Photo via Discovery Channel

On Tuesday I was in Las Vegas again, and my trip had me thinking about butts. 

I spent the wee hours of the morning writhing in pain while trying to avoid disturbing my partner’s sleep. Sometimes my body decides to stage a full-on menstrual revolt replete with cramps and some migraine-like symptoms—which I guess kinda make sense if you believe that migraines can be triggered by hormonal cycles. I chalk it up to God hating me because I’m a pornographer. (That last sentence was a joke. Mostly.) Like many women my periods suck and aren’t on a perfect cycle. It could be worse, but I still envy women who always know when their three magically pain-free days of moderate bleeding are going to happen. I turned on the television to distract myself from my internal grumble-rant and stumbled upon this survival reality show called Naked and Afraid.

Every episode pairs a man and a woman who have above average survival experience or knowledge. They meet each other for the first time in whatever area they’re going to be living in for the next 21 days. They are each allowed a single personal item; usually a knife, pot, or thing to start fire with. Oh, and they don’t have any clothes. No underwear, no shoes. Buck-ass naked. I wondered if I was watching the Playboy channel, but then the Discovery logo popped up. The first episode I saw took place in Tanzania with a pair named Kellie and EJ. 

EJ came off as pretty chauvinistic. Kellie seemed like a bit of a hippy. Their personalities clashed in a standard reality TV sort of way and eventually Kellie saved the day by basically using her vagina to catch a catfish. Seriously. She sat down in the water with her legs spread, this catfish swam up between them, and she used her hands to corner the catfish in her crotch. The glee in her voice while she narrated this incident for the camera made me fall a little bit in love with her. I was entertained by the unorthodox fishing antics so I stuck around for Alison and Jonathan on the Maldive Islands. Jonathan insisted on walking in the sun while complaining about being at risk for a serious sunburn, which he ended up getting. Then he spent the next few days laying on his back while Alison wove sunhats, foraged for berries that might help with Jonathan’s burn, and scaled trees to retrieve coconuts. Once Jonathan was back on his feet he dug a well. When Alison told him the water didn’t look safe to drink, he chugged it while chiding her for being a baby. It turned out that Alison was right, and she was extremely kind when she later informed him that no matter how bad a person’s diarrhea is it is never a good idea to poop right next the shelter.

Viewed sequentially, the first three episodes of the show take on an interesting ideology. Each man is presented as dudelier and more chauvinistic than the last and the women seem successively more frivolous *and* more competent in their ability to survive. The men from the Africa and the Maldives Islands episodes both vocally reassess their opinions of women at the end. I started wondering if this show was actually some kind of anti-man propaganda. But the one thing both sexes share—and Naked and Afraid is delighted to display—are asses.

The show is full of butts. The female breasts and genitals of both sexes are pixelated, but post-military man butts, 38-year-old grown woman butts, loner survivalist dude butts, and lean surfer chick butts all get a serious chunk of screen time. These butts aren’t presented in a licentious way. Nor are they presented in an artistic way or flattering way. They’re just butts, attached to people who are far more concerned with finding water and hunting down something to eat that contains protein than they are with whether or not they’re being documented from the most attractive angle. 


The author with butt.

The vast majority of the butts I see in person belong to people who work in pornography or are involved in other sorts of work in front of cameras or on stages. There’s a certain amount of physical awareness that develops when you use your body professionally to portray characters or deliver aesthetically pleasing entertainment. I frequently see my colleagues subconsciously position their bodies into flattering poses, pointing their toes or turning towards good light even when they’re not on the clock. One of my comedian friends probably couldn’t describe to what precise angle he lifts his eyebrow when delivering a wry look, but he lifts it in the funniest way whether he’s on stage or having coffee in his living room. When I try on lingerie, I usually catch myself in the mirror making the same handful of shapes with my body that get used on my promotional materials and box covers for Digital Playground.

Most people don’t spend their entire professional lives using their bodies as tools for creative expression. They provide medical care, deal with the paperwork involved in keeping our judicial system and economy running, or work one of the many jobs involved in growing and distributing food. We don’t see their butts very often. What we do see are the professionally photographed, well lit, and frequently photoshopped butts of models, musical artists, and porn performers. 

Naked and Afraid seems pretty scripted. Critics have been accused of its producers of being less than forthcoming about the medical and nutritional aid given to its survivalists. One thing I don’t think the show can reasonably be accused of is sexualizing the people who appear on it. My career in pornography may skew my definition of salacious and lewd intent, but I caught nary a whiff of either. 

Even though the people shown nude on Naked and Afraid are physically active, I think showing their butts helps to balance out the image of body-types and ass shapes that Victoria’s Secret and Brazzers display. The prolific asses on this hour-long program provide a context for human asses writ large.

We all know that the butts in fashion magazines are outliers, and one Discovery channel show won’t give viewers familiarity with the range of human bodies that say, a massage therapist or a person who frequents nudist colonies has, but I do think it’s a step towards counteracting the “Bikini Ready Body” headlines that dominate the covers of women’s magazines every spring. Or maybe I’m just full of PMS rage and glad to hop on the side of anyone who might be trying to overthrow the patriarchy through prolific documentation of butts. I’m also really good at making everything in the world somehow about my period.

Previously - Stoya on Starvation Economies and Getting New Cats

And more about butts:

Things I Have Fished Out of Other People's Butts

Assplasty: Dr. Mendiata's Perfect Booties

Watch - The Biggest Ass in Brazil

For VICE Japan's second Munchies episode we hung out with American-born ramen fanatic Keizo Shimamoto, head chef at renowned ramen joint Bassanova in Shindaita Station, Tokyo. Keizo and his fellow ramen obsessives Boom and Hiroshi took us on a whistle-stop walking tour of their favorite haunts before heading back to Bassanova for unattractive-sounding but surprisingly delicious "ramen burgers."

Here is VICE Japan's inaugural episode of Munchies, "Hatos Bar".

The human-powered helicopter in flight.

33 years ago, the American Helicopter Society established the Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Prize—which called for a team to design and build a working, non-motorized helicopter that could fly above three metres for a minute or longer. It took over three decades to successfully meet the challenge, but the prize was finally won this past weekend by the University of Toronto’s Human Powered Vehicle Design Team which, along with having a sweet new pedal-powered helicopter, took home $250,000 to reinvest in their laboratory and pay off their various investors.

Since this whole story is basically dripping in good vibes, I went to visit the Human Powered Vehicle lab just off of the U of T campus in Toronto to discuss the aftermath of completing an extremely difficult scientific challenge—with Dr. Todd Reichert and Cameron Robertson—and to see what they’re up to now (hint: it rhymes with bead tikes).

VICE: So what attracted you guys to this prize in the first place?
Cameron: We started working together on a human-powered ornithopter, the Snowbird, in 2006, which flew in 2010. For the next two years, I was in industry and Todd was finishing his PhD. And then we saw Gamera, the team in the US testing and said, “This looks like a really cool challenge and a neat endeavour. For 30 years, no one's been able to do it, and we'd like to give it a shot.” And then we looked at the value of the prize, and realized it could be a breakeven proposition in which everybody wins. Not only are we showcasing innovation—students are getting an excellent learning experience, and we're able to work on something we love, while getting out our message and encouraging people to do the impossible and to do more with less. It pretty much hit all of our hot buttons.

How do you think attaching a prize to a challenge like this can advance scientific progress?
Todd: This is a great example, and the X Prize is also a good example. This is obviously something a lot of people wanted to do, but as soon as you put a prize to it, it spurs people to actually go do it. There were tons of teams—several dozen teams around the world for the past 30 years—working on this project. Each of those teams is gathering together a group of bright individuals, trying to figure out creative solutions to their problems. If you paid a research institute a quarter of a million dollars, you wouldn't be able to get as much innovation as you did from getting all these different teams to work on this. So it's an amazing way to get all these people around the team pushing.

Cameron and Todd, working on some cool shit. Photos by Michael Toledano.

Did the competition between teams ever get weird when you were still trying to win?
Todd: Yeah, it was a really weird situation being so neck and neck with Gamera [the team in Maryland who was also competing]. We kept neck and neck, and each time our helicopter was in the middle of testing, we tried to coincide our flights, to make sure that when we were testing, so was Gamera. We were both very close the whole time. We had a lot of discussion with them, but there were a lot of things we kept secret. For example, neither of us were sharing our control strategies. But I visited them Christmas of last year, and in June when they did their last round of flight-testing. We've had a lot of communication despite the intense competition.

Did you get a call from them when you guys finally won?
Todd: Yeah, we actually called them up the day we won.

“Sorry, guys. It's over!”
Cameron: We had been in close communication and didn't want them to find out the wrong way, especially if they were going into more testing, we didn't want them to kill themselves and destroy their aircraft.

Todd: The human-powered vehicle community is really open to sharing information. When we first got into it, we went to visit teams that had been working on this in the 70s and 80s and 90s, and they were willing to share everything. One thing a prize does do is that all of a sudden, people want to be a little more secretive about some things. At the same time, both us and the Ganera team were as open as we could be about everything we didn't feel would lead the other team to win. It's a difficult balance, I guess.

Without getting really technical, were there any moments when you were like, “Fuck this, this isn't working”? What were some of the big walls you hit?
Cameron: The control system was probably the most salient example of that. We had started with this idea that we would vary the lift on the opposing rotors in order to get the helicopter to tilt and then start to drift one direction or the other. This was done with small control surfaces on the tips of each of the rotors. But through the first two weeks of testing we did and early in the winter, we realized that was an untenable system, that there was nothing to do to make it work

The solution we ended up adopting was very simple. Basically, instead of varying the opposing rotor's lift, the pilot leans the bike, and by leaning the bike, it pulls on lines attached to the bottoms of the rotor posts, and that tilts the thrusts of the rotors, which gives you an instantaneous and very large sideways force. It's very intuitive and simple, and we save like, six to eight pounds off the helicopter.

That's interesting. Probably more organic to control, too.
Cameron: Oh yeah, it's so cool, you just lean where you want to go, and you can feel it responding instantly. It's amazing. It's not a solution we had thought of from the get go. It wasn't until we started flying that we saw how flexible this thing was.

So, this is obviously the most advanced human-powered helicopter ever made, but when you look at it, the thing is massive. It’s 150 feet wide. What is it going to take to get a personal, human-powered helicopter? Is that possible?
Todd: I will be the first to say that nothing is impossible. I can't envision how we would make it small enough at this point.

Why does it have to be so big?
Cameron: It's much more efficient to push down lightly on a large amount of air than it is to push really hard on a small amount of air. So the power required varies directly with how big the rotor disk is. If you weigh 160 pounds, you have to lift that, which requires a massive disk area.

So people aren't going to be taking pedalcopters to work anytime soon?
Todd: No, not quite. I wish I could answer that better.

Speed bike shells.

Well, alright then. It appears you guys are moving on to speed bikes... What is a speed bike?
Todd: A speed bike is a recumbent bicycle that is covered in a composite aerodynamic shell that is capable of highway speeds. Some of our bikes have been up to 120 km/h, and the next bike is designed for up to 140km/h. Every year, we go to the world human-powered speed challenge out in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

Battle Mountain? Are you fucking kidding me? That’s a sweet name.
Todd: It's unfortunately a bit of a decrepit mining town. It's economically depressed, as is most of the US.

Cameron: Battle Mountain is where everyone goes. It's this five mile stretch of road where dreams are made. There are teams from France, Russia, the Netherlands, Canada, the US, and Australia—who go and bring the fastest technology in the world. The competition is really heating up. The current record has stood for a few years and hopefully this year, we or another team break it. The speed bikes are interesting because not only are they 140 km/h which is faster than driving a car, it's also that out of all the technologies we work on, these have the most potential for practical application. You could commute with them in the future, it could be part of the next generation of personal transport. That would be interesting to see.

"I don't often ride a bicycle... But when i do it's always over 100km/h"

Why do you guys want to keep making crazy, human powered vehicles in the first place?
Cameron: Well, part of the exciting thing we're doing with the speed bikes is focusing on student learning. The whole team out there are all University of Toronto and Ryerson engineering students, and imbuing in the next generation of engineers the concept of lightweight design for efficient engineering is one of the drivers. It's not the vehicles themselves. Commercializing them isn't our goal. We want young people out there to see nothing is impossible and that undertaking a great challenge for the thrill of it can lead to some incredible things.

It's also important to understand where all our support came from. There's been a partnership with the University of Toronto, corporate sponsorships, a few research grants, as well as a Kickstarter fundraising campaign—this kind of grassroots innovation does need the public’s support, their sympathy, and their help. This wasn't in a vacuum, it took the support of the whole community.

And it worked! Good news all-round.

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

Also:

Canadian Scientists Built a Virtual Map of the Human Brain

The author, with the stoner's father.

I’ve always said that if I ever become the son of someone rich or famous I will fall off the face of the Earth and live out my days staring at the sea. Doing stuff sucks. Some days I stare at the clouds and daydream about all the things I wouldn’t do if I were rich. I wouldn’t climb a tall mountain. I wouldn’t jump out of a plane. I wouldn’t write the great American novel. I wouldn’t go to Paris, Madagascar, or Mozambique. I wouldn’t even chew my food—I’d pay someone to chew it for me and spit it into my mouth like a bird.

And that’s why Tony Hawk’s son, Riley, annoys me. I don’t get that kid, nor do I understand what his problem is. His dad is rich—possibly one of the richest skateboarders of all time—and still Riley insists on doing shit. Over the years he’s become a great skateboarder, like his dad, and he’ll probably go pro one day. He even quit his dad’s company, Birdhouse, to ride for Baker to show he can make it on his own. If I had a dad who owned a skateboard company I would make him turn me pro as soon as I was able to speak, and I sure as hell wouldn’t bother learning to skate. I’d just have him buy me the best skater in the world, a la Richard Pryor in The Toy, and inform the skater that he was now me and would be changing his name to mine and putting out video parts for me. I think Nyjah Huston would look great with my haircut.

On a recent trip to Tony’s southern California home I asked him what Riley was up to, and he told me to go into the garage and see for myself. I was annoyed to find Riley jamming out with his buddies like he wasn’t rich as all hell. Now he’s playing music? Give me a fucking break. What’s next? Getting a job? Riley Hawk is seriously the all time worst at being a rich kid. And his dad is a total enabler. He’s LETTING Riley skate and play music. If I were Tony I’d be like, “Listen! We’re rich! Cut the shit and stop acting like the peasants!” But no! He encourages him. I asked him what he thought of Riley playing music, hoping he’d be pissed that his son was showing initiative, but instead he said,  “After one minute of jamming, it sounds like they repeat the same thing... for HOURS. But maybe I just don't get the melodic nuances. I like the creative atmosphere, though, and there is always someone to skate with. But I could do without the parking issues and dog shit everywhere.”

Fucking whatever, Tony. Pay a homeless guy to pick up the dog shit. No, better yet, pay a homeless guy to eat the dog shit while you make it rain on him. Go spin another 900, bro.

Here’s an interview I did with Riley about his music in the hope that he would drop the act and admit he was just pretending and actually paying someone to play for him.

VICE: How would you describe the music you make in your old man’s garage?
Riley: Usually, when it’s me and my buddies, I’d describe it as just a bunch of friends who don’t really know what they’re doing, trying to make music. I’ve played for a couple years but we don’t know anything about what keys to play in and all that kind of stuff. We just go for it.

Tell me about what you’ve got going with Figgy? Are you a band? Or do you just jam out?
Figgy is in a couple bands. At his house they have a place where they jam, but they got in trouble because it was too loud. I had all this stuff at my house, so they started coming over and practicing here. Whenever people are over it just turns into a jam with everybody. It’s usually me, Figgy, and Austin on drums—he’s the drummer in Figgy’s band, Harsh Toke.

That’s a great name for a stoner band. Do you guys have a stoney name for your band?
No, we’re not a band. Everyone just hops on whatever instrument and messes around.

Do you have to be stoned to make stoner rock?
I don’t think so…

But it helps, right?
Yeah, I guess. I mean it is called stoner rock.

Are you guys just fucking around, or are you trying to make it big?
No, no way. I’m just fucking around. But Figgy’s band is super good. They’re actually making a record right now.

What does your dad think of your music?
I don’t know. He’s usually out of town when we’re being loud, just because when he’s here we don’t want to play loud and bum him out. But whenever Figgy and those guys are playing it sounds just as good as any other band these days, so it’s not a bummer to hear good music.

He told me he’s bummed on it. He said you guys suck!
Really? I guess we need to step our game up.

He said the first minute sounds good but after that it sounds like the same shit over and over and over again.
Yeah, those guys go for like 20 or 30 minutes straight on the same song; it gets kind of gnarly.

On one tune? You’ve got to be high to play the same song for 30 minutes. Who’s your inspiration, Phish?
Who’s that?

They’re like the even shittier Grateful Dead. They keep playing and don’t stop.
I’ve never listened to them. I’m not too big a fan of the Grateful Dead. I don’t listen to them.

That’s good. They suck. Usually stoners listen to that crap.
No, I couldn’t really get into that.

Your dad also complains about the parking and the dog shit. Is it actually dog shit, or is it dude shit?
No, it’s definitely my dogs. He just hit me up the other day saying I need to be more on top of the dog shit. It’s hard because my dad’s backyard is huge. There’s so much grass, it’s hard to find where my dog is going every day.

Do you wipe your dog’s ass with the toilet paper you keep stealing from your old man?
No, definitely not. There’s just a bathroom right in front so if there’s none in my room I go in there and grab some. But he just showed me this closet area where he keeps all the rolls, so I stopped stealing his.

I like the vision of Birdman finding out the hard way that there’s no toilet paper on the roll. Your dad is pretty rich, does he just use rolls of $100 bills to wipe his ass?
No. I think it’s just like whatever, standard stuff.

Like $20s?
No, like $5s, I think. I’m just kidding. It’s just standard toilet paper like everyone else.

Does your dad ever act like an old guy? Does he come in with the robe on and yell at you kids to turn down that racket?
No. Never. If he does text me and say it’s loud I’ll turn it down. But usually we try to play when he’s not at the house.

Does he ever ask to do vocals on one of your songs?
My dad? No. We don’t even have a microphone. I think it would be embarrassing if we had a microphone. Maybe we can get him to sing on one of Figgy’s best track and send you the recording.

How big of a burden is it to be Tony Hawk’s kid?
I think it’s rad that my dad skates. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

When it comes to street skating, you look better on your board than your dad. Do you constantly remind him of that?
Ha! No, I don’t think so. Maybe for street, but on vert I’m nowhere close to what he’s doing. But I remember there was a time when I was doing a street trick that he couldn’t do and he was tripped out by it.

I have a photo here with a bong in it. Is that basically another instrument for your stoner rock?
I don’t really smoke with bongs. I don’t like them too much. They’re kind of intense. My friends usually come and go with them.

They travel with a bong?
Some people do, yeah.

In a car?
Yeah, I guess it has to be in a car.

Do you know how bad your car would smell if that spilled?
That’s very true. It’s high-risk bong transportation.

I did a beer bong with your old man. You ever try to get him high?
No, never. And I’m not a big drinker so I’ve never even done a beer bong myself.

So your dad can out-party you?
Yeah, definitely. I’m sure he could.

Does your dad play any instruments?
I don’t think so. I’m not sure if when he was younger he did but now I don’t think he does.

Does your uncle, Mike Hawk, play any instruments?
Uh, no. But my step dad was named Mike. His last name wasn’t Hawk, though. It would’ve been awesome if he was named Mike Hawk.

Figgy

I’m a huge fan of Mike Hawk!
I know. So many people tell me that I should name my kid Mike Hawk; that name always comes up.

Do you have any groupies for your band?
No, I have a girlfriend. I’ve been with her for over a year now.

So she’s your groupie.
I guess so.

Tell me about the groupies on the Asphalt Yacht Club trip you went on in Miami.
Dude! I don’t even know how to explain it. Stevie [Williams] just has a bunch of crazy chicks out there. I have no idea what any of those chicks’ deals are. I remember the first night we were there he went out after skating all day and we just kicked back. We were in this huge house and I was sleeping on the couch downstairs and then at five in the morning I hear a bunch of people come in. He was with a bunch of chicks he had met at the club. They partied from then until nine in the morning. It was pretty torturous.

I heard they were half-naked big booty video gals and you were quite uncomfortable.
No. My friend Russell was going around having them do all sorts of shit like a full on music video director. It was funny.

Here’s Riley getting arrested in the latest Thrasher Skate Rock clip:

Previously - Inside the Writer's Studio

For more Riley go to http://www.asphaltyachtclub.com/

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko

Cory Monteith at a press junket. via WikiCommons.

"Oh man, the guy from Glee is dead," said a friend of mine while staring down at his iPhone. It was 1:30am Sunday morning on the dance floor at Toronto’s Augusta House. As a recovering alcoholic and prescription pill addict, I rarely stay out past midnight anymore, mainly because nothing genuinely fun tends happens then. This particular night was a good friend’s birthday, so I had made an exception.

"Cory Monteith?" I asked, only because I knew that's who it would be. I knew his story. When I was just out of rehab in 2011, I met Monteith briefly at a press event. Though we didn’t exchange many words, he was polite, charming and even a bit shy, a rare and refreshing quality in an actor.

A few months later, I read an interview with Monteith in Parade Magazine in which he talked about his life as a former addict. He had gone to rehab for the first time at age 19 for drugs and alcohol after his friends and family staged an intervention. They were worried, in his words, that he "could die." He spoke candidly to the magazine about his relapses and how he eventually decided to sober up when he was caught stealing money for drugs from a family member. I had read many celebrity memoirs on addiction and recovery in an attempt to cope with my own feelings of isolation, but reading Monteith’s story was the first one that truly made me feel less alone, if only because I had met him briefly. He had seemed happy and comfortable with himself. It gave me hope that one day I would be at ease with a sober version of myself as well.  I didn't know at the time that I was about to relapse.

There's a build up to a relapse. For me, it started with feeling left out. My coworkers would drink beer on Friday afternoons around the office. My friends would "forget" to invite me to parties. After a while, I couldn't even rationalize to myself why I was staying sober anymore. I felt more alone than I had even at the height of my abuse. At least then, the bar was always welcoming, the bottle always numbing. Besides, most of the people I knew were party animals. If I needed help, so did they. I didn’t want to be the scapegoat for addiction, the one that everyone could point a finger at and say, "That, over there, is an example of someone who took it too far. We're fine.”

I was getting ready for work one morning at the gym in my office building. I was anxious about the day at hand. One of my coworkers had recently been criticizing my work, and I had the sneaking suspicion that it was her mission to weed the rehab girl out of the office. Maybe it was just speculation on my part. It didn’t really matter; I no longer felt welcome. And so that morning, while I was gurgling mouthwash, I decided to swallow it instead. It burned on the way down, and I felt comforted by that old feeling of something toxic making its way through my system, heating up and tingling on its way down. The harsh mint flavour didn’t even faze me. The buzz hit when I was putting my mascara on, and I was home.

After a few days, I was coming to work with a kombucha bottle filled with orange-coloured Listerine. I didn’t want to relapse on alcohol, so I drank something that very few people would ever consider recreational. I figured the mint smell would be my cover, since no one I knew could really know I was technically drinking again. I resented my time in rehab because I felt I couldn’t belong to any side of the situation now. The drinkers didn’t want me, and I didn’t want to be one with the sober kids. I didn’t even know who the sober kids were.

I had no clue how harsh mouthwash was, that it was 27% alcohol, or that it had tons of other poisonous ingredients that did a number on my body and brain in just days of drinking it. I was soon hospitalized briefly for suicidal acts I don’t really remember. I spent multiple days lying in a hospital bed with a guard outside in case I did anything remotely self-harming. I made a deal with myself to try one last time for the sake of my family, but that I’d quit my job, start writing the things I wanted to write and get some therapy and maybe make some new friends. I still relapsed one more time 50 days later, on a date, just because I needed to see if relapsing on wine would be any different than mouthwash. It wasn’t.

What happened next was a year of choices—choices to make new friends, choices to write stories I'd be proud of, choices to find support groups, and to even move cities. There was no magical moment, no epiphany. There was only a series of decisions that, when put all together, now amount to a girl who is okay in her own skin.

In February, I pitched Monteith as a possible celebrity interview to my editor at TheFix.com, a New York-based website about recovery. Before I put anything in motion with his publicist, Monteith relapsed and returned to rehab in April. I remember feeling shaken up. He must have had years of sobriety under his belt, though you never really know.

When Monteith re-emerged from rehab, he seemed to have the support of loved ones like his girlfriend Lea Michele. He obviously had a busy career to be excited for too, with a hit show and an upcoming movie on the horizon. So why the relapse? You can easily blame relapses on junkies just being junkies, but I don’t see it that way, mainly because I’m one of them. Even now with a year and a half of sobriety under my belt, it’s easy to understand the allure in giving up on recovery. When you say you don’t drink at parties, it always feels like you’re saying, “Hi, I’m an addict” to a room full of strangers. People seem thrown off by it. Some ask why, and some just decide you’re probably not worth talking to. Sometimes the judgment gets to you.

When I walked home from the bar on Sunday morning, it was around 2am. The toxicology reports for Monteith that revealed that he died from a mix of heroin and alcohol weren’t even out yet. They didn’t need to be. I just knew, and I was sad.

Stone cold sober, I walked past guys with half-closed eyes who predictably tried to make their desperate last moves on a girl, any girl, who walked by after last call. Drunk girls stumbled into alleys to yell into their iPhones or puke. It’s hard to tell an addict from a just a regular party kid in the early hours of the morning. The most obvious addicts are the ones like me: totally sober folks.

I don’t know what Monteith was feeling when he made his way back to his hotel last weekend where he would eventually die alone. I don't judge him for relapsing either. I get it because I've been there. It’s hard sometimes to accept sobriety, and the feeling that you’re not really going to be invited to the party anymore even when you’re physically there. Sobriety can be extremely isolating, even when the benefits of your new lifestyle are staring back at you. And isolation is lonely. On bad days, the loneliness is overwhelming, painful even, and all you really want is for the pain to stop. If there’s one thing addicts are experts at, it’s knowing how to stop pain. The problem is, sometimes when you stop the pain, it never comes back.

Previously:

My Methadone Clinic Is the Happiest Place on Earth

Hadith traditions and early biographical literature on Muhammad include an episode in which he takes on the strongest wrestler of his tribe, a man named Rukana. The wrestler promises that he will become Muslim if Muhammad can throw him. They wrestle, and Muhammad throws Rukana two or three times, after which he stuns Rukana with the additional miracle of summoning a tree to move towards him.

The “defeat me and I’ll convert to your religion” stipulation reminds me of WWE, because there are times in WWE when good must triumph simply because it is good. When WWE successfully constructs a hero, that hero will overcome whatever adversities are thrown at him, because the wrestling match serves as a measure of the goodness and justice in the universe. The truth of the wrestling hero must be demonstrated in victory. In the hero’s hands, the WWE championship signifies a restoration of cosmic harmony, balance in the Force. By WWE logic, the messenger of Allah would also have to be the ultimate good guy rassler.

This is a problem for me, because if it means that if Muhammad were a wrestler in today’s WWE, he would be John Cena. 

This past weekend, I watched John Cena successfully defend his WWE championship against the 400-pound Mark Henry, a powerlifter who holds legitimate records and is billed by WWE as the “world’s strongest man.” Henry played the heel, having established himself as a sadistic monster whose finishing move, the “world’s strongest slam,” inducted victims into what he called the “hall of pain.” Henry had challenged Cena after deceiving him and the fans with what appeared to have been a heartfelt retirement speech. Cena expressed his admiration for Henry, and Henry responded by world’s-strongest-slamming Cena into the mat.

While Mark Henry represented his own selfish ambitions and brute force, John Cena brought a different set of values to their match: his core principles of “hustle, loyalty, and respect.” Their match told the story of Cena’s values defeating those of Henry. Despite Henry’s underhanded tactics and merciless pounding of Cena, Cena refused to surrender. He fought honorably against all odds, and though Henry was too massive for Cena to slam, Cena managed to make Henry tap out. The good guy won, and through his efforts, good itself triumphed over evil.

John Cena is the contemporary version of what Hulk Hogan had been in the 80s. He's the white-bread superhero who stands for all of the wonderful values that parents wish to instill in their children. He spouts positive tripartite mantras (for Hogan it was “training, prayers, and vitamins”) and presents himself as some kind of metaphorical stand-in for the US military. Like Hulk Hogan before him, John Cena never gives up, he never backs down, and he’s so good that the truth of his goodness must be demonstrated every time he steps into the ring.  He’s so good that his goodness occasionally pokes holes in the fictional world that he inhabits. When Cena appears in WWE’s anti-bullying PSAs, he can speak as his character, but it’s hard to forget that Cena rules in an ongoing narrative that demands physical violence as the only way that problems can ever get solved, ever, ever.

Watching John Cena prove the truth of his message by defeating a man whom WWE made every effort to present as unbeatable, I could not help but recall the story of Muhammad versus Rukana. For a Muslim wrestling fan to make this comparison is horrifying, because Muslims regard Muhammad as the greatest human being to have ever walked the Earth, and serious wrestling fans regard John Cena as corny shit. When I contemplate the greatness of Muhammad, I don’t want to picture him wearing Cena’s jorts.

In his famous discussion of wrestling as myth, literary theorist Roland Barthes examines the ways in which wrestlers’ bodies serve as signifiers of their essential characters. In other words, the wrestler who is supposed to be the dishonest and cowardly heel will express this meaning in his physical appearance and every step that he takes and every pose and grimace. Likewise, the hero must be immediately recognizable as the hero. The wrestler who is supposed to be John Cena will look like John Cena. In the 80s, Hulk Hogan consistently referred to his 24-inch biceps as representing the essential truth of his being. The ultimate core of Hulk Hogan’s self was expressed in his arms. This aspect of the wrestler as a physical embodiment of his ideology also relates to the descriptions of Muhammad in hadith traditions. Muhammad’s companions often describe his physical superiority, whether in the beauty of his appearance of his having the sexual power of 30 men.  Like a wrestler who steps into the arena and must establish his persona at the very moment that he is seen by the fans, Muhammad’s body instantly delivers the proof of his Muhammad-ness.

The difficulty for me in considering Muhammad as a wrestler is that I have a mixed reaction to wrestling’s superheroes. I started my life as a wrestling fan fully in the clutches of Hulkamania. It was Hogan’s 1987 defeat of Andre the Giant, perhaps the most genuinely superhero-ish moment in WWE’s history, that caused me, a nine-year-old, to fall in deep and lasting love with WWE. By 1989, however, I was thoroughly over Hulk Hogan, having learned that it was more fun to cheer for the villains. When Hogan fought Randy “Macho Man” Savage at WrestleMania V, I was six months short of my 12th birthday, but wise enough to the business to know that the superhero had to win. I cheered for Savage anyway, in part because it demonstrated that I was no longer one of the little kids who loved a human cartoon. Going against the grain and cheering for Savage seemed like it was the more sophisticated and mature way to enjoy wrestling.

A whole generation of 80s kids learned in the Hogan-era that cheering unconditionally for one-dimensional good guys was kind of lame.  It is partly for their presence that John Cena gets at least half an arena’s worth of boos every Monday night. Cena has dominated WWE for most of the past decade, winning against insurmountable odds so many times that the act grew stale a long time ago. As they had with Hogan, fans have grown tired of Cena’s superhero persona. For years, people have been all but begging him to turn bad—as Hogan had in 1996, revitalizing his career—just to become interesting again. For the older fans and self-identified “smarks” (shorthand for “smart marks”), it’s preferable to support someone like CM Punk, who reigned as the top villain through the second half of 2012 and the first third of 2013. CM Punk ran amok as an arrogant, jealous, bitter, paranoid, delusional heel who hungered for constant adulation and demanded that he be recognized as “best in the world.” His heel behavior included stealing the Undertaker’s sacred urn, mocking the recently deceased Paul Bearer, and ostensibly pouring Bearer’s own ashes onto the Undertaker and himself. CM Punk was an awful human being, but still an immeasurably cooler wrestler than John Cena. Cheering him meant that we saw through the Cena hype machine. CM Punk has recently been recast as a good guy, which flattens much of what made his character so compelling.

Many wrestling fans and folks in the business mourn this loss of faith in the heroes. It’s part of the death of “kayfabe,” the traditional veiling of wrestling’s inner workings from its fans. Now that wrestling has become as transparent as any other form of entertainment, with the good guys and bad guys alike admitting that they only play fictional characters, the fans are free to get ironic and cynical, cheering for the villains and dumping on the cornball heroes. But what if I have a post-kayfabe religion?

I don’t know that Muhammad ever wrestled Rukana, or that this great wrestler Rukana ever existed, or even that Muhammad’s birth name was really “Muhammad.” I’m not necessarily buying into the canonical representation of Muhammad as the most physically perfect human specimen of all time, but I still find myself nourished by the character. This Ramadan, as I reflect on the stories of Muhammad, I bear witness to my own lack. I love a Muhammad who shows me what I am not. Muhammad tells me to train, say my prayers, take my vitamins, and remain faithful to the creed of hustle, loyalty, and respect. He says that we should always take the high road and never quit.

The truth is that even if I find John Cena’s superhero myth to be played out beyond repair, I cannot be John Cena. I cannot touch that level of goodness. It doesn’t even matter if John Cena himself cannot be John Cena, or Hulk Hogan cannot be Hulk Hogan, or Muhammad cannot be Muhammad. On the other hand, I could probably become CM Punk, if this only means being a supreme dick to people. Cheering for the hero means that I want a better version of myself. The holy month of Ramadan requires that for a time, I drop the smark irony and restore kayfabe. I see Muhammad flying to the ring on his winged Buraq, the WWE championship around his waist, and I mark hard for Muhammad because for my own growth as a human being, I should treat Muhammad-ness as possible. The champ is here.

Michael Muhammad Knight (@MM_Knight) is the author of nine books, including Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing. His 10^th book, Why I Am a Salafi, is forthcoming in 2014.

Not sure if you've heard, but we've got a show on a little network called HBO. It's called VICE and in it we've carried on our time-honored tradition of telling insane and uncomfortable stories from hot zones all over the globe. In our first season, we reported on everything from the gun violence in Chiraq to the killer kids of the Taliban in Kabul. We're not trying to gloat or anything, but everyone seems to dig it—we're even in the running for an Emmy. Yeah, we just got nominated for an award in the Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series category. It's pretty cool that people are up on it. We're not stressing or anything. It's not a big deal. But let's be honest, if we don't get that award we're going Ol' Dirty Bastard on the Emmys and snatching that statuette from whoever has their grubby hands on it. Everyone knows, VICE is for the children.  

Our founder Shane Smith was so hyped on the nomination that he had a few words to share: 

"It makes all the dysentery worthwhile, was my first thought when we found out that we had been nominated. My second was, a bunch of dirtbags from Brooklyn finally make good. We are insanely stoked and a little bit stunned to be nominated in our virgin season, and really have to thank HBO for giving us the creative freedom to make the show we wanted. We also have to thank the viewers who gave us so much support even when crazy shit went down (drunken karaoke dance-offs with the world's most terrifying and unknown dictator). Most of our crew are now in the field shooting season two, but on their behalf and on behalf of all of us here at VICE, we want to say "thank you." There's only love."

If you haven't watched VICE, check out this clip from episode one:

For more info on the VICE show, visit hbo.vice.com.

My favorite music videos were always the ones that looked like the bands had been locked in a house somewhere, forced to take part in a nightmarish Kenneth Anger or David Lynch movie. The images and sounds would shift so fast you wanted to see it and hear it again immediately to try and figure out what exactly the fuck you had just witnessed. That mutating is also one of my favorite modes in books—where the text is at once so spasmodic and so sure of itself, in its own logic, that where you end up could be achieved through no other means.

There are so many styles and modes at work in the 119 pages of James Pate’s The Fassbinder Diaries that you begin to feel kidnapped. There are many processes and perspectives turned on and left running all at once. The book begins with the description of some cryptic film populated by glass shards and mangled bodies; then suddenly we are watching others watch a Pasolini film before they go to bed; then, just as quickly, we are in the memory of another movie, full of elderly nuns and a masturbating boy, a Nazi flag hidden in a drawer. The book is full of cryptic rumors, half-remembered visions, and everyday images tied into the absurd, like an elevator on a beach releasing pink mist. This world, however, clearly touches the human one: cultural icons like The Beatles and characters from Rainer Werner Fassbinder films appear alongside nameless perverts and on one page even panthers pop up and then disappear, continually reminding us the book’s world is contained within ours.

Page by page the book continues to open and pile on itself, building as it goes a kind of catalog of cryptic films and sound, all of it laced together by the body of the book and coming open in odd places, with sudden images from nowhere like: “A pig can vibrate upon birth.” And “A red smear in an empty house, an isle covered with bird shit.” From jump to jump there builds a strange, hypnotic music, one which by the end has seemed to wrap around the reader like a film that never ends, insisting you stay in it alongside all the other images its captured. By the end, it is an experience more immediate and thrilling than one expects in such a small place, and lingers thereafter like a video you flipped to late one night on some shitty TV in a strange house and felt infatuated with or hypnotized by and never saw again. 

An excerpt from The Fassbinder Diaries:

The Double Life of Mick Jagger

I.

There was this one time at a party in Detroit, this Christmas party. In 2003 or 2004. I was in the bathroom washing my hands and two woman walked by outside and one said to the other that the other night she’d had a dream where Mick Jagger was trying to seduce her, except in the dream he was a woman. The other woman outside the door said he was a kind of woman. His mouth, she said, was a kind of vagina. And that exchange made me want to write a poem about that idea. About Mick Jagger’s vagina. I tried it the next day. My window overlooked a pawnshop with a shitload of lights flashing in the window. I came up with a poem about a couple, a man and a woman, and they both looked like Mick Jagger, and in a sense they both were Mick Jagger.

II.

In the hotel room in the poem the female Jagger will dress the male Jagger in whore clothes, call him whore names. The male Jagger will think during such episodes of how the meat inside of him could build a massive cathedral should it ever be extracted from his body. That is, if you took the meat and pounded it flat. And used quite a bit of metal wiring. His eyes could be in the center of the cathedral either in the floor and looking up or in the ceiling and staring down. Either way they would never blink. And his teeth. What could they do with his teeth.

III.

You fuck, the female Jagger will say, like a whore. You fuck, the male Jagger will say, like a porn film with the furniture scratched out.

IV.

Yet they do not know they are part of the same person. They do not realize their separate essences will only be reunited upon death.

V.

I was rereading Helter Skelter around this time. I was listening to some of the songs from the Manson family around this time, pretty songs sung by young women with childlike and fairylike voices. The two Mick Jaggers would be killed by a hitchhiking serial killer, a thug with a red mohawk. They would die on a bright June morning, in the silence of an Iowa cornfield. Did I hate them, the two Jaggers? I did not hate them. But I liked to think that in some way they hated each other. 

VI.

The crows will eat the hearts of the Mick Jaggers. Plastic crows. Lipstick hearts.

A Brief History of the Beatles

Mieze said to me earlier in the week that as a teenager she’d been obsessed with the possibility that Paul really was dead, that the rumor from the 60s had been right after all, that a bland fake Paul had for decades lived under the name and sign of the actual boyish and endearing Paul, and that the most haunting lyrics from any song ever was probably I Buried Paul murmured during the end of “Strawberry Fields Forever.”

Mieze said to me later in the week that “Helter Skelter” was the song that turned into a crime that turned into a made-for-TV movie. 

Revolution Number Nine

Mieze sits on the hotel bed smoking a cigarette.

By her knee is an ashtray and a pair of sunglasses. 

She has recently showered.

Her hair is wet and her cheeks are flushed.

She is tired and sunburned and excited and hungry.

Franz is under the covers pretending to be asleep.

Franz listens to himself breathing.

He is tired and sunburned and drifting and hungry.

From the room next door comes music.

It is a low murmur.

Franz can barely hear it.

Mieze can hear it a little better.

She is younger and less sleepy.

The Beatles.

One of the ballads from The White Album.

The television glows.

The screen shows 7,000 figures writhing in the mud.

Or 8,000. 

Because the picture is grainy it could be a cartoon.

A cartoon drawn in a crudely realist style.

Or the actors could be electrified mannequins.

And therefore not even alive.

And therefore not even dead.

Many wear black masks and black gloves.

A midnight ball strewn across the mud.

An evening dance left out in the rain.  

The ballad ends. “Revolution No. 9” begins. 

The curtains are closed.

The curtains are the color of dried rose petals.

The sun is out.

The sun lights the curtains. 

Franz thinks it is around four in the afternoon.

Mieze thinks it is around two in the afternoon.

Extraction #1

The man without air used his stomach muscles to center himself in the middle of the field. He used his jaw muscles to extinguish certain ideas he had only come to understand recently. He used his skull muscles to watch films involving parades of pork moving through cities of delicate snow. He used his spine muscles to extract newer and drier shadows from a previously dribbling haze. Behind the purple curtain the 19^th century withdrew. Behind the scarlet curtain Marilyn Monroe prepared for the Day of the Dead Mass. Behind the coarse curtain the sea tossed about like houses tumbling from clouds.

The man was dead and had recently been stuffed with salt and black feathers. The part of him that had been dead longest heard voices that whispered from a closet stuffed with white and lemon dresses. The part of him that had been alive furthest waited for the dresses to melt so he could lick their drippings from the floor.

Neither the alive nor dead part had ever waited longer than cloth. Neither the longest nor the furthest had grown past the customary whisperings.

But other sounds continued. The soundtrack dealt with 17 recurrent noises. Other recordings played through the foggier arenas. The wolves made volcano noises. The owls made bone noises. The snakes made June noises. The vultures made scarlet noises. The panthers made soundtrack noises. The bears made lunar noises. The butterflies made gunfire noises.

Way back in the day, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski started what would become one of the more peculiar comics VICE has had the pleasure of publishing. It was called The Untold Tales of Yuri Gagarin and they were obstensibly about the Russian astronaut. In those days, Chris and Maciek were just two dude's making puppets and drawing comics, but a little over 10 years later they made one of the most accomplished stop-motion films ever. Anything they’ve put their hands on is worth checking out, but Madame Tutli-Putli is special. It was their first official short film, made back in 2007, and it is still getting programmed all over the world and in film festivals. This weekend it’s playing at the inaugural BASILICASCOPE Film Festival at Basilica in Hudson, NY.

Chris and Maciek started working on Madame Tutli-Putli in 2003, with many ideas in their minds but very little knowledge of what the final product would be. Both explorers of the absurd, they set out to create something that would function as a springboard for their collected theories, film craft, and experiments.  

Madame Tutli-Putli is a film in which Jungian archetypes can act out their internal desires. Basically the short is a woman’s metaphysical journey to come to terms with fate. Since the narrative is an amalgamation of moments, which perpetuate the mood of the film, the atmosphere becomes the guide to how one takes in the film. If it all sounds too cerebral, it’s not. It’s visceral. There’s a beauty in the filmmaking when you realize that each scene—whether it features a has-been pro tennis player making sexual gestures with his hands or a moth circling a light bulb—is 16 images carefully and equally executed. Each flickering shadow, oil painted background, felt garment, quivering hand, and sound had to be created from scratch. Of course, it’s not simply a well-made traditional stop-motion. As the filmmaker’s will admit, the key to the mind is through the eyes. Understanding this, they made what is likely to be one of the films lasting legacies—they superimposed human eyes onto the puppet’s face. The eyes had the uncanny effect of making everything else about the puppet seem more lifelike, giving her character a humanity that could never have been animated.

Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s are the creators of Madame Tutli-Putli, which is the first official short film of their production company Clyde Henry. The film killed on the festival circuit picking up the Canal+ Grand Prize for best short film along with the Petit Rail d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. It went on to win a bunch of other fancy awards and got nominated for an Oscar in 2008. I highly recommend checking out the making-of videos, especially how Jason Walker tracked the eyes onto the Madame.

The duo have worked on a number of commercial projects, adapted Higglety Pigglety Pop! by Maurice Sendak (which is available online or on Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are DVD), and used to make comics for VICE.  

Anyways, I’m pretty much obsessed with the Clyde Henry guys. I had the pleasure of talking to Maciek about Madame Tutli-Putli and how he’s spending his days now.

VICE: How was Madame Tutli Putli conceived?
Maciek: One day you’re slapped with an idea. Sort of the perverse mechanism of an artist kicks in and you create. When working non-narratively you’re not working with story structure, but rather creating a suspended emotion. Once the puppets found their groove they would reject certain ideas. It’s a strange thing to say, but the puppets very much start leading their own way. We worked on the project for four years. When you do something that long you have to leave room for discovery or else it would be very dull.

Why a madame versus a man or a child?
Sometimes we like to pilfer a little idea from the past. There was a play written from the early 20th century with a woman of that name. We never read the play or anything, but we loved the name and reinvented her for ourselves.

Was the story born out of a desire to utilize new technical innovations—like tracking human eyes on puppets—or were the innovations developed to better tell the Madame's story?
It comes from building a puppet. Once the puppet exists, you give it a lot of authority. If it’s good, you look into its eyes and start to imagine its life, past, and memory. In the absence of dialogue we wanted the eyes to talk. We needed those kinds of eyes for her character. Some stories are best told with a drawing, a sculpture, a novel, or a puppet. The means supports the story. The means becomes the story.  Animation is an illusionist’s device. It’s ideal to tell a magical story.

Why stop-motion? Why puppetry?
Puppets have always been there for us. Having grown up in Poland, I was always making puppets and seeing puppet shows for children.  I’d also see grotesque stuff like the Quay Brothers. Madame Tutli-Putli is a classic stop-motion in a lot of ways, like the European puppet films. Though, its point was not to address our heroes. When we started making the film we wanted to use our knowledge to make a classic puppetry film. It’s intricate, because that’s the way we’ve always worked. In a lot of ways Madame Tutli-Putli was sort of our graduation film in puppetry. We nailed down the basics and can now explore the abstract. In the abstract arts I tend to trust someone who can also do a nice portrait. If one goes straight to abstraction, I feel like it’s cheating.

Was there ever a point in production when you were going to give it all up and kill yourselves?
Of course, but it has more to do with being in the dark than hating our work.  However tiring or draining, it’s an amazing thing to work on your dreams during the daytime.

What are you working on now?
Chris and I have been working with Guy Maddin on his séance Spiritismes film. We’ve known Guy for years and he has always been very supportive of our work, so it’s exciting to work with him on this. He’s been very upset about the storage and archival of old silent films so he started this project to reimagine them. Every morning we hold a film séance to invite the ghosts back into the films. One film every day for 12 days. It will ultimately be turned into a feature film, but will act as an interactive project. It’s a very fucked up and complicated thing, but it’s going to be magic. Also, our new short film Cochemare premiered at Annecy Film Festival in France last month. It’s 11 minutes of madness—sci-fi, porno fantasy with monkeys. Who doesn’t want to see that?

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as an art and film curator. He is a programmer at the Hamptons International Film Festival and screens for the Tribeca Film Festival. He also self-publishes a super fancy mixed-media art serial called PRISM index.

@PRISMindex

Previously - I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'The Bowler'

Walking through the gated entrance to an unmarked recording studio on the northside of industrial Williamsburg, I encountered four legendary rappers slumped on a couch, trying to decide what to order for lunch. Souls of Mischief looked exhausted. They spent their morning on a radio talk show, announcing details of their latest album, There Is Only Now. The release will be a collaboration with Adrian Younge, composer and producer of Ghostface's Twelve Reasons to Die, who entered the studio shortly after I did. Quietly fly in a slim orange button-up and desert boots, Younge offers the Souls a pizza delivery menu. Tajai Massey, who began rapping with Adam "A-Plus" Carter, Opio Lindsey, and Damani "Phesto" Thompson in the third grade, jokes that his dozing compatriots would prefer baby food.

In a way, Souls of Mischief and Adrian Younge are complementary. Souls are living legends, who are still active and touring 20 years after 93 Til Infinity cemented their place in the hip-hop. Younge is the up-and-coming producer who specializes in delivering cinematic narratives through live instrumentation, breathing new life into old sounds. Younge mentioned that the album will sound like "93 ’til Infinity meets The Low End Theory meets De La Soul Is Dead." This intersection of past and present bodes well for hip-hop fans with fond memories of the 90s. But Souls of Mischief take pains to note that they’re not holding a flag for anyone’s nostalgic idea of "real" hip-hop. The album promises to be "a look back to move forward," that will recontextualize backpacker lyricism for a new era. On the way to infinity, There Is Only Now.

VICE: What was the Bay Area scene like for teens embarking on a rap career?
Tajai Massey: There wasn't anything established and not many venues for shows. We'd sneak into clubs when we were 15 and start rapping on stage or at house parties. All the heads would meet at record stores—those were places you could buy large round objects imprinted with music, by the way—and talk about the newest releases. There wasn't any kind of distinction between rap. You were into rap or you weren't.

Was there a definitive Bay Area sound you identified with?
TM: I wouldn’t say there's even one now. What's popular is popular stylistically in the Bay. But Hieroglyphics is a Bay Area sound. The Coup is a Bay Area sound, along with 40 and $hort, and hyphy and all that. The Bay Area is the most diverse place in the world. Real diversity, not segregated diversity. People marry each other and eat with each other and live in the same neighborhoods. It’s a crazy concept.

Damani "Phesto" Thompson: Not just in a hip hop context, but you have to narrow it down to all forms of music that came from the Bay Area. You got Headhunters, Carlos Santana, Parliament Funkadelic, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. All that shit was out here.

How did this environment play into the development of Souls Of Mischief?

Opio Lindsey: The people who live there have a diverse taste in music. When we were young we would listen to NWA and X Clan, which really aren't that different, but people try to make it seem like two totally different things. Still, right now in the Bay a lot of kids who are into Mac Dre are also Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics fans. That's a whole other world that doesn't have anything to do with us, we don't make that type of music cause that's not us. But we live in Oakland and that's where it came from. If you look at the 93 Til Infinity video it's a dude doing donuts in his Mustang, which is the quintessential hyphy thing to do. So there’s a lot of interconnection.

Yeah, I was in high school when the “hyphy movement” was really popping off. At the time, it felt less like a sonic movement and more like a bunch of kids wilding out with a lot cars and a lot of space.

TM: Yeah, an outlet. Fools always been hyphy in the Bay. That's just something we'd say, like, "Damn, y'all fools is hyphy. Y'all doing too much." You know, now it's a movement. Now it's a sound. Cats have been dancing on top of cars and congregating on the strip since they moved out here in the industrial era. If you could afford a Cadillac... Yeah, I'm going to ride down the strip and pop at the hookers, you know what I'm saying! But the idea of a Bay Area sound, trying to define that, is almost what everybody in the Bay is striving not to do. There's so much diversity where we live that it's hard to peg it.

Did you go to a lot of sideshows?
TM: Yeah, as teens. There wasn't nothing else to do.

OL: That was just a normal kind of thing, and we lived right there. We're from East Oakland, Eastmont Mall is ten blocks from where we live. That’s where it used to happen. So we inevitably ended up there, numerous times

When did you first start touring on a national scale?
TM: Our first national tour was with De La [Soul] and A Tribe [Called Quest]. That was when De La had Buhloone Mindstate out, and Tribe had out Midnight Melodics, and then we came out with 93 Til. That was in '93, right before our album came out. And shit, we've been on tour ever since, every year, probably 150 to 180 shows every year. That's been the key to our longevity, is that we retain a live performance aspect to our music.

Is there one show you look back on as particularly formative?
OL: The shows in Berkeley Square. It was a high school thing. Our demos weren't known at all. It was at a spot called Berkeley Square, a punk rock club where Green Day used to play a lot. We felt like we were trying to do something that was uncharted territory lyrically, the way that we were trying to flow and use our wordplay. It was mostly our friends that would come, but it started to spread, and from that we played the Ice House which was a big show in West Oakland, and Too $hort came. It started to be a big deal when we'd perform, and we were still juniors in high school.

You mentioned that at that time there was no genre distinction for people that were into rap—when did you start to notice a divergence into sub-genres?
TM: We may have even helped bring that on. I remember Black Moon for instance, they came out with the backpacks, them and Rough House Survivors, two groups that were consciously like, We got the backpacks cause we're on the move, we got our shit in here, we in the streets, we're doing that. I remember thinking, Oh, that's backpack rap now. Genre-wise, if you listen to old Too $hort, Too $hort is an underground rapper! He curses in all his songs, he doesn't play on the radio. Nowadays, if you call someone like $hort underground, underground heads and elitists will be like, "Oh, you're crazy. He doesn't use big words." I would say it was around '93 when the genres started splitting off noticeably. Man, when we were kids, we kicked it with the punks and the metalheads. My homies called rap music "crap music," but we'd all smoke and chill and talk about it. They'd talk to me about Metallica, I'd talk to them about Run-DMC. I think the split was created by the industry to package and market and sell and hit certain demos on purpose. It’s literally a marketing tool. When we were kids just being into rap music was a secret society, like, "Oh, what tapes you got?"  It wasn't like, oh what kind of rap do you listen to

OL: De La Soul and NWA did shows together, so at that time, even though people would try to be like, “Oh, these are different genres and they have different fanbases," no they did not! They came from the same place. We were fans of both groups, we went to see them, so [the split] came about later. It's just corporations coming in and trying to figure out a way to market and sell a product rather than really represent it in its true form.

So, radio tried to pigeonhole these different demographics for marketing?
OL: I had friends that were basically athletes, I was into music and smoked weed and did all kinds of crazy shit, and these dudes were serious about trying to get into college, and taking care of their bodies. We were two totally separate people when it came to how we lived, but we both liked Gangstarr. They liked Gangstarr cause they were hip-hop fans. They weren't like "Oh, I dig Gangstarr cause I'm a crazy head and I dig these ill Premiere beats." It was just, "I love hip-hop." Period. Gangstarr had a lot of fans in Oakland that wasn't just the hardcore crazy hip-hop heads, the way people would see them now.

Nowadays, divides between the audiences of different rap subgenera seem very wide. What do you think is next for rap with an emphasis on conscious, complex lyricism?
TM: I hate to sound like this, but if you hear this new record dude, I think we're taking storytelling and MCing to a whole new level. Now that we, I mean hip-hop in general, have been through all these ups and downs, we know that we have the world's ear. We know that we have a certain skill level. We know that if you go too hard nobody's gonna hear. And we know if you dumb it down too much certain people are going to be like, "These guys are idiots." So I think that in general music has found this medium where it's OK to be lyrical and complex and still fun and cool and all that. Just look at J. Cole or Jay-Z. Those dudes aren't slouches with the raps. I think Eminem had a huge part in making it so people could follow rhyme schemes. He's so clear with it. To a large extent most of the world was not following how deep these rhyme patterns were and how you could be funny and crazy and zany at the same time, before him. He opened the door.

So you think audiences are becoming more open-minded?
With cats like us and Eminem who rap clearly and concisely, along with the Jay-Z's and the J. Cole's of the world, people are looking for lyrics. I've got a teenage kid, and before, she would listen to rap music to tune out. Now she's listening to rap music to tune in. A lot of people around the world are going to start tuning in, hopefully to rappers who are taking some responsibility and coming with some pertinent information, not just how much they make or how many chicks they have or that kinda stuff. But I think that rappers are becoming responsible, and they're also being real. Like, real real. Even the gangster rappers are revealing parts of themselves that before you couldn't because you had to put up this negative energy.

There's definitely a trend towards vulnerability.
TM: It's almost hip to be vulnerable, so that means there's a deeper dialogue going on between hip-hop and the listener. And I think the fans are ready for that.

So tell me how this all fits into the new record.
Adrian Younge: I'll say that the new record is a look back to move forward. Basically, looking at their 20-year span, Souls Of Mischief start off as the quintessential MC group and they continue to grow as artists, and now this is the album is the culmination of everything they've done in the last 20 years. It's a journey that goes back to push forward. It's their type of sound from when they did 93 Til Infinity, their surroundings, and the world that they were in. The album is a concept story that takes place in 94, their classic album came out already and this is a moment in time right after that. Basically they're purveying this hip-hop world to the youngsters now, I won't say as "elders" but as masters of the craft. You hear the wisdom in the lyrics. And theres a reason to listen. Its not just background, there's a lot of depth.

As a producer you tend to focus on creating narratives. Does this new record tell a story?
AY: It does have a narrative to it. It starts off with an incident that happened to the group around 1994, it starts off as a movie, where we're trying to find out what the origin of this volatile situation was. Now, without me telling the story, one of the reasons why it was so interesting to me is that as a fan of hip-hop, most people don't know the backstory to the people you grew up loving. This is one of those albums that actually gives those backstories. You know, when they came out, everybody thought that they were millionaires. They weren't millionaires, but you got people in the hood looking at you like you a millionaire, and that changes the course of your life. Those are the variables this album deals with.

@ezra_marc

More rap stuff:

MC Daleste Is the Seventh Baile Funk Artist Murdered in Sao Paulo

P. Reign feat. A$AP Rocky - "We Them Niggas" (Official Video)

Noisey Raps - Trinidad James, the Underachievers, Fredo Santana, and Lil' Reese

The mugshot of Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, the captured leader of Los Zetas cartel.

On Monday, the leader of the most brutal crime syndicate in Mexico was captured alive. Miguel Angel Treviño Morales, the boss of the notoriously violent Los Zetas drug cartel, was tracked down driving a pick-up truck in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. When Mexican marines apprehended him, reportedly without a shot being fired, he was found to be carrying an array of assault rifles and two million dollars in cash.

Miguel—or "Z-40," as he's commonly known—and his organizaton made a name for themselves by ordering the beheading of journalists who spoke out against them, orchestrating prison riots, and Miguel personally overseeing the massacre of hundreds of innocent migrants trying to make their way into the US over the Mexican border. The guy is like a highly vicious, Central American George Jung, only with a personal army that would rival that of a small country rather than a Hollywood biopic and an impressive collection of bad turtlenecks.   

So you'd be forgiven for describing the kingpin's arrest as "a major victory in [the] battle against murderous drug cartels." But is his capture really the gargantuan victory that many are claiming it to be? With Z-40 now off the streets, it's the perfect opportunity for the already fragmented divisions within Los Zetas—as well as all of Mexico's other cartels—to take advantage of the break in leadership and forge their own way to the top of the pile. 

The drug trade, i.e. the financial grease that keeps Mexico's cartels moving along, is unlikely to screech to a halt just because one man, albeit a very powerful one, has been arrested. In fact, Miguel's arrest is more likely to create a free-for-all in the scramble to control the drug market, inevitably causing even more of a bloodbath than when he was keeping tabs on everything.    

I called Steven Dudley from InSight Crime, an NGO that investigates the development of organized crime in Latin America, to ask him what Z-40's arrest means for the future of Mexico's drug trade.

Mexican marines, the same marines who caught "Z-40". (Photo via)

VICE: Is the capture of Z-40 really “a major victory in the battle against drug cartels”?
Steven Dudley: I don’t know what a "major victory" is for the war on drugs, to be honest. But it certainly is an important step in slowing the type of hyper-violence that this group—and this individual, in particular—promoted. Whether it will slow the flow of drugs, I don’t know.

Is violence actually going to decrease?
In many ways, Z-40 was the last stich that held the Zetas together. His capture may cause a spasm of violence within an organization that is highly prone to violent acts, and with him gone it just throws everything up in the air again. Some individuals may attempt to control the organization and step into the power void, and then you will also have rival organizations looking to take advantage.

If you were a member of one of those rival cartels, what would you be planning right now?
I think that there’s no question that the epicenter of what comes next in Mexico is going to happen in Nuevo Laredo, the most important commercial crossing point between the US and Mexico. Around 10,000 to 12,000 trucks cross every day, making it the crown jewel in terms of trafficking, as it provides such an easy way to camouflage merchandise going north and weapons and money going south. This is where you'll find other criminal organizations gearing up to make a move. It's an area that's been held by the Zetas for the past ten years.

Yeah, it's where Z-40 was captured, right?
Yes, he’s from there—that was his stomping ground. Nuevo Laredo has a lot of geographical advantages; it’s highly secluded and very hard to get there without people noticing. It’s in the middle of the desert.

What about the new leadership? Who is going to take over the Zetas?
The bottom line is that this is an organization that is made up of disparate pieces. There are only a few voices that are strong enough to pull these different pieces together like Z-40 did. And Omar, his hotly tipped younger brother, does not appear to be one of those voices.

So now, without a strong leader, these divisions could become even greater?
Even greater, yes. Lots of these pieces of the Zetas are already independent in some way within the local crime market, which is highly lucrative, growing, and very easy to enter. You will find more and more organizations breaking off, and there may be a dozen different Zetas organizations—though we’ll see if they start calling themselves something else entirely. But the Zetas brand name is very important—it's the Coca-Cola of the underworld.

Thanks, Steven.

A suspected drug trafficker being arrested in northern Mexico. (Photo from the Knight Foundation Flickr account) 

So with Z-40 captured, it looks likely that existing cartels and the newly independent factions within Los Zetas will duke it out over territory. And by that I mean relentlessly massacre each other with bloody gun battles in the streets of Mexico's border towns, undoubtedly catching many more civilians in the crossfire.  

The Mexican government seems to be anticipating this surge in violence, reportedly upping security in the northern part of the country. And as the consequences of Z-40's arrest unravel, it seems much less like a victory against the cartels and more like the authorities inadvertently ringing the death knell for its citizens—citizens who have already witnessed an estimated 80,000 murders since 2006.

Worryingly, Count the Costs, a program set up to quantify just how much of a disaster the war on drugs has been, told me in an email that, "80,000 [deaths] is a conservative estimate." This is due to the Mexican government's reluctance to release any conclusive figures and because many parts of Mexico don't have the capability to effectively monitor how many people are being murdered. On top of that, the figure fails to account for the thousands of people who have "disappeared" over the course of the conflict and aren't officially dead, but aren't officially alive, either.  

However, it’s not all bad news. Along with Steven, Adam Isacson from the NGO Washington Office on Latin America feels that Z-40’s capture might prompt a change in the cartel’s approach to business, away from trigger-happy chaos toward a more surreptitious, calculated way of doing things.

Adam Isacson. (Screenshot via)

VICE: Are the citizens of Mexico actually going to be safer with this man behind bars?
Adam Isacson: Overall, they may be. Z-40 really pioneered a new level of bloodthirstiness, and it’s possible that his capture may lead to the rise of a "better behaved" drug trafficker.

You mean that this hyper-violent approach might fall out of fashion because of his capture?
Right. And especially the kind of actions that impact people who are not in "the game." I think we’ll probably see the Sinaloa cartel model more. Sinaloa don’t do as much extortion, kidnapping, and other things that impact civilians. They always prefer to buy out officials, bribe everybody, and keep violence to a minimum to avoid detection.

So perhaps the Zetas could follow that approach with a different leadership?
I think that is the outcome the Mexican government is trying to achieve by targeting the more violent leaders and not those who don’t cause as much mayhem. It sends a message to the drug trafficking community that, if you can do this [drug trafficking] with a minimum of violence, we’re not going to use as many law enforcement resources to go after you. Plus, the cartels that allow normal people to move more safely and don’t disturb the peace seem to move more product—Sinaloa is a much wealthier cartel.

Thanks, Adam.

-

Clearly on one level Z-40's arrest is a good thing—nobody wants homicidal psychopaths rampaging around, destroying the lives of innocent people. But if all his arrest is really going to do is create a spike in violence before conditions return to "normal levels"—which, even when calm, still qualify Mexico as one of the most dangerous countries in the world—what can be done to weaken the cartels instead?

Perhaps a more effective way of dismantling Mexico's institutions of organized crime would be ridding them of their most lucrative product and primary source of power: the drugs themselves.

Lisa Sanchez, head of the drug policy foundation Transform's Latin American program, summed up the issue by telling me, "The arrest of drug cartel bosses is a step forward, but it ignores the underlying problem. Through drug prohibition, we are continuing to allow cartels a complete monopoly over the drugs trade, in turn financing them and allowing them to undermine democratic institutions through corruption and their violent ways. As long as we continue to give cartels power through the illegality of drugs, I don’t think we’re going to see a significant change in Mexico’s situation."

So even after the capture of a man who was known for "stewing" his victims in barrels of boiling oil, it seems that Mexico is still condemned to a future of murder, kidnapping, and political turmoil. Until something is done to take the drugs out of the hands of the cartels, of course.

Follow Joseph on Twitter: @josephfcox

Enjoy reading about Mexico's drug cartels? Try these:

Murderous Little Boys Are the Future of Mexico's Drug War

Los Zetas Drug Cartel Have Their Own Radio Network

The Fugitive Reporter Exposing Mexico's Drug Cartels

Watch - The Mexican Mormon War 

Fareed Wahidi is tearing it up. The 16-year old Afghan looks like he was born on a deck, plunging down a steep ramp and blasting off the other side. Until two years ago he’d never seen a real skateboard. Now he makes it look like part of his body.

“After I skated the first time,” he says, “I dreamt about it at night.”

A middle child out of six brothers and three sisters, skating is the thing that is his, a space he doesn’t have to share, but owns outright, by launching himself into it, over and over.

This simple thing, a chance to defy the laws of gravity even briefly, allows him to do the same with the conflict and poverty that are part of daily life for him and so many other children in Afghanistan.

This is how it happened: in 2007, Oliver Percovich came to visit Afghanistan with a former aide-worker girlfriend. He brought three of his skateboards and the minute he put them down to ride, he was surrounded by throngs of curious kids.

This motivated him to start a small skating school in Kabul, which became Skateistan. The idea was to empower children here, especially working street kids and girls, giving them a chance to have fun, while learning the values of quality, ownership, creativity, trust, respect, and equality, according to their mission statement.

In 2009, Skateistan completed an indoor skatepark and educational facility more than 5,000 square meters in size. It’s filled with ramps, kickers, and flat-bars. Here more than 1,200 members, almost half of them girls, can come to ride without fear.

The park was built on space donated by the Afghan Olympic Committee and is near the grounds of the Olympic Stadium, where the Taliban used to stage public executions.

But that’s history Fareed Wahidi can’t really remember, nor does he want to.

All text and photos by Kevin Sites.

The author on his way to Brooklyn, New York. Photo by Erica Euse.

It’s easier to hide from the specter of Trayvon Martin than it is to face his dead body sprawled awkwardly on the concrete. I was trying to escape it desperately last Saturday night, when George Zimmerman was found not guilty. I was at a fashion brand’s swanky event in a nightclub in Manhattan surrounded by obligatory white kids who like rap and probably have trust funds, boozing myself into a stupor. The next morning, when outraged people took to the streets all over the country, I went to a screening of Sophia Coppola’s Bling Ring and caught up on some reading at a coffee shop. I tried to ignore the news. I didn’t want to bear to think about it because it all hit way too close to home.

Usually, instances of black folks dying doesn’t fuck me up that much. The music I listen to every day is full of references to black men shooting or getting shot at. Like Tupac said, “Niggas been dying for years…” Not a day goes by that I don’t catch a story of a young black man who has met a violent end. Sometimes it’s through gang or drug violence, other times it’s by the hand of the cops, still other times a senile neighbor shoots a 13-year-old kid for no reason. Black death is so constant and relentless all over the country that news of new tragedy has started to lose its resonance for me.

The suddenness, violence, and pointlessness of deaths like Trayvon’s is hard for me to imagine, much less understand. Sometimes it feels like it’s happening on a different planet. I didn’t grow up in the ghetto. I’ve spent much of my life in the suburbs. I’ve lived around rich white folks, I went to school with them, I slept with their daughters, I took drugs with them, and I came of age with them. When you’re a black person who’s been in the company of white people as much as I have, sometimes you find yourself saying, What’s the difference? Aren’t we all the same?

But any time I’ve ever gotten too impressed with the progress of the arc of the moral universe toward justice, I’ve been smacked back to reality. It always comes when I least expect it—getting pulled over for no reason or followed around by a counterman in a stank-ass bodega that didn’t even have the fucking wave cap I was looking for. In those moments, I remember, as much as I’d like to forget, that we are not the same. We are not treated equally in the eyes of the law and we don’t face the same obstacles.

I remember—I’ll probably remember this for the rest of my life—a night shortly after I had got a job at VICE and earned my master’s degree at New York University in the same week. Naturally, I was feeling like Super New Improved Black Man, a sophisticated globetrotter who could go anywhere and do anything and be respected by his peers based strictly on him being a handsome and talented motherfucker.

At the time, I was living in Williamsburg around a bunch of “creative young people,” which is code for rich white kids. I had a great group of friends, most of whom were Caucasian. They weren’t hung up on race, or gender, or anything. I was living what I fooled myself into thinking was a “post-racial” Obama-type existence.

To celebrate all the dope shit happening in my life at the time, I decided to go out with a bunch of these homies. I rocked the best, newest, and most expensive shit I had—a Thom Browne down vest and button-down shirt, some Patrik Ervell jeans, a pair of pearly white Common Projects Achilles, my brand new VICE ring, and a Movado watch given to me by my mom as a graduation gift. I felt like I was the freshest brother on the planet, ready to go have some fancy cocktails with all of my new upwardly-mobile fashion and media pals. We were going to take the world on together as young people and change shit.

As me and my group moved from one bar to the next in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, we passed a couple of drunk Polish dudes and one of them called my friend a faggot. The guys started to approach us in a heated manner, and I stepped up and tried to tell everybody to chill the fuck out and go their separate ways. The Polish guy looked at me, cut me off, and said, “Nigger!” He cocked his fist back and punched me in the face, breaking my glasses and thoroughly killing my vibe.

I couldn’t believe it. I was stunned, not even so much that we got into a fight, but because I was still, STILL, a “nigger.” Really? A master’s from NYU, a full-time job in the media, and clothes by some of the finest designers in the game and I’m still a nigger?

It’s a harsh reality to stomach, when you realize that no matter how high you climb, no matter how much you achieve, to some people that’s all you will ever be. I can only imagine how Obama must feel as the fucking president when he’s treated with so much disdain and disrespect for the color of his skin by the some of the very people he’s sworn to lead and protect.

This realization—that I am different from others because people treat me with disdain or look down on me—demands work from me. I can’t just think about myself when I walk into a conference room full of whites. And if I have a son, it means I have to sit him down and give him the same talk I was given as a young man to ensure that he doesn’t get himself killed by forgetting that he’s a black man and that people and police will perceive him as a threat even if he’s just carrying some Skittles and an iced tea.

I tried to hide from the George Zimmerman verdict and Trayvon’s death because like the night I got punched in the face, it made me recognize how far we have to go. It fills me with disappointment, longing, and rage to think that a man followed a black teenager home, shot and killed him, wasn’t arrested—the police didn’t even inform Trayvon’s parents he was dead—and now is walking free. Because seeing the image of Trayvon in his hoodie with his rolled-up jeans and sneakers, I know I’m no different than him. I can’t help but see myself in Trayvon every time I look at that infamous picture of him spread out on the ground, with his mouth gaping open. I can’t get it out of my head.

And in that instance, I realize I’m no different than any of my brothers and sisters who’ve died, from Hadiya Pendleton in Chicago to Kimani Grey in Brooklyn. We are all one and we are all a part of the same struggle. The most successful black person among us is no better than those caught the dregs of gun violence on the streets of Chicago. There is no such thing as a post-racial America, at least not yet. And my generation, both the young blacks and the whites who get it, have a lot of work to do. Every black death is an injustice and too much blood has already been spilled. Being a nigger in the eyes of the system is something I can no longer ignore, because it’s liable to get me killed. 

@WilbertLCooper

More stuff from Wilbert:

My Dad Told Me a Black Man Would Never Be President

Trayvon Martin's Shooter Is Free Because of the Stand Your Ground Law

The Underachievers Talk About Stop-and-Frisk and Kimani Gray

Black Man in a Dress

Selected from "Place of the Inside Out," from the 2013 VICE Photo Issue.

We visit Asger Carlsen in his studio in Chinatown and talk to him about his life, his work, and why he is both a lazy artist and obsessed with making art. To get a closer look at his creative process, we follow him as he photographs a model in his studio, and we chat about his recent collaboration with Roger Ballen for the 2013 VICE Photo Issue.

Cry-Baby #1: Clown Town Children's Center

(story via/image via)

The incident: Some people sang "Happy Birthday."

The appropriate reprsponse: Singing along/Moving your lips as though you're singing along if you're shy. 

The actual response: A woman called the police. 

Last week, a guy named Colm Doherty attempted to book a birthday party at an indoor play center called Clown Town in London. 

He was told that there weren't any birthday packages available on the date he wanted, but he decided to take his daughter Cara, as well as 26 other people, to Clown Town anyway and pay the more expensive, non-birthday-package entry rate. 

Once inside, they realized that two of the center's "party booths" were not in use, and asked a female staff member if they could use one. They were told it was fine.

Later, the female staff member came back and told the group that she was "in fairly big trouble" for allowing them to use the party booth, and told them that, as they hadn't booked a birthday package, they would not be allowed to "produce a cake or sing 'Happy Birthday.'"

Colm ignored her and brought out his daughter's birthday cake anyway. As he did so, people sang "Happy Birthday."

Then, Colm says, "you could sense a bit of nervous tension among the staff, and one particular lady came storming down and told us that we could not sing and to put the cake away."

Colm stood in front of her, to stop her from interrupting the song and upsetting the children. At which point she called the police. 

Police officers came to Clown Town, but decided not to take any action against Colm. 

Cry-Baby #2: Erin Mulcahy and Shawn Duncan

(story via Reddit/images via Salisbury Police)

The incident: A lifeguard blew his whistle. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. Unless you're breaking beach rules, in which case he's probably blowing the whistle because of you and you should stop doing whatever it is that you're doing. 

The actual response: Two people beat the lifeguard up. 

Last weekend, Erin Mulcahy (pictured above, simultaneously laughing and crying) was at Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts with her boyfriend Shawn Duncan (also pictured above, with the exact facial hair/expression, hair/sunglasses combo you would expect the kind of guy who beats up lifeguards to have).

While they were relaxing on the sand, a lifeguard saw some swimmers who were too far out in the water and blew his whistle. Shawn asked the lifeguard to stop doing this, as it was aggravating his hangover. 

The lifeguard, obviously, told him that he was just doing his job. 

Police say this is when Erin dumped a bucket of water on the lifeguard's head, before Shawn punched him in the face, and knocked him to the ground. 

After we learned about all of the crazy shit taxi drivers have to see and put up with on a daily basis, we figured that going to chat with ER doctors about the ludicrous nonsense they endure would be the next logical step. So, here are our favourite anecdotes that were shared with us, from the people out there who can fix you up the next time you shove something metal up your butt.

Illustrations by Donald Clement.

The Case of the Missing Finial

One time, I treated a 19 year-old kid who was at home by himself playing with a curtain rod, and it was a split rod, so it was virtually a circle—but I guess you could squeeze it and put the decorative finial (the finial is that decorative carving bit on the end of a curtain rod) on the end of it, it’s got some spring to it. It has an open channel on one side. Anyway, he slid it up his bum and the channel pinched right onto his anus. It got stuck.

He was obviously alone in his bedroom playing with this curtain rod, and he was trying to get it out, but he couldn’t. So he called his mom to help, but she couldn’t get it out either, so they called an ambulance. The curtain rod was probably about five feet long—so this kid comes in lying face down on a stretcher, with a curtain rod sticking up in the air. He was in the emergency room for an hour before he got taken up to the operating room. We put him to sleep and took the curtain rod out. All you had to do was separate the edges a little bit and it un-pinched, which was easy to do when you could see it from behind. But then there was the other piece… it remained inside of him. So I started trying to get it, but every time I tried it just went further and further inside of him.

So I called up the surgeon, who could put a camera in him, like they do for a colonoscopy. When I called up the surgeon, I said, "do you know what a finial is?" And he said, "that's a weird question, but yes, I do. I was watching Home and Garden Television the other day and they had this thing about decoration, so the finial is the decorative thing at the end of the curtain rod." I said, "Yeah, well, the finial is missing. We know where it is, but we can't get it out."

So they took this guy up to the operating room and they pulled it out. The really incredible thing about all this, I think, is that he called his mom in to help. I love that he did that. He's a good boy.

The Knife Swallowers

The one thing we see a lot of is unfortunate people who definitely have mental health problems, and they engage in a lot of self-harming behavior. Specifically, they swallow things. We call them “frequent fliers” in the emergency room because they're very well known to the emergency staff. They come in to the emergency room to say they've swallowed anything from pens to buttons, nickels and dimes. It's quite sad because they can often die. They get the same care that everybody else would get, but they're definitely stigmatized because they cause so much trouble for doctors by doing these self-harming things. There's also a bunch of well-known people who go from hospital to hospital who swallow knives. Like sharp knives. And you can just see them sitting there in the X-ray. We try to remove them, but often trying to remove them is more dangerous than actually letting them just sit there.

The surgeons won't really operate on them until they've perforated some part of their gastrointestinal track. Sometimes they won't even operate on them anyways because they're just going to do it again. So we just manage their symptoms. It's pretty crazy—because they'll swallow seven or eight knives. You can even read online how to swallow knives. I've been told they freeze them and then they swallow them. It's part of a spectrum of mental health issues they have. This sort of behavior is pretty well studied. It's quite depressing dealing with these people, because eventually they're going to swallow something that's going to kill them, and nobody is going to be able to help them. I see these types of people all the time.

The Healer Becomes the Healed

One day at work, I went to examine an elderly patient who had shortness of breath. Upon entering the room, the patient looked at me with a strange facial expression. The patient told me my mother and grandmother were standing right behind me. I thought this patient was confused because both people were dead. The patient then explained that she is a spiritual reader and at times, she sees dead people.

She proceededto tell me that my mother was telling me that she loves me and that she is always at my side. She also told me not to worry, and that whatever is troubling me at this time would be solved soon. The patient said now she didn't feel short of breath any longer and that she has had this happen in the past, where she has come to the hospital with some illness and then she found the person she needed to help… and then her symptoms would go away. After that I felt my mother's presence and a warm feeling came over me.

I will never forget this experience.

Gone Fishin’

There were a bunch of 20-something guys, and they had gone across the border into New York State to go on a fishing trip. Every emergency doc has seen a million fishhooks in various parts of the body, usually in the fingers, but in other places too, and everyone has their own trick for getting them out.

Anyway, one of these guys was casting their fishing rod, and the hook caught another one in the eye. Not just in the eyelid, but right in his eyeball. But since they had just gone over for a quick fishing trip—they didn't bother getting health insurance—so rather than go to the hospital in the United States, which would have been somewhat expensive, they got into a truck and drove back home. This guy was lying on the back seat of a pickup truck for the entire eight hours that it took them to get back to Canada.

When he got to the ER, the ophthalmology guys took him to the operating room and they actually didn’t take out the hook that night. They just decided that it had been so long and there were some technical complications that they left it, and they were going to take him back the next day. As is often the case in emergency I don't actually know what happened to the guy. I know they were pretty concerned that he would lose the eye, but I don't actually know if he did.

Stripper Thief

There was one guy who was on a bridge, about to commit suicide, when the police saw him and brought him into hospital. He was very depressed. He told us that he came across an inheritance from a family member—it was a few thousand dollars—so he decided to go celebrate.

He went to the strip club, and while he was there, one of the strippers roofied him and took all of his money. He was really upset, and when he came into the hospital he was saying: "My life is not worth living, these strippers take all my money, there's no justice," but obviously the police weren't doing anything about it, and he needed some help with his suicidal thoughts, so we admitted him to the psychiatric ward. 

There are always police officers hanging around in the ER, so the next day he actually talked to a police officer, and for some reason he thought this police officer was actually going to help him find these strippers. So the next day, after being suicidal, he was happy again, and went back out into the world. It was a brief "I'm going to end my life," and then the next day he was totally fine. He just changed his mind.


Previously:

Taxi Drivers See Some Crazy Shit

Despite its booming economy, the people of South Korea have never been more unhappy. With an average of 43 suicides per day, it's the suicide capital of the developed world and Asia's unhappiest nation.

Unsurprisingly, this apparent paradox has provoked much soul-searching within South Korea. A result of this is the "Well Dying"—or "Near Death"—movement, which aims to give people a little taste of death to replenish their appetite for life.

Perhaps the most bizarre manifestation of this movement is the rise of "fake funeral" services, where participants are lectured by a philosophical guru and told to write their own eulogies, before spending 30 minutes meditating inside a coffin.

VICE Japan correspondent Yuka Uchida headed to Seoul to try to experience her own "death" at a fake funeral ceremony.

Watch: Aokigahara Suicide Forest, our documentary about the most popular place to kill yourself in Japan.

Subscribe to VICE Japan's YouTube channel.

Desperation is mostly inseparable from masculinity. Men strain for fame, for female attention, for sad, trivial triumphs over one another. We are a people perpetually trying to figure it all out—flexing in the mirror, using lines we've heard before, trying to seem bold and dignified. We're not cowboys or poets. If we are, we wear it as a disguise. Mostly, we are vulnerable and self-conscious and probably masturbating for the third time on a Tuesday afternoon, because we're off work and that Lea Thompson scene in All the Right Moves just came on. We are not men, but almost. Note: columns may also contain William Holden hero worship and meditations on cured meats.

Image by Courtney Nicholas

When the aliens arrive, they will marvel not at the Earth’s quantity of fetish pornography or the comments section of WorldStarHipHop videos, but at the American male’s infinite commitment to dedicating new things to his own existence. The aliens will ask the grown men why they have rooms decorated with the hoods of NASCAR cars and deer antlers and posters of Will Ferrell movies and replica football helmets. The men will tell them that these are their man caves, you see; places where only men can go, to do man things, with other men, for hours at a time, because a man’s life is so devoid of pleasure otherwise. And then aliens will incinerate everything in sight, because fucking obviously.

Civilization is worse off because of the existence of man caves. They are the male ethos writ large: no ambitions beyond hiding in a place surrounded by miniscule triumphs and pedestrian hobbies, while females are present only in two dimensions on a television screen with the volume turned down low. Their vision of paradise is microwavable appetizers, a beanbag chair with Dale Earnhardt stitched onto it, watching that Kate Upton .gif again, not being reprimanded for their music being too loud, and avoiding women at all costs, whom they see as diabolical, enigmatic creatures that speak some unintelligible dialect and only exist to tell them they were supposed to be home an hour ago. The existence of man caves almost confirms that, essentially, all a man desires is to reenact his twelfth birthday party. The men depicted in beer commercials exist, scurrying from women like boarding school students around a schoolmarm. They are inattentive to female needs beyond offering to take them to the mall or halfhearted foot rubs given specifically to facilitate three minutes of spastic gorilla sex. The man cave exists as a kind of salvation for suburban dads who resent their families for interfering with their fantasy football drafts.

A piece in the Chicago Tribune described man caves as a place for men to proudly display “beloved, tacky lamps and beer-can sculptures.” A book written by an English professor at the University of Florida said they are an environment where men can “smoke, fart,” and “tell the same jokes over and over again.” Sam Martin, who wrote Manspace: A Primal Guide to Marking Your Territory said garages were one of the ideal, de facto man caves because “You spill a beer there or leave a hamburger overnight, who cares?”

Is this really who men are? What they value? Farting and leaving half-eaten red meat out to rot? Is the prohibition of these things significantly restricting their day-to-day happiness? What kind of aspiration is devolution?  How is it possible that the middle class, privileged white males who can afford these man caves feel like they need some respite from their middle-class, privileged white lives? Why would someone with such a perfect reality ever deserve a fantasy, too? But there they are, buying pinball machines and turning the driver’s seat of their 1978 Trans Am into a recliner with a refrigerator and a USB outlet built in.

There’s an undeniably territorial, sub-Neanderthal, almost animalistic element not just to a man cave’s practical function but the need to have and pride in having one. Men see the assembly of a man cave as some mighty move to take over a region of their house; in reality it is a pathetic retreat from compromise and dialogue with women, to a den of Pearl Jam bootlegs and clan meetings with your Halofriends on Xbox Live. Man caves appeal to the most mediocre, unremarkable segment of the population—men who see plasma screens and sectional sofas and vacations to Orlando as beacons of success.

They are men who are obsessed with consolidating and hording the remnants of their glory days and tangible proof of their conquests—guns and trophies and empty beer bottles and tap handles. They display them in their caves like animal pelts or the skulls of their enemies. They can’t stop collecting worthless trinkets as proof of their DEDICATION to STUFF. They celebrate things so insignificant it almost can’t be sincere—catching a foul ball at a minor league baseball game or the time they got a picture with Erik Estrada at a TGIFridays.  Women are mocked for their unabashed sentimentality, yet who among them maintains a room in the house that is exclusively hers where she keeps, say, her wedding dress hanging on the wall? Men frame their high school football jerseys and can reminisce for a single, 16-minute-long unpunctuated sentence about the State semifinals when some guy named Donkey or Kevin the Neck Nugget or Farts MacTavish played the whole game with a broken collarbone and then caught the winning touchdown and celebrated by removing a Busch Light from his helmet and pouring it down his pants. They display jerseys, autographs, pictures of women, people they’ve never met. For all of man’s self-proclaimed independence and rogue aggression, no one is as consumed by creepy hero worship.  

In an April article in the New York Times, a realtor discussing the impact of a man cave on a residence’s resale value mentioned a client who installed crown molding made from baseball caps, and another who decorated a room entirely in maize and blue to show allegiance to the University of Michigan. For all eternity, man will simultaneously be as corny and obstinate as a 72-year-old and as delusional as a six-year-old.

A caveman’s style is one devoid of nuance; nuance is only a distraction. Cavemen want one unified theme that extends from the ceiling fan to the saltshaker to the doorknob shaped like breasts or arcade joysticks. These men are not capable of being delicate. The websites epicmancave.net and mancavecentral.com are actual places. Everything must be TOTAL DOMINATION and COMPLETE TAKEOVER. A caveman’s idea of great sex is to pound you like he is trying to break a continent in half; his idea of cooking is to cut an onion so fast that Looney Tunes dust clouds begin accumulating around him. And his idea of a sanctuary includes subwoofers and speakers the size of a naval fleet, painted with giant Dallas Cowboys stars on them.

I say don’t wait till the aliens come: detonate the cave entrances now and seal the inhabitants behind the rubble.

Previously - Kanye West, Bad Yearbook Pictures, and Growing Up

John Saward likes O.V. Wright and eating guacamole with no pants on. He lives in Connecticut. Follow him on Twitter @RBUAS.

The author sitting by the pool at Saddam Hussein's palace.

Baghdad, July 15, 2003 –
As far as I was concerned, the war was over. The president said so and we weren’t shooting anyone; we were just killing time, waiting for the word to go home. We spent our days moping around, trying not to sweat too much in our cement buildings as the Iraqi summer heat got hotter. We still did missions, but they felt more like a way of keeping us from going completely stir crazy than anything else—the way your dad might suddenly decide to take you to the park after spending the whole day watching cartoons.

One morning, our battalion chaplain came to our small firebase in Baghdad, told us that he had to go to one of Saddam’s palaces for meetings and wanted to take a couple of infantry squads with him so we could enjoy the facilities. He said there was a big pool and told us we could spend the day swimming, eating good food, and calling home.

It was an easy sell to our commanders, who were already looking for ways to raise morale. And, luckily for me, I was in one of the first two squads chosen to visit the palace.

That evening we excitedly packed all of our army-regulation vacation gear into camouflage assault packs. A good friend had a giant orange and yellow towel sent to him from home. We gave him shit for it, but he packed it anyway.

Laying in our cots in the dark, we schemed about how we would attack our day at the palace.

“OK, so we agree that we’ll start at the pool, swim for a while, get something to eat, and then make some phone calls,” someone said from the corner of the room.

“I just want to sit in the air conditioning, man,” came a response.

“Go to sleep!” barked an angry NCO.

The author getting changed to go swimming at Saddam's palace.

We woke up early the next morning and lined up outside, waiting for the chaplain. He arrived soon after, stepping out of his truck with a wide grin on his face. Walking over, he greeted each of us individually with a handshake and a smile. Even in war, chaplains are always overly positive—a peculiar trait I’ve only ever seen replicated on the faces of LA store attendants and quietly suicidal kids’ TV presenters.

“Are y’all ready for a relaxing day?” he asked us with a smile.

“Hoo-ah!” came the excited response.

We loaded into the truck and took our usual positions. We didn’t really want to pull security—AKA enforce security measures—that day; we were going on vacation and it felt wrong to tarnish a vacation with war. We all felt immune from attack, anyway.

The truck started rolling and we bounced around in the back, full of excitement. None of us had been to the palace before.

After a short ride along the infamous Highway 8, we snaked through a bunch of checkpoints, entering what would later become known as “The Green Zone,” a large area in central Baghdad that was secured by a long perimeter. Once inside, you could let your guard down.

As we entered, the few of us who were actually paying attention put our weapons inside the truck. The streets in the Green Zone were eerily quiet—wide streets were empty and what was once bustling downtown Baghdad was now deserted.

At one point, a gray SUV approached us on the opposite side of the road. It was new and large and stood out on the roads of Baghdad, where I was much more accustomed to seeing rickety little cars struggling to run. Inside, I saw a middle-aged white man in a nice suit behind the wheel.

“Well, would you look at this,” I said, incredulously. A buddy poked his head out the side of the truck and laughed: “What the hell?”

After months of war, it was an incredibly strange sight. Seeing any Westerners in Baghdad was usually preempted by talks and security briefings, but here was a guy comfortably driving a brand new SUV through the Green Zone. I instantly had the thought that this was why I had come to war—so that this guy could drive his huge car around Baghdad. Stupid and immature as it sounds, that thought feels no less true now than it did back then.

We soon spotted giant statues of Saddam Hussein’s head and knew we must be close. The truck came to a stop and we all jumped out, looking out over the vast concrete car park to the palace in the distance, hidden behind tall black fences and palm trees.

“All right gentlemen,” the chaplain drawled, “there’s a lot of brass here. I need y’all to be on your best behavior.”

We smiled and nodded.

There were more checkpoints to pass through before we got to the palace. A short, stocky Nepalese sentry stopped us before we could pass through the last fence into the palace compound. He didn’t speak English, but motioned for us to open our bags. I smiled and opened mine. He waved me through.

The author (center) with some more soldiers at Saddam's pool.

Emerging, quite literally, like an oasis in the desert, we reached the pool. The bright blue of the water was shocking. Until then, our view of the country had consisted of the dull, earthy colors of war. Men and—more importantly—women, lounged around the pool, sunbathing. We stopped walking, just to watch.

The chaplain, sensing our amazement, goaded us forward: “Come on, guys, there’s a place to change behind these trees.”

We followed him into the trees, a line of dirty infantrymen. Our uniforms were stiff with old salt and dry sweat. A sunbather raised his sunglasses on his head and watched us pass by, seemingly agitated. I stared at him hard, confident in the thought that I was the reason he was able to lay there and sunbathe.

Changed into our black army shorts, we moved to the pool. We looked like thin ghosts—body armor and military uniforms leave very little skin exposed to the sun. A couple of us jumped right into the pool, laughing.

I stood back for a moment, watching. I couldn’t get over the scene at the pool. Who were these people? What kind of jobs did they have that allowed them to just hang out at Saddam’s pool? This was supposed to be war.

After a while, swimming grew boring. We began to dare each other to jump off of the high board—a 30-foot diving board that had so far gone unused. No one would do it.

For some reason, I felt emboldened. Maybe it was the excitement of the day, but I volunteered. After climbing to the top, I jumped and tumbled forward, watching the blue water quickly swallow my entire field of vision before smacking me right in the face.

Somehow I surfaced at the side of the pool. My ears were completely clogged with water and my nose was bleeding.

“That was awesome,” someone said, “you totally ate it.”

We had been in the pool for a couple of hours and were already exhausted from the sun. The chaplain pulled us in close: “All right, gentlemen, go ahead and get changed. There’s a great dining facility inside the palace where you can eat. There’s also a place you can call home and some small shops. We’re going to meet back up in the parking lot at 1800. Have fun, but again, don’t ruin it for your buddies. Be on your best behavior and we can keep coming back.”

I imagined the agitated sunbather listening in, sighing.

From here, we broke off into groups. A friend and I first entered the palace in awe and headed straight to the dining facility for lunch, which was stocked with good food, sodas, and desserts—a much welcome break from a steady diet of pre-packaged MREs.

After lunch, we explored, walking down hallways we shouldn’t have, prompting perplexed looks from flower-sniffing State Department officials. We strutted through the halls like it was our own personal palace, poking heads into doors to see what was on the other side.

I got the sense that everyone there felt how strange the whole experience was. There we were—the Americans and her allies in Saddam’s captured palace, which we’d turned into our war resort.

The author (on the left) getting his nails done at the manicurist in Saddam's palace.

After more exploring, we found a beauty salon run by some Iraqi women. No one was using it. At the risk of being ridiculed by our hyper-masculine peers, we decided to get our nails done for the sheer luxury and spectacle of it. After all, how many infantrymen can say they had their nails done by Saddam’s personal manicurists?

With my time at the palace quickly coming to an end, I set off to see what else there was to do. My friend and I leaned against a marble pillar in the lobby in front of a large mansion-staircase and people-watched. It was such a departure from the normal grim drudgery of Baghdad; beautiful, educated people moved swiftly in nice clothing. High heels and leather shoes clicked against the marble floor, echoing with privilege.

Then, moving slowly into the room, came L. Paul Bremer, the Viceroy of Iraq. An entourage of reporters with cameras and notepads followed him. Flashbulbs flashed. A team of aides tried to protect him. He smiled and answered questions fired at him quickly. He stopped briefly, said a few words to the reporters, then turned to get away. I was staring at him and he caught me. With his lips tightly pursed, he gave me a slight nod as he passed.

“That was L. Paul Bremer,” I said to my friend as he passed by.

“Big deal,” he replied.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s go find a Gurkha knife.”

I was referring to the Kukri, a famous combat knife carried by the Nepalese guards who were responsible for security at the palace. The knives were large, curved and incredibly powerful—everything you want in a knife. So we set out to find a guard who might be willing to sell one.

We spoke to a guard checking IDs at the front door. He didn’t speak English particularly well, but understood what I wanted, telling us that all the guards lived in rooms downstairs.

Down in the basement of the palace, things were quiet. I felt like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. Probably because I wasn’t supposed to be there. After walking down a hallway of closed doors, I finally came across an open door and poked my head inside. There were three Nepalese soldiers laying in beds. A fourth stood in front of me, taking off his gear. I excused myself, and made my intentions known.

“Yes, I will sell Kukri,” the guard said.

“Great. I have $20 American,” I said.

“No, this is good Kukri. $120,” he replied.

I didn’t have the money and there was no way I was going to scrounge it together before we had to leave the palace. I looked to my friend who shrugged. We left the room, defeated.

The author sitting in one of Saddam's thrones.

Our time was dwindling. We continued walking around the palace, looking for things to do. We found a throne room with a large painting of America-bound Iraqi rockets in the background. We sat in the throne and took pictures.

Back in the basement, we opened a set of wooden doors that stuck out as we’d been walking through the marble hallway. Inside was Saddam Hussein’s private theater. A few marines were sitting in large leather chairs, sleeping. The air conditioning was blasting. The end credits of a movie rolled.

My friend and I nodded to each other and found seats—giant, soft things that swallowed us whole. A movie started as soon as the credits finished. It was 1963’s The Great Escape, a movie about allied World War II soldiers escaping from a German prisoner camp. The marching music started when my friend turned to me and said, “Wake me up when we have to go.”

I stared at the screen and soaked up the cold air. I was exhausted, my skin was hot and I smelled like chlorine. Looking around, everyone in the theater was sleeping. I looked down at my watch and set my alarm for 1730, 30 minutes before we had to be back in the truck.

I fell asleep.

By 1800, we were all assembled in the car park, ready to go back to our firebase in southwest Baghdad. We traded stories from the day, most of us hopped up on sugar but exhausted from the time spent in the pool under the sun.

Our truck wasn’t there. It was supposed to be, but they were delayed for some reason. Time dragged on as we sat, waiting and talking.

The sun set and it got dark. We stood around in a circle and somehow started talking about Free Masons. One of our senior NCOs said he was a Mason. I started pestering him with questions. I had read recently in some magazine that the big secret behind Masons is that there is no secret—that they thrive on the public’s general ignorance and tendency to seek conspiracy.

The conversation became a contest between him and I. He stood there holding a stick, picking at the concrete and flipping pebbles as he answered my probing questions, eyes on the ground:

“Why is it so secretive? How do you get in? Is it true that...?”

Eventually he got annoyed and told me to shut up. I felt annoyed too—we were at war together, how can anything be more sacred than that?

Finally, at around 2100, our truck arrived. We climbed into the back and counted off, making sure we were all there. The sound of Velcro and shuffling filled our ears as our body armor and helmets went back on.

“Hey, good job, paratroopers,” the chaplain said, his head poking up above the tail of the truck. “You guys behaved yourselves today. I hope you enjoyed the day out.”

From the darkness, a chorus of “Hoo-ah!”s. The canvas flap closed and we went home. No one pulled security.

Follow Don on Twitter: @dongomezjr

Visit his website here.

More stories about about Iraq:

Simon Mann Was Asked to Help Start the Iraq War

The VICE Guide to Iraq

Skating Iraq with Billy Rohan