This week on the VICE podcast, Reihan Salam sits down with Jose Antonio Vargas, the writer and director of the newly released documentary, Documented.

Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote an essay in the New York Times magazine in 2011, where he publicly outed himself as an undocumented immigrant who had been living in the US illegally since he was brought from Philippines at the age of 12.

The film chronicles this coming out experience, follows him on his journey through the US as an immigration reform activist, and gets a glimpse into a much more personal journey, in which he reconnects with his mother whom he hasn't seen in 20 years.

A faked photo of Jessica Alba

I’m looking at an image of Jessica Alba. In it, her face looks just like it does in every red carpet photo you’ve ever seen of her, but her body looks a little unfamiliar: The most striking differences is that it doesn’t have any clothes covering it, and that it’s having some anal sex with a guy in a gold silk shirt.

This photo is, of course, a fake. As far back as I can remember, there's been a big online demand for this particular brand of smut that involves stitching the heads of celebrities on to the bodies of porn stars.

Usually, the people who create the fakes—almost all of whom seem, understandably, to work under pseudonyms, such as “Lord Hollywood”, “Knight in the Wired,” and “Pirate Duck”—post their work to online forums, where it's critiqued by fans and other fakers. Occasionally, fakers get into head-to-head “duels” with other forum users voting for the winner. Of course nobody with an internet connection actually pays for fake nudes of female celebrities, so the fakers practice their craft merely for forum kudos. Or, if you're being more thoughtful about it, because it allows them to subvert Hollywood’s control over their fantasies—young starlets in low-cut tops, frolicking in bikini scenes, mounting motorcycles in short-shorts for no particular reason—and repackage them into something more risque for the gratification of both themselves and legions of enthusiastic wankers.

One such fan is Mr. Charles. When I meet him in a Starbucks, I learn that Mr. Charles is in his late-40s and, judging by his slightly baggy blazer, guess that his small potbelly may once have been 15 pounds heavier. He’s greying around the temples and wears thin, black wire-frame glasses. For whatever reason, he has chosen a pseudonym that makes him sound like a post-war slave-owner. Picture a senior manager at a software company and you're probably not far off the man I'm looking at.

He tells me that he has a wife and two daughters, but hasn’t seen them for over a year. “You don’t realize it when you’re on the path,” he mewls. “You don’t realize how it’s not just something you do any longer only when you’re bored, but something you do because you need to do it. Daily. Hourly.”

Mr. Charles began surfing fake celebrity porn forums five years ago, when his wife and two little girls were out of town. He doesn’t remember exactly how he came across his first fakers forum, but thinks he wound up there after searching for sexy photos of Jessica Alba on Google. He’d just watched one of her movies on TV and wanted to masturbate about it before going to bed.

The images he found on this first forum were leagues beyond the bikini shots he’d initially hoped to find; there were hundreds of images of Alba, contorted into every conceivable position: missionary, doggy, cum shots, double—even triple—anal. He recalls that he masturbated four times before bed that night.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” he gushes. “Remember when you were 13 and just discovered masturbation? How good that felt? How powerful? It was like that.”

Over the next few years, Mr. Charles would return to the forum, and other forums like it, at first weekly, then daily, then sometimes hourly. He even began to browse the forums whenever the colleague he shared his office with stepped out for lunch. “I just needed more,” he says. “My wife became unattractive to me. These images were more than your normal porn. Suddenly I could have any of the young actresses I saw in movies and on TV at any time and in any position.”

Mr. Charles says that the fake images he masturbated to seemed real enough to him that it felt like he was actually joining his favorite stars in their most private, intimate, and erotic moments, an engagement Hollywood always teased, but could never allow. He opens his laptop and shows me some of his most beloved images, not shy about browsing through a folder of 900 very explicit photos in a very packed coffee shop, before arriving at the one of Jessica Alba getting to know the guy in the gold silk shirt. The pseudonym on the photo is the mark of a prolific faker known as “Black Magnus.”

“This is the one that changed everything for me,” Mr. Charles says, as if he'd witnessed a holy revelation or shaken hands with an alien rather than simply found a Frankensteined image of "Jessica Alba" getting anally penetrated in the recesses of the internet.

He explains that, two years ago, he happened upon this particular fake of Alba for the first time. He’d never seen it before, even though it was by Black Magnus, his favorite faker. Mr Charles first stole a peek at it when he got to his work computer in the morning and logged into one of his favorite forums. The mixture of pain and pleasure on Alba’s face played on his mind for the next three hours, and when his colleague left for lunch he couldn’t wait any longer. As soon as the door shut behind her, he started masturbating.

And then his colleague opened the office door. “She actually screamed,” he says.

A faked image of Natalie Portman

The resulting investigation led to Mr. Charles’s dismissal. Unbeknownst to him, his company had begun tracking the web history of all its employees. His browsing history was all there: Alba having anal sex, Natalie Portman in a bukkake session, former Disney stars doing stuff that Disney would presumably not be very happy about them doing.

“When your bosses see that you’re looking at pornographic images of some very young actresses… well, I would have quit in shame if they hadn’t fired me,” he says, before adding that he never viewed fakes of underage actresses. “Matter of fact, faking underage stars will get you immediately banned in most forums.”

Mr. Charles came clean to his wife and promised to get help for what he now realized was an addiction. But the resulting depression from his firing, the loss of trust from his wife and his inability to find another job—combined with his promises to stop looking at fakes, but his powerlessness to do so—led to her leaving him ten months later, taking his two young daughters.

I’m about to ask Mr. Charles if he still looks at fakes, but given the collection he’s just taken me through, I already know the answer, so ask instead why he continues to indulge in the very thing that made his life fall apart. “Why does an alcoholic need a drink?” he answers.

Years before Mr. Charles’s firing, a 17-year-old Italian boy named Marco was whiling away his lunch hours drawing comic book heroines in a notebook, most of the time with their clothes torn to shreds, instead of socializing with his schoolmates. “I couldn’t explain it then,” Marco says, “but I drew these fake people with their clothes off because I wasn’t good at having real relationships, much less feeling comfortable around girls. I think the drawing of the obviously unattainable fake comic book superheroes was a way to release my teenage sexual frustration. Plus, I always liked to draw.”

Another fake nude of Alba

Unsurprisingly, Marco’s reclusiveness and his drawing of unobtainable women may have also had something to do with his relationship with his mother. A year earlier, his father had run off with the woman he hired to clean their house, leaving Marco and his mother to fend for themselves—something his mother wasn’t much good at.

The more his mother withdrew from life, the more panic attacks Marco found himself having at school, which led to increased bullying from his classmates. It wasn’t long before he started self-harming, before eventually becoming bulimic. Things came to a head shortly after Marco’s 18th birthday, when his mother killed herself. His father didn’t show for the funeral. “I knew I should have been mad at my father, but all my anger went towards my mother,” he says.

Over the next two years, Marco’s self-harm increased. Drug use and thoughts of suicide became a constant problem. Any job he managed to get, he quickly lost. But it wasn’t until one night before his 21st birthday that things hit rock bottom. “The thoughts of suicide had become so prevalent that I could literally hear them in my head,” he says. “I don’t know what stopped me, but I managed to walk out the door and made it to the hospital.”

Upon his release from the hospital, Marco was referred to a treatment centre where he attended cognitive behavioral therapy sessions for six months. “It wasn’t until I did an extra session with an arts therapist that I began to turn the corner,” he says. “She was the most non-judgmental person I’ve known. She asked what made me happy and I just answered, ‘Drawing unobtainable women.’ And she said, ‘So do that.’”

So that’s exactly what Marco did, beginning to draw his comic book women again, before getting a job at a local internet cafe and messing around with a pirated version of Photoshop, a platform that allowed him to create far more lifelike superheroes than ink on paper ever could.

“I’d show my photoshopped drawings of superheroines to a friend I made who worked late shifts with me at the cafe,” Marco says. “To my surprise, he had no shame in admitting he loved the topless ones. He even had me print some out for him. We laughed about it, but I did. It made me feel good.”

A faked image of Mila Kunis

The next week his friend came in with a memory stick containing several hardcore pornography images, as well as multiple photos of Keira Knightley, Shakira, and Mila Kunis.

“‘You think you can make me up an image?’ he said to me,” Marco recalls. “It was a challenge, since it was manipulating existing images. In many ways it’s much harder than just drawing your own. The first wasn’t that good, neither were the next five or six. With cartoon art, like you find in comics, you don’t need to worry about lighting, but in creating photorealistic images, the ability to match lighting and shading is what makes it.

“But I got good fast, and my friend soon made me aware he had been sharing my images on online forums. When I checked them out it was odd; there were dozens of comments praising my images, and there was also this big community of users who liked the same stuff I did. I felt not only accepted, but respected for the first time in my life.”

Over the next year, Marco made dozens of fakes, his reputation on the forums growing every time he released a new one. He then started winning duels with other fakers, which gained him even more praise. And though he knew that plenty of his fans were only looking at his images to get off, Marco was creating them as both an emotional release and also as an acceptance of who he was.

“At first I would just sign the images with my real initials, because I was no longer ashamed,” Marco says. “But the more I made, the more people online started requesting their favorites. They’d especially love my Natalie Portmans and Sarah Michelle Gellars, and they really liked the Jessica Albas, who I always liked from Dark Angel. At the same time, many of my fans also said I needed a better pseudonym, like the other great fakers had, than just my initials.”

So what pseudonym did he choose? “Black Magnus,” he says, adding that the recognition and encouragement of his talents gave him a confidence that, just a few years earlier, he could never dream of having.

It’s that confidence gained through creating celebrity fakes, Marco says, that enabled him to fully kick his self-loathing. “I know many might not consider it ‘art’,” he says, “but that therapist was right: It has the power to change your life.”

All names in this story have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. The fake images in this story are posted as examples of other fakers’ works and were not created by “Black Magnus.”

Michael Grothaus is a journalist whose first novel is about America’s addiction to celebrity, explored through a porn addict’s involuntary entanglement in the world of sex trafficking among the Hollywood elite. He is represented by the Hanbury Literary Agency in London. You can follow him on Twitter: @michaelgrothaus

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Berge Gazen

Earlier this year, I visited one of the world’s failed states, which forced me to take extended break from daily smoking for the first time in over nine years. I calculated how long it had been right before the trip, and it freaked me out a little. I’ve always championed weed for its lack of addictive qualities, and yet had never demonstrated this in almost a decade. The only way to know my dependency on weed was to go a place where I would find absolutely none of it.

The night before my trip, I stayed at home and smoked about an eighth to myself while packing. Every time I lit a new joint, the impending ordeal seemed all the more arduous. I unconsciously amplified the problem for myself right up to the minute we all got in a cab and headed to the airport. When we arrived at the airport, I smoked three cigarettes before finally going through security. I still felt anxious and had no idea how it would be.

We flew for 24 hours. I had officially detoxed of weed for one day, and already felt a little sharper than normal. My newfound alertness kicked in at just the right time: We arrived in the middle of a war-torn country. Every point of transit became a treacherous ordeal with a very real possibility that someone might co-opt our gear or haul us away for some unexplained reason. After we got through the airport melee, a UN-marked van scooped us up and took us to a hotel that would be our home for the next few days.

The hotel was nicer than what I had expected from a country plagued by violence and political turmoil. All of our amenities almost kind of worked: The air conditioner spit out cool air half the time; we had warm running water that would sometimes turn into brown sludge; the pool looked clean but gave one of our guys a severe case of hives. We rolled with the punches, because we were leaving in a few days. At this point, we had no idea that we’d end up stuck there for a lot longer than we expected.

While we waited for to be transported to our next stop, we didn’t leave the premises of the hotel. We had heard numerous stories about aid workers and other foreigners being kidnapped, beaten, and pelted with rocks out in the streets. The risk of jeopardizing our safety outweighed any adventurous possibilities. After three days at the hotel without being stoned, I felt pretty good. Sure, I had a couple of mood swings, but I was also more relaxed than I had been in years. Weed was my end-of-the-day treat, and without it, I was far more focused on my responsibilities. As each day went by, I was more eager to get out to the camps and get our story.

By the fourth day, we were told we could head to our next destination. The fifth day became the sixth, and then the seventh. Each morning, we’d pack up our stuff, head down to the lobby—only to hear that we’d have to wait one more day. We’d then spend the day tooling around at the hotel, trying to find a wifi signal, and not smoking any weed whatsoever. At night, we got word that we were leaving the next morning, and in the morning, some unforeseen snag would leave us trapped at the hotel yet again. What was supposed to be three days at the hotel became 12 days, and by the end of it we were all losing our minds. At many points, I thought to myself, Man, I really want to smoke right now, but it was more out of boredom than necessity. I felt no cravings, headaches, or any other withdrawal symptoms.

Not smoking definitely made me read a lot more. In those 12 days, I read Ursula K. LeGuin’s sci-fi classic The Dispossessed cover to cover, a feat I always thought was beyond my capabilities. The same asinine TV shows I typically zone out to when I’m stoned quickly bored me. I thought that not smoking would significantly reduce my creativity, but instead practically drove my energy and efforts. I prioritized what used to seem like mundane tasks, like reorganizing all the audio samples on my computer and creating a spreadsheet to tally how many joints I’ve rolled in my entire life.

Quitting smoking positively affected me, while cabin fever made me go insane. We developed a routine of eating, the same sub-par food, napping in the room, monotonously waiting to hear our fate. On the thirteenth day, it seemed that our fortune was about to prevail. We reported to the lobby at dawn, packed and ready to go as we had been so many times before, but this time we actually made it onto a tiny, two-propeller plane and hopped around for hours, landing at various airstrips in the middle of the desert for a few minutes before taking off again. When we were finally one stop away from our destination, we got a call that our permits were still incomplete and that we had to return to the hotel. If we disembarked, we would be arrested. Our frustration was at its peak. Rather than piss off the authorities, we retreated back to our hotel as instructed.

The moment we walked back into the lobby, the image of a lit joint burned in my memory. I wanted to smoke, but not because I felt like I needed it. I just couldn’t fathom keeping myself occupied for another day without a little help from weed. Keeping in good spirits, the team laughed off our ordeal and agreed that we’d try our luck again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until we finally got what we came for. The next morning, we arrived in the lobby fully expecting to be sent straight back to our rooms, but instead we were jammed onto an express flight and in less than two hours, we reached our final destination to finish our assignment. We spent two days there before hopping back to the capital before returning to New York. We had an extra two days before our return flight, and those were the most excruciating. Strangely, that weekend I barely thought about weed at all. For the first time in years, I was on a normal sleep cycle. I didn’t have anything to look forward to at the end of the day, and I didn’t feel like I needed it. Life at the hotel was mind-numbingly boring, but it gave me the opportunity to reflect. It was like a minimum-security prison that seems like a slap on the wrist until you find yourself reflecting on your life as you stare out your cell window.  

The weekend finally came to a close and we embarked on another 24-hour journey home to New York. When I walked into my apartment, my housemate was smoking a joint. Knowing that I had been away from by beloved weed for so long, he quickly handed it to me before I could even put my bag down. To my own surprise, I hesitated before hitting it. Don’t get me wrong—I still hit it. After that, I proceeded to roll three joints in a row and I smoked each one with great zeal. But it didn’t feel like getting a fix after weeks of abstinence. It was the same simple, pleasurable high I get from indulging in all the things I love, whether it’s good food, good music, or a particularly nice nug.

The experience affirmed my belief that weed is the kind of habit you can pick up and put down at the drop of a hat. I’m sure there are people who feel a deeper dependence and can’t stop smoking abruptly without some seriously unpleasant feelings, but I think every pothead owes it to him or herself to try. After years of smoking constantly, not being high is like a brand new high in itself. 

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Photo by Hill Street Studios/Matthew Palmer

Alice Goffman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison whose book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (out this month on University of Chicago Press), has been getting far more attention than academic works usually get. The book is a result of her living in a poor black neighborhood in Philadelphia she refers to as “6th Street” for years as an undergraduate and a grad student. (She changed the names of people and places in her book.) She eventually fell in with a group of young men who were almost constantly under the threat of being arrested and jailed, often for petty probation violations or unpaid court fees. She became a “fly on the wall” and took notes as her subjects (who were also her friends) attempted to make a living, support each other, and maintain relationships with their loved ones, all while attempting to evade the authorities. Goffman’s work shows how the threat of imprisonment hangs over the lives of so many in communities like 6th Street and warps families and friendships in the process. It’s an uncommonly close look at how lives are lived under police surveillance and should be read by anyone with an interest in poverty, policing, or mass incarceration. This excerpt is from the second chapter, which is titled “Techniques for Evading the Authorities.”

A young man concerned that the police will take him into custody comes to see danger and risk in the mundane doings of everyday life. To survive outside prison, he learns to hesitate when others walk casually forward, to see what others fail to notice, to fear what others trust or take for granted.

One of the first things that such a man develops is a heightened awareness of police officers—what they look like, how they move, where and when they are likely to appear. He learns the models of their undercover cars, the ways they hold their bodies and the cut of their hair, the timing and location of their typical routes. His awareness of the police never seems to leave him; he sees them sitting in plain clothes at the mall food court with their children; he spots them in his rearview mirror coming up behind him on the highway, from ten cars and three lanes away. Sometimes he finds that his body anticipates their arrival with sweat and a quickened heartbeat before his mind consciously registers any sign of their appearance.

When I first met Mike, I thought his awareness of the police was a special gift, unique to him. Then I realized Chuck also seemed to know when the police were coming. So did Alex. When they sensed the police were near, they did what other young men in the neighborhood did: they ran and hid.

Chuck put the strategy concisely to his 12-year-old brother, Tim:

If you hear the law coming, you merk on [run away from] them niggas. You don’t be having time to think okay, what do I got on me, what they going to want from me. No, you hear them coming, that’s it, you gone. Period. ’Cause whoever they looking for, even if it’s not you, nine times out of ten they’ll probably book you.

Tim was still learning how to run from the police, and his beginner missteps furnished a good deal of amusement for his older brothers and their friends.

Late one night, a white friend of mine from school dropped off Reggie and a friend of his at my apartment. Chuck and Mike phoned me to announce that Tim, who was 11 at the time, had spotted my friend’s car and taken off down the street, yelling, “It’s a undercover! It’s a undercover!”

“Nigga, that’s Alice’s girlfriend.” Mike laughed. “She was drinking with us last night.”

If a successful escape means learning how to identify the police, it also requires learning how to run. Chuck, Mike, and their friends spent many evenings honing this skill by running after each other and chasing each other in cars. The stated reason would be that one had taken something from the other: a CD, a five-dollar bill from a pocket, a small bag of weed. Reggie and his friends also ran away from their girlfriends on foot or by car.

One night, I was standing outside Ronny’s house with Reggie and Reggie’s friend, an 18-year-old young man who lived across the street. In the middle of the conversation, Reggie’s friend jumped in his car and took off. Reggie explained that he was on the run from his girlfriend, who we then saw getting into another car after him. Reggie explained that she wanted him to be in the house with her, but that he was refusing, wanting instead to go out to the bar. This pursuit lasted the entire evening, with the man’s girlfriend enlisting her friends and relatives to provide information about his whereabouts, and the man doing the same. Around one in the morning, I heard that she’d caught him going into the beer store and dragged him back home.

It wasn’t always clear to me whether these chases were games or more serious pursuits, and some appeared more serious than others. Regardless of the meaning that people ascribed to them at the time or afterward, these chases improved young men’s skill and speed at get ting away. In running from each other, from their girlfriends, and in a few cases their mothers, Reggie and his friends learned how to navigate the alleyways, weave through traffic, and identify local residents willing to hide them for a little while.

Abandoned buildings in North Philadelphia. Photo via Flickr user 秘密

During the first year and a half I spent on 6th Street, I watched young men running and hiding from the police on 111 occasions, an average of more than once every five days.

Those who interact rarely with the police may assume that running away after a police stop is futile. Worse, it could lead to increased charges or to violence. While the second part is true, the first is not. In my first 18 months on 6th Street, I observed a young man running after he had been stopped on 41 different occasions. Of these, eight involved men fleeing their houses during raids; 23 involved men running after being stopped while on foot (including running after the police had approached a group of people of whom the man was a part); six involved car chases; and two involved a combination of car and foot chases, where the chase began by car and continued with the man getting out and running.

In 24 of these cases, the man got away. In 17 of the 24, the police didn’t appear to know who the man was and couldn’t bring any charges against him after he had fled. Even in cases where the police subsequently charged him with fleeing or other crimes, the successful getaway allowed the man to stay out of jail longer than he might have if he’d simply permitted the police to cuff him and take him in.

A successful escape can be a solitary act, but oftentimes it is a collective accomplishment. A young man relies on his friends, relatives, and neighbors to alert him when they see the police coming, and to pass along information about where the police have been or where and when they might appear next. When the police make inquiries, these friends and neighbors feign ignorance or feed the police misinformation. They may also help to conceal incriminating objects and provide safe houses where a young man can hide. From field notes taken in September 2006:

Around 11 AM, I walked up the alleyway to the back of Chuck’s house. Before I reached the porch, Chuck came running down the iron stairs, shouting something to a neighbor. Reggie followed him, also shouting. Their mother, Miss Linda, came to the top of the second-floor balcony and told me the law was on the way, and to make sure that Reggie in particular did not come back until she gave the green light. I recalled that Reggie had a warrant out for failure to pay court fees, and would doubtless be taken in if the cops ran his name.

I watched Chuck and Reggie proceed up the alleyway, and then Chuck turned and yelled at me to come on. We ran for about three blocks, going through two backyards and over a small divider. Dogs barked as we went by. I was half a block behind and lost sight of Chuck and Reggie. Panting, I slowed to a walk, looking back to see if the police were coming. Then I heard “psst” and looked up to see Chuck leaning out the second-floor window of a two-story house. A woman in her 50s, who I immediately guessed to be a churchgoer, opened the door for me as I approached, saying only, “Upstairs.”

Chuck and Reggie were in her dressing room. This quite conservative- looking woman had converted what is usually the spare upstairs bedroom into a giant walk-in closet, with shoes, purses, and clothing arranged by color on the kind of white metal shelves that you buy and install yourself.

Our getaway had produced a mild euphoria. Reggie brushed past Chuck to examine the shoe collection, and Chuck wiped his arm off dramatically, teasing his younger brother about how sweaty he was.

“Look at yourself, nigga! You don’t run for shit now with that little bit of shell in your shoulder,” Reggie responded, referring to the partial bullet that had lodged just below the back of Chuck’s neck when he was shot the month before.

Chuck laughed. “I’m in the best shape of my life.” He explained that his shoulder hurt only when he played basketball.

Reggie sat on a small leopard-print stool and said, “Name a fat motherfucker who runs faster than me. Not just in the ’hood but anywhere in Philly.”

“Oh, here you go,” Chuck complained.

Chuck joked about the extensive shoe collection, saying you’d never know Miss Toya was like that. Reggie pulled out a pair of suede high heels and attempted to get one onto his foot, asking me to do up the straps. 
He got on her computer and started browsing pit bull websites, then YouTube videos of street fights. Chuck cringed and exclaimed loudly as Kimbo, a well-known street fighter, hit his opponent repeatedly in the eye, revealing bloody and battered tissue that Chuck called “spaghetti and meatballs.”

I asked Chuck why he made me run, and consequently dirty my sneakers, when I’m not even wanted.

“It’s good practice.”
Reggie grinned and said, “You be taking your fucking time, A.”

“You’re no track star,” I replied.

“What!? I was haul-assing.”


Chuck got on the phone with his mother and then a neighbor to find out how many police were on his block and for whom they had come. Apparently they were looking for a man who had fled on foot after being stopped on an off-road motorbike. They didn’t find this man, but did take two others from the house next door: One had a bench warrant for failure to appear, and the other had a small amount of crack in his pocket. Into the phone Chuck was saying, “Damn. They got Jay-Jay? Damn.”

About an hour later, his mother called to tell Chuck that the police had gone. We waited another ten minutes, then left for Pappi’s, the corner store. Chuck ordered Miss Toya a turkey hoagie and BBQ chips and brought them to her as thanks. We then walked back to the block with Dutch cigars and sodas.

Running wasn’t always the smartest thing to do when the cops came, but the urge to run was so ingrained that sometimes it was hard to stand still.

When the police came for Reggie, they blocked off the alleyway on both ends simultaneously, using at least five cars that I could count from where I was standing, and then ran into Reggie’s mother’s house. Chuck, Anthony, and two other guys were outside, trapped. Chuck and these two young men were clean, but Anthony had the warrant for failure to appear. As the police dragged Reggie out of his house, laid him on the ground, and searched him, one guy whispered to Anthony to be calm and stay still. Anthony kept quiet as Reggie was cuffed and placed in the squad car, but then he started whispering that he thought Reggie was looking at him funny, and might say something to the police.

Anthony started sweating and twitching his hands; the two young men and I whispered again to him to chill. One said, “Be easy. He’s not looking at you.”

We stood there, and time dragged on. When the police started searching the ground for whatever Reggie may have tossed before getting into the squad car, Anthony couldn’t seem to take it anymore. He started mumbling his concerns, and then he took off up the alley. One of the officers went after him, causing the other young man standing next to him to shake his head in frustrated disappointment.

Anthony’s running caused the other officer to put the two young men still standing there up against the car, search them, and run their names; luckily, they came back clean. Then two more cop cars came up the alley, sirens on. About five minutes after they finished searching the young men, one of the guys got a text from a friend up the street. He silently handed me the phone so I could read it:

Anthony just got booked. They beat the shit out of him.

At the time of this incident, Chuck had recently begun allowing Anthony to sleep in the basement of his mother’s house, on the floor next to his bed. So it was Chuck’s house that Anthony phoned first from the police station. Miss Linda picked up and began yelling at him immediately.

“You fucking stupid, Anthony! Nobody bothering you, nobody looking at you. What the fuck did you run for? You a nut. You a fucking nut. You deserve to get locked up. Dumb-ass nigga. Call your sister, don’t call my phone. And when you come home, you can find somewhere else to stay.”

When the techniques young men deploy to avoid the police fail, and they find themselves cuffed against a wall or cornered in an alleyway, all is not lost: Once caught, sometimes they practice concerted silence, create a distraction, advocate for their rights, or threaten to sue the police or go to the newspapers. I occasionally saw each of these measures dissuade the police from continuing to search a man or question a man on the street. When young men are taken in, they sometimes use the grate in the holding cell at the police station to scrape their fingertips down past the first few layers of skin, so that the police can’t obtain the prints necessary to identify them and attach them to their already pending legal matters. On four separate occasions I saw men from 6th Street released with bloody fingertips.

Cops get involved in a street dispute in North Philadelphia. Photo via Flickr user Scott

Avoiding the Police and Courts When Settling Disputes
It’s not enough to run and hide when the police approach. A man intent on staying out of jail cannot call the police when harmed, or make use of the courts to settle disputes. He must forego the use of the police and the courts when he is threatened or in danger and find alternative ways to protect himself. When Mike returned from a year upstate, he was rusty in these sensibilities, having been living most recently as an inmate rather than as a fugitive. His friends wasted no time in reacquainting him with the precariousness of life on the outside.

Mike had been released on parole to a halfway house, which he had to return to every day before curfew. When his mother went on vacation, he invited a man he had befriended in prison to her house to play video games. The next day, Mike, Chuck, and I went back to the house and found Mike’s mother’s stereo, DVD player, and two TVs gone. Later, a neighbor told Mike that he had seen the man taking these things from the house in the early morning.

Once the neighbor identified the thief, Mike debated whether to call the police. He didn’t want to let the robbery go, but he also didn’t want to take matters into his own hands and risk violating his parole. Finally, he called the police and gave them a description of the man. When we returned to the block, Reggie and another friend admonished Mike about the risks he had taken:

REGGIE: And you on parole! You done got home like a day ago! Why the fuck you calling the law for? You lucky they ain’t just grab [arrest] both of you.

FRIEND: Put it this way: They ain’t come grab you like you ain’t violate shit, they ain’t find no other jawns [warrants] in the computer. Dude ain’t pop no fly shit [accused Mike of some crime in an attempt to reduce his own charges], but simple fact is you filed a statement, you know what I’m saying, gave them niggas your government [real name]. Now they got your mom’s address in the file as your last known [address]. The next time they come looking for you, they not just going to your uncle’s, they definitely going to be through there [his mother’s house].

In this case, their counsel proved correct. Mike returned to the halfway house a few days later and discovered that the guards there were conducting alcohol tests. He left before they could test him, assuming he would test positive and spend another year upstate for the violation. He planned to live on the run for some time, but three days later the police found him at his mother’s house and took him into custody. We had been playing video games, and he had gone across the street to change his clothes at the Laundromat. Two unmarked cars pulled up, and three officers got out and started chasing him. He ran for two blocks before they threw him down on the pavement. Later, he mentioned that their knowledge of his mother’s new address must have come from the time he reported the robbery, and he bemoaned his thoughtlessness in calling them.

A Philadelphia police officer frisks a man. Photo via Flickr user BKL

Young men also learn to see the courts as dangerous. A year after Chuck came home from the assault case, he enrolled in a job training program for young men who have not completed high school, hoping to earn his high school diploma and gain a certificate in construction. He proudly graduated at 22 and found a job apprenticing on a construction crew. Around this time he had been arguing with his baby-mom, and she stopped allowing him to see their two daughters, ages one and a half and six months. After considerable hesitation, Chuck took her to family court to file for partial custody. He said it tore at him to let a white man into his family affairs, but what could he do? He needed to see his kids. At the time, Chuck was also sending $35 per month to the city toward payment on tickets he had received for driving without a license or registration; he hoped to get into good standing and become qualified to apply for a driver’s license. The judge said that if Chuck did not meet his payments on time every month, he would issue a bench warrant for his arrest.Then Chuck could work off the traffic tickets he owed in county jail (fines and fees can be deducted for every day spent in custody).

Five months into his case for partial custody in family court, Chuck lost his construction job and stopped making the payments to the city for the traffic tickets. He said he wasn’t sure if he had actually been issued a warrant, and unsuccessfully attempted to discover this. He went to court for the child custody case anyway the next month, and when his baby-mom mentioned that he was a drug dealer and unfit to get partial custody of their children, the judge immediately ran his name in the database to see if any warrants came up. They did not. As we walked out of the courthouse, Chuck said to me and to his mother:

I wanted to run [when the clerk ran his name], but it was no way I was getting out of there—it was too many cops and guards. But my shit came back clean, so I guess if they’re going to give me a warrant for the tickets, they ain’t get around to it yet.

The judge ruled in Chuck’s favor and granted him visitation on Sundays at a court-supervised day-care site. These visits, Chuck said, made him anxious: “Every time I walk in the door I wonder, like, is it today? Are they going to come grab me, like, right out of the day care? I can just see [my daughter’s] face, like, ‘Daddy, where you going?’”

After a month, the conditions of his custody allowed Chuck to go to his baby-mom’s house on the weekends to pick up his daughters. He appeared thrilled with these visits, because he could see his children without having to interact with the courts and risk any warrant that might come up.

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Photo via Wikipedia Creative Commons

March 31 marked the 15-year anniversary of the release of the first film in the Matrix trilogy. A few outlets marked the occasion with hagiographic looks back at the "enduring legacy" of the movie, its themes, and memorable iconography, but for the most part, no one gave a shit. What the hell happened to a movie that once defined a generation?

I was 14 when The Matrix came out, and far more interested in the upcoming Star Wars prequel to give much of a shit about a movie in which the guy from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure wears sunglasses for two hours. I heard from friends that were brave enough to sneak into a screening how "fucking sick" The Matrix was, and that it would "blow your mind, dude." It would be another few years before I finally knew the touch of a woman, but this movie sounded like a cinematic consolation prize.

Being that I was already a professional cynic in training, I tried to ignore the bro-tastic bluster and hyperbole. It didn't dawn on me that maybe there was something to their rhetoric until I found myself walking to my showing of The Phantom Menace and happening past an auditorium screening The Matrix. Between the gun shots, bombastic score, and earnestly delivered philosophical dialogue, there were audible gasps coming out of the theater. The last time I heard people gasp during a movie was the poolside sex scene in Showgirls, and that was me—alone in my room—while masturbating.

The Matrix became a pop culture phenomenon that spawned video games, cartoons, merchandise... and two ignominious sequels we'd all pay money to forget. It was the ideal film for the society in which it was birthed. That's great in the moment, because it means The Matrix could dominate the zeitgeist that spawned it. There's an ugly side to that momentary relevance, and that's how a movie like the Wachowskis' magnum opus fares with later generations. The Matrix was perfect in 1999, but watching that movie in 2014 isn't much different from listening to a Limp Bizkit album in 2014—as in, I highly recommend not doing it.

The Matrix soundtrack includes such "legendary" artists as Propellerheads, Deftones, Monster Magnet, Marilyn Manson, and Rammstein. The soundtrack for the sequel naturally ups the ante and commissioned Linkin Park and POD (responsible for this risible, horseshit music video above) to submit tracks. The pop music in these movies was like the world's worst Ozzfest lineup, since there's actually an appearance by Dave Matthews Band on the Reloaded soundtrack. Dave Matthews Band! It's almost appropriate, since their body of work is like a computer simulation of music. In 1999, the most popular man in America was Stone Cold Steve Austin. Things were tough all over, but especially in music. The Matrix soundtrack totally embodies this dark time.

Photo via Flickr User Peter Taylor

From the crap music to the dubious fashion choices, The Matrix is hopelessly dated. "Yeah, so what?" you say, scoffing. "All soundtracks and costumes become dated one day. That's why you think The Matrix is lame?"

Hardly, though the below screenshot from that POD video might make me reconsider:

Cowabunga, dude! Oh, wait, wrong movie.

The music (and the fashion) is actually the easiest target for ridicule, but if you dug deeper into the "rabbit hole" (see what I did there?), you'd realize that this film is trapped in a causality loop of endless anachronism that it can never escape.

Before The Matrix, pop culture really had no way of knowing how to acclimate itself to the new paradigm created by constantly improving computer-processing power and internet connectivity. "Evil technology" movies were a dime a dozen in the 90s. There were movies like that Sandra Bullock–Dennis Miller stinker, The Net, which was the cinematic equivalent of one of those scary local news stories about how there are razor blades in Halloween candy. "Hackers will steal your credit cards... and your soul!"

Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days predicted that by 1999, people would be watching virtual reality recordings of snuff films for kicks. In reality, we still hadn't figured out how to make 3-D movies palatable, let alone pump video directly into someone's head. Before that was Bigelow's ex-husband's seminal film, The Terminator, which told the tale of a future war between man and machine. The Matrix shook that formula up by making computers and the internet a conduit for humanity's eventual evolution—a blank canvas of unlimited possibilities. It actually found a way to envision technology as something that seemed exciting. With computers you can fly, dodge bullets, and learn foreign languages—in addition to being enslaved by giant squid monsters, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's reset.

If you don't know the story of The Matrix because you're 12 and your favorite movie is Frozen, allow me to break it down for you: Keanu Reeves is a nerdy computer programmer being chased by cool people in leather jumpsuits and IBM programmers from 1957 who always wear sunglasses. The IBM programmers seem way more evil, probably because they wear ties. The cool people in leather jumpsuits seem like good guys because they hang around raves and can do karate. It turns out that the world Keanu lives in is actually a computer simulation of the year 1999. In the real world, he's strapped to a machine that extracts energy from his lifeless, comatose body. This is the fate of the entirety of humanity, as sentient machines have taken over the planet and use people to power their evil machine society. Why do they hate humans so much? You'll have to watch a totally separate cartoon prequel DVD to figure that out.

Anyway, the IBM dudes are actually computer programs whose job is to keep humans from discovering the truth. The leather karate ravers are freed humans who go back into "the Matrix" to release other humans from this psychic prison. Keanu is their messiah, predicted to free humanity from bondage, but before he can do that, he has to learn to believe in himself. 

Sounds like an awesome movie, right? Well, not so fast, true believer. Beyond the bad fashion, nu-metal atrocities, and over-reliance on the color green, The Matrix suffers from being yet another goddamn movie where evil computers want to destroy the planet. Sorry, but in 2014, we're all much more aware that it's not technology that will destroy us, but the wealthy industrialists who seek to wield it for their own personal gain. Recent Johnny Depp poop-nugget Transcendence was a throwback to this late-90s mentality of computers corrupting man's boundless capacity for mangnimous action. Yeah, right. There's nothing truly shocking about the notion of squid robot monsters turning humans into batteries, because we're all already someone else's tool anyway. The future sucks, but a guy who knows kung fu isn't going to save us. 

The Matrix isn't technically terrible, though. It's well-paced, suspenseful, clever in places, and visually stimulating. It's just that from the design all the way up to the basic plot, it's all trapped in the year 1999, just like Thomas Anderson before he became Goth Jesus. It's simply the recycled offspring of everything that preceded it.

There aren't many sci-fi/fantasy films that can claim to have the same level of impact as The Matrix, but there are a few. Star Wars, the first modern blockbuster (and yet another classic hero's journey about a reluctant messiah saving the day), easily plops into this category. The fact that a picture of a bunch of people sitting in a living room reading a script can merit even a little media attention is a testament to the everlasting reverberations of the first movie's release in 1977. Without Star Wars, the world—not just movies—would be different.

On the other end of this rarefied spectrum is Blade Runner. A critical and commercial disaster when it was released in 1982, Ridley Scott's dystopian thriller could not be considered on the level of Star Wars in terms of popularity, but its unique vision of the future (cribbed from numerous sources from French comic books to Japanese manga) smudged its filthy fingerprints all over every sci-fi movie that came after it—including The Matrix.

The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, Dark City, The Crow, and just about every pre-Matrix comic book/sci-fi/fantasy movie from 1982 onward is a pale copy of Blade Runner's rainy, industrialized aesthetic nightmare. Blade Runner and Star Wars couldn't be any different in look, theme, pace, or tone. And yet the Wachowski siblings got them both drunk, made them screw, and nine months (or 20 years) later, they had a baby called The Matrix—a dark, ominous, rainy, bleak Christ allegory about the battle between good and evil. The only thing that truly separates The Matrix from its forebears is a bunch of annoying songs by horrible bands and bullet time. Imagine putting a Donna Summer song into the cantina scene in Star Wars.

Come on, imagine it. OK, don't just imagine it. Listen to this while you watch the cantina scene on mute:

With all of that said, please, for the love of God, do not remake The Matrix. It's a cultural artifact of a different time, like RoboCop, Seinfeld, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Monica Lewinsky. Let's leave those things where they belong. It's actually OK for stuff to get old and lame. My children are going to absolutely loathe the Hunger Games and Twilight (with their soon-to-be-dated soundtrack albums), which kids today swallow like eager baby birds. Some things are not "timeless classics." Admitting that is step one in the healing process. 

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VICE on HBO, season 2 episode 8 preview

Back in 2013, we set out to make a news-magazine show unlike anything that had come before it. The idea was simple: cover important and underreported stories all over the globe with a straightforwardness and on-the-ground perspective that didn't exist anywhere else in the mainstream media. We were successful, got nominated for an Emmy, and are now happy to officially say that we plan on delivering more of the same in the future. Today HBO announced the renewal of our show for a third and a fourth season, meaning, through 2016, you'll be seeing a lot more of the kind of immersive reporting you've become accustomed to.

We're not ones to talk ourselves up too much, so we'll just leave you with the PR release (below) and the reminder to tune in on Friday nights at 11:00 PM EST for new episodes from Season 2. This week, we head to Papua New Guinea to investigate the effect Exxon's new $19 billion liquid natural-gas project may have on the residents, and then to Texas, where, despite a devastating three-year drought, state legislators have taken few initiatives to limit the state's CO2 emissions, which are the highest in the country.

LOS ANGELES, CA (May 7, 2014) - HBO has renewed the news-magazine series VICE for two more seasons, it was announced today by Michael Lombardo, president, HBO Programming. Season three will debut in 2015 with 14 episodes, and season four will debut in 2016.

Hosted by Shane Smith, founder of the revolutionary global youth media company of the same name, VICE explores today’s most pressing issues, from civil unrest and hotbeds of terrorism to unchecked government corruption and looming environmental catastrophes.
           
“The success of VICE on HBO proves that people are hungry to be engaged in world events when the storytelling is not packaged into sound bites,” noted Lombardo.  “VICE’s smart, honest, in-depth approach to news coverage is a perfect complement to HBO’s programming.”

“We would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to HBO for letting us do what we love for another two seasons, and for providing the best platform in television where the stories we work so hard on can live,” says Shane Smith. “VICE on HBO has transformed our brand. It has forced us to get better, to try harder, and now, with two new seasons, we will keep striving to be better still. We promise to report on the underreported, to tell the forgotten stories, and to remain committed to uncovering the truth about our planet in peril. Here we come.”

Smith and VICE correspondents traverse the globe, bringing viewers the overlooked and underreported stories, all told through an immersive documentary style that offers a unique perspective on the events shaping the future.

Over the past two years, VICE has covered some of today’s most vital issues, including the environmental destruction in Greenland triggered by climate change, rampant US military waste and corruption in Afghanistan, extortion, torture and killing in Rio’s favelas, and terrorist training in Dagestan. Correspondents have embedded with Nigerian oil pirates, reported from within North Korea, and offered a firsthand look at Afghanistan’s child suicide bombers. The 2014 season has seen the addition of new award-winning correspondents and more episodes.

VICE kicked off its 12-episode second season on March 14, debuting new editions on Fridays (11:00–11:30 PM ET/PT), following new editions of Real Time with Bill Maher.

Season two credits: VICE is executive produced by Bill Maher, Shane Smith, Eddy Moretti, and BJ Levin; consulting producer, Fareed Zakaria.

Photo via Flickr user Mike Mozart

Hello, sir. I’m addressing you as such because you’re a man. I mean, I could be wrong (as I'm sure you know, I often am), but statistically speaking, you're probably not a member of the fairer sex. Ah, but look at me! Not even a paragraph in, and I'm already generalizing. Does that upset you? I bet it does. 

You don't like me. But then again, you don't like most people. Or things. Or worldviews that don't align with your own. You thrive on being a contrarian. Contrarianism is, in a way, your religion. Because you sure as shit aren't a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew, or any of those sheeple who believe in a higher power. You're higher than that high power. You're the highest. You, and only you, are the way, the truth, and the light. 

You hate, with a passion, that Lindy West broad­–y’know, the one who’s always flapping her gums about who-gives-a-fuck over at that Jezebel rag. You think she’s fat. You want her to know that you think she’s fat. So you tell her that she’s fat. Un-rapeably fat. Geez Louise, ain't she fat? Where does she get off, being so fat? 

You resent the website you’re reading, even though you continue to read it. You hate click bait like this but nevertheless click it, increasing its page views and thus the likelihood of more articles like it being published by the website you resent yet still read on a daily basis. And by “read,” I mean, “skim, if that, then immediately register your disgust below based primarily on the headline.” I’ve seen the analytics. I know that the likelihood of you reading to the bottom of an article is the same as you finding happiness: Not bloody likely. I wrote this for you. But why did I even bother? You’re not reading this. I may as well be typing into the void. I can type whatever I want right now; it doesn’t matter. I know where Joseph Kony is hiding. I can lead you there right now. Wanna come with me? Let's get him, gang.

Photo via Flickr user Pat Williams

You’re tired of being persecuted for your privilege. It’s not your fault that you’re white. Male. A member of the middle-class. You’ve worked hard for everything you have–the Nissan Altima, the two-bedroom ranch style home in the suburbs you live in alone, the 50’’ plasma TV, the Pittsburgh Steelers season tickets. No one helped you with a goddamned thing. You, sir, suckle at no teat. There is no room in your life, in your world, in your heart, for people who don’t pull their weight.

You wish you were a fuckin’ minority, y’know? Or a woman. Or a gay. They have it so much easier than you. I mean, society never persecutes them. They’re too busy giving them jobs and letting them, unwarranted, into universities. Fuckin' quotas, am I right? 

You comment because it makes you feel like you have a voice. At work, you don’t. You want to tell Trevor, your supervisor, to go fuck himself. Because, well, fuck Trevor. That smug little prick. He’s only your boss because his dad owns the place. But you can’t tell Trevor to go fuck himself. Otherwise you’d be out of a job, and in this economy (Thanks, Obama), you’d be up shit's creek without a proverbial paddle. But when you’re online, the whole world is a Trevor. And you can tell it to go fuck itself as much as you want. So, naturally, you do.

Photo via Flickr user Ryan Quick

You like Adam Corolla. Really, really, like Adam Corolla. Why do you like Adam Corolla so much? I don't get it. But I get why you get it. Not only is he funny, but he’s not afraid to call the rest of the media out on their shit. He speaks the truth, and as a truth-teller yourself, you appreciate his candor. The same goes for Howard Stern. Those Opie and Anthony guys, too. You tweet at them all the time. You tweet at a lot of people, actually. You’re really into creating a dialogue, I guess. And you look out for your own, blindly attacking anyone and everyone your favorite tweeters put in their crosshairs. Because those people, like me, don't get it. So fuck 'em.

You think I don’t know what I’m talking about. Wait–I mistyped. You know I don’t know what I’m talking about. Arguably, it’s the only thing you do know. It is the passion that drives you, the hatred that makes your motor run. You're fueled by energy drinks, nutritionally-deficient fast food, and hatred. Your digestive tract must be a nightmare.

You are adrift on vast, endless sea of righteous indignation. Don’t you get tired of being upset all the time? Is indignation your second job? Do you have a clock you punch before you go online? 

We can all agree that racism, sexism, and homophobia is bad. Or can we? I’m stomping all over your civil liberties, you say, whenever I imply that you should act civily. Have I heard of the first amendment, you ask? I have, I answer.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but you’ve hurt my feelings. That was, of course, your intent when you told me I was a dumb bitch who doesn’t know what I’m talking about. When you called me a hipster fuck. When you called me a racist pig. Congratulations. Mazel.

You didn’t actually read this article. And yet you’re still upset. So why don’t you fuckin’ tell me all about it? Please, tell me. Use your words. They're all you have.

Respectfully,

Some Dumb Bitch Who Doesn’t Know What She’s Talking About

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I replied to a Craigslist ad saying I’d be paid $150 to let some guys film me being tickled. My current work situation was nearing an end, and rent was coming up, so naturally, as an overeducated and underemployed twentysomething in a big city, I cast my net in the “gigs” section. No nudity would be required of me, and I’d be in and out within the span of an hour! Worrying you'd be murdered by people off the internet was so 2000. How could I pass up an opportunity like this?


These pornographers own and operate two subscription fetish sites. One is a male-on-male tickling site. The other is a bunch of shirtless guys blowing and popping bubble gum bubbles. Because we’re in LA, these enterprises were, of course, established as a means of funding the dark comedy screenplay they co-wrote.

I arrived at a corporate Burbank hotel on a Saturday morning. The innocence of the pee-wee soccer tournament teams milling about the lobby did nothing to put me at ease. 

Drawing upon years of being that white guy that just doesn’t look like he belongs in this scene, I galvanized my resolve to go into the shoot as the straight guy who is just so damn comfortable with his own sexual identity/orientation/whatever that a couple of dudes gettin' their tickle on wouldn’t even be a thing, man. To a liberal, aware-of-his-own-privilege male such as myself, the worst outcome of this whole arrangement wouldn’t be if I somehow found myself enjoying the proceedings resulting in some soul-searching afterward, but rather that my lack of arousal and interest could somehow be misconstrued as homophobic or sex-negative.

Upon entering the hotel room, I was greeted by two cheery guys: Josh and Brian. Josh looked like a swarthy skater boy who might’ve actually been a bit intimidating if it weren’t for his lip ring and gentle eyes. Brian had a more clean-cut look with a nondescript button-up and cargo shorts. They offered me bottled water or an energy drink as we began the paperwork. I signed my release and pored over the hand-written list of pseudonyms I’d be choosing from.

“Some of those names are weird. We just jotted them down in the car,” Josh half-apologised.

There were some interesting options on the list such as Reinier, Luca, and Tripp.

“What are the douchiest names you have? I want my name to be really douchey.”

We settled on “Chase.”

Josh explained the shooting schedule to me. We’d be doing five five-minute takes with resting periods between. We’d have to get moving, though, as they had another ticklee coming in just over an hour. I went to the bathroom and changed into the pair of shorts I’d brought. I’d chosen a pair with one of the shorter inseams in my collection. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I stood motionless in the bathroom for a few beats with the sink running so it sounded like I was washing my hands or doing something. Would my parents and friends look at me differently after this? Why didn’t I bring longer shorts? Vanity? My legs aren’t even in their best shape right now. Surely we’ll have a US President in the next 30 years that has done something just like this, right?

Now clad only in said shorts, I made the ten-foot trek to set and fell back onto the bed. Fortunately, my shackles were soft and loose, purely for effect. I’d be able to slip my hands out at any point if need be. If they were really going to murder me at this point, I’d have to shrug my shoulders and magnanimously concede.

“We’ve got the breaks scheduled,” reminded Josh, “but if you ever feel uncomfortable for any reason, just let us know and we can unstrap you early.”

Their bedside manners were starting to assuage my baseline fears.

Josh sat at the foot of the bed while Brian adjusted the lighting and cameras. While most tickle fetish sites had the usual variety of shots, these two innovators’ calling card was a picture-in-picture of my contorting face during the abuse, courtesy of a GoPro they’d mounted above the headboard.

The first scene consisted of Josh tickling my socked feet. He started in with his hands and really just went for it right out of the gate. When I’d initially replied to the Craigslist ad, I’d ranked my own ticklishness at “about a seven.” In my childhood, I’d always been brought to tears by tickles and squeezes on my ribs and just above the kneecap. There hadn’t been many memorable instances of being tickled in my adult life, but I figured the same latent weak spots would still be there. It turns out they weren’t. 

To make matters worse, for someone whose livelihood was contingent upon tickling others, Josh sucked at it. There was no finesse to his tickle game, no buildup or romance. I can’t be the only one that enjoys the prelude of a tickle. Gentle touches at first, the hint of more to come. Finally, unexpectedly, the main attack arrives and the victim has already been so weakened through the prior psychological warfare that he crumbles into a convulsing mess within seconds. Josh, however, came in like a bruiser and basically finger-punched the bottom of my feet before raking his nails across the underside of my arch. Sensing my unaffectedness, he yanked off my socks and started this routine again.

Fear of murder was beginning to morph into fear of a poor performance.

Now, I knew I’d have to be hamming my acting up a bit, but I thought my role would be more along the lines of “leaning in” to the laughs, rather than just pulling them out of my ass. Josh had moved on to a feather now, and his technique had not improved. Rather than use this feather the way that you, I, or any normal person who has watched a Tom and Jerry cartoon would, Josh decided the best course of action would be to saw between my toes with the barbs. And this wasn’t luxuriously soft goose down. It was a scratchy fucking Shakespearean quill. So when he began using the pointy feather end to scrawl a missive to the king on the bottom of my foot, I finally had to pipe up.

“Yeah, that’s not really doing anything for me.”

“OK, well… You’re going to need to be a lot louder than you are right now,” Brian said.

“I know. I’m trying. I’m still warming up. Still have to find it.”

His tone softened. “Hey, man. It’s OK. A lot of guys just need to adjust to the whole ‘strangers tickling me’ aspect of this. So just try to be vocal with your laughs. You can fake them if you need to. Maybe even a little begging. Our subscribers love that.”

We began the next round. Josh, seated at my side, leaning over my legs, began to dig his fingers into my knees and thighs. He’d somehow gotten stronger. Surely, I’d have bruises the next day.

I flashed back to my parents tickling me as a kid. They’d sing this two-line song to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” while gently swirling a finger around my kneecap.

“Tickle tickle on the knee / If you laugh / You don’t love me!”

Hitting the word “me” at the end would turn that nonchalant knee graze into a two-hand assault that would all but have me pissing my pants. The possible damaging effects of those lyrics aside, this reliably laugh-inducing ritual was apparently the standard to which I held all future tickles, and Josh wasn’t even coming close.

I was forcing out some “heh, heh, hehheh” sounds when an exasperated Brian looked up from the camera, glanced at Josh, then spoke to me.

“Listen. We might have to prorate this. I don’t know how much of this we’re going to be able to use.”

Fuck that. I pulled my hands out of my cuffs and sat up. “Well, first off, I’m REALLY trying here. Do you want me to give you more feedback on what works for me? Secondly, shouldn’t you have the potential for an occasional dud built into your operating costs?”

“What did you put as your ticklishness level?”

“I said a seven, but I think that’s in the same way people rate their own attractiveness. Nobody wants to say too high or too low. So we all just guesstimate somewhere around there. And you can’t actually tell me how I feel about my own levels of ticklishness.”

Sensing that the conversation was going to devolve into an argument on contract law, Josh wisely chimed in. “You’re right. And clearly, no matter what, we’re still going to give you the $150 that we promised.”

“So should we begin the next scene then? Don’t you have another guy coming soon?” I asked as I lay back down and threaded my hands back into the harnesses.

From fear to performance anxiety to feeling completely in control.

Round three started with Josh sitting on my stomach and giving my ribs the deep tissue massage he called “tickling.” Angry that they’d tried to pull some sketchy shit, as well as determined to pick up this gauntlet they’d laid before me, I started squirming around like Linda Blair and laughing in what I considered a believable fashion. “Huh. No. Huh. [Pant.] Huh. Hnnng. Huhhuhhuh.”

After five minutes of this, they cut for break and Brian asked me “Was that real or were you faking it?”

“100 percent fake. I felt nothing.”

“Wow!” he exclaimed, smiling for the first time since we’d begun filming. “That was so believable! This’ll be great! Just keep doing that.”

Josh returned to my feet and sprayed them with some sort of oil. The lubrication did not add to my sensation in any way, but I maintained the ruse and kept belting out the stuttery laughs. He began to work the bottom of my foot with a hair brush. The firm bristles, while not tickly, did seem to scratch a literal itch I didn’t know I’d had. I’m sure the porn stars that fake their way through a day on set occasionally stumble into a position that they can derive a little bit of pleasure from too. So I kicked back and enjoyed this mini victory for as long as Josh would allow it before returning to closing my eyes and thinking of England.

For their pièce de résistance, the boys would be double-teaming me. Josh stayed at my feet while Brian sat on my stomach for a crack at chest and ribs.

“I apparently suck at tickling,” he warned. “Josh is the good one, so you’ll probably just have to continue to fake it.”

They slated and began their frenetic barrage. Josh did his usual Hulk-hands thing, while newcomer Brian daintily touched my chest and recoiled over and over like an indecisive praying mantis. I confidently chewed the scenery again, having convinced myself that I was only one in the room who knew what he was doing. There was no crescendo. Just like that, their timer sounded, and that was a wrap.

I changed back into my clothes, and Brian handed me $150 in cash, plus $7 for parking. We all shook hands, and after assuring me that they ended up getting enough usable footage, we all were ready for me to get out of the hotel room.

I can’t fully wrap my mind around this fetish. My hunch would be that it stems from a deep-seated desire in some gay men to be in a hangout situation with a hetero friend, then a little horseplay starts up, then some tickling, then clothes are off and Whoops, how’d we end up fucking? I guess, for some guys, this lust makes a full stop right at the tickle stage and nothing further is required. It’s not my fetish, so it’s really not for me to know. 

But what I do know is that on the day of my shoot, I walked back to my car to find that parking was $10.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

ANC leader Jacob Zuma. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Most election talking points get forgotten pretty quickly. It’s grist. It gets milled. No one currently alive can recall a single useful fact about Harry and Louise, the stars of those industry-backed TV ads used to destroy Bill Clinton's health-care plan, but they seemed like a couple you were supposed to care passionately about in 1994.

Occasionally, though, something underreported at the time ends up lasting long after the ballots have been recycled. In March, we saw an act of South African political theater that may be exactly that—myth-making ahead of yesterday's general elections, a piece of writing that may well last longer for Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (the EFF), than his own political career.

“About 100m [328 feet] from the stage, there emerged a portrait of Julius Malema in the profile of China's erstwhile leader Mao Tse-tung,” wrote Malema’s ideologue-in-chief, Andile Mngxitama. “It was hoisted high above the multitudes of red. It was an ecstatic moment of symbolic reconstitution of the 60,000 into a single force in the form of Malema as Mao.”

Andile clearly doesn’t view Mao as a bad guy. He takes the view that the lives of 40 million peasants were but a stepping stone to progress, and that is exactly the sort of revolutionary freak scene Andile is proposing for a new version of South Africa led by Malema, the rabble-rousing former bad boy of the African National Congress (ANC). 

Charismatic high roller Malema was kicked out of the ruling ANC in 2011 for bringing it "into disrepute." So he went off and formed his own political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and shrouded it in a heavy dose of that very 20th-century sort of Marxist pageantry, last seen buttressing Hugo Chávez’s thuggish populism. There were the red shirts, the red berets, the Guevarista sloganeering about land, bread, peace, compulsory nationalization, and so on.

And now, finally, the rolling of Malema into a Mao-like pop-art icon. 

Julius Malema. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Malema has set this election on fire simply because he is the closest thing the country has to an authentic voice of the forgotten millions, who’ve still got long-drop toilets 20 years after the introduction of democracy and, in protest, have taken to throwing buckets of their own shit onto the highway that leads to Cape Town Airport. Yet for all the Bolshevik foment, the time is not yet here for Malema to storm the Union Buildings. He is only expected to pick up about 5 percent of the vote when the results of this year's polls are released later this week, with the majority of pundits predicting the ANC to retain their 20-year rule over South Africa.

For now, at least, the ANC's only real opposition is still the Democratic Alliance (DA), on course to grow their vote from 16 to 23 percent. But with just 6 percent of black voters inside their tent, they're already rubbing up against the maximum they can achieve without replacing amiable ex-crusading journalist Helen Zille with a less obviously white leader.

As the curtain came down on the electioneering phase, Malema and the rest spent last weekend at final-push public rallies, each entirely reflecting the character of the party concerned.

In keeping with the spectacle they’ve brought to an otherwise dry campaign, the EFF’s last push was part-Jesus Christ Superstar, part Long March: women in red jumpsuits riding in on Triumph Daytona sports bikes; guys in wraparound shades lounging against Range Rovers; 28,000 red jumpsuits in the stands of a sports stadium; ten dancing fighters carrying a wooden coffin with an effigy of Jacob Zuma inside, its head consisting of a butternut skewered on a long stick (his head allegedly looks a lot like a butternut). Then Malema, the chosen one, coming out in his red overalls at the head of a motorcade of motorbikes and German whips.

In keeping with their campaign, the DA’s was anodyne, TV-friendly blue gloss, stage-managed to within an inch of its life.

And in keeping with their campaign, the ANC’s was massive, sprawling, and headless. At the FNB Stadium, where a few months earlier Jacob Zuma had been booed in front of Obama at Mandela’s memorial, some 28 trains and 2,000 buses brought ANC supporters from all over the country to Soweto, where, dressed in yellow T-shirts, they were supposed to form an effective backdrop for Jacob to give his big speech. Unfortunately, no one told Zuma’s speechwriters what people are actually like and how they behave. After being brought in with drum majorettes and marching bands, the off-the-cuff charisma of Zuma—a guy who spent a lot of the last election dancing and singing about his machine gun—was replaced by his tendency to read pompous flat speeches in a dry monotone.

Jacob Zuma addressing thousands at ANC's rally in Soweto

This was a speech that had the exact pompous, flat tone his speechwriters had clearly been seeking to hone for years. And Zuma, sensing his big moment, duly read it in the driest monotone he could muster. The result? Nearly a third of the 80,000 hot, hungry bored people up in the stands began leaving the FNB stadium while Zuma was still in mid flow. Toward the end, like any good impresario, he cut to the song—a little ditty that has replaced his machine-gun anthem—about how Mandela said, "Meet me there on Freedom Day." But by then it was too late. He is a president without a political constituency—a rudderless, drifting hulk at the heart of power.

Two days later, Zuma rounded out his faltering campaign by taking his message to his biggest opponents: the press, who have been merciless in making hay over his scandals, infidelities, and bloopers. The questions, as ever, concerned the big scandal of this election cycle: Nkandla. At one point, a scandal so big it seemed it might actually unseat this Teflon don.

Nkandla, Zuma’s personal homestead in rural Natal, was re-kitted from the public purse at a stonking cost of around $8 million. It grew a pool, a fence, a chicken run, and a tuck shop, all at the taxpayers' expense. Entirely by coincidence, you understand, a further $7.6 million was spent building a road that would lead straight to its door.

After years of whistleblowing and shrieking from the media, the Public Protector’s report forensically laid out all the wrongdoing at Nkandla—the architect who made a R16 million ($1.5 million) personal profit, the fact that the budget had run ten times over the initial projections, the misleading way Zuma had presented the matter to Parliament. In response, The Ministry of Public Works, who’d built it, held their own bizarre press conference, where—with a Stalinism that may become more familiar to South Africans if the EFF come to power—they helpfully explained that the publicly-funded swimming pool was, in fact, not a swimming pool at all. It was a water reservoir, very important for the safety of the president, in case of a fire. Then some infiltrator from the press gallery asked whether they had purchased any hoses or pumps, in order to move this water towards a fire. No, the spokesman was forced to concede… you would have to use a bucket for that.

Helen Zille, head of the Democratic Alliance. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

At his own Monday press conference, for his own strange lofty reasons, Zuma decided it would be a good idea to play the victim: “If the Public Protector has a duty to protect; she has a duty to protect me as well," he said. "The guys talking about [Nkandla] are you guys, the media and the opposition. It's not an issue with the voters. It's an issue with the 'bright people', the very 'clever people.’”

Sensing a lingering frost in the room, he then made an even worse decision to play the rape victim. There were actually very good reasons, he announced, for all of that security. In the 90s, he continued, burglars had broken in and raped one of his four wives there. So security was not an abstract concern for him—it was very real indeed. When it was reported back on the afternoon’s airwaves, the nation’s face twitched between sympathy, anger, and plain discomfort.

In a nation where rape is a real problem, it is good to talk of such things, to draw attention to them, to speak up. But in a nation with some small remaining sense of dignity, it is perhaps not ideal to use such things as a scapegoat for your faltering political career. 

The problem is that, for all the talk of effective opposition, the ANC is too enmeshed in the national psyche as savior-daddy to be pushed from power along conventional First World lines.

Nkandla, Jacob Zuma's private compound (Photo via)

So in desperation, a few ex-cadres have gone Gandhi. Rather than get involved in the endless sideshow of mushrooming and collapsing mini-parties, they are asking the electorate to "vote no." Ronnie Kasrils was defense minister in Mandela’s government. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge wasn’t. But she was also in the cabinet. Now, they are the public figureheads to more than 100 struggle veterans who have signed a document called "Sidikiwe! Vukani! Vote No!" translated as "We are fed up! Wake up!" Supported by Desmond Tutu, the campaign calls upon ANC voters to spoil their ballots or vote for a minority party, to fire a bunch of vaguely pointless warning shots across the government’s bow.

Compared with what came before them, these incursions are petty, the moral blankness workaday. But the sense of inertia is sometimes the most chilling thing in the South African political landscape. Nkandla may have been the fire in the election campaign’s belly, but it doesn’t seem like it's going to make a difference to the outcome. Zuma's party will still take 60-odd percent of the vote—same as it always has. And that is the eternal mystery of the country's politics; there is no shortage of incident, scandal, personality clashes, and delicious intrigue, but in the end, the slate gets wiped, the votes stay the same, and you get what we have now: a zombie president for a zombie electorate.

In 1994, everyone predicted that the ANC would be in power for 20 years, and that the system would then inevitably fracture toward a more conventional left-right situation. It’s 20 years on. A few cracks are showing, but given its staying power, there's every chance this monolith could continue to wobble unsteadily for another generation. 

Follow Gavin Haynes on Twitter.

More stories from South Africa:

Growing Up in Apartheid-era South Africa

WATCH – South Africa's Illegal Gold Mines

WATCH – Violence and Private Security in South Africa

On December 5, 2013, in an attack that went largely underreported by the world's media, al Qaeda gunmen, clad in government military uniforms, casually slaughtered 52 innocent civilians in Sanaa, Yemen's capital. The al Oradi hospital sits within the same compound as the Yemeni ministry of defense, where al Qaeda alleged that drone strikes were directed.

Instead of targeting the ministry, however, the attackers killed the security guards manning the side gate of the hospital, then spent hours calmly stalking its corridors, shooting doctors, nurses, and even patients lying in their beds. In grim pictures captured by surveillance cameras, one gunman is seen approaching a group of terrified hospital staff.

At first they don't flinch, and almost seem to be awaiting instructions, until the attacker reveals a hand grenade, pulls out the pin, and tosses it at them as if he were throwing a ball to a puppy.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) usually avoids targeting civilians and even provides some form of governance in the small areas they control in Yemen. This goes some way to explaining why it enjoys some level of support in this war-torn country. But when this footage was aired on national TV, even AQAP supporters were horrified, and it was compelled to make an apology.

In a video statement, its military leader, Qasim al Raymi, acknowledged "our mistake and guilt," claiming that the nine attackers had been ordered not to enter the hospital. He continued: "We offer our apology and condolences to the victims' families. We accept full responsibility for what happened in the hospital and will pay blood money for the victims' families." Al Raymi added: "We are continuing our jihad."

A 50-trillion Zimbabwean dollar note and the approximate amount of produce it would have bought at the height of hyperinflation in the 2000s

You rarely see travel agencies advertising package holidays to Zimbabwe. I'm guessing that has something to do with the country's history of genocide and violent political repression—two things tourist boards tend to steer away from. But whatever the reason might be, it doesn't seem to be at the top of many getaway bucket lists, despite its beautiful wildlife, people, plains, and waterfalls.

Having read a lot of stuff over the past 12 months about the country finally "turning a corner" and focusing on tourism to help boost its wheezing economy, I thought I'd pay Zimbabwe a visit—dropping in on a family friend who lives on the outskirts of Harare, to see whether it's ready to top the Travel Channel's "Top 10 Vacation Spots."

Downtown Harare can basically be defined by its asphalt, office towers, and suited city boys. In that respect, its not too dissimilar to the financial districts of the West. It's completely dead at night, but then, so is Wall Street.

It's the same story back at the hotel, with hardly anyone around but the doorman, who spent the majority of his time slouching against the entrance, bored out of his mind—understandably, considering I hardly saw anybody else enter the hotel the entire time I was there. In the bar, it was just the bartender and I, spending as long as we could maintaining an awkward silence before I left for bed.

The next morning, I walked through township markets overflowing with cheap, locally made crafts. The proprietors are desperate for tourist money but currently don't have a lot of local customers, let alone foreign ones. I splurged on a couple of mini bongos and hand-carved animals, conveniently managing to pay for them without having to haul a wheelbarrow's worth of devalued banknotes around.

The economic collapse following 2000's farm seizures caused hyperinflation that surged to 231,000,000 percent, causing the majority of the population to become impoverished trillionaires overnight. But things have stabilized somewhat since the country abandoned its own currency and started using foreign money—usually American dollars.

Graffiti in support of ZANU-PF, President Robert Mugabe's party

It’s no surprise that things were a bit lonely; hotel bed occupancy remains stagnant, at about 35 percent, and overall visitor figures aren’t even a third of the 1.5 million arriving in Zim’s 1990s heyday, when the country sustained a healthy tourism industry that was later decimated by President Robert Mugabe’s infamous land-redistribution program and the political turmoil that followed.  

Bored of the monastery-like hotel bar, I hired a car and hit the road with my buddy, bound for a game reserve to look at some elephants. The highways are mostly barren, but you never get far before being halted by a police roadblock, asked for documentation, and having your vehicle circled by an officious—often very young—officer checking that all is “in order.” It’s nice that they’re so concerned, but the fistfuls of dollars I saw some officers openly counting as we drove past made me question whether my safety was their primary interest. That said, I was never asked to fork out any cash on my visit, so perhaps they just enjoy counting their legally earned money on the side of the road.

Robert Mugabe on the wall of a hotel

One of the worst things about Harare is seeing Robert Mugabe’s face all over the place, usually stuck in a frame and hung on the wall of a bar or hotel lobby. Each town I visited had a Robert Mugabe Street or Avenue as a central thoroughfare. To make derogatory comments about him is a criminal offense.

And that's a shame, because there’s plenty of bad stuff to say. For instance, he once said that homosexuals are “worse than dogs." He is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of civilians in Matabeleland. Last month—not long after his finance and economic development minister announced that Zimbabwe's external debt stands at around $6 billion—he used almost $16 million of taxpayers’ funds for his 90th birthday bash, for his daughter’s wedding, and to commission giant statues of himself, built in North Korea, to commemorate his 34-year rule.

If you see Mugabe’s 12-vehicle motorcade approaching, you best keep well clear, or just stop driving altogether—it’s an offense not to, and guards will readily beat you for stopping in the wrong place or not soon enough. In one fortnight in 2012, the motorcade claimed three lives in three separate collisions. I’m not sure if they’d make an exception for tourists, but it's probably not worth trying to find out.

Hwange

In Hwange, Zimbabwe’s biggest national park, the number of safari camps dwindled throughout the noughties without guests to support them. So too did the wildlife (without conservation investment), particularly tusked animals, ravaged by poachers when food and money were at their scarcest.

When I arrived there were magnificent beasts everywhere, from wandering giraffes to lumbering elephants—a few too many now, said my guide. While the animal stocks have replenished, he explained, visitor numbers still aren’t enough to sustain the business. And I believed him; it was just myself, my friend, and my guide in the jeep, maintaining stilted conversation while we watched the wildlife graze. There were no other guests booked until the following week.

It’s obvious why Zimbabwe is trying to attract tourists again: It’s short of cash, and it has the world’s largest waterfall, which—looking at the 22 million people who visit Niagara Falls every year—is a pretty good thing to have on your side when you want to sell overpriced soft drinks to people wearing fanny packs.

I felt slightly uncomfortable that my visa fee went to Mugabe’s regime. Mind you, most of the money I spent once I got there went to the locals, so at least the cash you're handing over once you're through the airport isn't going toward furthering his tyrannical rule. You can make your own mind up about whether you want to visit or not—but hey, a bunch of Western governments lifted their travel warnings back in 2009, so at least you're not in imminent danger if you do!

It's been one long-ass winter—filled with crusty lips, chapped butt cheeks, and snotty noses. But it finally looks like the cold is coming to an end, which means it's time to switch up the gear and put away the dark puffy clothes for more colorful, Miami-coke-kingpin-type shit. Luckily, Mishka has you covered with their summer 2014 collection. The vibe of their latest pieces harkens back to that classic quirky shit that is Mishka's bread and butter. The patterns are eccentric and subversive and have a chaotic vibe that captures the excitement of a sweltering summer in New York City.

The homies behind the ever-evolving streetwear brand have given VICE the pleasure of exclusively premiering the lookbook for their 2014 collection, which you can scroll through below. With glitchy GIFs and backgrounds that remind us of old-school pen-and-pixel art, the photos evoke the cut-and-paste pastiche that is defining cool shit right now. Enjoy! 

After you peep the collection, hop over to MishkaNYC.com to cop some weird, offbeat streetwear.

Welcome to the world of Thanks for Nothing, a gritty and gonzo talk show where you can expect our guests to have their boundaries pushed by "Chas," an avid reader who started smoking cigarettes at age 29. In this episode, Chas visits indie wunderkind Mac Demarco at his home in Montreal. They begin by cooking steak, which is promptly burnt, and things devolve from there. Conversation topics include crazy fans, and shitting one's self. Hope you can relate.

Former president George W. Bush’s two most famous artworks are self-portraits. In one, he stands naked, reflected in the bathroom mirror from the waist up with his back to us, and in another, stretched out in the tub, from his own point of view. The latter is the creepier of the two. It's as if our eyes and head correspond exactly to his—are we looking at our own knees raised in the milky bathtub, our feet and toes peeking out in the distance? Even for homespun realism, it's more than a little perverse. These are intimate moments that we would never be privy to—or particularly want to see—yet here they are, captured and put out into the world as paintings, made by the president himself.

Bush isn’t the first former head of state to take up the brush. Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill are two of the most well known, but the practice of academic easel painting also figures improbably in the bigger picture of a frustrated art student in Germany who would go on to terrorize all of Europe. How vastly different the brutal march of history might have been had Adolf Hitler found some measure of encouragement for his efforts, however pedestrian. But as we can see from his canvases and sketches, he was an amateur, with a rudimentary grasp of perspective, a reminder that both art and war, in terms of its winners and losers, are somehow equally a matter of failure.

Photo by Frank Scherschel//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

In his decision to become an artist, George W. Bush cited Churchill's book, Painting as a Pastime, widely published in 1965. In his essay, the former British prime minister puts forth the notion that those who take up art later in life shouldn't be concerned with the study of technique, stating, "We must not be too ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket." When considering the painted achievements of W., it's clear just how closely to heart he takes these words, how they must convey a freeing sense of permission with which he readily identifies. After all, some people in this life are used to getting "a pass," never having to work too hard for anything, rarely having to answer for mistakes, having others clean up after them. A spill of cadmium red can be removed with turpentine and a rag, but a pool of blood?

Churchill, despite the fairly tame appearance of his paintings, likened the act of making them to battle. Yet his forays into art were not solely those of a onetime statesman. His earliest canvases predate his essay on painting by a full 50 years, while it's been noted that he exhibited work under pseudonyms both before and after the war, trading on his name most assuredly. His onetime brother-in-arms, Eisenhower, picked up the brush after leaving the White House, and for each, painting must have offered a sense of meditative relaxation following many turbulent years on the world's stage.

Dwight D Eisenhower at his easel. Photo from Dan Ghraham's Rock My Religion, MIT Press, 1993

The artist Dan Graham, in his seminal 1968 essay "Eisenhower and the Hippies," remarks on how the paintings of the former president register an indifference to his subjects. Such a statement might just as well be that of an anti-monarchist indicting the king, though it seems impossible to occupy a bejeweled throne and not be indifferent to one's subjects. The throne room is very far from the studio, with the heady odor of oil and solvent fumes, a kind of ether whose intoxicating effects serve to remind us that creation and destruction are often intimately entwined. To paint after walking the hallways of power is, in contrast, to take up a rather mundane task, and yet with a painting one can decide on something and see it through from start to finish, with little or no interference. The same cannot be said of their prior lives in public service. For these once powerful men, painting is a second act that points inevitably to the limits of those higher realms. Simply stated, to be president of the United States is to be stuck in one of the most frustrating, dead-end jobs in the country.

Photo by Jason Metcalf

No one could have predicted that W. would turn to painting after his White House departure. But this is precisely what he has done, and it is now officially established with an exhibition of his portraits, titled The Art of Leadership: A President's Personal Diplomacy, at his Presidential Center in Dallas. In an interview posted on the History Channel, and annoyingly incorporated into the show, Bush reveals that he took up painting because he wondered "how to kind of live life to the fullest." In the video, he assures us that his new vocation is a total commitment, going so far as to claim, "I expect I’ll be painting till I drop. And my last stroke, and I’m heading into the grave, I wonder what color it will be." As for second acts, his wife, Laura, remarks, "I think what George is teaching everybody is that it's never too late to start something new." To which W. happily adds, with a tail practically wagging, "You can teach an old dog new tricks!"

Photo by Jason Metcalf

The exhibition includes numerous gifts from world leaders that were given to W. in his eight years in office, and in one there is a telling clue as to what may be the real source of his inspiration to paint: A glittering jewel of a book, displayed in a vitrine beneath a blandly scary portrait of Validmir Putin, identified thusly:

Book of original watercolor portraits of all the American Presidents through George W. Bush, given to President Bush during President Vladimir Putin's visit to Camp David on Sept. 26, 2003. The red velvet bound book is studded with precious gems including rubies, amethysts and sapphires.

It's certainly possible that Putin's gift was more influential on W.’s painting career than Churchill’s book, but why give credit to a tyrant when you can laud one of the heroes who so boldly helped save Europe in the war?

There are, of course, more than a few critics and casual observers who have said that Bush’s paintings are just plain bad. But is there really such a thing? After all, isn't there something bad about every painting? In the late 60s the artist Neil Jenney, until then an eccentric conceptualist with an obvious love of baseball and neon, began a series of representational works on canvas that came to be known as his "Bad Paintings." The term embraced a whole host of figurative or "new image" artists at the time, though Jenney's paintings were and remain the best. He is a great—and greatly underrated—artist, with a style that is smart, loose and simultaneously precise, and perfectly deadpan. His most "political" image shows an American Air Force jet and a Russian Mig flying side-by-side, with the painted caption/title, Them and Us (1969). It's worth noting that in his most recent exhibition, in March of last year, at Gagosian Gallery in New York, he hung a banner with a by now familiar picture of a young soldier that read: "Thank You Bradley Manning, America Needs the Truth."

Photo by Jason Metcalf

The show of W.'s paintings in Dallas contains no such political provocation—beyond the fact of its simply being there. It most certainly doesn't include those bathroom paintings, which the former President says he made only to tease his art instructor. (Neither does it include any of his paintings of cats and dogs, which are actually some of his best efforts, as good as any brushy masterworks by the much-admired Karen Kilimnik.) Is it possible that the bathroom paintings were intentionally used to rouse interest in his new hobby, especially for the show at his Presidential Center?

Across town, and opening at the same time, coincidentally or not, is the first retrospective for the painter Richard Phillips, mounted at Dallas Contemporary. Upon entering, one is confronted with his 2001 study for a portrait of George W. Bush. This has been hung next to a painting of a porn star, her legs spread and a huge stream of liquid spraying from her crotch, aimed precisely at the smirk on the president's face. Meant to push buttons of a less corporeal nature, the pairing is perhaps meant to provoke the hometown audience.

Photo by Jason Metcalf

In light of W.'s bathroom paintings, Phillips has something in common with their creator, what we might term the persistent schoolboy's need to shock, an art of arrested adolescence. And upon close inspection, Phillips isn't a much better painter than W. In another of his porn star paintings, an indistinct "mitt" is so crudely rendered that Phillips, or whoever painted it, seems to possess no sense of touch whatsoever. But wouldn't you expect a better handjob from an artist who has such a lofty estimation of his own talents? Phillips, in terms of his "values" and the limply predictable choice of subjects, is obviously as conservative as W., in the end just another "neocon" artist in a moment when they are increasing exponentially.

Photo by Jason Metcalf

Across the street from the Phillips exhibition, at the San Luis Night Club, a mural is painted on the brick wall adjacent to the parking lot, with a woman seductively posed on a pool table, in high black boots and a bikini, a painting signed by the appropriately named "Woody." It's a far more honest enticement than any of the billboards in Phillips's tawdry cathouse.

Photo by Jason Metcalf

Given the venue for W.'s show, it seems appropriate that its focus is on portraits of former and current world leaders he met while in office, such as Tony Blair, Hamid Karzai, and Angela Merkel. There are those exalted, like His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, as well as those who define the depths of sleaze, such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. They are all painted with the same modest talent for mediocrity, and in this there will be, for his detractors at least, a certain parallel to his stretch in the White House. Of course, you don't have to attend art school to become an artist. And so to be a president or a painter might overlap after all: No prior experience required.

Only a few of W.'s portraits stand out among the rest: Václav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, who is weirdly animated, ruddy, and toothsome (and might have been painted by John Currin earlier in his career). Unlike W's other subjects, Havel is afforded more than a bland background. He has, fittingly enough for a playwright, poet, and dissident, a shelf full of books. The background for Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, actually has gestural brushwork, indicating some sign of painted life where flat monochrome tends to prevail. But there's not much point in discussing these pictures as paintings, since they are more purely a phenomenon, not unlike the recent canvases by Bob Dylan—which some believe were produced by none other than Richard Prince and turned out to be copies from pre-existing and copyrighted images. Celebrity attribution, even of a dubious nature, adds to a work's price. At the very least, W. actually made his own paintings, and he doesn't have an inflated sense of their value. As he himself admits, "I fully understand that the signature is worth more than the painting."

Photo by Jason Metcalf

This is the kind of admission that you would never hear, at least not publicly, from a painter on the contemporary art scene. Any number of artists know full well that wealthy people drop a pile of change on their work for the signature alone—not for its beauty, rarity, quality, or importance. You could say that paintings of dubious aesthetic value are snapped up in a market that is vastly over-heated, and in direct proportion to how underwhelming its product has become. There are a lot of well-paid amateurs out there, whether over-the-hill or recently minted stars—shooting stars, as time will surely tell.

At least W. is offering an image. These days some of the most successful artists do little more than dip raw canvases in bleach, have studio assistants trample them with muddy sneakers, let their dogs pee on them, and then send them off to the gallery with five- and six-figure price tags. What to call it? “The Emperor's New Paintings”? As the brilliant Alissa Bennett recently remarked, we are all exhausted by "art that works so hard to show you how little it cares." When it comes to making the grade, there may be a borderline C given out at Yale, but there's no such thing in the market. Seemingly brainy underachievement is what tends to be praised. Is this our new avant-garde? Advancing absolutely nothing at all, merely weariness, avant-bored comes closer to its numbing effect.

Photo by Jason Metcalf

In his own likable way, W. can be convincing about his sincerity for painting, and yet sincerity has nothing to do with whether or not a canvas should be considered a work of Art with a capital A. Today, for better or worse, and all too often it's the latter, everything claimed as art must be accepted as such. Even a scrap of canvas upon which an adorable pup relieved himself in the studio. In this skewed paradigm, W.'s portraits of dogs are infinitely superior. They make no greater claim than to be exactly what they are: a painting of a pet, competently rendered, and hung on the den wall or offered as a present to a friend. These paintings aren't lying to us, pulling the wool over our sheepish heads. While you may not care for the man who made the painting—the same man who looked us in the face and insisted there were WMDs in Iraq—he has little in common with the "respectable" artists we're meant to take seriously, and who turns out to be a complete fraud. Or does he?

Photo by Jason Metcalf

Not long after The Art of Leadership opened in Dallas, the truth emerged about the sources of Bush's portraits—Google image searches, often the top hit for one of his subjects, or the official portrait on a Wiki page. Busted, it would seem. Stop the presses. Time to rewrite the day's front page. Or not. First, why on Earth is anyone in any way surprised that someone of W.'s stature would take a shortcut here or there? Hasn't he been taking them all his life? And what's the big deal? If anything, his sourcing of images online only makes him that much more of a relevant contemporary artist, more “with it,” our newest and most famous appropriationist. Isn't every painter today a copyist of one sort or another? Anyone who has ever been president in this country must be well-versed in how to appropriate or expropriate, to take as one's own. It must be second nature. After all, the apple isn't stolen very far from the tree. And the fine art of rapacity has always been conveyed in the most exclusive private schools. No future president left behind.

Anyway, what do people expect of Bush as an artist? To have painted these portraits from life? Or from memory? Now that would have been hilarious. He still could. Really, Mr. President, we dare you—paint from memory. And a new set of subjects as well, even at the risk of creating a rogue's gallery. Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney, and last but not least, the great known unknown, Donald Rumsfeld. Condoleeza Rice has already been painted memorably by the esteemed Luc Tuymans, but go ahead, "give it a whirl" as you yourself would say, see if you can do better. Put your mind to it, and with a more fluid flick of the wrist, maybe you will.

Photo via Creative Commons.
The Canadian Conservatives’ controversial cybercrime bill, C-13, is in its final stages of making its way into law this week. And, if you’re concerned about your privacy online as a Canadian, it’s definitely a subject you need to get familiar with. Quickly. So here: C-13 is causing a minor ruckus right now, mainly because it will allow any “public officer” or “peace officer” the freedom to request personal data from telecom companies, while providing those same telecom companies legal immunity for turning over data. Meaning that if a government officer requests to see your personal data from an ISP, they can do that pretty easily, and you can’t sue anyone over it.

It’s hard to imagine why the government needs extra powers for retrieving subscriber data, when there are roughly 1.2 million requests for subscriber data per year anyhow. As Justin Ling, a sometimes VICE Canada contributor, wrote for the National Post, C-13 would permit anyone from “tax agents to sheriffs, reeves, justices of the peace, CSIS agents, and even, yes, mayors” to request consumer data from telecoms. This opens the door for an easy Rob Ford joke (and we all know how fun those are to make) but the consequences of giving so many bureaucratic bozos the keys to Canadians’ private data seems like a wild and unnecessary overreaction.

In November, when word of C-13 first started to spread, I wrote that the “Conservatives are using cyberbullying to normalize online surveillance,” which is a position that I stand by today. Last month, an arrest was made in the Amanda Todd case. A man named Aydin Coban has been accused of extorting young girls online into performing sexual acts through their webcam; behaviour that I reported on extensively in the wake of Amanda’s suicide in late 2012.

Coban was taken into custody by authorities in the Netherlands and may be facing extradition to Canada. This arrest, evidently, was possible without the powers of the controversial Bill C-13. In fact, it isn’t clear what role, if any, Canadian authorities had in the arrest. Further, it would be speculative and unfair to say why it has taken authorities so long to arrest anyone in connection to Amanda Todd’s death, given that she was quite clearly harassed by a ring of merciless extortionists, but there are many more individuals out there who practice the same sadistic craft of harassment.

Carol Todd, Amanda’s mother, was unable to provide comment to VICE for this article, but as she told the CBC: “There were multiple people in those chat rooms… So this would hopefully be the first layer of many layers that they could uncover."

To be fair, C-13 may make the process of uncovering said layers of criminality easier, as it would introduce what has been called a “streamlined warrant,” a phrase that sent alarm bells ringing throughout the opposition parties late last year, as it intends to lower the standard of retrieving data to the very broad “reasonable grounds for suspicion.” Clearly our government is sending out a massive amount of data requests as it is, and telecom companies are already very secretive about the ways that they cooperate with government. And, if a task force did have a lead on a sexual extortionist preying on teenage girls, you would think that under our current system, where information is being freely provided in the first place, they wouldn’t encounter much resistance.

So, is this really about cyberbullying?

I covered the cases of Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd very closely. Both of these tragic deaths had a commonality: a lack of action from law enforcement. Nova Scotia, Rehtaeh’s home province, reacted to the teenage girl’s death by starting a cyberbullying task force. Somewhat similarly, Laureen Harper, Steve’s wife, suddenly became a public advocate on the issue. The deaths of both Amanda and Rehtaeh caused a shockwave of outrage in Canada, and the government responded in their own public-facing way. But we have to ask: is C-13 the correct next step?

We hear, for example, that the newly revealed powers of the NSA could have stopped 9/11. Therefore we need mass surveillance. That’s what Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA, argued as recently as last week, when I saw him debate Glenn Greenwald in Toronto. But that argument, at least when it comes to 9/11, was debunked in late December by CNN. The problem with 9/11 was not the lack of law enforcement powers, but rather the lack of information sharing between law enforcement agencies, and following the right clues and hints to stop the plot in its tracks.

9/11 is obviously a grandiose example, but the principles are the same. Does our government really need more surveillance powers to stop what they call cyberbullying? Or do our law enforcement agencies need to give more of a shit about young girls who are being harassed, blackmailed, and sexually assaulted by boys and men who they know in real life, or who are preying on them online from foreign countries?

From all I have seen, I believe our bigger problem is police apathy.

That said, I reached out to Glenn Canning today, Rehtaeh’s father, who will be speaking before the Standing Committee on C-13 next week. He sees the C-13 issue somewhat differently, and in an email, he told me:

“My stance on Bill C-13 needs to be understood from the perspective of someone who has suffered the loss of a child. Our family watched for months as a devastating photo of our daughter spread throughout our community. It showed up repeatedly to haunt her every time she attempted to put her life back on track at a new school or to make new friends.

Everyone had it, everyone was talking about. No one, not one person, did anything about it or tried to stop it. Unbelievably the police didn’t make a single attempt to hold anyone accountable for this. They told us at the time it was not a police matter. The told us the people who did this to Rehtaeh were not breaking the law.

I respect privacy as much as any Canadian. I served in our Armed Forces for 25 years to protect the rights we as Canadians enjoy.

Social media, the Internet, text messaging, email, shares, and numerous other means of mass communication has dramatically changed the way we reach out to each other. When Rehtaeh died her mother shared a post on Facebook that literally spread throughout the world in a matter of hours. It’s that fast and that powerful.

In the wrong hands it’s just as fast and it’s just as strong. Someone in Rehtaeh’s shoes won’t be helped unless the speed of that help is as viral as the problem.

I do believe, if properly enforced, the amendments in Bill C-13 would have made a difference to our daughter.

Someone has to draw a line in the sand and that line has to address the age we live in and the technology we use. I’ve read a lot of criticisms of Bill C-13 and have yet to find one that offers a working solution as an alternative.

It seems so out of place to complain about privacy while our children terrorize each other to death for Likes on Facebook.”

Quite understandably, Glen and I have had different reactions to the invasions of privacy that C-13 promises to execute. To be clear, I don’t have children, so I cannot even begin to imagine the weight of grief and outrage that he and Rehtaeh’s mother, Carol Todd, and every other parent who has lost a child must feel. Especially when cyberbullying, and online extortion are involved.

But as he himself says, the stupefying police inaction was a major factor that led to Rehtaeh’s life spinning out of control. And I’m not so sure that C-13 will necessarily kickstart that systemic problem of police apathy into gear. More surveillance is not going to magically create better police, and until we have a prevailing attitude among Canada’s law enforcement agencies that online harassment is a sophisticated and dangerous crime that requires intelligent investigation and compassionate responses to complaints from families like Amanda or Rehtaeh’s, I can’t imagine how C-13 will make any of us better off.

@patrickmcguire

Sneakerheads are among the most passionate collectors in the world. The price tag, limited availability, and beauty of sneakers have been linked to murders, riots, and people standing in line for absurd amounts of time since the 90s.

For some, this intense fanaticism has turned into a sexual fetishization called sneaker destruction. And apparently there's an infinite amount of ways you can destroy your ridiculously expensive shoes for sexual pleasure. 

In the sneaker destruction community exists a group of people who get off on videos of people popping the air pocket on their Air Max sneakers. The videos, which are mostly shared on YouTube, start in a variety of ways but always end with the same money shot—a sharp object puncturing the air bubble. The visual of a hunting knife, razor blade, or power drill being driven into the air bubble of sought-after sneakers makes for some weird, yet oddly satisfying, videos.

Popping the bubbles of Nike Air Maxes for sexual pleasure is a pretty small niche thing. When I brought the videos to three nationally renowned fetish experts none of them had even heard of the phenomenon before. 

Dr. Gloria Brame is an expert in anything kinky, and has been a private sex therapist for the last 14 years in one of the kinkiest cities in the world, San Francisco. She told me that "destruction of property doesn't even show up in the literature till later. Abusing footwear is really about the harm. It's thrilling, dangerous, and angry."

Image via YouTube user lovinsneax1

Brame says fetishes come and go based on the current culture. Back in the day, people used to fetishize bicorne hats (that's the kind Napoleon used to wear). Shoe destruction is a contemporary fetish that Brame says speaks to the fact that our culture has become more violent. Sharing the videos online makes it fun to be part of what Brame called a “fraternity of weirdness.”

As I dug deeper into the annals of message boards and video sites, shit got weird fairly quickly. So I decided to reach out to Ginnasio, a seasoned shoe destroyer, to see why he ruins kicks for kicks.

VICE: Can you explain in detail the feeling you get when you tear into a brand-new shoe with a knife?
Ginnasio: You can't explain the thrill. Sometimes I just can't resist the urge to do it, without any reason. That mostly happens with famous and trendy models of sneakers. I have met some people and let them try it out. Some appreciated it; others thought it was stupid.

When did you first realize you were attracted to destroying shoes? Are you sexually attracted to shoes in general or just to their destruction?
I was 13 or 14 the first time I modified my sneakers. I had fun, so I decided to continue. I like sneakers in general, but I only love them when they are trashed.

What is your favorite kind of shoe destruction?
I prefer to trash them to the level where they are still wearable—making holes and small cuts in the sneaker. I like swimming with them and walking in deep mud.

What does swimming and trekking have to do with shoe destruction?
I don't know why, but usually shoe destruction and bathing clothed are related. Most people engage in both.

Does destroying a more sought-after pair of sneakers increase the level of sexual pleasure you get?
Yeah, probably. Also, the ads from a big chain like Foot Locker represent kicks as a way of life. It's almost like they are part of the body. Converse advertisements always show dirty or trashed Chucks. They know the market and are targeting this important side of humanity.

How many shoes do you think you destroy a year? Is this hobby breaking the bank or what?
I trash about 8 to 10 pairs a year, but I usually wear them for months after they are trashed before I decide to destroy them completely. I spend about a $1,000 on shoes a year, but I get about a third of that money back from the website EverythingMustDie.com.

They pay you to destroy shoes?
They give me money for my videos and host them. Others pay them to watch.

Tell me about the shoe-destruction community on YouTube. Do you guys send one another shoes to destroy?
Yeah, sometimes. Some people have asked me to trash their shoes for them and vice versa. When I realized that all around the world there are really many people with the same hobby I was excited. I have always thought I was alone... But there are tons of "destroyers" in various countries. However, I have never met another shoe destroyer in person, though.

Have you ever had a sexual experience where you mix the shoe destruction in with the plain old intercourse?
I can say that I had a sexual experience just after a complete destruction of all my stuff, shoes included. I destroyed a bunch of stuff I had just bought: white jeans, tee, socks, underwear. 

Do you have any other interesting sexual tendencies? 
No. I'm single and hetero. If you count my fetish, then I've had some gay experiences as well.

I've heard this a predominately gay-male activity; is that true? 
Not at all. They're varied like anything else—straight, gay, and bi.

Does destroying shoes directly get you off? Like, is cutting into a shoe enough to make you ejaculate?
Yeah, sometimes.

What do you think of all the negative comments on YouTube?
They are a part of the game and I accept them so long as they contain any actual criticism, and not just insults (which happens sometimes). Moreover, the third-party site I publish my videos on gives a small part of its funds to charity.

What is something that people think about shoe destruction that isn't true?
That are spending habits are not validated. I have an absolutely normal life, as most of us do. Shoe destruction is a somewhat strange hobby, not a way of life.

Do you consider it a hobby or a fetish?
I am not really attracted by feet. Some other destroyers are, and they ask me to make videos barefoot. I only love to make my shoes trashed.

Do you think anything in your childhood lead to your attraction to shoes?
No. Just like many children, I loved to soak my shoes in a puddle or in mud. The only difference is that I still love to do it.

How we feel about fame, what people are willing to do to achieve it, and why anyone even cares are topics both fascinating and insidious. Let’s take the Bling Ring, for example. Nancy Jo Sales first told the tale of the band of teens who stole more than $3 million from various celebrities in a Vanity Fair article called “The Suspects Wore Louboutins,” which she later expanded into the book The Bling Ring: How a Gang of Fame-Obsessed Teens Ripped Off Hollywood and Shocked the World.  In 2013, Sofia Coppola turned the book into a film starring Emma Watson.

As Sales points out in the book, as a society we can’t take our eyes off the miscreant youth and misbehaving privileged kids. They are the modern-day Prince Hals, robbing and carousing before they become King Henrys; they possess all the beauty and potential of youth, but they wallow in destruction rather than achievement. When an older generation witnesses this destructive path, the defiance of a younger generation ignoring their privilege, we collectively think, Kids these days are worse than ever. In the preface to the book, Coppola even utters the same notion. She tells Sales how she feels like an old fogey for being appalled at the Bling Ring teens’ obsession with fame, celebrity gossip, and the lifestyles of the stars; she tracks the current intensification of celebrity obsession to the moment that Us became a weekly magazine and the coverage of young celebrities exploded, birthing the even more gossip-thirsty sharks on the order of TMZ and Perez Hilton. Yet Coppola’s movie eludes critiquing the culture that disgusts her in the first place. Sure, it had those intentions: While her characters are certainly not role models—they are shallow, callous, and delusional—their lifestyle stills seems fun, free-spirited, and overall glamorous. What teen doesn’t want to drive around listening to gangster rap, skip class and go to the beach, get drunk at parties, hang out in clubs, and flaunt designer clothes? The robbery becomes their thing, their key to the 15 minutes of fame, their access to the dreamscape of celebrity paradise beyond their computer screens where their ostensible idols—Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Miranda Kerr, and the like—live.

They want to be famous, and the article, movie, and book will help them do just that. The LA Times bestowed the thieves with their “Bling Ring” moniker; it makes them sound like a cool clique rather than a bunch of aimless hooligans. The attention they received then and since is the natural extensions of these youths’ pretensions. In this age of media frenzy and quantifiable digital attention—“How many likes did it get?”—there is no such thing as bad gossip.

Sales wrote the book with the intention of examining and critiquing that sort of sick culture. But inevitably, the more she shines her light on these attention-starved degenerates, the more they seem to sparkle in the glare of attention. In his book about comic book characters, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, Grant Morrison traces a swinging cultural pendulum between the rebelliousness of punks and hippies, meaning the inflections of rebellion take on the trappings of these two categories, and his contention is that the pendulum shifts between these poles every 20 years. In an age that is more about appropriation, cutting-and-pasting, DIY, postmodernist self creation—an age in which Jonathan Lethem’s “Ecstasy of Influence” is more and more at play—are the Bling Ring teens just social media’s version of punks? If so, that is infinitely sad and interesting.

But it would make perfect sense. These kids were raised in a culture in which attention equals power, regardless of the value of that attention and the actions that captured it. We have long showered the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan with such power. The Bling Ringers are only flowing in line with what they’ve been taught, or learned through osmosis depending on your point of view. It’s not what magazines and websites say about the celebrities that the Bling Ringers listen to; it’s the fact that they’re saying stuff about them at all. Of course, their actions aren’t solely driven by attention; money also inspires the special sheen that shines following their drunken antics, and all of this combined is the reason that the Bling Ringers steal and continue to be seen as notable members of society rather than ragdolls for inmates in various Los Angeles County prisons.

If money and attention were the two biggest barriers initially standing in the way of the Bling Ringers' becoming the next Paris or Lindsay, then it makes total sense that their formula for gaining fame was stealing things from celebrities and hoping to get caught. This hope is obvious in hindsight; they were turned in by an anonymous tip after bragging to their Calabasas social scene about their multiple burglaries. They appropriated these stars’ media attention, “earning” the perfect wardrobes and street cred needed to make a true splash and land their own reality shows—punk rebellion repackaged in the age of appropriation. (The fact is not lost on me that this is also evidenced by my writing about them here.)

This is the beauty and terror of youth culture today. It’s what Harmony Korine explored in Spring Breakers: If everything looks great, if we live our lives like we’re in a movie, maybe it will actually be a movie. In Sales’s book, one of the Bling Ringers talks about being “FOF”—Famous on Facebook—as an indication of being a star, at least in her own world. We all want into the citadel, but sadly, one of the access points to that citadel is now infamy.