Photo via Wikimedia User Ebyabe

We had only taken about 15 steps into the Lake Helen-Cassadaga cemetery before we saw the men coming down the hill. Some, actually, were boys. It was about 9 PM and very dark, but none of them looked like a police officer. We were suburban teenagers there for a Halloween scare, but it suddenly seemed like we were about to become characters in a horror movie.

I turned on my heels and bolted toward Kicklighter Road, where my friend's white Mercedes station wagon was parked. No one followed me. Left without the keys to the car, I was faced with few options. There are no streetlights in this rural area of Central Florida. The nearest main throughway was miles back from where I stood. Clueless and panicked, I ran back to the cemetery. Today, I can understand how characters in slasher flicks meet their ends.

The group of strangers handcuffed me and five of my high-school friends together and took us to a holding cell in what we thought was a house. Trespassing, they said. The cemetery was owned by the city and had public hours. It was both Friday the 13th and the month of October, so locals were anticipating an influx. That's why a group of volunteers had posted up behind the Devil's Chair, an allegedly haunted Florida landmark, and prepared to ambush anyone who came to see it that night. It was only later that they identified themselves as police officers, which might mark the only time in history that people have been glad to get nabbed by the cops.

And we were made an example of. I still remember an SUV full of kids tearing off when they saw us sitting in the dirt being yelled at by strangers. And I'm sure another group came just after we were carted off-the tiny town and its adjacent spiritualist camp is besieged with gawkers and shit-kicking kids each Halloween. They vandalize gravestones, throw paint-soaked tampons at houses, and ask about Casper's whereabouts. The place is definitely strange. Many of the folks who live in Cassadaga claim to be a psychic or a medium, but the locals definitely don't appreciate being treated like zoo animals. That's why they decided to crack down. Today it's illegal to go in the graveyard or even the camp itself after dusk.

Photo via Wikimedia user Joe Mabel of a devil's chair in Lake View Cemetery in Seattle

George P. Colby, a trance medium from New York, founded this unincorporated part of Volusia County in 1894. Cassadaga, which is near Daytona Beach, is home today to a hotel, a post office, four new-age stores, and a camp of about 50 houses. Its official slogan is "Where Mayberry meets the Twilight Zone." Indeed, there is a strange aura over the small town: Many of the residents claim they can either speak with the dead or predict future events. These earnest believers make their money doing private readings from their homes-charging as much as $50 an hour. Entering the area will make you feel a strange sense of calm, which eventually gives way to uneasiness. No one there seems engaged with the present.

But while Cassadagans welcome visitors during the day so they can pay the bills, they fear the troublemakers who inevitably show up at night. On a recent Thursday, I went back to Cassadaga to try and figure out why I was arrested. 

Outside of the camp's bookstore, I met Albert Bowes and his massive black lab, Zeus. Bowes has a white beard, a large gut, and hands the size of an NBA player's. He moved to Cassadaga from Gainesville 40 years ago. He's the subject of a book called Visions of Time, in which a University of Florida anthropologist put psychics through various double-blind tests involving artifacts. Supposedly, Bowes could intuit where an object came from and even biographical details about the person who owned it. In a 1982 interview he did with the Gainesville Sun, he told a reporter about his popularity among law enforcement officials, who he helps solve cases and locate bodies.

He also said that about eight years ago, some kids showed up around Halloween and started ringing a large bell outside of the camp's spiritualist church. When a resident confronted them, he was beat up. Although Bowes wishes it weren't the case, the incident caused a panic among the people who run the town.

"It intimidated a lot of small minded people here," he told me. "And the camp association isn't as Mayberry as you might think." 

Shortly thereafter, the locals put up signs saying that visitors will be prosecuted after dusk. A huge metal fence was erected along the perimeter of the Cassadaga-Lake Helen Cemetery. The site's main attraction is a supposedly haunted stone bench. The bench is what's known as a Devil's Chair, an umbrella term for funerary monuments erected in the 19th century that made visiting more comfortable for mourners. But once the practice of sitting in them fell out of fashion, they became sites for what's known as "legend tripping." 

Image via Wikimedia user Arkyan of Volusia County, where Cassadaga is located

Bill Ellis, a professor emeritus at Penn State who studies the occult, says that the term refers to a pilgrimage taken by adolescents to show daring. First conceived in 1973, the concept differs from a rite of passage, like hazing, because it's not passed on by an older group. Instead, it's self-generated by a younger group through folklore. It has many positive social benefits he says, because it's a creative and relatively safe outlet for social rebellion.

"They're ways of expressing independence from adult norms and the kind of social mores that govern people in school or society or church," he told me. "It's the opportunity to go visit the devil's half-acre, which I think people have to do to prove they're not the social robots adults [want them to be]."

Ellis first became interested in Legend tripping while growing up in Ohio. There, he visited the house of "Old Lady X" when he was 11, eventually being chased off by a Wiccan woman who threatened to sic dogs on him and his friends. As a researcher, he studied a place in Pennsylvania called the Stone Couch. Legend was that if you sat in it once, a baby would cry. The second time, you would receive a non-fatal warning, like totaling your car. The third time, you'd die. Ellis sat in it twice, and said the second time he lost most of his hearing. Although he's a smart and skeptical dude, he has no desire to ever try it again. Why take the chance?

Despite the freaky things he's experienced, the professor says that legend tripping is much safer than more solitary teenage rebellions like the choking game. "The irony is that these are so commonplace. But when they come to the attention of some crusader, [who] starts talking to the police, they begin to think it's Satanists teaching [this stuff to] kids," he told me. "So these things seem to go from trivial to 'a menace that threatens our country.'" 

Rather than arrest curious teens, he thinks police could take an example from one of his former students who once agreed to become the caretaker of a local legend tripping site. The student would wait for kids to complete their ritual and then chase after them while dressed in black. The youths would get their thrills, but would never come back.

That idea is pretty impractical for Lake Helen, which technically governs Florida's Devil's Chair. It has a population of fewer than 3,000. A spokesperson for the Lake Helen Police Department told me that in the past decade, they'd arrested hundreds of people for trying to sit in the chair. The no-tolerance policy came at the behest of locals who were sick of being harassed.

Photo by Allie Conti

Kathy, a psychic who owns one of the two storefronts in the camp's main strip, says that she hates when kids come by for Halloween. She told me that it's usually college students from nearby Stetson University. She says she's had statues stolen from her property that police later retrieve from frat-house lawns. "We like having people around, but don't do stupid shit," she warned me. "How would you feel if someone went into a graveyard and messed with your grandma's grave? If you come here after dark, you will get arrested."

The other local business owner on the main strip, Cynthia, echoed that view. She says that kids show up every year "hooting and hollering" but don't realize that the camp is filled with people just trying to live their lives. "[Halloween] is when the weirdos come out, because they think that it's scary," she told me. "But I'm not a tourist attraction, I'm a person."

Cassadaga has always been confused about how to treat Halloween visitors. In the past, the entire area has been blocked off by the Volusia County Sheriff's Office. Some years, the town offers haunted-house-like attractions to try and boost the local economy.

Although Cynthia used to live in the camp, she said she moved out to a nearby town because she didn't like the direction Cassadaga was going. She explained that the decisions are made by the camp's board of trustees who change annually and bring a different flavor to what goes on there during the spookiest month of the year.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/9FIRTw609o8' width='640' height='360']

"In terms of the face they show the world, they can be a little inconsistent," she told me. "The Hollywood stereotype is what's gonna draw people in. But on the flip side, that's buying into the exact same thing we don't want people to think." A spokesperson for the Volusia County Sheriff's Office told me that the camp hasn't made any request for police presence this year, but they would have to respond to any call a resident made about trespassing.

I wanted to ask someone from the board of trustees about their decision this year, or how they can reconcile wanting respect for their religion when they were essentially whoring it out to a spooky stereotype. The local hotel was advertising a 7 PM seance, and a store called the Purple Rose was even hosting an event in which you could get your picture taken in the Devil's Chair, which seemed to go against the wishes of the residents I had spoken to.

Apparently, it's next to impossible to get a statement from the powers that be. A girl working the front desk at the camp's headquarters told me that a journalist needed to fill out paperwork and then undergo an interview in front of the board of trustees just for the chance to ask a few questions. They'd had bad PR in the past, she said. When I asked for the paperwork, she said the printer was broken. The receptionist said she would email it to me instead, but never did. Whenever I called after that, the phone would just ring and ring.

Talking to the locals, I kind of felt like an asshole. Although I wasn't going to vandalize anything, I was basically mocking their beliefs by thinking it was OK to stroll through for a scare. But Ellis, the academic, assured me that my dweeby form of rebellion was a universal urge. 

"I think if you tried to criminalize it, you would be working against something that's a deep psychological urge on the part of adolescent," he told me. "Theres a larger group out there saying, Don't do this or you'll die. Or, The boogeyman will come out of the bushes and chase you. But it's up to [the adolescent] to say, We are not controlled or defined by this tradition, and we are brave enough to put ourselves in the face of danger."

Follow Allie on Twitter

[body_image width='1500' height='994' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='la-santa-muerte-is-a-saint-for-mexicos-delinquents-and-outcasts-body-image-1414850340.jpeg' id='186']

Current day Mexico is facing many problems: a lack of decent-paying jobs, corruption, violence, reduced access to safe water, pollution, traffic... and the list goes on. As such, it's common for many Mexicans to distrust their leaders and institutions.

One such institution is the Catholic Church. Mexico's dominant religion is seeing a decline in numbers as worshipers begin looking to modern religious cults to meet their spiritual needs.

The Santa Muerte is a prime example. A female saint honored by millions of devotees across Mexico, Santa Muerta is known as the watcher of all perpetrators of delinquency. She is the patron saint of outcasts and those who feel they are overlooked by society. The personification of death, she represents protection, justice, and a safe passage from life to death.

The contemporary cult of the Santa Muerte first appeared in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico around 1965. Ever since it's been heavily associated with violence, crime, prostitution, and the drug trade.

Her followers may not be particularly religious, but they aren't atheists. They create their own religious codes and icons to nourish their existence, identity, and practices. Many take refuge in the fact that their deity lets them carry out violent activities and will then pardon them for their acts. The Catholic Church condemns the movement for combining its own beliefs with cultism.

Santa Muerte's following has grown in the last ten years, and today she has an estimated six million followers in Mexico. Most are under 30 and from lower socio economic areas. Followers of Santa Muerte have been labeled as blasphemous practitioners of Satanism, and their opponents claim the Saint is used to misguide desperate people.

Erin is a New Zealand born, Mexico based photographer.

The VICE News Capsule is a news roundup that looks beyond the headlines. This week, Libyan soldiers and militias battle for Benghazi, tensions rise between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, Sao Paulo suffers its worst drought in 80 years, and legal questions are raised over tactics used in an FBI sting in Las Vegas.

Illustrations by Amanda Lanzone

Names and identifying details in this story have been changed.

"You should undo your top button, honey," my new boss told me in a Capitol Hill bar, smiling the way my mother would while delivering the exact opposite advice.

I reached for my blouse. My boss, Meredith, knew what she was doing. She had been practicing law for six years, and I had only taken the bar exam a week earlier. If showing some cleavage would get me where she was, I'd do it.

I liked Meredith. She was as much of a misfit as I was in Washington DC, a city filled with interns and lobbyists. Her Barbie-doll proportions, bleached-blonde cheerleader hairdo, and fishnet stockings belied a calculating intelligence.

Over the din of obnoxious name-droppers, I asked her about her family and her hometown. I wanted to ask her, "How did a woman who wears five-inch red stilettos make it through an Ivy League law school?" but I danced around that question. I had seen Legally Blonde. I understood the danger of stereotypes.

Meredith had grown up in the South, like me. We both loved dogs and were the only lawyers in our families. Surrounded by male martini-drinkers, we sipped wine. Meredith told me about her father.

"He used to be a doctor," she said hesitantly, "but he's in prison now."

I told her I was so sorry.

"He was convicted of raping his patients."

Tears of empathy sprung from my eyes. I took her hand. "My grandfather was a doctor and raped his patients too," I told her.  

Meredith should have said, "It's late, we should both go home." Instead, she wanted to know everything. I was equally curious. We had lived in emotional isolation for so many years, and suddenly we had found each other--co-habitants on the island of rapists' progeny. We talked until the bar closed, and when we hugged at the end of the night, I felt like I had found a mentor, a mother, and a sister all in one. 

When Meredith and I shared our deepest secrets, we broke down both invisible boundaries and the defined ones clearly spelled out in in the employee handbook, which reminded us this is a professional relationship at every step. A year later, I found myself at the center of a sexual harassment battle against Meredith. Like any good victim, I wondered how I could have prevented my boss's inappropriate behavior. I watched her suffer and begged my firm to do something other than fire her. I even broke her confidence and told them about her father, hoping it would garner some leniency--and I learned a lesson that still haunts me: Doing the right thing can feel terrible.

Although Meredith and I never discussed our families again, the truth hung in the air--a daily reminder of our ugly vulnerabilities. I began to feel an increasing need to protect her. Meredith was a woman who wore leather miniskirts at a conservative law firm. Her Facebook profile picture depicted her performing a lewd act on a beer bottle. In the middle of business meetings, she would apply bright red lipstick. When she took interns to lunch, she asked them about their love lives. Other lawyers gossiped about her, but I bristled at that talk. I saw her as smart and capable, just struggling to be herself. I wore pinstriped suits and asked interns about their career goals. I bored myself; she inspired me.

Meredith and I worked together on an international bribery investigation. Since she lacked organizational skills, I often sat in my office until after 5 PM waiting for orders, only to receive an email saying, "Sweetie, we're going to need to stay late tonight. Lots of work to do! Xoxo." I could never say no to a woman my own age who addressed me as sweetie. The term cemented our secret bond. Although we never saw each other outside of work, she made me feel like we were best friends. I see our dynamic more clearly now: She was raised to flirt, and I was raised to please. In a world without boundaries, we were a perfect storm.

Over time, Meredith became more and more demanding. If she wanted to spend the whole day shopping and then come to work in the evening, I would have to sit at my desk waiting for her until she arrived at night to boss me around. She complained constantly about how hard she worked, but as far as I could tell, her workday started at dusk. I suspected she avoided going home and certainly didn't want to be at work alone. The firm culture dictated that I never argue with my supervisor. Although there was no written rule saying I had to do whatever she wanted, I watched other associates glisten with obedience and complacence. I accepted this as my tithe for high pay and prestige.

At some point during my first year, Meredith's behavior started to strike me as strange. She flirted with male colleagues and opponents and often suggested that I should do the same. When we met with our male counterparts, she urged me to wear more revealing clothing. I pushed back, and she reminded me that my career wouldn't advance if I didn't follow her lead. One night we were working late with a forensic accountant trying to fight criminal bribery charges leveled against the multinational corporation that was our client. Meredith left the room for a minute. The accountant beckoned me over to show me something on his cell phone: a text from Meredith saying, "Would it make this easier for you if I let you come in my mouth?"

The text amused me--and then it terrified me, particularly when I realized that the accountant felt threatened. We were his clients. We were asking him to audit our client's financial records and determine whether federal crimes had been committed. Was Meredith's offer a bribe? Would the Department of Justice invalidate the audit results if they suspected a sext influenced them? As a witness to this crude invitation, was I suddenly responsible for what happened next?

I had two choices. I could play sexual games like Meredith or I could protect myself. Armed with the naïve expectation that I could seek guidance confidentially, I blurted out the whole story to a senior female partner, whom I hoped would agree this was Meredith's fault.

The next day, the firm's outside employment counsel interrogated me.

I never used the words sexual harassment, but the firm used the term for me. They yanked me off Meredith's case, forbade me from speaking to her, and relegated Meredith to an office on a lower floor with the copy machines and floating secretaries. Instead of empowering me, filing the complaint against my troubled boss made me feel like I had betrayed a kindred spirit. I knew she was the child of a rapist, and as the granddaughter of a rapist, I understood her world lacked boundaries. After weeks of working in the same building and painstakingly avoiding interaction, I learned the firm had fired her.

Overnight, I took over our case, received access to her email, and became an office celebrity. Co-workers praised me for getting rid of her and begged me for salacious details. Associates who had never been my friend suddenly wanted to have lunch with me to "get the scoop." Others stopped talking to me. I heard I had gotten Meredith fired because I was offended by her calling me "honey." I heard I was jealous of her good looks.

Soon after Meredith's departure, the firm required associates to attend sexual harassment prevention training. The class told us we were prohibited from retaliating against anyone who had filed a sexual harassment complaint. The instructor, an employment attorney, told us retaliation includes social ostracization.

An associate I had previously considered a friend raised her hand and glared at me from across the room.

"But what if someone filed a false sexual harassment claim? What if it was all based on lies?" Her question was directed to the instructor, but her eyes were on me.

"The veracity of a complaint is not for you to determine," the instructor answered.

"Can I be punished for ostracizing her, though? I mean, what if she punished my friend?"

The answer was yes. She could be punished for ostracizing me, but she never spoke to me again. Once I said hello to her in the hallway. She looked down and walked away.

If I could go back, I would rescind my complaint. Meredith had made me feel exposed and sexualized, but the aftermath made me feel exposed and helpless. Whether they were on my side or not, people believed I had acted out of vengeance. Nobody understood that I had intended to seek guidance, not retribution--I had no idea that Meredith would be fired.

To properly run the case we had worked on together, I had to go through Meredith's emails and piece together the narrative of what she had told the client, what damage she might have done, what I needed to clean up in her wake. She used her work email for personal correspondence, and while I tried to avoid reading messages between her and her husband, sometimes they stared me in the face. Her husband took frequent business trips, and often his flights home were delayed and he ended up staying in Las Vegas or Miami for a couple extra nights. She would offer to fly out and meet him; he always said no. I felt sick. I pleaded with the firm to take her back, or at least to pay for her psychological treatment, but a senior partner told me the firm had wanted to fire her for a long time. I was the smoking gun they'd been looking for.

Being a smoking gun is as shitty as it sounds. I stayed one more year at the firm, but I never stopped feeling like I was a piece of evidence--walking proof that the firm made the right decision. I don't think Meredith was fired because she created a hostile work environment for me, or even because she exposed the firm to liability. I think they fired her because she was different. She was damaged, and she couldn't hide it. There were partners at the firm who regularly had affairs and asked associates to cover them up, but Meredith had no one to cover for her. I know what she did was wrong. I only wish she had been given the role models she never had as a child.

I ran into Meredith a few times after the firm fired her. Each time, we stared at each other, her eyes filled with anger, mine scared and apologetic. We've both moved to different cities now, but I google her every few months. I want to know she's OK. When I look at her photos, I'm struck by how young she looks, her coy smile conveying a childlike sweetness--betrayed, forgiving, expectant. I question if her appearance changed because of plastic surgery or because she escaped the toll of Big Law. I write her letters, but I never send them. I remind myself that some boundaries are meant to stay in place.

A Syrian bride makes her way to the Golan Heights, crossing the Israeli-Syrian border in her wedding dress with her fiancé. Photos by Andrea & Magda/ICRC

In the hilltop town of Majdal Shams, Israel, bridegroom Asad Khlone waits for his fiancée. Because she lives in war-torn Syria—Israel’s sworn enemy, now rife with Islamic State terrorists—Khlone must get special permission from the Israeli government to bring her over the country’s threshold. The only son of elderly parents, Khlone feels unable to leave home, and the insurmountable obstacles of crossing a 65-mile border mean the two lovers haven’t seen each other in seven years.

“I’m usually not a patient guy,” says Khlone, a short construction worker with thick, black-framed glasses. From his wallet he takes out a photo of his fiancée—a classic, red-haired beauty. Although no one says it, this woman is clearly worth the wait.

Long-distance marriages between Syrians living in Israel and those still in the motherland are common in the Golan Heights, a mountainous area that belonged to Syria until Israeli forces captured it during the Six-Day War of 1967. The place is sparsely populated by Israeli settlements and leftover land mines, but the border is packed with Arabs who identify as Syrian or “Golanese.” Although the territory has been occupied for almost half a century, some remain hopeful that it will be returned to Syria, and arranged marriages and college sweethearts wedded across the border are seen as a way to maintain the link. (Khlone and his fiancée are in fact first cousins once removed.)

But for the first time since Israel and Syria reached a ceasefire 47 years ago, brides from both countries are crossing a border that is rampant with the activities of war. Mortar shells and gunfire are exchanged just miles from the only crossing, called Quneitra, where brides pass dusty, barbed-wire checkpoints in their white wedding gowns.

Crossings are emotional affairs, as brides must bid goodbye to their family members not knowing when or if they’ll get permission from the Israeli government to go home again.

According to an official at the International Committee of the Red Cross, at least three brides have crossed the border every year since recordkeeping started in 1991—putting the Golan’s Syrian bride population at about 88, though locals say the number is closer to 300. But since the start of the Syrian civil war, three years ago, the number of bridal crossings has gone down by about 60 percent.

As I sit on the terrace of Khlone’s family home, we look out at the border, where mortar shells can be heard exploding on either side at night. Casually, Khlone refers to the hurdle of getting one’s fiancée out of Syria as “an exceptional situation.”

Although crossing the fence has always been difficult—Israel and Syria have intermittently been at war ever since the Golan occupation began—the current immigration procedure has become an emotional hell for grooms and brides alike. As men in the Golan Heights apply to Israeli immigration officials for permission to bring over their brides, fiancées in Syria deal with the ongoing realities of war—water and electricity shortages, inflation rates of more than 50 percent, and the threat of attack. Meanwhile, women already in the Golan Heights feel unable to help their Syrian families. Once the brides cross over, it’s almost impossible to go back. As their husbands did previously, the brides must get permission from the Israeli government to pass through what is essentially a closed border.

Just a few miles down a narrow road that winds between concrete stacks of homes, I meet with Hanan Fkeralden. A 38-year-old woman with blond highlights and a pink T-shirt, Fkeralden crossed the border with seven other brides back in 1998. Since then, both of her parents have passed away in Syria, and her nephew has been kidnapped.

“It’s the worst feeling,” she says from the dry-cleaning store she now runs in Majdal Shams.

Although Fkerladen wasn’t allowed to travel back for her mother’s funeral, she stays in touch with her sister daily with a mobile phone that’s constantly ringing with texts and calls via Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, and Tango.

“I’m deeply in love with my husband, and I knew the consequences before I came here,” she tells me. At seven years old, Fkeralden saw her first bride crossing on TV. Her youthful mind saw it as an adventure, an exciting journey for a young woman. Her mother, in turn, slapped her across the face, saying, “You’re not going anywhere,” Fkeralden recounts, now laughing at the distant memory.

For a few hours, family members are allowed to gather at the UN checkpoint to celebrate.

But for Khlone, it will probably be many years before he can laugh at his current trials. For the past year and eight months, he has dealt with an immigration process that’s caused other star-crossed lovers to divorce or move abroad. He claims to have sent the Israeli immigration authority no fewer than 50 papers detailing his relationship with his fiancée. Last year, he hired someone “with connections” to help him fill out the paperwork—a strategy some grooms are convinced can speed up the process. After a few months, Khlone’s middleman told him that the application was successful and his bride would cross in February. On the Syrian side, she threw a goodbye party for all her friends and family. Khlone made his way to the border, bringing food and dessert for the guests who would assemble at the no-man’s-land between Israel and Syria. Just as he was about to put on his wedding suit, the authorities told him the crossing had not been cleared. The middleman had never sent in the papers. It was all a scam.

“We totally didn’t expect that to happen,” Khlone says. “We get to the last second and then it was all… it didn’t exist.”

As I listen to his story, I can’t help thinking of Diana Ross’s song “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” originally recorded by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell the same year this bastion of Syrian pride became disconnected from its mainland. I play the song for Khlone and translate the lyrics. He’s never heard of Diana Ross, but he immediately identifies with the message.

“It’s so true,” he says. “I mean, that’s reality for me.”

Although Khlone admits he’s a bigger fan of Celine Dion, he says he’ll try to squeeze the song onto his wedding album.

In a performance for NPR's Tiny Desk concert series on Wednesday, T-Pain proved to the world that he's more than just a human ringtone. "This is weird as hell for me," he told the audience before ripping into a rendition of "Buy U a Drank" without Auto-Tune. The video of the performance has already racked up more than 3 million views, mainly because people are so surprised to hear how great the singer's voice sounds without the digital effect that has become his calling card. 

Auto-Tune was first used on Cher's 1999 hit "Believe." However, T-Pain is largely considered the "King of Auto-Tune." His vibe has always aped the digitized vocals of 70s funk legend Roger Troutman and 90s New Jack Swing singer Teddy Riley, who used an older tool called the Vocoder to make their pitches warble. The Florida Rappa Ternt Sanga found immense success with his robotic-sounding singing in the mid-2000s. In an incredible run, ​he featured as a guest on 224 popular songs​, won Grammys for both best R&B Performance and Best Rap Song, and sold more than 2.3 million ringtone units of "Buy U a Drank" in 2007. However, his popularity inspired numerous clones who tried to make hits using Auto-Tune, which lead artists like ​Christina Aguilera​, ​Jay-Z, and ​Death Cab For Cutie​ to speak out against the tool's homogenizing effects. The backlash caused T-Pain to become a punching bag for everyone who was sick of Auto-Tune dominating the pop charts. 

At T-Pain's ​Tiny Desk​ concert, the audience laughed nervously before he started to sing without his favorite accoutrement, perhaps because they expected disaster. But why would T-Pain take the Tiny Desk challenge if he didn't have the singing chops? He's not stupid. It should be no surprise that he actually has a pretty good voice. And while the collective internet is freaking out about this revelation, anyone who's ever seen T-Pain perform live should know that he's always been more man than machine.

Although the NPR-listening world might not know it, T-Pain has performed without Auto-Tune before. Not only that, but he puts on a hell of a live show, complete with some synchronized dance moves and some microphones straight out of a 90s Nickelodeon show. And this isn't the first time that he's performed without ​Auto-Tune upon request​. In November of last year, he came on Sway Calloway's Sway in the Morning radio show and sang a snippet of "Buy U a Drank" with a cold, silencing doubters who attributed his musical skill to his favorite studio tool.

However, that instance was too brief to give much of an idea of how his songs might be impacted by a change in tone. The Tiny Desk version, though, provides a totally different context for understanding T-Pain's art. In the past, he's referred to himself as the Strip Club King and has made a career out of his love for Patron, but songs like "Drankin' Patna" turn melancholy when they're almost-acapella. When they're being sung so earnestly, you almost, almost forget that lyrics like "she's got me so deep in freakin' love" are terrible. Deprived of thumping bass and delivered like a confessional, others like, "I'm so gone on patron, I don't even know how I'm getting home," go from party anthems to something not dissimilar to Bukowski's poetry. The character of T-Pain--someone who seemingly spends all his time in the club getting faded as fuck and blowing all of his money "tryna see what's up" with a girl--seems really depressing when you're not being distracted by overproduction. Dude seems kinda lonely, and it seems like he needs some new hobbies.

According to a preview for his upcoming All Things Considered interview, T-Pain's about to turn 30. The Tiny Desk performance was in anticipation of his forthcoming greatest hits album. Hopefully, it marks a turning point for the singer. Originally, the Auto-Tune sound was what helped make him a star. But now that every rapper under the sun has experimented with it, and Kanye West made a ​whole album revolving around it, its seems natural for T-Pain to drop the Auto-Tune and start showcasing his other, underappreciated skills.

Follow Allie on ​Twitter​.

I spent the last few weeks following a trail of mysterious, poetic phrases painted on blank billboards along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. They're everywhere, but I couldn't find an explanation. My attempt to learn more about them led me to artist Lance de los Reyes. I wrote about wanting to interview him in a ​​blog post, and he subsequently agreed to answer some questions, which led me to his first solo show, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, now on display at ​t​he Hole until Sunday.

When I walked into the gallery for our meeting, Lance was being interviewed by a Canadian journalist. "I was born in Texas and grew up in Southern California in the mountains around horses, rocks, and rattlesnakes," he said as we stood next to the bold, abstract paintings and a pile of rocks in the center of the room.  

Before he moved to the east coast, Lance was living with Shepard Fairey and other friends in Southern California. "I was just writing graffiti on trains and seeking out rooftops and finding architecture and trying to put my moniker there," he said. "One of my friends introduced me to Julian Schnabel's film about Jean-Michel Basquiat. ­I had never known anything about New York and never even considered art."

At the age of 21, he was inspired to go to art school. "I was working with Shepard Fairey, and in the middle of the night I would go into the barn and use all the house paint and start painting." After putting together a portfolio he was accepted into the painting program at the San Francisco Art Institute. 

"They encouraged me to go to new genres," he said. "I got into sculpture and performance (I sang to a sunflower) and hung a picture of my graffiti in the city on the wall after September 11. It was a performance piece. I tied it to into the narrative of the movie and approached graffiti like it was this alter ego. To me it was an obligation to a character. I realized the RAMBO thing had its own energy, and Lance just was the person conducting the energy."

When the vandal squad started looking for him, Lance left art school and moved to New York, where he got a job assisting Donald Baechler. "I got initiated in this really cryptic way into a society within a society," he said. "With art, the world doesn't necessarily need a great painting, it needs a great idea. It's all going to be up to the people who came before me who are overseeing this whole orchestra of actions. They respect you as long as you are aware that they can take it from you at any time. They can give you what you need to conduct your dance."

After the Canadian journalist left, Lance and I walked around the corner to a coffee shop so I could ask my questions. There was one in particular that I wanted to clarify right away.

Lance de los Reyes at his show in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Photos by the author unless otherwise noted

VICE: Are you being public about RAMBO? I was nervous in the email I sent you with my blo​g post about discovering your work. I mean, I saw the billboard, then I saw more and more RAMBO all along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
​Lance de los Reyes: More poetry, you mean.

First, I noticed your style. Then I wondered, who is RAMBO? Is it a person? Or a group? I came from knowing nothing. And then, I found my way to you. It was a very dramatic moment for me. I felt like I made this discovery. Does that worry you? Couldn't the police do what I just did? Are you worried about that at all?
So what's your question?

How are you resolving your identity as Lance and as RAMBO?
There's nothing to be resolved. Lance de Los Reyes and RAMBO are two different entities. I am Lance. And I know the poet RAMBO you're interested in. Very well.

OK.
I know of him pretty well.

It's not you?
Like I said before, I am Lance. I just know RAMBO very well. We have friends in common and we all agree that RAMBO is very dedicated and his mission is greater than himself. He's a great guy, great guy.

Photo via Flickr user ​ancie​​nt history

So, maybe then you can tell me about this idea of "mastering" that pops up in the art. Like, MASTER YOUR HEART or MASTER YOUR B​ODY.
I think that when those were done, the conductor or the performer was playing with words. When I saw it, it said MASTER YOUR HEART, but then OUR in YOUR was over-scored. Language is a tool. It can be used to evoke a dialogue within a dialogue. And certain dialogues belongs to certain people who get it. You know people see things in different dimensions. MASTER YOUR HEART is probably this ancient thing that a lot of really important people have tried to accomplish. That's how I feel. I know that I've seen people cry after seeing that, and then meeting that RAMBO person.

Art is so important, especially in a place where you have so many beautiful hearts all in one city. I consider New York City the new Rome where all avant garde things are possible. It is the performer's job not only to master his own heart, but to do something that is beyond himself. I don't think that RAMBO really ever knows what people think about his work. But I know when I see it, it feels right. You can only leave it up to a third party to judge if someone is in tune with the dialogue that they're evoking, if they're thinking or performing with their heart.

And above that? What about the phrase BROTHERS AND SISTERS DUE THE IMPOSSIBLE?
It doesn't say "impossible." There is a space between the M and the P. It says I'M POSSIBLE.

And D-U-E?
Yeah, pay dues is part of being active and being of service to society.

How about KNOW GODS JUST WORK?
Well, KNOW is spelled K-N-O-W. The NO is circled. So, there again you have a play with words and spelling. I seriously doubt that God looks like the trendy image that is hanging in every church. But I know that every true person who is of their craft, it becomes their religion. It's something that they're trying to keep steadfast, and something that they are living and breathing. There's no part-timing this situation. Because you can't get away from it. It's always watching you.

I think that every man and woman could possibly consider themselves their own architect. In their mind and in their heart, they're trying to build an empire out of nothing. People trip themselves up a lot because things can get very dark. I think that if you can just keep it moving, and not stay idle, you're probably better off than just being stuck and spectating. You're either a doer or a spectator. You're either doing something, or watching something happen. And then there are those who have the audacity to make a mockery of other people's work.

I'm under the impression that RAMBO is hyper-sentitive and I can relate to that. He seems to be someone who pays close attention. But he's very active. And very site-specific. And very calculated. And very sincere. As much as he can be.

In terms of being site specific, there's a lot of blank space now on those billboards along the BQE because of the damage that one caused when it fell. Now there are these regulations. And they tower over us. Your gallery show is called Standing on the Shoulders of Giants...
To me, everything is one long, deranged movement of my senses. I have a big book going on in my mind. Energetically, I know what things meant to me. I am a firm believer that if I think about it enough, I can make it happen. And I like to challenge that in the physical too.

And on the KNOW GODS JUST WORK, on top it now says JULIAN SCHNABEL, but under that, there was something else before about Shepard and Banksy. BANK SY.
Well, I know Shepard.

Tell me about how you got to know him.
I used to play pool with him at a coffee shop in Southern California. I never knew that it was Shepard Fairey until, one day, I saw him cutting a Rubylith while he was waiting for me to show up to play.

There was this sign on this brick wall that said THE GUILD, this big neon sign. I had stood on that sign, off the side of building, which was a smaller platform than the one that the RAMBO guy does on the billboards. And I painted my name. And Shepard was like, "You're the one that stood on the guild sign." Even now when I think about it, the word guild, it becomes relevant and amusing to me.

[body_image width='640' height='400' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='the-cryptic-billboard-messages-all-over-nyc-explained-1101-body-image-1414869643.jpg' id='264']

OUR GUILDED LEGACY...
​Yeah. OUR GUILDED LEGACY / WHERE SILENCE BECOMES GOLDEN. This is a situation where one must never take their cloak off and remain in the shadows.

So I met Shepard, and he invited me to go to Los Angeles. I went to LA with him a couple of times. I lived with him for two years, and he brought me to New York for my first time.

When was that?
When I was 21 or 22. I'm a strong believer that you can't do things alone. You need your brothers and sisters. There's a caste system here. And everyone has a position to play. And everyone's of service. But it's very sacred and secretive to me. And I want to protect that as much as possible.

You have your solo art and your sense of collaboration.
​I've noticed that RAMBO has brought a couple of people with me, and done work in public. Social media has put a real damper on things. People get a real sense of self-worth about how many likes they have on a photo, and how many followers they have. I think that they're really just following their egos instead of their heart. And that really saddens me. Even recently, there's a certain individual who RAMBO has shared the experience of doing work in public with. And he takes RAMBO's poetry and tries to make it his own. When he's just known writing his name. And he doesn't even know how to pronounce some of the words that are being written. I guess you just have to be compassion for those who are making a mockery.

It's a big collaboration going on in a city like this. Each person has their individual heartbeat, but there's one big heart that's beating here. And some people are beating to the same drum.

There's a lot of mystery and paradox in the wordplay.
The things that are being written in public, people see it and like it because it's there. And some people understand. Those are the people that I would bow my head to. And wink my eye at. And give a handshake to.

Over the years, I've realized graffiti is a sport. It's special and very cryptic. Like the synchronicities of different handstyles and different ways of approaching graffiti while writing your name. But how many times can these individuals write their names?

I listen to a lot of Manly P. Hall. Do you know him? He's a great teacher and philosopher and person who speaks about things that are really important to me. Men should be showing proof of maturing and transforming every seven years. I think that a lot of individuals who engage in graffiti are stuck. They're having real problems maturing and that saddens me.

You mention men maturing. What are your thoughts about women?
I think women who are very introverted are actually the ones casting the most powerful spells. And men, without even being aware of it, are cursed by the spells of women.

Photo via Flickr user ​RJ

I'm really also into the anarchy approach.

How do you mean?
​​I'm not here to break rules. I don't get off on doing things are illegal. I'm not trying to hurt anyone. I'm trying to contribute to the world around me and make my world a better place. To some extent. But, also, I have certain things that I need to--that I want to say. And I'm going to do that. No matter what.

I think artists have a responsibility. I think it's our responsibility to consider that people need art, because they need things to live through besides their cool outfits that give them this surface acceptance. People need paintings, but I'm speaking about art as a whole. It's one of the most vital things, and important.

What is the symbol on your hand? I've seen that before.
This is a trident. There's an art movement that Harmony Korine, the film director, started called the Mistakist movement. It represents using absurdity and realism to become a tool for your craft--being as absurd as possible but conducting that through realism. And you come up with these living archetypes, individuals that all have this certain thing they're trying to evoke and give back to the people.

You have three kids, right? How do they inspire you?
It's all for my children, basically. All I know is that when I look at my children, I know that they chose me to be their father. And I'm just here to protect them. I just want to make them proud.

Do they paint with you?
I​ndigo and Xavior, yeah. I've painted with both my four and two year olds. When my children are able to conduct their thoughts, and express themselves, I would want them to be proud of their father. That means a lot to me.

Related to that: Being high on the top of a billboard must be exhilarating and terrifying.
It's all that stuff. But I've been told I'm going to live a long life. I keep that in mind, and maintain situational awareness. That's the main thing. Maintain situational awareness and try to get as close as I can to the way the stars are aligning.

Photo by Nathan Schneider

It sounds like your spirituality is intertwined with art. And your bio note says, for what it's worth, you're also a believer. What does that mean?
That would be up to someone else that's amused by the work. I'm not trying to con anyone, even though I'm a con artist. I'm just a believer in the fact that whatever I want to accomplish, I'm going to accomplish it--through trailblazing, and leaving two and three-dimensional objects behind that could possibly become artifacts. I'm not doodling. What I am doing is definitely trying to have those moments where I get little hints of happiness.

Did you grow up with any religious tradition?
I grew up going to Catholic church. I was a rebellious child. I played sports. I was star of the lacrosse team; I was most valuable player on my lacrosse team two years in a row. I grew up skateboarding and surfing. Once I started going off into the night to write on things and be by myself, just listening to the environment and nature, I started to learn more about myself and what it meant to have personal ceremonies.

Tell me about your moral codes, your ethics.
I know the difference between right and wrong. I'm not perfect. I do bad things. I've been self-destructive before. I have vices and flaws. But inevitably my obligation to art will always win. It will always be more powerful than anything I could ever do wrong. It's either I become a great artist or I become like an assassin. And the government hires me to assassinate people that have done our country wrong (laughs).

What is RAMBO?
I don't know, you just keep bringing that up. I know RAMBO, the guy you seem so interested in.

The meaning.
Well there's Rimbaud, the poet. I've seen the movies, and I think it's this character who felt like he was dispensable, but he just couldn't die. He felt dispensable, but they made a bunch of them. He's an actor. He's a character.

It's been a real trial and tribulation expressing oneself in the public forum. But there's always people who are a little more hyper-sensitive than others, who care more than others. I think that those people, in the end, will earn themselves some sort of legacy, from people who are intelligent enough to be amused. And that's exciting. But of course, because it's on public space, and it falls into the hands of being stapled as graffiti, you have to deal with that subculture. And RAMBO has a lot of prolific friends who write graffiti. He's friends with the best.

In the movies, I don't think Rambo cared if people liked what he was doing or not, he was just doing what he was supposed to do. You can probably say that of any actor or archetype. It sounds fairytale-ish, or kind of not immature, but dramatic. But it is kind of all one big drama anyway. Why not keep it as dramatic and entertaining as possible? It's nice to be able to be recognized for certain evocations of just being yourself. It's very humbling. It's humbling, and challenging, and exciting.

That's how Lance feels. He's very humbled, and very excited. Just very grateful. That he could be so multidimensional and be given the opportunity to prove that being multi-faceted, and having different things for which you're capable of being shown respect or being recognized. But you don't want to give him too much--it's not over yet. It hasn't even begun. It's better to put it all away, and just let it continue.

Follow Claire Kelley on Twi​tter.

​"It sure ain't going to change anything for me," said the man, looking at the campaign signs posted along the road in Larose, a small town in Louisiana. The air is always damp in this part of the state the sky heavy with rolling clouds coming from the gulf. For a number of people here, Louisiana's upcoming US Senate elections don't mean much. "I'll be on my boat catching oysters," the man, a rugged fisherman Cajun in his forties, added motioning to the rusted drawbridge rising over Bayou Lafourche. Life goes slow and work is hard for him, as it does for many in the oil and fishing industries who spend their weeks drilling on offshore rigs, crabbing in Terrebonne Bay, or operating related service businesses.

"I make a living here. My kids, they go to school here, they grow up here. People keep forgetting about us but we ain't going nowhere," the man said. "I don't believe a politician can bring any change to that." The feeling seems to be shared among many Cajuns here. The swamps around the Atchafalaya River belong to another world. Politics are a local matter, here, with people more concerned about down-to-earth issues than distant rhetoric for which they have no time to spend. "You should ask the crabs what they think of it," someone shouted, showing a crate full of crustaceans. "They can't be more wrong than we are."​

[body_image width='2000' height='1500' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='bayou-politics-louisiana-senate-race-111-body-image-1414872285.jpg' id='273']

Across the country, the ​​2014 midterms have been rough on Democrats​. With control of the Senate at stake, the race is bound to be very tight, with most forecasts giving the GOP around a 65 percent chance of gaining the six seats they need to win a majority. Republicans have an edge in competitive states like Arkansas, Alaska, and Colorado, as well as here in Louisiana, where Democratic incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu is locked in a heated campaign for reelection against Republican challenger, Congressman Bill Cassidy.

After three terms in office, Landrieu finds herself in the fight for her political life, tainted by her association with an unpopular Democratic president in a state that has taken a hard turn to the right over the past two decades. Polls currently show ​​Landrieu narrowly leading Cassid​y in Tuesday's three-way election, and then losing to him in a runoff on December 6, once Tea Party candidate Rob Maness is knocked out of the race. But in Louisiana, politics is local, and Landrieu has been making a hard sell in recent months, traveling from parish to parish to convince voters that, despite her party affiliation, she's the candidate who will deliver for the state. ​

At the D&D drive-in restaurant in Larose, some voters had trouble forgiving Landrieu for supporting President Barack Obama's policy agenda, including her vote for Obamacare, a central attack line from her Republican opponents. But the Senator's deep ties to the oil and gas industry--which Landrieu has been talking up on the campaign trail--has been helping her cause. "As long as she supports us, I don't care for the rest," said Andrew Ledet, a mechanic who works with oil companies. 

Cassidy didn't get much more praise. "I find him bland," an older man mumbled, eating his chili dog. Maness, a retired Air Force Colonel, gets some credit here for wrestling an alligator in one of his campaign ads, but in the end none of the candidates seemed to really resonate with the locals in this town of 4,000.​In Port Fourchon, at the southernmost tip of conservative Lafourche Parish on the Gulf of Mexico, fisherman John Fontenot was taking a lunch break in the city's commercial marina. "Landrieu has done a lot for Louisiana," he said. Cranes moved in the background, loading and unloading containers on the docks. "She's been helping the shrimping industry. She's petitioning for the Keystone pipeline. She's against the government wanting to cut deep water drilling. I never liked Obama and I won't vote for a Democrat at the White House, but I trust her to run Louisiana. That's what counts for me." A man behind Fontenot laughed and said, "She's experienced, right. But she's been here for too long. She's too comfortable. Time for someone else--someone not crooked you know? Someone real." Asked if Cassidy would fit the description, the man replied, in typical Cajun fashion, "What's a Cassidy?" ​

[body_image width='2000' height='1500' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='bayou-politics-louisiana-senate-race-111-body-image-1414872502.jpg' id='276']

Theoretically, Landrieu should be the obvious favorite to win this year's Senate race. A staunch supporter of the state's oil and gas industry, she chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has succeeded in winning billions of dollars for the state for the BP oil spill clean-up, and before that for Hurricane Katrina recovery. On top of that, she has a near-perfect political pedigree in Louisiana. Her father, Moon Landrieu, was a beloved former mayor of New Orleans who fought for civil liberties and gave black people access to high positions in the city's offices, and her brother Mitch currently holds the office.

Support for Landrieu is still strong in New Orleans, where the liberal voter base is well-established. "I've been raised in a family of seven," said Tyler Bell, a musician living in the 7th Ward. "I know what it's like being poor. My mother used to tell me stories of [...] the segregation and everything, and how it was for her back then. Now today ain't perfect, right? But it's slowly becoming better. And Landrieu isn't perfect but she's my best choice if I want to keep it improving."

Landrieu's fate will likely rest with these voters, and particularly African Americans, who make up 60 percent of the city's population.The latest voter numbers indicate that registration among black voters has increased since 2008, but it's not clear how many of these new voters will show up for a midterm election. And in the likely event of a runoff, it's not clear if Landrieu's support in New Orleans will be enough to defeat Cassidy, who is expected to gain votes from Maness and benefit from traditionally higher midterm turnout among Republican voters. 

"That's why people need to act.," said Felicia Jones-Hebert, a waitress in a small café in the French Quarter. "I know I'll be watching this closely. Ain't nothing good about Republicans winning, I tell you. Do you remember how nobody in Washington lifted a finger for us after Katrina?"​

On a recent night near Vaughan's Lounge, a ramshackle watering hole in New Orleans' Bywater neighborhood, a gathering of people were discussing the race. "I'll go vote for the first time ever in November," Keila Aldridge, a student at Louisiana State University, declared, waiting in line under the old bar's porch. Asked if she would return to the polls for a runoff in December, she said she would try depending on her schedule. "The Landrieu family has a great history in the state," another student chimed in as he ordered a po-boy, leaning on the faded wooden wall where colorful neon signs were illuminating the crowd. "I don't think Republicans have their place here. The city is too liberal for them." As music filtered through the doors, everyone seemed to be having a good time, waiting for the voting day to make their voices heard.

[body_image width='2000' height='1328' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='bayou-politics-louisiana-senate-race-111-body-image-1414872527.jpg' id='277']

In Jena, the seat of La Salle Parish, voters I spoke to were more reserved about Landrieu. American flags fly on almost every street in this city, where the motto is A Nice Place to Call Home. The city made national headlines for the ​2006 Jena Six ​case​, a storm of racial confrontations surrounding the local high school that prompted enormous civil rights demonstrations. Located in one of the most solidly Republican parishes in Louisiana, Jena is unsurprisingly a bastion of support for Bill Cassidy. 

"We need the GOP to take over the Senate this year," Mitch Bradford, a local contractor, told me as he filled up supplies at Ace Hardware. "I don't need to be convinced, I already know Landrieu is playing Obama's game. It's always the same story."

"She's not even really living here," his wife Karen chimed in, referring to the fact that Landrieu has declared her parents' home as her primary residence in Louisiana, and spends most of her time in Washington, D.C.

Down the road at Mac's Supermarket, Chad Martinez likes Maness. "I'll give my vote to Maness. I guess Cassidy would be more strategic but I like Maness more," he said. "There's something authentic in Maness," he added. "Maybe it's because he's a retired military like me."

Among voters I spoke to in the parish, the default opinion seemed to be that Cassidy lacks personality--often thought to be essential to run for office in Louisiana--but is nevertheless preferable to Landrieu. Although Cassidy's decision to participate in only two debates has been criticized, even by Republicans, it has allowed the GOP candidate to campaign under the radar and avoid gaffes, keeping the focus on Landrieu and Obama.​

Incumbent Democratic Senators have typically had little trouble getting reelected in Louisiana. As surprising as it sounds now, Louisiana actually used to be a blue state, and even went for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, when Landrieu was first elected to the Senate. Since then, though, the Bayou State has been getting steadily redder. In 2008, John McCain carried Louisiana by 59 percent, and Mitt Romney won by a similar margin in 2012. Practically every parish in Louisiana, with the exception of the New Orleans and Baton Rouge metro areas, is now reliably Republican. 

Despite the shift, Landrieu managed to narrowly survive her first reelection race in 2002, and easily cruised to reelection in 2008, thanks to her popularity following Hurricane Katrina and increased voter turnout among black voters during Obama's first presidential campaign.

This time it's different. With ​Obama's approval ratings at an all-time low, Landrieu is struggling to explain some of her more liberal positions on social issues--she's pro-choice Democrat and supports same-sex marriage--as well as her votes in favor of Obama's key policy initiatives, specifically the Affordable Care Act. 

"She says she's going to fix it," said Carolyn Foncesca, a retail cashier in Houma. "It doesn't need to get fixed, it needs to go. I won't pay for it. I won't lose my job for it. Obama shoved it in our mouths and she was okay with that." 

The Senator also has a C rating from the National Rifle Association, which has come out in support of her opponents. During her current campaign, she's been slammed by her Republican opponents for ​improperly billing her Senate account for $30,000 in private ​flights​ used by her campaign--a controversy her opponents have used to discredit her as an out-of-touch elitist. Support for Cassidy is far from unanimous, even in the most conservative parishes, but it is enough to give Republicans their best chance at defeating Landrieu since she took office.

But life will go on in Louisiana, regardless of who wins the Senate race. The receding lands and misty bayous will keep being. Fishermen will keep fishing. Oil workers will keep drilling. Musicians will keep playing, and families will keep eating spicy Creole food. Because over all this, past the politics and the controversies, past the disparities and the statistics, people here are bonded with a common attachment to their culture and history--past the polls and the long-awaited promises of better tomorrows, a sheer love for everything that makes this place what it is, from brass band trombones to the taste of broiled crawfish. 

Follow Anthony on​ Twitter.

​Register to Vote on VICE

To work as a stripper is to be involved in an increasingly dog-eat-dog world. One where dancers are encouraged to pit themselves against each other for the attention of customers. And while some come into the industry with visions of raking in thousands a night, the reality is one of an increasingly competitive environment where dancers have to become hustlers to make a decent wage.

Perhaps it's not surprising that few organizations have succeeded in bringing these women together to fight for their rights. This is where the East London Strippers Collective steps in. The group is trying to take on exploitative employment practices, provide a support network for dancers, and fight the stigma attached to the work they do. It is quite an undertaking, but one that founder Stacey Clare is happy to be tackling.

"Right when I first started dancing, I very quickly started to see the ways dancers were being exploited," she says. "I would sit in clubs, calculate how much the bar was making, how much was taken on the door, how much the barman would be paid. I would be doing sums, and I would think, Hang on a minute. The club is making all their money from us. We are the main attraction. There wouldn't be a business model if we weren't dancing. And I really quickly saw it wasn't a reciprocal relationship."

[body_image width='640' height='427' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846456.jpg' id='140']

Photo by Anslem Burnette

While dancers are classed as self employed, they are also subject to harsher rules than most other workers.

"If you've been working for hours, and are bored out of your nut, and you glance at your phone, you'll be fined [$30]. If you're chewing gum, another [$30]. Or you don't have exactly the right dress, same again," says Samantha, a dancer who has been with the group since its inception in April. 

"We are supposed to be self employed, but we're not really. We really get the worst of both worlds," she says.

[body_image width='339' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846301.jpg' id='134']

Photo by Anslem Burnette

The dancers talk about owners and managers who run their clubs like personal fiefdoms. They paint a picture of a world where most managers are bullies, a culture in which the people at the top treat everyone below them as cash cows. 

"You get medieval levels of maltreatment and emotional brutality. I can't count the times I've been threatened with the sack for simply questioning the shift patterns, or speaking out of turn, or not having the right outfit," Clare says.

[body_image width='426' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846519.jpg' id='144']

Photo by Anslem Burnette

Despite these working conditions, none of the women I talk to want to be rescued from the industry. They feel the 2003 reforms to the licensing laws, and rules introduced in 2009 that allow councils to put a block on the granting of any new licenses, have seriously damaged their working conditions. (Both laws were promoted by people claiming to care about dancers' interests.)

The changes made it easier to close down clubs, and increased the cost of a license, which can be as much as $47,000 more a year. But these prohibitive moves haven't improved conditions or helped dancers leave the industry.

As more clubs close down, and those that stay open scrape around for more money, owners ramp up house fees (the charge strippers pay for their chance to dance each night) and cram more and more girls into clubs, regardless of how many customers come through the door.

[body_image width='416' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846589.jpg' id='145']

Photo by Anslem Burnette

Collective member Suzi says that when she started stripping 12 years ago, only around one third of clubs in London offered private dancing, with the rest only featuring dancers on stage. Now not a single venue operates under that model.

"That means it becomes more and more of a sales job, with girls fighting it out for private dances. It kills the creative side of it, which is a lot of the appeal for dancers and customers," she says. "I used to do one routine to 'Where the Wild Roses Grow' by Kylie [Minogue] where I would put on fake tattoos and get properly dressed up, put a lot of effort in. But you can't do that if you've got to get straight off stage and be hustling on the floor. Now it's just girls in easy-on easy-off mini-dresses."

Increasingly there is a feeling that as clubs struggle to get by they see the house fees as a way to prop up their revenues. 

"It's actually genius when you think about it. Your workers are paying you to work for them," says Samantha. "At some of the big clubs, there's always the chance you can leave with nothing. There's this hope you will leave with a grand tonight, but that's very rare, and you're constantly chasing it. Most nights there are more girls than guys, and you are left running after customers for money."

The collective wants house fees to be capped, and a contract to be drawn up by clubs that clearly lays out the charges, while also promising to consult dancers on any changes. But the group is also taking matters into its own hands, with plans to develop a database, open to all dancers and customers, that will reveal how much they are made to pay in each club.

[body_image width='640' height='480' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846661.jpg' id='146']

A changing room in a strip club

Clare wants to see house fees reserved for improvements such as better changing facilities rather than going into owners' pockets. "Often the front of these clubs can be made up like [reality TV star] Katie Price's wet dream, but the backstage areas are horribly run down," she says. "I remember the toilet in this one club that was disgusting, with one girl puking in the toilet and another having to piss in the sink while others got changed in there. It was like a Hieronymus Bosch painting."

Suzi backs up this impression: "If you are feeling under the weather, there is a choice of cancelling your shift and usually getting fined (either financially or in the shape of having another shift taken away) or coming to work somewhere with rain coming in through the toilet ceiling [where you're expected to change] with no heating, and risking making yourself more ill. But if you complain about the conditions, you get fired."

[body_image width='480' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846697.jpg' id='147']

Even if there are proper dressing rooms, the chances are there are 20 girls crammed into what was designed for five, she tells me.

But uniting strippers to stand up to their bosses can prove difficult. Clare recounts an experience at a club in Newcastle that demonstrated to her how disempowered dancers are. "The manager at this place was a real brute. We were working the Saturday afternoon shift and dances were just [$5]. We made OK money, but at the end of the shift, we all got wind that he wanted 50 [bucks] off each of us, and we decided together that we wouldn't pay it. We would make a stand. 

"When he opened the hatch into the changing room as usual and we all lined up to pay, the atmosphere was so tense. But everyone silently did as they were told, because everyone realized that the reality was that ten people would be sacked otherwise."

[body_image width='480' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846734.jpg' id='149']

Another collective member, Zoe, who now works in a small Shoreditch club, tells me about her time at one of the large West End venues: "It can be very hard to organize and even make friends. There are so many girls and you are so agitated and so worried the whole time. I remember being in a panic every day at work, thinking, I'm not going to make any money. I don't have time to [make] friends with these girls, let alone organize."

But the collective has succeeded in bringing some dancers together and is working to get its voice out there. It plans to hold its first public meeting at the Bell in Aldgate on November 20.

It's important, Samantha says, to have a collective voice.  "When the licensing changes came in, the industry was represented by Peter Stringfellow. Come on, we really don't want him representing us because, let's face it, he is ridiculous and doesn't have our interests at heart. No one consulted us and asked us what needs to be improved. But we are now ready to provide a voice and say, 'No, actually you need to listen to us. We are the ones who work in the industry.'"

This lack of consultation has meant that the smaller clubs, where conditions are often better, get closed down, Samantha says: "Moral campaigners have no idea which are the clubs that need to be closed down, where poor practices are going on. They just oppose them on moral grounds."

[body_image width='427' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/01/' filename='east-london-strippers-collective-is-standing-up-for-strippers-rights-250-body-image-1414846782.jpg' id='150']

Photo by Vera ​Rodriguez​

But for some of the women involved, the collective is largely about changing public attitudes towards their work. For Zoe, casting off the stigma is the main reason she joined the collective. "Having to hide what I do from people constantly is really not nice," she says. "When I had a day job as well, I'd constantly be lying and covering my tracks. And moving on to another career is really hard. What do I put on my [resume] for the time I've spent dancing?"

The collective is also looking to lead by example by holding its own pop-up events. They want to show what clubs could be like. No hustling, no pressure, no house fees. To allow dancers to be more creative and to attract the audience that they want. Their success would mean happy dancers and a happy audience, they say.

Clare goes further and says that she would eventually like to set up a cooperative strip club run by the girls, for the girls: "I think that this would create a culture of respect and reciprocity. You would attract a different audience. If we were to create this club and attract dancers from all over the world, who have worked for years in shit clubs, and they came to a club where they experience appreciation in a work environment that supports them and encourages them to flourish, that would be a beacon."

But there have been previous efforts to organize dancers in London. Every ten years or so, Suzi tells me, there is a push. None have achieved a great deal. She believes this time is different: "This is the first time anything like this has been attempted in the age of social media. We can connect with so many more girls in a way that we never could before. That's going to make a big difference." For the sake of Britain's  beleaguered strippers, let's hope she's right.

Prayuth Chan-ocha, the man who helped lead the Thai royalist coup that allowed the military to take power earlier this year, is the undisputed leader of the Thai government, but he ceased being commander-in-chief of the armed forces at the end of last month. It might have something to do with his series of gaffes that go beyond being harmless Bush- or Biden-esque slips of the tongue, and instead come off as borderline insane.

The political elite of Thailand appear to see him as "a loose canon and an embarrassment," according to Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a Thai academic based in Kyoto who is recognized as an expert in Thai politics. "The generational change within the military party allowed Chan-ocha to rise to eminence," Pavin told me. "This could mean he faces no challenge within the military, and believes he can do or say whatever he wants. In other words, there could be a leadership crisis in the army, to the point that it allows incompetent figures like Prayuth to rule."

As the man put in place to cement the power of Thailand's royalist elite, he is expected to engage in a charm offensive and woo the Thai population. The snag is he's not particularly smart, and the things he says in public can be a little deranged. How exactly does Prime Minister and former General Prayuth go off script and stray from the royalist program? Like this:

"I am a victim of black magic by the anti-coup elements."

Thailand is a superstitious country where  magical tattoos bestow fortune and protection (disclaimer: I admit to having three on my back), and mystical amulets with the same powers can be found around the necks of many men. "This is not uncommon," Pavin told me, "and he is a reflection of an overall society which clings so much to superstition, fortune-telling, and astrology. In the political context, deferring to supernatural belief is a way of gaining legitimacy: If it goes right, then it is OK. If it goes wrong, then it is not his fault--it is destined." But for Prayuth to blame the opposition for every ailment he has--he once blamed a sore throat and neck pains on "curses"--seems a bit far-fetched. 

But that's no surprise. As Pavin said, he's not particularly bright:

"The other day, I had a look at the homework of a por neung [first grade] student. I must say that I didn't even know how to do it. Homework is too difficult for students."

No matter where you are, you deserve a leader who can tackle the intricacies of single-digit addition and the ability to dictate your language's alphabet. Or maybe it's just that he couldn't figure out how to use the ta​blets that some first-graders in Thailand now have in the classroom. In any case, if a six-year-old can do better in her final exam than your prime minister, your country has a problem.

By the way, Prayuth was also an officer at the Thai Oil Public Company and a director at the Thai Militar​y Bank. You'd think he'd have some basic math and writing skills.

Still, his heart's in the right place. Sort of. He wants to safeguard Thailand from foreign invaders:

Tourists in Thailand need to be "screened and of​ quality."

Does this mean the culture-less barbarians of tourists roaming Bangkok's Khao San Road will soon go extinct? Will Alex Garland's " cen​ter of the backpacking universe" soon implode? Will Pattaya's mess of bars, massage parlors, and saunas be able to stay in business? 

His next gaffe at the expense of tourists was theoretically an attempt to protect women:

Should foreign women wear bikinis in Thailand? "Only if they are no​t beautiful."

He apologized. And then he made a special offer:

To promote " sustainable​ happiness" in the country known as the Land of Smiles (or not), he ordered the production of pleasant soap operas and set the scribes to work. He even said, "If they can't finish it, I will write it myself."

There's been no word on the progress of Prayuth's opus, but he has previously dabbled in the arts. The lyrics of a ballad called "Return Happiness to Thailand" were written by Thailand's Dear Leader.

In the song, Prayuth says that "the nation faces danger with unrest everywhere, we would like to come in and save the nation so that it is not too late."

He was referring to the enemies of the coup, like Pavin, and a group of high school students who are being t​hreatened by the junta because they oppose the "12 Thai Values" created by Prayuth. The prime minister and his backers demand total loyalty, and those who step out of line are h​unted down and charged with the crime of lèse maj​esté, which carries sentences ranging from three to 15 years in prison.

Pavin pointed out to me that it's not just the elite who question Prayuth's competence. "Most Thais feel that Prayuth lacks charisma, and worse, a brain," he said. "If Prayuth has proven to be a liability, rather than an asset, he could be removed soon." 

For Bangkok's elites, this is a critical time. "We are talking about the upcoming royal succession," Pavin noted. The king of Thailand is old and has health problems, and the crown prince is seen as weak and corrupt--he recently named his dog, Foo Foo, air chief marshal at a canine birthday celebration that featured a cake topped with a pig in a bikini and a to​pless crown princess.

The prime minister and the monarch are the two most prominent symbols of the power of Bangkok's elite. If one is no longer dependable and the other has no popular support, the structure of the ruling class will be dangerously unsettled.

In the meantime, Chan-ocha wants Thais to "love [him] just a little, but love [him] for a long time." The prime minister of Thailand is flying high, and anyone who utters a syllable of dissent is branded as an enemy of the state. So give him a little love. That's all he wants--well, that and your freedom.

Images courtesy of Joseph BelBruno

If you're one of those ardent smokers who goes off on a rant about "freedom" when someone tells you you aren't allowed to light up on an airplane, it's already hard to  find a hotel that will let you inhale your fumes in peace. But folk wisdom has long ​held that pot smokers can get away with toking in non-smoking hotel rooms because the smell doesn't stick around. 

Not anymore though, at least not if Dartmouth p​rofessor Joseph J. BelBruno and the rest of the team behind the new device they're calling the A​irGuard have anything to say about it. Their baby is a detector sophisticated enough to know the difference between smoke and smoking, and that it's intended not just for hotels, but for any shared space where smoking is meant to be discouraged, like your dorm--meaning narc-leaning RAs all over the country can rejoice.

If a conventional smoke detector is like a screaming baby, the AirGuard is like a covert spy lurking over your shoulder recording your smoking habits and tattling on you. And whether you indulge yourself a cigarette, a pipe, a cigar, or a joint, it's on to you.

To find out exactly how this is going to make potheads' lives difficult, I got in touch with BelBruno. 

VICE: So this device doesn't just detect smoke. Instead, it knows when you're smoking?
Joseph BelBruno: Yeah, that's correct. It detects nicotine.

And if you're smoking pot, it picks up THC?
No, it's detecting another chemical that's much more prevalent in marijuana smoke. 

And that chemical is a secret?
For now it is. It probably will be [revealed] once we're actually out there selling them, but for now it is, yeah. Sorry. 

People are going to be mad, and insist that their pot smoke isn't a problem because the smell doesn't linger. People tell me it hangs around for 12 hours, tops.
I was surprised when talking to the hotels that they find it much more of a problem than cigarette smoking. [They say] that there are many more people who do it. It does stick around some. Twelve hours is nice to think about, but it's not really true, at least from their point of view. Originally we were only working on nicotine and discussing this with hotels, but during market surveys, that question kept coming up: "Can you do marijuana as well? Because we have a problem there too." 

Conventional wisdom is that the smell fades, and it doesn't stain a room yellow.
It doesn't cause such extensive cleaning, I think you're correct there. It really isn't as bad in terms of hanging around quite as long, but from their point of view, if someone else is renting the room the next night, they often complain and ask for a different room, which is one of the issues that the hotels have with it. It's not always just the cleaning; it's being able to rent the room out for the next night.

Since it detects nicotine, will it know when people are using e-cigarettes?
I'd say no.  An e-cigarette doesn't burn when you're not smoking it. There's always a bit of a delay between drawing it in and not drawing in on the cigarette, and there may be some smoke that escapes, but it can't be very much nicotine that escapes. So no.

At least there's that.
E-cigarettes appear to be really only dangerous to the smoker, if they're dangerous at all. Depends on your view of nicotine.

Is it mostly for hotels, or will there be other uses?
We've had people call from public housing, for example, and from those who own multifamily housing where it's supposed to be a smoke-free environment. And they're interested in using it in dormitories, nursing homes, various kinds of places like that where there's lots of shared living space. They're all interested. We are planning to build a device that's more portable, that's battery-powered, and that one could be used for any of these scientific studies as well to look at exposure of children or anyone really in a different environment. 

What does it do instead of just beeping if someone smokes?
We're working on two sets of devices. One set that stores the information and you could go with an Android device and read out any event that's happened. You can inquire of the device, have there been smoking events? And it will tell you when they were.  The other device, you can be hooked up to someone's WiFi system and that will report back and tell that smoking has occurred in a particular place. 

And it pages a bellhop to come yell at you for smoking?
That's what most of the hotels we've talked to are interested in. Whether they would immediately show up there, I don't know. That's sort of up to the hotel, but they would be able to do that and just phone up the room and say, "We would like you to stop smoking, we know you're smoking in there." From their point of view, they're protecting their non-smoking rooms. They don't want the cost of cleaning up the room to make the rest of us happy when we're in there.  

Follow Mike Pearl on Twi​tter.

[body_image width='2000' height='2000' path='images/content-images/2014/11/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/02/' filename='i-went-to-a-chihuahua-picnic-in-central-park-768-body-image-1414963044.jpg' id='481']

Ada Nieves wants to take over the world, one Chihuahua at a time. Since 2004, the New York-based pet fashion designer has served as the organizer of the New York chapter of the Chihuahua Nation, an umbrella term for a network of Chihuahua meet-ups across the United States, ranging everywhere from Beverly Hills to Orlando, Florida. The New York chapter was founded in 2002, and today boasts over 900 human members. 

"It's true that Chihuahuas are like potato chips, you cannot just have one," Nieves, who has dressed everything from rats to chickens, told me over email. "They are the perfect companion." 

Nieves grew up with a family Chihuahua, so it was natural for her to buy her own pups. (Her four Chihuahuas are currently paid actors with agents.) When her husband was deployed to Iraq, he gave her Vanilla, a white Chihuahua to keep her company as he fought overseas. It was not her first Chihuahua, but shortly after, Chihuahua Nation was born.

Every month, the Chihuahua owners meet monthly to host "pawties," ice cream socials, "Chi-lloween" events, picnics, and other activities. It's as much of a social calendar for the dogs as it is for humans. Although Nieves remains the reigning queen of Chihuahuas, co-organizers help facilitate the communities across the United States. When these members aren't socializing with pooches, they help coordinate foster homes for Chihuahuas in need. 

On a recent warm day in Central Park, I met with the Chihuahua Nation for a puppy picnic. "Look passed the pilgrim statue. You won't miss us," Nieves told me. From a distance I saw a sea of blankets and humans in the shade, resembling every other group in Central Park. As I got closer and closer, I finally understood what Nieves meant. Situated on a blue blanket in Central Park were nearly 20 Chihuahuas (some wore dresses and sun hats), plus two chickens named Beyonce and Lady Gaga, who I later learned were the honorary Chihuahuas of the day. For solidarity purposes, I brought along Sasha, my Pomeranian-Chihuahua mix, as my guest to the picnic. At a whopping 18 pounds, she was the largest creature in attendance.

From my time spent with the New York chapter, I could sense that this was very much a clique. Attendees from every borough laughed, feasted on cheese and crackers, and caught up with one another from their last meeting. While humans socialized, the Chihuahuas took their turns seeking approval from Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

As we bid adieu to warm days, let us remember summer and fall fondly with photos of Chihuahuas picnicking in Central Park. 

Back in the 90s, the family of famed Dead Kennedys' screamer Jello Biafra lived just a few houses down from the Ramseys' residence in Boulder, Colorado. Considering the average age of VICE's readership, you probably don't remember ​JonBenét​ Ramsey, that famous flaxen-haired six-year-old who was brutally slain in 1996, igniting a media firestorm.

Jello was home for the Christmas holiday season when JonBenét was beaten and strangled to death. Why the FBI never interviewed him, the world will never know, but I bet it would have made for hysterical reading.

Instead of lobbying the FBI, I thought I'd conduct my own investigation into the wild world of Jello Biafra, to find out just what he was up to that fateful night... and just who stole that candy cane off their front lawn?

JonBenét Ramsey

The first day after the JonBenét Ramsey murder there were four or five paragraphs on the front of the Boulder Daily Camera. The next day there was maybe triple that amount of ink, and then the next day there was page after page after page and the circus had come to town. It was wild.

A lot of the national journalists spent most of their time hanging around at the bar at the Harvest House Hotel, just getting drunk on each other, but it was crazy. I'd just come back from a New Year's show at the Blue Bird in Denver and had a little bit of a buzz going on. It was a good show, a lot of energy. It was three in the morning, the night was young, I was bored, What should I do?

I know, I'll go to JonBenét's house!

So I stopped by on the way home. It's about a five-minute walk from where I grew up. It was below freezing outside, with two feet of snow on the ground, and the Ramsey's had fled the house to get away from the media. There was a CBS truck or a CNN truck. A couple of those corporate news cartoon vans were floodlighting the front of the Ramsey's mansion, with their engines running at three in the morning, just in case something happened.

I'm still kicking myself for not pulling over, whipping out my recording walkman I carried with me everywhere, and just knocking on the door of the van, asking, "What are you trying to do here, people? Now I'm interviewing you! Gimme some fucking news! Do you have any?"

One of my friends, Bob, managed to "acquire" one of the plastic candy canes from the Ramsey's front yard. He got together a bunch of articles about her, and along with the candy cane, built a shrine to JonBenét in his bedroom.

CBS was rooting around, trying to dig up some overlooked suspects in the murder of JonBenét, so Bob invited CBS to come over and check out his shrine. And sure enough, they filmed it and ran the piece! They were pointing fingers at different people on this segment, then there's the candy cane with Bob talking about how much JonBenét meant to him in his life. They fucking fell for it.

So a day or two after the broadcast, the FBI stormed Bob's house and took away his JonBenét collection, including the candy cane. He's never been able to get it back.

My family dentist was saying that the grandpa did it, because he was whisked away to the airport in the wee hours of that morning, but I never heard that anywhere else.

I don't think the little brother did it, because it was too sophisticated for a kid that young. I don't think he had sperm yet, and they found some kind of semen on her. But again, I could be wrong.

My uncle said that he heard that the Detroit mob did it, to get back at John Ramsey for something he did in Detroit. But if the mob wanted to get your ass badly enough, they don't kill your daughter--they kill you.

The other rumor floating around was that 50 different people had copies of the house keys. The Ramsey's were trusting and would let people come and go, doing favors for them. The problem is, if even five extra people have keys, a well-meaning person might make a copy for some other well-meaning person who might make another copy for some other well-meaning person, who might have some not-so-well-meaning friend swipe the key and make a copy for themselves.

I mean, there was so much missing information, and misinformation, so people could point fingers all they wanted. But I think the DA, Alex Hunter, was right in not brining the case to trial, even when a grand jury recommended charging the parents. Hunter was an experienced prosecutor, and knew that the case wasn't a slam dunk. I think he made the right decision, especially when the parents got cleared later on.

And it's still going on. It's still an unsolved murder. I mean, it may be the biggest tabloid sensation of its time since the Black Dahlia murder case.

H. R. Giger

There were a few silver linings to my 1986 obscenity bust, when police officers raided my house in response to complaints by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRA). The LA deputy city attorney Michael Guarino, working under City Attorney James Hahn, brought me to trial for distributing "harmful material to minors," because in the album Frankenchrist there was a print of the H. R. Giger poster "Penis Landscape" included as a poster.

So I was charged with "distribution of harmful matter," which had never been tried in a courtroom before, and I'm sure nobody ever tried to bring that charge to court ever again. It was a year-and-a-half-long ordeal. I mean, it tied in with Ed Messe's attacks on porn, and was also meant to generate publicity for Al Gore's first presidential run in 1988.

It damned near drove me to a nervous breakdown, feeling like I had the whole future of the music industry and freedom of expression hanging on my back. But the silver linings were that suddenly my spoken word performances were vaulted out of the coffee houses and onto the college lecture circuit as the so-called "expert on censorship." I spoke about who was funding the PMRC and what their real goals were in connection with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson and the "Focus on the Family."

Also I got to know Frank Zappa and eventually managed to spend time with Hans Rudolf Giger.

The first time meeting Giger was probably the most fun. We met when he came to New York on a rare visit to the United States with his agent, Leslie Barany. They flew me out because Giger wanted to meet me after all the shit that went down with Frankenchrist. It was the same time in New York as the CMJ festival, and Giger and this uptight gallery owner were having all kinds of disagreements about the exhibit.

Then it was time for opening night and Giger was in one room and an R. Crumb exhibit was going on in the other room and people were going back and forth. And Giger discovered that this gallery owner, who was obviously some miserable guy with money, had to put, Where Are We Going? (the actual title of the Giger piece in the Frankenchrist album) and some other more graphic and supposedly explicit Giger pieces all in one little room, where he could lock a door.

And if so called important people were there, they were allowed into this little room, because they might drop 50 grand on another Giger painting.

So Giger was just enraged, and a battle ensued and finally the door was kept open and the room was lit for everybody, but the arguments went on and on. Then people started coming in, and Giger was trying to have some fun with the whole thing, and he put on one of those metal masks he makes and hid behind the door, and as people walked in, Giger would jump out and scare them!

He'd go RAHHR, like a werewolf springing on them.

And all these metal-heads began showing up, and I'm not sure that miserable money guy had ever seen such creatures before, because he started freaking out again and imposed a dress code in the middle of the party.

The gallery owner said, "Now you have to pay 25 bucks to get on the elevator to come up to the event!"

So Giger, of course, was furious. The metal fans were all there to meet him cause he'd just done the cover for a Carcass album and Carcass was there playing CMJ, so all these Carcass people were there and the gallery owner was freaking out!

Then who should walk in, in full costume, but GWAR. The gallery owner was so flipped out by that point he fled his own party and didn't come back the rest of the night.

Giger was overjoyed to see GWAR, it was a buoyant mood for the rest of the evening.

I dunno how I would describe H. R. Giger. Obviously he was very brilliant, very focused on his work. The next time I saw him, I got to go visit his place in Zürich.
 It was part of a large duplex building. One side of the duplex was immaculately maintained with a perfectly manicured little lawn in front. Then there was Giger's side, where some of the weeds in the lawn had turned into tree trunks!

So I went in and there's some of the best-known paintings we all know and love just leaning against each other on one wall. There was a famous Joe Coleman original thrown up above his stove complete with splattered food grease on it. He also had the remnants of a little train he'd built that went in and out of his house and back into a tunnel he put in the back yard. Of course the entrance looked more like a woman's vagina than a tunnel entrance and there were 3-D reproductions of some of his infamous "Babies in a Row" paintings.

It was cold and raining the day I went, and I guess it had been for some time, because the babies had mushrooms growing all over them which made them even more Giger-esque. Eventually I heard this real atonal music, this almost Schoenberg-ish piano music coming through the building, and I thought it set a really good mood. I went, "Wow, this is a cool choice, I wonder what this is?"

I finally made it up the stairs to a little top attic floor,and there was Giger all by himself, playing the piano. He looked up and saw me watching him and stopped. He didn't play anymore.
 Apparently he was an accomplished keyboardist as well, and some recordings of his music may exist, but I don't know what state they're in, or what length they are, or where you can get them.

The Ramones

The first time I saw the Ramones was in Denver in 1977. I was still shocked I could just go backstage and talk to a member of a rock band! I mean, arena rock was all we knew back then.

What set them apart from all the dumb sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll arena shit--not to mention horrid adult soft rock--was what they were singing about. I mean, at first, me and my pot head friends would put the Ramones on and laugh when we heard, "Now I wanna sniff some glue, now I wanna have something to do."

They had these super short songs with no guitar solos, but what they were singing about was trying to turn a trick at 53rd and 3rd, or beating somebody up at the Burger King. People didn't even talk about that topical stuff until punk brought it back with a vengeance.

The word got around about that show. After me and some of my friends went and saw it, my other friends were like, "Eric do you really take the Ramones seriously now?"

Yep. Hah! Part of the beauty of that show was not only that it was so powerful, but also that it scared 
the living shit out of most of the people in the room. It wasn't only about how powerful they were, but how simple they were. The gears began turning. "Wow... Some of that was so simple, anybody could do it! I could do it! I should do it!"

And of course those gears were turning in people's heads all over the country. So slowly but surely, the lonely misfit Stooges fans, who didn't know anybody else like them in their towns, all moved to bigger towns (especially New York, LA, and San Francisco) and started bands. The rest is history.
 Johnny Ramone did write me a letter when Dead Kennedys was still active in the mid-80s, on why he thought punk shouldn't be political and stuff. Johnny was not exactly down with where Dead Kennedys were going.

I wrote him back, I think, but I can't remember what I said. It was friendly, but standing my ground. I always heard the Ramones as a political band, simply because of the subjects they put in their songs.

The Melvins

I've known the Melvins for many years. A friend of theirs gave me a little demo cassette of them clear back in 1984, when they were all living in Olympia. Then I saw them a little bit in the late 80s or early 90s, when they moved down here. I didn't quite get into them that much.

Eventually I saw another show and all the sudden I got it.
 Maybe it was because they played "Halo of Flies" that night? I don't know, but they blew the roof off the venue, so I figured it was time to start listening to them. It only took one more gig before Buzz and Dale approached me about doing a tour. They were responding to the fake, reformed version of Dead Kennedys, who were running off with people's money in their fraud-core shows. The Melvins guys were really outraged at that and so they wanted to do a counter tour playing nothing but Dead Kennedys songs.

I was like, "No, if I'm gonna tour at all, I wanna play new songs. I've got plenty of other songs I've never performed with anybody. Do you wanna make an album?"

And they were totally into it.

Future Biafra-isms

For the last few years, I've been doing the band again. I was finally able to launch Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. Now we have four releases, two full lengths and two EPs. The last album was called White People and the Damage Done. It came out early 2013, and the on-again off-again touring for it hasn't really slowed down until recently. We still have a little sling through Texas to do and anything else local that pops up, but otherwise it's gonna be time for me to, uh... pull the plug for a little bit. I need to hide and write the next batch of Guantanamo School of Med songs.

I'm not very good at writing songs on the fly when I'm on tour. I gotta be left alone a while to hide and get my brain in the zone and not have the phone and the email and everything else.

I used to do my writing in Boulder, but it became a little harder to do that for me for whatever reason by the mid to late 80s, so I've done all the writing here in San Francisco. But all the Dead Kennedys writing was done in Boulder. Back then, there wasn't such a thing as answering machines or emails or whatever. Every time the phone rang at my house somebody had to pick it up. Nine times out of ten, the call was for me and there would go another day of my life.

So I had to get away from both Dead Kennedys and I suppose get away from Jello Biafra long enough to pull my brain back out of my ass and start writing stuff again.
 I'm also trying to get a couple of other projects out the door, including a long-overdue live album from this really cool thing I did in New Orleans on a dare. It's called Jello Biafra and the New Orleans Raunchin' Soul All-Stars.

See, I was back at my parent's place and I went to a show in Denver to see Cowboy Mouth and Dash Rip Rock. I'd never heard of Cowboy Mouth, but they totally blew me away. Fred LeBlanc is just about the most charismatic singing drummer you could ever imagine. Maybe even more charismatic than Levon Helm.

So I was at the Dash Rip Rock show and the story is that one of their crew heard me singing along to some of their covers, which of course was older New Orleans rock 'n' roll, or a little bit of gospel. Then Fred and Bill Davis, the main guy in Dash Rip Rock, just kind of pulled me aside in the dressing room and dared me to come to New Orleans during Jazz Fest and do a whole set of old New Orleans soul and rhythm-and-blues covers.

And I talked him into adding a little bit of garage rock too, because that's more in my wheelhouse. So we came down and did it with a full horn section and an amazing piano player Pete Gordon, who I've worked with before.

Pete came down to join us and a great time was had by all. The recording multi-track was a total fucking train wreck, but Ben Mumphry, who does Pixies and Frank and a whole bunch of other people, called me up and said, "Look, I was at the show, I think I can fix this if you'll let me take the multi-track to my studio."

So slowly but surely he's been doing pretty coherent versions with maximum trash appeal, ya know, everything from "Workin' in a Coal Mine," "Mother in Law," the Ernie K. Doe song, we got "House of the Rising Sun," and we did "Bangkok" because Alex Chilton had been adopted by New Orleans after he moved there and he'd just died. We needed to give him a shout out. We even did "I Walk on Gilded Splinters," that really cool Dr. John song off Gris-Gris.

It's not exactly the tightest thing in the world, but you can just tell that everybody's having fun and there's sweat dripping off the walls.

Back in 1975, Legs McNeil co-founded Pu​nk magazine, which is part of the reason you even know what that word means. He also wrote Please Kill Me, which basically makes him the Studs Terkel of punk rock. In addition to his work as a columnist for VICE, he continues to write for his personal blog, Please​KillMe.com. You should also follow him on Twit​ter.

In the United States, more people between the ages of 25 and 64 die of complications from drugs than car crashes. According to a 2009 study published by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 23.5 million people in this country over the age of 12 need treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, and only 2.6 million of these afflicted individuals actually receive it. In response, drug and alcohol rehab has blossomed in the past three decades into a $35 billion industry with nearly 15,000 facilities across the country. Although non-hospital residential treatment serves only about 10 percent of those in recovery in the US, the exorbitant cost of such care--as high as $75,000 a month--has made it extremely lucrative. And thanks to popular TV shows like Celebrity Rehab, which have installed the luxurious rehabilitation center in the popular consciousness, the national enrollment figures keep growing.

VICE editor Wilbert L. Cooper traveled to Southern California, the region with the highest concentration of these high-end rehab clinics, to explore the peculiar and troubling side of the for-profit addiction treatment industry.

Check back tomorrow for part two of this doc and a feature article by Wilbert that takes a closer look at the lives that are lost as a result of the lack of regulation within the addiction treatment industry.

Follow Wilbert on Twitter