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The images below are from the blog ​Art F Cit​y's racy new calendar, ​Artists as Pandas in the Nu​de. It features photographer ​Rac​hel Stern's neoclassical scenes of New York artists, art dealers, and critics in the buck, often wearing nothing but a panda-shaped hat. Paddy Johnson, the blog's founder and editorial director, came up with the idea after last year's federal government shutdown. When the National Zoo's panda cam went off the air, Paddy saw a need that needed to be filled, so the site's staff live-blogged via webcam dressed as pandas, offering 24/7 panda coverage. It mostly looked like people in panda costumes sending emails, but sometimes there were workout videos, too.

This particular brand of of nerdery draws artists to Art F City (AFC) because humor is a scarce commodity in the New York art world. But apart from being funny, the blog tends to focus on the political side of the art market. The nonprofit questions labor practices and covers exhibitions other media outlets might overlook while employing and supporting talented young art writers.

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Photos by ​Rache​l Stern. April: Art F City (Corinna Kirsch, Matthew Leifheit, Paddy Johnson, Whitney Kimball)

Disclaimer time: Before I was photo editor of VICE, I was on staff at AFC. Like most people in their early 20s I was timid, and didn't think I had the authority to say much of anything at all. But they took a chance on me, and I may have written ​some good stuff. So I asked Paddy Johnson how she went from being a terrified kid to becoming a nonprofit organization that isn't afraid to say, "​We Didn't Like It."

VICE: Your background is in art history, right?
​Paddy Johnson: No.

What is it then? You went to Rutgers.
​I was making paintings and sound art. When I went to grad school I suffered from a lot of culture shock. I didn't think there'd be that much coming from Canada, but there was for me. New Brunswick is not a friendly town, let's say. I was living in an area where my neighbor shot and killed his family and then himself. I guess where I'm going with this is that I had dreams of people being killed every night, and I was not making very good art.

Sounds like difficult conditions.
​Honestly I was very self-conscious. I got there and I thought, Oh fuck what the hell am I doing here, everybody seems really good, which is ridiculous. And I started making these narrative sound pieces, and they sometimes related to the art world. Those were the things my teachers wanted me to do more of, but I think I was just too self-conscious at that time. I thought, What business do I have doing this? I haven't been trained in writing. This could suck and I wouldn't even know it. So I just didn't do much writing for maybe four years after that. Instead, I did a whole bunch of gallery jobs, and I was fired from a lot of those.

February: Molly Soda, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches 

You told me once you were good at getting jobs, but not very good at keeping them.
​I was excellent at getting jobs! I don't know why I got so many jobs. I once got a job managing a stock portfolio for an arts-based high school in New York, and that was really frightening. But I was desperate for a job, and when the woman asked me if I was good at math, I said, "No, but I can add." Which was true! But I guess I didn't say that I can't add very well [laughs].

So it didn't work out.
​I lasted about two weeks there. I was always willing to work really hard, but for things like that I didn't know enough to do a good job. And I was working with someone who was a yeller. Every skill I have just shuts down when that happens; I can't work in those environments. And there's a lot of those in the gallery world. So, I was applying for these gallery positions, but doing it half-heartedly. And then I started AFC.

May: Xaveria Simmons, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches 

That was 2005.
​​It was a time when the media narrative was like, This is the democratization of the web. I'd spent the last five years thinking I couldn't do it. I thought I couldn't make these sound art pieces and write these narratives because I never went to school for it. And then here comes this other narrative that's like, Yes you can, anybody can do this. And I believed it. I don't even know if it was true necessarily, but it was true enough for me. That was really important, because I was able to break through that crippling self-consciousness I think a lot of people in their 20s suffer from. Certainly I did.

How did you get people to start reading it? You just started writing? At that point was it called "Art Fag City"?
​It was called Art Fag City right from the start. I wrote it anonymously for three months, but I didn't really like being anonymous. Like, you couldn't just call and ask somebody something. It felt kind of duplicitous, and if you wanted to have an interview with anybody, you had to reveal your identity. I quickly realized it wasn't practical at all.

I was very aggressive in terms of how I "marketed" things. I sent a link to anybody I wrote about, like Here you go, I thought you would be interested in this. I stopped doing that so aggressively when I sent somebody a very negative review and I got a lambasting back about what a terrible a person I was and how conservative my tastes were. It was about a show that I still think was really terrible, but I decided sending someone a really negative review because you think they'll want to read it was a little troll-y.

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March: Mike and Claire, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches 

Despite feeling like you were not qualified, and you hadn't been trained in writing, you were never pulling punches.
​This is very naive, but at the time I really thought I was doing people a favor. I thought everybody deserved negative criticism if that's what needed to be said. And I actually still debate over this with my boyfriend, but I still believe there is some good done by negative criticism.

I agree. Somebody had to call bullshit every once in a while.
​Yeah, and I usually like being that person.

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Recent ​h​eadline from Art F City

Is it harder to write a negative review than a positive one?
​Yes and no. Sometimes it's like shooting fish in a barrel. The show is so bad that you could aim blindly and still hit something because everything is terrible. But when a show is that bad, there really has to be a very good reason for writing about it because frankly there's a lot of stuff out there that meets that criteria of being that bad, but most people just don't think it's worth writing about, and they're right. There has to be some sort of larger public discussion about it. Otherwise you're just being a shithead.

You'd like reviews serve the work in some way.
​That's definitely something we struggle with and try and maintain on the site—there actually has to be a reason for publishing something. In truth, that leaves us with a lot less to publish than most people. You really have to choose what things need to be discussed versus what things are already being discussed. And I think sometimes what needs to be discussed doesn't always line up with what's going to get you traffic.

From a business standpoint, how does that work out?
​It doesn't always work out. But sometimes I think that has more to do with the fact that I'm a writer. I'm sometimes a curator and a fundraiser, but it doesn't always work out from a business standpoint because... people don't come to me to find out how to better monetize the web [laughs].

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August: Rollin Leonard, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches 

You've turned what started out as a one-person blog into a profitable entity, or rather a nonprofit entity. It supports two staff writers, Whitney Kimball and Corinna Kirsch.
​These are writers who I think are exceptionally talented. Also, they're really good people. I don't want to be hanging around with people who don't care about the health of the art world, who are just swimming around looking for opportunities.

What can you do as an art critic working on a digital platform as opposed to print? What are the advantages?
​I complain about how much we have to update a blog every day, but actually, we don't have time for writer's block. It's something that is really good for me, too—the pressure to post as much and as often as you can. Sometimes that creates shit, but just as often it keeps you from being too much of a burden on yourself. You're still terribly self-conscious, but you can't afford to let it get in the way.

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June: Paul Outlaw and Jennifer Catron, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches 

What are some other reasons people come to the blog?
​Hopefully they expect to find a certain level of nerdishness. People come to us because we do call bullshit, and people recognize that we're socially and politically aware.

Net art is something AFC takes more seriously than other blogs, too.
​That's something that will become more prevalent in the next year. Net art is kind a curious thing because there's a certain bracket of net artists that are now making money off their work, which I think it great. But then there's another bracket of net artists who make work that really does just live online, and there's no real way for them to step forward in the marketplace. And that presents a problem, in an art world where the press circulates around what sells. It's very often that critics will say talking about money instead of the art is boring. But I actually don't think that's true.

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November: Nayland Blake, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches

I've heard you say you're not interested in street art.
​Yes, I maintain that. I'm not interested in street art.

Can you talk more about that?
​Well I can, but it comes from a kind of uninformed position. I'm just not interested in walking around Williamsburg and being able to identify the people who are tagging the sides of buildings. It's just not my thing. And then when the stuff goes into the gallery, it always ends up being some stupid conversation about "selling out" or "commodification" blah blah blah, like street art belongs on the street. I just feel like a lot of those conversations are really infantile. So yeah, I'm not interested in it. I'm not interested in the business of it, or the exhibition of it. I'm not interested in it as public art. The only thing I like about it is that it's impermanent. [laughs]

It sounds nasty. I don't mean to say that I like it because it will disappear eventually. I mean it will disappear and someone else will take its place, so there's a life cycle.

It also doesn't really function in the marketplace much of the time.
​It's one of the few things that isn't more interesting for not participating in the marketplace. Except it does participate in the marketplace—but it doesn't participate in the art marketplace. It's actually kind of in the real estate market, because it's on the side of buildings. If you look at what happened to ​Five Pointz: An owner decided to paint over things and that was the end of that. It's the same thing that happened to subway cars, when they had to be repainted, before they came up with a graffiti-resistant lacquer.

I remember hearing that one of the things that nobody really talks about when they talk about all the graffiti on subway cars in the 80s is that a lot of it was terrible. Which of course makes a lot of sense! Because 90 percent of art is bad. You have all this great creativity, but no ability to curate it.

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January: Allegra LaViola, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches

I remember you telling British TV that Banksy's work is toilet reading. Are there other things you're not interested in writing about?
​I can't write about film too much because I fall asleep during most movies.

When you started covering art fairs, did you start with Miami Basel? I know that started as fairs in hotel rooms.
​Yeah, actually I did.

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October: Martha Wilson, 2014, c-print, 16 x 20 inches

You like covering art fairs?
​You go there and everybody you know is there. Whatever the complaint is of the day, you've both got the same one. Whatever the joyous thing is, you can talk about that. For better or for worse, it's a very efficient way of talking to people.

A big part of the job in blogging is talking to people, and I never get tired of it. There's nothing better than talking to someone who knows so much more than you about a particular subject and is very articulate, and can talk about something in a way that's illuminating.

That's the whole reason you go and see art, too—because someone has some way of visually expressing something in a way that you never would have thought of, or expressed that way yourself. Expression is the most powerful and interesting thing you can do with your life, I think.

Buy Art F City's first ever nude panda calendar he​r​e, along with its nud​e pan​da print series.  

For more photos by Rachel Stern, check out her ​w​ebsite.

Follow Matthew Leifheit on ​Tw​itter. 

Last month a group called ​Hollaback released a video that quickly became one of the more talked-about clips of the year. It was the ​catcalling video heard round the world, and it brought to light the near-constant barrage of verbal assault women face as they go about their day-to-day lives. As might have been expected, a lot of men pushed back against the thesis of the video. #notallmen and all that.

There's probably no chance of a guy truly understanding this from a woman's point of view. Going about my business and suddenly feeling sexually threatened just isn't something I can simulate. Still, as a non-catcaller, I thought I might learn something by getting into the shitty mindset of a catcaller, so I decided to try it out. Only instead of yelling at females I'd never met, I would direct my unwanted attention only at other men.

I recruited a friend to accompany me to the high foot traffic area of LA known as Hollywood and Highland, where tourists and locals alike try their best to avoid being accosted by mangy Elmos. My friend would serve as my photographer for this endeavor, but more importantly, as a cute female, she could draw upon her lifetime of catcall experience and coach me on what to say to my targets. We found a ledge upon which to post up and I got to work.

I started out timidly enough.

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"Hey. How's it going?" No reaction. I needed to engage more.

"Hey? Where you going?" Now I was getting somewhere, my coach assured me. It still needed some finessing, though.

The next hour was spent refining my technique with all the men who walked by. Most, surprised at actually being pulled out of their bubble by a stranger talking at them, became flustered and returned volley with a "Oh, hi" or "thanks" of their own. Others tucked their heads down and plowed forward with a newfound sense of urgency, lest a crazy person on the sidewalk rope them into a conversation, or worse, ask them for change. 

I'm no stranger to this approach. Anyone trying to talk to me as I go about my daily walking business usually gets iced out with silence, and maybe a gesture toward my earbuds, the universal sign for "I can't hear you." That means I would have been a boring subject in my own experiment.  It was only when I started using an old chestnut, suggested by my coach, that things got interesting.

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"Hey, man. You should smile. It's a beautiful day!"

It's a phrase that might just be the bane of every woman's existence. But it actually got positive reactions from a few guys. A few ignored me, but the overwhelming majority of men who I hit with some iteration of this line did a double take and then gave me a big toothy grin like I was orchestrating some heartstring-tuggy YouTube video. Maybe guys really didn't see that sort of command as inappropriate. Maybe these fellas found the suggestion to be the boost in spirit they needed at that moment. Maybe men really are from Mars. Or maybe they just hadn't been told to smile by 100,000 males over the course of a lifetime.

The tourist element may have been tainting my sample, however. These weren't all people on their way to and from work in a city they call home. There were far too many jet-setters on vacation who jumped at the opportunity to speak with a local.

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A guy in a cute jacket

I'd start with something like "that's a cute jacket, dawg," butching up my voice a bit so the recipient would know I wasn't about any funny business with that compliment. But then the guy would do a quick about-face and trot back to me all excited, saying thank you before asking me a bunch of questions about LA and what they could do for fun around here and would I mind taking a picture of them by this Marilyn Monroe star? I didn't sign up for this. Somehow, the harasser had become the harassee. I ratcheted up my glower and pressed on.

At the beginning of my second hour of catcalling, an Australian fellow was way too eager to stop in his tracks and sidle back over to me when I asked "how's your day going?" He stood uncomfortably close to where I was sitting and offered me a cigarette as I silently nudged my friend to ready her camera. I declined his cigarette and jumped into the conversation that was now happening whether I liked it or not.

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The Australian guy

"What're you up to?" he asked.

"Just hanging out."

"Cool, yeah, me and the boys are just up from Mexico for the day."

"What were you guys doing down there?" I stupidly pressed.

"Just on a bit of a cruise. Did some partying."

"I see."

"So..." his voice lowered, as if we were filming a bad after school special, "you think you could, uh, help me out and I'll take care of you?"

This was terrifyingly vague. Did he want drugs? Did he want to buy me as some sort of rentboy? Did he need assistance changing a flat? Whatever the subtext, I decidedly could not help him out and told him as much, which sent him on his way. If my catcalling had written a check I couldn't actually cash, I felt a little guilty about it.

Little did I know this would not be my most uncomfortable exchange of the afternoon.

Shortly after the Aussie departed, a late middle-aged man passing out tour bus fliers came up to talk to me after I hollered "looking good out there" at him. He strode over wearing a safari vest and cowboy hat and was otherwise the spitting image of Larry David.

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"Can I ask you a question? Can I? Now, you gotta promise you won't get mad at me."

"Sure" I acquiesced. Was he going to ask if this was a prank? If I was gay? My mind reeled with possibilities.

"What do you think of this president?"

Oh, God. No. I was all too familiar with this sort. This had nothing to do with catcalling. He just needed victims to spit political crazy at. I had ventured too close to his event horizon and now, much like in Interstellar, I would escape only after many years had passed in Earth time, demoralized and having learned nothing in the process.

I'll spare you the full recounting of the next half hour, but some highlights included Larry (yes, the Larry David looking guy was actually named Larry) explaining to me: 

• How Christopher Hitchens wrote a book detailing how President Clinton raped four women: "Forget this Bill Cosby nonsense. The real monster is that pervert, Bill Clinton!" 
• ​How we're fucking up our handling of ISIS: "Americans are getting beheaded every day and everyone is just like, 'Where's my fucking Starbucks?!'" 
• How ​Howard Stern and the whackpack get comedy right: "You've got to be willing to cross the fucking line like Sal and Richard." 
• ​How he's so successful with the ladies: "You know why I get so much trim at 65, anyone I want? Cause I pay them no mind." Larry had officially blown up my spot. 

Realizing I'd be able to accomplish no more work in this primo locale with Larry spitting superior insanity game, I was forced to grab my coach and high-tail it to a new base of operations.

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A trend emerged in the last stretch: Men who had been victim to my catcalling only moments before would circle back to wink, smile, or try chatting with my friend. Keep in mind that she had spent this entire afternoon sitting a reasonable distance from me, doing whatever on her phone. So, it's not like I was implicitly roping her into any potential convos through my actions. Nonetheless, the attention I had just given some of these men was quickly brushed off with the Swiffer of cognitive dissonance as they mounted their own attacks on my poor friend. She even texted me later to document the two "hey, girl" remarks she got on the walk back to her car.

I don't know exactly what I learned from this dip into the ocean of catcalling that affects millions of women every day. Nobody got in my face or called me a faggot, which was a nice surprise. It was certainly strange to see how many dudes responded positively to the charade. Perhaps my lack of intent to actually do anything besides talk at them was what set me aside from your everyday catcaller, but then again, maybe not. 

While I maintain that catcalling is a shitty thing to do, and if you can't find another possible way to meet and socialize with strangers then maybe you deserve to be alone, this afternoon did give me some possible insight into the minds of these guys. I hadn't thought that most people would engage me. I figured I'd be ignored for 99 percent of my day. But maybe these catcalling pricks have the same (lack of) expectations. They very well may be big, dumb dogs chasing cars who wouldn't know what to do if they caught one.

Follow ​Justin Caffier on ​Twitter.

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Illustrations by ​Simon Reid

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

These days, when he's having pathetic tiffs with beer-wattle journalists and fans in hotels, it's easy to forget that no one brought fury to the Premier League quite like Roy Keane. He was the division's own cold operative, the kind of guy you see walking out of a council estate on a grey day, hands punched into the pockets of his MA1, face impassive as the car bomb explodes behind him. At other times he was the raging hound of Hades, eyes like tiny black snooker balls lodged in the depths of the solar system, Roy of the Rovers crossed with Bane.

He was a captain in the tradition of Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, a philosophical psychopath who could dominate games and inspire men like no other. In match after match, again and again, he won the ball back, picked it up, moved it forward, pushed his team on. Turin, 1999, and the smoke hangs over Juventus' Stadio delle Alpi, the Italian fans waiting for the Champions League semi-final victory that is surely theirs.

Keane isn't fazed. He's hammering into tackles—of course he is—but his game was always so much more than that. He was a passer of the ball, a runner, a skilled technician, a supremely intelligent master of the space on a football pitch. He scores with a header. Flying in, in front of the keeper. "A captain's goal," cries Clive Tyldesley. Keane picks up a booking, which rules him out of the final he's got his team into.

It's not like that was Keane's only decent performance, though it is certainly his most retrospectively heralded. There's also the FA Cup final against Liverpool in 1996, which he dominates completely, swatting aside McManaman, Redknapp and Barnes single-handedly as the commentator grudgingly admits that, " taking aside his temperament," the Irishman has had rather a good game.

Then there's Highbury, 2005, less than a year before he leaves United, standing up for his little teammate Gary Neville in the impossibly small tunnel, telling Patrick Vieira he's a cunt and then going out there and battering him under the floodlights. "I hated them," he said of Arsenal, and that sweet hatred ran through the rivalry between the teams and the rivalry between Vieira and Keane, the greatest rivalries in the past 20 years of English football, rivalries that had the pigs at Sky Sports squealing merrily in their own filth.

Keane brought that same brilliance to Ireland, most notably in the qualifiers for the 2002 World Cup: against the Netherlands, hammering into Marc Overmars in the first minute and bossing it from there on in, or taking Portugal on almost single-handedly, playing so well that the first thing Eusebio did at the end of the match was to come to the Irish dressing room and ask for Keane's shirt. But then, with Ireland qualified for the tournament and preparing on the island of Saipan, Keane tore into manager Mick McCarthy, calling him a shit player, manager and human being. Captain Roy was sent home, kept from playing in a World Cup by a dour Yorkshireman—and by the limitations, or perhaps excesses, of his own character. Today's midfielders—your Oscars, your Wilsheres, your Blinds—are all sprightly and talented in their own way, but they're bottle-fed, eunuch automatons in comparison.

Reading Keane's recent book, The Second Half, written with the novelist Roddy Doyle, this character comes out as a mass of contradictions. Many thought that while Keane had to make himself a great player through sheer strength of will, overcoming his small physical frame to cross the Irish Sea and join Nottingham Forest, he would be a natural great in management. But of course that's not how it's gone. The passion, perfectionism and fury that made him a brilliant player have made him an unstable manager thus far, like putting a volcano in charge of air traffic control.

The most obvious comparison, to me, was with Graeme Souness. There's a misty-eyed documentary about the great Liverpool team of the 1980s in which Souness talks about the joy of being a guy in your twenties, playing football for the best team in the world and how you think it'll last forever, how you can never quite replicate it once it's over. "When you start out in your career," Roy Keane writes, "you know it's going to finish at 34 or 35. You know it is. But I'm not sure that your emotions know it." Suddenly, your purpose is gone, you don't know what to do and you're paranoid, everyone is talking about you.

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In many ways, Keane has turned out to be Souness' heir, on and off the pitch. Like the Scot, he was a dominant central midfielder, fiercely committed, often violent ( this classic Souness tackle is richly evocative of Keane on Haaland) but also very, very good. And like the Scot, he is a man of extremes who hasn't quite been able to recapture the joy of his playing days and who seems unable to accept the inability of others to match his own almost impossibly high standards. Souness tried to recapture those glorious playing days when manager of Galatasaray by inciting a Turkish riot with his flag-planting antics at the home of arch rivals Fenerbahce. As manager of Sunderland, Keane grabbed a member of Reading's backroom staff by his tie and pushed his face into a desk. We all have our own methods of motivation.

The book is full of these angry outbursts. Roy is constantly conflicted. He wants to go and have a nice walk with his dog, but then he'll probably have to beat up some kids along the way. He's down for some shopping with the wife but then, on the way home he's going to have to menace some old folks at the bus stop. These contradictions often come within the same paragraph, sometimes the same sentence. He's completely tormented, and torn between wanting to learn from his mistakes and accept he did things wrong, and "fighting my corner."

Roy Keane enjoys a selfie (Photo via stu_fraser)

The contradictions pile up. When he leaves Sunderland, Dwight Yorke, who played with him at United and for him in the north-east, gets in touch: "Yorkie texted me: All the best. I texted him back: Go fuck yourself... And it's sad, because I had great days with Yorkie. I could have handled things differently." When he's working for ITV as a pundit, he says: "... I don't like the label pundit. I don't like being labelled, generally. Although I never minded being called a footballer—because I loved being a footballer."

And then at Ipswich, he tells us: "I'd be talking to a member of my staff, and I'd have to remind myself that I'd played more games at the highest level, I'd managed at a higher level—and I was taking advice from people who couldn't match that experience. That's not to say they're not worth listening to—I don't mean that."

What do you mean, Roy? There's a party in your mind but no one ever came. Was anyone even invited?

On Clough and Ferguson, he's conflicted and contradictory, as any estranged son would be. He doesn't spend as much time on Ferguson as the headlines upon the books release suggested but the anger with his old boss runs deep. In fact, he was so angry and upset that when he left United he missed out on about £1 million because he just wanted to remove himself from the situation, cry in his car for two minutes and then put the warrior mask back on, shovel the pain into an already full reservoir of hurt in his chest and wait for it to explode at some other juncture. He drives the car United gave him, an Audi, for three more months. "Every little victory is vital," he writes, as you wait for him to tell you that he returned the vehicle with some empty crisp packets in the back and a box of Oasis: Live at Maine Road DVDs in the front.

"I think Brian Clough's warmth was genuine. I think that with Alex Ferguson it was pure business—everything was business," writes Keane. But then, a couple of paragraphs later, he needs to make a clarification. "I know Clough's warmth was business, too."

Was he being treated as a commodity when really all he wanted was to be loved as a boy? He was small as a child and as a friend from Cork once told the Evening Standard: "What you have to understand about Roy is that in those early days he had to try harder than anyone else to make up for what some felt was a lack of physical presence." That determination never left Keane, but with an explosive temper that he says he got from his father, he was always liable to press "that self-destruct button." This button, he admits, hurts him more than anyone else.

"We all want to be liked," he writes, and suddenly you feel as though being Roy Keane must be a very lonely thing, at times. I remember a surfer who broke some unfathomable record way out at sea saying that after he'd done it, no one in the boat going back to land with him was able to look him in the eye. They were afraid of him because of what he was capable of and he felt so alone that he started crying. Keane the leader is feared. People have their preconceptions about him. "As soon as I walk into a room, I know people are apprehensive... they are expecting some sort of skinhead thug." Sometimes he lives up to those expectations. He may as well be in that boat, separated from his fellow man by the force of his will.

It's lonely and again, it's conflicting. Keane is married and has five children, but it's a dad jumper he wears uncomfortably. "Maybe I'm like every man on the planet," he says. "I don't know; I want a bit more than what's on offer. My mid-life crisis has been going on for years. I can be sitting at home, the most contented man on the planet. An hour later, I go 'Jesus—it's hard work, this.'"

This man, who has tasted so much glory, feels like a suburban dad who just wishes he'd made a proper go of his high school band. At Sunderland, he lives out his own solitary version of The Young Ones, subsisting on Pot Noodles and beans. He rents a flat in Durham, in a student area, and goes into the cafés there convinced that no one knows him because students "aren't that interested in football." The world of guys on Twitter comparing John O'Shea to Samwise Gamgee would shock and appall him.

Elsewhere, this idiosyncrasy leaves him able to skewer the bullshit of the modern football dressing room, with its players glued to their phones and computer games. Keane's the dinosaur, the old warrior, wondering what the hell WhatsApp is, angrily confused by the sight of Wayne Rooney taking a selfie. "He was wearing Superman underpants" is all he needs to say about Stephen Ireland and of course he's not having Robbie Savage, with his Wazzup answer phone message, or the old guys making sure their cheques clear before they shuffle off to Legends matches. "I just didn't want to end up playing football with fuckin' JLS," is his final word on wanting to stay relevant in the football world.

And staying relevant means ageing with purpose and integrity. This book, which deals with the death of a career on the pitch and the troubled birth of one off it, is in many ways about ageing. This is there in Keane's fondness of innocence, which comes out at various moments. At United, he prefers Ronaldo to Rooney because Ronaldo has "an innocence and a niceness" to him, whereas Rooney is already "streetwise." Jordan Henderson is the same. As a manager, the delight of Sunderland is that the job seems fresh and innocent. Not so at Ipswich.

It all paints a picture of Keane sitting on a park bench, having a Holden Caulfield moment as he watches the kids on the carousel and wishes they never had to be tainted by the phoniness of the world. Roy Keane is a hard man but he feels as though the world is a hard place, almost unbearably so at times. As a kid, his under-12 football team wins a national tournament and the prize is being taken to see Ireland play at Lansdowne Road. In Dublin, he buys his first single, "Karma Chameleon," by Culture Club. For me, two lines stand out:

Every day is like survival

You're my lover not my rival

Every day can be like survival. For Roy Keane, will the world go on being his rival?

Follow Oscar Rickett on ​Twitter

"Vivid Radio!" Sapphire says, "We're talking about snowballing and cum-swapping today! Do you have a story or fantasy you'd like to share?"

Sapphire, the producer for porn star Annie Cruz's internet radio show Dirtiest Girl in the World, is in the radio control room at the offices of porn mega-company ​Vivid. The phones were ringing off the hook, the lines crowded with men who wanted to be part of the show, which features Annie telling dirty stories and taking calls.

One guy I know who had listened to Vivid Radio, the porn-centric Sirius XM station that Dirtiest Girl in the World is a part of, described it as "sweaty guys calling in to have phone sex with porn stars." That makes it sound both disgusting and boring, an unfortunate cross between Car Talk and a seedy internet chat room. 

But the station just celebrated its first-year anniversary (it went from being on satellite radio to an online-only operation in ​July), and, as I found when I visited Sapphire and Annie while they recorded Dirtiest Girl, the shows have attracted a dedicated—if sweaty-palmed—audience.

When I met Annie—who was wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and no makeup—I found out one secret behind he show's success: she's not only the dirtiest girl in the world, she's the friendliest. She's got the personality of a genuinely nice frat guy, her speech was peppered with "dude"s, she's passionate about comics and gaming, and identifies as pansexual. I'll admit to a certain amount of prejudice when it comes to porn stars, Annie was not what I had in mind when I thought of a "Vivid Girl."

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Annie's first segment was "Sexy Stories," true tales of the sexy encounters she's had recently. The phones were lit up with callers, even though this wasn't a call-in segment. "Oh, they call in and wait," Sapphire told me. "They'll stay on hold throughout the whole Sexy Stories segment to get to the call-in portion."

In front of the mic, Annie has the delivery of a bro describing the funniest thing, ever, that happened to him at the gym. "Then he fucks me so hard, I'm like, 'Holy fuck dude,'" she said while describing a weekend with her boyfriend, whom she calls "Captain America." (Her nickname for her boyfriend, a doctor she met at the ​Adult Entertainment Expo last year, when he came dressed as Captain America.) "For the rest of the evening we basically played video games. In the morning we did this brutal TRX workout in Culver City. Then we ate some cookies." 

After Sexy Stories, it was finally time for " Ask Me Anything Mondays," the weekly call-in segment that the men had been dutifully waiting on the line for. Annie opened the segment by poking gentle fun at last week's callers for not really... asking her anything. "Guys, you can ask me anything," she reminded them.

Her first caller was Victor, who was wondering if Annie would ever "shove [his] face in [her] pussy." She considered this, seriously, and said, "Maybe. Are you cool?" Victor reassured her that he was indeed cool. Annie asked what made him so cool, a question he obviously was not expecting. "I'm... fun to be around," he said, "and I'd... buy you... a dildo." All parties agreed this was fair.

After Victor was Todd, who asked Annie what kind of shoes she was wearing. Annie looked at her feet and told him (truthfully) that she was wearing red Converse. "What do they smell like?" Todd asked. In the control room, Sapphire shouted, "What the FUCK!" But in the studio, Annie dutifully smelled her sneakers. "They kind of smell brand new," she told Todd. "I have a lot of Chuck Taylors, but I hardly ever wear these ones, so they smell pretty new." 

"Do you have any old ones you would sell me?" Todd asked. Yeah right, I thought, there's no way she would ever do that, buddy, as though tennis shoe sales were the one line a porn star must never cross. "Sure," Annie said. "Just email me." Another friendly exchange, another satisfied customer.

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After Todd, Annie took a call from Jordie, who mumbled something unintelligible—a hallmark, I learned, of guys who call into porn radio shows. "What did you say, sweetie?" Annie asked him, and he spoke up a little louder: "Did you see the VMAs last night?" In the control room, Sapphire laughed loudly. "Oh, the VMAs! No, I didn't watch them," Annie replied. "Sorry!" After chatting for a while, Annie eventually got to the bottom of Jordie's call: He wanted to talk about Nicki Minaj's  ​wardrobe malfunction (but seemed satisfied with making other pleasant conversation). After he hung up, Annie shrugged. "I guess I did say ask me anything."

Then a man who went by "Harry Palm" called in. "Harry! It's me, Sapphire! It's good to hear from you," Sapphire said, and chatted with Harry for a minute before handing him over to Annie. Harry, Sapphire explained, is a regular caller—one of many. Harry had a casual and non-sexy conversation with Annie, who greeted him like they were old pals. Then the show ended, and Annie set her headphones down on her desk next to a colorful collection of dildos.

Follow Allegra Ringo on ​Twitter.

UPDATE:​ According to ​documents obtained by La Presse, the fatal incident occurred during an active police corruption investigation involving former Quebec Liberal Party director Robert Parent.

Mike Belance was driving his kids to school on a Thursday morning last February when a car came barreling down the road and collided with his in the intersection. Belance was making a legal left turn. The other driver, a police officer in an unmarked car, was going approximately 75 miles per hour—more than twice the legal speed limit. The impact was enough to fling Belance's Kia sedan about ten feet off the road. It was the day before Valentine's Day, and by February 17, Belance's five-year-old son, who had been in the backseat of the car, was dead from his injuries. Belance and his 14-year-old daughter, while badly hurt from the collision, survived. 

As of today, no one has been charged in the child's death.

The officer, part of the provincial police force Sûreté du Québec, was not responding to an emergency. His lights were not flashing. His siren was not on. No one knows why he was driving so fast. Several hours after the crash, the Montreal police department began an investigation into what had happened and then turned the case over to the Crown prosecutor (the Canadian equivalent of an Attorney General). Earlier this month, they told the Belance family that there would not be any charges. Because there are no criminal charges, the Belance family will not receive any of the compensation that's normally given to crime victims' families. The Belance family never even found out the driver's name.

It still isn't clear—to the Belance family or anyone else—why no charges were pressed, despite the Canadian criminal code containing a number of offenses that seem like they would fit this crime: "dangerous driving causing death," "criminal negligence causing death," or even just plain "manslaughter." Yesterday, the DPCP (Montreal's agency for criminal and penal prosecutions) released a statement saying that they would arrange a meeting with the Belance family to discuss the "reasons for its decision not to charge," after which they would release that information to the public.

What happened to the Belance family is not an anomaly. Canadian cops are notoriously dangerous drivers. A few years ago, Benjamin Monty Robinson—an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—struck and killed a 21-year-old motorcyclist and then fled the scene to take a few shots of vodka to "calm his nerves." He was accused of "obstructing justice" (e.g. hitting and running), but didn't receive any jail time. Instead, the RCMP suspended him with full pay until he voluntarily retired in 2012. (Robinson is also the officer responsible for Tasering Robert Dziekański to death in 2007, but that's unrelated.)

In September, 48-year-old Guy Blouin died after he was run over by a police cruiser in Quebec City. He had been riding his bicycle the wrong direction down a one-way street, and as the police drove up to pull him over, he got caught under the wheels of the car. An eyewitness says the car ran him over twice before officers pinned him to the ground and continued their arrest as blood poured out of his mouth. The officer driving the car was just ​promoted.

Then, in February, 41-year-old ​Alain Magloire was shot and killed by Montreal cops. When he died, officers reported that Magloire, who was homeless and suffered from mental illness, had been wielding a hammer and refused to drop it. But when a video of the incident surfaced many months later, it appeared that Magloire was first struck by a police cruiser and then fatally shot by the officers. After a Sûreté du Québec investigation, the Crown prosecutor concluded that there were "​no grounds to lay charges against the officers."

As ​The Globe and Mail points out, Canada's other provinces have "an independent body [that] investigates deaths, serious injuries and other high-profile cases that involve police officers." When no charges are filed, the investigators are still required to provide a detailed summary of their decision. In Quebec, there is no such requirement, and the investigations are carried out by other police forces. After Magloire's death, many called for the creation of a board of independent investigations in Quebec. Until one is created, the police in Quebec will keep policing themselves—a scary thought for anyone not in a uniform.

The DPCP did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow Arielle Pardes on ​Twitter.

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​Kayleigh Peddie underwear

​Photographer: ​Claire Milbrath
​​Stylist: ​Sara Graorac
​​Assistant: Catherine Patrick-Boon
​Grooming: Steffi Nicole
​Nails: ​Amy Johnson

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​Kayleigh Peddie underwear​

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​Vintage candy lingerie set​

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​Calvin Klein underwear and waistband, vintage robe​

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​Urban Outfitters bra, C Boutique skirt

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​Stopshop Boutique skirt, Calvin Klein underwear

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​Rachel Rector garter belt and underwear

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​Vintage Necklace Body Glove briefs,​ Calvin Klein waistband

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​Vintage Necklace Body Glove briefs, Calvin Klein waistband

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​American Apparel sweater, Kayleigh Peddie roll on garter and underwear, vintage stockings and tap shoes​​ ​​​

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​Vintage top

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​Vintage briefs

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​Vintage briefs, American Apparel socks

The Meat Puppets emerged from SST, the LA punk label founded in 1978 by Black Flag's Greg Ginn. SST built its legendary status by releasing material from bands like the Minutemen, Dinosaur Jr., Saccharine Trust, Sonic Youth, and Hüsker Du—all groups that are dead and gone or in the midst of their 18th reunions. The Meat Puppets, however, stood out from the rest of their labelmates because of their weird blend of punk, country, and folk that's been referred to as "cowpunk," whatever that means.

Take SST's 1983 compilation record, The Blasting Concept. On it, the Minutemen yell about Reagan, Black Flag yell about teen angst, Saccharine Trust yell about identity politics, and the Meat Puppets just yell for the fuck of it with a slacker twang that still sounds original and unique almost 30 years later.

The Meat Puppets are still soldiering on after 14 albums, multiple labels, bouts of rehab, and some mainstream exposure thanks to an appearance on ​Nirvana's MTV Unplugged show in 1993. Their long career is all due to the autonomous creative vision and attitude of founding brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood. The band was never plotting any sort of trajectory. They just worked hard, as they still do, on whatever they want, enduring on grit alone—which is way more punk rock than what most self-identified punks do after they turn 30.

I recently talked to Curt about all of this and other things, but mostly we talked about Disney movies.

VICE: Are you guys working on any new material?
​Curt Kirkwood: Yeah, it's coming along. I don't have much of a discipline for that. I just wait for ideas to pop up and get them on the tape recorder. But it's coming along. I'm thinking about doing it a little at a time instead of just going in for a session.

Would you say your songwriting process has changed since the early days?
​Not much, actually. It's always been about the same. I'll generally get a melody or some chords and put words to it, that's it 90 percent of the time.

Are there any influences on the process that people might not expect?
​It could be anything—something rhythmic like windshield wipers, or a little string from a commercial that I start spinning off of. I think most good pop music evokes the feeling that you've heard it before because you probably did. You just have to make sure that it's not too close or you'll get sued. I'm sure I'm pretty derivative, but I edit a lot. Ultimately, a lot of my influence aesthetically comes from ​Stephen Foste​r and other early songs like that. He was the first American pop musician, in my opinion. And then you mix that with a really heavy dose of Disney.

Disney?
​Yeah, that's my primary influence—Disney. I watched the Wizard of Oz, and Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights. And I always had the records of music to Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Dumbo also has a super great soundtrack. And Bambi is great, too.

​I always go back to those records. And other soundtrack stuff too. Early on I listened to the soundtrack for Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, and Planet of the Apes, Ennio Morricone's scores for Sergio Leone movies, and then on into stuff like Close Encounters. I still like Rodgers and Hammerstein and listen to the Cabaret soundtrack, the one with Liza Minnelli. The King andI is great. So is South Pacific. That's where a lot of my influence comes from.

You're probably the only SST band that cites Liza Minnelli as an influence.
​There are a ton of influences. John Fahey, Leo Kottke... The first concert I ever went to was Bowie, and then Lynyrd Skynyrd, Joe Walsh, Led Zeppelin, and Sabbath. I liked the idea of being in a rock band. We were way into prog, too. I still love Jethro Tull.

Has your philosophy toward music changed considerably since then?
​I'd say that's pretty much the same. I do it because I like it. It's like a hobby in that sense. It's always fun to see how something turns out. I've never had much of a vision. It's fun to just do it and see what you've got. In that way, I like shows. You can't really get the buzz any other way than by shows. You can play all you want around the house and record all you want, but it's still about the live stuff.

It seems like the only way to organically build an audience, even with the internet, is to constantly play shows. People look up to the SST crew still because you guys pioneered what's now called the "DIY ethic." It's a term that has now been beaten to death, but it still holds true. Do you see any of that old attitude still?
​It's similar to how it was then, but back then you really had to have an independent record company to do it yourself. It was mostly college radio and fanzines and people in each town that liked your stuff. It's easier to get your name around now with the internet. But back then, there wasn't any money on the horizon and nobody at SST was thinking about it that way. It was about doing shows or having a big label pick you up to start footing some of the bill or making you more popular or whatever. 

The way things are now is pretty similar to how they were then. All we did was tour, and we liked it, and it kept you afloat if you did it enough. We were just left to our own devices, which was cool. It's the same now—nobody's expecting a hit song or whatever. You've gotta love it from every angle and enjoy everything, including the business.

Are there any younger bands that you've seen in recent years that stand out as embodying that?
​I mostly only see bands that we play with. I've never prowled around much. I get turned on from my friends. I'm not much of a connoisseur. I was lucky on SST, I just got turned on to all kinds of stuff on the scene. Now, there's just a shitload of bands, but I've always got my ears open. I'm always waiting to go, "Man, that's pure magic." I like to be floored.

Are there any records that you find yourselves coming back to again and again?
​Sure, I think the last thing I heard was Ray Charles. Slim Whitman... Love the old-timey stuff—the stuff I grew up on. I love George Jones and I can listen to a shitload of that. I still really like Burl Ives. Once in a while I'll go back to my teens and need to hear some Led Zeppelin. I don't have much of a record collection, though.

I love these ​Sublime Frequencie​s records. One of my buddies from Sun City Girls put out a Sublime Frequencies compilation where they go to a bunch of different countries and get obscure pop music. Those are great records and I have a number of those. I like music with lyrics I can't understand.

Do you run into the old SST guys besides Mike Watt?/
​I've seen Chuck Dukowski over the past few years, over at a festival in Belgium. I still see the Sonic Youth guys. We did a tour with Soundgarden a little bit ago. I see Rollins, always good to see him. They're like old high school alumni friends—good buddies.

You're still doing a fair amount of visual art?
​I don't do a lot, same as always. It's just a past time, scribbling a bit when I'm sitting around. I don't keep a studio or anything. It's just for fun.

Your whole deal just seems like "art for art's sake," and you've managed somehow to make it work for yourself for so long. It's great.
​I've been very lucky. I'm not really ambitious and I don't network very well. I've never really had a vision but people have always managed to include me, so I bring my stupid act to the party.

Keep up with the Meat Puppets by visiting the band's ​website.

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Rich Peppiat walks away from Paul Dacre's house, dildo in hand

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

In 2011, Rich Peppiat shot into the national conscience when he sensationally quit his job as a hack at the DailyStar, saying that the paper's Islamophobic agenda, which led to the spinning of largely untrue stories, was too much to bear.

Before that, he would have been known only to the readers of the  Star, who may have recognized his byline from made-up "news" stories which he—in his own words—plucked from his ass. They may even have recognized his face from the times he dressed up as a John Lennon, a vampire, a Mexican, Noel Gallagher, Saint George (twice), Santa Claus, Aleksandr the Meerkat, the Stig, and a transvestite Alex Reid for their amusement. They wouldn't have recognized him from the time he walked around in public in a burka all day for an article.

Publishing his resignation letter in the Guardian, he wrote, "You may have heard the phrase, 'The flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.' Well, try this: 'The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved in down an alley in Bradford.'"

He became part of the story again when he testified to the Leveson Inquiry about the culture of bullshit at tabloid papers.  Now he's entering the public eye once more with a film, One Rogue Reporter, in which he gets his revenge on crappy newspaper editors through a series of pranks. Some of them fall a bit flat, such as papping the guy behind the Mail Online's side bar of shame—giving him a taste of his own medicine, geddit?—or putting a dildo on Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre's doorstep because of the guy's prudish editorial style.

However, you do get to see former News of the World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck chatting up a masseuse for an undercover story in a completely cringe-worthy manner while completely naked. The final prank—presenting the ex-editor of the Sun with his own allegedly philandering text messages while he believes he is innocently being interviewed for a documentary about kiss 'n' tell stories—is worth the wait. I spoke to Rich about the film and leaving life as a sleazy tabloid hack behind him.
​

VICE: Tell me about quitting the Daily Star.
​Rich Peppiat:  What always really upset me was the anti-Islam stuff. The Daily Star had a real hard-on for anti-Muslim stories. They were putting things on the front page like, "The English Defence League are the current political party." I remember going to an EDL rally as a reporter and the minute they found out I was from the Daily Star they started picking me up and holding me aloft like I was their hero or something. They saw the Daily Star as being their newspaper and that's when I just thought, Jesus fucking Christ, what am I doing with my life that these morons are lauding me as their voice? And so it was things like that that built up and up and eventually I sort of snapped.

Why didn't you quit earlier on?
​ I certainly don't hold myself up as some hero of the piece, because I think most people wouldn't have lasted as long as I did [two and a half years]. They would have left the first time they got asked to wear a burka. I think that certainly questions my own moral integrity. It's something I still think about. I think it was cowardice. I was too scared to stand up for myself and too scared to risk my career. I was far too interested in climbing up the greasy pole. It's a very competitive industry and I'm a competitive person, but in the process I completely sold myself down the river and it came to a point where I didn't like who I was. I wasn't happy and I was depressed. It's taken me a long time to get back to a place that feels like something more true to me.

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Peppiat interviewing Kelvin MacKenzie

In One Rogue Reporter you give a number of different tabloid editors a taste of their own medicine. Which was your favorite?
​ The Kelvin MacKenzie prank just because he walks into every punch that I threw at him. Even I couldn't believe just quite how much he was digging his own grave, so that was the most satisfying certainly. The moment when he finally recognizes that what is being read out to him are his own text messages is certainly enjoyable for the audience. I could see by the glint in his eye when all of a sudden the panic set in and he thought, Hang on—this isn't what I thought it was, this is me isn't it. For me though the constant battle was not to laugh and ruin the whole thing.

Were you tempted to sell them to a newspaper?
​ I don't really think that there are many newspapers that would want Kelvin MacKenzie's texts and even less that would want to buy them off of me.

Why wouldn't they want to publish his texts?
​ Because there's this thing that's colloquially called the "no-pissing pact," where newspaper editors don't go after each other's private lives. It's a long-standing tradition.

How did you decide what pranks to do?
​ I went over the Leveson Inquiry and based it on the people who pissed me off the most. I was like, "You're a dick, I think you deserve to get turned over." All the stunts are about exposing hypocrisy, so it was a matter of trying to work out exactly what these editors do that is in contrast to their public declarations.

Mackenzie was slightly different though because all the other editors like to pretend that they're good, upstanding, lovely, moral people whereas what they do for work all day belies that that's untrue. However MacKenzie is an unashamed scumbag—he's quite proud of it. And so MacKenzie is the one where it wasn't really exposing hypocrisy, it was just giving him a kick.

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What do you think the reactions to the pranks tell us about people in the newspaper industry?
​ What I wanted to show is that they believe it's one rule for them and one for everyone else and that it's OK to send out people to harass people unfairly, but if you try doing it to them then they're not very happy about it. I think if you're going to live by the sword you have to die by the sword. That counts for me as much as anyone. I know that I put myself out there, going out after them and if someone wanted to stunt me then I'd probably be deserving of it and I wouldn't be complaining. Whereas them—they don't like it up 'em.

Where do the boundaries lie between privacy, public interest, and freedom of expression?
​ That's a very good question, because that's what the whole film is about. There is no set boundary. The point I wanted to make is that far too often people want to be told "this is where the boundary lies," whereas in fact, every person needs to make their own decision as to what's acceptable.

Certainly in the film, people could argue that I cross the line in certain parts, that I shouldn't be invading people's privacy in the way that I do, whether they've done it to other people or not. But that's fine, as long as people are talking about it and thinking for themselves. What is acceptable? Is it acceptable to put a video of someone's asshole and balls in my film because they have written kiss and tells? I think so, but maybe you don't, maybe other people don't.

Why don't you get your own back on your old boss from the Daily Star in the film?
​ On my long list of people to target, he was certainly there. We did actually have a stunt planned, but with the budget we had it ended up being too difficult to do so we ended up dropping it. I'm not going to say what it was because I might still do it now. Let's just say I've got a few other things up my sleeve. I might not be finished quite yet.

So is there going to be a One Rogue Reporter sequel?
​ Not in this country there won't be. I'm developing a second film going after the American media. I've been in New York and Washington for the last couple of months, trying to work out how I'll go about it. It's certainly a different situation. Having made One Rogue Reporter completely off my own back, with no money, no backing, no nothing, having a production company on board you've got scope to do much bigger things.

Is the film a way for you to look back at being part of that world and atone for the things that you did?
It's not something that's foregrounded in the film, but certainly on a personal level yeah I think that was a subconscious motivation, there was a degree of trying to right a wrong. I do feel guilty about some of the things I did and this feels like a bit of atonement for that.

Follow Georgia Rose on ​Twitter

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Photo via ​Jeff Toth

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

A long time ago in a galaxy not far away (our own galaxy, in fact), the genre of science fiction was born. Groundbreaking and seemingly unrestricted, sci-fi put no limits on the imagination. Unless that imagination involved fairly representing the LGBT community. In which case, there were lots of limits.

Granted, geniuses like Samuel R. Delaney and Theodore Sturgeon were exploring sexuality in sci-fi literature as early as the 1950s, but there's always been a dearth of out and open LGBT characters onscreen.

However, things are changing. Sci-fi has finally started to see an emergence of gay characters who aren't concealed by a heap of sub-textual dark matter.

"If we're talking about mainstream media, we should look at the second word in 'show business.' It's never been more popular or profitable to cater to the geek audience or to a queer one," said Jono Jarrett, coordinator for Geeks Out, a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering, promoting, and rallying the queer geek community. They are currently busy raising funds for Flameco​n, a queer festival designed to bring geeky gays together in New York City.

"There are more queer writers, directors, producers, performers and executives in positions of power now than ever before," Jarrett said. "There's also a more persuasive and vocal queer and queer-allied audience encouraging the sci-fi community to include LGBTQ content." 

According to Jono, science fiction is about imagination, the new and unknown: "It's not a place to stifle expression of any kind, especially something so human as queerness."

The path to get to this point has been a long and laborious one. There has never been an LGBT character in any Star Trek franchises. That's quite a fucking achievement, considering the vast number of characters over the years, including all the aliens, some of whom you'd imagine might come from slightly more liberal planets than ours.

One exception—the steamy lesbian kiss in Deep Space Nine—certainly got hearts racing. Except one of the characters was formerly male and now inhabiting a female body, and the pair were once happily married heteros. So that doesn't really count.

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Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5 

A nod has to go to Susan Ivanova in Babylon 5, as many fans believe she had a lesbian relationship with the character Talia Winters. But, again, this was never expanded or properly confirmed. In a genre dominated by mainly straight males, the most audiences got was a nod and a wink.

It was Torchwood's Captain Jack Harkness, played by John Barrowman, who provided the first notable break from the norm. Captain Jack isn't gay; he's "omnisexual." Or, as John Barrowman delicately pu​ts it, "He'll shag anything with a hole."

The refreshing thing about Jack was that he just seemed to stomp around the place saving the day, undefined by sexuality and unconcerned with social norms. He wasn't the creepy and effeminate closeted villain, nor was he the sassy and pedantic sidekick from times past (s/o C3P0). He was the hero.

Andy Brierley, of Andy Brierley Casting, has been involved in the sci-fi industry for over a decade and is certain that the "regaysance" is upon us.

"Torchwood was groundbreaking to have a character like Jack at its heart," he told me. "Now, we have the lesbian couple in Doctor Who and we have Benny in Wizards vs Aliens, which is a children's show. I think that's great, as it's reaching out to young people and it's not a watershed show like Torchwood—it's introducing gay characters to children as the norm."

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Still from Doctor Who

"Russell [T Davies, screenwriter for Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Wizards vs Aliens] likes to represent the world as he sees it. To not have gay characters in any type of TV is not representing society. It's so integral and normal to me, so to say that it's important would be an understatement—it's essential."

There are other pioneers, like Graeme Manson and John Fawcett—the writers of Orphan Black—who are challenging heteronormative staples. The show, which features gay, bisexual and transgender protagonists, has gained popularity across the globe.

"There are obvious reasons why TV can have more LGBT characters than films, because TV is often about characters and serial television relies on relationships," said Lorna Jowett, Professor at the University in Northumbria and expert in gender, sexuality, and sci-fi. 

Jowett will be joined by academics Stacey Abbott and Ewan Kirkland at the British Film Institute's panel discussion "Gays of Fear ​and Wonder: Queer Sci-Fi TV" next week, which looks at queer icons and celebrates sci-fi's queer characters as part of the BFI's sci-fi Days of Fear and ​Wonder season.

"With television, it may be a smaller audience, but it will be a loyal audience," she continued, "which means writers can afford do things that they think audiences will accept and enjoy—and having diverse characters is one of them."

She added: "Mainstream science fiction cinema tends to focus on things like spectacle and action and effects rather than on characters. But if they're trying to sell a big commercial film, they're trying to not offend part of their audience, so they might be interpreting that quite conservatively."

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Ezra Miller. Photo by David S​hankbonevia Wikimedia Commons

Cinema is still lagging behind, but even there things are stirring. Last month it was announced that Ezra Miller will be pla​ying the Flash, set to premiere in 2018. It will be the first time a non-heterosexual has played the lead in a superhero movie, and, coincidentally, bisexual actor Andy Mientus has been cast to play gay villain The Pied Piper in The Flash TV series.

The indy film C​redenceis another exciting project on the horizon. Filmmaker Mike Buonaiuto, tired of the lack of LGBT characters in cinema, created a crowdfunding page for his apocalyptic film, which follows two gay fathers giving up their child, who's set to leave a crumbling Earth with a younger generation of chosen ones.

There's clearly an appetite for his idea as the project amassed £22,000 ($34,500) in donations, surpassing their £6,000 target, and is currently in production.
​

When asked about his impetus for the project, Mike said, "It's very difficult to get someone to believe in the science fiction world, as it stretches the imagination to such an extent. So writers often build their characters around stereotypes, which make it easier for viewers to understand the world these characters inhabit. Now, as an adult, I see it as more important than ever to have that diversity and to have LGBT stories represented in film."

"The amazing response, comments and reviews we've had from the trailer show that people are just experiencing Credence as a film, not as a 'gay film,'" he continued. "The issues they're facing as parents—making the sacrifice to let go of their children—is something that parents of all backgrounds can relate to."

It could be argued that visual media is moving towards greater representation across the board, and that there's nothing particularly spectacular about what's been going on in sci-fi. Yet Britain had it's first onscreen gay kiss in 1987, and since then gay characters have littered the lexicon of mainstream TV and film. For a genre that looks to the future and explores progressive new worlds and utopias, it seems odd how long it's taken for mainstream sci-fi to catch up with the world we live in today.

LGBT sci-fi fanatics have long used the genre as a form of self expression, writing enough fan and slash-fiction to fill The British Library a thousand times over. But translating that passion onto the small and big screen has been a mission fraught with obstacles.

There's always been a huge gay sci-fi following; for decades, many on the queer spectrum have identified with feeling alien and out of place, and have looked to the future, to a place where all sexualities and genders are accepted.

When I asked him, Sir Ian McKellan agreed: "It's worth noting that the X-Men movies—like the comics—appeal to young gay people who identify with the mutants. Their disaffection with society mirrors their own. For example, the coming out storyline of Ice Man in X2, which made the parallel clear: 'Have you ever tried not being a mutant?'"

While allegories obviously exist, it's good to see LGBT characters depicted unapologetically. The sci-fi world has always welcomed outsiders, but now more than ever, it is giving them a voice. No time like the present, after all.

Follow Josh Willacy on ​Twitter

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​Resea​rchers at the National Library of Medicine have just found out that there is an epidemic sweeping America called—and this is possibly the best name for a medical condition since "micropenis"—"text neck".

Text neck. Text. Neck. It's when you look down at your phone too much—when walking down the street, perhaps, or when you're sitting in front of me at the cinema, or at the bar instead of talking—and the weight of your big dumb head plus the Earth's gravity puts unbearable strain on your neck and spine. The condition can cause muscle strain, pinched nerves, herniated discs, and, over time, even remove your neck's natural curve. And all because you had to keep an eye on your group text message while someone went through a bad breakup. All because you were taking a screenshot of a fun interaction you had on Tinder.

"It is an epidemic or, at least, it's very common," said Kenneth Hansraj, chief of spine surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine and the study's author. "Just look around you, everyone has their heads down."

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Yeah, he sounds a bit like your dad getting angry at young people, but the problem is hella real, and gets realer the more you lean forward and squint. Basically, your big dumb head weighs around 12 pounds, but when you lean your head forward the weight on the cervical spine starts to increase. At 15 degrees your head is exerting about 27 pounds of force on your neck; at 30 degrees it's 40 pounds. By the time you're leaning 60 degrees forward just to send someone a dick pic, you've got 60 pounds—or, "about the weight of an eight-year-old"—hanging like a weird invisible albatross around your neck.

"The problem is really profound in young people," Hanraj adds, by which he means you. "With this excessive stress in the neck, we might start seeing young people needing spine care. I would really like to see parents showing more guidance." Plus, it wrecks your posture, which experts reckon can lead to reduced lung capacity as well as headaches and neurological issues.
​

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Anyway, the main thing is that text neck is clearly part of a wave of very modern injuries that are going to cripple young people in what we will look back on as a very hilarious way. What next? Burns from an overheating laptop? Dick stuck in a Roomba? Whatever future awaits us, just know that we will find dozens of innocuous ways to permanently and irrevocably injure ourselves. To the future!

PS: That laptop burns thing is ​real.

Follow Joel Golby on ​Twitter.

[body_image width='960' height='640' path='images/content-images/2014/11/21/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2014/11/21/' filename='the-toronto-streetcar-sexcapade-reveals-canadas-marginalized-public-sex-fetish-555-body-image-1416601883.jpg' id='5963'] ​Three passengers gave new meaning to "ride the rocket" yesterday. Photo ​via Facebook.

​In the latest scandal to receive wall-to-wall coverage from Toronto's hallowed media institutions, two men and one woman caught in what investigators dryly called a "sexual activity incident" on a King St. streetcar last night. The incident, which has become immortalized with the hashtag ​#torontostreetcarsex, has unearthed the not-so-distant memory of two people who had sex on the platform of the Spadina subway station. ​In their report, CBC Toronto re-ran video footage of that infamous sexcapade from the not-so-distant past—which is still hilariously emblazoned with the WorldStarHipHop logo—to remind us all that yes, sometimes people like to do it in public.

Rob Ford, in his final act as mayor, reverses his anti-streetcar stance #TorontoStreetcarSex

— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) November 21, 2014

Why the TTC is, seemingly, the preferred location for such naughty behaviour is a perplexing question. Every surface on the streetcars, buses, and trains of the TTC is likely to be covered in the fur of rats, the pee of humans, and the stray hairs of cute (but mangy) dogs. Though I presume the crowded nature of the TTC, and its prevalence of security cameras, makes the thrill of getting caught that much more boner-inducing.

Getting arrested, yelled at, or at the very least given cut-eye while doing the nasty out in the open certainly has to be part of the appeal. And police forces the world over have long targeted public-sexers in their unending quest to combat crime and preserve civil decency. In ​Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, by Patrick Califia, the attempt by various police forces around the United States to deter those who like practice baby-making out in the open is described as such:

"[The police] have several favorite techniques for invading arenas where quasi-public sexual encounters take place. One technique is to alter or disrupt the physical space as to make protective, camouflaging behavior difficult or impossible. They cut down underbrush or trees that provide a screen, or they put up bright lights. In Indianapolis the vice squad and the local chapter of the Moral Majority got an ordinance passed that required adult bookstores to cut the doors on their movie booths in half. In Los Angeles the bookstores must remove the doors entirely. This has been done deliberately to transform private places into public ones. Police officers set up hidden cameras, climb on the roofs of public toilets and peek through skylights, or secrete themselves in broom closets. Cops pretend they are available for sex, then arrest the luckless and gullible. Dignified isn't it? And to think that many vice cops are volunteers..."

As a society, we're, for the most part, disinterested in allowing people to do it on our public transportation system. And there are great, obvious reasons for that. For one, it's unsanitary. No one wants the most intimate of bodily fluids splashing on them while they're commuting to work. And secondly, it's quite grotesque. Porn is weird at the best of times, and to be forced into observing someone having sex is unpleasant.

But all of this societal unacceptance must be fueling the thrill of those who want to make whoopie in front of strangers. In Califia's book, he talks about the essential need of humans to find thrills and excitement, and sex is a great place to scratch that itch. In a chapter entitled, "Sluts in Utopia: The Future of Radical Sex," Califia writes about sex work, stating: "Since human beings are a curious species, and many of us need adventure, risk, and excitement, I would hope that the sex industry would continue to be available to fulfill those needs in positive ways."

This is, indeed, a great argument for the therapeutic nature of sex work. A properly regulated sex industry can provide both men and women, with somewhat high-risk fantasies, a clean and safe way to explore those desires. This possibility, unfortunately, has been ​squashed by new anti-sex work laws that Canada's Conservative government has championed and passed into law. But regardless, there's really no safe way to practice public sex, unless you do it in a European sextopia where such things are legal, or through, maybe, some kind of virtual reality porn that doesn't yet exist.

The crux of all this, is whether or not public sex infringes on public safety or puts others at risk. While there is no impending physical risk to people, there could be legitimate trauma incurred by observing people having sex in public, especially for children. I remember one particular family wedding I went to as a kid that went south after one of the bridesmaids was caught having sex on the lawn in front of the banquet hall, with a groomsmen; a sight I only narrowly avoided witnessing, thanks to my dad who pushed me away from the scene of the "crime."

In a report published by Oxford Brookes University, entitled ​"Setting the Boundaries - tackling Public Sex Environments in Country Parks," a practice called "dogging" is defined, which seems to fit the mould of the Toronto streetcar sexcapade, as it can be summarized as: "Engaging in consensual sexual activity in ​public to attract an audience; the audience either observes or joins in."

When reached for a comment, Jack Lamon, owner of Toronto co-op sex shop Come As You Are, said "So many people love public sex—whether it is the thrill of being watched or being caught—but for a lot of people who don't have access to private space of their own, public sex can often be the only way to experience intimacy and touch." It's uncertain if the people engaged in this particular instance of dogging did it out of necessity, but I imagine there are better places to go than the TTC if you want an intimate three-way.

This quest for an audience, it seems, is certainly a huge part of the excitement. And in the safest circumstances, where consent has been secured and no minors are present, public sex is a victimless crime. It's wholly understandable, however, that the authorities would want to put a stop to it, but obviously this is a real and present fetish that will be explored by sexual daredevils here and there. It seems, too, that the more stigma we put on it, and the more media coverage it receives, the greater thrill those who wish to bone in public will gain from getting freaky on the TTC. So maybe we should stop making such a big deal of this particular sexcapade, lest our city buses and streetcars be full of sexually curious thrillseekers.

​
​​@patrickmcguire

It's no secret that privately run, for-profit prisons can be shady places. The multibillion-do​llar industry has steadily become a particularly maligned sector of the prison-industrial complex in the United States, notorious for a unique blend of corruption, reticence, and violence. Headlines over the past few years can s​tand alone as biting critique​s of a world in which prisons operate as businesses.

But a body of mounting evidence suggests there are nationwide patterns of racial disparities in private prisons that add a compelling—if not necessarily shocking—vantage point for many scholars and advocates of social and criminal justice. It also sheds new light on the disproportionate impact mass incarceration in America has on communities of color.

A recent​ study by Brett Burkhardt, an associate professor at Oregon State University, found that private prisons across the country were found to have a disproportionately higher Hispanic population than public prisons by nearly two percentage points, and a smaller white population by more than eight points. That's after accounting for factors that might explain away racial differences like facility location and immigrant numbers—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) occasionally se​nds illegal immigrants to private facilities that aren't explicitly immigration detention centers.

Burkhardt's findings don't necessarily point to higher incarceration rate of Hispanics, though. Rather, he says, the higher numbers appear to stem from the process by which inmates are assigned to correctional facilities, a behind-closed-doors task usually carried out by prison administrators. The indication that there could exist racial patterns in these processes is troubling, and raise potential legal concerns for corrections officials.

Whether or not you think it's legal to use race as a factor in where inmates are in placed (it's​ not), it's important to keep in mind that companies like Corrections Corp. of America (CCA) and GEO Group—the tw​o largest private prison companies—make a substantial portio​n of their profits from ICE contracts. The numbers, then, could speak to an unhealthy reliance by private prison companies on Hispanic inmates and detainees. It could also explain their heavyweight lobb​ying efforts against immigration reform over the years.

"My findings regarding the overrepresentation of Hispanics in private prisons dovetail with our knowledge about the extensive use of private firms to detain illegal immigrants (who are predominantly Hispanic)," Burkhardt told me in an email. "These two facts suggest that private corrections firms are heavily invested in having Hispanic inmates to lock up."

Burkhardt's study falls short in its attempt to explain the disparities it lays out. But it comes on the heels of another proje​ct that posits a compelling link between race and age in this country's private and public prisons.

According to a stu​dy by Chris Petrella, a doctoral candidate at University of California, Berkeley, people of color are more likely to serve time in private prisons than public ones. Once there, inmates face a potential grab ​bag of substandard conditions like higher rates of violence and recidivism, poorer health care, and fewer educational and rehabilitative program opportunities relative to public prisons. Out of the nine states Petrella examined, all were found to have higher rates of African Americans and Hispanics locked up in private prisons, with fewer inmates over the age of 50.

Petrella thinks age is a key piece of the puzzle. It's well known that incarceration levels are disproportionately high among younger people of color thanks to war on drugs policies like mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenses and "three strike" laws. It's somewhat less well known that private prison companies are keen to draw up strict contractual agreements with states such as Arizona and Colorado to guarantee things like "occu​pancy quotas" and "l​ow-crime taxes" to secure capacity control and profit margins.

But private prisons often contractually exempt th​emselves from the financial burdens of medically expensive—which is to say older—inmates. It should come as no surprise, then, that according to the study, the "states in which the private versus public racial disparities are the most pronounced also happen to be the states in which the private versus-public age disparities are most salient."

"Race is basically a proxy for health, and therefore age," said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, a criminal justice advocacy group opposed to the for-profit prison industry. "Private prisons pluck healthy folks and send people who are less healthy and therefore more expensive to incarcerate back to the public system." According to an ACLU​ report, it costs $34,135 to house an "average" inmate and $68,270 to house an inmate 50 or older. For private prisons, this cherry-picking belies the high-efficiency/low-cost claims made by both private prison companies and their advocates.

When I reached out to CCA for comment via email, the company categorically dismissed my sources as "deeply flawed" and bereft of a "basic understanding of government contracting, corrections management, or inmate programming."

Yet the trend these studies capture speaks to a larger issue of incarceration in the United States. "There have always been palpable linkages in the US between race and various forms of punishment and profit," Petrella told me over the phone. "There's a lot of evidence to suggest those three nodes—racial formation, containment or punishment, and profit—actually reinforce one another quite well.

"I think it's really important to note," he added, "that though people of color are overrepresented in private prisons relative to public prisons, and though companies like CCA and GEO don't necessarily explicitly try to ensure that there's a specific racial composition of their prisons, [private prisons] partake in a larger project of racial formation in the US."

Private prisons were born out of a culture of incarceration where harsh sentencing practices reigned supreme, and where prisoners were lining up faster than administrators could lock them away. Though those conditions still exist today to a very large extent, there is evidence of a reevaluation germinating in the high courts and voting booths.

As VICE has reported, federal prison populations are slowly shrin​king, and California just took a major stride in defel​onizing drug use. Kentucky notably walked away from renewing a CCA contract, ending the state's decades-long relationship with private prisons. There is even talk of an "imminent" reintroduction of a bill by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas that would mandate a basic structure of information reporting for the private prison industry (which is notoriously sluggish and secretive in providing information reports).

While private prisons can surely be as corrosive as they are often portrayed, they're also stand-ins for larger problems, and for a simple reason: states and governments are ultimately the ones that call the shots in these relationships. CCA was quick to point this out when I contacted them. But a growing public awareness of the problems these institutions present could augur a downturn in their dominance. In 2012, states roundly re​jected a CCA prop​osal offering to buy up facilities in return for high occupancy quotas, and this month, an indictmen​t of a Mississippi corrections official accused him of accepting $1 million from private prison interests. With any luck, the back-door workings of private prisons will continue to bubble up, and with them, so will public concern. 

Alex Mierjeski is a freelance reporter based in Portland, Oregon. Follow him on ​Twitter.

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Last week, Jay Caspian Kang wrote a ​scathing indictment of the true crime podcast Serial for the Awl. In it, he claimed that Sarah Koenig's investigation of the murder of Hae-Min Lee amounted to a very popular version of cultural tourism and white privilege. If you haven't heard the show, it's about Koenig sticking her white nose into the not-white lives of Lee and the man convicted of her murder, Adnan Sayed, the son of Muslim immigrants, and Kang argues that she gets stuff wrong as a result of cultural differences. Late in his piece, Kang writes, "The listener is asked to simply trust Koenig's translation of two distinct immigrant cultures. I can think of no better definition of white privilege in journalism than that." 

Kang's piece was widely read, especially in certain media-centric corners of the internet, and soon spawned a backlash to his backlash, then a backlash against the ​backlash to his backlash. All this made me wary of actually listening to the show, but my plan was ruined by my choice, made many years ago, to socialize with mostly white people. All of the parties I attend resemble scenes from the movies Mystic Pizza (rent it—Julia Roberts is transcendent) so I had an army of Serial fiends prodding me with questions about whether or not I'm "listening to Serial," if I've "got any theories on who did it," whether or not I know "where the bathroom is," which "freeway I took to get here," and who "scratched my goddamn Fiat."

I caved and listened to a couple episodes. It was exactly what I expected: a disembodied voice, some droll wit, a few quirky music cues, and an old-school theatrical flair for the cliffhanger. Every so often, Koenig calls her cousin, doctor, artisan butcher, personal shopper, or someone like that and asks them what they make of some crazy revelation. You can practically hear the eye rolls through your speakers: OMG, there goes wacky Sarah again with her kooky-pants theories. Good luck with this show. Like anyone will care when this comes out. It's not even on TV! LOL. 

More than just a delightful romp through someone's actual, real-life misery, though, Serial is a bespoke, pastel dog whistle for anyone who absolutely cannot stand the self-satisfied "white liberal media" industrial complex—the well-meaning yet perpetually enraged section of the internet that loves reminding people how evolved they are. These are the kinds of websites that go out of their way to remind me that Ted Cruz is a touch dumb, Sarah Palin is unqualified for every job except waitressing at the Denny's off the turnpike, that Jon Stewart (and now John Oliver) is a saint and was born from the world's cleanest, most respectable vagina, and that Obamacare would work if everyone would just agree to use it. Serial is very popular with these people, which is why it's become both an ideological punching bag for some and a totem for others. Not liking Serial is a synecdoche for hating how monochromatic the highest rungs of journalism are.

[tweet text="I will be your best friend, Liberal White Media. In 2022, I will be your deputy editor." byline="— jay caspian kang (@jaycaspiankang)" user_id="jaycaspiankang" tweet_id="534891494780702720" tweet_visual_time="November 19, 2014"]

This point is pretty inarguable—the media is obviously dominated by white folks. There's never been a minority (or female) host of The Tonight Show. Every few years we all have to debate why there's so few minorities on Saturday Night Live. Can I get an Asian on Monday Night Football or what? Come on, people. 

Koenig isn't the problem in all of this, though. She's simply a person with a soothing voice and the absurdly enviable job of "public radio personality." Though a good number of people have gotten on the "hate Sarah Koenig" bus (don't worry, the bus is a plug-in hybrid), I think many of them are responding to her suddenly exalted position in the liberal media landscape more than the content of her show. It's not so much that Serial is a terrible podcast, it's that people who aren't white never seem to get the chance to make something like that.

[tweet text="Much needed: The Problem with those "The Problem with SERIAL" pieces http://t.co/cVZcpZbn6Z by @jaimealyse" byline="— Laura Miller (@magiciansbook)" user_id="magiciansbook" tweet_id="534307202258202625" tweet_visual_time="November 17, 2014"]

By the way, most people who are talking about all this stuff are white. Earlier this week white person Laura Miller, one of the co-founders of Salon (the ultimate white liberal media internet outpost), tweeted out a ​rebuttal to Kang's article by white person Jaime Green. That was around the time white person Sarah Miller wrote her own rebuttal of Kang. The whiteness of the people discussing Serial's whiteness isn't a coincidence—the advantages in access, education, and connections that white people tend to have relative to other ethnicities means that the people with the largest megaphones usually have a certain type of skin pigmentation. That inherently unfair fact about the world is pretty obvious, but talking about that makes some white people—even white people who say the word "problematic" all the time—sort of nervous. 

It's telling that Serial has been called "​The Wire of Podcasts," since the very same (white) people who evangelized on behalf of that show are shoving a feeding tube of praise down my throat like I'm getting fattened up to be turned into foie gras. I get it, white liberals! You like this show! You hate the idea that your enjoyment of the show makes you somehow racist or complicit in racism! It makes you nervous that a nonwhite person is aware of your consumption habits and looking down upon you for them! I hear you. Now leave me alone. I'm going to watch Mystic Pizza again.

Follow Dave Schilling on Twit​t​er.

​The first one I can remember is ​Ted Bundy. I was five years old and living in Florida, and I remember my parents watching the news coverage of his execution on television. A few years later, when I was seven, ​Danny Rolling was on the loose. I remember my mother telling me that he was a serial killer—he killed people, she explained, and in some cases "he posed some of the people he killed for shock value."

It's hard to say why those memories made such an impression on me, but I developed a fascination with murderers. It struck me that while they were national spectacles—the graphic stories of the way they killed people splashed across the news—I didn't really know anything about them. And so on a whim, in 2009, I wrote  ​Richard Ramirez a letter. 

I forgot about it almost as soon as I'd sent it. That is, until I checked the mail three weeks later and found an envelope addressed to me. The return address was scrawled unintelligibly, but I could make out that it was from San Quentin State Prison.

The letter itself was actually rather boring. He came off as polite and fairly normal, save for a bit where he asked me to send him photos of women at the beach. He asked me what kind of cars I liked and what kind of music I listened to. If I hadn't already known him as the Night Stalker, it would've been impossible to tell if he was in prison for petty theft or for serial murder. He wrote that he liked AC/DC, and my stomach turned as I remembered the AC/DC hat he was rumored to have worn while he killed. 

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Since then, I've written to upwards of 50 serial killers, school shooters, and mass murderers. 

Of all the killers I've corresponded with, there's only one whom I can honestly consider a "friend."  ​Barry Loukaitis was 14 years old in 1996, when he walked into his algebra class at Frontier middle school armed with a hunting rifle and two hand guns. He opened fire on several students and a teacher, killing three and injuring one. I wrote Barry not knowing what to expect, but I found an extremely intelligent man who has spent more of his life in prison then he has out of it. We shared many things in common: We're both unabashed atheists; both interested in politics; we're close in age, and we grew up enjoying the same video games and movies. Something that struck me about Barry was that he had genuine remorse for those his crime affected. He refuses to speak with journalists out of respect for his victims. He had also spent quite a bit of time self-reflecting and analyzing the decision that landed him in prison for life. When I initially asked about this, he replied:

To put it simply, I was an asshole. I felt isolated from everyone, and didn't fit in. Rather than see this for what it was and embrace individuality, I chose to be mean to people. I had a very puerile 'they're not worth befriending anyway' attitude, which insulated me from the feeling of rejection. Suffice it to say that I adopted an identity which wasn't really who I was. Deep down I knew this but I ignored it. I tried to project a fearsome image, but would never act accordingly. When I was challenged, I backed down. After this happened several times I felt I needed to prove myself, that I was what I claimed to be. The result was me murdering people.

He wrote that he's fantasized about going back in time, trying to reason with his younger self. "Also, cliché but true; I needed a role model."

I didn't feel bad for Barry—he is where he deserves to be, without question—but I understood his situation. He told me that the guilt was absolutely overwhelming to him, I found the entire situation to be tragic. He can never undo what he did, but through our letters, I was able to connect with him on a human level.

But not all killers are like this. My letters from  ​Phillip Jablonski—a brutal and sexually-motivated serial killer on death row in California—illustrated the gruesome, sickening logic of some murderers. Phillip and I corresponded for a few years, and our conversations were weighed down by his fantasies of violence and murder. Phillip is what you might imagine as a stereotypical serial killer: He bragged about his crimes, he spoke of horrible fantasies, and he sent my wife homemade holiday cards (much to her dismay). It amazed me how he could seemingly turn his extremely violent nature on and off at will.

I've had many nightmares about Phillip. Such is the cost of digging into these people's heads: sometimes they hide in yours. 

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Most of my letters were, for lack of a better word, boring.  I read military stories and theories about God from ​Robert Yates (the Spokane serial killer). I talked about Combat sports with ​Marc Sappington (the Kansas City Vampire), and received cooking recipes from ​Bill Suff (the Riverside prostitute killer). ​James Whitey Bulger told me stories from Alcatraz and about life on the run and warned me—as if I needed a warning—against a life of crime. He also told me what his last meal would be if he were to receive the death penalty: T-bone steak, cooked medium; salad with onions; a glass of red wine, or a Coca Cola.

I would send my correspondents money for postage and phone time to write and call me, so they wouldn't have to use their personal resources when I was the one pursuing them. After a few years I have had quite a few conversations with at least a few dozen of America's most infamous and hated individuals. I've received letters from  ​Susan Atkins, ​Ed Edwards, and ​Karl Myers, all weeks before their deaths. For a period of time, I had a relentless stream of mail from ​Robert Bardo, the stalker and killer of Hollywood actress Rebeca Schaeffer, who fervently requested information about his favorite celebrities. In many cases, there were requests for something from the offenders I contacted—they'd ask for money, or for books. Some, like ​Jack Spillman (the werewolf butcher) asked for photos of "sick-looking girls." But when all's said and done, the people I engaged were looking for something from me just as much as I was looking for something from them.

The more I spoke with them and the more I learned, the less curious I was. I've learned now, after five years of writing to these criminals, that behind every murder is a person, and those people are not all alike. Barry Loukaitis shot his classmates as the result of depression and an identity complex.  ​Michael Carneal was—and still is—severely mentally ill. ​Andrew Williams was bullied intensely. They were all extremely withdrawn before they committed their crimes. ​William Clyde Gibson was motivated by sex and used drugs and alcohol to enable and embolden him to act on his fantasies.​ Tommy Lynn Sells was motivated by rage developed from a rough life, and ​Paul Reid was motivated by greed. All of them were seeking a degree of power and control through killing. Knowing this doesn't soften their crimes, but it somehow feels important to know. It feels important to have an answer rather than grasping in the dark about why someone would kill another person. Though some things are the same, there are many differences in these criminals and their crimes. It's not as black and white as most would like to believe. And it's not as simple an answer as a person being naturally "evil." There is much more behind it.

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I'm often asked if I feel more sympathetic toward killers, given the extensive conversations I've had with them. In actuality, this experience has increased my sensitivity to their victims. These stories have become intensely real to me—no longer an article in a newspaper, a page in a true crime book, or a segment on the nightly news.

I haven't written to any offenders lately, but I have recently completed my first criminal and geographical profile with the assistance of Dr. Maurice Godwin, on the Daytona Beach serial killer cold case. I also consulted on a book called Invisible Killer: The Monster Behind the Mask, about a little known serial killer named Charlie Brandt. My interactions with different types of offenders have enabled me to better understand them as criminals, offering insight that can't be learned in any book. If not by outright speaking to them about their crimes, then it was through observing firsthand their behavior, manipulations, social interaction, personal life, and their past in conversation. This information brings these offenders and others like them into light. I now use my knowledge to help expose them. 

Former FBI profiler John Douglas said: "To understand an artist, you have to look at their art." But to understand the art, you also have to look at the artist. And to truly understand a crime, you have to take a long, hard look at the criminal.

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​Etsy is a veritable cornucopia of feminist DIY products including, but not limited to, crocheted uterus-shaped ​menstrual cup bags, ​various "CRUSH THE PATRIARCHY" needlepoints, and a vast, roiling sea of buttons emblazoned with empowering messages. 

Nestled within this glorious bounty are several  ​high-end pieces of vulva art (some artists bristle at their work being dubbed "vagina art" because the vagina is but one part of the vulva as a whole; others don't really care about the distinction). 

In the spirit of discovery, VICE reached out to several of the most prolific and/or intriguing vulva artists of Etsy to learn the secrets of their craft.

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​ Images via ​Facebook.

ARTIST: Dorrie Lane
​ SHOP: ​Wondrous Vulva Puppet
​ PRICE: $85 for a mini puppet - $250 for a full-size one made of mohair
​ ABOUT: Dorrie created her first Wondrous Vulva Puppet in the 90s to help her teen daughter feel comfortable with her anatomy. The vulva was a hit at school, as vulvas often are, so Dorrie began producing more. Her business quickly expanded, and she started selling them to sex educators, sex therapists, and general genital-enthusiasts. As one might expect, they have appeared in an episode of Portlandia.

VICE: What is your ultimate goal in creating these Wondrous Vulva Puppets?
​Dorrie Lane: ​When I first made them, my ultimate goal was for them to be in every store next to Barbie. The ultimate goal is really just to get them out there so they're mainstream.

My friends' kids were raised with vulva puppets, and it just became an article in the house. These kids all had really positive experiences learning about sexuality, so it's contributed to respecting women. [They recognize] that it's all a circle, it's where we came from. Respect comes out from that, and it should come back to that. My ultimate goal, really, is that that message comes through.

Tell me about the design of the vulva puppets.
​ For me, it was really important that the vulva was anatomically correct, that it felt good. If you put your finger in the vagina, the vagina is made of velvet, gathered velvet, and it feels like a vagina. And the g-spot is made from ribbons. When you put your finger through the vagina, you can feel the variation. And it really encourages women to get to know their bodies. It really does. It really encourages men to ask questions about clit play or what women like.

Have you thought about a penis puppet?
​ I do have a penis puppet in the works. When I have time I'll get to it. It'll be like nothing you've ever seen before.

Do you think men really need help celebrating their penises?
​ I think that men need to understand the beauty of their genitals as well. The mock-up [penis puppet] I've got going now is responsive: the balls retract as the erection comes up. There are different ways you can play with it. It's totally like the vulva puppet. You can play with it, and it's gonna be a puppet. Jim Henson is turning in his grave.

The idea there is the same as the idea of the vulva puppet—make it beautiful, make it touchable, and make it anatomically correct. For me, it's really more about embracing our sexuality, rather than what everybody else seems to be doing. I don't know what they're doing. For me, it's about embracing it and really feeling comfortable with a part of our bodies that, in American culture, is totally repressed.

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​ Images via Etsy.

ARTIST: Kira
​ SHOP: ​Scarlet Tentacle
​ PRICE: $170 - $225
​ ABOUT: Scarlet Tentacle was conceived of in 2009; since then, proprietor Kira has been selling embroidered vulva art, sexy coloring books and greeting cards to the masses.

VICE: How did you get started as a vulva artist?
​Kira: I used to work in the marketing department of a mainstream porn distributor and I was incredibly burnt out by the double standards I was immersed in: I was the only woman in my department surrounded by lots and lots of men making an incredible amount of money employed by selling sex while denigrating and mocking the female performers who made the products they were making their living off of—not the sex-positive utopia I'd hoped that job would be. 

I started embroidering vulvas as a direct response to that environment. I wanted to make something completely unexpected and confrontational that didn't pass judgement on sex, sexuality, or sex workers, and the combination of art featuring vulvas and embroidery seemed to fit that.

What drew you to embroidery as a medium?
​ The shock value of not only creating art featuring vulvas, but of art featuring vulvas made with an incredibly gendered medium, is very appealing to me. Embroidery is a craft that takes an incredible amount of time and labour, and making a piece that took so much effort felt like a way to further comment on treating sexuality and sex workers as disposable goods.

And practically, I wanted a portable medium that I could work on while commuting to and from my porn industry job and during my lunch breaks.

What's the best reaction you've ever gotten to your work?
​ My favorite reaction to my work was at ​Renegade Handmade in San Francisco a few years ago. Two women in their 40s or 50s came up to me after browsing through my booth and as they were paying, asked me, "How long have you identified as femme for?" I was completely flabbergasted, since usually I have to come out to people very explicitly and very often, and I asked them how they could tell I was queer and femme just by looking at me. They looked at each other and laughed and told me, "Honey, you're standing in front of a wall of embroidered vaginas wearing pearls and high heels. We knew."

  ​

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​ Image via Etsy.

ARTIST: Whitley Sullivan
​SHOP: ​SquidleyStuff
​ PRICE: $200 for one (1) vagina orchid sculpture
​ABOUT: From the looks of her shop, Whitley Sullivan primarily creates bow ties, none of which are particularly yonic. However, one stand-out item—a $200 vagina orchid sculpture (featuring a clit piercing)—caught my attention.

VICE: How did you get started creating vagina art?
​Whitley Sullivan: I got started pretty much because I'm a lesbian and I love the vagina. It makes the world go round.

Why did you choose to make a vagina orchid?
​ Because I love vaginas. Also, my mother is a florist so we would always have flowers everywhere. And you're literally smelling a vagina [because flowers are the reproductive organs of some plants]. When a man/woman gives someone roses for Valentine's day, they just gave someone a bundle of vags, which is so funny.

I just did it because I thought it was creative and funny and a good way to get a laugh. Let's be honest—even if you love penises or vaginas, we all know they are not the most attractive things on the human body. No matter how much you say you love it.

Have you done other pieces like this, or is the vagina orchid a one-off deal?
​ I pretty much have, like, three vagina orchids that I made. That's it, really. I'm trying to sell them, but no one wants one. Maybe I will drop the price. If you're interested I'll give you a good deal!

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​ Image via Etsy.

ARTIST: Michelle Gauthier
​ SHOP: ​MichelleGauthierArt
​ PRICE: $20 - $70 
​ ABOUT: Michelle's vagina-related art consists of cross-stitched vulvas, ovaries, tampons, and the occasional cross-stitched penis. A great holiday gift for the more traditional of your playfully-erotic-art-collecting family members.

VICE: What would you say is the message behind your pieces, if there is one?
Michelle Gauthier: ​I love making vulvas/penises/breasts/tampons because they bring attention to a subject that usually isn't openly talked about by most people. I want to promote body positivity, sexual health, and let people know that they shouldn't be afraid to talk about sex!​

What is the best reaction you've ever gotten to your work?
​ The best reactions are usually when people see me stitching in public. I take public transit a lot, and to pass the time I'm always making something. People will stare, ask me if I'm really stitching what it looks like, or just ask me why. There's also the reactions of family members and other "conservative" type people. They think I'm really weird.

How much vulva-related art would you say you have around your house?
​ I've definitely started networking with other artists who do vulva-related art. Off the top of my head, I have a beautiful vulva ornament, vulva buttons, and a lovely knitted vulva in my room.

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​ Images via Etsy.

ARTIST: Kniqui Nimbus
​ SHOP: ​Hypgnosis
​ PRICE: $25 - $95
​ ABOUT: Kniqui's art relates to the vulva in a mystical sort of way. Highlights include cement garden vulvas ("put it in your garden and you will see the meaning of fecundity"), vulva cabinet knobs ("Labia lovers rejoice!"), and decorative BDSM vulvas ("This piece may be used simply as Dungeon Decor, or you may use it in a working to control your lover's sex in regards to fidelity and chastity"). In short, a vulva for every type of hobby.

VICE: How did you get into vulva art?
​Kniqui Nimbus: My love for the vulva goes back to my childhood when I fell in love with my own. My mother caught me masturbating and told me it was dirty. That was when I started doing it discreetly during and after bath-time.

About five years ago I created my first heart vulva for a dear friend and sister lesbian. It was a p apier-mâché wall hanging. She loved it so much and told me, "You could totally sell these." I began creating and selling them on Etsy. I started with a Virgin Mary Yoni (a later edition of this was featured on the disappeared Regretsy), then I got a request for the Bride of Christ nun vulva. 

I noticed your work intersects with the occult and BDSM. How would you characterize this intersection?
​ I characterize the intersection of my art with the occult and BDSM as an obvious one for me personally. The power and imagery of them combined excites me. The womb and vagina are occult or hidden mysterious places of power and the vulva is the facade, or in my art, a beloved icon.

What misconceptions bother you about your work?
​ I am bothered when someone characterizes my work as "vagina art." I prefer vulva and do not mind yoni, labia, pussy, lady-bits, wajaba, bajango, gash, or even cunt. I do not object to the word vagina or the vagina itself. It is the ignorance of what a vagina is. I will surely someday do vagina art and I doubt I would even have to label it mature on Etsy since most people wouldn't even know what they were looking at.

Follow Callie on ​Twitter.

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Elvira Santamaría Torres and Manuel Vason, Double Exposures, Belfast, 2013

This post originally appeared in VICE UK

Italian photographer Manuel Vason began his career in 1999 shooting performance artists and has since become the world's most prolific documentarian when it comes to the practice. Over the course of nine books he has developed a hybrid form that marries the art of stylized photography and that fleeting moment of creation when, for example, a Franko B or ​Ron Athey​ work is born. 

Vason's latest project, Double Exp​osures, is a book of his most well known subjects from over the last 15 years, including Stacy Makishi, David Hoyle, and Ernst Fischer. Vason works mostly with contempoary British performance artists and captures them doing things like putting a fist in their ass, setting things alight and, errr, smoking with an octopus on their head. 

Unlike his previous work however, Vason also trains the camera on himself. By letting these artists sculpt his own body into a new, specially commissioned, work of art, Vason finally makes the crossover from observer to performer. We asked him why he felt the need. 

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Áine Phillips and Manuel Vason, Double Exposures, Ballyvaughan, 2014

VICE: How did you come to shoot performance artists? Was that always what you wanted to do?
Manuel Vason: Well, ​I come from fashion photography. I worked as an assistant for about ten years with people like Nick Knight, Steven Klein, and Michel Comte. So I was really intrigued by this collaborative mode, where there is always a body in front of the camera and it's a sculptural process and it's very performative. But the thing with fashion photography is it's driven by money and I didn't really care about the garments or the industry. If Karl Lagerfeld got a fever, for example, I wouldn't have given a damn.

When I was in London assisting Nick Knight I suddenly started getting involved with club culture and more in touch with the world of performance. There were a lot of performance fetish clubs and artists appearing and suddenly I saw a body which was doing some sort of action, but communicating things that were much more subtle and layered and personal than models or actors, they had a necessity; they were truthful.

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Stacy Makishi and Manuel Vason, Double Exposures, London, 2012

It's quite interesting to photograph what would otherwise be an ephemeral practice. Is there a risk that your work becomes part of the ephemera? 
​When I started collaborating with these people, instead of me going to where they were performing and trying to capture what they were doing, I'd invite them to do something more stylized—more controlled—in front of the camera. That can dramatically change the relationship between their performance and the document because the document became the only place that you could see certain work.

​I like basically to take portrait photography as a performative practice and so I'm interested in that kind of encounter you have when you are facing a live performance and the encounter you have when you face this image. I don't want to say it's the same; they are two different languages, but they both trigger similar emotional responses and both need a particular sort of interpretation by the spectator. 

How does Double Exposure break away from your previous portraits of performance artists?
​Basically for me this book was about breaking some rules. For many years I had been trained to encapsulate into the single image something that was durational or complex—to behold that iconic image that would trap the event and immortalize the artist. What I ended up doing on this book however, is sabotaging that way of working. I split the iconic image in two. The diptych for me is a gesture of interruption, separation, or negation.

The other thing is that I gave the camera away. So one image is the artist photographed by myself and the other facing image is the artist photographing my body. It was about taking a risk, because obviously I'm not a performance artist, I'm a photographer, I've not been trained as a performance artist and suddenly I was directed by this professional who was experienced.

For many years I had been talking about collaboration; you perform for the camera, I create the images for you, there is an exchange. But ultimately I was very safe and to actually go on the other side of the camera was, for me, the only way to really show my willingness to make a proper exchange.

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Ernst Fischer and Manuel Vason, Double Exposures, London, 2012

What about pushing you to your limits, what was your most challenging moment?
​Well the book basically collects 43 artists and 40 collaborations, 40 diptychs, so I think it was the duration of the entire project, that was one of the biggest things. It took me four years to complete the project and two and half to actually go through one image after the other. I think it's the intensity of the diversity of approaches—stepping between one mindset into another, or one bodily situation into another—that really pushed my body and my mind.

And then of course each single collaboration was a challenge in a way, because it was a completely new conversation, and I did everything from being pierced, taped up, having my head shaved... I had to do a lot of durational work, stay in one particular position for a long time. Swimming on a lake of shit was probably the worst though. That image [the Ernst Fisher collaboration] looks like a beautiful pond but it's actually in the forest and when I went to the site and got in the water I could smell shit all over me. I also had some leeches and had to go to the doctor.

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Ron Athey and Manuel Vason, London 2012 and Mojave Desert 2013

Have you ever approached a performance artist to take their picture and they've been like, "No I don't want you to take this"?
​Absolutely. I encounter people that have a no documentation policy, which I utterly respect and think is totally fair enough. I am aware that photography can be intrusive and invasive so I totally understand it's not for everybody.

There is a natural conflict between life, which is uncontrollable and un-capturable, and photography, which is all about boxing and fixing and controlling. But at the same time I'm aware that there are possibilities of experimentation in this frictional dialogue and I think this was the objective.

Is there something about the extremity of performance art that interests you? You tend to focus on people who push their body quite far.
​When I saw some of this work it completely fascinated me, by the strength of communicating something and it could be anything; it could be violence, it could be trauma, or something really positive; a poetic symbolic thing, but they are both positive in my opinion. I think that what these artists are doing is to kind of trigger some sort of memories in ourselves.

I guess it's a personal curiosity in terms of this constant confrontation with the limit of the body, whether it's a confrontation with identity, or religious matter or topographical matter. I'm not really interested in shocking but I am interested to provoke a discourse and also I'm interested in presenting work that destabilizes me. Art should bring us into a territory that is a critical space.

They are definitely captivating and they take you somewhere and it might be a sensation of confusion or a sensation of questioning for instance, but I think the questioning is great, it means its positive for me because when you see an artwork or an image and suddenly it's clear and you've seen it many times and your brain doesn't register because we are so saturated that it becomes pointless.

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Aaron Williamson and Manuel Vason, Double Exposures, Purfleet, 2014

Is that why you think performance art is having a big moment now, maybe because we're in this age of the reproduction of the image... maybe we are looking for something else?
There are definitely more people talking about performance art, more students studying it, more critics writing about it, but I wonder if this is positive or a negative thing for the form itself. Performance was very much about a reaction to the mainstream—a form that developed because it didn't want to be institutionalized and the fact that now it's kind of everywhere and totally assimilated will probably mean the end of it—we'll exhaust the fuel, the energy, the reasoning for being. 

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