Photos by Nate Miller

When I said I was going to interview "Weird Al" Yankovic this past weekend, people asked me how he was going to find the time. The guy is everywhere right now. I was a little confused myself about how he could possibly squeeze in a casual conversation in the lounge at The Standard Hollywood, a hotel on the Sunset Strip.

It wasn't until I actually saw him stroll into the lobby that I really believed the All-Time King of Song Parody, and reigning Emperor of the Internet could take a moment away from darting all over the digital landscape to talk to the likes of me. He had an entrourage of one in tow: Jay Levey, his manager, creative soulmate and director of UHF (a movie that was released 25 years ago yesterday). Jay is a small, taciturn, businesslike man who puts Al's elastic, always-on persona in stark relief. 

But when Yankovic sat down wearing low-key, normal people colors, it was clear that he wasn't out of breath, and he was capable of devoting his full attention to an interview. I couldn't help but ask how this was possible.

"I have to say, the synchronicity with the release of ["Mandatory Fun"] is pretty mind boggling even before we get into all that," he said. "I had been doing all sorts of promotional stuff, like, months and months before I even knew I had an album coming out, and everything started to happen right around the time of the release." He was referring to his recent appearances in other people's work: "Epic Rap Battles of History," where he rapped with animal agression while dressed as Isaac Newton, and Drunk History with Derek Waters, in which he played Hitler.

But he emphasized that some of his recent everywhere-ness was happenstance, his performance as Hitler being a prime example. "It tied into the whole totalitarian theme on the album art. And there are things that are coming out over the next few weeks, like 'Hotwives of Orlando.' I did a little bit on that show, and that came out the same day as the album. All this stuff is sort of happening, y’know, at the same time."

For the past several months, not only has he been appearing in other people's comedy videos, he's been hard at work directing music videos and locking them in a digital vault. Four of the eight videos from this album cycle were his own creations.

It's not the first time he's aimed for an explosive release; it's just the most successful. And his previous attempt actually worked pretty well—it was, at the time, his highest charting album.

"Three years ago, I released a video for every single track from Alpocalypse. I’m not gonna say I’m the first person to do that. I’m sure someone did it before me. But what irked me was, when I came out with this eight videos in eight days thing, people were like 'Oh, you’re pulling a Beyoncé.' and I have to be like, 'No, actually Beyoncé was pulling a 'Weird Al.'" 

Some newscasters who have taken notice of his incredible marketing acumen have misapprehended where the money flowed in. Stuart Varney of Fox News subjected Yankovic to a particularly bizarre grilling under the assumption that he was receiving paychecks from all of the sites that are releasing his videos. This is far from the simple truth, which is, in Yankovic's words, "They get content, and I get a free video."

"I don’t know what [Varney] wanted from me," he told me when I asked about that interrogation, "But I was having fun. It was a really loopy interview," he said, seeming bemused by the whole thing. "I was trying to explain exactly how these internet portals are working. I’m making the videos so that hopefully people will see them and want my album and I’ll make money off that, but I’m not making any money off the videos. And he couldn’t understand." 

"Weird Al" is just like the rest of us: balancing doing what he loves with trying to make the best living he possibly can. He just understands how to play the media better than most of us. "I was trying to take advantage of the whole news cycle, and the viral nature of the internet. That’s why I wanted to do a video a day, because things blow up, and people get excited about them, and then the next day they’re like, well what’s new? Whatcha got for me now?" 

Being at the center of things means being up to date, which, he told me, was why he needed to parody "Fancy" by Iggy Azalea. "This was the only time when my album has come out and the lead track is a parody of the number one song in the country. That was a pretty good hat trick to pull off." 

In order to time it just right, his dealings with Azalea had to happen right before the album release, which in turn meant recording at breakneck speed to make it all work. He said there was only a month between asking Iggy Azalea for persmission, and the CD's release.

"I had eleven songs done, in the can, ready to go. And I wanted to wait for whatever the hit of the summer was gonna be. And I thought, Well, I think that’s gonna be Iggy Azalea. I had a release date set up for the album. We kinda reversed it like, 'OK, I’m gonna write the songs here, record it here, and the album’s gonna come out on July 15.' So we had that set, and then it was like, 'If we don’t mess it up, that’ll be the release date.' Well we weren’t hearing back from Iggy’s management. We kept waiting to hear back, didn’t hear back. And finally it was like, Well we’re a couple days away from when we’re supposed to be recording the song. I just have to go track her down.'"

Tracking her down meant figuring out where she was at the moment, and literally showing up there. "I flew out to Denver on a Friday, and talked to her literally as she was walking off stage. I stopped her and said, 'Hi Iggy. Sorry to bother you. I’m "Weird Al" Yankovic. I’d love to do a parody of your song "Fancy" for my next album. We’re hoping to record it tomorrow. I just want to know if you’re cool with it.' And she said, 'Um, I need a little more information.' So I said, 'I happen to have the lyrics right here!' I pulled it out of my pocket. She looked at it, and like a few seconds later she said, 'This seems fine.' And I said, 'Thank you very much!' and I went back to LA and did the song." 

Celebrity gossip didn't hurt the buzz either, he explained. "The next day TMZ was like 'Al begs Iggy Azalea for permission.' All this click bait kind of jive, y’know. So of course that translates to 'begging.' But she was very sweet. She gave me permission on the spot. And I was able to fly back to LA that night and record the song the next morning." 

Fortunately for Yankovic, "Fancy" isn't a very challenging song to reproduce.

"First of all, the instrumentation on the song is really sparse. It’s not a big production. My band, I don’t worry about them. They’re super professional. They nail it every time. And I don’t normally write all the lyrics before presenting it to the artists because on the off chance that they don’t like parodies I will have wasted a lot of time and effort. I made an exception in this case because I was so desperate to get the song out ASAP that I thought, OK if she gives her blessing, we need to go immediately."

Advanced preparation was completeted on some pretty low-tech equipment. "It’s a laptop, a keyboard, and a microphone. But it’s enough for me to make very primitive demos that I can share with the band and we can rehearse to fine tune the arrangement a little bit, and make another demo with the band, and by the time we get to the studio we have a pretty good idea of the direction the song is going in." 

But I insisted to him that it still must be tough to work under those kinds of time constraints. "There’s a lot of working on good faith, because I just had to have a positive attitude and say, 'Everything’s gonna turn out fine.' I just put on the blinders and didn’t listen to people saying 'Are you sure you can do this? Because she hasn’t signed off on it yet, and the label’s really concerned.' And I was like (plugs ears), 'Nah nah nah. I can’t hear you! Everything’s fine!'"

The strongest track on the album is probably the most out-of-date. "Word Crimes," a parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," mixes a 100 percent dead-on reproduction of the original song's catchiness with an airing of grievances about shitty grammar that Yankovic's nerdy fans can really relate to. I asked him about the temptation to make the song about Robin Thicke's reputation for misogyny. Perhaps "Sex Crimes."

"There are a number of reasons why I didn’t do that, one of which was that 'Blurred Lines' is almost a year old already and there’s already been 10,000 parodies on YouTube, and a lot of those were basically comments on how the original song was a little misogynistic and possibly rapey. I’ve learned that now more than ever it’s important not to take the most obvious route. You don’t want to go for what everybody else is going for, so I figured that nobody was... I don’t think anybody took that song and made it about the proper usage of grammar." 

The song works because it's so unexpected. Like the best of his work, I'll be reminded of it when I encounter the subject—in this case bad grammar—for decades to come. 

"Parody is, almost by nature, disposable," Yankovic says. "And yet, people like it so much. Especially if you hear it at a certain point in your life, and then hear it like a decade later, there’s nostalgia attached to it. I’m sure people like a lot of my early parodies, but I think their enthusiasm at hearing it goes some a concert has as much to do with their personal attachment to the song as it does to the song itself." 

More often than not, the "Weird Al" version of a song is just a footnote in that song's history. "I Love Rocky Road" obviously didn't have the impact of "I Love Rock and Roll," but some of Yankovic's originals stick in the minds of fans. It seems likely that this might happen with "Lame Claim to Fame," from "Mandatory Fun."

It's a style parody of a legendary bar band called Southern Culture on the Skids. It seems like an odd choice. The homage to an obscure band won't help the song's virality, although the cool stop-motion video might. I joked that he's trying to prostheltyze his musical taste to his prepubescent fans, and has been for decades.

"My main goal is to get people to laugh and to lighten up a little bit and have fun. But what I do as well is I share a lot of my own personal musical taste, especially in terms of the originals and the style parodies. And it’s not necessarily to get people to share my taste with me. I’m not overtly trying to expose people to new music. I’m just doing what I enjoy doing. If that means people being exposed to new things that turn them on, that’s great." 

The original songs on Yankovic's albums are a long-term labor of love that's never seemed to get caught up in the zeitgeist. He calls them "pastiches" of a band's style. Fans love them, but they don't move units like the song parodies. I asked him if they're more of a time sink than the parodies.

"It takes a lot more time than writing a traditional original song, because not only do you go through all the machinations of that, you have to write it and chart it, make a demo, and rehearse it with the band, you know... It’s a process. Not only that, but because it is a pastiche, I have to study another artists’ body of work, because I wanna basically put on their skin, musically speaking, and dissect their body of work, and try to figure out what makes them tick musically. The little musical and lyrical idiosyncrasies. That's a little bit of a research project, which is why I pick artists that I really like, because I wouldn’t do that for somebody that I didn’t care about."

He will, of course, be touring in support of his monster hit album. Many of his shows are, as always, likely to be at venues like county fairs, which often carry connotations of career stagnation, but not in Yankovic's case. "They pay very well, and those are some of the biggest audiences I play to. There’s no shame in that. Some people make jokes about playing the county fair. But hey! You know, it’s a really good gig."

He won't only be playing fairs, though.

"Well I love playing some rock clubs, because I love standing audiences. I know that people like to sit down and be comfortable, but we do a rock show, and I love to get the energy coming back to me at the stage. Like when I played Bonnaroo last year, that was maybe my favorite show that I’ve ever done, because it was a rock show. People were standing the whole time, jumping up and down, and just putting all the energy I was throwing out right back at me." 

But when I asked if more rock venues meant we might see stage diving, he demurred. "You know I’ve never done that, and I feel like I’ve missed my window. I don’t think it’s gonna work now. That’s sort of like a missed opportunity. There was a small window of time when I think I might have been able to pull that off. But I’m just not sure that people would remember the whole stage diving thing, and I might hit [the ground]." 

But lest you think he's losing his elasticity, he rebuffed my suggestion that age was a factor. "I’m still pretty limber. I can still do the high kicks at the live show. But as years go by, me jumping around with my leg behind my head is something that I tend not to do on the red carpet anymore."

But as if to prove it to himself, he followed up this remark by putting his foot behind his head right there in the bar, to much applause. Most of the applause was mine.

"I had my skeleton removed. It’s very helpful," he said.

Riding a wave of adrenaline from watching one of my childhood heroes make himself into a spectacle before my eyes, I shared my thoughts on the future of his career with him. "Don’t take this the wrong way," I told him, "but it’s always seemed like you should be middle aged. As a young guy performing, you never seemed like you were in your twenties. If I go back and look at videos of you playing your early songs on the accordion, you look like you’re the entertainment at the Elks Lodge." 

"I know what you mean," he said, laughing at my half-joke. 

"I’ve never given a whole lot of thought to the future, frankly. If you’d asked me thirty years ago if I’d still be doing it today, I’d be like 'No. I’d love to keep doing it, but I can’t imagine I’d have a career that would last remotely that long.' So I’d hate to even hypothesize what the future holds. I can tell you that I’ll never get tired of doing this. I’m doing exactly what I love to do. And at some point maybe people will finally get tired of me. But judging from the reaction to this album it’s probably not going to be for a little while longer."  

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Look, we love comedians. We love podcasts. Using the transitive property, therefore we should love comedy podcasts. Unfortunately, there are a fucking billion comedy podcasts all about how comedians started doing open mics and how they feel about the check drop. We’re gonna do something a little different. Instead of their first dumb open mic, let’s talk about their first time having sex, or first time seeing a dead body, y’know?

We run a show called Entitlement in Los Angeles, and we grabbed our headliner Chris Fairbanks, along with comedy’s drunk camping buddy Kyle Kinane, took ‘em to the studio where fucking Pet Sounds was recorded, and asked them about their first time’s doin’ it.

There's something special about the very first time you do something different, or the first time something out of the ordinary happens to you. As monotonous as that eventual thing might become, the first time holds meaning. It marks change. Even the most minor firsts can have a huge effect on your life. The first time you rode a bike. That could have been what made you decide to never drive a car. From there, you become a bicycle activist and move to Portland to fight "The Man," (who, BTW, has never been to Portland in his life.) Of course, there are milestone firsts. Firsts that act as a rite of passage. When someone asks you about your “first time” the assumption is obviously, sex. When was the first time you had sex? Actual sex? Inside a person? Inside of you?

Highlights of this episode include: a stripper buying gas station shoes, a college roommate sleeping through it, uttering the words “dick acne," dildo therapy and so much more. A lot more, really. Next week we’ll debut a brand new episode called “What Happens When You Die?” If you have any suggestions for the next “First” we should discuss, put it in the comments.  

UNLOCK THE GATES: it’s time for the ENTITLEMENT podcast.

PRODUCER: BRETT RADER

ENGINEER: CHRIS SOUSA

MUSIC: LA FONT

Follow Alison and Josh on Twitter.

Activists angry at NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton calling for his resignation Monday. Photo by Alex Ellefson

By now, you’ve probably heard something about the death of Eric Garner on Thursday in Staten Island, New York City. You may have even seen it on video, which horribly (and luckily) was captured by Ramsey Orta, a bystander at the scene. The New York Police Department (NYPD) claims that Garner, an asthmatic father of six, was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes—aka “Lucys”—as he allegedly had done in the past. Garner denied this on video, and Orta said while filming that the man was hassled for breaking up a fight and nothing more.

Regardless, Garner was dead an hour after five cops threw him to the ground as he resisted (but, it’s worth noting, did not fight back). To get him down, Officer Daniel Pantaleo put Garner in a chokehold, which is against NYPD protocol (and has been for two decades). Pantaleo, who has been sued three times in two years for racial bias in arrests, had his badge and gun taken away and was re-assigned to desk duty. Likewise, Officer Justin Damico has been placed on desk duty pending investigation, though he was allowed to keep his badge and gun.

No other officers are under investigation—though four Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers are on desk duty, and not permitted to respond to 911 calls, for seemingly failing to render aid to 43-year-old Garner as he lay unconscious on the sidewalk. A second video shows CPR was not performed by the EMS workers. It does, however, show nearly four minutes of the cops gently shaking Garner as he lies unmoving on the ground. They search his pockets, but do not seem particularly concerned that their suspect hasn’t moved in minutes. (Cops know CPR, and are expected to perform it if necessary, but previous punishment for failure to do so has been very light indeed.) Once Garner is loaded onto a stretcher, a bystander asks, “Why does nobody do CPR?” and an NYPD officer responds, “Because he’s breathing.” He may be breathing, but Garner also appears entirely unresponsive on camera.

Garner’s last words were “I can’t breathe,” which is awful enough. His penultimate words were almost more disturbing, though, because they consisted of a man committing the fatal error of standing up for himself.

It’s too dangerous to stand up to the police, particularly for a black male in a place like New York City. The officers who brought him down likely didn’t intend to kill Garner. Certainly they will point to him being overweight and asthmatic as the reasons he didn’t survive his interactions with those protecting and serving him. Qualified immunity will underline the point, which is not so much that police did wrong, as that it’s bad to resist them. And it is. When you see Garner yell, "I was just minding my own business. Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today!" you want to tell him: no, no, no, just give in! Obey police orders, because your life is forfeit if you don’t.

More bad cops of the week:

-There is something rotten in the state of Florida prisons: Two years ago, guards scalded 50-year-old Darren Rainey in the Dade (near Miami) Correctional Institution’s psych showers while laughing, then left him for two hours. When they came back, Rainey’s skin was sliding off, and he was dead. Two of the guards involved, Cornelius Thompson and Roland Clarke, were later promoted, and remained on duty until last year when Thompson left his job. Clarke finally resigned last week, but other guards who were nearby remain employed at the prison. On July 17, the warden for the prison was dismissed, the first punishment levied for this behavior. Police have been looking into Rainey’s death, but they didn’t keep the 911 call tape because they didn’t suspect anyone had been deliberately burned to death in the showers. Rainey was reportedly mentally ill and was serving two years for drug possession, so literally everything about this story is the worst fucking thing I have ever read. But wait—as the heroic Miami-Herald reporters have found, there is more terrible stuff happening in Florida prisons. And it’s just as bad.

-The Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announced his office’s plan to stop prosecuting low-level first-time marijuana possession—albeit with exceptions—in a July 8 memo. However, the NYPD officially “will continue to enforce the law uniformly throughout all five boroughs of the city,” thereby making sure it still has plenty of excuse to keep harassing (mostly) males of color.

-Once again, resisting police or trying to get away from them shouldn’t result in them beating you up. And this goes double for teenage girls who didn’t do a damn thing except try to run away. On Tuesday night in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a 17-year-old girl was beaten and arrested by police for trying to run away from officers, and then resisting their attempts to handcuff her after they threw her on the ground. Merceedez Wright told an ABC affiliate that she thought she’d be okay because she’s not a boy, and also that she was simply afraid of the cops when they tried to detain her because it was a few minutes after curfew. Surveillance video shows only a piece of the confrontation, and it does show Wright getting her hand free, trying, she says, to protect herself with her hands because police were hurting her. She ended up in the hospital with unspecified injuries, but the news showed her in a neck brace.

-On Friday, John McNesby, the head of the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police, accused reporters for the Philadelphia Daily News of using paid, anonymous informants for their Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 series on corruption in the local narcotics task force. One officer was fired in the wake of the articles, and another is still under investigation, so this seems like a convenient way of raising hell from McNesby. Not to mention it could have a major chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of city reporters.

-On Wednesday, Connecticut state trooper AJ Hunstman accepted a plea deal that may give him 16 months in prison for stealing a gold crucifix and $3700 off of a man dying in a car accident, an act that was captured on the trooper’s dashcam. Huntsman was the first responder to the scene in September, 2012, and later lied to the victim’s father about there being cash at the crash site. Skin-crawlingly reported by the news, “Huntsman walked out of the courtroom with a big smile on his face following the hearing.” Please keep this man away from any and all jobs that involve human beings once he gets out of prison. Thanks.

-Last week, Buzzfeed’s Benny Johnson wrote an amusing tribute to the brutalist horrors of DC government buildings. Then he wrote a follow-up mentioning that he was bothered by police or guards no less than six times in his efforts to photograph these seven ugly-ass buildings. One guard simply said, “You are suspicious, and we are in a post-9/11 world,” which is exactly what you’d assume they’d say, but maybe mix it up a little? All in all, your tax dollars might pay for these horrible eyesores, but guards can’t be too careful if you actually want to document them.

-30 San Diego strippers from two different clubs sued the city and the chief of police this week over a March 6 compliance check on the strip joints. Cops say it was protocol, and they were checking tattoos and other identification to make sure dancers matched IDs, but the women say their Fourth Amendment rights, among others, were violated when they were held, searched, and photographed for hours. One dancer said that the camera flash combined with her skimpy outfit basically meant she was being photographed nude without consent. One of the clubs has had its license revoked, and the women’s attorney alleges that’s retaliation for the dancers’ lawsuit.

-USA Today found that 91 percent of the subjects of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives’s (ATF) controversial stings were minorities, so that’s bodes even less well for the constantly-fucking-up agency than usual.

-There is no Good Cop of the Week. I’m sure some cop somewhere did something positive, but I’m taking a week off in honor of Eric Garner and Darren Rainey. Try harder next week, law enforcement. Or maybe stop trying altogether.

Follow Lucy Steigerwald on Twitter.

Rory Patrick. Images via his Twitter account

On April 5, 2014, Rory Patrick announced to his Twitter followers that he was going to stop masturbating for 100 days. Soon, a hashtag was started: #Rory100. Friends and supporters cheered him on, sent him messages of encouragement as well as sheer amazement, and naturally some of confusion. As soon as I heard about this personal challenge I started thinking, could I ever do this? Could I possibly go over 3 months without masturbating? Not even once? No. None of us can. It's horrifying. Terrible. What the Hell was Rory thinking?

#rory100 pic.twitter.com/SftTq51ZnI

— rory (@rorynotroy) April 1, 2014

Interestingly enough, a growing number of men are choosing to do exactly what Rory did. They call themselves “Nofappers” and “Fapstonauts”, which really just sounds like people who jerk off in zero gravity. This community of mostly men takes not jerking off quite seriously. According to NoFap.org (yes this is real), the reasons for refraining from personal gratification vary but the ultimate result is supposedly a better you. Some want to wean themselves off of porn addictions, which in turn will give their computer much more hard-drive space. The movement also boasts that you'll have increased self-control, more time on your hands (now that your hands are free), and an overall improved attitude. 

“Many nofappers described increased happiness throughout their lives, especially in their attitudes towards sex and interpersonal relationships,” according to Nofap's about page. The community has become strong enough to have its own terminology. Most of the terms sound like things a Redditor rambles in his sleep after a night of drinking one too many beers, like “Blue Petal,” the female equivalent of blue balls. This makes perfect sense however, since the organization was started because of a Reddit thread. A user posted a statistic on the “Today I Learned” subreddit, claiming that men who abstain from masturbating for 7 days increase their testosterone levels over 45%. From there, the idea of a “no masturbation challenge” came about. 


Rory however, was unaware of the Nofap community when he started this. He took this mission on for himself, and rather than engage with the Fapstronauts, he tweeted frequently about his progress to his followers. On July 13, this masochistic endeavor finally came to an end. I could finally talk to him about it, and find out whether the benefits of not masturbating are real, without having to try for myself.

just the 2 sweetest []s carrying me to the end nbd RT @annabelle_nyst: @rorynotroy solidarity. we love you. #rory100 pic.twitter.com/INXa3nICJi

— rory (@rorynotroy) July 13, 2014

VICE: So obviously I have to know why. Why did you do this to yourself, and why 100 days? One-hundred days dude. Why? WHY?
Rory Patrick: I’d just noticed how jerking off had altered the trajectory of my day-to-day life. For instance, sometimes I’d planned to go to the gym or go on a run, and then I’d say to myself, “Okay, you’re going to run, so let’s have a nice moment to yourself before that.” After masturbating, though, I’d find myself curled up in my bed watching television with a bag of chips instead of actually running. Cumming was also my primary coping strategy for stress or pain and that just didn’t seem healthy at all. So, when a friend of mine was talking about a group of people that were going without for 90 days, I just competitively reacted, saying that I could do 100 days. I just hoped that the challenge would give me the impetus to be cum-free for a while. 

So you made the decision and then charted your 100 days with a hashtag on Twitter. What has support been like?
It has been heartwarming. The Twitter community can be so overwhelmingly positive and supportive. My friend Josh and I started taking pictures of ourselves doing that salute from The Hunger Games and people caught on and would take pictures of themselves doing the salute with the hashtag. It let me know people were thinking about me and kept me honest, because it seemed like people were having fun with it. I didn’t want to ruin it one night because I was stressed about work and needed to rub one out. You had some people that asked every week if I’d cum yet and some others that would intermittently send me nudes to try and tempt me into succumbing to cumming, but generally people were just behind me and hoping I lasted the 100 days.

How often did you masturbate before doing this?
Daily. On average, daily. As I said before, it ended up being necessary because I could tell that every time I was stressed, I’d feel this urgency to get back to my room and jack off or be intimate with someone. My sleep routine was also connected to cumming. Cumming before sleeping at some point became a habit. I probably should have a more diverse range of coping skills to deal with life’s curveballs than draining my own balls. 

When was it the hardest? Were there specific days you can recall where you came close to giving up? How did you resist temptation?
The first four days were hell, and it was apparent how much cumming helped me get through life on a day-to-day basis. I just had a routine of cumming before sleeping. My routine at first was still built around trying to cum and go to sleep. When I started, I’d still watch a little porn and then go to sleep without touching myself. Sleeping was impossible. I was rolling around all night, trying to put together like 3 hours of rest at a time. I tried everything from sleeping pills to food coma-ing myself and I’d still struggle to get to sleep or stay asleep.

The one day the whole challenge was in danger was after some Twitter people had come in from out of town. We got very drunk, and sometimes after drinking heavily, I’ll get severe anxiety the next day. I remember it specifically being day 86, because I said to myself, “It’s okay, Rory, you did 86 days. Not many people could’ve done 86 days,” with my cock in my hands, ready to start jerking off. After a lot of breathing though, my friend texted me back, (I’d texted a bunch of people but it was the middle of the night) and was supportive and it gave me the boost I needed to just get up and take a shower and shake it off.

So this no jerk-off rule, did this also include no sex? 
No cumming at all. So I couldn’t masturbate or have sex to completion. 

How did it affect your mood?
After those first four days, things were pretty great. I used cumming time to run and exercise. I felt more eloquent. I work in suicide prevention and was aware that I was connecting with people better and was listening with greater concentration. I was writing a lot more than before and taking time to read. It’s upsetting to think that all those activities before were mostly me just feeling like, Hey, I’ve got 20 minutes free here, maybe I should see if there’s any good porn up, which there always is.

#rory100 finally pic.twitter.com/FkRcjrotOl

— rory (@rorynotroy) July 14, 2014

Once the 100th day came to a full completion, how long did it take for you to jerk off again? Did you do anything special to prepare for the big event?
The last day was great. It was the World Cup final, so I watched that with a friend. After he left, I worked out and cleaned up the house. I took the time to shave, trim and clip my whole body to prepare myself for myself. I went on a bike ride to kill some time and then when the clock was nearing midnight I met some of my friends for some drinks. My roommate and one of my closest confidants had promised to leave the house, so I could be as loud as I needed to be. I tweeted out some thanks and when the the time came, I was naked and really enjoying myself once again. It only took a few minutes and the finish was spectacular.

I remember shaking deeply in my core like I hadn’t felt before, and then I proceeded to finish all over my chest with a fury I haven’t felt since I was in middle school. The orgasm reverberated throughout the room for at least 20 minutes. I tweeted out a pic of me smiling and then logged off for a while. I haven’t been jacking off ceaselessly since day 100, but I also haven’t been a stranger to myself. It was a needed 100 days. I’m more aware of why I need to cum now than I was before. That’s important. I missed it though and I’m glad it’s back. 

Now what are your masturbation plans? Back to old school Rory or are you switching things up?
It was a beautiful last couple of days before hand. Everyone online was shouting support out and not cumming with me in celebration of the end of the journey. But I’m not going to just go crazy on myself. I’m treating it like a juice fast. I’m going to try and keep myself from myself and maintain the habits I’ve built up over the last 100 days. So if stress or anxiety hits, I don’t just jump under the covers or text someone to hang out. I’d like to greet those moments with something a bit healthier. My apartment has never been cleaner and my body has been getting a bunch of use outside of my cock for the last 100 days, and my hope is that continues. 

So would you do this again or what?
Yes, definitely. I will be doing it again to be honest.

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VICE's new comedy series airing this week, hosted by comedian Jim Norton. On this episode of VICE Meets we sit down with Jim to talk about his career, how shitty the press can be, and—of course—The Jim Norton Show.

Every year on July 12, many Northern Irish Unionists celebrate Protestant victory in the Battle of Boyne in 1690 by lighting huge bonfires and marching through the streets playing music and saluting the Queen. This year, about 50,000 people reportedly took part all over the region.

“The Twelfth” is a particularly contentious period in the heavily divided Protestant/Catholic city of Belfast. After decades of conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles—a political and sectarian war that claimed more than 3,600 lives—there are still many people on each side who feel oppressed by the other. Riots involving rock throwing, Molotov cocktails, and even gunfire often erupt on or around the Twelfth. Problems are particularly commonplace as marchers head through Ardoyne, a heavily Catholic and nationalist area surrounded by Protestant neighborhoods.

Though the city's youngest adults can barely remember the Troubles themselves, they're increasingly becoming radicalized. Poverty in Belfast is at a 10-year high; unemployment hovers near 8 percent, with about one in four 18- to 24-year-olds out of work in 2013. And so with few jobs and often inadequate education, young men are indoctrinated by paramilitary groups still left over from the fighting of the past.

VICE News went to the biggest bonfire in Northern Ireland, on Belfast's notorious Shankill Road, to watch Unionists celebrate—and drink, and fight, and burn Irish flags.

Illustration by Sam Taylor

Sex! What’s it all about? "Fanny farts" and creeping to the bathroom with cum dribbling down your leg, if this article in the Metro is anything to go by. Hannah Gale, who wrote the “The 21 Unsexiest Things About Sex,” says she’s “just being honest” and challenging “unrealistic” sex scenes in rom-coms. But honestly, if you’re that fucking basic that your view of sex is in any way influenced by rom-coms, then I’m sorry, you actually deserve shit sex. She doesn’t even preface her list with any real acknowledgment that sex can be great fun, or that women’s pleasure is important. It comes across like “women don’t really enjoy sex, it’s all just so dirty and embarrassing.” Way to go, Hannah.

The article’s been shared over 112,000 times on social media. No doubt by the sort of women who spend their weekends listening to Kylie and drinking white wine spritzers. The kind of people who bought Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus in the 90s and rabbit dildos in the noughties—but only "for a laugh," because Samantha from Sex and the City had one. I refuse to believe any men who aren’t called Percy or Harold shared this story because given the chance most guys would shag a watermelon so long as they a) didn’t have to wear a condom and b) could cum inside it. Like they give a shit about awkwardness. Just kidding, fellas. I think?

There’s probably a serious point to be made about carnal politics and how, in our over-sanitized, digitized world, the squelchy business of sex can be such a source of embarrassment. I could keep certain political debate sites ticking over all week with my thoughts on the pressure for women to look a certain way and why, with the pornification of our culture and lack of useful education around modern sexuality. Or I could get into the fact that these days many women feel like sex is something to be performed rather than enjoyed with wanton inhibition—but I’d rather just talk about sex.

So here are my 21 sexiest things about sex. I did a callout for suggestions on Facebook and answers ranged from “Sacred sex where you commit an act of bonding” to “Rimming until your partner is begging you to fuck them.” Pigs. “Making love” is all well and good, but it always fucks you in the end. This list is about the delights of a fully-fledged passion. I’m not including the sexiest part of sex, which, of course, is our imagination and the mystery of what’s to come. You may not agree with my points and, despite my best efforts to fuck as many people as possible, I cannot reflect every single person’s experience of desire, so if you have better suggestions about what makes sex sexy, do let me know in the comments. Shit like that turns me on.

Photo author's own

PARIS LEES' 21 SEXIEST THINGS ABOUT SEX

1 – The smell. If you don't like the smell of sex, I don't know, maybe you're not human? Sex smells… sexy?

2 – Socks. When your trusted fuck-buddy stuffs socks inside your mouth and ties your hands behind your back while ramming you like a champ. You people all do that, right?

3 – When a guy cums inside you and leaves himself inside and then you feel it getting hard again and he fucks you and cums again without ever taking it out. Not only is that sexy, you don’t have to worry about fanny farts that way, Hannah.

4 – Squeezing a guy while he’s inside you. It’s kind of like your pussy/butt saying, "I got you, homie."

5 – Speaking of which, when he puts it in. And it feels like you’re sitting on an air freshener canister. Oh. My. Lord. What do you mean it’s "not all in yet"? Go, go gadget dick!

6 – When you can tell your lover is really into it. When they groan. And it’s genuine. When a guy looks like all his birthdays came at once because he’s here, with you, Paris “Yes it’s really me, and yes I really am like this in real life” Lees, and cumming like a Roman candle. You know that’s how it goes down in a PL session.

7 – Semen. Is great. I probably like it best when it comes as a surprise (no pun intended) like when you’re shagging some guy at a house party and some next dude walks in and you’re like “Hey, come join the fun!” but he’s so horny as he pulls his dick out he just ends up jizzing over the both of you (seriously, what had we all taken that night?)—or maybe like when you’re wanking some stranger off in a dark room and you suddenly feel this warm, wet dripping in-between your legs and down your thighs onto your leather miniskirt. Dude, you didn’t tell me you were close! Hot!

8 – Your underwear. Call me old-fashioned if you like, but I really don’t think you can go wrong slutting it up with lingerie, champagne, and copious amounts of you-know-what. It’s traditional, right?

9 – Fucking weirdoes. Literally fucking them. Like people you truly wouldn't want to introduce to your mates. Some of my most leg-shakingly good shags have been one-offs with pot-bellied perverts wearing dirty band T-shirts from the 90s. When you don't care what they think, you can let go and let loose! You might want to ask them to double up on the condoms, though.

10 – Using all the sex juices to get yourself off again. Fuck me that’s good.

11 – Watching yourself be a bad girl in the mirror. I really feel like a spit roast is wasted if the person in the middle doesn’t get to see how it looks, ’cause it looks fucking horny.

12 – Talking dirty. Agreed, it takes some chutzpah and genuine passion to pull it off, but what are you? A mouse? Or a fucker? You’re a fucker—so call me a slut and tell me to suck it.

13 – When you’ve been kissing and fondling for a while and getting really quite sticky down there and you look at your partner with a sense of urgency and tell them to rip your knickers off, at which point they know that you really, really want it, and down they come, right past your ankles, while the hot space between your legs throbs in anticipation. You know those hands are coming up.

14 – Looking into someone’s eyes as they cum and watching their pupils dilate. It’s really beautiful.

15 – Hearing your neighbors at it. Wow, turns me on. And fuck me, if anyone ever needed a good shag it was those miserable cunts next door.

16 – The sweat. Hannah has sweat on her list of unsexy things but Hannah is wrong. Just. Wrong. If you find someone attractive enough to let them bump uglies with you, Hannah, you really need to be down with their sweat. As do they with yours. Seriously sweetheart, this isn’t choir practice. It’s sex. If you’re doing it right, people perspire.

17 – Wetness. Man or woman, it's really hot when your lover starts leaking. If you're too grossed out by bodily fluids, I have to ask, what are you doing having sex? Sex is juicy. Good sex is even juicier. If you wanna know if he loves you so, forget his kiss—it's in his precum. Although kissing's hot too. Just all of it, I guess.

18 – Doggy style. This is hot when you just want to get fucked like an animal—a dog, say—and it has the added bonus of leaving your hands and mouth free should his friends require simultaneous servicing.

19 – Number 19 on Hannah’s list is “jawlock,” which I do sympathize with, really, I do. I’m a feminist. But then she’s like, “Imagine if you put that much effort into the gym, eh?” and I’m like, really? You’re thinking about going to the gym while you’re giving head? But anyway, Hannah’s list is WACK and number 19 on my list is “manhandling,” which is when a man with big strong hands and vein-y arms handles you. Grab my throat! Pull me hair! I can take it! 

20 – "Willies and vaginas," as Hannah so quaintly puts it. She thinks they're weird and ugly, but I think they're special buttons of never-ending pleasure. And I don’t care if you’re homosexual, heterosexual, or Capricorn—eating out is glorious. Warm wet tongues were made for warm wet clits.

21 – Rolling over back onto his dick again. Hannah rolled onto a wet patch. Hannah rolled the wrong way.

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Despite heavy police presence in the region, violent conflict between indigenous activists and landowners continues in the Araucanía. (Photo via Alianza Territorial Mapuche (ATM))

Chile’s conservative right is calling on the government to use controversial anti-terrorism legislation against those responsible for a series of violent attacks in the south of the country, including the July shooting of a police officer and arson attacks on property. The attacks relate to the long-running conflict between activists from Chile’s largest indigenous group, the Mapuche, and local landowners over land rights. Labeling these attacks as terrorism has divided political opinion for several years.

Originally introduced to curtail any opposition under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, the anti-terrorism law was first applied to crimes relating to the Mapuche movement in the early 2000s. The legislation, since modified in the democratic era, currently allows for the extended detention of suspects without charge and greater sentences upon conviction as well as, most controversially, anonymous witness testimony as primary evidence.

Unsurprisingly, it has been criticized for leading to miscarriages of justice and provoked resentment from Mapuche groups who claim it stigmatizes protesters as terrorists.

Following President Michelle Bachelet’s pledge not to apply the law in the run-up to 2013 elections, the bill remained in limbo for several months, still active but intentionally avoided until the government announced plans to review it in May. This capitulation was brought about by a 39-day hunger strike of three prisoners considered terrorists by the Chilean state but hailed as heroes by many in the Mapuche movement.

Opinions remain polarized on the best way to end the conflict, which has turned violent in the last 15 years as the government takes its sweet time to give land back to indigenous people that was taken from them in the 19th century. But many across the political spectrum agree on one thing: the long-running tensions of this centuries-long conflict aren't going anywhere. Mapuche activists remain frustrated by the state’s response to their calls for greater political autonomy and a return of ancestral lands, while landowners and big business in the region are worried about the worsening security situation and demand tougher policing.

Mapuche prisoner Cristian Levinao was one of three prisoners to participate in a 39-day hunger strike protesting Chile’s controversial anti-terrorism law and its provision of anonymous witnesses for the prosecution. (Photo by Fernando Lavoz)

Neither side wants to compromise. Bachelet is already a controversial figure for many within the indigenous movement for having overseen several incidents of excessive police force resulting in the death of Mapuche activists during her first term (2006-2010). Her administration, then, will be judged on whether or not it chooses to cut the terrorism terminology and accompanying ideological baggage from the debate by modifying the law.

For now the most contested point is the provision for anonymous witnesses, one of several points currently under review by an external panel of experts. Supporters of the measure say it is an indispensable protection for witnesses. Otherwise they could be vulnerable to threats and retaliatory attacks—pointing to the repeated death threats made against so-called “anti-Mapuche” prosecutor Luis Chamorro which, they speculate, prompted his decision to resign in mid May.

However, international human rights groups and the United Nations have consistently criticized the potential for miscarriages of justice as a result of secret testimony. And with good reason—earlier this year several cases were overturned after a formerly anonymous witness was discredited and claimed to have been a police informant.

For Domingo Namuncura, director of the Indigenous Rights Program at think tank Fundación Chile 21, the move toward charging the more serious crimes related to the Mapuche movement as acts of terror has reshaped how the conflict is perceived and exacerbated divisions. “The so-called ‘Mapuche conflict’ was understood from then on as a public order issue,” he told me. “This error of focus would go on to create considerable distance between the indigenous movement and the government. From then on the historical context of the demands of indigenous groups was largely overlooked.”

Professor Jaime Couso, legal expert at Universidad Diego Portales, expressed similar concerns. The use of the terminology of terrorism, he said, "introduces the rhetoric of an ‘internal enemy’ which in turn increases the likelihood of the Mapuche people considering themselves as part of a struggle of a nationalist character.”

But while the harsh language of terror risks entrench the position of the indigenous movement, those in land disputes with Mapuche communities are happy to call what they see as a spade a spade.

As activists become frustrated with the pace of land reform via official channels, the tactics of occupation and other overtly militant action have increased. Groups representing non-indigenous landowners in the region such as the Association of Victims of Rural Violence (AVVRU) claim many of those in dispute in the Araucanía suffer persistent orchestrated intimidation in the form of arson and attacks on livestock and property—the vast majority of which, they say, are never solved.

Arson attacks on timber plantations are among the alleged tactics of hardline indigenous groups which the anti-terrorism law has been used to combat. Photo via Mapuexpress

“No one wants to recognize the open secret about life [in the Araucanía], which is that every day and every night there are both minor and major attacks,” AVVRU President Alejo Apraiz said in a public statement in April. “The small incidents are never reported in the press, and so it’s as if they don’t exist but we, the victims, watch on powerless in the face of [intimidation] which has no end.”

AVVRU Executive Director Felipe Romero said the police are no longer capable of maintaining law and order in parts of the Araucanía. Many factors are to blame but a significant issue is the government’s policy of purchasing territory for groups who resort to hardline tactics in land disputes, he said.

“The only thing this is achieving is to compel [non-indigenous landowners] to arm themselves out of fear,” Romero told me, pointing to the numerous violent incidents reported in the region throughout June. He noted that the law had been ratified on numerous occasions since the return to democracy—so why not use it? “It’s very concerning that a government will simply announce it will not apply one of the country’s laws,” he said, claiming that police had few tools to combat the problem as it stands.

Indigenous protesters carry a banner reading: “We are not terrorists,” a response to the application of the controversial anti-terrorism law to the conflict. (Photo via Mapuexpress)

Among the politicians to advocate a tougher stance toward such tactics is Dep. Gonzalo Fuenzalida of the center-right National Renewal (RN) party. He lambasted the government for its decision to review the anti-terrorism law and its provision for anonymous witnesses, telling press it further isolated the already vulnerable victims of intimidation.

“[The government] is calling into question the scarce legal resources which we have specifically for victims to denounce offenders and proceed with cases for attacks against their family and property,” Fuenzalida said.

Calls for the anti-terrorism law to be applied to crimes in the Araucanía conflict gained further momentum in mid July after the government announced its decision to use the legislation against those responsible for leaving an explosive device on the Santiago metro the previous weekend.

“Undoubtedly, what happened on the metro is an act of terrorism, but by that token we don’t understand what is different about the arson attacks which take place in the south of the country,” Sen. Victor Pérez of the right-wing Independent Democratic Union (UDI) told press last week. “In the Araucanía organized groups use violence to generate fear in the general population. This is terrorism however you look at it.”

But others in Chile remain doubtful of the long term benefits of further stigmatizing the Mapuche as terrorists, who may just become more and more likely to live up to that label.

Nancy Lee, who died after prolonged ketamine abuse at the age of 23

Ketamine is that crazy wobbly leg drug. The wacky student drug, the post club chill-out aid, the new gen LSD that gives users the power to become—according to 1970s K-hole explorer and dolphin whisperer John C Lilly—“peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.” But its reputation as a popular recreational drug, since filtering into the mainstream via the gay clubbing and free party scenes in the 2000s, does not tell the whole story of what’s going on in modern British K-land.

Apart from a brief paragraph in the Brighton Argus’s obituary column, Nancy Lee’s drug death went unreported. There was no shock factor: she hadn’t collapsed in public from a toxic reaction to a pill or a line of powder in a club. Instead, at the age of 23, Nancy had died slowly over seven years, her body trashed by a steady diet of ketamine.

Nancy started using ketamine aged 16 when she made new friends. Most teenagers getting high in the local Brighton park were necking cider and smoking skunk, but Nancy and her group of Indie kid outsiders used the open spaces to take ketamine. It was cheap, at 12 grams for about $150, and importantly for Nancy, it transported her away from real life.

“She was sensitive and very caring but Nancy was a misfit,” her father Jim, a college lecturer, tells me. “She was bullied at school because of a bad squint and for being a tomboy. She had a victim mentality, a feeling that the world was against her.” It’s just that Nancy ended up finding solace in ketamine. “If someone was to design the perfect drug for a teenager who is depressed and doesn’t have much money, this would be it,” says Jim.

Nancy’s older sister Libby told me that when Nancy starting using the drug regularly it left her stuck in a teenage world from which she was never able to escape. “When I asked her why she couldn’t just stop taking it she said ketamine allowed her to get away from her life,” says Libby. “She told me she took it because she didn’t want to be herself.”

Meanwhile in reality, outside of ketamine’s cartoon world, Nancy’s body was beginning to disintegrate because she was taking ketamine but rarely eating, exercising or drinking water. At 21, because of the effects of heavy ketamine use on her bladder and appetite, Nancy was incontinent, suffering from a weak heart due to malnutrition and weighed 33 kilos. Her kidneys and bladder were barely functioning. She slept in the day and went out at night and flitted between her mother’s and various friends’ places, so no one knew how seriously ill she was until Jim intervened and took her to the hospital, where he was told by doctors her condition was life threatening.

After spending five weeks on a urology ward surrounded by elderly patients, Nancy was discharged, but she was warned that she could have caused long-term damage to her body. In the end, it proved worse than that.

Unable to get a job because of her ill health, Nancy lived off sickness benefits. She occasionally lapsed into using ketamine, sometimes disappearing for days. At the start of this year, she appeared to be getting healthier, but in March, because of her weakened organs, she got a kidney infection and was dead within a week.

We know that cocaine, MDMA, mephedrone and LSD can end up damaging people and some can become addictive, but it appears none of these drugs has the ability to wreck the body or leave users mentally marooned in the way that ketamine does. Rather than being a window into the soul, for some ketamine has turned into a way of mollifying pain or getting through the day, like heroin and diazepam.

A heap of ketamine (Photo via Coaster420)

I spoke to Laura, a call center manager from Bristol. Now 32, she’s been taking ketamine for half her life. She started in 2001 and at one point was snorting three grams a day. She’s spent seven years in drug counselling and NA.

“I really feel sorry for anyone that is in that lifestyle on a daily basis, because it’s almost impossible to get out of. I can say for sure that if I didn’t commit myself 40 hours a week to my job I would be on it all the time, or struggling with myself not to be. Even though I'm 'clean' this is only by default, from changing my social groups and prioritizing life, love and work over ketamine. If you put the stuff in front of me now I'd still do it. It's more powerful than I ever anticipated.”

Laura never used ketamine in a club, she took it every day, like a lot of her friends in Bristol did. “In the beginning K can wipe you out and make you pretty out of it. But after a while it becomes an everyday thing. I could easily get up and do it in the morning, hair of the dog, so to speak.

“I know lots of people with kids who'll happily get on it while they're at school. I preferred a line of K over a glass of wine after work. Life's busy, stressful, loud and intense. K is mellow, slow, relaxing and lets you drift away from it all. But one line turns into two and then your tolerance is high and suddenly you are doing a gram or two a day.”

She said ketamine is a disaster as a coping mechanism. “I went through a major bereavement and found myself using two to three grams a day. It helped to an extent, but really it just separated me from my life and emotions. The problem is it all comes flooding back when you come down, which gives you the need to blanket yourself again—hence the vicious cycle.” So far, Laura’s organs are intact.

Laura tempered her ketamine use by eating well, exercising and being careful when you mix it with other drugs, most crucially alcohol. She knew how to reduce the dangers. However, the average kid receives a measly one hour of drug education before they leave secondary school. So Nancy never knew.

Most of the 93 recorded ketamine-related deaths (between 2005 and 2013) in the UK have been accidental poisonings—like at this year’s Glastonbury festival, at an illegal rave in Croydon and at last year’s Boomtown festival—or accidents. There have been nine drowning and three road traffic accident fatalities caused by the drug. There have also been suicides. In 2011 a depressed, jobless teenager, Adam Sephton, was found hanged in a football field in Barnsley after several months of heavy ketamine use.

Nancy’s death, from long-term ketamine abuse, is one of the first of its kind in the UK. Doctors are hoping that as Britain’s first ketamine-using generation grows older, Nancy’s death is not the first of too many. In Hong Kong, which has a serious ketamine problem and where doctors have discovered that heavy ketamine use may cause liver cancer, there have so far been three deaths linked to long-term ketamine abuse.

Drug services and hospitals here are seeing a rising number of people suffering serious health problems due to heavy K use. In London, Leeds and Bristol there have been sharp increases in people being referred to urologists with ketamine-related bladder issues. Last year David Gillatt, the UK's leading urological surgeon, removed three bladders from ketamine users.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Owen Bowden-Jones, lead clinician at the Club Drug Clinic in London, says around three quarters of ketamine users visiting the clinic have bladder-related symptoms.

Nancy with friends

As with Nancy, he says ketamine is prompted by and linked with depression, anxiety and addiction. Nearly one in five of those who told the Global Drug Survey they used ketamine in 2009 admitted that they were dependent on the drug.

The other problem with ketamine is that the anti-social nature of the drug means that heavy users, particularly the young, tend to be outsiders who hang out in groups with other heavy users. The lack of any recognized treatment for ketamine addiction means that many heavy users exist beyond the radar of local drug services.

An outreach worker at the drug charity CRI in Brighton told me that Nancy came into the project a few years ago to discuss worries over her ketamine use, but she missed her next appointment and never returned. Her dad Jim says Nancy refused attempts at getting her psychiatric or medical help because she had a phobia about visiting doctors and hospitals.

As with a growing number of parents of people killed through drug taking, Jim says the government is doing virtually nothing—beyond its rarely visited, zero credibility website Talk to Frank—to inform children about drugs. He wants to see a change in drug policy that is more focused on education and care than inaction and criminalization.

“I hate it that we live in a world where we prefer to turn the other cheek and ignore what is happening on our doorstep. Brighton is a wealthy area, but in reality it’s like Brighton Rock; it still exists on two separate worlds. We need to care for people who have drug problems, not treat them as outcasts. The government needs to listen to the advice of experts rather than the Daily Mail. Prohibition causes more problems than it solves.”

But for a lot of people who get into trouble with drugs, the real problem is mental health issues. And in modern Britain, the fact that some kids are using potent drugs like ketamine to deal with depression and a feeling of dislocation with the world, is tragic.

“I was quite depressed,” 21-year-old Nancy said after coming out of the hospital in 2011. “K takes your mind to a different world so you forget the bad stuff. But in the end, ketamine becomes the bad stuff.”

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A year after I went away to college, my mom left the Northern New Jersey town where we lived since I started tenth grade. Neither of us were the type to look back at old places we lived with much nostalgia. Before long, the town was forgotten. We moved on with our lives, occasionally passing it on the highway, conjuring up some pleasant, benign memory. I didn’t keep in touch with many friends from high school. They were mostly dudes in my vicinity who liked getting fucked up, so we got along fine. Despite our camaraderie's lack of depth, I spent some formative years alongside them, forming a bond I don’t have with my college buddies.

My last memory of the people I went high school with is a house party in my old neighborhood the summer after my first year away at college. I hadn’t planned on returning to the town, but I happened to be driving past it on my way to New York. Part of me just wanted to burn one with the old crew, but another part of me wanted to gawk at the people from my high school—people whom I would probably never see again reliving their bleak, suburban glory days.

I got to the party around 10 PM and there were cars parked up and down the block. I parked and walked toward the backyard, suddenly dreading the pleasantries I’d have to make with forgotten acquaintances. As I crossed the driveway, two guys walked up carrying several cases of beer. “Yo dude!” one of them yelled to me. “Long time no see!” It was a kid I had blazed with a few times back in high school. His name escaped me. He dropped one of the cases to the ground and ripped it open. Looking at his fellow beer-bringer and pointing at me, he said, “This guy’s fuckin’ crazy. Remember him? He’s, like, insane.” He looked back at me and said, “You’re gonna shotgun a beer with us, right dude?” I figured it might not be a bad idea to kickstart the evening, so I agreed and shotgunned a beer with the two dudes. As soon as I finished it, I let out a massive belch, attracting the attention of two of my old homies who were in the yard. They walked out onto the driveway and we greeted each other enthusiastically. The kid with the beers said, “It’s a fuckin’ reunion! Let’s all shotgun another beer!” Before I could say that I just had one and I’m probably good for the moment, I had an already popped beer can in my hand, ready to go. Right after we shotgunned the second beer, one of my buddies said, “Holy shit dude! You gotta see this.”

Leaving the beer-bringers behind, my buddies led me into the garage, where three kids were taking turns hitting a plastic five-foot bong. One of them, a little guy, was standing on a stepstool to get his mouth on top of the thing. They finished up and walked away dragging their feet and mumbling. We took over the bong. One of my friends said, “Dude, we haven’t seen you in forever. You gotta go first.” I cleared a hit in three or four breaths and immediately felt the early stages of the spins. I stepped back and coughed for a while before noticing that no one else was taking a hit. “Dude, you gotta do another one! It’s been, like, a year since we saw you!” he said.  His encouraging words prevailed and I pulled another heaping hit out of the five-footer.

I coughed a lot more, but I didn’t throw up. I kind of wanted to just to get the beer out of my system. In less than 10 minutes, I had consumed two beers and two five-foot bong hits, and I hadn’t even made it into the party yet. I finally stumbled out onto the back porch and saw a couple of people I knew. I made small talk, but I was just trying not to fall into people as I spoke to them. I powered through it, figuring it would pass if I just drank some water. After all, it wasn’t the volume of what I had consumed that did it. It was just the quick succession.

I went into the kitchen to get some water and ran into a friend of one of my ex-girlfriends. In the midst of catching up, I felt a severe drowsy spell. Her face started to blur in front of me. Her voice started sounding distant and echo-y. I felt like it was making me even dizzier. I braced myself on the kitchen counter, put my hand up right in the girl’s face, and yelled, “Wait! Wait! Just shut the fuck up for two seconds.” I closed my eyes and reeled for a second. When I opened them, the girl’s disgusted face came into focus. “Gross,” she muttered, and walked away.

I chugged a cup of water and retreated to the house’s formal living room. It was off limits to guests, so it was empty with all the lights out. I laid out on one of the couches and fell asleep almost immediately. When I woke up, it was 3:30 in the morning. A couple of other people were passed out on couches around me. The party had died down. Sublime was playing in the backyard and a couple of voices were drunkenly singing along.

I got up from the couch and stretched. I felt like a million bucks. I walked out to the yard and saw that my old high school buddies were the last guys at the party, passing around a pipe and a bottle of whiskey. When I joined them at the patio table, they asked me where the hell I had been all night, and I explained. They broke my balls about it for a bit, and then we caught up on old times. Somebody rolled a blunt, and then another. In their wasted state, my friends reminded me of our experiences as kids, when we were first getting familiar with alcohol and weed. I kicked it with them for an hour or two and then jetted. Most of them, I never saw again. That party was the closest thing I had to a high school reunion, and I slept through it, waking up at the tail end of a smoke session the following morning. It’s an allegory for my entire high school experience, and I’m glad it went down like that.

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A teenager from Alabama took a photo in front of a concentration camp where an estimated 1,000,000 people were killed. She did so while smiling. As you might have guessed, that did not sit well with the internet. In a New York Post article on the now-infamous Breanna Mitchell Auschwitz selfie, the writer quotes a particularly vitriolic response that simply said, "Did you manage to take any of you laughing inside a gas chamber or maybe one with your head stuck in a cremator?" A fair question which I don't believe she took the time to answer.

In an instant, Breanna became as close to the Devil as you can get without being Donald Sterling. Business Insider collected some of the more amusing insults and reactions from Twitter, which amounted to "fuck you" and little else. Despite this concerted effort to make her feel bad about herself, Breanna has continued to publicly defend her actions. It's almost like she has so much self-esteem and so little self-awareness that she'd have to be the only kind of person who would be dumb enough to take a selfie at a concentration camp.

By being completely ignorant of how some would interpret her vague digital communication (the only thing that's obvious from her photo is that she's happy and she's at Auschwitz. The rest is not clear), she's influenced a global conversation on the limits of self-involvement. Some have come to her defense, reminding us all that she's just a kid with a dead dad who shared her love of history. Others are plenty happy to keep fucking with her, which has pushed Breanna to make her Twitter page private. The internet is paying attention, and forming strong opinions about a picture she took over a month ago. Isn't that something to be proud of? She's already proud of herself for going to Auschwitz. Why not be proud of this too?

Can't she take some solace in the fact that, even if she's got haters to the left of her and haters to the right of her, that at least they know her name? I defy you to come up with a stronger, more valuable currency than recognition. OK, money's pretty up there on the currency scale, but you know who has tons of money? Famous people. More human beings have seen Breanna's selfie than will ever pay to see the new Zach Braff film. Try to let that sink in.

The commenters that made Breanna so infamous are, of course, the same ones who hate that she took a photo of herself at a concentration camp. In a misguided effort to stem the tide of selfies, we've once again created even more incentive to take selfies. Everyone wins in this twisted media 69—the outrageous get to see their face everywhere, and feel important. The outraged get to register their disgust and wait for the likes and faves to roll in. 

We actually need more Breannas in the world, not fewer. Selfies, like Pet Rocks, bell bottoms, and cocaine before them, are the ultimate signfier of modern social worth, but also targets for mockery. They actually help make everyone happier. Selfies can give meaning to lives where none previously existed—validating some and giving the rest an object of ridicule to make them feel superior.

Those that love selfies too will shower you with praise for taking such great photos. Those who hate selfies will rage about you on the internet because you are so good at taking selfies. Benny Winfield Jr., aka mrpimpgoodgame, has 227,300 followers on Instagram even though he takes the same fucking picture over and over and over again. He's clearly overflowing with self-esteem. Pimping good game is in his name for God's sake. For all we know, some of his selfies could have been taken at funerals. Would that make his game any less "pimp good"?

The selfie trend—if you can even call something this ubiquitous a mere "trend"—has spawned equal amounts of anger and admiration. For some, it's a reminder that human civilization has completely lost track of where its priorities truly belong. Why aren't we doing more for the poor? What about Afghanistan? Can we stop the cataclysmic effects of global warming? When is Johnny Depp going to find a good script to star in? No one is talking about this shit, because they're too busy taking photos of themselves at the 9/11 memorial!

For everyone else, it's just a fun thing to do with their free time, and a great way to let the world know how happy/sad you are. It's a very effective status update for a culture that is obsessed with status. I am at a visually interesting or famous location! I am wearing a great outfit that is flattering on my figure! You don't think about historical context or social propriety, because the only vital information you are hoping to impart is where you're at and how you look. As I said earlier, that's the only thing that we can gather from Breanna's photo. She is at Auschwitz and she's happy. She didn't say "I love Hitler" or espouse any political views. The only reason why Breanna is on the receiving end of so much hatred is because she had the audacity to smile at a concentration camp. I hate to break it to you all, but Breanna Mitchell smiling at Auschwitz is not the worst thing that ever happened at Auschwitz. I dare say that it's not even in the top 5,000.

Taking a selfie while writing this article. How meta.

This situation might have played out differently if Breanna had simply frowned in her photo instead of looking happy, like we all should when we vacation in Poland. No one could accuse her of insensitivity, since tourists take pictures at concentration camps all the time. This particular photo just happened to have its photographer inside the frame. If she had done what we all wanted her to do, and register her solemn contemplation, it's likely she would have escaped our scorn. It doesn't matter that she might have actually been happy. It's just that she's not allowed to show it.

Even if she'd appeared sad, what if her expression wasn't satisfactorily somber? What if she just wasn't sad enough? As you can see in my picture here, I am sad. I'm not having much fun writing this piece. That's mostly because I'm imagining all of the mean things people will say to me in the comments on this article and on Twitter. Also, my computer is running slowly since I have so many tabs open. It's called research, folks.

I'm a cynical man who's been disappointed more times than I can count—mostly by the Dodgers and the TV show Lost, but also other people. Breanna Mitchell is a teenager from Alabama who just graduated from high school and has a deceased father according to this Washington Post story. Other than that, she's probably had a fairly typical life for a privileged American teen. She is not a miserable bastard like me, though now she might be. She has the kind of fame where you have to consider changing your name and moving to a small island nation that doubles as a tax shelter for various and sundry Koch brothers. Life for her is going to fucking suck for awhile, but it's not as bad as it might seem today.

She can always remember that just around the corner is a Today Show or The View appearance where she can "come clean," "apologize," and "address her detractors." She's famous now, which is not something I can say for myself. The selfies I take kinda suck, so I continue to hope and pray for my moment of glory. Breanna can always take her moment of fame with her wherever she goes in her adult life. Also, unlike those unfortunate souls who died at Auschwitz, Breanna gets to keep living, which is a plus on her ledger. 

Whether or not we collectively appreciate this trend of documenting everything through cell phone photos, it's here to stay. The internet can try to shame teens as much as it wants, but shame didn't stop them from smoking weed in the 60s. Fear and embarrassment don't convince high school kids to stop fucking and having babies before they're ready. You want to stop kids from taking selfies where tragedies took place? Put up a sign. The sign should have a picture of Breanna Mitchell with a giant X over her face. Underneath that, write the caption, "No Selfies." Just be prepared for absolutely nothing to change, because if there's one thing that teenagers love more than themselves, it's ignoring rules. 

Follow Dave Schilling on Twitter.

New York lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Tim Wu on the stump. Photo by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid via Flickr 

It's not very often that you get to vote for the smartest person in the room. But Tim Wu, the Columbia Law School professor who came up with the concept of net neutrality to protect a free and open internet, is making it pretty easy. He's running for the Democratic Party's nomination to be the next lieutenant governor of New York in a September primary against former Congresswoman Kathy Hochul. A bank lobbyist, Hochul is the hand-picked favorite of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who's currently being investigated by federal prosecutors for corruption. Hochul also stands out as a rabid foe of illegal immigration who raised hell when the state considered issuing drivers licenses to undocumented workers a few years ago.

By challenging Cuomo and his stooge's conservative views, Wu hopes to steer his party out of the thrall of big money on issues like financial and telecom regulation—and maybe even back in the direction of its populist roots. Unlike American presidents and their powerless vice presidents, New York's governor and lieutenant governor are elected separately, even if they run as a team. Although his awesomely-named running mate Zephyr Teachout doesn’t stand much of a chance of dethroning the $33 million (and counting) incumbent in the governor's mansion, Wu has a pretty decent shot at edging Cuomo's lackey, Hochul.

But Wu isn't known for his politics so much as his principles. He coined net neutrality in 2003 to push back against the growing stranglehold of massive cable companies on every piece of information we consume, arguing that all data should be treated equally by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). He fears that concentrated wealth imperils America’s future just as it did under the robber barons of the early 20th century—except the corporate honchos living it up in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street aren’t even paying for hellish manufacturing jobs anymore.

We called Wu up on his birthday (he was hanging by a lake) to find out what it's like to suddenly dive into the cesspool that is America's electoral system. We picked his brain about butting heads with the Democratic Party's leaders and the future of net neutrality. Here's what he had to say.  

VICE: I don't think anyone would have used the term politician to describe you just a few weeks ago. What's the transition been like from the academic world to this one, where it's all about convincing people to vote for you?
Professor Tim Wu: One of the reasons I ran is that I feel that politics are too important to leave to career politicians. I think people who have deep feelings about policy and thoughts about political theory or where the country should be going should also run for office. I think that it's become kind of a shame that the circle of people who we imagine running for office has been somewhat narrowed.

You haven't sold your soul just yet, have you?
It's both exciting and disheartening at the same time. I kinda knew this just from reading magazines and newspapers and coverage, but it's disheartening how much focus there is on resources and money and how much money you have and who's going to raise from who. When you're in it, you realize just how much is based on resources as opposed to ideas. I think in academia or even in policy, we're more used to saying, "OK—whose idea is better?" rather than who has the biggest warchest. And I knew it wasn't like that, but to actually see money being such a central question—I wasn't totally ready for that. It reminded me of when you get too much into the movie industry and no one talks about movies anymore, they just talk about the weekend grosses. Nobody is talking about anything other than how much can they raise. 

Anything surprise you about life on the campaign trail so far?
The thing I really like about it is that people come out everywhere to express support. That's sort of surprising. Even though I just said that the focus on resources is a little disheartening, it has given me more faith in democracy in the sense that I feel like a lot of people care. Often you get the impression that nobody cares. We just launched our campaign, we're not political veterans. But a lot of people are like, "What can I do to help?" That's given me a little faith. It's amazing how many people come out of the woodwork and pay attention. I think the idea that Americans are apathetic is overstated. 

I mean, they watch football, but I like football, too, so that's not a big problem. The idea that there's too much concentrated economic power is something people are interested in, too. Or the idea that the internet is threatened—look, it's not like everyone's interested, but there were a million comments [on the FCC's proposal to gut net neutrality]. That's one in 300 Americans writing about a pretty obscure telecom regulation. That's kind of amazing. 

Is it safe to say you and Zephyr Teachout will be on the Democratic primary ballot in September? I mean, you've announced you submitted 45,000 nominating petitions, which sounds like a lot.
Oh, we're on the ballot for sure. If they challenge us, that bleeds money and we'll have to raise more money, but it looks bad for them [to challenge]. Occasionally there are invalid signatures, which is why we had that huge number, but the number sort of speaks for itself.

What's your sense of the forces arrayed against you, ranging from Bill and Hillary Clinton to NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio to Wall Street megadonors?
I like a fight. I like facing a challenging opponent. You don't want to run for something, at least in my mind, where there's no fight. If I wanted to do that I would run for the head of our curriculum committee at Columbia or something. I'm a startup guy. I'm from the tech sector. There's nothing a startup guy, a tech guy, likes better than a big but vulnerable opponent. The disadvantage we have is resources, but the advantage that we have, like any startup, is that we're not institutionally committed. We don't have to pussyfoot around, we can say what we want. And actually, the most important thing is we're not hamstrung by donors. I think Cuomo, given the amount of money he gets from certain sectors of the economy, is severely limited in what he can do and say.

That's where the advantage is for us. We're faster, we're more flexible, we're not corrupted. And I'm also not bound by aspirations for offices beyond this. I'm not watching everything I say thinking about a presidential campaign or Senate campaign or something. I can just go for it. Those are huge advantages in a political fight. I can just go exactly where the people are. When the Tea Party wins a primary, it's because they go to where their voters are.

You've used the word startup a few times, embracing the mantle of tech culture and Silicon Valley. Disruption is the latest buzzword, but a controversial one. What does it mean to you? And what do you make of criticisms of Silicon Valley's negative impact on the poor and minorities—in the San Francisco Bay area, for example—and tech companies' tendency to oppose regulation? 
I believe there are incremental and disruptive innovations. Overall, I think the disruptive innovations are by far the most important and are ultimately the hallmark of a healthy and dynamic society. You see this in economic systems and political systems. There are incremental politicians who tinker at the edges, and, now and then, you have sharper changes that are more systematic. Ronald Reagan is a great example. FDR is a great example. Woodrow Wilson is another. You never know until later whether it really was disruptive or not.

That doesn't mean these huge disruptions don't have negative side-effects. They do. Part of a healthy process is allowing the disruptive changes to happen and then being sensitive to the fact that they may do disproportionate harm in some ways. Do I think, for example, that Air BnB and Uber—as they disrupt the hospitality and taxi industry—might cause hardship? Yes. But I think they also create convenience and value. So on the one hand I think they should be allowed and I think their disruption is important. Then we figure out how bad are things and we use the surplus from the value to somewhat remedy the negatives. Sometimes old businesses will lose—how's the typewriter industry doing? It's gone. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have any rules for new industries. 

Did you draw any inspiration from the populist insurgency on the right that took out House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia last month? He was seen as being nearly as untouchable as Cuomo right up until election day, no?
I think the Tea Party is a reaction to crony capitalism and a sense that the system is rigged against working people—that there's too much inequality in the country. It makes one enormous error, which is that it tries to blame government for everything rather than understanding that controlling concentrated private power without government is really not easy. To the degree that they're on a constant attack against government—even on something like net neutrality—they'll find that they just empower exactly what they're fighting against.

That's what scares me about the Tea Party: They're concerned about crony capitalism, but they're fighting a fight when they try to destroy government that will make capitalism ever more crony and rigged against the average person. 

One lesson it has for our race is that no one is invulnerable. Cantor's big problem was he was too close to his donors, too close to big business, so he couldn't actually put forth positions his constituents cared about. I think it's a warning for anyone who relies on donations as their power—the warchest model. It is inherently vulnerable. Corporations can give money but they don't vote, so you're always vulnerable to the franchise.

Do people really care abut political corruption from what you can tell so far?
I think what Larry Lessig says is right. I think they care about it, but feel hopeless. Something like [New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's] Bridgegate [scandal] shows when you go too far [with corruption], how much people do care about it. But leaders don't have patience for complicated facts. I know of things Chris Christie has done that are probably worse, but they're not as vivid. Something like Bridgegate makes it a lot clearer to people.

It seems like the challenge for you and Zephyr taking on Cuomo is that there's no smoking gun.
[Former President Richard] Nixon looked invulnerable until Watergate, right? Christie looked invulnerable until Bridegate. I don't have any magical power, but Cuomo has certainly been throwing his weight around. There's the shutdown of the Moreland Commission—as you know there's been subpoenas issued [While not a smoking gun per se, a massive New York Times investigation released Wednesday sheds new light on Cuomo's meddling with his own anti-corruption panel.] And there are stories about his side of the Port Authority that are suspicious, but no one has really managed to get. It's like Christie and Nixon: They were floating around and everybody thought they were clean as whistles until the moment came. There's a chance something serious will happen. 

But until then part of the problem is that a lot of what Governor Cuomo is doing is shady but legal, right? We're seeing that with these Supreme Court decisions where the only thing that is explicitly banned is exchanging cash for votes.
So the real problem in the American system and New York State is we've taken a lot of stuff that would've been called corruption in other periods and legalized it or made it allowable. So you don't need to take illegal bribes because you can do everything in sort of a legal way—give enormous campaign donations—and all of this is legal. I think it's the great challenge of our political system, is a shift away from outright corruption. But you know what's crazy is that there is old-fashioned—here's a bag of money!—corruption in New York, too. But we have a problem moving from individualized oldschool corruption to systematic corruption where you just have a system that depends on the exchange of money for favors but everything is perfectly legal. It's the greatest challenge of our time. It's hard to fight because it's a cloud or fog as opposed to a single monster or single guy with a bag of money on his desk.

What does net neutrality mean to you now, and why is it so important in 2014?
Net neutrality is the principle that we should prevent the internet from becoming cable television. One of the things I think appeals to people about the internet in general is that it gives smaller players—relatively regular people—a shot on a footing where they're not completely equal to the big guys but are roughly equal. Like, a really successful blogger can reach an audience. It's not guaranteed, of course. A startup newspaper with listicles can become a serious news organization. People kinda like that because everything else feels like a rigged game. Hey, it's not like I'm saying it's easy—everyone has put a video up on the internet that goes nowhere.

Net neutrality actually equips much smaller companies and individuals with the advantages larger companies have. They don't get a corporate jet, but if you use the tools on the internet, you can put together something that has a fighting chance. We're like that in this campaign—we're dependent on the internet. Without it, a campaign like mine and Zephyr's doesn't exist. We can always get it out there on the internet, and if it gets big enough, the regular media feels like it has to cover it.

Net neutrality has a lot to do with my own candidacy. I'm kind of testing the principle: How far can the internet take you?

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

TIMBALAND ALONE IN HIS STUDIO

Timbaland is all alone in his music studio
it is very late at night and he is trying to finish a brand new pop/hiphop
hit for young artist
he is recording his own voice doing little yells
they will be deep in the mix
always leaving a part of himself in every song he makes
he is sad
now he is crying
what does his life mean
he has made very popular songs played in clubs all over the world
but what does it truly mean to touch another person
to connect w/ another human

Timbaland eats a whole bag of food
he is tired now
his eyes slowly close
he goes to sleep
he dreams of a world where things can be different

MY DREAM

Last night I have a dream
I am at stand up comedy club
it is expensive
I am sitting in the middle of comedy auditorium 

stand up comedian notices me because of my glasses
he starts to make jokes about me

he says a have v small penis
also i am a loser
he says that morally I am also a bad person
the summation of my entire life is also meaningless 

I try to leave but he follows me in large car
continuing thorough examination of my life and choices

why do I dream of this

SUPERBOWL

I am at Superbowl my long and very thin hair is cascading down my shoulders
football is about to begin
but it never begins
instead everybody in 60 000 capacity stadium
becomes nude
they have forgotten about sports and are now filled with erotic energy
everyone begins to have sex together
all the different ways
there is universal pleasure and harmony
every member of each football team has died
but they watch on from heaven in peace
everybody take pictures with phone and ipad

BLOOPER

A reporter is talking
meanwhile
two dogs fuck each other in background
they don't care
u watch

THE REAL WORLD

Welcome to the Real World House
it is filled w/ single young ppl looking to hook up also find themselves
sometimes they are drunk and fight or have sex together.
real world house slowing filling with fecally contaminated water
secretly it is built on an offshore drilling platform
thousands of miles out into the Pacific Ocean
what is going to happen

MY RESTAURANT 

In the future I have a restaurant
I am the owner at least partially
it is a good restaurant
we serve traditional food
Cheeseburger, pancakes etc.
but in this restaurant all the seats are toilets
so it is easier for you, the customer

at nite I use a power washer to clean everything
there is a drain in the floor
start everyday new and shining
filled with hope and positive energy

HIGHWAY

I am driving on highway
I am in my bright yellow Hummer car
it is 100% electric especially made for me
I have a custom licence plate
its says "ZZZZZZZ"
when you drive behind me you wonder
"what that mean"
then you see I am in my car asleep

Few things in this world are as satisfying as cracking open a cold beer or pouring a cocktail after work. In that brief moment before the liquor hits your lips, anything is possible and the universe is infinite. But what if that moment was all you had?

Jules, a VICE contributor and our resident "I'll try anything once" guy, made the foolish choice to go on an all-alcohol diet for five days. He crafted a detailed meal plan (which you can look at below) that satisfied all of his daily nutritional needs—kind of like the Soylent diet, except with booze.

The way he tells it, those five days were the most hellish experience of his entire life. He eventually dropped the meal plan and started randomly taking shots to occupy his free time. He shit blood, lost part of his vision, and spent most of his days in a dark, drunken purgatory. 

VICE: You had a very detailed dietary plan that you went through. How did you change your normal, everyday routine?
Jules Suzdaltsev: It’s probably important to note that I don’t really have an everyday, normal routine. I heavily undereat throughout the day, and then I’ll just get stoned and kill 1,200 to 1,500 calories. So I tend to eat really, really poorly, but I don’t get fat, because I don’t eat enough. So this was probably the first time I’ve stuck to a consistent meal plan. The best way to describe it is like, a very limited juice fast with alcohol. Basically, every day, I tried to hit between 1,500 and 2,000 calories and in some small way, balance it out so it wasn’t all carbs or pure sugar. Unfortunately, alcohol by itself has, like, next to no caloric content, so it was all really dependent on a bunch of different mixed drinks: beer-based stuff, Cheladas, Bloody Marys… I think Bloody Marys are what kept me alive.

So, how did you feel after the first day? You wake up in the morning after not eating and only drinking alcohol. Did you take a huge shit? Did you pee a lot?
The first day, I think I undershot how much I should’ve been drinking, because it had almost no effect on me. The first day of actually doing it, my poops were pretty normal and everything seemed pretty sober. The second day, I bought a whole bottle of champagne and I had to finish that, because... I opened it. That got me, like, drunk. That, plus tequila. Every time I had tequila, I would be immediately drunk, and uncomfortably drunk. Not fully smashed-drunk, but I definitely felt it. Nothing else would do it quite so quickly. Basically, the second day of doing it, I was just shitting straight-up Bloody Mary mix and pissing. Just pissing and shitting piss out my ass.

Was the color and complexion of your shit different? I mean, were you shitting red?
Yeah. Yeah, it was red. It was fucking horrifying. I was not only shitting red, but I was also shitting so often that my asshole started bleeding a little bit, so it was kind of this nightmare of, “I don’t know how much blood this is or how much Bloody Mary this is.” In retrospect, I’m fine, and it was just a rough asshole from shitting, like, 15 to 20 times per day. All that is more kind of juice fast-based. I’ve never done a juice fast, but I assume it’s not super different.

Did your mood change when you started this? Did you feel yourself becoming more aggravated?
Oh man, yeah. I really hated doing this. I felt like I had two of my favorite things taken away, which are eating and smoking weed. Not being able to do either, and also having to be between kind-of-drunk and very-drunk pretty much the whole time was really depressing. I know alcohol is a depressant, but it was just super aggravating how I didn’t feel happy no matter what I did, and how non-stop hungry I was. I couldn’t stop thinking about how hungry I was, no matter how heavy of a drink I would make myself. On the third day, I gave myself an eggnog drink that I made incorrectly, so it was way too many calories. I think it was a 1,000 calorie eggnog. And I was still starving! Just absolutely starving, the entire time.

Did you throw up at all?
I came really close. On the third day, I did this thing, which I think was kind of cheating. I promised myself everything I would drink would be something that I could order from a bar. Just so that I didn’t start making, like, protein vodka shakes. I wanted to know what it’s like to do a cocktail diet. On the third day, my last drink of the day was something called a Zakuska, which is just the Russian practice of taking a shot of vodka and chasing it with a pickle. I needed something. I took the shot of vodka and I was not prepared for it, and I kind of had to gag it down, and then I was facing the toilet for a minute or two. But I never ended up puking. I never got to the point of puking. I did almost puke yesterday, but that was… Yesterday was sort of like a hardcore run. It was many shots, and then a Bloody Mary, and then I just fell asleep for the rest of the day. Had I not fallen asleep, I would’ve puked.

Were you not drinking water at all? Was it just alcohol?
No, no, I was definitely drinking water. I probably had water in between every shot.

You absolutely would’ve died if you didn’t drink water, I would imagine.
Yeah, I probably could’ve drank a lot more water than I did, but I didn’t exclude water from my diet.

How yellow was your pee?
Surprisingly, it looked like—you know how they say in gym rooms something like, “If it’s iced tea, you’re dehydrated. If it’s lemonade, you’re cool.” I was all lemonade! My piss was totally… it wasn’t clear, but it was definitely healthy looking.

You said earlier that you fell in a toilet on Friday.
I mean, I went to the toilet and the seat was up. I live in a house of girls, so usually it’s not, and I wasn’t thinking about it. I sat on it and fell into the toilet. So, I think that was probably the worst thing that happened all week. Also, my lower back has been hurting for a while. I thought that was probably because I’d been sleeping weird, but I realized that’s where my kidneys are. I hope that goes away. It’s probably fine. I mean, there’s no intense pain anywhere. I feel relatively healthy right now and it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been. Did I mention that I had to buy hemorrhoid ass wipes because I was just shitting so much that I couldn’t use regular toilet paper anymore?

Was your asshole too raw?
Yeah, it was way too raw. After the first day, it was just raw city. I’ve had the stomach flu before, and that’s exactly what happens when you shit a ton. So, I would say again that it's similar to the juice fast.

Did you black out at all? It sounds like there are some things you don’t remember. Was there a point when your brain just shut off and you weren’t remembering stuff?
I would say no, honestly. I think I might’ve blacked out yesterday—or, rather, I passed out yesterday, but it was kind of an intentional pass out, because I knew it was going to happen. But in general, I don’t… I remember as clearly as normal what’s happened over the last couple of days. Probably a little worse, but I don’t have any big missing pieces that aren’t just attributed to the fact that my memory isn’t very good.

What was the worst part about it—besides being hungry? What was the thing that was the most upsetting?
I had a fucking ocular migraine yesterday, which is this thing that I’ve probably gotten less than ten times in my life. Basically, the entire center of my vision just becomes a blind spot. It’s kind of like going blind, except that you can see everything that’s going around in the periphery. Just not in front of you. It’s really horrifying and annoying when it happens. For some people it hurts, but for me it doesn’t hurt. I’ve been to a doctor and everything. It has something to do with pressure behind the eyes, and how dehydrated I was that morning, because that’s the most identifiable part of it. I hadn’t had water the night before, so I woke up like that. That sucked. I wasn’t expecting that. I never expect them, and they fucking suck. They only last, like, an hour or two, but it’s not fun.

So, contrast that first day to the last day. It sounds like you were in pretty bad shape. But what, specifically, was your fifth and final day like?
Probably the weirdest thing was that on the first day, I didn’t get drunk at all. And starting on the fourth day, I had a Coco Chanel in the morning, and immediately afterward I knew that I was drunk. Being drunk continued on through yesterday, on to this morning. Right now, I’ve definitely had a coffee and some eggs and I’m more awake, so I’m not fucked. But yesterday, I was just really drunk all day, which sucks. Being drunk all day—compared to being high all day—is so boring. I felt time passing; agonizingly, annoyingly passing. It probably didn’t help that I pretty much didn’t stick to the diet at all. I spaced out, in an hour; whiskey, rum, vodka, tequila shots, and then closed it all with a Bloody Mary. Which was probably a mistake.

Why’d you stop doing the diet on the last day?
It just felt… Because the other days, I hadn’t been getting as drunk as I thought I would. The second-to-last day, I felt like I was kind of hitting a stride of being able to be drunk. So I really just wanted to capitalize on it to see how drunk I could get and what would happen. I was pretty worried about puking. I definitely thought I would puke after every shot, but I never did. Although, they weren’t full shots. They were those little plastic party cups, so I guess that’s half a shot. It felt really horrible to drink half a shot and think about mixing another drink, so I just stuck with one shot an hour and then something so that I didn’t, like, not wake up after I passed out. But by the fourth shot, I was not… The last one was tequila, also. So it was intentionally, like, “I’m fucked.”

So are you basically back to normal, then?
Yeah. I’m probably going to smoke a little bit later, and that will probably just make me feel better; help me not feel hungover. It really only took a day, though. Last night, pretty late at night, I ended up having a salad because I felt like it would be a terrible idea to try to choke down another drink versus just not eating until today. I’ve got shit to do.

The salad was your first meal?
Technically, the pickle was my first solid food on the third day, and the salad was my first meal. It was amazing. I hate salad, and it was like a Caesar salad from Crepevine, and I felt like I should pray beforehand. I was so, so fucking hungry. I can’t understate how hungry I was the whole time.

Was there anything remotely pleasurable about this experience?
Oh, yeah. I went out at one point. I wanted a cop to breathalyze me, because I had no idea how drunk I was. This was probably, I think, the third night. Yeah, this was Friday night. I knew the cops would be out, so I went out to try to find a cop to breathalyze me and walking around in the bar crowd with a lot of other people who were also very drunk—although not like me, who got drunk sad and alone—but still, that feeling of camaraderie of being drunk, I definitely understood that. I understood that for the social usefulness that it is to get drunk. For the first time ever, I understood that. So that was probably the best. I don’t know, overall, not a lot of great moments.

Then I guess you would not recommend this to other people?
Um… I would say this: First of all, God no. But I would also say that it didn’t kill me. I talked to a lot of people before I did this: the Safeway sommelier, all of my friends, everybody who I told I was doing this told me absolutely not to do it and that I would definitely die, and it ended up being not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I thought I would be stumbling around drunk for five days, probably because I spaced out my drinks and didn’t drink in excess, I didn’t get as drunk as everybody thought I would. But as a weight loss thing? It’s really stupid. I weighed myself before and after, and I lost one pound. That’s not a thing.

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On the first episode of The Jim Norton Show, Jim sits down with boxing legend Mike Tyson and UFC President Dana White for a discussion that could never happen on a traditional talk show.

All photos by Daniel Arnold unless otherwise noted

The word “Mormonism” typically brings to mind the church’s gothic headquarters in Salt Lake City, the tract housing and Humvees of Big Love, or a pair of boys dressed in twin suits seen through the peephole of a front door. But the faith got its humble start in Upstate New York, and the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which takes place annually in Palmyra, is still one of the largest gatherings of Latter Day Saints in the country. For a week and a half each July the seeds of Mormonism spread and germinate among a nightly crowd of nearly 8,000 people in the small town, located about 24 miles east of Rochester. It’s free and open to non-Mormons like me, who are, as they say, “ready to receive.”

The actual Hill Cumorah bears similar traits to the Wailing Wall as a spiritual and historical pilgrimage site.  According to Mormon history, in 1823 the Angel Moroni directed Joseph Smith to the grassy slope to search for buried golden tablets that contained the tenets of Mormonism. Smith, guided by a couple of rocks that he referred to as seer stones, translated the tablets into English and released the text as the Book of Mormon. “Pageant,” as regular attendees refer to the festival, is a 75-minute dramatic revival of scenes from The Book held outdoors at the base of the Hill Cumorah. “Pageant” is also a demure word for the event, which to the average spectator looks like 650 war reenactors dodging fireballs and flashfloods in a Michael Bay blockbuster. At one point in the performance the body of a murdered prophet is rolled off a ten-foot drop, never to be seen again.

Photo via Wikicommons

This general apocalyptic vibe is the creation of author Orson Scott Card, most famously known for the sci-fi doomsday novel Enders Game. His script is prerecorded and mixed with triumphant music, and booms over the audience. Waves of actors, mostly children dressed as Bedouins, pour over the multi-tiered stage, gesticulating and lip-syncing to the narration. Pyrotechnics burn prophets at the stake, water mists in a halo around a sacred tree, and Jesus seemingly descends from a grove of alders. But despite the epic battles depicted onstage, the crowd was anything but violent. Instead it felt like a big Mormon tailgate, complete with uncaffeinated drinks and salt potatoes. As the mechanic at the Firestone selling me a new wiper blade the next day would remark of the event, “there’s something for everyone!”

Most participants in Pageant have been called here through prayer. They arrive at the Hill Cumorah a mere week before the first performance. Eight hundred Mormons, complete strangers to one another, receive their roles and rehearse for just seven days before opening night. Their time off work and away from their daily lives culminates in 230,000 hours of collective missionary service. Those who don’t have an active role in the production come in caravans as a sort of pilgrimage to see the famous Mormon sites, like Joseph Smith’s cabin, and to receive messages every night at the performances. One older couple, the Cleggs, had seen the show nearly 90 times and even acted in it themselves. A high point was sharing a scene together with all five of their sons. “It’s been life-changing for us,” Elder Clegg, who reminded me of Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights, said before pausing to fight back tears, overwhelmed by the atmosphere of thousands of believers called to gather.

Preceding the performance, an army of very confident children, clad in their costumes, roamed the grounds. They worked in pairs, carrying their Books of Mormon and pamphlets, striking up friendly banter with other kids who weren’t lucky enough to be actors in the show. Their colorful skirts and headdresses put them in an enviable position, and they used this allure to recruit would-be peers in the audience for future Pageants. As I waited for the event to start, multiple sets of the child actors approached me. Eerily mature, they spoke about going on missions and the joys of participating in Pageant. Two enterprising boys who looked like Roman warriors approached me and asked if I was familiar with the Book of Mormon. One acknowledged that he loved Pageant, but lamented that it took him away from Idaho, where he went to high school and ran a non-profit, a summer camp for local children. Home commitments aside, for most of these kids Pageant seemed like a reprieve from the motivated and ambitious lives of Mormon teenagers, like a really fun summer camp where you get to dress up and run around with spears all day.

A lot of what I've decribed so far might make Hill Cumorah sound like some sort of testosterone-fuelled cosplay convention, but Pageant is nuanced and detailed, and casts plenty of young women alongside the men. At one point I looked up from my seat to see a gorgeous almond-eyed girl, Rachel, wearing a headscarf and bangles standing next to me. “May I read you my favorite quote from the Book of Mormon?” she asked. The self-possessed teenager was raw and rather intimidating. She subverted my expectations the way I’ve seen David Blaine do with his Street Magic: “You think X but let me tell you, X is an illusion.” Rachel was playing the role of an Unbeliever, a skeptic of the Book of Mormon. She felt the role suited her because just months before, as a freshman at Brigham Young University, she had fallen out of love with Mormonism. Throughout the previous year she had teetered on the verge of leaving the church, unsure of Christ’s existence because negative things were happening in the world at such a mind-boggling clip. But now Mormonism was back in her good graces, some sea change in her belief system having occurred. Perhaps she was discovering, as I had around her age, that when it comes to believing, the path of least resistance is skepticism rather than sincerity.

When I was 13 a soft-spoken pastor with one eye that rolled unmoored in its socket backed me into a spiritual corner at a youth group retreat. He posed a hypothetical scenario to me: If we all died that very night, everyone would go to heaven except for me, because I hadn’t accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. Unlike the other kids on the retreat, I was on a path to eternal hellfire. The old man spooked me enough that I became a Christian for exactly two months, until I discovered weed. But as I spoke with Rachel and the other teens at Hill Cumorah, I wondered: what if the person proselytizing to me had been another kid my age? The army of Bedouin children was genius! They weren’t there to speak with people like me, they were there for the other kids, to perpetuate the believers rather than convert them. It was like being a freshman in high school at the activity fair and drooling over the cheerleading booth.

Photo via Flickr user Seabamirum

As the sun set, horns trumpeting over the loudspeaker marked the start of the Pageant. The Latter Day Saints in Israel were taking a boat across the Atlantic Ocean to come to America where Mormonism could prosper freely. On stage, a sail attached to a giant mast was erected and then shredded by the force of some special effect supposed to indicate wind. I watched the herds of child warriors in their element, throwing rocks and sticks at each other. The kids, in roles taken seriously, were having the time of their lives. Another army of children, whose chance to participate in the Pageant still awaited them in the future, watched from the audience, ready to receive.