Mossless in America is a column featuring interviews with documentary photographers. The series is produced in partnership with Mossless magazine, an experimental photography publication run by Romke Hoogwaerts and Grace Leigh. Romke started Mossless in 2009, as a blog in which he interviewed a different photographer every two days; since 2012 the magazine has produced two print issues, each dealing with a different type of photography. Mossless was featured prominently in the landmark 2012 exhibition Millennium Magazine at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; it is supported by Printed Matter, Inc. Its third issue, a major photographic volume on American documentary photography from the last ten years, titled The United States (2003–2013), will be published this spring.

A still from Viral Loads

Treasure Island Media is a gay-porn studio based out of San Francisco that has always specialized in making films that pirouetted on the edge of outrage, but its most recent release, titled Viral Loads, headed straight into the abyss. It's an extremely hardcore video starring Blue Bailey, an allegedly HIV-positive man who's status is curiously exempt from the film's presser and—well, here's an excerpt from the studio's description of the film:

The willing, hungry lad gets gang-fucked by a roomful of studs. Most are poz [HIV-positive], some are neg. Who the fuck cares? Not Blue, that’s for fuckin’ sure.

To finish up his man worship initiation, we bring out a brimful jar full of more than 200 poz loads. Blue’s good buddies Dayton O’connor and Drew Sebastian carefully squirt every fucking drop up Blue’s knocked-up ass. Max X slurps Blue’s jizz-leaking ass throughout, establishing himself as the new world’s felching-champeen.

I called Treasure Island head honcho Paul Morris to ask what the heck was going on here, and he in turn asked if I was cut or uncut.

What follows is an excerpt from our conversation. I should say that getting in touch with him was challenging, which he later explained by telling me, “This is the first phone call I’ve taken in years. I don’t meet people, and I don’t talk to them. I deal with the men that I work with. It’s very rare that I meet somebody.”

VICE: Hey, Paul, thanks for talking to me. I’m flattered.
Paul Morris: Toby, I assume that you’re uncut.

Yep. A lot of us Australians have hoodies.
That’s kind of wonderful, isn’t it?

Yeah, it’s all right. You’re pretty shy on the phone. I understand your reserve; your porn doesn’t always receive the warmest reception.
I find the most offensive reaction to what I’ve done is people saying that I clearly don’t understand the suffering and what was lost due to HIV. The vast majority of my acquaintances and friends and lovers died. It isn’t that I’m untouched. It’s that I’m so deeply touched by it that I believe in the necessity of remembering what it is that they and I all explored—and not forgetting it. That’s crucial to me. The most painful thing for me to hear is I’m callous, or I’m doing this to make a buck on the deaths of other people or something like that. That’s horrifying to me.

In one scene in Viral Loads, there’s a jar of 200 different loads labeled “POZ CUM.” It is poured directly into Blue Bailey’s ass. You can see how that would upset people.
The number of men who have written to me asking to be the recipient of gallons of semen is virtually uncountable. These aren’t the incidental fantasies of a small fringe of outliers. These speak to the heart of the sexual imagination of most queer men. It wasn’t made for you. There’s no reason for you to see it. For you, it would read as an irrational stunt. But for the straight world, much of what comprises queer culture and life is incomprehensible. Regrettably, the same can still be said for many of the older members of the gay world. Years ago I stated that all gay men are HIV-positive. That is, every gay man alive today is defined as much by the viral load narrative as by any external homophobia. If you wonder at the meaning of a jar filled with poz loads being poured up the ass of a happy, intelligent, and more-than-willing young gay man, the primary meaning is that there is no reason or excuse for continuing to live in fear of a virus.

Then why the controversy?
We’re at a point where it’s altogether possible, given the simple strategies like PrEP, to render HIV a nonissue. And the gay world is panicking because too much money, too many institutions, too much of the gay mainstream has based itself on terror and fear and grief. It’s a cultural identity crisis. It’s a mass version of agoraphobia. A world that’s suddenly free of fear is daunting and very large.

Have any of your performers contracted HIV during one of your videos?
You’d have to ask my performers that question. I know everything about them. Everything.

Then surely you know this.
Yes. I do know this.

And?
And that’s between myself and those people. When people come to me, we have one of the most extensive interview processes of any company in porn. We get to know not just what their health status is—whatever “health” means—but we find out who they are. We talk with them about what books they’re reading. “Why are you coming to do porn?” We encourage people not to do it if there’s the slightest indication this isn’t something they really want or should do. Then they tell us everything. We put them into situations they want to be put into. Everyone who’s in one of our pieces is doing exactly what they most want to be doing. Now, what they tell me is extremely private. You’re asking me to tell you the most intimate information about the people with whom I work?

It’s hardly intimate in this context. You advertise this. You market it. It’s the kink in the middle of Viral Loads.
Why would you call it a kink? What does a kink mean? No. no, no, no. First of all, you’re not the person for whom this video is made, Toby.

Is that relevant?
The point is that this was made for a community of men who understand what it means.

What does it mean?
Some of the people that I’m most interested in right now are young, intelligent gay men who are educated, bright, upper-middle class. They refuse HIV meds because they’re proud of their viral load. Is that something you can understand?

It is. I get it.
Explain it to me.

If it were me? You’re right, I’d go crazy trying to live a normal life with a killer virus waiting to take me out.
Interesting. One of the elements of Viral Loads that I think from the outside might not be immediately apparent—is the term. “Viral load” is something that the entire gay world has held on to and labored under for two generations. One of the reasons I made this title was to simply say, exactly as you did, “Enough is enough.” We're living with this; let’s just be open and clear about it. I don’t see anything controversial about that, do you? If it seems odd to some people; they’re not the people I’m really interested in. Certainly they’re not the people I’m working for.

They’re part of your community. You should give a shit.
There are people who are locked for various reasons into archaic and counterproductive ways of thinking and living. I had an acquaintance who was in his late 70s; he was a fellow who hated my work. He assured me that he would only have safe sex because he didn’t want to become HIV-positive. A few weeks after we had that conversation, he died of a heart attack. I think he was insane. Gay men in their 50s and older are addicted to the notion that sex equals death, and the culture has to live under the burden of terror. The only wildness that is acceptable is the wildness of drag queens.

In gay culture, there’s never been more of an almost hysterical centering of life around two things—drag queens and marriage—both of which are unfortunate misogynistic parodies of heteroseuxal life. Gay men have completely lost the sense of who they are because they’ve been immersed in terror, because they’ve been living under a viral load for two generations.

Is HIV inextricably linked with the gay identity?
No, and in 20 years it’ll be all but forgotten. It is right now, and what I’m saying is, we’re more than this. The point of Viral Loads was for those people to whom it would make sense to look at it, say it, own it, and fucking move on. Fucking move on! In 20 years, there will be references to HIV, and young gay men will astonish and horrify people who are now in their 20s when they say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” And the men will say, “I remember the day when it was a big deal. I remember the day when if we had just fucked somebody and come up their ass, we were worried about HIV.” My point is: Time to fucking move on. Somebody said, “How safe does it have to be for you before you’ll just fuck somebody?” My answer is: It’s there! We’re there. We’ve been there. Now the important thing is to break the mould of stigma and terror and knee-jerk reaction.

Follow Toby McCasker on Twitter.

HR Giger, regardless of how many museum or galleries he fills with volumes of his other work, will almost certainly go down in history as that strange Swiss guy behind the Alien movie. During the 70s Giger produced a book called Necronomicon, which established him as the foremost fantastical artist at the time. Salvador Dali was so impressed by his work that he invited him over to Spain for a visit and stole Giger’s girlfriend in the process. In the 80s Giger got involved in the movies and got an Oscar for his work on Alien, but after a couple of awful cinematic collaborations in the 90s he pretty much disappeared to everyone except the goths and metalheads raiding his back catalogue for tattoos. He’s 69 now. Loathed by feminists and obscenity sticklers, Giger, the one-time king of darkness and the person Ridley Scott confessed to being petrified of meeting, is now no more scary than a grumpy old neighbor. He wears Crocs. He potters around the garden, mumbles to the cat, drops himself in front of the tube for the afternoon, and cracks open a bottle whenever he feels like it. His wife Carmen lives next door. Giger punched a hole through the wall to join the buildings. Giger’s side is painted black from floor to ceiling; Carmen’s, one assumes, ain’t so bad. He divides his time between a castle in the Alps and his house in Zurich where he has a little train track running round the garden and right through the kitchen. When he sketches, he still likes to draw strange alien figures with hefty packages pinning fragile looking ladies to the floor, but his days of nightmarish visions and brutal hallucinations are over. He goes to bed at 5 AM and wakes at noon. The night before the interview, Giger had overdone it at the dinner table. How was your fondue last night? Heavy. Oh so heavy. After I always say, "Oh my God, why have I done that?" But it’s so good. What are you doing with yourself these days? You know I haven’t painted since the 90s? I’m quiet now. I like watching television. I like the Wire, and the Sopranos is so good. Yesterday we met your good friend Walter Wegmüller, who helped Timothy Leary when he was on the run. He spoke about the “freaky times” back in Switzerland in the 70s. What were they like? Ah, the freaky times. When Timothy Leary was in Switzerland, he was hoping to get asylum so he could stay here and not go back to prison in America. I was collecting signatures for him. My father was a pharmacist, you know? "What are you doing with this guy?" he asked me. It was funny. Timothy Leary was a very nice man. I didn’t meet him back then in Switzerland, but I met him later in Los Angeles when he wrote two articles for my books. They were very good and he was a very fine person. Did you exchange ideas? Oh not much. What could I say? He was a very intelligent man with a lot of knowledge and I’m, well, I’m just an artist. Did you ever take LSD with him? Ah, you know you can’t talk about that on record. LSD is still forbidden, so it’s not good to talk about those things. You’ve said before that much of the inspiration for your art comes from dreams, and more specifically nightmares? Everyone always wants to know about my dreams. The inspiration is mostly from literature actually. I have read so many things that have inspired me. Beckett was very much an inspiration for me. His theatre especially. I made paintings as a homage to Samuel Beckett [Homage to S. Beckett I,II,III]. They were some of the very few colored paintings I’ve done. What other writers were an inspiration for you? Crime writers especially. I started with Edgar Wallace and then all sorts of Western writers. Your work comes from a much darker place than Beckett or Wallace? Darker, yes. It came partly from Chur where I grew up; partly from the war. I was born in 1940 so I could feel the atmosphere when my parents were afraid. The lamps were always a bluish dark, so the planes would not bomb us. Switzerland and Germany are close. The targets weren’t always very well marked. I felt the fear of that very much. Later on at a certain time I saw a lot of witchcraft books and stuff like that. H.P. Lovecraft and these kind of people. I’d say my inspiration comes from books mostly, but dreams also. Is there any way that you can control the dreams and manipulate your surroundings from within the dream? Yeah sometimes it happens and I can remember when I’m in a dream. Or I get the feeling like I’m out of my body. A long time ago, about 10 or even 20 years ago, I had that. But it didn’t happen to me often. Probably four or five times but yeah, that was strong. Was it frightening? No. It wasn’t frightening. It was just, well, I was so surprised. A dream where I can’t get enough air, that’s frightening. Or the kind of dream where I was stuck in a grave or something like that, that was frightening. But later I developed these passages paintings [Passage I-XXX] and they were very good for that. I got some sort of relief. I got no more bad dreams when I painted these passages. It was helpful. Does that happen often? No, not often, but I did the right thing because at the time these passage dreams were ruining my work. It was the right thing to make me feel better. Can you tell me about the dream behind Necronomicon your book that Ridley Scott used as the template for Alien? These things come from H.P. Lovecraft. In the 70s I was very familiar with Lovecraft. And the Alien figure itself? Well it all comes from the same place. I had already done Necronom IV and V, these monsters with the long heads. That’s what Ridley Scott saw. I showed them in a gallery in Paris. Jodoworsky visited the gallery and so did Ridley Scott and later on I got an invitation to do some work for movies. First it was Jodoworsky for Dune then later on it was Ridley Scott for Alien. What ever happened with Dune? Dune never happened with me. I was asked to do it two times. Once with Jodorowsky and then another time with Ridley Scott, but the daughter of Dino de Laurentis had the rights for Dune and she gave them to David Lynch. And David Lynch was not very happy with me. Why’s that? He said that I had stolen his ideas, that I’d stolen his baby. I said I liked his baby from Eraserhead. I always said very nice things about him but he was a little strange. And he was jealous because I exhibited in a New York gallery and he couldn’t. He was sour. But I like him. Do you have a favorite Lynch movie? Yes, I mean all of Twin Peaks. That was really fabulous. And of course it all started with Eraserhead. All the films he did were wonderful. How much control were you given during the production of Alien? Well Ridley Scott directed it and I hadn’t much to say. Ridley Scott knew exactly what he wanted. I was happy that he accepted my book and he showed it to all the crew like it was the bible. He said, you have to do it exactly this way, and I was happy with that. I like him very much. He’s a great guy. Giger's preliminary sketches for the Batmobile. Certain other projects you did after Alien, like Poltergeist II and Killer Condom weren’t as well received, why did you choose to work on them? After Alien things didn’t turn out so well in the movies because I didn’t get involved enough. I didn’t want to stay in another country. I had spent several months in Shepperton Studios working on Alien and wanted to be home. Later on when it came to doing these other projects I spent only a few days in the country for each one. When the movies eventually came out I thought, "Oh shit." But I couldn’t change it. There was no more time. So I thought that’s the wrong way to work. If you work on a film you have to be there all the time and be always looking at what they’re doing otherwise they’ll do what they want. In film, everybody wants to bring his own ideas in and make his own style, so it’s terrible. I was very depressed when I saw that. Which film made you the most depressed? All of them. I was only pleased with Alien and with the other things I was not very happy with. After all your involvement in Hollywood, are you filthy rich? Ah no. I’m actually poor. I had to sell several paintings to pay for the castle. That was shit. I had to sell some very nice, very important paintings. When did you get the castle? I did a show in Gruyeres in 1990 and fell in love with the town. I heard that they wanted to sell the castle, so I got it at auction. It was very difficult as I’m really not rich, you know? I got the money from many different places. I was always looking for something, a place for my paintings and sculptures, and I think a castle is the right place for me, no? Is the castle a work in progress or is it finished? More or less I’m finished, but it’s not done so well. I mean it was done on a really small budget. I can always make it better, but what I’m doing now is putting on shows in different countries to get publicity for the castle. And to find out where my paintings are. What happened to your paintings? Some of them were sold and I don’t know to where, and some of them got stolen. It’s horrible. Were they stolen from your house? Some, yes. And during the transport to shows. That’s shit. The two paintings for Emerson Lake and Palmer, for their Brain Salad Surgery album, were stolen. What can you do in that situation? Nothing. I tried. I said I’ll pay 10,000 francs if someone knows anything about them. I don’t know where they are. It upsets me so much. I like those things and I did them in 1973 and Emerson Lake and Palmer even came to Switzerland to see them. If you were rich, what would you like to do with the castle? I’d like to buy back some paintings. There was an idea for a train set running through the castle, but it’s too crazy. It’s fantastical. It costs too much to make such a train and you could never pay if off. It would be very funny to have, but I still have to pay for the castle. I have two million I have to pay back to the bank for the castle, and that’s heavy. The castle gets a lot of visits from young rockers and goths. They seem to look on it as a bit of temple of darkness. Do you get any bizarre requests from them? Oh yes. I get a lot of strange people who come to see my work in Gruyeres. It’s very nice. You know people from the village they know my fans when they see them. They’re all in black. They want to marry there, do photo shoots, all kinds of stuff. Do you think they ever have sex in the castle? Ha, it’s possible. I don’t know. We don’t have everything so tightly controlled. Apart from art, is there anything else you collect? I have weapons. I never want to be without weapons. As protection. I like weapons. From a child I always had weapons. What’s your favourite weapon? I have a small 5mm, 22 calibre, it’s a small revolver. That was what Li (Giger’s first wife) shot herself with. It’s very small. I have three revolvers with gunpowder in the barrel. You can fill them up. That’s fun. Would you recommend the film industry to a fine artist? Oh no, not at all. It’s very hard to work for film and you never have time to finish things in a really good way. Films make you crazy. You know once I wanted to work in Switzerland for the film industry. That was for the movie Species. Oh that was wrong. Why was it so bad? These guys I was working with, they didn’t want to work on Saturday and Sunday. It was terrible. They blamed me because I wanted them to work late. Film is great. I mean, I see what they do today and it’s wonderful. They know how to do it, they have all kinds of things but it really makes you crazy.

Interpol's annual Pink Panther conference. Photo courtesy of Interpol; all other photos by the authors

There are plenty of theories about how the Pink Panthers were formed. The international network of jewel thieves—who were given their nickname by Interpol in 1993 after one team of Panthers mimicked a theft from an Inspector Clouseau film—is thought to be made up of mostly Serbians and Montenegrins, which is why some believe that the organization was formed by Serbian militants during the Yugoslav Wars of the 90s.

The story goes that a number of the network's founding fathers belonged to the Arkan Tigers, a paramilitary group controlled by Serbian career criminal Željko Ražnatović, a.k.a. “Arkan,” and blamed for massacres in Bosnia. After meeting in the militia, the crooks supposedly went on a thieving rampage through Europe, ploughing the money made from their stolen goods back into their compatriots’ campaigns. Since those early days the criminal network is believed to have conducted 370 heists, nabbing some $500 million worth of jewels. They have disguised themselves as golfers, Hawaiian tourists, and workmen to pull off jobs, from which they've escaped in speedboats, scooters, and bicycles. They are the most successful band of diamond theives in history.

Of course, the above is mostly speculation at best—it’s hard to say anything definitive about the secretive group. But everyone agrees that they’re a highly organized, highly professional group of individuals. Thought to be dispersed throughout 35 different countries, the network is so prolific that Interpol has even created a special task force to chase them; the Pink Panthers project meets at an annual conference to exchange information, coordinate activities, and discuss how best to deal with their fabled foes.

In Greece, officers at the Property Crimes Unit (YDEZI) have caught three groups of Panthers since 2007. The most recent arrests were on March 3, when the cops apprehended four Serbian men, who, in the past year, have broken into 30 stores, most of them jewelry shops.

Some of the stolen items recovered by YDEZI after the recent Pink Panthers arrest.

We spoke to George Papasifakis, a YDEZI deputy involved in the arrest, while we looked over the Panthers’ recovered spoils. Piles of gold watches, jewelry, and cell phones were still scattered on tables in the YDEZI headquarters, waiting to be claimed by their owners. Among the evidence gathered by the police is the battering ram used by Panthers in “difficult” cases.

“We have mutual respect for each other,” Papasifakis said. “We ‘appreciate’ the way they work—their organization, speed, and their skill at evading us. But when we catch them, they too admit that we do a good job.”

Papasifakis has been in charge of investigating Pink Panther groups active in Greece for the past few years, and much of the credit when it comes to the recent arrests can be awarded to him and his experienced team of investigators.

Stolen phones recovered by YDEZI after the recent Pink Panthers arrest.

“All those arrested in Greece had fought in the war in former Yugoslavia, and this is one of the ways they relate to each other,” said Papasifakis, before explaining what he and his team have discovered about Pink Panther operations. “The criminal organization has a common modus operandi that involves three stages: preparation, penetration, and escape," he said.

"Initially, the Panthers perform surveillance of the place by pretending to be customers. They then steal cars from the 90s that don’t have electronic anti-theft systems installed, using impromptu passe-partout keys—known as ‘Polish keys’—which, by the by, is their signature move. And finally, using the ram-raiding method, they break into the shops.

“They’ve also used other methods to get into shops. On other occasions they’ve used straps, wires, or climbing ropes to tie the doors, then they normally dump the cars and escape on motorcycles, having snatched expensive watches and jewelry.”

Stolen watches recovered by YDEZI after the recent Pink Panthers arrest

As much as Papasifakis and his team have uncovered, trying to define the Panthers’ methodology is problematic, as there’s no centralized structure handing down orders of how things should be done. Unlike many crime syndicates, which have a leader at the top of a pyramid, the Pink Panthers operate in cells that go about their business independently from one another, much like al Qaeda and its various international affiliates.

That said, every Pink Panther robbery has its similarities—the primary one being that once they enter a shop or a jewelers, they know exactly where to go and exactly what to do. The average Pink Panther robbery takes 60 seconds or less; they decide what they want in advance and get out as quickly as they came in.

I asked Papasifakis how new members are indoctrinated. “Nobody really knows,” he answered. “Someone is definitely moving the strings on the ground in Serbia, and someone is in charge of initiating and educating the younger members—some members who have yet to be arrested pass on their expertise to others. Many wonder whether there’s an element of patriotism to the whole thing, but no one can answer with confidence. In my opinion, it’s more likely that they influence each other, imitating one another and learning the tricks of the trade.”



Evidence recovered by YDEZI after the recent Pink Panthers arrest.

The various Panther members all seem to take the same approach to their robberies. “They prefer to be sober to ensure they have complete control over their movements,” said Papasifakis. “And they never carry guns during a break-in either. Generally, they try to minimize risk by stealing cars from different neighborhoods, discarding their mobile phones, and generally by leading a quiet life.

"Only the first group [that we caught in 2007] ‘showed off’—the members stayed in lavish hotels in Glyfada [a wealthy neighbourhood in southern Athens], moved around in expensive rented cars, and spent a lot of money on their appearance and activities.”

That particular case was widely covered by the Greek press at the time because Olia Cirkovic—a female Serbian basketball player who’d played for a popular Greek team in the 90s—had participated in the robbery. The “spider-woman,” as she was dubbed after the raid, was in charge of casing the site before the robbery took place, and would then complete the job with her partners. She popped up again in the press when she escaped from Korydallos prison in 2011 before being apprehended four months later.

A flyer for this year's Interpol Pink Panthers conference among stolen items recovered in the recent YDEZI arrests.

The Panthers caught in March of this year were far more wary than Cirkovic and her squad. According to Papasifakis, the group had gone to great lengths to avoid being identified and captured: They used fake passports, fake ID cards, and fake driver's licenses, and communicated with each other using "ghost phones"—mobile phones registered under fake names.

With all of this protection in place, I asked Papasifakis how his team had managed to track the Panthers down. “No crime is perfect,” he said. “We keep a close eye on them. They’re bound to make a mistake, and it’s our duty to be there when that happens. During our most recent investigation, one of the perpetrators had a document with a photo and his personal information on it. The photo was real but the name on the document was fake. And we started to look into it… The main thing is to know what it is you’re looking for. We’ve studied the group for a long time and we have a good idea of what to look for now. From there on, we sit tight, waiting for the right moment to make simultaneous arrests in the area.

“Usually they won’t admit to anything on record. Even when we say we have incriminating evidence linking them to ten, 20, or 30 cases, they usually reply: ‘You may well have, but our code of honor won’t allow us to say anything.’ This is worthy of some respect,” admitted Papasifakis.

Before putting down the phone, I asked the deputy whether he thinks his team have won the battle against Pink Panthers—if the recent capture might put them off trying to bust into any more jewelry stores in Athens. “We may have already caught three groups, but we’re under no illusion that they’re going to disappear,” he answered. “They’re bound to make another appearance and, when they do, we’ll be here, with even more experience under our belts.”

Follow Lefteris Bidelas and Maria Psara on Twitter.

Denmark’s voting turnout for the 2009 EU elections was around 60 percent. Which isn’t half bad—turnout for the 2012 US presidential elections was 57.5 percent—but still, there’s always room for improvement. In an attempt to boost this year's numbers, Denmark’s parliament opted to combat youthful voting apathy by giving the kids what they love—a raging steroid freak who decapitates hipsters and literally punches women into voting booths.

Yesterday, Voteman was born. Briefly, the universe allowed him to exist.

The cartoon starts with Voteman getting blown by a group of four beautiful cartoon women when his phone rings. The voice on the other end of the line tells him there's a vote happening, and his lazy countrymen need his help. He smacks them away and rides two dolphins—his feet lodged firmly in their blowholes—away from his island's underground lair. After reaching mainland he goes on to throw a bunch of ninja stars at a guy walking down the street, kick about six people in the face, headbutt a woman, and throw a couple who are having sex out of a window. All in an attempt to make people vote.

Unfortunately, this mix of sex and violence wasn’t met with much warmth by certain sections of the Danish public and the ensuing criticism saw the video removed after just 24 hours.

“Many people whose opinions I deeply respect have perceived the cartoon from the EU information center as far more serious and offensive than it was intended,” the speaker of the Folketing (the national parliament of Denmark), Mogens Lykketoft, told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet about the $50,000 animation.

“I acknowledge that in the future Folketinget as an institution has to show more caution in terms of what we put our name to," Lykketoft continued.

No Lakotas in the picture. All photos courtesy of Daniel Lenchner's collection.

“Do you know about the Lakota Indians?” asked Daniel Lenchner, handing me a slightly faded photograph from the early 20th century. It was a class portrait with a location printed at the bottom: Lakota, North Dakota.

“Now,” challenged Lenchner, “can you find an Indian in this picture?”

I scanned the rows of Caucasian faces.

“Not going to happen,” he continued. “We got rid of them, you know. No more Lakotas in Lakota. It looks like a class portrait, but you could also say that this is a picture of genocide.”

That theme of implicit absence dominates Lenchner’s found-photograph collection. Scouring flea markets, estate sales, and the internet, Lenchner has collected over 500 snapshots of Nazis taken by Nazis that document their daily lives: their families, their friendships, and their leisure activities.  

As a Jewish man with ancestors who perished in the Holocaust, these intimate glimpses into the daily lives of his family’s persecutors bring him face to face with what political philosopher Hannah Arendt called  “the banality of evil.”

I met the 68 year old Lenchner last month in his sprawling New York apartment to look through his collection and discuss its implications.

VICE: What’s striking about so many of these images is that without the uniforms you really can’t tell that these people are Nazis, can you?
Daniel Lenchner: Yes, that’s really what my thesis is: These people are normal in appearance, but appearances are deceiving. There is the modern news phenomenon of people being interviewed in the street after they discover that their neighbor is a mass murderer. They’re always expressing surprise, that they didn’t realize it, that they should have known. The underlying assumption is that they could’ve known. But, if the truth is that there is no way to know, then you shouldn’t be surprised.

I interviewed the great-niece of Nazi leader Herman Göring once, and her family albums are filled with pictures like these. She talked about feeling the love that’s evident in so many of the scenes: fathers holding their children, spouses embracing, friends laughing. How do you confront the presence of those kinds of emotions?
Yes, these guys went home to their wives and children, and maybe they sang them nice German lullabies, but it’s not an exoneration. I mean, Hitler loved dogs, and he was a vegetarian. Great. But, it’s all kind of irrelevant. At the end of the day these things are reconcilable. No, not exactly reconcilable, but they coexist. The evil and the not-evil coexist in a person. But, in Nuremberg, it didn’t come up that they were nice to their wives because it didn’t matter.

It looks like the man in this picture wasn’t such a great husband. Is this a Dear John letter written on the back?
A Dear Johann letter, so to speak.

Can you describe what we’re looking it?
Well, here we have this handsome studio portrait of a German officer, and on the back is this message from a woman, apparently his mistress. She writes that she’s giving back this photograph because it’s brought her back luck. He’s a playboy. She refers to his “wanderings in Weimar,” and makes reference to his wife.

What do you like about this picture?
It’s just so normal, so banal, just a man screwing around on his wife—nothing so unusual there. He’s a regular scoundrel, but put him in a Nazi uniform and all of a sudden we have a special kind of scoundrel.

In this case, the story is right there on the image itself, but most of these pictures have very little context. How much of what you see comes from the pictures themselves and how much is your own projection?
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Let me show you something that addresses that. This is one of the most stunning pictures I've ever bought and there's absolutely nothing on the back. Take a look and tell me what you see.

I see a massacre.  
Yes, a little massacre, with what I believe is a rape. This is surely a woman with her babushka. She's laid on this table with her legs splayed, and she’s been made a little comfortable with some straw under her head. I think everybody's dead here: bodies, bodies, bodies. And, the Germans are done now. They’re heading to what looks like a small train station. Their backs are all turned away. “We’ve done our work and now we’re leaving.”

What might be most disturbing of all is this detail of putting the straw under the woman’s head. It looks like an attempt to make her comfortable as they raped and killed her. It seems like a recognition of her humanity.
Also, it looks like this dead man has his arm around this person here, in a protective pose.

As if he could shield them from bullets.
As I said, there's nothing on the back of this photograph, but the story is very clearly there. I don't think we have to read too much into it.

And yet, it’s hard not to project, isn’t it? This is not so different from the kind of war photography that we’re all familiar with…
Right, this almost could have been taken by Robert Capa.

The composition is excellent and the focus is razor sharp.
That’s right. One thing you can say about the Nazis is that they went to war with good cameras. They didn't go with any goddamn instamatics. They went with Leicas: good cameras with good lenses. You can see the number on the train. You can see the blades of grass. You can see the dead man's eyes.

It’s similar to a Robert Capa, as you say, but—and this goes back to projection—knowing who took this picture gives it an intimacy that takes it beyond photojournalism. The photographer is part of the photograph. That almost gives it the quality of a family snapshot, except instead of standing and smiling, everyone is dead.
And then, the question you'll never answer: why did they take this picture?

Why do you think?
Sometimes you wonder, are they proud? Who knows. This I have no answer for.

Well, they certainly didn’t take it for your benefit. There’s something profoundly subversive about this ending up in your hands. I mean, the photographer could never have even imagined your existence.
No. But, who was it meant for? His superior officer, his friends, his wife, his children?

It’s jarring to see that photograph in the same collection as this other one here. This picture here seems delightful, really: a crowd of people laughing at something outside the frame.
Except, look there. Do you see the swastika? Suddenly it becomes sinister. What are they laughing at? We will never know. And, they are really cracking up. It’s great. You have examples of all the different ways that people laugh. Some people cover their face, and some bend at the waist, some hold their stomach, and here he’s leaning backwards, she’s covering her mouth, and she’s pointing to draw her friend’s attention.

You must be primed to see the swastika. It took me a second.
Yeah, that’s absolutely true. I’m so sensitive that I occasionally see swastikas where there are none.

With that kind of priming, what do you see when you look at the German people of today?
Well, I lived in Germany for five years as a college instructor for the American military. I taught comparative literature to GIs. That was during the mid-70s, so many of the people that I passed on the street had lived through the Nazi era. It was a little weird to say the least. You get on a German train and you can’t help but think about cattle cars packed with human beings. But, you’re also struck by all of the good things. The place is clean, and the trains run on time, and the people are so honest.

In what ways were they honest?
On the autobahn, for example, the bathrooms all had plates where you would leave a tip for the cleaning person. So, you walk into the bathroom, and there is a plate full of money. Now, you put that on the New Jersey Turnpike and it wouldn’t last three minutes. They’d steal the money and the plate too. But, in Germany not only do they not steal the money, but they put more in. You look at that and you think, Are these the same people responsible for the Holocaust? How can this be? Yet, some of those people must have been honest. They must have been honest in that narrow sense: placing money on the plate on their way to build a concentration camp.

The Lenchner family in Lodz, Poland in 1935. Only Daniel Lenchner's father (back row, second from right) survived the war.
 

Roc’s new book, And, was released recently. You can find more information on his website.

Photo via Creative Commons.
As I’ve already reported for VICE, the Canadian government is taking part in negotiations for a 12-country trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. From the leaked texts we’ve seen, if it were passed today the TPP would very likely import harsh US intellectual property laws that would harm Canadian internet freedom and digital innovation. Things don’t look so good for mother nature, either. Negotiations are still ongoing, but the US seems to be alone in pushing to include a modest amount of environmental protection in the final text of the agreement. So far, not good.

If the whole agreement is as ugly as these two leaked chapters, the Canadian government would probably want to back out altogether. But let’s give the government the benefit of the doubt and assume that all their aims are true. Does the TPP have any redeeming qualities?

While digging through a relatively soporific Initial Environmental Assessment of the TPP prepared by the government, I came across one figure that stood out: bureaucrats predicted that the TPP would add 0.36% to Canada’s GDP. This works out to about $186 per Canadian, assuming it were all distributed equally (it wouldn’t be). Given all the criticism the TPP has received as a “giant corporate wishlist,” I wanted to find out whether there was more to the story. Would the government really risk signing over a few more of our rights to The Man so that each citizen could have a chance at an extra two days worth of minimum wage? That doesn’t sound like a good deal.

I spoke at length with Robert Wolfe, a trade policy expert and former trade official for Canada now teaching at the Queen’s School of Policy Studies. He told me that the above figure likely doesn’t mean all that much for two principal reasons: first, the economic model used to come up with that figure isn’t ideal; and second, the figure ignores new business and investment that would occur if the TPP were passed. Nevertheless, he said, “most of the potential gains from trade are already being exploited,” so it’s not as if the deal will light a roaring bonfire under the ass of Canada’s economy.

Because governments have already taken tariff (import tax) levels down to quite low levels, much of the agreement that focuses on trade doesn’t deal with tariffs. But agriculture remains an extraordinarily protected sector, especially in Japan. Opening things up could result in a significant payoff, since Japan is the second largest export market for our agriculture. Wolfe told me that for Canada, increased access to Japan’s food market (especially beef and pork) was “the money to make TPP work,” and he pointed to the example of South Korea. Because the US sealed a trade deal with Korea before Canada, Canadian exporters lost bigtime on selling our succulent, tasty meat to that country. It’s a loss the government doesn’t want to repeat.

Other potential gains from the agreement involve removing non-tariff barriers to trade (e.g. government contracting requirements) and harmonizing rules and regulations between countries without lowering standards for workers, the environment, etc. It’s still possible that the TPP could do these things, but at the moment it’s impossible to know. Why? Because from the beginning, TPP negotiations have taken place behind closed doors.

I asked Prof. Wolfe for his take on this, especially given that corporate advisors and lobbyists have enjoyed much more access to government negotiators than have the public, academics, or NGO’s. His answer was that the TPP represented a ‘swinging of the pendulum’ away from previous trade deals (like the Doha round of the World Trade Organization) that have stalled in part due to their transparency.

The reasoning goes like this: If every country’s position is known to both other states and domestic groups, then potential sources of opposition to a deal become too numerous. Everyone will find something that they don’t like, and will speak out against the deal. Because deals naturally involve concessions from both sides, nobody makes any big concessions and the negotiations fall apart. That’s the reasoning for clandestine negotiations, on paper anyway.

Unfortunately for the TPP, its unprecedented level of secrecy hasn’t exactly led to a fast deal. Perhaps this is because the information available so far doesn’t make the deal look palatable to many outside of the boardroom. If this is true, governments should do a better job convincing voters that what’s good for big firms may in fact be good for citizens, too. Although their main goal is to maximize profit (sometimes at the expense of the public good), big businesses do offer some goodies. After all, corporations pay a very large amount of taxes to buy schools, hospitals, and other things, in addition to providing jobs. It does make some sense to set trade conditions so that our corporations can succeed, provided they stick around.

Perhaps citizens are becoming wary of trade promises from politicians—with free trade, governments are supposed to compensate the ‘losers’ so that the country as a whole can gain. Their record is far from perfect in doing this, and it’s doubtful that the Harper government will be keen on redistributing income to cushion the blow that globalization has delivered to certain industries. In an era of widening income inequality, this matters—even if, as Wolfe argues, trade often gets blamed for the impacts of globalization, which are much bigger and more complicated than any single agreement.

As we were wrapping up our conversation, I asked Prof. Wolfe for some closing thoughts on the TPP. Will it be good for Canada? His answer was cautious: at the moment, “there isn’t enough information to say it’s a bad thing, as a whole.” Given the gains mentioned above, there’s a chance the TPP could improve the Canadian economy. But it’s hard to escape the obvious fact that, as the New York Times put it, “companies are using trade agreements to get special benefits that they would find much more difficult to get through the standard legislative process.”

The government must make a stronger case for why this process isn’t out of balance, at the very least because Canadians value more than just economic growth. We value fairness and democracy as well. Even if the TPP can deliver benefits along these lines, Ottawa hasn’t been very forthcoming about what’s in this deal or what it means for the public. As an example, Opposition MPs can’t see the negotiating texts, limiting their ability to debate the issue if negotiations wrap up and a treaty comes before Parliament. This level of secrecy begins to undermine the consent of the governed and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Trade agreements of this size are important and wide-ranging. For better or for worse, Canadians deserve more opportunity to weigh in on whether the TPP is worth it. Come election time, I hope we’ll get that chance.  


@chrismalmo

Our exploration of rural Quebec continues, with a crash course in ice fishing from a complete and total stranger. While we didn't bother to arrange any sort of ice fishing appointment in advance, through the power of Quebecois charm and free beer, Tommy was able to convince a gentleman named Serge--who was hanging out in his ice fishing hut solo--to teach us the ancient art of pulling free food from a nearly-frozen body of water. Hopefully you can learn a thing or two about catching your own food.

Jon Daniel talks with a friend the night before meeting with the ACLU, who announced today they plan on filing a lawsuit on Daniel's behalf.

It seems incredible that a bored man who created a parody Twitter account while sitting on the edge of his bed while his son watched Spongebob Squarepants would have his home raided by the cops and wind up at the center of one of the oddest scandals in Peoria, Illinois political history, but that’s exactly where Jon Daniel finds himself. And now that the Illinois branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is getting involved, Daniel’s life is likely to get odder still.

Today the ACLU announced it plans to file a lawsuit on the grounds that @peoriamayor, a Twitter handle Daniel created that parodied Peoria mayor Jim Ardis, is protected speech and the police raid was therefore uncalled for.

"Mr. Daniel, like other parodists, has a First Amendment right to post these tweets,” spokesman Ed Yohnka said in a statement.“He was engaging in a time-honored tradition of poking fun at public officials—even when the public official doesn’t like it. Because Mr. Daniel’s activities were protected, they should never have led to a warrant and search of his home.”

Ardis likely doesn’t see it that way—the mayor was so incensed by a Twitter account with a measly 50 followers that portrayed him as a crack-smoking party animal that he complained to police in March, and the cops showed up at Daniel’s door with a search warrant on April 15, took several of his housemates in for hours of questioning, and seized video game consoles, computers, tablets, and phones.

On the train ride to his downtown hotel in Chicago on May 5, after signing the contract that made the ACLU’s representation of him official, Daniel was in a thoughtful mood. Over and over again he marvelled at the absurdity of the situation he was in.

“This is something that’s going to be attached to me for the rest of my life,” he said on a darkened El train. “Pre-raid everything was cool.” Now things are crazy. Bizarre. Life-altering. Scary.

“Every police officer in the city of Peoria knows my name,” he said, “That don’t make me feel too safe.”

The inspiration for @peoriamayor came from Twitter parody accounts like Drunk Patrick Kane and Drunk Jay Cutler. (Daniel is a Chicago sports nut who has the Bears’ logo tattooed on his right forearm.) Prior to mocking Ardis, Daniel operated an account that purported to be someone representing Lea and Perrins steak sauce. Basically, Daniel would search for people tweeting about steak and tell them, “Make sure you put some Lea and Perrins on that bitch!”

The fake Jim Ardis account was at times a bit crude, according to Ardis, and that descriptor was co-opted by the Peoria newspaper here in some of its reporting. That’s a point of contention for Daniel.

“That was Ardis’s way to describe it,” Daniel said of the word crude. “Then (the newspaper) just runs with that and everyone believes them because they can’t find the tweets themselves.”

No matter how offensive the tweets were, if Peoria doesn’t settle out of court—which seems likely—the city’s attorneys will almost surely be eviscerated by the dozen-plus ACLU lawyers who have been working over every aspect of the case for weeks now. The thinness of the city’s argument that Daniel was doing something illegal is evident from a glut of emails exchanged by city officials about the case obtained through several Freedom of Information Act requests.

Among those communications is an email from Beth Jensen, an at-large member of the Peoria City Council. In it, Jensen questioned Ardis about whether the city’s interim corporate counsel Sonni Williams had been consulted in the lead-up to the raid. If not, Jensen wrote, was that because Ardis and City Manager Patrick Urich had a “lack of trust or confidence in (William’s) abilities?” These emails also show that Chief of Police Steve Settingsgaard and a detective in the department’s cyber crimes unit didn’t think Daniel’s tweets amounted to a chargeable offense, but after some deliberation (and dozens of emails), they changed their tune and decided that @peoriamayor amounted to “personation of a public official,” a misdemeanor in Illinois.

The cops got three warrants that forced Twitter to give up the account’s IP address, got the internet service provider to provide the physical location of the house attached to the IP address, and allowed police to raid the home, confiscate electronics found there, and examine them for a wide array of possible crimes. The cops also got a judge's permission to search the house for drugs, because in several of @peoriamayor’s over-the-top tweets Daniel reference smoking weed and doing blow.

No hard drugs were found, but the cops came across a few ounces of weed, and Daniel’s roommate, Jake Elliot is still dealing with that charge. (Elliot has asked for help in raising funds to hire a lawyer, and there’s a Change.org petition to have his charges dropped.) And ten days after the raid, State’s Attorney Jerry Brady announced no charges would be filed related to the Twitter account. But it’s the actions of Ardis and police—which may have violated Daniel’s right to free speech and protection against unreasonable search and seizure—that have many people pissed and made this a national story. Those possible First and Fourth Amendment violations have the Illinois ACLU salivating over what could be a slam-dunk of a case.

Prior to his meeting with a roomful of lawyers, Daniel said he was worried that he’ll be seen as greedy, that a monetary settlement will cause a shift in a court of public opinion that has so far been supportive of Daniel and his crew.

“Are people going to be happy that I just took taxpayer money?” he said of a possible settlement the night before he signed the contract with the ACLU. “That money ain’t coming out of Ardis’s bank account.”

Daniel in Chicago after celebrating signing a contract with the ACLU.

Ardis is a fairly popular politician, or at least he was until the “Twitter incident,” as Wikipedia has dubbed it. The Republican and lifelong Peorian is in his third term after running unopposed in an election last April, and under his tenure the city has built the Peoria Riverfront Museum and a baseball stadium—both of which have been the subjects of scrutiny over their partly taxpayer-subsidized births and subsequent lives. (The museum in particular is a constant source of aggravation for many in town. Its finances are shaky, and attendance hasn’t been stellar.) Ardis, whose mayoral duties are part-time, ran on a platform of not being a well-connected politician or fat cat—in addition to the $37,800 he made last year for being the Peoria’s mayor and liquor commissioner, Ardis also works for Axis IT&T, an engineering firm. Not that Daniel was aware of any of this when he started @peoriamayor. Actually, he told me in Chicago, he didn’t even know who the mayor was.

“It took me two seconds to find him. It took me two seconds to find his picture and his email,” Daniel said. “And that was it. So for (the police) to say I went to ‘great lengths’ to create it is just a huge overstatement.”

Daniel is concerned that his now very public stand-off with the mayor will hurt his chances of finding work in the future—even if he didn't do anything wrong, it's still sure to draw some raised eyebrows from some potential employers. The court battle is a David vs. Goliath scenario that may have flipped with the involvement of the ACLU. Though Daniel’s case looks pretty strong right now, he acknowledges that many people are victims of police overreach and shaky warrants; he's only where he is now because a few journalists (including me) wrote about his situation and it struck a chord with many thanks to the sheer ridiculousness of police showing up at his door due to a few Twitter jokes.

“I’m lucky. I know that. Our whole house is lucky,” Daniel told me. “They didn’t know they were raiding a house that was close to journalist-type people. If it wasn’t for that they would have swept it under the rug. They messed up.”

Justin Glawe is a freelance journalist who lives in Peoria. He chronicles crime and violence there.

When Glenn Greenwald first met Edward Snowden on the streets of Hong Kong, he was sure he had wasted his time flying halfway around the world. This guy? That young? No way he has the goods, thought Greenwald.

Snowden had asked the Guardian journalist to wait for a man with a Rubik’s cube. But the man was so young that Greenwald wondered whether perhaps it was the NSA whistleblower’s son or his lover who had come to the initial meeting.

Any doubts about Snowden’s position inside the NSA, however, were squelched when the whistleblower began recounting his improbable rise from high school dropout/video gamer to master of offensive cyber attacks on behalf of the Obama administration, all of which he had documented methodically.

Throughout their first adrenaline-pounding days together, Greenwald’s mind was understandably boggled at the enormity of the scoop. Snowden, meanwhile, ended the day saying he needed to rest, joking, “I call the bottom bunk at GITMO [Guantánamo].” Asked why he could sleep so well, Snowden quipped, “I figure I have very few days left with a comfortable pillow, so I might as well enjoy them.”

Judging from Greenwald’s first-person account, Snowden radiated a calm and an orderly logic that were essential parts of his psychological makeup. It was a combination that made him both the NSA’s up-and-coming star and their ongoing nightmare.

Greenwald’s eloquent book about the Snowden case, No Place to Hide, is less about Snowden than the “tens of thousands” of documents that the 29-year-old copied, organized, and handed off to Greenwald and a select group of other journalists.

Snowden told Greenwald he was inspired by Joseph Campbell’s book about mythological martyrs, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and said, “What keeps a person passive and compliant is fear of repercussions, but once you let go of your attachment to things that don’t ultimately matter—money, career, physical safety—you can overcome that fear.”

Snowden’s defense of internet freedom was both theoretical and experiential. “Basically the internet allowed me to experience freedom and explore my full capacity as a human being,” Snowden told Greenwald. “For many kids, the internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that only works if we’re able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us. I worry that mine was the last generation to enjoy that freedom.”

Greenwald—whose training as a lawyer and litigator make his arguments sound like they are expounded before a jury—is not naïve about the security threats of the post-Cold War era. Instead, he posits a fundamental American core value: Innocent until proven guilty. “The alternative to mass surveillance is not the complete elimination of surveillance. It is, instead, targeted surveillance, aimed only at those for whom there is substantial evidence to believe they are engaged in real wrongdoing,” he writes.

The most powerful sections of Greenwald’s book are not the individual documents but his accounts of the connivance of corporate America. The subservient role of Fortune 500 Corporations, especially Microsoft, allows a rare glimpse into the unspoken conspiracies that may never be written or seen but are felt by all. Microsoft, writes Greenwald, with ample evidence to back up the claim, spent months redesigning software to facilitate penetration by NSA spies.

Snowden meanwhile is depicted as a wise ascetic, a man willing to go down on the sword for the greater good. "I could not do this without accepting the risk of prison. You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk,” Snowden tells Greenwald. “If they want to get you, over time, they will." Usually such dire predictions are dismissed as paranoid rants. In this case they are the levelheaded analysis of a former top US intelligence operative.

It is true, Greenwald notes, that the Snowden revelations triggered a “global debate about the value of individual privacy in the digital age and prompted challenges to America’s hegemonic control over the internet.” But how much of the dirty, nitty-gritty detail will stick?

The Snowden documents highlight an unprecedented sabotage of internet privacy. In operation after operation, the documents show US officials lurching from one technical challenge to another, never asking, “Should we?” and obsessing with “getting it all." Referring to US intelligence, Snowden states, "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries."

The damage to human creativity, the subversion of personal privacy, and the overall betrayal of human rights from such intrusive spying will never fully be calculated. But even the small fraction of the Snowden papers thus far made public have shown that our intrinsic need to communicate, to share, to blog/tweet/upload has ushered in a radical new balance of power. Whether Snowden has stopped the forces of surveillance, merely slowed them, or allowed them to hone their tools has yet to be decided. In No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald makes a persuasive case that it is a battle that has engulfed us all, and one that has not yet ended.

This weekend Europe's eyes were on Denmark as it played host to the Eurovision Song Contest, an annual celebration of cheesy pop songs and international goodwill. (Conchita Wurst, a transgender woman with a beard, ended up winning.) Bizarrely enough, that same weekend Copenhagen decided to green-light the country's first official Nazi demonstration since World War II. On May 9, about 40 members of far right organization Danish National Front set up shop outside Parliament sporting propaganda-filled banners and Danish flags.

One skinhead even brought his acoustic guitar along, but before he could strum a single chord counter-protesters rained on the Nazis' parade with glass bottles. As the anti-fascists increased in numbers, riot police quickly formed a circle around the right-wing demonstrators. Around 3 PM, some 200 masked anti-fascists stormed the square, and Esben Kristensen, the leader of the Danish National Socialist Movement, pretty much had his ass handed to him before the police pulled out their truncheons and began forcing the demonstrators back.

To save the right-wing activists from punishment, riot police escorted them to safety and sent them on their way. Of course this only meant the trouble scattered out into the streets of Copenhagen—while families and tourists stood by stunned and speechless, packs of masked anti-fascists ran around the city looking for Nazis to beat up.

By the end of the day, 13 anti-fascist rioters had been arrested for throwing bottles, and one of them will likely face prison time. Twenty-one right-wing radicals were later arrested for public disturbance while on a train leaving Copenhagen. Everyone should have just stayed home and watched Eurovision.

Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (formerly Grassy Narrows), one of Ontario's contaminated sites.
Recently, I wrote a story for VICE about the alarming number of First Nation communities in northwestern Ontario that are home to ‘high-priority’ contaminated sites. Most of these sites were contaminated with petroleum products or other chemicals called ‘BTEX’—known to be severely harmful to human health.

According to the Treasury Board’s inventory (which tracks contaminated areas in Canada), at the time of publishing there were 134 high-priority sites in the north. I reported that some of the contaminated sites are as large as 4,500 cubic meters or can even be measured in the tonnes. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada is responsible for almost all of the sites reported.

However, within hours of VICE publishing my article, the number of contaminated sites listed in the inventory magically dropped to 56—before jumping back up to 109 two days later. Coincidence, says the Treasury Board. In an email statement, the Board stated that a reporting organization could modify the inventory at any time. It just so happened that Aboriginal Affairs updated their information soon after publication.

But at least one opposition MP questions that explanation. “This government has had a history of manipulating information in order to achieve an end, ” says NDP Aboriginal Affairs critic Jean Crowder. “In the absence of information you can make what ever policy decisions that you like.” The changing data didn’t surprise an industry watchdog either. “There’s a real reluctance on that part of all levels of government to even acknowledge the problem,“ says Jamie Kneen, communications coordinator with MiningWatch Canada. For the last 15 years, MiningWatch has pressured the federal government to look after its contaminated sites problem. “These liabilities aren’t going away if you aren’t going to clean them up,” says Kneen. But Kneen warns that the worst contamination could be yet to come.

For years, planning has been underway for a massive Chromite mining project in northern Ontario called The Ring of Fire. Early last year, Tony Clement was named the lead federal minister on the project. Clement is also the president of the Treasury Board. Valued at over $120 billion, The Ring of Fire project is expected to create thousands of jobs and could spark about 100 years of mining activity. At least nine First Nation communities have signed off on the deal that Clement says will be Canada’s “next oil sands.”

Stan Beardy is Regional Chief of the Chiefs of Ontario, a political organization that represents 133 First Nation communities in the province. He says high environmental standards must be in place before the Ring of Fire goes forward. And that means reliable data.

Across Canada, there are a total of 568 “high-priority” contaminated sites in First Nation communities. Aboriginal Affairs is responsible for a large number of these sites. In its plans and priorities report for this year, the Department warned they might not be able to clean up and manage the sites in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, the Ring of Fire is slowly moving forward. Recently, an agreement was signed between First Nation communities and the Ontario government. Which means First Nation communities already living near existing sites may soon face new contaminated sites—with no idea when they'll be taken care of.

A few years ago, my friend Bill Dunleavy and I started Superchief Gallery in a loft space in Brooklyn. In 2013 we moved it to the Lower East Side, where we hosted 47 week-long gallery exhibitions, including VICE's annual photo show. This year we're opening up a new branch on the West Coast, in a 4,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown LA. Our first show opens this Thursday, May 15, and it's the biggest thing we've done so far. It's called Grand Opening, and it features more than 45 artists, many of whom you've seen in the pages of this very publication. 

A few weeks ago we drove a 16-foot box truck (packed to the gills with $500,000 worth of art) from New York to LA, hoping like hell we wouldn't get busted for weed on the backroads of some ratball country town. Almost every night we slept in sleeping bags on top of the truck, but once we stayed in the slave quarters of a mansion owned by a high-level Mason with a one-eyed cat. We climbed through hollowed-out airplanes in the City Museum of St. Louis, visited the Westboro Baptist Church, got pushed off the road by a flash sandstorm in Kansas, bought overpriced legal weed in Denver, and drove through the gorgeous desert panoramas of Utah, Nevada, and California, pissing off GTA 5–style biker freaks as we slowed down to take their photos from the passenger-side window.

These are some of our flicks of America, taken in a hurry as we hustled across it. And if you're in LA this Thursday, roll through the gallery and party with us. Here's all the info you need.

Members of Walk For Justice, calling on the government to address the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, in 2008. Photo via Flickr user mrmillroy.
The UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples has joined native groups, all the provincial premiers, Canada’s opposition parties, and various UN countries in their call for a national inquiry into the disturbingly high number of missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. In his report released Monday, James Anaya called government initiatives to address the problems faced by native people “insufficient” at all levels. He pointed out that “the well-being gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in Canada has not narrowed over the last several years, treaty and aboriginals claims remain persistently unresolved, indigenous women and girls remain vulnerable to abuse, and overall there appear to be high levels of distrust among indigenous peoples toward the government.”

Almost 1,200 aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered since 1952, which is twice as many as advocacy groups had previously estimated, as the RCMP confirmed earlier this month. During his research, Anaya heard “consistent, insistent” calls for a nation-wide inquiry into the women’s deaths. He recommends the government listen to these calls and write a comprehensive report with the help of indigenous groups, something the Harper government has been avoiding for a while. “I am sure it is because they are afraid of us,” Michèle Audette, the president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada said in a previous interview.

A national inquiry “would give an opportunity for families to be heard but it would also look at what [Anaya] called unresolved issues that continue to have women and girls vulnerable to abuse,” said Jean Crowder, the NDP critic for aboriginal affairs.

The UN report says that aboriginal women make up only four percent of the population, but 16 percent of murdered women. (Oh and women make up 73 percent of all victims of solved homicide if you count dating homicide, which apparently Statistics Canada doesn’t always do.) And homicide statistics are just one of many categories that feature aboriginal women in hugely disproportionate numbers. Native women are “even more disproportionately incarcerated than indigenous individuals generally” and are the fastest-growing population in federal prisons, said the report. They face gender discrimination under the Indian Act, as women who are impregnated due to rape or incest can’t get native status for their child.

“Because of the disproportionate numbers and the lack of action, this somehow sends the message that these women are not worth the attention, and that simply should not happen in Canada,” said Crowder. “We pride ourselves on our human rights agenda and if that’s not a violation of human rights when women are treated differently or victimized more often, I don’t know what is.”

Many of these issues come back to the “distressing” socioeconomic conditions of Canada’s indigenous people, which Anaya called “the most jarring manifestation of these human rights problems.”  The chronic lack of housing in native communities has a ripple effect, contributing to other problems, such as high rates of respiratory illness, depression, and family violence. The economic gap between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians is shocking—of the top 100 communities on the Community Wellbeing Index, only one is First Nations, but 96 are on the bottom 100. “Ongoing issues around poverty, lack of access to housing, lack of access to education, lack of job opportunities, all compound violence in a number of ways,” Crowder said. For example, she noted that there are fewer legal and economic support structures for women on reserves who are looking to escape domestic violence.

Bernard Valcourt, Canada’s Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, released a statement in response to Anaya’s report. In the statement, he pats himself on the back for committing $25 million over five years to reduce violence against aboriginal women and girls—a move that Audette told me was “a slap in our face.” She said the funding was already committed to family violence programs, and just got a shiny new name.

A few hours later, Minister Valcourt released an additional statement, this time boasting that he gave native women the same rights as other Canadians and provided reserves with drinkable water. Neither of Valcourt’s statements mention any plans for action on the “continuing crisis” Anaya describes in his report, other than saying briefly that “challenges remain.”

Minister Valcourt’s second statement also said that he increased “the level of transparency required for First Nations in line with those of other levels of government in Canada.” In reality, indigenous governments are the most over-reporting level of government, because any community that receives funding under the Indian Act is required to produce about 100 reports every year, something that Minister Valcourt might know about his own department, if only he had read Anaya’s report before responding to it in a press release.

This “level of transparency” is hardly something to be proud of, as the burden of unnecessary paperwork impedes governments’ abilities to provide services and “has been perceived by First Nations to reinforce a negative stereotype of aboriginal people and governments as incompetent and corrupt,” according to the UN report. This is a stereotype that has been reinforced as recently as today, in a SUN Media op-ed that claims “most Canadians” feel as if “there isn’t enough accountability” amongst First Nations governments. This requirement of over-reporting that SUN and Minister Valcourt want to draw our attention to is one of the many things Anaya recommended the government stop doing right now. Valcourt’s press secretary Erica Meekes responded to my request for an interview by emailing me a copied-and-pasted version of the statement I said I had questions about.

“There are some places in the report where Mr. Anaya does acknowledge that there are some things that have been done and that was all he focused on,” said Crowder of Minister Valcourt’s response. “I didn’t see him focus on language like ‘debilitating poverty,’ ‘lack of trust,’ or ‘broken relationships.’ It was a very diplomatic report, but it’s clear to me, at least when reading it, that we are losing ground. And Minister Valcourt’s response does not acknowledge that we are losing ground.”

After the murder of Loretta Saunders in February, Audette told me if the government still refused to act, we would see “just how bad and mean and stubborn the Prime Minister and his government really is.” Seeing as the federal Minister in charge of aboriginal issues bragged about measures the UN recommended he cease in the very report he was responding to, chances probably aren’t great we’ll get a comprehensive, nation-wide inquiry into our country’s 1,200 dead aboriginal women.

@waitwhichemma

Photos by Leo Malek

Just outside Prague, the once-wealthy silver mining town of Kutná Hora is home to arguably the most morbid tourist attraction in the world. If you’ve ever turned to Tumblr to avoid doing the work you’re paid to do, chances are you’ve already come across photos of the Sedlec Ossuary (or “the bone church”), a small Roman Catholic chapel that’s decorated with the bones of an estimated 40,000 to 70,000 victims of both the Black Death and the 15th-century Hussite Wars.

The hundreds of thousands of human bones have been arranged in all kinds of creative ways, from bone chalices and chandeliers to strings of skulls and bones hung across the ceiling like history’s most depressing party bunting. It’s the Ted Bundy approach to interior design: the entrance to Disneyland’s Nightmare Before Christmas ride if they’d sourced their raw materials from a morgue rather than a Hollywood prop department.

The basement at Sedlec, where all the bone sculptures are located, is open to the public and has long been one of the most popular tourist spots in the Czech Republic, attracting around 200,000 visitors every year. All kinds of people—from Polish pensioners to fans of “grief tourism” (a.k.a. sociopaths who holiday in Auschwitz and Chernobyl)—come here from all over the world to shoot their new profile pictures next to the piles of 500-year-old human skulls.

Now the 14th-century church building is in serious need of repair. The bones are beginning to crumble, and the church leans drunkenly to one side; the owners can’t put the restoration work off any longer.

Of course, this isn't going to be your standard church-restoration job. The basement hasn’t changed since 1870, and the grim decorations now have to be taken apart and moved for the first time since they were installed. Nothing like this has been done before, because—to the international authorities’ knowledge, at least—nothing like this has existed before outside the fictitious realm of Rob Zombie movies and hack-and-slash video games. Compounding their problems, the restorers in charge of Sedlec say that no one alive today actually knows how the bones were fixed together in the first place.

After an hour’s train journey from Prague, a walk down Kutná Hora's main road takes you past the bone church’s own dedicated tourist information office, cafe, and toilets, and a gift shop featuring an array of plastic skull necklaces, fridge magnets, and the most macabre beer cosies I’ve ever seen. There’s apparently almost always a line of international tour buses stationed outside the gates of the church.

None of this kitsch and fanfare helps much while trying to reflect on either my own individual insignificance within the universe, or the inescapable hand of death, which, I’ve read, are the two things the bone church was built to remind us of.

Skulls and crossbones on the spires of the church above the Sedlec Ossuary

Walking toward the church, the first thing you notice—besides the German teenagers in Monster snapbacks taking selfies by the entrance—is that there are skulls and crossbones everywhere, carved in stone on the gates, painted on the pavement outside, and even replacing the standard crucifixion-style symbol on top of the spires.

The church has been associated with death for centuries, long before the basement was filled with the skeletal bric-a-brac it is now. The legend goes that after a local monk brought some soil back from the Holy Land in 1278, Central Europe's wealthiest residents started queuing up for family burial plots. Two religious wars and one plague later, this holy ground was full to bursting. To make way for new graves, the older remains were exhumed in 1511 by a half-blind monk, who left them piled up in the church basement.

More than 300 years later, in 1870, the aristocratic Schwarzenberg family, who owned the church at the time, asked a woodcarver to do something with the forgotten bones, and what you see today is what he came up with. František Rint worked for decades to organize and style the remains into decorations, recruiting his wife and kids to help him in perhaps the least family-friendly family business I’ve ever come across.

An engraving on the wall in honour of František Rint

There are rumors that people had already started making things out of the bones before Rint came along, leaving the Schwarzenbergs no option but to pay someone to do it properly. Jana at the ticket desk told me this was probably true. “We know that a man called Santini—and possibly others—was already making bone decorations here in the early 18th century,” she said. “Rint’s work just continued that.”

Regardless of who was there first, the same problem still stands: There’s no record of how everything was originally put together. And for the restorers, that’s a major issue; taking a few piles of old bones apart doesn’t sound that hard, until you see the size of them. In each of the ossuary’s four corners there are huge pyramids of skulls and bones, stretching far back into the recesses of the walls and filled with cobwebs and money (Jana told me that people just started throwing coins in there two or three years ago, presumably for good luck, and nobody stopped them).

Coins that have been thrown behind the piles of human skulls

These mounds are going to provide the biggest headache for the restorers, since nobody knows what’s holding them together. What they do know is that it’s going to take at least a year to dismantle each pyramid, send the bones away to be cleaned, re-plaster the walls behind them and eventually put the piles of skulls back together. Overall, Jana said, the work will take at least five years.

Before they hop that hurdle, the restorers are going to start work on the ceiling. That means taking down the huge chandelier, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, and the collection of skulls and bones strung up around it. No one at the church seemed to know exactly how they’ll make sure everything is put back the way it was. I was going to suggest taking a bunch of photographs and just labeling all the bones correctly, but apparently restorers are going to work out their own method at some point later this year.

Unlike the four big piles, the bone version of the Schwarzenberg family coat of arms—put together by Rint and featuring a raven picking out the eyes of a dead Turk—won’t need to be taken apart. You’ll presumably be pleased to hear that the terrifying cherubs sitting on top of towers of skulls and crossbones can also be safely left alone.

The place, unsurprisingly, can get a little unnerving, and even Jana admitted that she doesn’t like being left there alone after everyone else has gone (“I start to think strange things”). But the only notable incidents to have happened at the church involve the living; last year, for example, someone stole one of the skulls. “It happens sometimes,” Jana told me. “They sent it back in a box from abroad.”

The basement empties out briefly between tour groups, and when everyone’s gone you can see how badly damaged the church actually is. In one corner, the basement floor is sinking into the crypt below, though when it was opened up last year no one could see where the problem originated. Now, they’ll have to open up the various other crypts and side chapels around the ossuary, which are filled with yet more bones, in an attempt to find out the cause of the decay.

Despite the uncertainty, the church’s owners say the work desperately needs to be done; otherwise the whole place could collapse.

A tourist posing beneath the skull and bones chandelier

A local café owner named Josef told me that some local people aren’t happy about the renovation work. “Mostly older people, religious people, think it should be left alone,” he said. “Because it’s a Christian grave, they say it should be left in peace, even if that means it falls to ruin. Tourists shouldn’t be going in to look at it anyway. And everyone knows the restorers will never be able to put it back together the same.”

Despite the quibbles of the town's older residents, Josef wants to see the church restored, mainly because it brings visitors to his café. “I don’t know if they can do it,” he said, worried, “but without this church there would be a lot less people coming to Kutná Hora.”

Kutná Hora used to be rich, famous, and important in its own right back in the Middle Ages. Today, now completely overshadowed by Prague in the tourism stakes, it’s been reduced to a mere day trip for fans of faded grandeur and very old human remains. 

One American tour guide at the church told his group that “there are bone churches like this all over Europe.” He wasn’t totally wrong; Europe’s second-largest ossuary (after the Paris catacombs) was discovered ten years ago underneath the main square in the Czech city of Brno. It was opened up to the public in 2012, but the bones there haven’t been as artfully arranged and, despite being bigger, it’s nowhere near as well-known as the church in Sedlec.

If you like your bone churches a little quieter and much, much smaller, there’s a tiny chapel stuffed with decomposed human remains in Nizkov, a village in the Czech Vysočina region, and another small bone church 20 miles north of Prague in Mělník. There’s also an ossuary in Czermna, Poland, just 12 miles from Rint’s hometown of Česká Skalice, which might have been the inspiration for what he did here in Kutná Hora.

So, with plenty of alternatives available for anyone who's into that kind of thing, the restorers have their work cut out for them if they want to keep Kutná Hora's most popular tourist spot open to the public. For now, though, all we can do is wait, and check back in five years down the line to see if they managed the seemingly unmanageable. 

Follow Clare Speak on Twitter.

I was having lunch at the swan near Hyde Park and some son of a bitch took my bag with all my documents, the email began. It was June of 2009 and I was sitting at a desk in Riyadh. Assuming this was spam, I was about to press delete, when something made me reconsider.

Outside, it was summer in Saudi Arabia, where temperatures could exceed one hundred and thirty degrees. My wife Kelly and I had lived in the country for nearly a year. We’d spent much of our lives in foreign countries or in strange corners of North America. We’d met in Cambodia, spent years in Southeast Asia, got to know Russia and the former Soviet Union, and I proposed to her on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska. This time, however, the Middle East in general seemed a little beyond my talent set. Maybe it was the heat making me feel weak? By this time of year everyone was spending entire days indoors, emerging only to drive air-conditioned cars, in which metal could be so hot it might burn your skin. Streets buckled, the wind howled in from the desert, and meanwhile booze was still illegal, women were forbidden from consorting with men they weren’t related to, and it was hard to imagine why anyone would ever choose to settle here. Considering all this, we—the swashbuckling couple who had never shied away from doing something insane—were about to bring a new baby into the world.

Earlier that spring, my wife had consulted with our doctor, who was open to natural birth. Pressed, she admitted that even at this, the best hospital in the country, we couldn’t know in advance which doctor we might get for the actual event. Most doctors, we feared, would just wheel in the knives and proceed to surgery. In Saudi Arabia, women could have up to eight babies, and the rich ones understandably came to view childbirth with as much ceremony as a hair appointment and scheduled caesareans weeks in advance. After these procedures, the nurse would arrive, take the baby to the nursery, and when it was time to leave, a nanny fed the child and carried her to the car. Honestly, I didn’t think that sounded too bad. And Kelly might have agreed, too, had we not met that Swiss doula at a camel race outside town. While we watched the beasts galumph around a desert oval, the beatifically maternal Swiss woman advocated for a natural birth with as little to do with medicine or surgery as possible. Over the next few days, driving around Riyadh’s wind-blown terrain, we talked and I suppose both became convinced—enamored, really, by the challenge of it. After all, it seemed ironic—in an otherwise throwback culture, which was leery of modern progress, which loved all things pure and holy—that they might consider a natural birth odd and subversive. Kelly heard about a doctor who could help. We drove to his clinic with a stack of cash nearly half an inch thick. The money—five thousand dollars—was a guarantee he’d come any time, day or night, no matter what.

“Don’t worry,” he said after we’d paid. “I’ll be there when you need me.”

Driving home, I remember thinking how easy that had been, but also what kind of freedom we’d lost in the transaction. Already, we were beginning to accumulate things that might slow us down. The rental car was about six hundred dollars a month. After we were kicked out of our first apartment, we took a risk and rented a roach-infested place in the middle of the city beside the Kuwaiti souk. Almost everyone in the building was a deeply religious Saudi family. But what could we do? We’d soon be parents and needed a place to stay. The landlord required all six months up front, an amount that would get you a month in a sprawling penthouse in Manhattan. We were paying all that in one of the harshest climates in the world, in the country perhaps more hostile to outsiders than any other, where Islam was practiced in its strictest form, where people were executed for witchcraft and adultery. We were incredibly alone and trying to have a baby in a country where family and religion was sacred, where the locals were intensely loyal to whatever group or ideas they considered theirs, and where rising oil prices meant everyone was getting rich. Meanwhile, we were living on the edge, without tribe or chief, attempting to ask questions of ourselves and others and be open to the world, making it as freelance journalists without health insurance or much money in savings, with no real safety net, and no formal support except for the distant and somewhat restrained awe and encouragement of friends and family back home. (“You live where? Why?”) Now we thought it’d be a good idea to become parents.

***

It was only on the slimmest of pretexts—a new kind of journalist visa—that we’d even been admitted to Saudi Arabia in the first place. For decades prior, few western reporters had been allowed much more than a short visit, during which they would be clung to by a government minder. But when the Saudi ambassador in Washington, impressed as he was that she occasionally worked for NPR,  offered Kelly a week’s visa—and later when he agreed to sponsor me, though not to work, just as a spouse—we jumped at the chance. Who could say no to the opportunity to access one of the most under-covered and misunderstood corners of the world? Well, perhaps a lot of people. But not us. We could not say no.

When our 747 landed in September 2008 and we cleared passport control, we couldn’t believe our luck that no minder appeared, that we could simply retrieve our bags, walk out into the fearsome heat, flag down a taxi, and do whatever and go wherever we chose. It felt like everything was snapping into place.

That first night we went to the cheapest hotel in town. Moving from crap-room to crap-room, we managed, with some haggling over money and rules, to replace our original weeklong visas with a month’s permission, later converted into a three-month permit. We felt cocky, I suppose. Then Kelly learned she was pregnant. We attended a party that week with a bunch of diplomats, and I sipped their illicit champagne as we talked feverishly about what to do next. For the first time we envied, rather than ridiculed, the various British accents and networks of support and jobs and health care everyone was plugged into. Untethered from a world of parents and friends—the people you might take for granted when you’re wild and young, but the community that feels so critical when you’re pregnant—we wondered: Should we go home? I downed another glass, and we decided, fuck it, let’s do this.

That winter we secured a pair of six-month permissions. Kelly was already four months pregnant. If everything went well, she’d give birth in June and we’d get out just before our visas expired. (If you overstayed your visa, you could be deported, imprisoned, or worse.)

Her belly got bigger, and I started writing more regularly, and she filed more reports for NPR. When she was at full term, our visas were set to expire, and the due date was just a few days before my thirtieth birthday. Both of our moms were flying in to help—mine first, to be replaced immediately thereafter by Claudia, Kelly’s mom. With all of this on my mind, I sat at my computer in what would eventually be our daughter’s room, preparing to work on a book I’d been attempting to write for several years, trying to cool off when I opened the email that would change the tenor of what was already a complicated couple of weeks.

I was having lunch at the swan near Hyde Park and some son of a bitch took my bag with all my documents. The email was riddled with bizarre but authentic-feeling typos. It is sunday—US consulate closed til tomorrow...there are copies of my visa and passport on the frig \9\i cannot remember Al’s email address-phone is almost dead-\i have nothing!!! what to do now...

Al: That was my father’s name. This wasn’t spam. My mom was stranded in London hours before I was to pick her up at the airport in Riyadh, days before my wife was to go into labor.

To read the rest of this essay, buy Nathan Deuel's book, Friday Was the Bomb, which he wrote during a five-year stay in the Middle East and will be published by Dzanc this week. It can be purchased through their webstore. Nathan lives in Los Angeles.

Photo via Flickr user Peter Baker.

SexPot comedy show in Denver. Photo by Cannabis Camera

I don't know my way around Los Angeles, but the cracked pavement of the dingy corner I’m standing on clearly isn’t where gorgeous young starlets sip Cristal. Still, once I find the place and step inside, I’m in a well-lit headshop, with a wide array of herbal accessories on display, including dozens of elaborate glass bongs specially designed for smoking dabs.

I subtly drop the name of the guy who referred me and suddenly I'm whisked, Goodfellas-style, into a small stock room that's blocked from view by hanging tapestries. Then a secret door hidden in a false wall opens onto a long narrow hallway lined on both sides by even more impressive art glass. Until at last I'm ushered into a surprisingly swanky little lounge space in back, featuring waiters in crisp white shirts and black bow ties, plus a “bring your own” policy on marijuana in all forms that makes this members-only club one of America's few full-time smoke-easys. I can’t disclose its location, because it’s a secret.

“This is not an original idea. It's something people have always wanted,” The proprietor offers, once I make my way through the crowd, and find an open seat at the specially designed hash bar. “Our community deserves a place to socialize, so we're providing a safe, discreet space for that. By now, the local authorities must be aware of our existence, but as it stands, we're not a priority.”

I'm here for the unnamed, underground club's increasingly high-profile weekly comedy night. The show's been up-and-running less than six months, but headliners have already included Erik Griffin (Workaholics), Donnell Rawlings (Chappelle's Show), Anthony Jeselnik (The Jeselnik Offensive), and Charles Fleischer (the voice of Roger Rabbit).

“Most comedians smoke weed, so that gets them interested right off the bat,” My host, who I agreed not to name in this article, explains. “A lot of them also think it's going to be an easy gig to come in and try out new jokes, when in reality this is probably the toughest room in all of LA. We're actually a great place to draw the line between the pros and the amateurs. Because if you need to work on your set, this room will tell you. Lose people's interest for even a second, they'll go right back to rolling up joints, or doing whatever.”

Just under 100 people show up on a random Tuesday night, with no promised headliner. Approximately 95 percent of the crowd work in the local cannabis industry, and have a T-shirt on that proves it. So any thought that this audience will start cracking up at the drop of a hat because they're totally baked should be rapidly reconsidered.

That's amateur-hour stuff. These folks puff tough.

A "smoke-easy" in Los Angeles

And they ain't drunk, or even drinking. Which actually presents something of a challenge. Because while I haven't frequented many comedy clubs, I've been to enough to know that a few well lubricated tables generally serve as grist for the laugh mill, especially for borderline talents willing to work blue. Tell a few off-color jokes, get a sloshed dental assistant and a plastered plant manager guffawing, and the crowd just might follow along.

Deprived of those easy laughs, however, many of the comedians seem off-balance. The smart ones take the crowd's occasional stony silences to heart, then employ the old Letterman bit of winning them over with jokes about how badly the last joke bombed. The bitter comics, meanwhile, blame their audience by insisting that inhaling massive amounts of highly concentrated cannabis oil—often literally during the delivery of the punchline—somehow renders the audience unable to mentally process a bunch of lame-ass fart jokes.

Overall, the night's entertainment runs the gamut from jittery newbie to washed-up old timer to exciting young talent working out the kinks. I blaze a joint (or three) with local herb legend Dr. Dina, the self-described real-life Nancy Botwin, and discover that even the particularly unfunny acts hold my interest. On some level, being stoned makes me feel incredible empathy for the terrible predicament they find themselves in, put literally on the spot and expected to make everyone laugh.

“The smokeasy is generally in much higher spirits than typical comedy club crowds, which can get drunk and rowdy,” Lauren Brenner, one of the evening's bright spots, tells me after her set. “I've actually never seen a heckler in here. And I'm no scientist, but my intuition tells me that's closely related to the cannabis.”

Brenner confirms using marijuana as a creative tool while writing jokes, and even occasionally before performing. Her best line of the night, naturally, played right to the crowd:

I used to work at a medical marijuana dispensary but I had to quit. Because I started taking my work home with me every night.

Does Something Smell Funny?

My visit to the smoke-easy had the unexpected side effect of awakening my long-dormant desire to do standup, a bucket-list experience I've so far avoided largely due to the omnipresent threat of drunken heckling. But what if the wonderful new world of barely legal weed has opened up a more enlightened comedy club experience, not just for the audience, but for the performers as well? Would that be enough to get me on stage as a 38-year-old stand-up virgin?

To find out, I traveled to Denver the week leading up to 4/20 for an inside look at the Mile High City's cannabis-fueled comedy boom. And quickly discovered that if you smell weed, and hear people laughing, Kayvan Khalatbari must be somewhere nearby.

“I've always been a supporter of the arts, and this is my way to help promote an art form that I truly appreciate and enjoy,” The 30-year-old legal pot impresario tells me over chai tea. “My motivation is to sponsor a successful show I can also have fun at.”

As co-owner of Denver Relief, one of Colorado's oldest medical marijuana dispensaries, plus a small chain of local pizza restaurants, and a sought-after cannabusiness consulting firm, Khalatbari used to spend large sums on local advertising for his pizza and pot that proved largely ineffective in bringing in customers. Then one day, about two years ago, he decided to sponsor a small stand-up show at his original Sexy Pizza location. The event wasn't advertised as 420-friendly, but things quickly went decisively in that direction.

“I lit the first joint, and that kind of set it off,” Khalatbari recalls. “People smoked all night, they barely drank at all, and I think a lot of them were kind of in awe. They laughed at the jokes, but they were also just soaking in the atmosphere, because we were sharing an experience we'd never had before. Going in, I didn't know what to expect, and it ended up being one of the most fun nights of my life. I also loved the civil disobedience aspect—the whole speakeasy vibe of what we were doing.”

From there, things just kept rolling.

Comedy, THC, and tacos in Denver

Khalatbari now sponsors seven monthly shows under his SexPot Comedy label, plus multiple weekly open mics, a comedy game show, and four different locally produced podcasts. And he's got plans to push things even further, by making Denver a major touring hub for nationally emerging stand-up acts, while working closely with the best homegrown talent in Colorado to incubate television and film projects.

“I think we're on the front end of comedy blowing up, not just in Denver, but nationally,” Khalatbari says. “As the more subdued marijuana scene we're cultivating here spreads, we're going to see people discover that an enjoyable evening out doesn't need to be about raging all the time. It can be about relaxing, and comedy's a great fit for that. So if 300 people come to our shows every week, and experience this successful on-site consumption model, I believe they will begin to accept it and even push for it.”

High Anxiety

After much soul searching and several internal pep talks, I finally commit to making my stand-up debut at one of SexPot's weekly open-mic nights. About ten minutes before the doors open, I find myself pacing around outside Denver's Voodoo Comedy Lounge—crib notes in one hand and a joint of store-bought Sour Diesel in the other.

For a brief, self-destructive moment I debate whether sparking up in an alley behind the club might help settle my nerves. But then I remember that the primary cause of said anxiety is a growing fear that once I face an audience, I'll go blank and forget the five minutes of jokes I spent the last two days feverishly writing and half-assedly rehearsing. And so, since Marijuana is not exactly a performance-enhancing drug when it comes to remembering things, for once, getting high doesn't seem like the answer to my problems. Especially in light of something Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson) once told me in an interview, back when I was an editor at High Times:

Me: Have you ever used cannabis while acting?
Nick Offerman: I tried it once when I first started smoking pot back in college. I thought: "Marijuana is amazing! The world is so beautiful—it's going to be so cool when I get really high and then perform in this production of Man of La Mancha." So I did it. And, you know, one of the things new initiates often say when they first smoke pot is, "I feel like everybody's looking at me."

Well, when you're standing on a stage—they are indeed looking at you. It was quite unnerving...

I decide to save the joint for after the show. Instead, I head inside and chat with a few open-mic regulars, who collectively give off a distinct Island of the Misfit Toys type vibe. They seem like the kind of kids who, back in high school, put their hearts and souls into drama club, instead of smoking weed behind a bowling alley and wisecracking with their loser friends (like me). At least that's my hastily formed first impression, one that only deepens when the night's first act arrives in the form of an improv troupe having a rap battle.

From there, at least half the performers at this (and likely every) open mic comedy night don't actually have anything funny to say. They're here for a free therapy session. Also, let's be honest, of the 30-odd people in the seats, every single one of them is either here to perform or to support a friend. It really is amateur hour, but on the plus side, that dynamic has the effect of making any even remotely funny one-liner shine like polished silver.

For instance, I laughed so hard at the following people turned around to stare:

I got really drunk two nights ago and passed out in the street. Woke up covered in a blanket of snow. And let me tell you, that's a shitty blanket!           

As the night wears on, I quietly pray for someone not at all funny to immediately precede me, and have that wish granted. Then they call my name, and suddenly my heart starts pounding and my mouth goes dry. Fortunately, as a dedicated stoner, I'm used to dealing with both of these sensations.

Unfortunately, I stumble out of the gate, opening with a lengthy anecdote instead of a quick, punchy one-liner,. Then my mind splits into two tracks, running simultaneously. One attempts to remember and deliver my set as prepared, and the other wonders how on Earth I ever talked myself into this.

Until, mercifully, I find my footing with a few pot jokes:

People say smoking weed makes you lazy, but I don't think that's true. It's just that lazy people love smoking weed, so you get a false impression. Which makes sense, actually, because if you're already planning to spend the day binge-watching season 2 of Game of Thrones, why not take a few bong rips? You're going to experience all the good parts of getting high and none of the drawbacks—so that's actually a rational response.

Just don't say smoking pot made you lazy. That's like saying moisturizer made you masturbate.

Anyway, I'm not sure what evolutionary purpose humor serves, if any, but hearing the crowd start to laugh feels like a tall drink of water after nearly dying of thirst. Overall, it's not as exciting or pleasurable an experience as losing my sexual virginity, but at five-minutes and thirty-two seconds, it certainly lasted a lot longer. And I don't cry afterwards.

To put a firewall around my humiliation, should things have gone south, I'd invited only my wife and two close friends to the open-mic night. After the show, we all regroup in the alley behind the theater to dispose of some Sour Diesel and compare notes.

“I could tell you were struggling at the beginning,” My wife says. “But then things kind of clicked. I saw this big smile come over your face, and I knew you were having fun.”

When the smoke clears, I feel intoxicated by more than just the ganja. Stand-up allowed me to embody Lawrence Ferlinghetti's famous tight rope walker, “constantly risking absurdity, and death, whenever he performs.” And so I do think I'll end up trying it again.

The Green Room

Hoping for a final bit of comedic inspiration before leaving the land of legal weed behind, I make plans to check out the Midnight Run a few nights after making my stand-up debut. Promoted under the SexPot umbrella, with a prominent 4/20 theme, this highly irie iteration of the long-running showcase promises to pair top-flight local comics with a selection of herb-friendly out-of-towners—all in Denver's historic Oriental Theater, which opened in 1929 as a “movie palace” that also once hosted live vaudeville.

Designed in the then-popular Exotic Revival architectural style, the theater's décor evokes a Middle Eastern oasis at twilight. In the lobby, a small bar serves beer and cocktails, but most of the early arrivers choose to hover around a free toast-your-own-frozen-waffle table set up close to the entrance. Not yet stoned, I nonetheless can't resist scarfing down a chocolate chip waffle drowned in syrup before moving upstairs to the 100-person capacity balcony.

Although on-site cannabis consumption remains forbidden in Denver, smoke rises, shall we say. A thickening fog hovers visibly in the balcony, a milieu I find more than inviting. Moving up a few notches on the comedy food chain also means that every comic on the bill has real chops. They're also, by and large, really, really stoned thanks to a backstage green room that more than lives up to its name.

“We were smoking a ton of weed backstage before the show, and then Andy Haynes, the host, made sure we all smoked even more weed immediately before we went on stage,” Denver-native Noah Gardenswartzreveals after his show-stealing set. “For me it wasn't a new experience, because I usually perform high. That's not to say that I need to be high, but I enjoy smoking weed regardless, so I'm at least a little high 75 percent of the time I take the stage.”

Gardenswartz says he greatly enjoys sharing the same wavelength with a slightly toasted audience, but sometimes such crowds indulge a little too much, and the energy in the room becomes dangerously mellow. Still, he'd much prefer to perform for an audience that's too high than too drunk. Plus, pot plays a subtle but important role in his writing.

“I can't honestly say weed has ever helped me create material, but it has definitely helped me enhance material. So more often than not, instead of having no jokes, smoking herb, and suddenly thinking of jokes, what will happen is I'll get high, think about a joke I'm already working on, and then start creating all kinds of fun new angles and riffs to explore.”

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