Photo courtesy of Eva Angelina

You may know Eva Angelina for her many accolades, like the AVN award for Best Tease Performance, but since she gained her real estate license in May, she’s been trying to sell property other than her titties. 

“There are simply too many porn stars and not enough production companies for anyone to be able to make money anymore,” Angelina told me when we sat down to discuss her new career.

The eleven-year porn veteran now lives with her kids in Orange County, California, where she's focusing on having a steady job. She chose the real estate industry because she's loved looking at houses since she watched her mother work as a real estate agent during her childhood. “I’m the type of person on weekends who sees an open house sign and says, ‘Oh, let’s go look!’” Angelina said. So when her boyfriend encouraged her to get a real estate license, she thought it was a brilliant idea.

Angelina hasn’t earned a penny from real estate yet, but she’s hoping to change that this year. Interested in learning more about her transition from porn to real estate, I sat down with Angelina to discuss the housing market, the porn industry, and why she’s already planning to put an IUD in her daughter.

VICE: How is your hunt for clients going?
Eva Angelina: I have a couple clients that I’ve met through Instagram and Twitter, but I have to figure out an efficient way of screening fans, who just want to meet me, and those who are actually serious. I’ve already been fooled twice. Luckily, I have a really good company where my team leader in the room makes sure I’m safe. I allow him to interrogate the guys to [figure out] what they’re all about—and it helps because this guy is a bulldog.

Has your porn career helped your real estate sales?
I haven’t sold anything yet. I feel like I have to step away from the Eva persona because it’s making it difficult. You draw a certain type of person being who I am, and that brings a lot of false hope. It makes me super suspicious, so I need to keep my little detective hat on.

Do you still film on the side or is real estate your full-time gig?
I shoot girl-on-girl now, and I still feature dance, but only one weekend out of the month. It could be an entire year before I get income from real estate, so this is a way to keep my head above the water. As much as I wish I were a millionaire like everybody thought I was, that’s definitely not reality.

You speak fondly about porn. Do you miss it?
I do for the experience, but I don’t because let’s face it: You can’t throw down on an ass like you can with a pussy. I don’t know about you, but I have a tight, little hole. I’m not the type of person who’s like, “If I poop, I poop!”

What’s been the hardest part about transitioning into your new field?
We’re so used to instant gratification. We shoot our scene and leave with a check. During my eleven-year career, I had control, acceptance from my peers, and decided how much money I wanted to make. [Real estate is] a lot more secretive, and I’m used to being out in the open.

Is the world becoming more accepting to porn performers?
Yes, especially in real estate. I’ve been so welcomed in Westwood and Newport Beach in Orange County. I love the Irvine Spectrum, but I have to dodge my kids around the carousel because the second they see it, we have to go on it six times.

Do your children understand your previous career?
Not yet. They’re still too young. When there’s a make-out session in a movie, they’re like, “Ah! it’s a naked movie!” and I’m like, “They’re just kissing because they love each other.”

What kind of sex advice are you going to give your children?
The second they start ovulating I’m putting an IUD in them. Because I’ve had my cervix beat up, it didn’t hurt to put in. (I must have calluses in my vagina.) When I was 13, I was on the pill and couldn’t be trusted to take it everyday. Kids are going to have sex; it’s inevitable. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t ruin their lives. A 13-year-old is a kid having a kid.

What do you think about your porn career now that you’re transitioning to real estate?
Going [into the porn industry], I wanted to be the sex icon. It wasn’t about the money. I wanted people to see what kind of sexual person I was—my dad started calling me a nympho when I was 14. Random people would call me asking for sex advice, and my dad would overhear the conversation, and I’d be like, “Yes, dad, I went there.” My dad’s a nympho himself, so he couldn’t blame me.

Photos courtesy of the author

For $94.99 you can order a live baby alligator from Backwater Reptiles, an online store located in Rocklin, California, according to the Better Business Bureau. Amos Cooper, who oversees the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's alligator program in Texas, told me, “You have to be an alligator farmer [to own one]—registered or else affiliated with some kind of research program.” Yet Backwater Reptiles sells animals to anyone and features glowing reviews from satisfied customers with names like “Angela Lance.”

“Lillygator lets everyone handle her,” Lance gushes in her review. “She eats fantastic, knows her name, and is doing great both on leash training and being trained to respond to a dog clicker.”

If you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, your safest bet is a man I met in Florida while I was killing hogs. He asked me not to share his name, so let's call him Bob. 

“You want a baby?” Bob asked gamely when I called him. “How often do you come to Florida? I know where a bunch of ‘em are.”

He explained that if it’s the right time of year, and you know the right guy, you can take home a baby alligator for free. Well, for zero financial cost. Bob told me baby alligators make terrible pets.

“They bite you right out of the egg,” he said. “They never tame down. They always bite.”

I paused, momentarily distracted by Google Images of marmosets, which are not only cuddlier than alligators, but also, apparently, inspire true love. Unfortunately, they can cost up to $3,000.

“You still interested [in buying a baby alligator]?” Bob asked after a pause.

“I might be,” I admitted. Owning an alligator sounded terrifying, but the idea of taming a monster intrigued me. Like most self-proclaimed animal lovers, I suffer from what I call the Snow White Effect (SWE): the dangerous misconception that if a predator stands close to you without eating you, you are magical. Zoos depress me, and despite Bob’s invitation, I wasn’t planning to go back to Okeechobee, Florida, any time soon. (The last time I went there, I departed shaking and covered in blood). But I have always been attracted to snake charmers because they’ve forged a special bond with otherwise untamable beasts. I assume they must be wizards or, at the very least, exceptional. If left to my own devices, I’m the sort of person who would die in the woods with “friends” that are actually bears, like the guy in Grizzly Man.

The Snow White Effect, in full effect

According to a recent National Geographic article, “Privately owning exotic animals is currently permitted in a handful of states with essentially no restrictions: You must have a license to own a dog, but you are free to purchase a lion or baboon and keep it as a pet.” The article goes on to state that such ownership carries obvious risks: “In Texas a four-year-old [was] mauled by a mountain lion his aunt kept as a pet, in Connecticut a 55-year-old woman’s face [was] permanently disfigured by her friend’s lifelong pet chimpanzee, in Ohio an 80-year-old man [was] attacked by a 200-pound kangaroo, in Nebraska a 34-year-old man [was] strangled to death by his pet snake.”

The obvious risk of owning a bloodthirsty hatchling—a cute animal that could one day grow up to be 14-feet long—might be part of the reason that an employee of another online retailer, Voracious Reptiles, agreed to speak to me on the phone but refused to give me his name. 

“You can sell to anybody out of state,” he insisted. “Baby alligators aren’t unlawful to sell or to have, no ma’am, that’s just not true.” 

“Do they get along with other pets?” I asked.

“What kinds of pets?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I allowed myself to engage in some wishful thinking. “A dog?”

“Keep them away from the dog,” he said grimly.

My phone calls to other exotic animal salespeople were equally disheartening. I called Backwater Reptiles to ask about their return policy, but they never called back, which makes sense considering the Better Business Bureau gave them a B+ rating. (They have received two negative reviews because their animals were sick or dead when they arrived at customers' homes.) 

At this point the Snow White Effect was in full swing, so I called up Diane Davis, an employee at Trophy Gators, a taxidermy place in Florida. Davis comes in contact with many alligator wranglers, and I assumed she could tell me more about the baby alligator peddlers I’d since found on Hoobly.com, a website that lets users post free classified ads. 

“I don’t really use the computer, honey,” Davis said. “But keep in mind that alligators don’t love anyone. They eat your hands off.”

“Would you show me where to get a little one?” I asked Davis.

“What you’re asking is illegal,” Davis snapped. “If you want a baby one so [sic] bad, why don’t you go buy a little head at the filling station down the street? And if that [sic] don’t satisfy you, see a doctor.”

Follow Kathleen Hale on Twitter. 

Photos by the author

In 2011, when the Occupy Movement was thought of  by middle America as a smorgasbord of drum circles, a photo emerged of a former police captain being arrested by the NYPD. That was Ray Lewis, 23 year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Force. The Occupy Movement turned him into some sort of legitimized and uniformed social advocate. He’s since traveled to various protests across the US, including the recent unrest in Ferguson. I caught up with him across the street from the QuikTrip where Mike Brown was killed.

VICE: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve seen in Ferguson?
Ray Lewis: Last night I saw officers not wearing name tags or badges. It’s unfathomable to me that officers, while being investigated, and with international attention, are still breaking the law, I can’t believe it. Officers on site are allowing it. That’s unheard of. If I ever saw that, the officer would be off the street in a second.

You’ve never seen anything like that before?
My officers knew better. They’d never think of doing something like that. The thing is, there’s no accountability. They get away with it here. That shows me one thing, it shows that nothing gets done to them.

Who did you see doing that?
It was the dark blue uniforms—either Ferguson or Highway patrol. Speaking of which, I’ve got the St. Louis police right over my shoulder here. I don’t know what they’re doing, but I’m standing right next to CNN. 

What do you think the solution in Ferguson is?
Well Police Chief Jackson has got to go. He will go. That’s one of the ways they’ll persuade the citizens. They’re going to have to get rid of his top commanders, and get new guys to come in. They’ll know that they have to do the job right. But [these officers] are going to say, “Now nobody is going to cover for me." They’re going to try and undermine the new command. It takes time to get around that.

The new commanders need to designate an officer as a community relations officer. He’s got to interact. The people get to know the officer, and the officer gets to know the people. Right now there is no interaction.

At Chief Jackson’s press conference where he announced the name of the officer [who shot Mike Brown], there were around 12 officers behind him—all white. If he had intermingled with the community in his four years, he’d have had 12 black people back there. 

Do you think affirmative action could work in police departments?
I’m not saying you have to have affirmative action, but you can accomplish the same thing by doing this: You have to have a police force that’s representative of your community. That does not just mean race. That means ethnicity, gender, and even sexual preference. You’ve got to advertise in black neighborhoods, over black radio stations, in gay magazines. Once you put this out there you’ll have people going hey, I didn’t know the police were hiring. They don’t do that here. 

What do you think of the militarization of police?
It’s appalling. I saw two huge armored personal carriers the other night, and it sent chills up my spine. Loaded with officers. Someone can pop up with a machine gun. 

Here you have a protest that’s very peaceful. You don’t need cops driving up and down the street. It’s an insult to the community. It’s not just a slap in the face to the community; it’s a punch in the face.

And the body suits they have, they look like robots. When you look like robots, you’re going to act like a robot. Your sensitivity is reduced. If you start dressing a police force like an occupying army they’re going to start acting like an occupying army. And we all know how occupying armies act. Look at the atrocities that this country has committed in occupied countries that we’re in now. You lose perspective. 

Did you see any militarization in your experience? 
Oh no, none whatsoever. Almost every problem, if you follow it back far enough, goes to corporate America. They saw what was happening in other countries, and then they saw what was happening with Occupy, and that woke them up, [they realized] that if economic times get worse we might have more people rioting and we might not be able to deal with it. Lets make sure the police are armed. 

The other way they make money is that eventually this equipment is going to become outdated, and they’ll need new equipment. There’s going to be pressure on police departments to stay modern. Plus they’ll need maintince. Who supplies this maintenance? Corporations. They’re going to make a fortune off this. 

Have you ever seen Inside Job?
Yeah, the one narrated by Matt Damon? Exactly, that motivated me. I got up, I said to my wife, “Why doesn’t somebody do something?!” I passed a mirror and I saw somebody. A week later I read about the Occupy movement. Here’s a movement already in progress and not only that, but I’ve got the uniform. 

The media were casting the Occupiers as dirty, filthy, yelling, screaming hippies. Well let them tell me to get a bath. Let them tell me to get a job. Boy, [the police] hated my guts down there. 

What other causes have you protested for?
I’ve been in Philadelphia a number of times for pro-marijuana and gay-rights rallies, rallies against fracking and companies that are destroying the air and water and raping the land. I’m very environmentally conscious in my protests.

Are you hopeful for the future of America?
No not at all, we’re going to get climate change and it’s going to change the earth, and it’s going to be too late to do anything about it. We’re past the tipping point. 

In 20 to 30 years, this country is going to be drastically changed, if it even exists. Everyone is going to be fighting each other for survival, the food that still exists, and the water that hasn’t evaporated. People think there will always be a Walmart, they’ll always have a big screen TV and an SUV. It’s very short sighted. 

You can find Captain Ray Lewis on Facebook. 

Follow Sam Koebrich on Twitter.

Photo by Flickr user Andy Wright

Ray Lesniak, a New Jersey state senator, recently told The Star Ledger that he plans on “placing my first bet at Monmouth racetrack on Sept. 8 for the Giants to beat the spread against the Lions on ‘Monday Night Football.’” He's demonstrating a hardcore commitment to his cause by saying he plans to commit what is currently a crime in New Jersey, the legalization of which is still heavily opposed by the likes of Chris Christie. But he's far from alone in trying to legitimize American sports betting.

Currently, the pastime Lesniak advocates comes complete with ex-mafiosi, uncles that’ll threaten to break your legs and goons who show up at your job and demand their cash. Where? Over the billions of servers and connections that make up the modern version of the Wild West.

The only type of legal sports betting in most U.S. states is fantasy sports games. To be legal, the game must be (1) based on skill, (2) based on the results of multiple players across multiple real-world games and (3) the prize amount must be fixed before the contest begins. There are a few federal laws that make just about everything outside of that illegal, so if you’re looking to bet on who’s going to win tonight’s Yankees game, and if they’re going to lose by one run or three, you have entered into the world of sports books, which are completely illegal outside of Nevada, Oregon, Montana and Delaware.

For the average Joe that doesn’t have the time or resources to go to Las Vegas and sit around and bet on sports all day, there are plenty of lines—another way of saying "the spread," the odds of a team winning what and by how many points—they can bet against, right from their bedrooms using their smartphone or computer.

If it’s online it’s gotta be legal, right? Not quite. 

Bookies and illegal betting have always existed and have mostly been controlled by the mafia—tropes we’ve seen in mass media since we were kids. What’s happening now is these guys wised up and moved their operations online. Take BetJupiter.com for example. Go ahead, click on it. 

You’ll see sportsbook, poker, casino and racebook at the top. When you click, you get this: 

There’s no “start here” button or “check the lines” option. When you look around the website, you realize that even though there’s a box for logging in with a username and password, there’s no option to sign up. 

The website claims to be a “leader in providing safe and secure online wagering" on NFL football, college football, horse racing, basketball, Major League Baseball, hockey, NASCAR, and boxing. Betting options include "spreads, totals, moneylines, quarter lines, half-time lines, futures, props and much more.” When you check out the terms and conditions, though, you see they are for “entertainment purposes only” and “may not be used in connection with any form of gambling or wagering.”

I talked to Les Barry*, who once used a site like this one, to find out how users get around the strange login system. Regular guys like Les across Long Island, “people at the deli, real estate agents, shit like that,” who have some extra money—who may or may not be connected to the mafia—set up websites like BetJupiter.com and act as sort of virtual bookies. They sit safely inside their homes and run the websites. In order to get people to go to their site to bet, they hire what are called “agents.”

Agents go out into the world and look for “people who want to bet.” They approach these people, let them know they can place sports bets, and if they’re interested, they’re given a special username and password so they can log in to the website directly. The idea is that this agent knows you directly, sort of recruited you for the site and will oversee you, for lack of a better word. So once you get your special username and password, you log in and to your delight, you already have $1,000 in credit to bet with. This is how they get you. 

Winnings are paid and losses are collected at the end of each week when the new lines come out. So you got your thousand dollars of fake Internet credit and decide to bet a grand on the Dolphins vs. Jets game. Because you bet with your heart and chose the Dolphins, they lose and so do you, which means your fake Internet money is gone and now you owe it to the real agent that introduced you to the website. That’s when things get kind of nasty. 

Screenshot of Vegas Insider, the standard for oddsmakers

“They know down the line people are going to lose more money than they win. There were times when I would be up during the week, I’d be up two, three or four thousand dollars and because I was addicted, I would just keep betting and losing it all at the end of the week. You find yourself chasing, that’s what it’s called. You lose more, and then...” Barry explained over the phone, trailing off towards the end. 

When it was time to pay up at the end of the week, he’d meet agents in shady locations like Starbucks. When Barry didn’t have the money, threats started coming in. 

“There was one time maybe four years ago when I lost like six grand and I had half of it, and I thought I’d be alright. I go to the guy’s house to bring it to him, and he’s like, ‘If you don’t fucking have the other three fucking thousand dollars by next Friday then that’s it’ and sure enough, every day I was getting threats. Text messages, phone calls, it’s an ongoing nightmare. That’s just how it is.”

No longer involved in sports betting, Barry said the only sports bets he’d make these days would be in Vegas where there is no credit system. While he did say it’s not as bad as the “old days” when people’s cars were getting destroyed and cousins would suddenly go missing, the money retrieval process can be humiliating. 

“They’ll show up at your job, they’ll embarrass you. They’ll show up at your house unannounced. You don’t need that. And it’s not like they’re just gonna forget.” They’ll just keep harassing you until you pay up. 

“These guys were seriously pressing me, showing up at places where I was out at night and stuff. I paid it off and got past it, you don’t need to fucking go to the gym and see someone you owe money to.”

On the other hand, getting your winnings can be as much of a nightmare as paying for your losses. Like any legally questionable business, word of mouth and reputation keeps them afloat. It's like when you’re looking for a new pot dealer, and you ask your other friends for a guy that’s going to sell you a decent dimebag of Matanuska Thunder Fuck, and isn’t going to rob you. This self-regulation doesn't always work.

“There was a time when I won thirty grand and on a computer screen, it said I was owed $30,000. I call the guy I signed up with and said, ‘You guys were supposed to pay me last Friday,’ and they tell you to go fuck yourself, and what do you do?” 

There’s another side to this business that is happening entirely offshore, mostly in Costa Rica. As opposed to BetJupiter, websites like SportsBetting.com and Sportsbook.ag are more legitimate. They don’t run on old-fashioned credit because bettors actually use a debit or credit card to make a bet (like in Vegas). You or I could sign up and, from New York to Florida, we could make sports bets all day long regardless of their legality. We wouldn’t have to worry about goons knocking on our door if our gambling got out of hand. We also wouldn’t be targeted by police because cops don’t care about the junkie, they’re only concerned with the supplier. 

As with any online business that's outside the law, authorities can only catch up so quickly. But they do eventually catch on. Barry told me a story about one of his friends who had $10,000 tied up with one of these offshore websites. One day out of nowhere, the website was shut down and he has yet to recuperate his funds. But they still exist, and are arguably thriving. Why is this? According to Lesniak, It’s an unenforceable law.

I spoke to Lesniak on the phone about this. "We can’t reach out to them or prosecute them because it’s off borders and outside of our jurisdiction," he told me.

the existing business is most likely entrenched, and likely defending the status quo however it can.

Barry was an eleventh-hour source for this article. The first person I was going to speak to, Jaques* (I coworker of mine for several years) took my phone call but when I started asking questions, clammed up. He seemingly hung up on me, and when I called back he didn’t answer. A little while later, I got a phone call from someone demanding to know who I was, who I worked for, and who was giving Jaques’ number out to me. Despite his Hollywood, Florida, area code, his thick accent told me he was a transplant from the New York/New Jersey area and he wasn’t very happy to know that I was asking questions.  

“It feeds the mouths of organized crime and it benefits companies that are operating outside of the jurisdiction of the United States." Lesniak told me. "Shocking, by the way, that organized crime still exists in the United States, but it does."

*Names have been changed

Follow Gabrielle Fonrouge on Twitter.

A sign stuck on the front of One Commercial Street

London is a landmark of inequality. The top tenth of the city’s workers earn around four and a half times as much as the bottom tenth, a bigger divide than anywhere else in the country, and that latter group are being pushed out of their homes to make way for new luxury apartments marketed to people who will never live in them. Social cleansing disguised as “regeneration” by developers and local governments.

There’s probably no more tangible example of this than the “poor doors” installed at One Commercial Street, a luxury apartment building in the East End. Home to a number of tenants receiving government benefits for their housing, as well as all the affluent city workers the whole thing was presumably built for, there are two separate doors to the building: one for the rich, one for the poor. The rich door involves smoked glass and a concierge; the poor door is off an alley favored by drunk weekend warriors stumbling around after getting a late night snack.

Since the recent exposure of this weird rich-poor segregation device, a number of anarchists, activists and aggrieved locals have been holding weekly protests outside the “rich door,” voicing their anger at this “class apartheid.” I went along to check out one of the demonstrations to see whether it really is a case of “one door for them and another for us.”

There were a couple of dozen agitators brandishing Class War banners proclaiming, “We are the fucking alternative,” “Women’s death brigade,” and—on the more militant end of the scale—“We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live”—a 1915 quote from firebrand Chicago anarchist Lucy Parsons, the Class War pin-up. With only a handful of exceptions, all of them were local residents.

Passing motorists honked and gave the thumbs up, while some local kids and an Imam en route to the Whitechapel mosque also voiced their approval. Admittedly, there wasn’t a lot of “devastation” going on, but anyone trying to enter the building through the rich door was jeered at and told to fuck off to the back door for a change.

Besides one little man in a suit, who thought the doors were a “brilliant” idea, no one—not even the security guards or the lone police officer sent along to monitor the protest—was arguing with the demonstrations’s objective. That's pretty understandable, really. As one person pointed out, even police officers used to have social housing in the area before the re-developers moved in.

The alley housing the "poor" door

One demonstrator, Patrick, took a brief rest from abusing the “rich scum” through his megaphone to spit: “The cost of a flat in One Commercial Street is around $7.5 million [a currently-listed penthouse is actually going for $5.5 million, but that’s obviously still a lot of money]. Forty percent of these flats are pre-sold to overseas investors, mainly from Saudi Arabia and Russia, and they then become an asset on their property portfolio, remaining empty, or rented out short-term to visitors on international banking business.

“Twenty percent of what remains is called ‘affordable housing’, but who the fuck from this borough can afford to pay $5,000 a month in rent? The rest of the occupants are social housing tenants who occupy floors 7–11 and have to enter round the back in a piss-stinking alley where people are always getting mugged, and you see junkies shooting up. Their elevator broke down this week and it took three days to get fixed. There’s elderly and pregnant women who use the social housing elevator, and they weren’t allowed to use the other one.”

Martin, who lives just around the corner in Aldgate, told me: “I had friends over from New York recently who couldn’t believe the change in the place since they were here only a few years ago. They said the way that gentrification is taking place, East London will soon become like Lower Manhattan, with all the existing inhabitants driven out, their homes replaced by multi-million pound apartments.

“We’re not doing this for the sake of it. All the new developments claim they will have parks, gardens and other ‘open spaces,’ and this helps grease their planning permission. But of course these areas will be out of bounds for any locals who don’t live in these flats or look wealthy enough that they could. We’re doing this now as we don’t want to be socially excluded from more of our own areas in the future. You just have to look at what happened to the (London neighborhood of) Isle of Dogs or Canary Wharf. There’s no trickle-down effect. There’s none of the promised jobs created for the locals. It’s just social cleansing.”

Tim, from Hackney, added: “Poor doors are a slap in the face to a part of London that has some of the highest levels of poverty in England, right next to the financial City, which robs us blind and gives nothing back. We want to inspire working class people to be more vocal and to make the rich residents feel embarrassed. And they fucking well should be!”

Ian Bone

Veteran anarchist and Class War founder Ian Bone—labeled “the most evil man in Britain” by the tabloids in the mid-1980s—was just as vitriolic as he’s always been.

“This is The Alamo for the working class of east London,” he said. “If people put up with ‘one door for the rich, another door for the poor,’ they’ll put up with fucking anything. If there’s ever been an issue that people should stand up and be counted on, it’s this disgrace.

“This used to be a working class area, and now the last of the working class living here are being humiliated—literally—every time they step over their doorsteps. Our protest is about the rich taking over London and treating all those who aren’t rich as second class citizens. We’re not taking this, and we’re going on the attack to drive the rats back down their holes.”

When I first saw The One I Love, I had zero expectations. I thought it was a romantic comedy with Mark Duplass (Safety Not Guaranteed, Jeff Who Lives at Home) and Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) by some dude named Charlie McDowell. The One I Love starts off like every romantic drama/comedy you’ve ever seen. But just 13 minutes into its running time, the film throws out all of your preconceived notions and becomes something indescribable. The problem with writing about the film is that most of the press have (in good faith) agreed to not reveal its central premise, because the premise is essentially a twist. While it’s annoying to write about something when you have to dance around the “twist,” I’m going to lay out the plot as best I can:

The One I Love centers on Ethan (Mark Duplass) and Sophie (Elisabeth Moss), a married couple on the brink of separation. Having not been the most faithful husband, Ethan struggles to keep Sophie interested after his improprieties. Awkward attempts to rekindle their once playful relationship by recreating past dates illustrate how far they have fallen and how trite their love life has become. At the urging of their therapist (Ted Danson), they escape to a beautiful vacation house for a weekend getaway to salvage what’s left of their relationship. The break from life’s distractions appears at first to be just what the doctor ordered... And then it gets pretty crazy. 

The film is the feature debut of Charlie McDowell, a man probably better known for his Twitter account and his first book, Dear Girls Above Me, than being Malcolm McDowell’s son and Ted Danson’s step son. As a director, he manages to combine a banal relationship drama with a Twilight Zone premise and elevates it into a high-concept romance tinged with humor and extraordinary pathos. What starts off as a relaxing and tranquil retreat soon spirals into a dizzyingly bizarre experience that forces the couple to reflect upon the complexities of their troubled partnership. Capturing remarkable and nuanced performances from his two leads, McDowell deftly turns a low-budget relationship study into a surprisingly complex head-trip where up is down and you are me and I could be anybody. 

I sat down with Charlie, Elisabeth, and Mark to discuss the film. Enjoy!

VICE: What’s going on guys?
Mark Duplass: Talking about ourselves, pontificating.

Specifically about yourselves? Not your characters or anything?
Duplass: Our characters, too.

Well I guess that’s all we have to talk about since we can’t talk about the twist.
Charlie McDowell: You’re really upset about this.

I am upset. I like the twist. So, in your own words…
Elisabeth Moss: You’re going to torture us.

In your own words…
Duplass: You’re going to make us dance like fucking monkeys!

In your own words, describe the film. Sell it without ruining it.
Moss: You sound so aggressive!
Duplass: I would say I don’t need to sell the movie, because the movie is fucking awesome. My take on talking about the movie is that basically, you know…
McDowell: [robotic voice] Let me give you the generic answer that we've given everyone else.
Duplass: Come see a romantic comedy, but be prepared to have it blown up pretty early on and keep an open mind about what it can be. At the end of the day, it’s this magical, strange film about relationships. We’re examining what it’s like to be a couple when the shine comes off and you’re trying to fight to keep it together. 

OK, you sold it better than I expected. How about you, Charlie. What does the director have to say?
Moss: So mean! "How about you? Now you try..." You know what? Don’t see the fucking movie! Don’t worry about it, OK?
McDowell: Was that not good enough? Don’t you have enough with that?

No.
Moss: Go see something else. I hear Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is fantastic.

Elisabeth, how would you describe your character and what makes you different in terms of expressing yourself in the relationship? 
Moss: For me, it is about a couple that’s going through a hard time. I always play characters that are very different from myself and this was the closest I got. But then there’s this whole thing that we can’t talk about that was extremely challenging as well. I was completely terrified before I started. I remember driving up to Ojai, California after wrapping Mad Men and thinking, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and these people are totally going to catch me and they’re going to think I’m an idiot and I’m not going to be able to do this and…
Duplass: They might kill me.

There are only three people in the entire movie and you’re alone in a house.
Moss: And I arrived in the dark.
McDowell: You only came because we promised we had pressed juice. That was the selling point. 

You’d just send her pictures of all of the juices as ransom.
Moss: They had to send pictures every 10 minutes to keep me driving.
Duplass: "If you don’t get here in one day, we drink all this fucking juice!"

What do you want in the one you love?
Moss: That’s what we talked a lot about in the beginning, before we started shooting, because we had to hit the ground running with only 15 days to film. I think everyone is different in a way, which is what makes it so hard, because everyone’s looking for different things. However, there were these essential things like: communication, honesty, trust, sense of humor. These were things we could all kind of agree on—universal things.

What about you, Mark?
Duplass: Well I’m married. We’ve been together for almost 13 years. One thing that has been so important in maintaining our relationship is self-awareness. Arguments are just going to come up. The thing I value the most is the ability to be in a fight and then one of us catches ourselves and is like, I’m just being totally defensive, I’m wrong, I’m sorry. That quality is what sustains relationships for me and I love it.

You’re the one who initially had the concept for the movie. Was it something you came up with in order to talk about your own issues?
Duplass: To be fair, it wasn’t that far developed. It was the kernel of an idea, a feeling, a sketch. I didn’t really understand what was in there and it was Charlie and Justin Ladder [screenwriter] who drew all of that stuff out.

How did you and Justin flesh all of that out?
McDowell: We took that idea that when you start a relationship, you present the best version of you. You sort of become a character. We really responded to that because it felt like something that everyone can relate to. From there, it was just about figuring out who the characters were and the plotting came second. We knew we had a location we could shoot at and part of it was just budgetary reasons. It kind of unfolded naturally once we had all of the pieces there and we could see what stuck.

The amazing thing about this film is how everyone comes at it from a different context. This film is a great microcosm of itself…
McDowell: See you can talk about the movie without revealing the twist...
Moss: Stop patronizing him!
All: [laughs]

You’re killing me. Don’t direct me, director.

Even if Charlie won’t tell you to see it, The One I Love is in theaters and is available on VOD platforms. It’s being released by Radius TWC and is a pretty awesome fucking movie. 

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The author and Assemblyman Steve Katz

I’m always surprised at how few people realize that we have legal medical marijuana in New York. Governor Cuomo signed it into law in July after months of deliberation in which he dismantled several of its essential tenets. It’s incredibly limited—smoking is barred in favor of vaping and edibles, there will only be 20 locations in the entire state that distribute cannabis, and only the extremely ill qualify to get it. But the fact remains that medical marijuana is legal here, and the state government has 18 months to implement it.

I’ve been following the story since January, and it didn’t look like it would happen until the very end. Even after it was passed and signed, it had no immediate effect on my life, so there was nothing to make it feel like a reality. I can still be arrested or ticketed for having weed on me, and I’d probably catch a beating and a charge for smoking it anywhere. It didn’t occur to me that New York made any progress on marijuana until I attended a cannabis industry luncheon in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago.

The National Cannabis Industry Association held the event at a restaurant called Humphrey. I pounded a few hits from my vape pen before walking in. Entering the bar, I realized that I had been here before. The last time I had a drink here, they called it Basque and had an 80s red and black sci-fi theme conceived by Syd Mead. It’s now transformed into a white tablecloth joint, and on that day weed entrepreneurs from every corner of the legal game filled the seats. There were lobbyists who schmooze politicians to get weed legislation passed, owners of growhouses vying to get cultivation licenses in newly legalized states, and founders of companies that make everything from edibles to optimized soil. One of the organizers led me to a table with all the other press people.

I was disappointed to find that the other reporters covering this thing were not the friendly, fun-loving ones I usually meet at cannabis events. Instead, they were a handful of young men and women who had the competitive glint in their eye that I imagine White House reporters invented. I smiled and introduced myself to the table, but the only person who reciprocated was a middle-aged woman from a women’s magazine. She seemed to realize upon arriving there that she wouldn’t get a relevant story out of it for her magazine, so she was just chilling until lunch ended. She asked me what I did, and I told her I started out as a music journalist but now I pretty much only write about weed. I ended my explanation with, “And I love weed, so it all works out great.” At this, a reporter from a well-known news site sitting at the table started chuckling. I immediately recognized the nature of this chuckle, and I was extremely peeved.

“You’re laughing because I said I love weed?” I asked her. Still laughing, she tilted her head to the side and patronizingly said, “It’s funny!” I was fuming, but I hid it well. I began, “Y’know, that attitude is exactly the problem with how people look at weed these days.” I tried really hard not to swear. “Shit” and “fuck” would not match the white tablecloths. “I don’t think you understand that cannabis is not the cartoonish, tie-dye goof drug that you think it is. It’s a medicine and a crop and a recreational drug, and it needs to be legal. A lot of people, plenty of whom are in this room, fought those stereotypes for a long time so we could get to a place where the concept of marijuana legalization wouldn’t be laughed out of the room. And here you are, laughing right at it like Harry Anslinger.” Her expression told me that she had no idea who Harry Anslinger was. That wasn’t her fault. Perhaps you have to have a particular interest this area to know the Hitler of marijuana by name. But she was unfazed by the rest of my rant and in fact continued laughing throughout.

It dawned on me that this is the type of reporter writing most of the weed news in America today. They don’t understand it, they certainly don’t use it, and when they can’t think of an intelligent reaction to it, they laugh. If you’re reading a local newspaper other than the Denver Post or the Seattle Times, you’re likely to see glaring errors. For example, referring to extractions as “making drugs” or reporting with the assumption that weed makes you hallucinate and become violent. That may sound like Reefer Madness era propaganda, but in fact reporters are using such fallacy as fact more and more as cannabis reportage increases. Often it comes with some admittance of the world’s changing attitude on cannabis and the newly discovered medical benefits before launching into a rhetorical discussion that all potheads put to rest long ago—“Marijuana is a revolutionary plant… but does it make you crazy?” No. What makes you crazy is believing everything you read about something even though you’ve never tried it.

The other reporters at the table seemed just as square as the laugher, and I remained silently annoyed until a familiar person sat down right next to me. After the frustration of realizing that reporters know nothing about weed, I was deeply relieved at the sight of a pro-legalization Republican politician—New York marijuana advocacy’s elusive snow leopard. This was Assemblyman Steve Katz, a veterinarian from Westchester who used to be completely against legalization until last year, when a cop pulled him over for speeding on the New York State Thruway and discovered a bag of weed in Katz’s car. The cop arrested him and charged him with possession. He also got a speeding ticket.

Katz dealt with his situation in a way that no one else, not Bill Clinton or Michael Phelps, had the balls to do. He decided to go full on pro-marijuana, becoming one of the most outspoken advocates of New York’s medical marijuana bill. He came to the luncheon to speak about the issue. A few months back, I interviewed him on the phone for High Times, so I introduced myself. “That was a good piece!” he said. The guy ate a lot of criticism for the weed incident, so he was glad to meet a reporter who applauded his change of heart on weed. We chatted for a few minutes until someone introduced Katz on the microphone and mentioned his “brush with the law.” When he heard that, Katz put on a sheepish smile and shuffled his notes. I leaned over to him and said, “It’s all good, sir. I recently had one of those brush too.” He raised his eyebrows with genuine concern and said, “Oh no, man,” the same way one of my friends would have. I told him I’d tell him about it after his speech.

I didn’t get a chance to tell Katz about my own experience that day, but I will tell it in an upcoming column so everyone can share in the ordeal.

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On the afternoon of August 9, police officer Darren Wilson shot to death 18-year-old Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Today, after over two weeks of protests and police action in the wake of his killing, his funeral will take place.

Militants from Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian jihadist group. Photo by Benjamin Hiller

Anand Gopal’s job is to report from the front lines of conflict. He spent years as the Wall Street Journal’s reporter in Afghanistan, and in a few months he will be heading to Iraq to take stock of the chaos enveloping the region.

In the wake of the Islamic State’s murder of photojournalist James Foley, VICE checked in with Gopal to find out what he thinks of the situation unfolding in Iraq and the risks inherent in reporting from a war zone.

VICE: You spent years living in and reporting from Afghanistan, first for the Christian Science Monitor and then for the Wall Street Journal. The last reporter the Journal had covering Afghanistan before you was Daniel Pearl, who was murdered by Pakistani militants in much the same way James Foley was by the Islamic State. Later this year, you’ll be traveling to Iraq to cover the turmoil there. Your job obviously requires you to take significant risks with potentially lethal consequences. Do you think of your work this way? Or do you become inured to the dangers it entails?
Anand Gopal: I have not become inured to the dangers, because the moment you do that, that’s when you’re the most vulnerable. Although I work in war zones, and I work in places that are considered dangerous, I actually take quite a bit of precautions when reporting. I make sure I know an area very well; I make sure I have a very trusted network of contacts. I tend not to take particular risks that some other types of journalists take—particularly photojournalists, I think, tend to take way more risks than print reporters do, because they need to be in the middle of the firefight to take the photos. I’m always more interested in the background to the fighting, the political underpinnings of the fighting, so I tend not to be the one to run to the scene of an explosion, whereas photojournalists tend to do that.

So, of course there are risks, but I try to mitigate those risks through preparation and through the types of stories that I pursue.

You’ve interviewed both foot soldiers and leaders in the Taliban, and Afghan warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. These were, obviously, dangerous men steeped in brutal violence and war. From a Western vantage point, however, the Islamic State seems as if it belongs to a different category altogether. The IS bloodlust seems to go even further than that of the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the other radical Islamic groups that the US has been at war with for the past 13 years. Is that an accurate description in your view, or is there a hype factor at work here?
To some extent it is accurate to say that ISIS, or the Islamic State, is quite different from the Taliban. Different from al Qaeda as well, but especially different from the Taliban, for a couple of reasons—one of which is that the Taliban’s goals have always been nationalistic, in the sense that they claim to be fighting on behalf of Afghans against a foreign occupier. They claim to have the extent of their political ambitions being the return of Afghanistan to the status quo before the 2001 American invasion. And so in that sense they’re very much sort of focused on Afghanistan, and also—something I’ve learned from talking to Talib fighters—is that the things that propel them to fight are very local, very parochial. It’s about some valley that you live in. There happens to be a warlord there who’s predatory or who causes human-rights violations, and you’re reacting against this warlord. And that’s really the extent of it, and you go and join the Taliban. So it’s a very locally oriented movement, whereas ISIS is not.

What’s very interesting about ISIS is that they seem to reject the international order altogether, and I think that’s very unique and different. Even when the Taliban were in power, they sought international approval to an extent. I don’t think ISIS is necessarily more bloodthirsty than the Assad regime, or the Taliban, or al Qaeda, but what’s different about ISIS is that they are very happy to show their atrocities. They post it on Twitter. They put it on YouTube. And it’s because they have basically rejected the international order, and they’re rejecting working with the international order, and claiming their own order, an Islamic order harking back to the caliphate days, and because of that it seems like they’re much more bloodthirsty than any other group. But groups that are in power, including the Syrian regime, and groups that are in opposition, including elements of al Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban, can be just as bloodthirsty, except that they try to minimize their atrocities; they don’t want the world to know about them. They hide their atrocities, whereas ISIS, because they reject the international order, they have a completely different strategic logic. So they promote their atrocities, and because of that we tend to think that ISIS is somehow uniquely bloodthirsty, more bloodthirsty than any other group out there, but I don’t think that’s actually the case.

Journalist Anand Gopal. Photo via Brave New Films

On the surface, last week’s gruesome murder of James Foley seemed to be either a warning to the US to stay out of Iraq or a provocation to join the fight. But was the intended audience really the West, or could it have been aimed at a domestic Iraqi audience for recruitment purposes?
Well, it’s possible that it was both simultaneously. I think there’s less sympathy for the killing of an American in parts of Iraq, given Iraq’s recent history with the United States, than there would be for the killing of Iraqis or Syrians, which is also happening on a daily basis via ISIS. So it’s very plausible that on the one hand it was something that was intended for a local audience in terms of recruitment, but at the same time I do think it’s hard to deny that in some way it was intended for the West as well.

There’s a line of thought out there, which I think is plausible, which says that ISIS and its previous incarnation, going back to 2004, 2005, 2006, that what they were very good at was operating in a state of war—at sowing chaos, and using that chaos to draw recruits and function as a group. And you could see this as part of that strategy. They’re still operating in a state of war. Their efforts to actually build a state, even in places like Rakkah in Syria, aren’t as extensive as you may see in in other places, like if you compare it with Hezbollah, and the mini-state that Hezbollah has in Lebanon, or some other Islamist groups.

As monstrous as the Islamic State may be, its success is fueled by legitimate grievances on the part of a Sunni population that has been relegated to second-class status by the Maliki government, a government that came into power as a result of the United States' recklessly short-sighted invasion and occupation of the country. Now we’re essentially being dared by IS to intervene again in what has become a three-way civil war. Is there any kind of constructive role the US can play in this nightmare scenario, military or otherwise, or should the Obama administration stay as far away from the situation as possible?
I don’t think there’s a constructive role that the US can play. It’s important to keep in mind that the US is indirectly responsible for the very existence of ISIS because of its invasion, because of the chaos that was sowed by the invasion and because of the civil war that was ultimately caused by the United States’ invasion. So number one, given that, and number two, given the fact that it was US partners that laid the groundwork for Sunni disillusionment that ISIS was able to take advantage of, I don’t think the US has a very good track record in Iraq, and so I would be very wary of US involvement.

But beyond that, also, there’s really a dearth of good options. It’s not like a foreign power, a major power like the US can come in there and somehow defeat ISIS without causing unintended consequences or second- and third-order effects of the sort that gave rise to ISIS in the first place. I think if the Syrian Revolution were to change course, which unfortunately seems like it’s not very likely right now, but if it were to, if the less radical Islamists and the non-Islamist forces were able to become stronger, that might change the dynamic, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot that can be done. It seems like there would be a lot of bloodshed for many years to come.

What we’re seeing, more broadly speaking, is the fact that we’ve had 30, 40, 50 years of dictatorship, secular dictatorship across the Arab world, in which you’ve had very weak left forces that can articulate a vision of social justice that’s also secular. Those forces have been extraordinarily weak, in large part because of these dictatorships, because of Arab nationalism and Baathism and a lot of these ideologies that garb themselves in left-wing rhetoric but actually, in practice, are very oppressive. And so I think that robs a lot of genuine social justice and left-wing political movements of their legitimacy. And instead what you have is left-wing dictatorships or Islamism as the alternative.

And so after the Arab Spring, the secular dictatorships have been overthrown for the most part, or they’ve been attempted to be overthrown, and there’s nobody else to fill that vacuum except for the Islamists, and so that’s what’s playing out across the Arab world.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to that. It’s a generational thing. It’s going to take rebuilding, rediscovering these forms of politics and resistance that don’t have to do with Islamism and don’t have to do with Baathism and these other ruinous ideologies. It’s going to take a lot of time, and unfortunately, it’s going to be very bloody.

Portraits of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad in Damascus. Photo by James Gordon

You’ve written, of Syria, that there is “a powerful pull in the West to order a messy reality into a simple and self-serving narrative.” Do you see that process unfolding in media accounts of what’s happening in Iraq today?
Certainly. I think for one thing, people have forgotten the history. The debate right now, sadly, is whether Obama pulling out in 2010–2011 is what caused ISIS to grow and become strong, or whether not arming the Syrian rebels is what allowed ISIS to grow and become strong. But these are very selective and simplistic views because we have to take the longer view, which is the fact that this is all taking place within the context of the radical upheaval that the US caused by its intervention and occupation of Iraq. And that has to be the starting point to begin to understand this.

And secondly, people tend to think of ISIS as purely evil. I see that word a lot. And obviously they’re heinous and barbaric and I abhor them. But we don’t get very far by thinking of them as purely evil. We need to really think about what are the social origins, what are the political roots of ISIS. What are the conditions in Iraq, particularly after 2008 and 2009, that led to the feelings of disillusionment and disenfranchisement on behalf of Sunni populations and the anger toward the Maliki government that allowed a group like ISIS to become strong in the first place?

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A protest outside of a jail in Lindsey, Ontario where many migrant detainees are being held. Image via End Immigration Detention.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Working Group on Arbitrary Detention called on Canada to release an immigrant jailed for eight years without charge, and to set a maximum time limit for this type of detainment.

Michael Mvogo has been in jail for eight years because the government can’t figure out how to deport him. He arrived in Canada in 2005 with a fake U.S. passport but admitted years later to being from Cameroon. The U.S., Cameroon, Haiti, and Guinea have all said ‘no’ to Canada’s requests they take Mvogo in. Never charged with a crime here, Mvogo is held under laws that let Canada detain migrants who they can’t identify, or who pose a “flight risk.” There is no time limit on how long someone like Mvogo can be jailed.

Last year alone, 10,088 people were detained this way, according to Pierre Deveau, a Canadian Border Agency Services spokesperson. Detention “should be the last resort and should be permissible only for the shortest period of time,” the UN opinion said. “Alternatives to detention should be sought wherever possible.”

The UN opinion has no legal bearing in Canada, Deveau pointed out. “Canadian officials will carefully review this opinion and recommendations and will respond in due course,” he said in an email to VICE.

In the past ten years, about 80,000 people have been imprisoned this way, according to Syed Hussan of End Immigration Detention, the advocacy group that filed the complaint to the UN as part of a widespread strike against the detention system. (The government response to the strike was to deport a few of the key organizers, move others to different prisons across Ontario, and put those on hunger strike in solitary confinement, Hussan said.) There are jailed migrants in over 142 facilities across the country, including maximum-security prisons.

None of the reasons Canada is using to justify Mvogo’s detention are legitimate, the UN said. He should be released immediately and compensated for the eight years of his life lost, the body recommended.

Instead of releasing Mvogo, the Canadian government hit back at the UN. “It is time the UN and its committees turn full attention to the true humanitarian crises of the world rather than spending time and resources scrutinizing modern, rights-based democracies,” a Public Safety spokesperson told The Canadian Press.

By rejecting UN recommendations, Hussan said Canada “is choosing to continue to be a rogue nation.”

In the U.S. and across Europe, there’s a time limit on immigration detention. So if the government can’t deport a person within, say 90 days, they have to release them. This is one of the stipulations the UN said Canada should add to their program. On top of that, the government should also create a proper judicial review process for deportation and detention decisions.

Currently, any migrants who fail to meet our complex immigration requirements can be detained if the government can’t verify their identity, or thinks they may not show up to be deported. Every month, the jailed person gets to appear before an appointed member of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s Immigration Division, where they have about a 15 percent chance of being released. This is how the government sidesteps putting a time limit on detention—they insist they’re only really detaining people for one month at a time. Months add up though, and once you’ve been held for more than six months, your chance of being released falls to almost zero.

You can appeal to the Federal Court (if they grant you permission to do so) but if you win there, that simply means you get to go back to the administrative review and ask them to reconsider their decision. Mvogo has never been granted permission to appeal. “It’s such a broken system that the UN actually approached it as if there was no judicial review,” Hussan said.

In recent years, the government has given itself more power to take away people’s immigration status while increasing deportation and detention for those without it, according to a report from End Immigration Detention. The Canadian Border Service Agency’s budget for immigration enforcement more than doubled—from $91 million to $198 million—in only two years. While cutting funds to settlement agencies that help immigrants, the government’s putting more money into catching those who break the rules and locking them up.

“It’s a continued disgrace,” Hussan said. “Living without status in this country is under administrative law, it’s equivalent to something like a parking permit. The fact that the response is deportation is abhorrent… but then on top of deportation to indefinitely detain people? It should be impossible… there’s no trial. There’s no end in sight.”
 

@emmapaling

The author in his delinquent days, with a hairstyle straight from The Warriors.

When I was 17 years old, I was arrested at school along with my younger brother and our friend. The police officers divided the three of us up and interviewed us separately. We were read our rights, and then interrogated at school.

The police officer who interrogated me made it clear that I was going to prison. Not only was I in possession of felony levels of LSD at the time, but I’d also dealt various drugs to my classmates, their friends, and underclassmen as young as 14. I was 17, and the officer said, “You’ll be charged as an adult. You’ll face at least four different felonies—multiple counts on each—and those will guarantee a prison term. You’ll go to Oregon State Penitentiary.”

I was scared. I considered myself tough in comparison to kids in my high school and people at large, but I had a friend who went to prison and I knew it was a different world. Compared to the average inmate at the state prison, I wasn’t tough at all. I was little and soft and pink.

My brother and I spent a week under an agreed-upon house arrest at a friend of my father’s. We waited for our hearings and to be remanded to custody. But none of those things never happened.

Before I faced a pre-trial hearing, my father spoke to the district attorney. They worked out a deal in which I would participate in a nine-month-long Life Challenge parole and rehabilitation program as a diversion. In exchange for my felony charges, I would serve nine months in an East Texas facility. I’d heard enough stories about the penitentiary, so I took the deal.

But three weeks later, I escaped from the East Texas Life Challenge adult facility where I’d shared a cabin with multiple murderers, a rapist, and a school bomber, all of whom were on parole from the Texas State Pen.

I ran, knowing that the Sheriff’s Department would be called as soon as I left. But since my charges were in the state of Oregon, and not Texas, I hoped that I’d have enough time to get away before everything was figured out.

I hitchhiked all day and ended up sleeping under a bridge in Dallas. By the next night, I’d taken up residence in the city’s Greyhound station where I could eat free saltines and ketchup packets and sleep during the day in the bus terminal’s padded chairs. At night, I wandered the streets of Dallas, napping on warm sidewalk vents if I felt safe enough to close my eyes. After two weeks, a friend wired me money and I took a long bus ride home to Oregon.

That’s where the story gets strange. I’d been arrested, made a deal with the DA, and reneged on that deal. I hadn’t done my time. I hadn’t completed my nine months. So, back in Oregon, I awaited my charges from the DA. I knew the other possibility was that a patrol car could pick me up and drag me to the Lane County Jail.

I waited, laid low, and waited some more.

Finally, I got a letter from Lane County. I was to report to the juvenile detention center in Eugene on a specified date. I didn’t know what would happen once I got there, but I was happy to see that it was the juvenile detention center. That meant that my charges weren’t going to be a part of the adult system.

I wasn’t afraid of Juvi. I’d done reform school in Tennessee. I’d seen a lot of violence. I’d participated in a lot of violence—I’d been hurt and hurt other people. Kids didn’t scare me. So, on the requested date, I showed up.

And you know how many days I spent at that juvenile detention center? Just one.

I was promised prison at my arrest. I never even went to trial. My father wasn’t wealthy enough to pay anyone off—so that possibility is out of the question—but I do wonder what might’ve happened to me if I weren't a middle class kid who got pretty good grades and earned National Merit Commended Scholar status.

More than that, I wonder, still: What if I wasn’t white?

I know that’s not a question we’re supposed to ask in this country post-1968, but, well, I have to ask.

The author (right) with his brother and a very smiley girl

I was watching the series premiere of The Wire the other night (I’m that far behind on HBO television shows—12 years back), and I recognized my brother and me in the West Side Pit boys. My brother and I carried handguns, dealt drugs, sawed off shotguns, hit people with various objects, dodged police, ran scams, and backed each other up. People didn’t fuck with us. By my senior year in high school, anyone who knew us was afraid of what we might do if they made us angry, so they stayed clear. And to be honest, I never knew exactly what I’d do myself—what I was capable of.

One night I was really high and tapping an axe against a high school football player’s car window while he and his girlfriend huddled, terrified, inside the vehicle. And I didn’t even question why I was there. That seemed like a normal thing to do on a Friday night. Of course I was tapping an axe against his car window. He was a dick, so why wouldn’t I? He had it coming.

I made a lot of bad choices, and when I was finally caught and arrested, I wasn’t held accountable. I wasn’t tried and sentenced. And I have to wonder, if I was in the West Baltimore projects, would I have been treated the same way that I was treated in suburban Oregon? Or if I was a young black male instead of a young white male, would I have been tried in a court of law? Would I have been charged as the arresting officer promised?

One morning in Tennessee—one morning only—I sold speed, ran a car off the road, shoved a gun in a stranger’s face, and even littered out my car window. Finally, my car was pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. But none of those previously-mentioned illegal activities were the reason for the deputy’s traffic stop.

The reason we were pulled over? Probably because one of my friends in the car was black. The sheriff’s deputy was wondering what he was doing, why he was in the car, what he was up to. Never mind that I had the gun and the drugs on me at the time, in the driver's seat. The deputy didn’t even search me. He barely looked at me.

Four years ago, before I published my memoir, my book editor called me from New York and said, “Are you willing to be fired from your job?”

“What?”

She said, “You’re a teacher, and so many things you did as a teenager were illegal and violent. And even the things that you didn’t pull off still included murderous intent, murderous thoughts. So I’m just telling you: You might be fired after this book goes to print.”

It's true: Along with being a former drug dealer and violent teen, I’m a teacher—a high school teacher.

My argument for holding the job that I do is that yes, I made so many mistakes in my past, but I’ve never hid from them. I went to college after, earned a degree, and then got a master’s. I acknowledge my mistakes and say in interviews that my bad choices probably help me relate to my students. I’ve never pretended to be perfect, and that’s part of what you get when you hire me. I’m an imperfect person, imperfect but empathetic.

After my memoir went to print, I wasn’t fired. In fact, my superintendent and my assistant superintendent didn’t read the book. They didn’t even read about the book. I’m not even sure that they knew my memoir existed. So there was no buzz, no push to get me fired. A writer for a local newspaper suggested that I be fired, but apparently no one in the school district read that article either. So I kept my job.

I’m thankful that I wasn’t fired when my memoir was published. I’m thankful that I’ve been given opportunities and trust at my job. But gratitude also comes with a painful partner—the realization that not everyone is afforded the opportunities that I am, that not everyone is forgiven the way that I’ve been forgiven. The grace I’ve experienced is a privileged grace.

So I ask the question: Would I be a teacher today if I weren't white? Given the nature of my past crimes, would I be allowed to stand in front of young, impressionable students? Would I be given autonomy and respect?

I hope so. I hope my opportunities would be the same because I’m nothing like my younger self. I’m not violent. I don’t deal or use drugs anymore. I’m generally honest and responsible, as I’m sure many former delinquents of all backgrounds are. I believe in the possibility of redemption because I understand it on a personal level.

I was profiled once. It was long after I'd stopped committing crimes. I was in my mid-20s. A teacher, a father, with no police record. But on this particular day, I committed the crime of driving by a police officer while wearing a flat-billed hat cocked to the left. Definitely off-center. It was the hat equivalent of a hoodie.

The police officer pulled me over but refused to speak to me. I waited for a half hour, then called out the window, "Sir, please talk to me about this traffic stop."

He didn't. He called back-up. I waited another 15 minutes and, finally, got out of the car.

I know I should have stayed in my vehicle, but instead, I walked back towards his police cruiser, held my hands high above my head and yelled at him: "Sir, it is your job to tell me why you're holding me!"

The police officer drew his gun. He used his service weapon to intimidate me back into my vehicle.

At the time, and later, interviewing with Internal Affairs, I considered myself unlucky. But now I see it differently. What if I wasn't white? What if, as a black man being illegally stopped by a police officer, I got fed up, left my vehicle, and walked toward a police cruiser while yelling at the officer? Would I have been shot? Would the shooting have later been justified? What if I'd had my hands in the air to show that I was unarmed in, say, Ferguson, Missouri?

Peter Brown Hoffmeister’s memoir about his druggy, violent high school days, is titled The End of Boys. 

Follow him on Twitter or on Facebook.

Canada may have to have its Timmies the BK way. Image via WikiMedia Commons.
The maple-flavoured, red and white pastiche of Canada’s 147-year old cultural identity, has been threatened by America’s foremost burger monarchy.

News broke yesterday that Burger King—the home of elongated chicken sandwiches, the onion ring option, and their illustrious Whopper brand—is sizing up Tim Horton’s for acquisition. Even teasing the press with this potential burger/coffee coupling has spiked both companies’ stocks, and should the two get in bed together, their unholy alliance will have a market cap of $18 billion, and this new Frankenstein company will become the third largest fast-food seller on the planet.

Obviously, Canadians are distraught over the potential of losing their great coffee icon to the merciless Burger King, which has been illustrated by a recent Toronto Star poll that shows 57 percent of its readers think that such a hostile takeover would “dilute Tim Horton’s Canadian-ness,” and further wound our fragile beaver-loving identity.

Screenshot via Torstar.

It seems as if the Burger King himself is interested in Canada’s most patriotic coffee brand, so that he can stash his millions and millions of greenbacks in our low-tax loonie-bunkers, otherwise known as Canadian banks.

Obama himself has spoken out against tax-haven maneuvers like the one Burger King is proposing, as it funnels money straight out of the US and away from the prying eyes of the IRS. The Burger King is, of course, immune to the laws of mortal men like Barack, so Barry’s scolding finger-wagging is not likely to prevent the almighty hamburger lord from touching down on Canadian soil, to gain dominion over all of our double-doubles and Timbits.

This isn’t the first time, however, that Tim Horton’s has sold a bit of its soul to a cow-slaughtering, American burger-merchant. In 1995, Wendy’s acquired Tim Horton’s, which sparked a broken-hearted outcry from Canadian journalists everywhere. Writing for the Toronto Star, Susan Katsner decried the merger: “Shall we examine Tim Hortons selling out to Wendy's, the spectacle of another great Canadian icon, one more priceless chocolate coconut cream-filled dutchie glazed cruller Timbit of our precious heritage, gone to Yankee burgerfat.”

Tim Horton’s also solicited the creamy, American sugar-treats of Coldstone Creamery when it injected their frozen milky goodness into 100 of their stores back in 2009. This appeared to be a case of insecurity over Tim Horton’s own frozen-sugar product, the Ice Capp, which has surprisingly not been immortalized on any Canadian currency as of yet. Earlier this year, Tim Horton’s kicked Coldstone Creamery out of their franchise for good, presumably after realizing that Canadians care more about their Ice Capps than almost any other earthly pleasure.

So, sure, this is far from the first time that Tim Horton’s has got into bed with an American food corporation that has made bazillions of dollars hocking burgers or frozen treats to the good, non-Canadian people of the US of A. But even still, Canadians are feeling a wave of sheer terror over the possibility that the next time they order a double-double, they may only be a stone’s throw away from a Burger King restaurant, whose Whopper odour will be floating through the air, coating that morning’s batch of Timbits with its insidious, beefy smell.

America's foremost burger monarchy welcomes Canada with open arms. Image via WikiMedia Commons.
Whether or not the Burger King realizes he is jeopardizing the very thing that holds us Canadians together, through his selfish tax-evasion needs, is a whole other issue. The King was unavailable for comment at the time of publication, but if he were to be asked about his takeover of Canada’s most nationalistic caffeine seller, he probably would have laughed a deep, hearty laugh, before yelling “Have it Your Way, Canada!” as he throws onion rings and free Whoppers down on us from a blimp.

In all seriousness, Tim Horton’s could benefit in a big way from getting a new burger-daddy. For one, Tim’s could get their coffee in all BKs worldwide, which would effectively act as a Canadian-culture spreading endeavour, more powerful than the combined effect of every Canadian arts grant ever given to our country’s most influential ambassadors.

So don’t be afraid of our new burger overlord, Canada! I, for one, welcome our new King. And look out for the new Stars and Stripes Timbit and the Abe Lincoln Ice Capp, coming to each and every Tim Horton's very soon.


@patrickmcguire

Lil' Flea at his home on the Southside of Houston. All photos via Peter Beste.
Houston’s impact on 21^st century rap is virtually unprecedented. One has to look no further than its pronounced influence on two of the genres biggest stars—Drake and A$AP Rocky—or the obsessive remix culture spawned out of DJ Screw’s legendary screwed and chopped style—to see its wide-ranging and lasting cultural impact.

Nine years ago, photographer Peter Beste set out to document the regional powerhouse turned international phenomenon. He tapped his pal and writer Lance Scott Walker, to conduct interviews documenting the history of the city's regionally self sufficient music industry, slang, drugs, and geographic tumult.

Over much of the next decade, the duo spent countless hours immersing themselves in Houston rap’s rich culture, tracking down the rappers, drug dealers, producers, managers, strippers, radio and club personalities, pimps, and various hangers-on who witnessed and helped build the Bayou City’s local rap scene. The research resulted in two books: Houston Rap Tapes, a collection of the interviews conducted during that nine year period, and Houston Rap, a photobook interspersed with firsthand accounts of the community and culture that spawned national stars like Lil’ Flip, Mike Jones, Chamillionaire, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Pimp C and Bun B, as well as many others who were integral to the city’s local rap infrastructure but never achieved nationwide success.

Using the music industry as its prism, Houston Rap takes an unflinching look at the music scene and the city’s rapid march towards gentrification that left many of the neighborhoods focused on in the book (Third Ward, Fifth Ward, South Park, the Southside) irrevocably altered.

During a talk and signing at Toronto’s Type Books last month, Lance discussed the difficulties of penetrating Houston’s insular scene as one of two white guys with photography equipment and tape recorders travelling to places integral to Houston’s rap scene, like its network of afterhours strip clubs. “We would go in there and get a bunch of strange looks,” he told a packed Toronto crowd. “We had to the get the promoter to tell the DJ to make an announcement saying, ‘OK. The two whiteboys in here are the owner’s personal photographers. They’re going to be walking around, taking pictures and asking questions,’ before anyone would open up to us.”

With Houston Rap only featuring a fraction of thousands of images that Peter shot over nearly a decade, each with its own compelling backstory, we asked Lance to select ten of his favourite photographs from the book and tell us how they came together. He did us one better by offering ten previously unpublished photographs and the stories behind them. The recollections begin on the next page. Photographs by Peter Beste, words by Lance Scott Walker. Enjoy!

Point Blank, a.k.a. The Bull (middle) and Egypt E of The Terrorists (second from right) at Houston's MacGregor Park for the 2005 SPC Weekend, an annual event held in the legendary park from which South Park draws its name. The South Park Coalition (SPC) is a group of artists some 100-strong who come together every September around founder K-Rino's birthday, for a Saturday night club show and then the park on Sunday afternoon, with turntables set up right next to the basketball court. Around sunset, rappers take a microphone and do live sets right there on the sidewalk.

This was Peter's first shoot with Bun B, sometime in early 2005. Taken in Midtown Houston, in what was known as Vietnamtown before gentrification more than doubled its population in the last decade. Around the time of this photo, Houston had officially designated the area "Little Saigon," but developers had already begun to claw away at its landscape. Blocks of apartment complexes, condos, and strip centers have chased out Vietnamese businesses that have been there since people started immigrating to Houston from Vietnam in the mid-1970s. There are still some Vietnamese sandwich shops, restaurants and noodle houses, but a lot of Midtown now looks like it was built in the last 15 years—and it was! Despite those keys in his hand, this is not Bun's car.

In the fall of 2006, VICE came to Houston and ran around town with Peter and me for a week. Our main tour guide (to the left here) was Kyu Boi, a marginally known member of the South Park Coalition who was close to DJ Screw and knew everybody on the Southside. He introduced us to a lot of folks, and was the first one to take us to South Park's housing projects. His storytelling and outgoing nature landed him lots of screen time in “Screwed In Houston,” the eventual documentary produced by VBS. To the right is South Park Coalition founder K-Rino, who is one of Houston's most prolific and universally respected rappers. He played an important part in the VBS documentary and was a huge voice in both of our books. 

The first time I interviewed Screwed Up Click rapper Lil' Keke, it was at the home of longtime Swishahouse art director Mike Frost, who had just ordered pizza, so Keke did the entire interview eating pizza. The second time I interviewed him, it was as part of a panel in front of an audience of hundreds at the University of Houston, and he brought a fruit cup and a bottle of Sprite onstage. On the day of this shoot, he only smoked.



This is Lil' Flea of the Houston group Street Military at his home on the Southside in the very first photoshoot Peter did for the project. One of the photos from these sessions appears in Houston Rap Tapes. Street Military was an early '90s group of rappers from different parts of Houston, who all went on to notable solo projects after the group disbanded (one member, Nutt, died, and another, Pharoah, is in prison). KB Da Kidnappa and DJ Icey Hott are the two most active members of Street Military. Both appear in Houston Rap, as do transcriptions of letters Pharoah and I wrote back and forth from prison.

Lockwood Skating Palace in Fifth Ward is one of the most important landmarks in Houston's rap history. Many artists made their first live appearance here, and it has served as the site of countless battle rap competitions over the years, as that was the way early Houston rappers cut their teeth to get into the scene. Trae tha Truth performed at the skating rink on the night this photo was taken in 2008 (a picture from his set that night, onstage with the late Money Clip D, ended up in Houston Rap Tapes) and gave away free bicycles to the kids.

This is Swishahouse founder DJ Michael '5000' Watts at the same Uptown landmark that appears in Lil’Keke’s video for “Southside,”taken not long after Keke signed with a subsidiary of the Northside label. Swishahouse long ago grew out of its late '90s reputation as the Northside's answer to DJ Screw, launching the careers of Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, and Slim Thug before each went on to have an impact in the mainstream rap world. Swishahouse is the only record label archived at Rice University in Houston. 



To the left is O.G. Style, an old school rapper from Fourth Ward whose first album didn't come out until 1991, when Rap-A-Lot released "I Know How To Play 'Em," but was an early pioneer in Houston who was a regular on the Saturday morning hip-hop radio show Kidz Jamm. Back then, he was known as Prince Ezzy-E, but everybody in his neighborhood knew him by his face anyway. Peter was taking his picture in front of a Fourth Ward store when the gentleman with the golf club walked right into the frame and proclaimed himself the "Tiger Wood of the hood," wanting to be in a photo with the Bayou City legend. Peter obliged, and also took a photo of ‘Tiger Wood’ by himself that ended up in Houston Rap. O.G. Style died in early 2008 from a brain aneurysm.



Northside rapper Paul Wall makes a sandwich for his daughter at their house in Kingwood, just north of Houston. Don't let the bling fool you. That's a real dude. Because of his tours overseas entertaining troops and the trips he took to Sierra Leone to witness firsthand the realities of the diamond conflict (Paul is the public face of a Houston jeweler), his interview in Houston Rap Tapes is one of the most wide-ranging of any I conducted for the books. 

One of the biggest champions of the H-Town underground to emerge in recent years has been Optimo Ram, whose online radio station plays Houston rap music around the clock. This photo was taken in Second Ward, where Ram began broadcasting from in 2010. 

An unguarded moment between old friends Bun B and the late Pimp C at his mother's house in Port Arthur just a few months before his death in 2007. Their group Underground Kingz (UGK) was from Port Arthur, but Pimp C and Bun B are identified with the Houston movement because of their love for the city and their huge influence on its growth as a rap powerhouse. There were plenty of late Houston artists we didn't get to meet before we started the books (Fat Pat, Big Mello, DJ Screw) whose personalities were the stuff of legend, but waiting for Pimp C to be released from prison at the end of 2005 and then meeting him a few months later was the closest we came to that kind of magic. Easily the most electric voice of anyone I spoke with during the nine years we worked on the books. The night we finally did meet, UGK was set to play a reunion show at a huge club on the Westside. During one of the opening acts, a brawl broke out near the stage and the place went wild and emptied out into the street. The photographer from the Houston Chronicle I was with got hit in the head with a microphone, which he picked up off the ground and took home with him.

To purchase the Houston Rap photo book, click here. To purchase Houston Rap Tapes, click here. To learn more about Lance and Peter's work, visit them here or here.


@jordanisjoso