfully, decentralized direct democracy offers some fantastic possibilities for improving our political life by letting people have a greater voice if they choose to. In a time when people are already trendily “hacking” their diet, their business model, their workspace, and their sleep schedule, why shouldn’t we be tempted to hack democracy? We might just like the results. 


@chrismalmo

Jesse Friedman is 20 years old. A former resident of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, he prefers the moniker Hi-Rez over his Christian name. Like most 20-year-old Floridians, he loves pornography. Unlike most 20-year-old Floridians, he's a Penalty/Sony recording artist, so when he tweeted at Pornhub, the YouTube of smut, asking if they'd give him a lifetime membership in exchange for an original song about the site, the company responded to his request with an emphatic yes. A man of his word, Hi-Rez then went into the studio and, in one magical hour, cranked out a song titled, natch, “Pornhub.”

Which explains why he's here, in a hillside mansion in the otherwise unglamorous enclave of Whittier, California, surrounded by porn stars, camera equipment, cookie jars filled with weed, tired-looking men holding clipboards, and bored-looking members of his entourage. The time has come to shoot a music video for “Pornhub.” Which explains why I’m here.

The interior of the mansion is nondescript in a decidedly new-money way: An enormous flat-screen TV blasts Olympics footage in the living room to an audience of no one. A curio cabinet filled with action figures and memorabilia from the Saw franchise sits in one corner; a cage full of exotic cats sits in the other. I hear the click of heels above me, but the only person within my eyesight is a middle-aged man with a buzz cut and dazed expression. He wanders around slowly, saying nothing. I take a seat on an overstuffed black leather couch and wait for my contact, Hi-Rez’s manager, to find me.

I’m eventually led upstairs, where filming is taking place in one of the bedrooms. Hi-Rez’s manager introduces me to his employer as “Megan from VICE.” “Is that her last name? ‘From VICE?’" Hi-Rez retorts. Along with the already exhausted looking crew, I exchange awkward chuckles at this bon mot. Hi-Rez is, indeed, 20 years old. He wears tube socks and sweat shorts, and his face is lightly dusted with acne—he looks, acts, and exudes his age. He sits on a pile of beanbags that have been placed to give him a height advantage over the two tanned women in pink bikinis that fawn over him whenever the camera rolls. The three of them frolic on a velour Playboy blanket, the kind you'd buy from a kiosk in the mall or the trunk of a van outside a gas station. Hi-Rez’s shirt reads “Big Dreams,” which, given the context, seems very apropos.

Porn legend Eva Angelina, sitting on a couch behind the crew, picks up one of the two copies of Guns & Ammo lying next to her and holds it to her chest. “Looks like she really likes guns!" she remarks, referring to the owner of the mansion. I can already tell Eva will be the sunshine of this set. I take a photo of her giving an electric pink-nailed thumbs-up next to one of the gun mags:

Hi-Rez pantomime-raps along to his song (sample lines: “Jerkin' off till my elbow's / Fuckin' sore as hell, though / I don't really care, though”) as the pink bikinied women writhe around him. His manager nods along, even though he’s surely heard the (admittedly catchy) song at least a dozen times today. The owner of the house, a middle-aged woman who resembles the actress Louise Lasser, nods along as well. "I love the song!" she gushes. She asks the director if he wants to include a shot of two of her exotic cats fucking in the video. According to her, whenever you put 'em together, they just start going at it. She reckons it might “be cute.” He responds positively, but without making a commitment to her.

Scene in the can, I smoke a cigarette outside with a fella by the name of Huggy. Along with being a loving father and husband, he’s also a director of films for Brazzers. (Brazzers, for the uninitiated, is one of the biggest porn producers in the business, specializing in gals with big knockers gettin’ fucked but good.) He’s telling me about a profile of a pornographer he recently read. “It was good,” he says, “but the guy was just the worst." According to Huggy, the man in question came off as incredibly egotistical, to the extent that he feels the profile negatively reflected the entire porn industry. "I wanted to send an Edible Arrangement [to everyone who read it] or something, to say, like, ‘We aren't all like that!'"

Eva comes out and smokes a menthol alongside us. She pokes away at a phone ensconced in a bright-pink case. A guy from Hi-Rez’s entourage wanders outside, saying the word hashtag to no one in particular. Eva takes a selfie. “What you doin' with that?” he asks. “Putting it on Instagram,” she replies. “Can you hashtag me?” he requests. “Sure, what's your name?” she enquires. “Kush Friendly ENT.” “Kush friendly EMT?” she confusedly asks. "No, Kush Friendly E-N-T,” he clarifies. “Like entertainment."

Hi-Rez’s hangers-on all wear hats and are smoking weed. They’re doing very little, other than the aforementioned weed smoking and checking their cell phones. They don’t even gawk at the porn stars; when they actually talk to them, they do so respectfully. They mostly wander in silence, on call to smoke more weed with their employer. (By “their employer,” I mean “their friend, the 20-year-old from Ft. Lauderdale.”)

Morale on the set is high, the environment lighthearted. All the porn stars are jovial and jokey; their jokes usually involving humorous puns about their profession. “I'm a carnivore at heart!” Eva yells. “I can't live without my tube steak!” It’s impressive how quick these gals can turn it on—pun intended. Cheerful and gay before becoming seriously, intensely, mock-gay, they instantly kiss and rub and make bedroom eyes and whatnot as soon as the director says, “Action!” I admire their professionalism. I watch Eva and another broad lick whipped cream off each other's tits.

"I'm not gonna lie,” Hi-Rez's manager says. “This beats being in my office. This beats any video we've ever shot." Huggy and another guy on the crew talk camera lenses as the licking transpires. They’re oblivious.

Time moves slowly, as it does with anything entertainment-industry-related. The dazed middle-aged man I encountered earlier explains film shoots to me: “It's hurry up to wait,” he says. “Tell you what—it doesn't matter if it's a Miley Cyrus video or if it's a porno. It's always hurry up and wait.” He keeps trying to get me to take a picture of an enormous shark statue next to the pool, in the interest of making it look like it’s biting one of the twerking asses currently being filmed. My camera won’t focus. “Come over here,” he slurs. “Just take pictures of the asses."

Many hours have passed, and morale has decreased significantly. We’ve been privy to a lot: hours of twerking, topless pole dancing, energy-drink product placement, the eating out of an Eva Angelina-signature Fleshlight and the mock sucking of the dick of a bear from the motion picture Ted. Even Hi-Rez himself is pooped. "I'm done,” he says. “I'm done. I've seen enough tits and ass for today." Eva jokes that the shoot has gone on so long, she’s “gonna ask for [her] anal rate.” "Do you take PayPal?” Huggy asks. "Actually, I do!" she cheerfully replies.

The smell of weed smoke sits heavy in the air. It’s 7 PM; the crew has been here since 8 AM. Everyone types away on his or her phone. The porn stars perk up when Hi-Rez’s manager suggests a Starbucks run. Before the caffeine can be procured, however, a wrap is called. They nixed the cat scene.

For behind-the-scenes footage of Hi-Rez's "Pornhub," watch Pornhub's making-of video. 

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.