Because my adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God will be released this August, I thought I would pepper the summer with three early adaptations I did when I was at NYU. This one is based on the poem “The Clerk’s Tale" by Spencer Reece.  

Here's a conversation I had with Matt Rager about my adaptation of "The Clerk's Tale." Matt co-wrote the screenplays for my movies The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying—both of which are also adaptations. Also, check out the other two short films I adapted from poems, "The Feast of Stephen" and "Herbert White."

Matt: From a practical perspective, what were some of the concerns in making a film where nothing, essentially, happens—a film about the mundane boredom of a thankless 9-to-5 job? I think that it works excellently as the third of the three. The film’s stillness is enhanced by its coming on the heels of The Feast of Stephen and Herbert White. Simply by juxtaposing this film beside the violence of the first two, the Brooks Brothers immediately takes on a ominous aspect. Frankly, we're expecting someone to get murdered. But then nothing happens. 

James: It certainly helped to pair this film with the other two shorts. It gains power from them. The previous films are dark and have such heavy material so that when you get to The Clerk’s Tale you are expecting it to be just as dark. I made all the films at different times, but there was always a feeling that they would work together as a trilogy—and I think they do, thematically and stylistically.

Matt: While the plots are vastly different from Feast of Stephen or Herbert White, I feel like the fundamental challenge is strikingly similar: how to translate, into film, elements that are grounded in the linguistic level of poetry. In “The Clerk’s Tale,” so much of the pathos comes from the mere fact of detailing the minutiae of working in a Brooks Brothers.

Mostly I talk of rep ties and bow ties,
of full-Windsor knots and half-Windsor knots,
of tattersall, French cuff, and English spread collars,
of foulards, neats, and internationals,
of pincord, houndstooth, nailhead, and sharkskin.

The challenge seems to be to evoke both the visual lushness and the sense of despair at the same time. The camera itself needs to communicate elements of the poetry that the actors cannot articulate. It seems like the film does this through presenting the vividness of the colors and the richness of the fabrics juxtaposed against the intense quiet.

Similarly, there seems to be a sense of stasis—the fact that the entire film is contained within the mall, the long takes—that is subtly undermined by the camera work, as it wobbles slightly and fades in and out of focus. It seems to belie the mundanity of the everyday by suggesting an unsteadiness lurking just beneath the surface.

James: The Clerk’s Tale is the most staid of the three films, at least in its overt subject matter. Despite this lack of explicit dramatic action, there is a deep despair and intensity underneath the surface of the poem. But it is also difficult to trace that effect down to any single line—it's more of a cumulative effect. That's what I wanted to achieve in the film: a seemingly mundane atmosphere that will accumulate into a sense of weight and depth.

As far as the look of the film, I was very influenced by the cover of Spencer’s book, which is a Sergeant painting of a young man. I thought that it had the right qualities of stasis, sorrow, and depth. I looked to the Dardenne brothers for their fluid shooting and blocking style, although I eventually broke this up by using a very powerful zoom lens. In the opening scene, I played out a full scene of the Clerk fitting a customer. This scene was inspired by the section of the poem that describes the interaction with the straight and married customers. I didn’t want the dialogue to address these issues too directly—instead I wanted to feel the tension through behavior and shot composition. 

All that happens in the scene is a man buys a suit, but the shifting focus and size of the frame makes it feel like something bigger is happening. The fluidness of the dolly combined with the rough feeling of the zooms and the shifting focus contrast and blend with each other in the same way that I wanted the material and staid surface to contrast with the depth of the character’s feelings. 

Matt: The Feast of Stephen is entirely free of dialogue. Michael Shannon’s role as Herbert is incredibly compelling, but the viewer is trapped in his solitary world. The Clerk’s Tale, on the other hand, involves interaction between the two characters, both in terms of actual dialogue and in terms of the interplay between the two as they each go about their work routine, creating the feeling that the Brooks Brothers is a stage upon which the drama unfolds.

Both the poem and the film capture that strange intimacy that can develop between co-workers as you spend hour after hour together, but within a structured, formal environment with rules and regulations. The connection comes through the shared experience, which highlights the importance of those small gestures: The offered breath mint, standing shoulder-to-shoulder folding the clothes, the bittersweet routine of closing down the store. And then each passes into the night to their solitary lives.

James: If we look at that depth on a character level, it feels like the Thoreau saying, “Men living lives of quiet desperation.” Yes, there is desperation in the characters, but there is also strength. It was important to have both sides. I thought that the Spencer character (I called him Spencer in the film even though he doesn’t have a name in the poem, because his situation matches Spencer Reece’s situation so closely) regards the older employee, Ralph, with both skepticism and love. Ralph is Spencer’s possible future—Ralph has been working at the store for decades. He is a good salesman, but he seems lonely.

Ralph is also a supportive force in Spencer’s life. This is an aspect I got from the real Spencer, the poet: Spencer Reece had been a divinity student at Harvard and then dropped out. He had a minor breakdown and, to recover, he moved to Minneapolis and began working at a Brooks Brothers in the Mall of America. This job was his portal back into the real world, and Ralph's real-life counterpart was a positive force in Spencer’s recovery. I wanted to emphasize that aspect—the dynamic between the characters, as strongly as the sadness.  

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2009 World Economic Forum in Davos. Photo via Flickr user World Economic Forum

As the crisis in Ukraine has unfolded, exacerbated by the downing of a Malaysian commercial airline jet late last week courtesy of Moscow-friendly rebels, Western countries have been unable to muster any serious sanctions against Russia. The eastern European power thrives on partnerships with American and multinational corporations, but the last round of Obama administration sanctions against Putin's allies (targeting the Russian oil industry) were so weak that the Moscow-based gas company Rosneft is still permitted to go ahead with extremely lucrative drilling plans in collaboration with ExxonMobil and other US-based businesses.

Sanctions against Russia thus far have largely targeted individuals and certain US-based assets of Russian figures close to President Vladimir Putin. These individuals, including Putin’s close political advisors, are barred from visiting the US or owning American assets. The Russians responded with an equally meaningless ban on political figures like Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The latest and strongest round of sanctions only go so far as to block some Russian companies from accessing US markets for long-term debt, but do not ban Russian firms from doing business with Americans—a move that simply means Russian firms will use Chinese markets for financing while continuing to make money from their American counterparts.  

In other words, as political leaders talk tough and carnage continues throughout Ukraine, oligarchs in both the US and Russia are still happily doing business together. But how does Putin keep his economic interests chugging along pretty much unscathed?

New disclosures suggest that third-party business lobbying groups active in US politics have closer ties to Putin than previously known.

Ketchum, a public relations firm that has represented the Russian government and Gazprom, the Russian oil behemoth, just filed its latest 6-month disclosure form with the US Department of Justice. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law signed by President Franklin Roosevelt to regulate international lobbying, agents of foreign governments are required to report a significant amount of their activities to the public. The disclosures show a number of media contacts on behalf of the Russian government, including with the New York Times, AP, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, Politico, CNBC, CNN, and PBS.

The form also shows that Ketchum has corresponded closely with two trade groups that have been pivotal in beating back sanctions against Russia since the revolution in Ukraine: the US-Russia Business Council and the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, a Moscow affiliate to the US Chamber of Commerce known as an AmCham. Both groups are funded by companies with a stake in the US and Russia, including CitiGroup, BP, GE, GM, and Caterpillar.

But the most important business link between the two countries is ExxonMobil. The oil giant has multiple deals with Rosneft worth upwards of $1 trillion, including plans to drill in the Arctic, throughout Siberia, and in Alaska.
 Are US-based companies representing American foreign policy interests? Simply being based in one country or the other can be misleading; as the Ketchum disclosure shows, the business lobbies, which have battled Obama administration attempts at sanctions, have a cozy relationship with Putin's government. The forms make clear that the US-Russia Business Council even receives funds from the Putin government by way of Ketchum.

These groups play both a public and private role in setting American foreign policy. The Russian AmCham supported efforts by its parent organization, the US Chamber, along with the National Association of Manufacturers, to sponsor advertisements in national newspapers denouncing strong sanctions against Moscow—claiming that doing so would endanger American jobs and investment. Both business groups, which are funded by corporate donors with extensive dealings in Russia, including Caterpillar and ExxonMobil, have made their case against sanctions with major media outlets. The US-Russia Business Council has also met with White House officials, along with member companies, to dissuade Team Obama from enacting meaningful sanctions. 


The influence extends to Republicans as well. Richard Burt, a former Reagan White House official who now works at the lobbying firm McLarty Associates, serves on the US-Russia Business Council board. According to the Wall Street Journal, Burt, who has argued against unilateral sanctions against Russia, regularly advises Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul on foreign policy.
The combined lobbying efforts have achieved PR coups for the Putin regime beyond just limiting sanctions. The Obama administration implored US business leaders to abstain from attending the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a Russian summit. Several companies complied, but major firms went anyway. ExxonMobil shrugged off the call from the White House and even used the event, which took place in May, to stage a photo-op with Putin—while signing yet another partnership with Rosneft. The Ketchum disclosure makes clear that the American PR firm was key to the Forum’s success.

In an update posted on the US-Russia Business Council's website, the group boasts that it used the Forum as a chance to mobilize American business lobbyists. The executives were asked to "gather information on Congressional activity related to Russia, to share perspectives regarding the value of the business community’s long-term relationship with Russia and to continue to offer ourselves up as a resource regarding the impact of sanctions." 

Thursday morning, the Associated Press reported that Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is resigning. The political chaos in the region continues, then, but business between the US and Russia moves ahead smoothly.

Lee Fang, a San Francisco–based journalist, is an investigative fellow at the Nation Institute and co-founder of Republic Report.

One week after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people onboard, authorities have yet to determine for certain who was responsible for launching the missile that destroyed the plane. Many Ukrainians, however, are convinced it was the pro-Russia rebels who committed the act of “terrorism;” Russia continues to deny involvement.  

VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky is in Kharkiv as the investigation continues. He attends a pro-Ukrainian rally, then travels to the Kharkiv airport, where the bodies of many of the passengers arrive to be sent back to the Netherlands for identification and burial.

A still from Beyond Clueless

If you were a teenager in the late 90s or early 2000s, I challenge you to convince me that American Pie didn’t teach you at least some of what you know about sex. Back then, teen movies were a window to an American fantasyland, and in it, hot girls walked slow-mo down corridors, all boys looked like Paul Walker, and everyone skipped class to hang out at the beach.

No one understands the lurid appeal of the teen movie better than filmmaker (and occasional VICE writer) Charlie Lyne, and in his new documentary Beyond Clueless, he explains exactly how films like She’s All That helped us come of age. With footage from literally hundreds of cult classics, it’s like the film equivalent of a Teen Movie Reader, and will make you glad you went to an American high school.

We called up director Charlie Lyne and had a chat with him about making the film, his favorite teen movies, and why he thinks teen movie tropes continue to work, time and time again.

VICE: For any teen movie fan, Beyond Clueless is a great nostalgia trip, but what does it offer to a teen film audience that’s new?
Charlie Lyne: Watching Beyond Clueless is the equivalent of watching 300 teen movies simultaneously, so whatever you make of it, it’s inarguably a timesaver. It also has a really great soundtrack by Summer Camp, so if you’re not enjoying the movie you can always just close your eyes and listen to that.

The film has some amazing edit sequences drawing together clips from different teen movies. My particular favorites are the pool sequence and the ejaculation sequence. Did you edit it?  
Yeah, I edited the movie myself over the course of about a year. I had roughly 450 hours of material to choose from, so picking just the right shot of Freddie Prinze Jr to illustrate each emotional climax was no mean feat.

Still from The Craft. Fairuza Balk pictured left.

How did Fairuza Balk from The Craft come on board as your narrator? And what do you think she brings to Beyond Clueless?
Fairuza runs a candle-making business in her spare time, so I actually got in touch with her through that. Her voice is absolutely tailor-made for a film like this—you’re never quite sure whether it’s an insider or outsider perspective that you’re hearing. And her candles are brilliant.

The film focuses on the shared tropes of teen films, and really drives home how similar some of these films are. Are you more interested in the similarities, or the films that break away?
The teen movies that break the mould in certain respects are usually the same ones that very carefully toe the line in other areas. That’s how they get away with it. A film like Idle Hands is only able to explore big, ambitious themes like sexual anxiety because it plays it safe in so many other ways. The teen genre is basically one big Trojan horse for some of the most challenging ideas ever committed to celluloid.

Hundreds, even thousands, of teen movies must have been made from the mid-90s to the mid-00s. Why was there such a boom?
In the 80s, the teen genre was ruled over by a small handful of unimpeachable kingpins, John Hughes being the definitive example. By contrast, the 1990s teen boom was characterised by smaller films, with smaller budgets and less experienced writers and directors at the helm. These stranger, more idiosyncratic teen movies unsurprisingly struck a chord with teenagers who couldn’t see themselves in any of The Breakfast Club’s designated character types.

Still from The Girl Next Door, which features in Beyond Clueless.

Why do you think teen films have so much resonance?
It’s the only genre that is defined by the age of its audience, which is kind of sinister when you really start to think about it. These films are declaring in advance that they want to be seen by people who are at the most impressionable stage of their lives, so it’s no wonder they have such influence. So would The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel if it marketed itself exclusively towards 15-year-olds.

How did you draw a line when it came to selecting films that fall within the genre? There’s some films like American History X or The Dreamers, which you could argue for or against as teen movies…
My only rule was that each film—or the specific subplot of the film that I was interested in—had to capture some sense of adolescence, or some suggestion of the transition from child to adult. I’m not so interested in the specific ages of the characters, or the actors playing them.

I was interested that you chose to include a lot of films that I’d call “horror” films before “teen” films; why do the two so often overlap?
The teen genre isn’t really a genre. It’s an umbrella term that covers comedies, rom-coms, horror films, dramas and a million other kinds of movies. Horror elements crop up especially often because one of the few things that most teenagers agree on is that adolescence can be pretty horrific.

The most common way it rears its head is a parallel for either puberty or menstruation. My favourite is always Ginger Snaps and the subsequent increasingly bizarre sequels and these incredibly elaborate feature-length metaphors for menstruation… It’s compared with becoming a werewolf, which is so brilliantly unsubtle. They say throughout, you know, “I’m growing loads of hair! There’s blood everywhere. I don’t know what’s going on with the way I feel each month!” and then the answer being time and time again, it’s like, “Oh, it’s because I’m a werewolf.”

I think there’s something nice about the wholeheartedly overblown metaphors like that. And there’s no shortage in that genre.

Freddie Prinze Jr in a still from She's All That

There are films like Todd Solondz’ Storytelling and Greg Araki’s Doom Generation in there, and you’ve said that people have tried to dispute this, probably because the films have “respected directors”. I kind of agree, in a way—not to leap to the defence of those filmmakers, but because I kind of think of teen films as guilty pleasures.
A lot of people have a pretty snobby definition of teen movies, which excludes anything that they consider to be artistically valid. The movie I get picked up on more than any other is Rushmore, which is a film about a teenager, set almost entirely at a school. But because it’s Wes Anderson, people put it on a pedestal, and refuse to recognize it as a teen movie.

You seemed to mostly choose American films, and you used an American voiceover even though you're British. Why is that?
I certainly did, and that’s ultimately what Beyond Clueless is about: interrogating a world in which I feel completely at home, despite its otherness. Although I don’t think there’s anything quintessentially American about teen movies. There are certainly other countries that produce more of them. But America is especially adept at exporting its teen movies around the world, and as a result, it’s hard to grow up anywhere else and not become familiar with the very distinctive traits of American teen cinema.

Can we talk conspiracies for a second—you seem to suggest Scottie in Euro Trash is gay! I guess I missed that at the time. What other subliminal messages did I miss?
The psychosexual clusterfuck that is the 2006 body-swap comedy It’s a Boy Girl Thing would have taken our entire 90-minute runtime to unravel, so we decided to leave it be.

Still from Gregg Araki's Nowhere

You’re also a film reviewer. What’s it been like to be on the other end of film criticism, as the filmmaker?
It’s been great. As a filmmaker, I can’t imagine anything more rewarding than reading a carefully considered appraisal of your work from somebody who’s actually sat down and given it their full attention. It doesn’t really matter whether they like it or not—some of our best reviews have been utterly brutal.

And finally, who is the greatest teen high school queen of them all?
I’ve never actually seen it, but I hear good things about Rose McGowan in Encino Man.

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Maradona

Maradona, that’s what they call him. And indeed, there is a resemblance, especially when you look back at the time when (the real) Maradona used a lot of cocaine. Even though we later learned his real name, thanks to the little side-business that the human smuggler has set up in Istanbul, it is better not to write it down. So Maradona it is.

"To be clear: we do not bring terrorists to Europe," said Maradona. He points out his pack of Gauloises cigarettes that cost him half a Euro because they were smuggled from Iraq to Turkey. "Look, I smoke during Ramadan. I have nothing to do with those Muslim fanatics out there. I only work with people that I trust."

It will be a recurring subject: smuggler Maradona is the good guy. He‘s not involved in filthy mob jobs. We should see it as charity work. Those poor refugees are stuck in Istanbul, where they have to work for twelve hours a day receiving a pittance. Maradona helps them because he cannot bear to see so much pain.

"A passage to one of the better countries like Germany, Sweden or Switzerland costs me between €6,000 [$8,090] and €10,000 [$13,466]," says Maradona. Not all smugglers are so expensive. Some only bring their refugees to the forest on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria, and then leave them to meet their fate.

"But it sounds like I'm getting rich from this activity, and that's not true," he continues while stirring sugar into his tea. "To get a refugee somewhere I need to invest heavily. A false passport costs around €700 [$942]. And the drivers have to be paid, in addition to hotels and restaurants. What remains for me is a mere €1,000 [$1,346] per refugee. "

The money is kept in one of the special "banks", that seem to have been set up for only such for activities: shops where the money is protected by a code that only the refugees know. Only when the refugee has arrived at his final destination, will they call the code through to Maradona. If it goes wrong, the refugee or his family get their money back. In other words: the risk is all the smuggler's.

"Think of it as gambling," he says. "Sometimes I make a profit, but just as easily I lose thousands of dollars. Recently, I lost €40,000 [$53,864] at once because twelve people were intercepted at the airport."

Refugees sleep in parks all over Istanbul.

One of Maradona's phones rings: as we speak, four refugees are being loaded on a truck to Bulgaria. Tomorrow they’ll arrive, if all goes well. Maradona puts his phone down with a satisfied grin on his face, which bares his yellow teeth. He orders a shisha for us to smoke.

We are in a teahouse in the multicultural district of Aksaray where, according to Maradona, the staff can be trusted. Several toned and tattooed figures come to him during our conversation to shake his hand and look suspiciously towards us. Maradona wanted to talk to us because he believes that everyone should know about the suffering of the refugees, but not everyone seems to appreciate it.

"It started in 1992," he starts again. His cousin was facing a hefty time in prison back in Syria, where he is originally from, so someone had to make sure he was transported to Europe. Maradona arranged it all. Because he knew the trick after doing it once, it was easy to sell the same route to others, including his contacts.

While most students make their money by working at the pub, Maradona made his money as a student studying in Kazakhstan by smuggling Kazakhs to China. After having worked some time in oil and gas, he went back to Syria and got married. If the war had not come to his country he wouldn’t be a smuggler.

"When you see a war on television, it is always something that happens outside of your reality," he says. "That is always the way we look at Afghanistan or Sudan. You start feeling it inside when the bombs start falling around you and you've come to recognize the smell of blood in the streets.’’

The main square in Aksaray, where smugglers and refugees meet.

Little remained rrom Maradona's village in the desert, so he left for Turkey. But as a Kurdish Syrian, he isn’t very loved in that country. And with Prime Minister Erdogan busy trying to keep his local Kurdish population under his thumb, Maradona saw a gap in the market: thousands of Kurds fled Syria thanks to him, and most of them preferably want to get to the EU.

Because human smuggling does not always generate the same amount of cash, Maradona is also taking on other “businesses." He doesn’t tell us a lot about it but if we are really interested, we will have to call him later. "I could use a contact person in the Netherlands," he says, deadpan. "How about 10,000 per month?  I bet you don’t earn that with those articles of yours. "

Whether Maradona really is the humanist he claims to be, we don’t know. Well, he doesn’t wear bling-bling and was kind enough to pay the bill. But as he is chatting with one of his mob buddies sat at another table, our local friend tells us that he would prefer not to be seen with Maradona in Istanbul. He is afraid of a drive-by shooting, because allegedly Maradona has a few enemies in Istanbul.

The next day we called up Maradona. The four refugees arrived in Bulgaria.

In January, European Union restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria were lifted, meaning citizens of those countries were free to travel and work throughout the EU. This inspired anger in wealthier countries like the UK, where people anticipated a flood of migrants looking to take advantage of relatively generous welfare systems. This anger was directed most fiercely at the Roma.

Europe's largest ethnic minority—also known as gypsies—has long endured bigotry and abuse. This year, they've been a boon to rightwing politicians who've used them to garner support for anti-immigration policies and achieve significant electoral victories.

VICE News examines the so-called "Roma influx" by visiting a Roma community in northern England, then traveling to Romania to meet a group of Roma who have just been evicted from their homes and don't have the money to leave the country to seek out better lives.

Photos by Paul T. Bradley

As I’ve mentioned before, karaoke is my thing. For people who know me, the first thing they associate me with is karaoke. I have no discernible skills or physical abilities, but I can wail when there are absolutely no stakes.

See, there’s the rub. I’m too afraid to start a band for fear of it being terrible, so I’ve relegated myself to the safe world of karaoke. When my mom called to tell me about a $5000 live band karaoke competition, I viewed it as a bridge. If I won, maybe it would be time to really go for it, and live my frontman dream.

The contest was run by LA’s so-soft-you-might-fall-asleep-and-crash-into-a-bus rock station KOST 103.5 and held at Commerce Casino. Commerce is one of those cities that’s technically in Los Angeles county, but really, no self-respecting Angeleno would ever go there unless they were on their way to Disneyland. It's one of those cities where you go to buy a house and die, or possibly to escape the authorities because, Jesus, not even they want to go to fucking Commerce.

I brought my friend Paul for moral support, as well as a Statler to my Waldorf, for this night was sure to be a viewing experience worthy of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Paul and I arrived to the ballroom late, of course, because (a) I knew I wasn’t first, and (b) I needed a goddamned drink in my hand and wanted to miss as many singers as possible.

We entered what looked like it was supposed to be a showroom, but it was painfully empty. It was, “Learning Annex lecture hosted by the guy you hate the most at work” empty. It was perfect. It was mine.

Song 1:

If I were to ask you to bet on which song would be the first one sung, out of the gate, what would you guess? I’d put the odds at this song being first at around 50/50. Ready? Duh, it was most certainly “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Why did this song come back into the zeitgeist? I don’t know what happened circa 2006-2007 to make us all collectively decide that we needed to implore our fellow Americans to not give up. Was it the Bush Administration? Maybe. Or—follow me on this one—did we predict the global financial collapse of 2008 via only the inexplicable resurgence of this song? Did our collective unconscious know that we were about to face a situation where most of us would, in fact, stop believing? Was our only spiritual recourse to put up a subconscious warning, pinned on the wings of Steve Perry? The world will never know for certain. But I do know that I never need to hear this song again. If you run a karaoke night, please start charging people five dollars to sing this song. You probably don’t get tipped enough, so it’s a plus, and your regulars will not only understand, but cheer. 

The lady who sang the song was as forgettable as they come, using the safe, crisp runs of a first round reality show cast-off. I’m already bored of talking about her. 

Our host, who we’ll call “Yoked Jillian Reynolds,” was an overly tanned husk. You could tell she used to have a dream, and I guess she makes money doing what she loves, technically? That seems like hell. She is a professional singer, but she is here, with us. Her talents had led her to be forever relegated to wearing a fedora and singing to Tommy Bahama dads at various national-chain bars and regional contests. No Hollywood Bowl for you. Be careful what you wish for.

The judges? This is where it got infuriating: They were two “social media queens” named Britney and Ashley, or Heather and Summer, or some other stock standard millenial names, who we've all seen saying “Hey YouTube, thanks for liking and sharing our new song,” and scoring fucking 70,000 hits for no reason. No other reason, that is, except a giant corporation placed a diet soda in one of their hands and an energy drink in the other one’s hand. It is not daring for me to say fuck these people, but it feels good. Fuck these people. Fuck anyone who thinks turning tweens into diet soda drinking consumer whores so they can get mindless, meaningless “views” on their “What’s In My Bag" video is in any way a contribution. The third judge went to the same dumb acting school I dropped out of, and because he’s been on a billboard, he is its most famous Alum. 

Song 2:

It was the second song of the night, and holy shit, both of these people have been way better than I expected. I nervously grasped my second drink. Two singers, two drinks, could I keep up this pace? Gabriel Iglesias over here was straight up killin' "Just A Gigolo." He wailed and rasped his way into my and the judges' hearts. First judgment was from one of our Social Media Strumpets, "You dressed the part!" to which he responded with, "Oh, yeah, I gotta work the blackjack tables after this." Well, fuck me, he already had the blue-collar vote.

To win this, I needed a sob story. Nothing over-the-top, just believable enough. My mom needs better teeth? My cat has PTSD? I want to donate my prize money to tone-deaf kids in Africa? I had to get my story straight, this guy was a true competitor.

Song 3:

"Survivors out there this is for you!" she said, and, yes, of course she sang “I Will Survive.” It would’ve been really weird if she'd said that and then launched into "Rape Me." I can only describe her performance as “Drunk Aunt Going Wild On This Cruise Ship To Make Up For Getting Married Too Early In Life.” During the subsequent mediocrity and disco light show, I felt my confidence return. Maybe it was the third vodka, but I was pretty sure it was my confidence. I had this. I'm a goddamned performer. I was born to do this. I’m the star. It's my big dick, and I say when we roll.

Song 4:

Oh, Frank.

By looks alone, Frank would not win the five grand. However, he would win the trophy for “dude who looks the most like a King of Queens fan.” Frank disturbs the (for some reason) all-ages “crowd” by looking at us and softly yet emphatically declaring “This here? This is the sexiest song in the world.”

Oh really, Frank? I was dying to know what this beef-pillow thought was sexy. I prayed it would be that amazing “AND TWINS” song from those old beer commercials, but I was way off.

You don’t necessarily hear the first note of Chris Isaak’s "Wicked Game," as much as you fucking feel it in whichever part of you gets fucked the most. I had never felt it harder than right then, played by Reno’s own Karaoke Rockstarz. Frank was right. He had picked the sexiest song, and he. was. nailing it. Women in the crowd went nuts. I was lucky they didn't call off that goddamned contest right then and there and declare Frank winner, savior, and hero. Even Paul leaned over to me and whispered, “I love you, dude, but if Frank doesn’t win, I’m gonna kill myself.” Frank, chinbeard and all, was a fucking babe. He looked like a baby but he was a babe.

Time for the intermission, and we needed it. Was I next after the intermission? Nobody knew. I did know I needed both of my hands to drink. I was keeping up my un-asked-for, unnecessary drinking pace. Nerves, man. I asked Paul if he could drive us home. He said yes. He is a trooper. I could’ve driven if I had to, but that would mean I would’ve had to stop drinking immediately and there were at least two more hours of karaoke left. I couldn't do that to myself, so I did it to Paul.

We got back in the “ballroom” in time to hear Yoked Jillian Reynolds yell “How many Guns N Roses fans do we have here?” The answer was very clearly four! The Karaoke Rockstarz guitarist looked a LOT like a sweatier version of that dude from Dinosaur Jr., so I called him Spray Mascis. He played "Sweet Child o' Mine" half a notch slower than Slash, but he also undoubtedly cost less than half of Slash, so he comes out on top, value-wise. Yoked Jillian Reynolds asks us to scream. It was only 9:00 but it felt like forever. Would I ever leave this casino conference/ballroom? Did I want to? Did I deserve to?

I was at least six drinks in, so it became a blur until my song. Within that blur, a second woman sang "I Will Survive," but it was the first camel toe fiesta—her crotch looked like yoga pants being eaten by Pacman; after more than three hours at this casino, I finally saw my first mobility scooter; some girl whose mom probably had a Jim Morrison tattoo sounded like a bad comedian doing an insulting Sarah Silverman impression; and after finishing his song some #swag kid addressed the judges with, "Everybody stepped it up tonight."

Furious, I turned to Paul and scream-whispered, "This isn't a fucking reality show." Paul, compassionate Paul, looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, it is. That is exactly what it is for them.” Oh my god. He was right. This was American fucking Idol for everyone else here. This is the peak. Nowhere to go but down.

At precisely 10:26 PM—I marked it down—it all stopped being fun.

Luckily, I was up next. I pumped myself up, remembering that this actually meant something. I genuinely hoped that I didn’t get too drunk to fuck it all up in the name of protecting my vulnerabilities by shitting on strangers. After all, I was not better than them. I was there too. I did it because I wanted to. I did it for the sincere, unironic joy of singing with a band. Time to PUT THE WHOLE FUCKING ROOM ON MY BACK AND CARRY THEM TO VALHALLA.

I walked out, and they started playing my song: "Nothing Compares 2 U." The thing that people forget about that song is that it’s not written by Sinead. It’s a motherfucking Prince song.

I gave it my all.

I was the only person to powerslide. I knew I was going to powerslide. I was not going to waste perhaps my only opportunity to sing in front of a real band by not fucking powersliding.

Compelled by the feeling of joy from the crowd, I had to join them. I went off the stage, climbing through the empty chairs, reaching out for their hands. If this was it for me, I was gonna go full-Bono. 

The song was over. I am not humble at all about the fact that I got a standing ovation. Was it 40 people in a room that usually sits 400? That’s still a standing ovation. The keyboardist shouted that I was amazing over the sound of the cheers. Did it matter that she looked like Roseanne Barr in a K.D. Lang wig and lived in Reno? Not at that fucking moment. I felt it all. I was going to win. I was going to start a band.

The judges were in awe. They told me I was amazing. They told me I was a star, a personality, that I had charisma and talent, and a future. They were right.

They told me that I could make it to the big time. They told me that the big time, of course, meant being a YouTube Star.

I fucking hate their little YouTube world.

Sure, I was drunk, so that had to make it worse, but the crashing, plummeting, comet-killing-the-dinosaurs doom of reality hit me so hard that I laughed. Out loud. A LOT. I laughed like a crazy person. Like, one would assume, a stranded man wandering the desert would laugh when his shimmering waterfall oasis evaporated into more fucking sand.

One of the judges asked me why I was laughing.

“I hate YouTube.”

They were nice, and thanked me, but I knew. We all knew: I didn’t play their game, and no matter how wicked the game is, if you want to win, you have to play.

Frank lost, too.

Follow Josh Androsky on Twitter

All illustrations via Drew Shannon.
Fast food restaurants are breeding grounds for chaos. Last year, they made $160 billion in the US alone. Their chains are often so ubiquitous and cheap that people tend to leave all their fucks at the door and walk in like it’s their living room. There’s an air of desperation that surrounds both working and eating there that puts everyone a little more on edge and insane than they would typically be.

Born out of this chaos are a countless number of public incidents, like the lady who successfully sued McDonald’s for her hot coffee, or the manager who performed a strip search on her employee. Given the nature and sheer number of these oft convenient and well-priced restaurants, I was certain there were more gems like this hidden from the public eye. Since nobody knows fast food restaurants chaos like their employees, I reached out to some of them to hear some of their untold stories.

John’s Revenge

I worked on the floor with these two guys who straight up hated each other. One was this short, deaf guy, John, who stood at around five-foot-six. The other was this huge meathead, Daniel, who stood at six-four. Anyway, the meathead guy was always picking on the deaf guy for his disability and the way he talked. He would laugh in his face, shout at him from behind, yell at him when he didn’t understand. One day Daniel shouted an order across to John, who wasn’t looking and didn’t hear him. Daniel strode over and shouted sarcastically right in his face:

“MAKE DUH FOOOOOOOD!”

John looked up at him and knocked Daniel out cold with one swift punch to the jaw. They never fired John—after reviewing the tape they said Daniel had it coming.



McGolden Shower

One day the store manager was in the bathroom, snaking the pipes or whatever. This guy walks in the washroom and my manager’s like, “Sorry, sir. It’s out of order.” And he’s like, "Oh, yeah?"

Then he pulls down his pants and pisses all over my manager. He grabs a few paper towels as he’s pissing on my manager and is like, “Take your minimum wage salary and clean this shit up.”

So the manager comes like dripping out of the washroom right after and tells the assistant manager: “I gotta go home and take a shower. Someone just pissed on me.”

She’s like, “Whoa, yeah, OK. Do your thing.”

Creepy Hans

We had this 28 year-old German guy Hans managing our store once and we always thought he was kinda creepy. He was always eyeing the female customers down, and showing them pictures from his phone. One time after the store had closed it was just me and him closing up. I hadn’t seen him for a while. I walked to the back to try to find Hans, and I see him with his tongue down this girl’s throat, who I later learned was 16. He told me to “Get the fuck out of here,” so I left and went to the monitor room to watch. He turned the lights off to try to hide it and all I heard was: “I wanna taste you.”

I cleaned up awkwardly while Hans banged this 16-year-old by the freezer. He got fired the next day.

Here, Catch

One day I was helping unload new food that was being delivered. My buddy and I didn’t want to clean up all the boxes piled up in the middle of the floor, so he was just throwing tomatoes over the boxes to me and I was catching them. As we’re doing this, this guy we worked with walked in behind me, but neither of us noticed. So he’s throwin’ them at me, and as he gets one tomato he fakes it low but throws it high. I jerked my hand up to catch it and felt my thumb go into the guy’s eye. I pulled my thumb up to get it out and heard a squelching sound as my thumb rubbed his eyejuices. I looked back and the guy was banging on the wall screaming,

“AHHH, MY EYE! MY EYE!”

Me and my buddy just kinda sat there and laughed at him, which didn’t go over well when they looked at the security tapes. So then after we’re like, “Well we’re gonna take you to the hospital, but we gotta finish these tomatoes first, so you gotta wait in the crew room.”

He had to wear an eyepatch for a while, but he’s fine now.

Guardian Hobo

I work in a 24-hour fast food joint, and we get a lot of homeless guys and hobos coming in. If they’re not bothering anyone, we usually let them sit there if it’s not busy. This one guy had been sitting there completely peacefully when he started shouting nonsense: “Give me a fucking break! All of you on your watchtowers think you’re so fucking rich!”

The security guard was on break, so I walked over to ask him to leave.  When I got close enough, he charged at my stomach full force and knocked me to the ground. We started wrestling and it turned out this guy's actually surprisingly strong so I can’t get him off of me. Then someone pushed him off me, and I look expecting to see the security guard, but it’s another homeless guy. Now the two of them start rolling on the ground fighting. Meanwhile everyone’s like backed up against the walls clutching their burgers and children. Luckily a policeman was walking by outside and came in and pried the two apart.

As they were escorted out, the hobo who saved me gave me a wink like, “Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.”


@keefe_stephen

Pelican Bay, California's most notorious supermax prison. Photo via the California Department of Corrections.

The United States has an enormous prison problem. A more-than-2.4-million-prisoner-sized problem, to be precise, locked up in the archipelago of federal penitentiaries, state corrections facilities, and local jailhouses that form the nation's thriving prison-industrial complex. Since 1980, the number of incarcerated citizens in the US has more than quadrupled, an unprecedented rise that can attributed to four decades of tough-on-crime oneupmanship, and a draconian war on drugs.

Today, more than one out of every 100 Americans is behind bars, and the US has the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of the actual number of inmates and as a percentage of the total population. The numbers are staggering: The US incarceration rate is nearly 3.5 times higher than that of Mexico, a country that has spent the last decade in the throes of an actual drug war, and between five and ten times higher than those seen in Western Europe. There are more people locked up in the US than in China. In fact, the US is home to nearly a quarter of the world's prisoners, despite accounting for just 5 percent of the overall global population.

But the data gets even more disturbing when broken down at the state level. A recent analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative shows that while states like Louisiana have undoubtedly led America's march toward mass incarceration, no state or region has been immune to the prison boom. And each state is a global aberration, with incarceration rates that compare to those found in isolated dictatorships and countries recovering from civil war.  

As the chart shows, 36 states have higher incarceration rates than Cuba, the country with the world's second highest prison rate. New York comes in just above Rwanda, which is still trying thousands of people in connection to the 1994 genocide. Even Vermont, birthplace of Phish, Ben & Jerry's, and the country's only socialist senator, imprisons a higher percentage of its population than countries like Israel, Mexico, or Saudi Arabia.

Looked at in terms of actual inmate numbers, this means that the number of people behind bars in most US states is on par with the prison populations of entire nations. And not Luxembourg or Burundi. Big, messy countries, like Venezuela and Egypt. 

“The question here is are we using prison too much, and when you compare one US state to another US state, you start to think ‘Eh, maybe it’s all just the same,’” said PPI Executive Director Peter Wagner, who co-authored the analysis. “But the bigger picture here is that every single state is out of step with the rest of the world.”

“Other than the United States, most of the countries with high incarceration rates have had a very recent social trauma," Wagner added. “New York has the same incarceration rate as Rwanda and there has not been a massive genocide in New York State. The irony is that New York actually used to have a much higher rate of incarceration. It's actually one of the grand exceptions in the country, of a state that has been reducing its prison population."

The numbers, Wagner explained, underscore the central role that states have played in America’s unprecedented prison buildup. While much of the recent prison debate has centered on federal sentencing laws and drug policy reform, the real mass incarceration action has taken place at the state level. According to PPI data, more than half of US inmates—57 percent—are in state prisons, and another 30 percent are incarcerated in local jails, generally for violating state laws. Though prison rates have varied widely across the US, all 50 states have implemented some set of policies—like mandatory minimums, “truth in sentencing” policies, or “three strikes” rules—aimed at putting more people in prison for longer periods of time. 

Unsurprisingly, the economic and social impacts of this trend have been massive. According to a 464-page report published by the National Research Council earlier this year, state spending on corrections increased 400 percent between 1980 and 2009. The result, the NRC points out, is that prisons are now some of the primary providers of health care, counseling, and job training to the country's most disadvantaged groups. Meanwhile, the social and cultural costs of mass incarceration are disproportionately borne by poor communities, minorities, and people with mental illnesses.

And the actual benefits of mass incarceration are minimal, at best. Sure, crime rates have gone down since 1980, but studies have found the connection between increased prison rates and lower crime is tenuous and small. In fact a report released by The Sentencing Project this week found that in states that have substantially reduced their prison population in recent years, like California, New York, and New Jersey, the crime rate has actually fallen faster than the national average.

“It's really a situation of diminishing returns for public safety,” said executive director Marc Mauer. “And the amount of crime control that we produce becomes less over time as well.”

Recently, though, there are signs that America is doing a rethink on its experiment with mass imprisonment. Earlier this month, the US Sentencing Commission voted to retroactively extend lighter sentencing guidelines to about 46,000 prisoners currently serving time for federal drug crimes, a move that was endorsed by the Department of Justice. Efforts to implement criminal justice and federal sentencing reforms that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago have been gaining traction from both parties in Congress, forming a rare left-right coalition that is decidedly soft on crime.

At the state level, tight budgets have forced governors and lawmakers to ease drug laws and relax harsh incarceration policies, and to look for more cost-effective criminal justice solutions, including investing in better drug treatment and parole programs. Even in Louisiana, the world’s prison capital, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal has passed modest measures, setting up an early release program for some nonviolent drug offenders, although he recently vetoed stronger sentencing reforms.

“We’re always going to have prisons and we're always going to have crime, but many states are starting to rethink their drug policies, their sentencing laws,” said Mauer. “The impact is not dramatic yet, but I think there's no question that the climate is beginning to shift. The question is how far can we go now that we’ve started to move in the other direction.” 

Dr. George King invoking spiritual energy for storage in an Operation Prayer Power battery, on the shores of Lake Powell, USA, in the early 1970s.

So far, the concept of aliens in popular culture has largely been limited to little green, probing perverts from sci-fi movies and the rantings of conspiracy theorists. Which is why the conversation about extra-terrestrial life is for most people submerged in farce. However, there is a group of men and women in a renovated church in Parson’s Green, who take the matter very, very seriously: They are The Aetherius Society and to them, aliens are gods.

The society was founded in 1955, by a London cabbie called Dr. George King after he claimed to come into contact with aliens. According to him, speaking directly through their larynges, these “highly evolved intelligences from other planets” would communicate wisdom and guidance for mankind.

Today The Aetherius Society boasts thousands of members worldwide as well as headquarters in London, Los Angeles and Auckland. I went down to their European headquarters in West London to meet with the leading member Richard Lawrence; a man who, amongst other things, claims to have channeled the voice of Dante Alighieri and Sir Winston Churchill.

The Aetherius Society HQ in Parsons Green.

VICE: For those who don’t know, could you summate what The Aetherius Society is?

Richard Lawrence: It is a society based on Dr. George King and his contacts with an extra-terrestrial intelligence known as “Aetherius.” It is spiritual, religious, scientific and educational. It’s spread around the world. It’s not massive, but we have thousands of people who are members or support our activities, with tens of thousands of people enquiring over time.

How do other religions fit into your beliefs and can separate beliefs co-exist?
We have people who’ve come from Islamic, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and atheistic backgrounds. We’re not the one and only way, we just introduce a cosmic dimension to spirituality. So we believe that some of the great spiritual leaders such as Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi and Sophocles were all in fact aliens sent to help us. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea; it could be regarded as heretical by some religions.

Do you ever get anger from religious figures?
Well yes, I think Dr. King received anger from Christians when he first claimed that Jesus came from Venus. Born-again Christians have denounced me on the radio. On the other hand, I’ve been invited to speak at a Synagogue, at an Anglican event and I’ve spoken in two Buddhist temples at the invitation of the monks.

Richard Lawrence at his desk at The Aetherius Society

How did you first meet Dr. King and how did your faith change through this meeting?
That was at Hull University. When I went there a group of The Aetherius Society was enshrined in the union. The members of the union had had a vote and decided to accept the authority of inter-planetary parliament. It was through them, that I became aware of him. I got to know him personally by coming here to Parson’s Green and volunteering. In the last 20 years of his life, we became close friends.

To be honest with you, I had never heard of your society before spotting your lecture in Time Out. However, reading up I’ve noticed Dr. George King has been documented in prominent publications for decades now, even having been featured live on the BBC. How did he first get into the public eye?
As you can imagine, he was ridiculed quite mercilessly by the media and the public in the 1950s. But he was a very strong person and this didn’t put him off. There were many UFO contactee claims around the world at that time—as there are today—but his hallmark was his spirituality. This was a big part of his life—from childhood to the years leading up to The Command, which was the first alien contact he had.

Before this, he had become celibate and spent eight hours doing yoga every day. Have you ever met a man who does eight hours of yoga every day? I certainly haven’t.

A portrait of Dr. George King.

One of the things you announced in the new edition of your book Contacts With The Gods From Space was that Dr George King was himself an alien.
Yes, he was one of those beings that have come from another world and lived among us, and was born through the womb of an earth woman. In fact his mother and grandmother also believed that. At his birth it is believed his grandmother even said, “Mary, this child is not of this Earth!”

Wait, so his mum was called Mary?
His mother was actually called Mary—but he never compared himself to Jesus at all and certainly wouldn’t allow that. But, if you look at what he did and what we believe then it fits.

Have you ever seen or had an experience with an alien?
Well I’ve seen UFOs. I had a big sighting in Hull actually.

Can you tell me about it?
It was a cigar-shaped object—probably a mothership—that was moving very slowly in the sky, illuminating it. It was on the news that there was a UFO sighting so we drove out to this field to see it. The government used to wheel people out to explain these. I mean, a professor at our university said it was a barium cloud. Barium clouds don’t behave in that way. In fact, the explanations for UFOs are a study in themselves. Hilarious, some of them.

Members and sympathisers taking part in Operation Prayer Power on Holdstone Down.

So you think there are wide scale government cover-ups?
Beyond any doubt. That’s actually proven. There’s been CIA cover-ups. In fact, I’ve brought CIA papers to this country that were released under the Freedom of Information Act. When Tony Blair’s government brought this Act in, I was told that the top three asked questions by the British public were about UFOs. They used to have a UFO department in the Ministry of Defense, but because they were getting all these questions they closed it. This was on the grounds that it had no “defense value,” saying that they had “no opinion of the existence of extra-terrestrial life.” “No opinion,” can you believe it? All rather convenient.

Are people who don’t believe in aliens ultimately ignorant?
Um… well I don’t want to avoid your question here, but I think we all suffer from ignorance. I don’t want to condemn people but I think they’re wrong. I can understand it if they’ve never investigated it. It depends whether they say, “they don’t exist”, or whether they say, “I don’t know”. If they say, “there’s definitely no such thing as an alien anywhere”, then that’s pretty stupid. Especially since it’s been announced that there’s 40 billion planets in our galaxy that can sustain life as we know it.

A member of The Aetherius Society invoking spiritual energy for storage in an Operation Prayer Power battery on Holdstone Down, North Devon

Moving onto your activities, can you tell me about your Holy Mountain expeditions and how they fit into your beliefs?
Dr. George King actually climbed 18 of these mountains—not the 19th though, that’s Kilimanjaro—and discovered that they are charged with energy by beings from other planets. We invite people to come to Devon with us and see if they can sense that. We go to the mountains to send energy out for peace.

And you have something called a Prayer Battery?
Yes, we work with that every Thursday. People who practice prayer will come up and put their hand in front of the battery, channeling energy, which you can feel through the arm and hand. In that way, we store energy in the battery and when we have a crisis that energy can be released.

This can be in conjunction with the extra-terrestrials who will send it wherever it is needed. The first big one we did was in the 1970s when we released 532 prayer hours to a war that was brewing in Cyprus and eight hours later the war stopped. [ed.note: Dr. King claims to have interfered with the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus]

Are we now under threat of our own destruction?
In a nutshell, what we think is that, after Maldek (which was destroyed by us and is now an asteroid belt), we came here and built up a civilization called Amuria, which we all destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. Then we built up Atlantis and, again, that was destroyed.

We are now in a position where we could do the same but we don’t think we will be allowed to destroy the planet; Mother Earth is more important to us than the people. She is the highest being that we can physically touch and is herself a goddess. If we want to stop this war and destruction, it can only be done through sending love energy. A treaty won’t do it, money can’t do it and politics certainly don’t do it.

You have a perception of aliens being an inherently benevolent force. Do you therefore stand against the widespread image of evil, probing forces?
Well firstly, we do not say that they are all benign. What we say is that benign forces from those who are hostile protect us.

Richard Lawrence on The Great Change.

So there are evil aliens?
There are beings out there, not in our solar system that we have been protected from. If we hadn’t been protected we wouldn’t stand a chance.

Why are they hostile?
Well that’s a good question for VICE, isn’t it... why do people go to war?

Finally, if aliens do exist, why haven’t they made themselves known to everyone?
They are far more aware than we are of the psychology of the terrestrial mind. Panic and hostility would be the result. I would say that for anybody who wanted to know, the evidence is there. If they don’t choose to look into it, or to deny it because it's inconvenient to their belief system, then the beings haven’t yet chosen to force them to change. There’s a plan though, a long-term plan. They will prove themselves at the time that is in the best interest of the human race. There will be a Coming.

Okay, cheers for talking to me!

Follow Adrian Choa on Twitter

Meet Nicole, the latest kid in our beloved series. She's a little bit older and on the verge of being one of those "I've-got-my-learner's-permit-so-I'm-better-than-you" girls. The next couple of years are going to be rough. Good luck, Mom and Dad!

This is not J. but a bus driver in Mumbai. Photo by Pedro Elias via

It is often said that along sex and pooping, sleep is one of the greatest pleasures in life. But what if, suddenly one day sleep goes from being awesome to a nightmare, from which you can't even wake up.

J. – who didn't want to give me his full name – suffers from hypnophobia, namely the fear of falling asleep. The mere thought of sleep makes him panic – which sort of complicated our interview, because every time he thought about his phobia, he had to try suppressing an anxiety attack.

VICE: Hi J., can you explain what hypnophobia is?
J.: Hypnophobia is to be afraid to sleep. It's one of the most specific, sensitive and difficult to understand phobias as it occurs in very few cases, but seriously affects the physical and psychological health of those affected.

How is it affecting you?
it is affecting every area of my life. I try to avoid sleeping by all means because I’m afraid of dying – suffer a heart attack for example, or a fatal accident. The next day, I feel totally powerless and hopeless. This heinous physical and psychological fatigue is really taking a toll on me. Any small detail of your daily life is affected, things that a normal person would not be able to understand.

What was it that triggered it in your case?
It all began with a vermian injury [a brain injury that causes loss of balance and dizziness]. One night in August 2010, while having dinner and watching television, I suddenly lost consciousness for a few seconds. I fell off the couch. Immediately after I came to, alone and unaided, I went to the hospital.

The treatment I received was very bad, and the doctors thought my problem was a "mania" or something "invented". The psychiatrist and the doctor diagnosed me with "hypochondria and a psychosomatic problem". This was the starting point of my hypnophobia.

What did you do next?
I went to a lot of public and private hospitals and countless doctors who made me take countless tests. I got all kinds of diagnoses: some were saying that I had cancer, others brain tumours, ear problems – you name it I've had it.

As it was expected, all these conflicting diagnoses created this fear in me that something could happen to me at any time. Keep in mind that this difficult process took almost two years, in which I suffered permanent dizziness, vertigo and severe headaches, besides the sleep problems.

Gradually, my fears were increased. I began to be afraid of sleeping, and thought that I suffered from a serious illness.

None of these guys is J. either. Photo by Bruno Bayley

You explain your phobia is based on the fear of not waking up, the fear of death. What are your beliefs on this subject?
I am an atheist, I do not believe in gods. I think that when we die it's all over and that thought terrifies me. I guess no one prepared me for this: my family or professionals, nobody.

You've said that you do everything you can in order to not to fall asleep. What do you usually do?
When I prepare to sleep I suffer a gradual increase of anxiety. My body triggers episodes of panic and choking, to prevent me from falling asleep. It's hard to explain, you have to feel it: my pulse quickens, I tremble, I don’t know what to do. You feel powerless. The situation, your subconscious dominates you.

Besides that, I sometimes consciously get out of bed and go out desperately seeking help. I've gone to mental health centres, where instead of helping me, what they did was aggravate my condition with pills and drugs. I have thought about ending it all, but let’s say I am a strong person. I have an inner strength that keeps me from doing that.

When you do fall asleep, do you rest well?
When I sleep, it is because I fall asleep. Still, my mind plays tricks on me, reacting as a self-defence mechanism to keep my consciousness from relaxing and disconnecting from reality to have a restful sleep. I guess the brain disconnects because it knows that if you do not sleep, you die.

How many hours do you usually sleep for?
Between three and five hours, depending on the day and the intensity of panic.

Now that you've been diagnosed, do you follow any treatment? Do you take any drugs?
There isn't a pharmacological treatment. You have to follow a specific and concrete psychotherapeutic treatment.

There is a very small number of centres that treat that kind of illness, which are very expensive and therefore inaccessible to most people with my problem. I just try to go out, distract myself – I walk or think about other things to minimise the effects of hypnophobia.

How do you feel when you wake up and realise nothing bad has happened to you?
I wake up very tired, exhausted. I don’t want to do anything and obviously I’m sleepy. You can never overcome phobias, you can monitor them and live with them as best as possible, but you must keep in mind that they cannot be cured and whoever says otherwise is lying.

How does hypnophobia affect your social life?
I have no social life. My relationships with humans are limited as for my family... no comment. Nobody understands what I am going through and tend to identify it with madness. It's also impossible for me to perform well at work. This has aggravated my isolation, distrust, appearance of new pathologies and mental health.

How do you feel when people think that you are "crazy"?
Well, they are crazier than me because they have no empathy.

Is there something you would like people to know about hypnophobia?
Support is essential, but we live in a hypocritical society in which people with physical and psychological disabilities are abandoned and abused by our capitalist society. You are treated like a freak and you don’t have the right to bother others with your problems.

These phobias should be investigated – the number of people affected by them are much higher than we think. And at the moment, the only solution is in private clinics that working people can't afford.

More on sleep:

The Smug Men Who Never Sleep Think We're All Slobs

Sexsomnia Is a Bedtime Bonner Kill

Wait, Are These Taxi Drivers Sleeping or Dead?

What do the Paris Review and Chipotle have in common? If you guessed that they've both published Toni Morrison, you're right. Last month, Mexican “fast causal” restaurant chain Chipotle announced that they would print original short fiction and non-fiction pieces on their bags and cups in stores nationwide. The lineup of writers that have contributed is staggering—Toni Morrison, Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis, George Saunders, Judd Apatow, and Jonathan Safran Foer, who is curating the project. Overnight, Chipotle has a contibutor base that even the New Yorker would be jealous of.

So the story goes, the idea was conceived when Foer was eating at a Chipotle and, being without a smartphone (he didn’t own one yet) or a book or magazine, found himself bored and in need of reading material. Then the light bulb went off—what if there was something interesting to read on the very packaging he was eating from? He wrote an email to his acquaintance, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells, who jumped at the proposal, and here we are.

In Foer's own words, the campaign is less about having something to read when you leave the house without a book or your iPhone and more about the accessibility of quality writing. In an interview with VF Daily, Foer recalls saying in his email to Ells: 

“I bet a shitload of people go into your restaurants every day, and I bet some of them have very similar experiences, and even if they didn’t have that negative experience, they could have a positive experience if they had access to some kind of interesting text.” 

“What interested me,” Foer says later in the interview, “is 800,000 Americans of extremely diverse backgrounds having access to good writing. A lot of those people don’t have access to libraries or bookstores. Something felt very democratic and good about this.”

Even still, Foer misses the point of his own project. Most everyone who lives near a Chipotle has access to the internet (at home or on their smartphone) and, though waning in number, there are still bookstores and libraries nearly everywhere. In fact, while there are about 1600 Chipotle locations (most in the United States), there are over 26,000 bookstores (according to Statista.com) and 120,000 libraries of all kinds (according to the American Library Association) in the United States. 

On the societal level that Foer is speaking on, the problem is not access—bookstores and libraries are still far more prevalent than Chipotle restaurants. The problem is that bookstores and libraries are becoming less and less culturally relevant, and chances are if you’re on your laptop or smartphone, you’re likely not reading Toni Morrison. It’s not that people can’t read work by these writers, it’s that they don’t.

What's unique about the Chipotle campaign, then, is that it inserts world-class writing into a space where society does a good portion of its consuming (literally) and forces the customer to at least look at it. It would be like if every time you rode the subway Pavarotti came over the loudspeaker. Maybe the fact that the encounter comes in a place where one doesn’t expect to find art would even add to the impact of the work.

Chipotle Communications Director Chris Arnold seems to acknowledge this point: “We’d like for these little two-minute essays to provide a little analog pause in an otherwise digital world," he told me. "It’s our hope that customers will read and enjoy them, and maybe discover a writer they didn’t know before.” This idea of someone “discovering” a new writer comes not from access, per se, but from putting the writing right in front of them. Redirecting focus away from a smartphone might just be necessary to accomplish that.

Even still, something about the whole thing still doesn't feel right. We can all agree putting writers of the modern American canon onto something that will be smeared and torn and, of course, thrown away is at least a little disconcerting. With this brand of forced accessibility, let’s call it—literally handing someone top-tier writing whether they asked for it or not, as opposed to say, buying or checking out a book—inevitably comes disposability.

Outraging as it might be to many, more than anything it's a sign of the times. In our Twitter-Snapchat-newsfeed culture, most of what we read is both democratic and temporary, open to all but gone very quickly. Just like putting these writers into Chipotle in the first place meets the American public on its level, so does the idea of making the writing short and temporary. But that doesn’t make the notion any less hard to swallow, even for many of the writers ask to be part of the campaign.

Said Arnold, “To get our initial group of ten submissions (which is what we have now), we reached out to between 40 and 50 writers, so many more said no to us than accepted the invitation to participate.”

The gatekeepers of literature—academia, publishing houses—have been dying a slow and painful death for some time now, but this might be the coupe de grâce, at least symbolically. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that judging by the heavy hitters commissioned by Chipotle, the new ones are also pretty strict about who they consecrate. And, as far as restaurant chains go, Chipotle isn’t so bad. Their mission statement focuses on a commitment to using organic vegetables and sustainably farmed meat—their animated film, “The Scarecrow,” about this very subject was viewed nearly 13 million times and just won the PR award at Cannes on June 16 of this year. Even McDonald’s, a major early investor, divested eight years ago (although some speculate they are still involved with the company). 

But as Foer points out, none of that matters when it comes to this vision.

“Chipotle was pointed to quite often, as a model of what scaling good practices might look like,” he says. “The truth is, that’s not really why I did this.”

Although Foer states that he “wouldn’t have done it if it was for another company like a McDonald’s,” his point is that Chipotle’s status as a conscious company is not what qualifies it in this undertaking, but rather that it serves hundreds of thousands of customers per day (while not being as overtly corporate and as morally bankrupt as the face of fast food).

In the end, at the heart of the campaign is the idea that it doesn’t matter who’s providing culture so long as it gets in front of as many eyes as possible. And it’s hard to argue that that’s a bad thing, in principal. But in practice, the effects of the mass-dissemination of culture at the expense of the established channels of how and where it’s disseminated have yet to be seen. Is it such a bad thing that you have to go out of your way to read Michael Lewis, even if that just means making a conscious choice to buy or check out a book? Is it so undemocratic that a Malcolm Gladwell book be kept in a library, where it is bound between two covers and kept upright on a shelf? As I’m sure Chipotle would agree, these authors ought to be revered. It’s just hard to remember that when their work comes with a side of sour cream.

Giancarlo T. Roma is a Brooklyn-based writer and musician. Follow him on Twitter.