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Fightland: Pakistan - Part 2

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Pakistani MMA got its start in an apartment above a real estate office. It's come a long way since. Fightland traveled to Lahore to meet Bashir Ahmad, a professional fighter and founder of the country's first-ever mixed martial arts team, PAK MMA. In part two of the series, Bashir shows us traditional mud-wrestling pits and late-night "smokers."


The Loneliness of the Village at the End of the World

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The "village at the end of the world" – Niaqornat, Greenland.

In Niaqornat, Greenland, every morning a man collects buckets full of his neighbors’ shit, which he loads into a wheelbarrow and dumps into a designated pit. He does this because the small village has no sewage system. In fact, its infrastructure is so minimal that when its residents need to commute they do so via a government-contracted Huey helicopter, while a supply ship brings in additional goods every now and then. The only teenager in town messes around on Google Earth, listens to Greenlandic rap songs about suicide, and crafts tupilaqs out of angst.

The 59 Inuit residents of Niaqornat have months of perpetual darkness or perpetual daylight and are so cut off from the rest of the world you'd think life would be relatively simple. However, modernity, with all its attendant problems, is starting to seep in. The socio-economic issues that are plaguing Greenland as a whole—like teenage suicide and unemployment—are already having an effect on life here. Meanwhile, climate change is no myth for the villagers of Niaqornat, but one fact is changing the way they live: the Greenlandic ice sheet is melting, and it’s directly affecting their hunting practices and livelihood.

Last year, director Sarah Gavron and cinematographer David Katznelson visited this tiny hamlet and made a documentary centered on the collision between the old and the new, and the villagers’ struggle with climate change and government policies. The film is called Village at the End of the World. I wanted to find out more, so I gave Sarah a call.

VICE: One of the main focuses of your documentary is the government-backed closure of the only fish factory in Niaqornat, which is vital to the village's survival. Does the Greenland government ultimately want to shut down the villages?
Sarah Gavron:
It’s not as explicit as that—it’s not an official policy. In fact, they have recently gotten a new government, which is more supportive of the traditional communities. But the villages are expensive. They need subsidies to survive. There is talk that the government, unofficially, is kind of starving out small villages—if they fall below a certain number of people, they stop giving them subsidies and supply ships. The struggle to reopen the fish factory certainly didn’t help the villagers, but it's essential to their economy.


Lars, the only teenager in the village.

These subsidies you mention, are they Danish or Greenlandic?
The Danish government gives Greenland a certain amount of subsidies, and Greenland chooses how to distribute them to villages. So, yes, there is money coming from Denmark.

Was Niaqornat affected by the 2009 EU legislation banning the trade of seal products?
Yes, certainly. They were very affected by the quotas on all fronts, in terms of catching whales and seals. The hunters are against those quotas because they limit and change their livelihood. The feeling in the village is that there are people who overhunt but not in these tiny communities. These communities are really sustenance hunters; they catch what they need. And the one seal that they catch each year—that has lived free all of its life—they use every bit of. And, as they say, “Should they be shipping in battery chickens or should they be catching that one seal that they use every bit of?” So, the quotas haven’t helped them. In my perspective, they aren’t necessary for such small communities doing as little hunting as they are.

The only teenager in town, Lars, doesn’t necessarily want to preserve the traditions. Do you attribute this restlessness solely to the internet? And do you think the internet is a positive or negative influence on them?
There are two sides to the argument. I think Lars, as a character, would have chosen to leave anyway; he’s somebody who doesn’t want to be a hunter, and in that community you have to belong, you have to continue the tradition, otherwise there’s not much purpose in you being there. It’s difficult for him. I think the internet, in some ways, broadens the villagers’ horizons. They certainly used the internet in the campaign to open the fish factory. They were communicating with politicians and the people who ran the fish factory and it was useful. But, obviously it’s drawing Lars away, and adding to the demise of those communities. So you could look at it as a positive and a negative thing. It’s a reality of the modern world, and they have to work out how it’s going to affect them.


Ilannguaq, the local sewage collector.

In one scene, a tourist from a cruise ship who visit the island makes a haughty remark about inbreeding. Is there any truth to that?
It’s a question that outsiders ask, since Niaqornat is a small community. The truth is there are about two major families in the village and a few extra people, and when they meet new people they go off to other villages. They’re aware of having to expand the gene pool. So it is an issue for them. For Lars, there are no women of his age in the village. He does have to go farther afield if he wants to meet someone.

Is status solely based on hunting skills? I found it interesting that, even though he’s presumably the most educated among them, Ilannguaq, the sewage collector, has the worst job. Is it because he’s an outsider?
As you say, he came to the village from outside; the job was available and he offered to do it. He’s not a hunter, and in that village you either hunt or there are very few jobs: there’s one job in the grocery shop, there’s the school teacher, the village administrator, the sewage collector, and that’s it. There’s not a class system, but traditionally the hunter is chief of the village.



Greenland has a high rate of unemployment and alcoholism. Obviously, unemployment is a primary element of your documentary, but what about alcoholism?

In Greenland, certainly, there are very big alcohol and suicide issues. But in villages like Niaqornat people operate in a healthy way. Lars talks about suicide at one point because there was that one person in the village who killed himself. So the issue has affected him.

How much does the climate change and the melting of the Greenlandic ice sheet affect their livelihood?
What’s interesting about going there is that the signs are very obvious. Some years are hotter, some years are colder, but generally, the trend is that it’s warming up each year, and the ice is getting thinner and thinner. It’s melting and it’s not replacing itself as it used to, the glacier is receeding. And that has consequences for the community: they have to adapt their hunting ways. For example, the year we were there, they couldn’t use their sledge dogs to go hunting, because the ice was so thin. Also, Greenland is sitting on lots of minerals and oil potentially, which, if taken out will lead to further melting of the ice. It’s a complex situation, but there is no doubt climate change is happening. It’s the result of us polluting the world, not them. There’s a kind of circularity to it, and an irony there.

On climate change no longer being a theory, Inuit politician Aqqaluk Lynge said, “What happens in the world happens first in the Arctic.” It sounds romantic, but it is a sad fact.
Yes, it is like the barometer of the world.

Follow Esra on Twitter: @esragurmen

More on loneliness:

The Loneliness of the Gay Romanian Chillwave Fan

The Loneliest Goth in the World

Forever Alone Involuntary Flashmob

Australian Scientists Think We Can Grow Our Limbs Back Like Salamanders

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Australian Scientists Think We Can Grow Our Limbs Back Like Salamanders

Rave and Hardcore YouTube Comments Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity

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A playlist of all the rave/hardcore tracks people in this blog have commented on. You should probably listen to it as you read. 

It's commonly held knowledge that most YouTube comments rank up there with Houellebecq novels and Somme fatality statistics as some of the most depressing things you can read. Even if it's a video of an elephant cuddling a pug or a Philip Glass recital, you'll usually find yourself greeted with the same shitstorm of racism, homophobia, misogyny, accusations of n00bery, and somebody who says they'll put a curse on you if you don't repost a story about a girl who died in a car crash to at least ten of your friends.

Thankfully, there are a few diamonds of decency in this online hate-pit, and they usually arrive beneath music videos. Sometimes you read stories about aging couples who had their first kiss in a Wisconsin diner as "Tiny Dancer" played on the jukebox. Sometimes you see really enthusiastic Europeans thanking the uploader of a death metal track with a smiley face. And sometimes, just sometimes, YouTube commenters prove they're capable of being funny.

However, if you want to find the most inspiring and poignant posts on YouTube, you could do far worse than loading up a rave/hardcore playlist comprised of tracks from the late 80s and early 90s.


A comment on "Sweet Sensation" by Shades Of Rhythm.

Because the comments on those videos are genuinely some of the most beautiful things I've ever read.


Both comments on "Everybody" by Shades Of Rhythm.

If you were being cynical, you could probably say that these comments are just the MDMA-warped memories of a generation of thirty-something men who resent their wives, boring children, mortgages, jobs, and the responsibilities that come with them. You could dismiss their exhortations of the "old days" as merely the rueful people who can't grasp the modern dance world, with its live streams, forum trolls, and LiveNation wristband raves.

And that may or may not be true. But it doesn't matter, because what these people are expressing through the unlikely medium of YouTube comments is pure romance. Regardless of what Positiva release caused their Proust-on pills recollections, these people seem to be genuinely conjuring up fragmented glimpses of a lost past, something that is infinitely more life-affirming and valuable than anything spat out by the usual "Hey, remember Pogs!?" school of internet nostalgia. 


On "I Know" by New Atlantic.


On "Anthem" by N-Joi.

At some points, it feels like you're witnessing the outbreak of a new—or at least unrecognized—movement of unwitting outsider poets. While I don't doubt that some of the people watching and commenting on these vids are highly educated types who ended up running the country and maybe even producing youth culture shows for PBS, a lot of them are almost definitely written by regular people who probably don't get a chance to express themselves so candidly in their day to day lives.

I like to imagine misty-eyed men and women staying up late in their newly built homes, waiting for their kids to go to bed before they can transport themselves back to their carefree, wide-eyed, hands-in-the-air youths spent blissfully blowing holes in their psyche in New York warehouses and on Balearic beaches. It might be a bit tragic if they were still showing up at Warehouse Project three speckled Doves deep, still losing their shit to "Voodoo Ray" as Joy Orbison plays it 25 years later. But they aren't, I don't think. These are people who know that their raving days are over, and are looking back on them rather than trying to recreate them in some Hacienda historical reenactment society. In that way, these are examples of wistful longing rather than regressive nostalgia. 


On "Closer to All Your Dreams" by Rhythm Quest.

Of course, you're going to see as many broken dreams as you are sentimental recollections of clubs these people danced, fucked, drank and drugged in, but those have long since gone the way of all things. But even somebody as dispirited as MrCockPirate here can look back on these days with positivity. And in the age where people cringe at photos taken six months ago, that's pretty cool.


On "40 Miles" by Congress.


On "Turn Me Out" by Kathy Brown feat. Praxis.

One of the most impressive things you come to realize about rave and hardcore through looking at these comments is its relationship to time and place. It seems that the combination of music, scenario and chemicals created genuinely unforgettable moments in people's lives, and these videos act as portals back to that time. Who knows, maybe in 25 years  tons of people will be talking about the first time they heard "Where Dem Girls At" by Flo Rida and David Guetta. But let's face it; they won't be, will they?


On "Better Days" by Jimmy Polo.

This is probably my favorite one. It doesn't just tell you about a club or a banging remix, but hints at the entire span of some unknown relationship that Phil Davies from Nantwich and Johnny from Coventry once had. A relationship that was subsequently snatched from them, presumably by responsibility and the post-rave diaspora that responsible adulthood created.

Whether they briefly became best friends, whether they put the world to rights in a wire-jawed, late-night session of serotonin fuelled telekinesis as the sun came up at Fantazia, or whether they indulged in some kind of tryst as the piano break came in on "Better Days", we'll never know. But the fact that something as ostensibly banal as a YouTube comment can make us ponder such possibilities, acting as a personals ad for a relationship that is long past, is a testament to the evocative power of the internet.  


On "High" by Hyper Go Go.

More than anything though, these comments serve as the world's least effective antidrug PSA. Scan over them (and believe me, I have) and there's literally no one who claims that ecstasy ruined their life or bank balance and there's no macho boasting of how much they could handle. Obviously there are dangers to all drugs, and these people aren't talking about the crystal fear that is chemlab Molly. But if you ever need convincing that nights spent on E can be worth the comedown, you're gonna find it here.


On "Devotion" by Nomad.

It's amazing to think that through browsing the top-rated comments of a few piano house tunes you can see the hopes and dreams of an entire generation laid out before you. I've got a feeling that cultural historians will come back to look at comments like this in the same way that military historians look at testimonies from Stalingrad. It was a time that was never documented very well. Sure, there's the Doncaster Warehouse vid, Human Traffic, Irvine Welsh's The Acid House, and a smattering of badly shot rave videos, but as someone who was too young to be there at the time, there's nothing that feels like it might capture the era's true spirit quite like these.

Obviously nostalgia is bullshit, and for every "Pacific State" there were a hundred terrible "big fish, small fish, cardboard box" novelty records. And for everyone who looks back on it with fondness, there is probably a casualty. And we probably all need to remember that patterned board shorts were de rigeur back then. But you can't help but feel these people had the right idea.

If these comments are true—and why would you doubt that they are?—going out in those days was about unity and euphoria rather than wearing T-shirts that define your pecs and trying to compete in some kind of Moet-pissing competition. Maybe these comments comprise a history lesson that modern clubbers would do well to heed.

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive

More about rave:

Thatcher's War on Acid House

Rave on or Rave Off?

I Used My Stockmarket Millions to Throw Raves and Sell Drugs

Juggalos Are OK, Cupid

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Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

Something like 70 percent of the internet is people going, “Hey did you see this cute/funny/sad/tragic/OMG/WTF/fail thing?” and passing around the meme du jour—a wacky crime story from Florida, an amazing photo of natural phenomenon that just has to be seen to be believed, a fake video of an eagle snatching a kid in a park, a cat that looks like something other than a cat. Yesterday, the hot, clickable content being viewed, blogged, reblogged, shared, and no doubt monetized was a Tumblr called OkCupid Juggalos.

Juggalos, of course, are diehard fans of the crypto-Christian rap duo Insane Clown Posse, and OkCupid is a really popular free online dating site. Combine the two things, and you get awkward, posturing selfies of men and women with painted faces and poorly done tattoos, coupled with their ungrammatical statements about being “chill,” loving Faygo, and being “crazy.” Hilarious.

The site is part of a subgenre of Tumblrs devoted to pointing out people, usually men, who have bizarre OkCupid profiles that sometimes make them sound like psychopaths or rapists. (It’s such a popular trope that OkCupid Juggalos isn’t even the only Tumblr devoted to Juggalos on OkCupid.)  OkCupid Goldmine documents a grab bag of creeps and weirdos; Okc_ebooks gets gullible users to respond to messages that are actually gibberish tweets from bot/poet @Horse_ebooks; the creator of OkCupid Enemies sought out people who weren’t good matches for him or her to find freakish profiles (that one’s apparently now defunct); Fedoras of OKC targets the usually nerdy, Reddit-using, neck-bearded gamer types who think they look good in fedoras; and Nice Guys of OkCupid (also defunct) went after dudes who claimed to be “nice guys” but were clearly entitled, misogynistic dicks who had some fucked-up thoughts about women.

That last one sparked a mini debate in feminist corners of the internet—is it really OK to publicly mock these guys, who are usually socially awkward and unsuccessful in love as it is? The argument made by Hugo Schwyzer in Jezebel was that it’s fine, since “mockery, in this instance, isn't so much about being cruel as it is about publicly rejecting the Nice Guys' sense of entitlement to both sex and sympathy.” So as long as you can come up with a good enough reason to be an asshole on the internet—it’s not about the individual guys you’re shaming, it’s about societal misogyny, or something—you’re in the clear.

But as Ally Fogg wrote in response to Hugo, as detestable as the “archetype” of the Nice Guy misogynist is, “archetypes don’t have to pluck up the courage to join a dating site and then go through the awkward steps of creating a clumsy profile... Archetypes don’t suffer if their fragile self-esteem is kicked into the dirt and trampled on. People do.”

That’s what makes me feel crappy when I scroll through Tumblrs like these. The idea of a socially awkward dude whose main social outlet is the internet putting on a stupid hat because he thinks it will help him get a date is funny. But shitting on this guy because he’s into My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and has both a gun collection and a knife collection is just laughing at him because he’s different. Haha, his values are weird, he must be a loser. What makes it worse is that many of these people are young men who might have had rocky, awkward adolescences and are still learning how to connect romantically with others. Amid the genuinely disturbed dudes who are openly sexist and racist are people like this guy, from Fedoras of OKC:
Screenshot via Fedoras of OKC

He’s a kid who is trying his best to look good. Yeah, the tie with skulls on it and the cartoonish hat aren’t great, but he’s putting himself out there. Putting together an online dating profile that makes you look attractive and not like all the other fish in the vast, horny sea is pretty goddamn hard. Taking a screenshot and pointing and laughing is easy.

It’s even easier when your victims are already one of the most hated subcultures in America. Juggalos are obsessed with a rap group most people regard as a shitty punchline; they’re considered a “gang” by the FBI even though they organize charity activities and prayer groups. They have their own slang and soda preference and identify themselves—proudly, in spite of all the scorn—by painting their faces. And when they’re looking for love online, they don’t hide the fact that they’re down with the clown.

As McBain would say, “That’s the joke.”

If they didn’t have their faces painted and weren’t posing like extras in a low-budget remake of The Warriors—that is, if they weren’t openly celebrating the culture and music that’s important to them—the OkCupid Juggalos would be regarded as portraits of loneliness and need, and they wouldn’t be nearly as clickable. Some examples (the text overlaid on the photos was lifted from the Juggalos' profiles by the person running the Tumblr):


Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

Is it funny that he has acne? Or that he is letting people he might want to date know about a potentially unattractive feature? Maybe it’s supposed to be humorous that he might be painting his face because he’s embarrassed about his scars?


Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

Haha, this guy gets panic attacks and tends to get emotionally attached to people he likes! He probably has a tough time dating! LOL


Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

The only explanation for this one being on the Tumblr is that the guy is making a weird face—surely, no one thinks it's funny he's passionate about finding homes for animals, right?


Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

Here’s a nod to the lineage from which OkCupid Juggalos comes—this entry lets the audience bask in the satisfaction of knowing that both Nice Guys and Juggalos are worthy of derision. I guess you’re supposed to ignore the sadness of a guy who hasn’t been in a “successful relationship” trying to connect with someone online.


Screenshot via OkCupid Juggalos

This kid is clearly young, not conventionally attractive, and, if what he wrote isn’t a joke, a McDonald’s employee—but he’s got a nice, self-deprecating sense of humor about his situation. If the point of putting this on Tumblr is what I think it is—Ha! Look at this dumb guy! He works at McDonald’s!—it’s shockingly mean. The humor is based on him being different, and one of the things that makes him different is that he doesn’t have much money.

“Juggalos tend to be poor and uneducated, from economically depressed small towns and broken homes,” Nathan Rabin noted in the AV Club last year. It’s not considered kosher even by asshole-on-the-internet standards to make fun of someone for not having enough money, or being born into circumstances that would make being head fry cook something worth bragging about in a half-kidding way. But if the target is a Juggalo? Apparently it’s open season on just straight-up giggling at his or her vulnerabilities and poverty and cultural differences.  

Fortunately, there’s room on the internet for all of us. No doubt Juggalos will find other Juggalos and fall in love and have baby Juggalos no matter how much snarky scorn gets tossed their way. In other words, they don’t want to date you either, asshole.  

@HCheadle

More on Juggalos:

Meet the Girls Who Are Terrorizing Juggalos with Their Perfect Asses

Logging on to the Dark Carnival

We Interviewed Insane Clown Posse

Amy’s Baking Company's Grand Reopening Nearly Bored Me to Death

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Reality TV peaked long ago, yet millions still tune into hundreds of shows that try to wring drama out of every petty excuse for a first world problem. Nothing is sacred and an undercurrent of violence runs for everything. It’s war for cupcakes, war for parking spots, war for storage, war for shipping, war for blackboards.

The shows that exhibit people with borderline personality disorders or some kind of mental failing are particularly awful, like My Strange Addiction or the variations on "People Who Have Too Much Fucking Stuff Because They Are Mentally Ill."

So when the season finale of Kitchen Nightmares revealed some kind of truly demented ego, someone so damaged by an abusive upbringing, I indulged myself willingly and glued myself to my TV. By now you probably already know the story: Amy and Samy Bouzaglo, owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizona, were surprisingly unresponsive to host Gordon Ramsay’s advice to, basically, just not be dicks. All reality TV features similar screeching fits, but the volume for this episode was dialed up to 11, leading Ramsay to walk out for the first time in his show’s 80-episode run.

The resulting fallout was equally dramatic, if not more so—bored people on the internet expressed their dissatisfaction on Amy’s Facebook page and were met with furious, cringe-worthy retorts from Amy and Samy. The founders later claimed their accounts were hacked and now the FBI is involved, blah blah blah, everyone’s lying.

Photo by Bobby Patterson

In some kind of misguided attempt to renew their brand, Amy and Samy hired a PR guy and decided to have a relaunch. Since I work right down the street from the restaurant, I decided to drop in.

From the beginning, my only reaction to this entire shit stain was pity and some mild curiosity, as it paints a strange portrait of how social media interacts with people who seem to have mental disorders. I half-expected the entire parking lot to be jammed, with news vans from every local stations hugging the fire lanes, spotlights torching up the sky and maybe even a red carpet.

It was none of these things. I arrived at 5:30 to a scene of maybe 20 people standing outside, arms crossed, as they collectively glared at a boring restaurant, hoping to see a woman become completely outraged over nothing or something along those lines. There was a small team of security guards who would occasionally kick someone off the premises or take someone’s cell phone away and delete any offending pictures.

You couldn’t get in without a reservation and you couldn’t loiter outside, so there wasn’t much to do but watch. I called the restaurant's number, but it went straight to a full voicemail box. A couple news vans (representing 3TV, Fox, and NBC) would drive by, set up their cameras on the edges of the parking lot and leave again, only to return later, circling like sharks for blood. 

In the shadows of a movie theater, we sat and waited and watched. A woman large enough to be an elephant seal left briefly to get popcorn, saying something about how this was like real life TV. Except nothing was happening. Watching traffic was more interesting than watching strangers eat through a window from 500 yards away.

I spoke to two kids who said they were unemployed. The elephant seal said the same and suddenly this made sense. Did anyone here have a job besides me, the members of the mini media circus, and the security guards? Why were we here? I felt like a voyeur, but a suspiciously uninteresting one. I really had nothing better to do but sit outside a business and hope the owner would suddenly snap. I prayed for broken windows or screaming spells or sirens and I don’t really know why.

Of all the celebrity meltdowns I can think of, this is the only one I know of that the public helped instigate. And like many internet campaigns, it was overtly cruel. Every single offensive thing about Amy and Samy has been trotted out over and over like so much Judge Judy theatrics. Did they deserve it? I can’t say. There aren’t really any heroes in this drama. There’s just shitty food, shitty people, shitty everything.

People live-tweeted, but there wasn’t much to report. According to a few patrons I chased down on their way back to their cars, the food was decent and everything was calm inside. The restaurant was about three-quarters full. The Olive Garden down the street was about as fascinating.

The rumors, which I can’t confirm, were a little more bizarre. According to one chick, no one was seated outside due to death threats and patrons were frisked for weapons before being allowed inside. According to another kid, all the new employees were screened—only those who hadn’t seen the infamous Kitchen Nightmares episode were hired.

Everything seemed a little too perfect and among the voyeurs, a theory emerged that most of the patrons were hired to say nice things. Does it really matter if they were? I’d still probably rather eat at Domino's.

Since I sure wasn’t eating at Amy’s, I dropped into Pita Jungle and flirted with the hostess and she flirted back and then told me she was 17 and so I said adios and walked back over. I decided to try to get in anyway, but a cop stopped me, like I expected.

“Do you have a reservation?” he asked.

“Uh, I was gonna look into getting one…”

“You can’t tonight, but they’re taking reservations later this week,” the officer explained, handing me a business card for Amy’s.

“Is this the kind of work you imagined you’d be doing when you joined the force?”

“We do everything,” the cop said. “But I did expect there to be more of an audience. I expected protestors and overflowing parking, but there's none of that. No troublemakers at all.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad no one’s broken anything.”

The cop raised an eyebrow.

“Actually, I’m kind of relieved,” I said. And I was. Maybe it’s a good thing that this rubbernecking isn’t riveting. It’ll make it all the more easy for these people to fade into the background. As some people have said, this restaurant really wasn’t relevant before they appeared on Ramsay’s show and started attacking anyone who disagreed with them online. The worst part of the restaurant wasn’t that it was expensive or a disaster—it was that they were mediocre.

Perhaps this three-ring circus has run its course and the public can realize Amy's deserves no more attention. It was a worthy fight to join in on, at first, but now it’s as stale as that store-bought ravioli we’ve heard so much about. And maybe the whole idea of “reality” as entertainment will also lose steam, but I doubt it.

Before I left, someone said to me, “I came here for a show. Where is it?”

Go home, I thought.

@filth_filler

Watch Japanther's Kaleidoscopic New Video for "Stolen Flowers"

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I've been instructed by VICE's supreme overlords to always adopt a "global" tone in my writing, one that doesn't single out a specific city as any better than, say, Decatur, Illinois. The truth is, me and a lot of my dumb little writing buddies live in New York City, and we're all pretty sure it's at least one of the more tolerable spots on this dying sphere we're currently riding around space on.

One of the reasons I like New York so much are the sounds that it emits, and one of the reasons I like those sounds so much is that there are bands like Japanther you can see on Friday nights. I used to bike out to the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge at 2 AM to see them perform a few songs before getting shut down by the cops. It helped 20-year-old me realize that life in this city may not be like Seinfeld, but it can be alright if you just go to shows all the time instead of trying to get a real job or develop a dumb hobby or something.

Japanther just sent us their new video for "Stolen Flowers," a song that sounds a lot like the other scuzzy pop-punk coming out of Brooklyn loft parties right now. (Note: this means that it is inherently good.) The video is directed Mason Ortalea, and features the duo performing in front of a kaleidoscopic, stop-motion barrage of flower petals. You can find the song on their amazingly-titled new record, Eat Like Lisa Act Like Bart, which came out yesterday on Recess Records. Be sure to pick up your very own copy by clicking right here, and catch the band on tour starting next month.

Japanther Tour Dates

 

6/28: San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
6/29: Oakland, CA @ Metro Theater
6/30: Los Angeles, CA @ The American Legion Hall (Growing Up Dumb Festival)
7/1: Chicago, IL @ Schuba's
7/2: Bloomington, IN @ Rachel's
7/3: Detroit, MI @ Old Miami
7/4: Detroit, MI @ Gratiot Gallery
7/5: Northport, MI @ 109 E Nagonaba
7/6: Northport, MI @ 109 E Nagonaba
7/7: Cleveland, OH @ Now That's Class
7/9: Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery
7/10: Philadelphia, PA @ Ortliebs Lounge
7/11: Brooklyn, NY @ Rare Form
7/12: Washington, NJ @ Washington Theater
7/13: Providence, RI @ AS220
7/14: Cambridge, MA @ Cambridge Elks Lodge

@b_shap

Which Hockey Team Will End Canada’s Stanley Cup Drought?

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The Stanley Cup in 1930. Roughly the same time a Canadian team touched it (hiyooo!) via.

Since watching their team’s agonizing choke job in game seven a few weeks back, Maple Leafs fans have consoled themselves largely with lies. The biggest of those lies is that “this is an up-and-coming team, and this series—as disappointing as blowing a two goal lead with two minutes left in game seven was—is just the start of something big.” Yeah, okay.

Meanwhile, in the Nation’s Capital, the vastly outgunned Ottawa Senators continue to perfect their Houdini act. Their latest trick—scoring a short-handed goal with 28.6 seconds remaining in game three, and winning game three in double overtime—has them poised to even up their second round series against the Pittsburgh Penguins in game four on Wednesday night in the middle of a cornfield Kanata.

Thinking about the agony and self deception of Leafs fans, and watching an inferior Senators team hang with one of the most explosive offensive teams of the past decade got me wondering: which Canadian team really has the best chance of ending Canada’s twenty year old cup drought the soonest? Yeap, our country’s Stanley Cup drought is of legal age to make porn, drink beer, but not quite old enough to rent a minivan.

Every Canadian hockey fan desperately wants their club to end the drought, I figure, and concurrently would hate life if any of the other six clubs managed the feat before them.

So it’s a pertinent question, really, and to try and answer it I’ve put together a “Canadian Cup Drought power-rankings.” The list takes into account the state of each Canadian team currently and their future prospects in an effort to answer the question: “which Canadian team seems most likely to end Canada’s twenty year national nightmare first?” Let's start with Ottawa.

 

 

Why?

I basically see the Senators and the Habs as a coin flip, with Ottawa’s team narrowly edging Montreal’s because they’re still alive this season, and because they have a way better coach.

Ottawa’s General Manager Bryan Murray has done some stellar work of late, most recently when he completely stole Cory Conacher and a pick from Stevie “Why are you so intent on wasting Steven Stamkos’ prime by relying on unproven goaltenders?” Yzerman and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Secondly, Ottawa’s head coach is one of the best in the league (and also the funniest, and also the funniest looking). The Senators have, what, maybe four top-six quality forwards in their lineup at the moment (Michalek, Alfredsson, Turris and Silverfberg)? Yet they’re one of the league’s best puck possession teams and effectively play an aggressive uptempo style of hockey even though they’re severely undermanned. That’s a pretty neat trick.

I like their core pieces going forward too. Craig Anderson is really good at stopping pucks, Erik Karlsson is an elite blue-line piece, and Jason Spezza—when he’s healthy, of course—is still probably a top ten NHL centreman. As a playmaking centre who generally relies on timing and intelligence to be productive, he probably has two or three seasons left as a top-line force who you can win with.

Fourthly and most importantly, the Senators have some solid young forwards with top-line potential who will enter the prime of their careers over the next season or two (Zibenajad, Silverfberg). And a couple of young defenceman who look like really good players (Cowen, Wiercioch). Plus, they’ve been really good and consistent at identifying young players who can contribute and drive play at the NHL level in bottom-six roles (Zack Smith, Erik Condra, J.G. Pageau). That’s a pretty lethal combination.

Why not?

Gary Roberts is still alive, and this country isn’t big enough for both Gary Roberts and a Stanley Cup Champion Ottawa Senators team.


 

Why?

For whatever reason PK Subban—who only just turned twenty-four—isn’t often mentioned in the same breath as the likes of Drew Doughty, Zdeno Chara, and Shea Weber. But he should be, and if he puts in another season like the one he just had, he will be.

So les habitants start out with a super elite twenty-four year old defenceman that they can build around. Then there’s twenty-four year old power-forward Max Pacioretty, who is just entering his prime, and twenty-five year old puck-stopper Carey Price, an above average starter who battles inconsistency from time to time. There’s a future number one centreman in Alex Galchenyuk—who is only 19 and had a wicked rookie season—and a top-six pest in Brendan Gallagher, who just turned 21 and is nominated for the Calder.

That’s an absurdly talented, youthful core. If Montreal can manage their assets shrewdly over the next couple of years the Habs could morph into a very legitimate juggernaut... and soon.

Why not?

I’m not a big Michel Therrien fan. Though of course if it’s not working out they can always replace him in midseason (at which point they’ll surely go on an improbable run to the Stanley Cup).

 


Why?

The Canucks were probably the hardest team to rank, because there’s so much uncertainty in their projection. The Sedins are aging, but their decline is over-stated.

Ryan Kesler was banged up all season, and when he was in the lineup, he was pretty much unable to drive play the way he has throughout his career. Is that a fitness and recovery thing, or does it suggest a structural physical deterioration in his game? If it’s the latter, the Canucks are boned. If it’s the former, they’re a lot closer than it might appear after the club was swept in the first round of the playoffs this season.

What the Canucks have going for them is their blue-line group, which is deep and pretty damn good. The Canucks need to inject some serious offense into their lineup this summer, but with a surplus of good, young, affordable defenceman on the roster—and defencemen always draw a premium price on the trade market—there’s some opportunity for creative destruction here.

Unfortunately boy wonder Mike Gillis has turned into King Midas in reverse over the past season and a half. Unless he pulls a fluffy fucking bunny out of his top hat, his handling of the Roberto Luongo/Cory Schneider situation will make for an interesting asset management case study, filed under “what not to do.” Meanwhile trades for David Booth, Zack Kassian, and Keith Ballard have uniformly backfired for Vancouver, even though the decision-making processes behind each of those deals strikes me as mostly solid.

With Mike Gillis’s back up against the wall this summer, he has the assets and the opportunity to transform his team back into a contender. Alternatively, it could go the other way and Vancouver’s “championship window” could rapidly snap shut (if it hasn’t already).

Why Not?

The Canucks have one of the toughest cap situations in the league right now so their hands may well be tied this summer.

Why?

Here’s the thing about the Winnipeg Jets: they’re actually a good team with lots of quality pieces and some good prospects. They’re fast and employ Evander Kane (who owns and is yet to really hit his prime), Andrew Ladd, and Dustin Byfuglien, so they’re also massive. I think they’d be a nightmare to face in the postseason if they could ever make it there.

Why not?

They won’t make the playoffs unless they manage to receive at least average goaltending over the course of a full season. Hilariously that’s not something they’ll get—at least not consistently—from Ondrej Pavelec. It’s a dirty little secret, but the Winnipeg Jets were basically a playoff team from the blue-line out over the past two seasons. They’ve been done in, however, by one of the worst regular starters in the NHL.

It’s interesting that Jets fans—arguably the stupidest Canadian fanbase—almost uniformly seem to believe that Pavelec is a hero, and that Winnipeg’s issues are on defence. That’s in stark contrast with Oilers and Leafs fans who are skeptical of Devan Dubnyk and James Reimer, even though both are good bets to be above average NHL starters… 

Pavelec makes outrageous saves from time-to-time, but those saves mostly look so good because he’s so far out of position. He’s basically Dominik Hasek, if Dominik Hasek were terrible.

Still, the True North ownership group and General Manager Kevin Cheveldayoff strike me as really smart hockey folks, outside of evaluating goaltenders. So on the one hand, the Jets are better than their results the past two seasons might suggest and are only one piece away from being a pretty formidable club. On the other, I have no faith that they realize this.


Why?

The quality, potential and sheer amount of blue-chip young talent on the Oilers roster is intoxicating.

For example, the denizens of YakCity get massive boners whenever they watch the electric Russian sniper play. Taylor Hall is already a super elite piece—a fast, physical winger and a top-10 NHL scorer at the age of 22. Jordan Eberle isn’t a top-line piece and the contract the Oilers handed him is a laugher, but he’s a good hockey player and had a more impressive season this past year—in my estimation—than he did when he was lighting it up with the benefit of smoke and mirrors.

The Oilers are still a top-four defenceman and a quality third line away from being a serious team. But at least along the blueline they have some solid young players in Jeff Petry, Justin Schultz, and Ladislav Smid. You can begin to see the exoskeleton of an intriguing group. Also Devan Dubnyk is a very safe bet to be an above average NHL starter going forward, though I’m not sure that the Oilers understand that.

Why Not?

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is having offseason surgery (who could’ve seen that coming?) and will return just in time to get a massive raise next summer. “The Nuge” has more hockey intelligence in his fingernails than the majority of professional hockey players, but man did the Oilers ever screw up both his development, and their management of him as an asset.

This is symptomatic of their organizational inability to evaluate anything well, frankly. Just look around the league and you’ll find former Oilers players like Erik Cole, Joffrey Lupl, Sheldon Souray, Andrew Cogliano, Kyle Brodziak, Dustin Penner, and Lubomir Visnovsky playing big minutes on team’s better than the Oilers. Most of those players were traded away for absolutely fucking nothing too (the Oilers once turned Joffrey Lupul into Joni Pitkanen into Erik Cole into Patrick O’Sullivan. LOLOLOL).

Maybe some of that, hell maybe even most of it, can be blamed on deposed General Manager Steve Tambellini. New General Manager Craig MacTavish seems like a smart guy, but he’s got a lot of organizational rot to contend with.

Why?

I don’t totally hate what the Leafs have going on. Phil Kessel is very probably a top-five pure offensive talent in the NHL, James Van Riemsdyk is a top-six beast, Joffrey Lupul is looking increasingly like one of the best offensive forwards in the game, and James Reimer seems like—even if he doesn’t often look like—a safe bet to the be one of the ten best starting goaltenders in the national hockey league.

Toronto’s blueline isn’t good yet, but Jake Gardiner and Morgan Reilly give Leafs fans some reason for optimism here. Mikhail Grabovski is a hell of a two-way player, and the Leafs will be a better team next season if Randy Carlyle leans on him in the regular season the way he did in the playoffs.

Why Not?

Besides the fact that they just fucking lost and I knew they would, Expectations are high in Toronto right now, which would be fair if Dave Nonis’ club had a coach who anyone trusted to evaluate players, or a top-line centre, or more than one top-pairing defenseman…

Nazem Kadri, for example, had a nice first full season as an NHL player, and came to play in games six and seven of Toronto’s first round series. That’s a good sign, but he’s unlikely to produce at the same level next year as he did this season, when he was just about the luckiest player in the entire league.

Will Kadri take on a bigger role with Tyler Bozak moving on in free agency? Or will the Leafs overpay Bozak because he’s Phil Kessel’s roommate and also he wins faceoffs? If you have to ask yourself stupid questions like these, and you do if you’re a Leafs fan, then I’m sorry but your team’s not going anywhere in a hurry.

 

 

Why?

They might get Connor McDavid in a few years?

Why Not?

LOLOL

 

Follow the Angry Hockey Nerd on Twitter: @ThomasDrance

More angry hockey ranting:

The Edmonton Oilers Are a Useless Franchise

The Bruins Will Beat the Leafs Because They’re Better

The 2013 JerkPuck All Star Team


Marc Maron Is the King of Twitter

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If you’re on Twitter, you’re a narcissist. If you’re a celebrity, you’re a bigger narcissist. If you’re a celebrity on Twitter, you’re an even bigger narcissist. And if you’re a celebrity on Twitter whose public persona is predicated on you being a narcissistic celebrity on Twitter, you’re Marc Maron. 

That being the case, it comes as no surprise that the most common subject on Maron’s Twitter feed is, you guessed it, Marc Maron—the way Marc Maron feels about the world, the way Marc Maron feels about his own psyche, the way Marc Maron feels the airline industry, the way Marc Maron, well, feels. He’s amassed 240,000 Twitter followers, created the one of the most popular podcasts on the internet, netted his own IFC show and got a book deal by giving the people what they want: himself, warts and all (the more warts, the better). He's a straight shooting, no-bullshit kind of guy, and his adoring public loves when he's cantankerous. After all, he’s just Marc being Marc, Marc being real. And what's realer than publicly, unapologetically expressing contempt for one of your contemporaries? 

In the interest of giving said people what they want, Maron’s gotten embroiled in Twitter arguments before. (The people, they love drama!) The latest such argument was with comedian Michael Ian Black, the former VICE columnist who has starred in things like The State, Viva Variety, and those mind-numbing VH1 talking heads shows about ALF. The two exchanged words yesterday, much to the amusement of their bloodthirsty public. Let’s review.

At noon, Maron tweeted the incredibly Maron-esque:

To which Black responded:

Thus instigating said argument. Marc responded:

And on it went, for 40 captivating minutes. Highlights include:

Before ending with a terse:

Previous to Twitter, there was essentially no way to enjoy the private conversations of others in a public forum without eavesdropping. Twitter has not only made it incredibly easy to be a voyeur, it’s made voyeurism a national pastime. And in the case of Maron, it’s made it profitable. After all, who doesn’t want to see famous people snipe at each other in real time? Enjoy the venom you just read? Maron: Fridays at 10, 9 Central, on IFC.

Before social media made the whole world a stage, comedians used to eloquently eviscerate each other in private. Take, for example, Judd Apatow and That 70’s Show creator Mark Brazill’s legendarily mean-spirited 2001 email exchange. (Brazill: “Have you ever read ‘What Makes Sammy Run’? I think you'd like it. Get cancer.” Apatow: “I guess if Mark Brazill doesn't go insane over stuff that makes no sense, the terrorists win. Good luck with That 80's Show. And I look forward to That 90's Show.") Apatow and Brazill’s flame war predated Twitter by five years. It was published in Harper’s Magazine a year after it took place. If the public were able to consume it as it was happening, who knows what the result would have been? Hell, Brazill could have actually been handed the keys to That 90's Show. Apatow could have made The 40 Year Old Virgin (and his career) four years sooner! 

In an interview with Salon, Maron explained that the events of yesterday were blown out of proportion. That he and Black “have an understanding. We ride a line. But we are generally OK with each other.” He continued, “It’s easy to get me worked up. I’m kind of a raw nerve on Twitter. How is that not going to be entertaining? I don’t always come out looking good but it’s an engaging thing for everyone involved and very revealing. Even if it is in ‘good fun.’”

Indeed, the argument was (mostly) fictitious. And why wouldn’t it be? The man is an entertainer, and clearly a very smart one. He knows what side his bread’s buttered on. He knows what people want. After decades of toiling in obscurity as a stand-up comedian and radio host, he finally broke on through to the other side of celebrity by making the public private and giving people deeply personal material they could feel honored being a party to. Twitter put him in the zeitgeist. And Twitter’s gonna keep him there. Maron: Fridays at 10, 9 Central, on IFC.

Photo via

@bornferal

For more comedy talk:

A Golden Tribute to Comedy Duo Greats

Robert Smigel

Chelsea Perretti Answers the Questions Of Carl Bennett

Pump It Up

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River Island top and earrings, Nike shorts

PHOTOS: ANNA RYON
STYLING: LOLA CHATTERTON

Hair and Make-up: Xabier Celaya
Fashion Assistant: Olivia Pigeon

Models: Ayesha, Nikoline, Rosie, Daniela, Anna, Lanre and Melissa

Click through to the next page to see more pictures.

River Island top, earrings and bracelet, Nike shorts

 

River Island top, Franklin and Marshall shorts

 

Lacoste L!ve polo shirt, Nike shorts, ASOS leggings; River Island top, H&M shorts

 

H&M top and bra, Franklin and Marshall shorts, vintage trainers, Lacoste L!ve socks

 

H&M top, Nike leggings, vintage socks and slippers, Reebok dumbbells

 

Franklin & Marshall shorts, vintage socks

 

Nike bra, American Apparel shorts, G-Shock watch

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Deportee Purgatory

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Avimael, “El Cocho,” and his girlfriend Marta Gomez, 42, sit inside their ñongo, which Cocho dug alongside the Tijuana River canal. Photos by David Maung.

Each year, more than 30 million people flow between the US and Mexico through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land-border crossing in the world. Situated between San Diego and Tijuana, at one time the area around San Ysidro was a prime spot to cross illegally into the US. But in 1994, Operation Gatekeeper expanded the border wall and increased the number of checkpoints. With the more recent addition of unmanned drone patrols along the border, Tijuana has become one of the most fortified border points in the Americas. Border crossers have been forced to turn to alternative sites of crossing, such as the Sonoran Desert, where hundreds of people die each year.

About 40 percent of Mexican immigrants deported from the US are sent back through Tijuana. Many of the deported border crossers have established a makeshift shantytown inside a dry, concrete riverbed where the Tijuana River once flowed—called El Bordo.

In years past, local nonprofits and shelters offered humanitarian aid to immigrants attempting to cross into the US, but today they primarily care for the deportees who have been booted back to Mexico. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (better known as ICE) reported a record 409,849 immigrants deported from the States in 2012, and a recent report published by Social Scientists on Immigration Policy states that, based on the current rates of deportation, more than two million people will have been deported by the Obama administration by 2014, more than under any president in American history. 

El Bordo roughly translates as “the border” or, more grimly, “the ditch.” In the 1960s, the area around the Tijuana River was a frontier town where would-be immigrants would congregate to meet polleros (“human smugglers”), who would transport them into the US for a fee. 

Micaela Saucedo runs the Casa Refugio Elvira shelter, located a block away from the dry river, and has assisted border crossers and deportees for more than 30 years. “In the 60s, it was very easy to cross. In those years, it was a different world.” Micaela led me to a public square where several hundred homeless deportees were milling about, waiting for the free meal that local humanitarian organizations dish out every day. “The deportees stay here [in Tijuana] because they think crossing again will be easy,” Micaela said, “but they don’t realize that the border is now completely secured. It’s very hard to cross.” 

Later Micaela gave me a tour of El Bordo—an inhospitable concrete embankment filled with a sea of tents. The elegant Las Americas mall in San Diego is visible just over the border fence. 

“Gallo!” Micaela shouted. A man emerged from a hole, crowing like a rooster. Delfino Lopez, a.k.a. El Gallo, a man in his early 30s who wore a hat with a fighting cock embroidered on it, is one of the estimated 3,000 people who reside in El Bordo year-round. Like many of his fellow inhabitants, Gallo previously resided in the US. He crossed the border illegally in 2005 and worked in construction for six years, sending most of his money to his wife and kids in Puebla. 

Two years ago, Gallo’s landlord called ICE on him, and he was deported. He hasn’t seen his family since and told me he refuses to do so until he’s capable of providing for them. He tried to return to the US several times but was unsuccessful. He said the only way he knew how to make money was to return to el otro lado. “I don’t want to return as a defeated person,” he added. 

Gallo welcomed me inside his improvised dwelling—a five-by-ten-foot minibunker, called a ñongo, that he dug out some time ago. It’s one of 300 along the concrete riverbed, with the rest of the deportees living in tents or inside the sewers. I crawled through a hatch fashioned out of the casing of an old TV. He told me it was safe because the dirt walls had been reinforced with recycled materials like wood, plastic tarps, and sandbags, but I couldn’t imagine sleeping in what is essentially a hole in the ground. Or, more pessimistically, a ready-made grave. Nevertheless, Gallo said, if constructed properly there are benefits to living in a subterranean abode—“the roof doesn’t leak and people can walk on top of it without it collapsing.” Still, that doesn’t mean he’s completely protected.

“I’m afraid of the cops,” Gallo said. “They come, and they burn everything. They think we are all drug addicts and thieves.” 

“The first time they came in, they brought a bulldozer and destroyed houses here and then set them on fire,” Micaela added. “The second time, they got here and spread gasoline, not even checking if people were inside or not. Some people were burned. Then a third time the same thing happened.”

We walked the embankment’s perimeter, stopping at an overturned cooler. Micaela knocked, and moments later, Avimael “El Cocho” Martinez emerged from his hole, inviting us inside. His “Cochotunnel,” as he calls it, was much larger than Gallo’s and, he said, could accommodate as many as 16 guests. Cocho came to El Bordo two years ago after being deported, and like many of his neighbors, he still yearns for his former life in the States.  

“I was in the US for a long time,” Cocho said. “I wanted the American dream. My family is OK, but most of my belongings are still there. I left my family and my work. I used to own my own business, an auto-body shop.” His eyes welled up while reminiscing about his former home; the luxuries of having a TV, laundry room, kitchen, and guest room. “We used to eat like regular people. This place is awful. It’s really impossible to compare. There I had happiness, good memories. Here I have sadness. This is a place full of vices. I try to stay away from them.” 

Gallo and Cocho aren’t exceptions in El Bordo—many of the residents have worked in the US and even have children who are American citizens. Many were deported for infractions like drunk driving or domestic violence. 

According to Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana, Mexicans deported from the US fall into three loose categories: those apprehended while trying to cross the border illegally; deportees who once lived in the US and had normal lives but were deported; and former inmates sent home from overcrowded US prisons.

All of this becomes even more troubling when you consider that Mexicans living illegally in the United States have become vital to the American economy, providing cheap labor for farms, factories, restaurants, and other industries. They are also essential to the Mexican economy. Remittances sent from the US represent Mexico’s second-largest revenue source after oil. 


A homeless man showers in El Bordo, the border wall separating the US and Mexico stands behind him.

“The Mexican state has a huge responsibility to provide immigrants with free food, shelter, give them IDs, and help them find work,” Victor said. “They should provide orientation about the services that the city offers. Last year, migrants sent $24 billion to Mexico, so it would only be fair, when those immigrants become deportees, that the state should give back.”

Finding work is nearly impossible for the majority of those living in El Bordo, so they come to rely on nonprofits and religious organizations for basic necessities. The most established of these organizations is the Padre Chava soup kitchen, located directly across the street from El Bordo. The kitchen serves breakfast to more than 1,000 people daily. 

Father Ernesto Hernández, the priest who oversees the soup kitchen, said that deportees can go from having respectable, comfortable lives in the States to being broke and homeless in as little as ten days. He explained that recent deportees usually spend their last few dollars on cheap hotels or shelters while trying to find work. Most are unsuccessful and wind up living on the streets where the police harass them until they end up in El Bordo. 

“A lot of the people that have been deported were in the US for a long time,” Father Ernesto said. “They have a family, wife and kids there. Once they are deported, they decide to stay here to feel a bit closer to their families [in the US].” 

Father Ernesto introduced us to Joaquin, a man in his late 30s. He said that he had lived in the US undocumented for 22 years before he was deported in 2012 for expired license-plate tags on his truck. His wife, eight brothers, parents, and four kids (two of whom are American citizens) remain in California, where Joaquin ran a welding business. Joaquin hopes that after filing his 2012 taxes in the US (made possible by “borrowing” a friend’s Social Security number) his refund will cover the $3,000 coyote fee to get him back to the US. 

Tijuana’s economy has changed drastically over the last decade. In the early 2000s, the main tourist thoroughfare, Revolución Avenue, was packed with underage gringos getting drunk and buying Viagra and Xanax over the counter at pharmacies. The debauchery came to an abrupt halt in 2006, when the Sinaloa cartel declared war on the Tijuana cartel and local police forces. In 2008 alone, there were at least 844 murders in the city. While the official death toll dwindled slightly over the next two years, the violence continued unabated. The killings have subsided in recent years, partially because of the increased presence of police and the Mexican army, and partially because the Sinaloa cartel has largely forced their enemies out of town. Restaurants are now reopening, the bar scene is booming, and the locals have reclaimed Revolución Avenue for themselves. Ruidoson, Tijuana’s brand of electronic music, is rising to prominence, and the local Baja Med cuisine is gaining international attention. Today, Tijuana is once again fun, vibrant, and for the most part, safe. 

To better understand the situation on the border, I arranged to ride along with Tijuana Police Subdirector Armando Rascón on a scheduled patrol of Zona Norte, sandwiched between the tourist center and El Bordo. Zona Norte is where most of the migrant shelters are located, along with many houses that serve as heroin-shooting dens and the red-light district, which is full of cheap hotels, brothels, and massive strip clubs.

“The problem at El Bordo is serious, and it’s growing,” Armando said. “The people that live there are not worried about eating. In the morning, they eat at the Padre Chava soup kitchen, then at 4 PM, a Christian group feeds them, and then Americans feed them again at night. These people are worried about getting money to buy their drugs because most of them are addicts. And that’s why they go snatch a purse, or steal whatever they can.” 

Armando continued, explaining the strategy of local law enforcement. “We go and destroy everything they build. But as soon as we destroy it, they build it back again. It’s like a game.” I asked him about Micaela’s allegations that the police sometimes torched the El Bordo encampments, and he assured us that his officers would never engage in such brutal tactics, claiming that the residents had started the fires accidentally while cooking food outside or burning tires. Most of the occupiers of El Bordo I spoke with, however, said that they are terrified of the police, and many told me that they have been abused and beaten up by officers, and some said they’ve had their homes bulldozed or burned down. 

As we continued along the canal, Armando pointed out the giant sewage tunnels and said that many deportees live inside of them in total darkness. “All we want is for these people to stay in El Bordo,” Armando said. “We don’t want them to rob our tourists. We have to take care of the people that cross the border legally into the US, and those that come back into Mexico… Our job is to provide security for all the citizens of Tijuana, protect the tourists and businesses in our city. And the way to show we are doing our work is with operatives and removing people from the streets.”


Cocho peers out from his “Cochotunnel.”

When I asked him about potential solutions to the growing migrant problem in El Bordo, he said, “We would have to start with the US sending the deportees by plane to the rest of the country, instead of sending everyone through here. In the downtown area, 86 percent of the crimes are related to the people that live in El Bordo… At the same time this is a problem that has to be solved from a social perspective, and not just by putting people in jail.”

The Mexican federal government has a program to help repatriated deportees, but it is not nearly enough. The program provides a free phone call, some food and medical attention, and a temporary ID (often not recognized by cops and potential employers), but beyond that, there’s nothing else given to help them get reestablished in Mexico.

It’s painfully apparent that many of the residents of El Bordo are addicted to hard drugs like heroin and meth, which only reinforces the local police’s perceptions of the embankment’s displaced residents. A dose of heroin can be bought for as little as $2, and most users I spoke with said they shot up at least three or four times per day. Many of these addicts support their addiction by collecting scrap metal, and the police said they resort to robbery and other criminal activity to fund their habits. 

Dr. Remedios Lozada, coordinator of the HIV and STD program at the Baja California health ministry, has organized a needle-exchange program in El Bordo with the goal of reducing the risk of HIV and hepatitis infection. “All of them are addicted to some substance,” she said of its residents. “Ninety percent of them do intravenous drugs like heroin. Those who don’t shoot up at least smoke meth.” Due to lack of funds, the program can only manage to conduct the exchanges every few weeks. 

I accompanied Dr. Remedios to one of the exchanges. She drove me to an encampment near the river surrounded by tall bushes. We parked the car, and I watched as approximately 30 men staggered up the concrete ramp and approached a table that volunteer organizers had set up to exchange needles. Each man was clutching an assortment of used needles, and some even had syringes wedged behind their ears. Moments after receiving their clean needles, each began cooking up heroin—or chiva (“goat”) as they call it—in plastic spoons. They then proceeded to shoot into their necks, legs, and between their fingers, right in front of the volunteer table. 

I approached a man after he finished injecting his dose. He told me he had been recently deported from a prison in the US. I asked him if he thought he was better off living in jail or El Bordo, and he replied that at least jail had provided him with basic sustenance and a roof over his head.  

Our next stop was a bridge where around 100 people—including a few women—had gathered below. The volunteers set up their table and doled out clean needles and condoms. Ten minutes later, a guy wearing brand-new shoes and a black hoodie appeared. Our driver discreetly told us that he was a wholesale heroin supplier, dropping off a fresh batch for the local dealer. We decided it was time to leave.  

Watch our new documentary about Mexican deportees living in El Bordo on VICE.com later this month.

Read more from our World Hates You Issue:

This Is What Winning Looks Like

A Long Way From Home

Getting Wet

A Chat with Janicza Bravo (and Brett Gelman) About Her New Short Starring Michael Cera in a Wheelchair

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Longtime VICE contributors and honey bunnies Janicza Bravo and Brett Gelman are responsible for the Hair Trilogy of VICE magazine columns entitled Toupee, Combover, and Rat Tail, respectively. And not only are they dark comedic geniuses and human beings par excellence, they are also very talented filmmakers. Case in point: Janicza’s new short film Gregory Go Boom, starring Michael Cera as a wheelchair-bound dorkface who just wants to fire BB guns into the Salton Sea with his older degenerate brother (who is, of course, played by Brett), lose his virginity, and generally have some fun in his life for once. It’s absurdly funny and slightly depressing (just like modern life), and you can watch the whole fuckin’ thing below. A couple weeks back I chatted with J&B over baba ghanous and margaritas about the new film and why they did such a thing.

VICE: People won’t really get this question until they see the end of the movie, but Gregory Go Boom… did the idea start with the title?
Janicza Bravo: Yeah, it started with the title. Well, no, it started with Brett and I going out to dinner with Brett’s uncle around two years ago.

What sort of uncle are we talking about here?
Janicza: He’s a really cool uncle.

Does he look like Brett?
Janicza: Yeah, he does. He’s handsome, really tan, little, really strong body.

That sounds nice.
Brett Gelman: He likes to have a good time.
Janicza: White hair.
Brett: A very positive man.

Janicza: Very positive. We were waiting to have dinner with him and before he got there, there was a man sitting next to us who was in a wheelchair and who was, like, obsessively staring at his phone. He was in one of those really fancy electric wheelchairs that could probably do fine on a highway or something like that. Anyway, he kept looking at his phone and eventually Brett’s uncle comes, we’re having dinner with him and I’m kind of infatuated with... it just seemed like the guy in the wheelchair was waiting for somebody. Then this woman walked in and she’s late. It’s raining a little bit outside. She’s British. She’s looking around, sees him, and her face is like Holy shit. And she sits down and immediately apologizes for being late, but she also says she can’t be there for very long. And he’s like, “Oh, OK.” And she’s like, “I have to make a call.” So she gets up and leaves. I went outside to have a cigarette and overheard her conversation on the phone, which was that she had been set up on a blind date with him but hadn’t been told that he was in a wheelchair. She was really pissed off about that.

How’d that make you feel? There’s a level of honesty there—and this is mirrored in the film—that you can’t really deny. People want to be nonjudgmental and whatever, but you witnessed an undoubtedly honest moment outside that restaurant and incorporated it into the film.
Janicza: I mean, I think that, to me, that guy is disabled or handicapped. And obviously I am physically very able. But, then again, I have my own handicaps. We all do. And so it made me feel really bad. Because I think I have my own broken things like that, you know? Being of color, being a woman. I experience my own things as a result. But I also think that, if I had been set up with somebody that was in a wheelchair, I would just want to know that beforehand. Anyway, she comes back inside, and he’s ordered two glasses of prosecco.

And she’s like I’m definitely going to leave soon. She drank it really fast. And they continued to drink and have a really great time.

She didn’t walk out on him?
Janicza: No, she stayed.

So this short takes place in the Salton Sea, which to me is a great setting to heighten certain uncomfortable realities.
Janicza: I’d become really infatuated with the Salton Sea, and I thought it’d be great to set this kind of story in that place. And to kind of write in my language but in that environment. So it’s a little bit heightened, but it still feels like it makes sense. It’s not like anywhere I’ve been.

Have you visited there before you shot it?
Janicza: Yeah I had.
Brett: Twice before we shot it, right?
Janicza: Yeah. I visited once because I was interested, and then I just kept thinking about it. Then I wanted to spend more intimate time there, and it just seemed like a good place for the film to take place it. I mean, when you read the script, it wouldn’t work in LA, where we live. It needed to feel like it was somewhere special—like an island, you know? Somewhere where there weren’t that many people.

Well, it’s like, what’s Michael Cera’s character’s—uh, oh shit never mind…
Janicza: Gregory.

Obviously. Duh. Oh fuck, I’m dumb.
Janicza: Gregory. The film...
Brett: It’s just in the title!

We’ll leave all that in the interview, don’t worry. I really enjoy self-deprecation. More people should be OK with it. It should happen more often.
Janicza: Please, you’d better leave that in.

Oh, I promise you.
Brett: If I speak at all in this interview, I will trump your embarrassment. I will say something way worse.

That’s going in, too. And Brett, you play the creepiest character in the film, which makes perfect sense. You really came off as someone who lived near the Salton Sea. Mad serial killer vibes.
Brett: Oh I did? Thank you.

It’s the same in real life.
Brett: Oh, I know.
Janicza: In your personal life, that’s what you definitely seem.

It seemed like some of the people in the movie were natives of the region—well, maybe exaggerated versions. What were the locals like?
Janicza: I mean there’s definitely a town of people who are born and raised and have history and roots there. But then there’s also a feeling of, like, rapists, tax-evasion, criminals, people with guns. It just seems like maybe a lot of the people there ran away from something. I wouldn’t say in Bombay Beach, where we shot the film, it feels like that. But in Slab City, where Salvation Mountain is, Slab City— “the last free city in America”—there are definitely, like, murder vibes.

How did you instruct Michael Cera to prepare for the role?
Janicza: As I said, I’d been to the Salton Sea few times, so I’d taken a lot of photographs. I sent him a bunch of the pictures, we hung out, we talked about it. But I really entrusted him with the role because we were both on the same page about it.

But had he been there before you started shooting?
Janicza: No he’d never been there, but seeing my photos gave him a sense of the world. And we had talked about a few real-life people that inspired his character. We talked a little bit about Daniel Johnston—people who just seem like the summation a lot of really bad things, or unfortunate things.

How did you link up with him? Did you have him in mind?
Janicza: Yeah, I mean, we linked up because we’re working on a full-length together—Lemon, which Brett and I wrote together.
Brett: Can we say that?
Janicza: We can say that, that’s how we know Michael.

If you want to, it doesn’t have to go in...
Brett: Don’t put that in.
Janicza: Yeah, go ahead and put it in.
Brett: Yeah, make me seem like a little coward—a total asshole. Oh, this... this is mine? [looks at the table] Is this my phone?

No, that’s mine, I just took the case off.
Brett: Oh, OK.

Yeah, I’m recording you. I’m not a pickpocket.
Brett: Have we had that many margaritas?
Janicza: You have, apparently.

You’re drugged actually. I already touched your privates a few times when you were passed out.
Brett: I remember one of those.

Yeah, OK.
Brett: It was great.

I know.
Brett: It was great.

You’ve still got some… stuff in your beard.
Brett: I thought you were her, but...

Hey, what can I say, I have small hands.
Janicza: Your hands are tiny, aren’t they?A little bit bigger than mine.

A little bit bigger, but you wouldn’t know.
Janicza: Once it’s on a dick, you never know the difference. Uh... what?

We’re leaving that in, too.

@rocco_castoro

For more from Janicza and Brett, check these out:

Hippo Mary’s Vendetta

The Debut Single

That's Tokyo Town

 

A Few Impressions: 'Leviathan,' I Love You

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On a Tuesday night, the Music Hall theater in Beverly Hills was seemingly empty. I arrived an hour early for the 10 PM screening of Leviathan. I walked in thinking it was a poetic documentary about the lives of deep-sea fishermen.

Before the movie I sat in the lobby and read Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. At some point, a huge crowd of Israeli women filed in and overpowered the Daft Punk emanating from my headphones. Must have been a special screening. It was then I noticed a poster for the LA Jewish Film Festival depicting a bunch of director’s chairs arranged like the Star of David. Underneath it read a different kind of star.

My companion arrived at 10. We entered the all-but-empty theater and sat in the back because I always sit in the back. The film started with an appropriately weighty epigraph from the Book of Job, something about the hoary deep. I was already sold.

I’m the biggest Moby Dick fan ever, and here was a movie that relies on biblical-level pretensions while capturing the fishing life with an unblinking gaze. It’s modern-day Melville, at least the non-narrative chapters that relate the whaling life through non-fictional accounts and facts.

One of the most salient aspects of the film was its camerawork. I haven’t looked into how they filmed it, but it seems as if they attached a bunch of small GoPro cameras to every part of the ship—including the heads of fishermen, the underwater nets, and possibly even seagulls (my guess is they didn’t actually do this, but it sure seems like it). It begins in darkness and then gradually transitions into a frenetic exploration of the environment, both above and below the water, and above and below deck. The early shots must have been shot by a camera attached to one of the fishermen, because the frame jolts around with quick, deliberate movements as their nets are pulled aboard.  

Then we see the haul. It’s enormous and grotesque and beautiful. And the precision and routinized ease with which the fishermen start arranging and slicing and beheading the fish is mesmerizing. This is a slaughterhouse of the sea, but strangely not as instant-vegetarian-inducing as watching a cattle abattoir or sausage factory in action; it’s less The Jungle and more the mesmeric presentation of Ahab and his mythical crew. Notice the cigarettes. One man lights two at a time and passes one off to his facially scarred friend. They let the things sway and dangle as they slice and rip, slice and rip. They grab the slippery, bug-eyed things in the bin, and then slice and chop, and let the heads fall shock-eyed on the deck.

Later we see these large-eyed mothers on the floor of the ship—just the heads—as the sea rages through a gutter hole in the background. We sit with these heads as the boat rocks and shifts in the intense surf and the heads carom about and then sit and stare, a lifeless oracle, somehow easier to look at because it’s a fish’s head, a cat’s plaything. Then they are shifted back through the gutter hole and returned to the wild sea.

Dead fish. More romantic than dead cow. Is that because we’re more desensitized to seeing dead fish? Some restaurants serve them whole, and some “vegetarians” (pescetarians?) are OK with eating fish. Dead fish are somehow not as threatening or disgusting as other dead things that we eat; little swimming bundles of food plucked from the ocean, the unseen vastness. But on witnessing how immense these devices are, these manmade leviathans that pull their prey from the sea by the shipload, one can only wonder: How many more are left? How can it be?

There are some shots (connected to a crane?) that plunge underwater before being pulled high into the air above a flock of seagulls. I mean, WTF? How? How did the film’s makers achieve this poetry? Because, if anything, this movie exemplifies the art of poetry without words, the art of poetry through images, the art taking real life and framing it and juxtaposing it in such a way that it becomes greater than fiction. It holds up a mirror to nature, but this mirror came from a funhouse and in its distortions reveals a deeper truth.             

My companion said she got seasick from watching all the shaking, sea-rocking stuff. I, on the other hand, want to go back and ride it again. Leviathan is where documentary filmmaking can go if they aspire to art. So many forms are consumed by the television these days, to see a bunch of truckers travel over ice-covered roads or a family of hunters doing their thing and being funny to boot is de rigeur on any given night. But only as a movie—a film—takes the care to do this sort of baby work, the important minutiae. In this case it feels as majestic, or as horrible, as something out of the Bible. A document becomes an epic.

This is life. Man versus nature. Man’s machines. Man’s mastery of the planet. Man’s destruction of the planet. Man’s ushering in of the apocalypse. But it is also beautiful. I used to wonder how the greatness and horror of Moby Dick might ever be recaptured on film or otherwise, chiefly because whaling is now considered among the worst environmental crimes on the planet. Well, here it is: man, mastering the seas and the world, doing horrible things, brave things, impossible things. Because we are man. We need to survive. And conquer.

Photos courtesy of James Franco.

@JamesFrancoTV

Previously - Gatsby

More film stuff from VICE:

A Chat with Janicza Bravo (and Brett Gelman) About Her New Short Starring Michael Cera in a Wheelchair

Some Tribeca Film Festival Movies Made Us Vomit, Others Made Us Smile

I'm Short, Not Stupid Presents: 'Food'

I Used to Abuse Fentanyl

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Your brain on fentanyl. via.

It’s no surprise that Montreal is one of the biggest drug ports in Canada. It’s a party city filled with kids who like to have fun. Over the past six years Montreal has been responsible for 60% of the $5.5 billion in drug seizures that have been caught at our nation's border, according to Canadian Border Service Agency, and god knows how many billions of dollars sold internally. There are always drug busts going on in our mess of a city, but that’s what gives it a certain sketchbag charm. It’s one of the only cities in Canada where the youth are massively involved in the scene and are quite resilient when it comes to taking their drugs. Which just means they’re going to go out looking for something harder than the run of the mill ecstasy pill eventually. So it’s not surprising that the police found three kilos of desmethyl fentanyl in their most recent drug bust earlier this month.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is supposed to be used as a pain reliever. It is way more potent than morphine and generally is given to cancer patients in the form of a patch to help relieve pain. There are a few different ways that you can get in into your system by either smoking, shooting, snorting or orally ingesting it—depending on the form you have available. Most often than not, heroin users will mix it with lower grade heroin in order to compensate and make the drug more potent and get a next level high. What a lot of people don’t realize is how easy it is to overdose on due to the potency, which has caused a bunch of fatalities including Wilco’s guitar player Jay Bennett. He had an actual prescription for this shit.

The Montreal police force was shocked, claiming that this was the first time they have ever found fentanyl being sold in the black market. In addition to the three kilos of fent, they found enough equipment to produce over three million pills and machines that are capable of pushing out one pill per second. Which is pretty impressive when you think about it. This is the biggest and most recent drug bust this year; it spanned across several districts in Montreal, including the Plateau, Little Burgundy, and Point St-Charles.

This may be the first time it’s shown up in such large quantities in a Montreal drug bust, but fentanyl is no stranger to Canada. Two years ago in Surrey, B.C. the R.C.M.P. found the first fentanyl lab in the country which was only discovered because a 30 year old man was dying of an overdose in there. Fentanyl in it’s purest form before it’s processed is pretty toxic apparently and when the police were clearing it out in Montreal four of them had to be hospitalized for getting too much of a dose of it through their specially designed drug proof suits.


Fentanyl patches. via.

When I initially heard about this bust, it brought me back to a hot summer day three years ago—the first day I ever took fentanyl. I will never forget that first time. It was around noon, in a tent, in the middle of an electronic music festival. I sat nervously on some random person’s sleeping bag as my friend cut out a square off this patch and placed it on a piece of tin foil. I had never freebased anything before, but my pal explained that he was going to heat it up from underneath and that I would have to suck up the smoke from the straw when the patch started bubbling. I knew that nothing good would come out of this, but I took the straw from him anyway, and waited until I saw the smoke starting to rise from the tinfoil. I inhaled deeply as the patch bubbled and turned a gnarly shade of brown. I held in the smoke and exhaled. As it started hitting all my nerves disintegrated and I felt fucking awesome. He took his hit and then we stumbled out of the tent and into the sun. As we walked around I started stretching. I felt light as a feather and bright as the sun. My friend turned to me and asked me how I was doing. I smiled and he just said: “It makes you feel invincible doesn’t it?” I couldn’t agree more.

It wasn’t until I had some more hits that I realized that this drug wasn’t all sunshine and rainbow sparkles. As the drugs started to fade about 45 minutes later, so did I. The nausea that gripped me was insane. To keep it at bay I took another hit. That helped take off the edge a bit, but my insides still felt like they were smashing together like a hurricane.

Next thing I knew fent was on the brain. Fent and everything else I could get my hands on. This was a dark period in my life. Looking back on it now, it’s hard to remember everything that happened, but one thing that I know is that if I didn’t have the support of my close friends I would be in a much worse situation. I remember sitting in my house alone freebasing the shit out of this one patch and mixing it with other drugs, when I came to a stark realization that I was ruining my life; but I couldn’t stop. Or, more accurately, I didn’t want to stop because I was afraid of the withdrawal. It took me losing most of my friends and alienating myself at school to realize I was being a piece of shit. So I quit. I quit everything at once.

I spent what seemed like an eternity in my apartment throwing up and sweating out all the reckless nights of partying. I had no way of telling how long I was actually in there alone as I switched between reality and dreams, but just as easily as one flicks a switch I woke up and I felt clear headed. The withdrawal fever had passed, I was exhausted, but I no longer needed that crutch. I remember making a lot of phone calls that day, apologizing for my behaviour over the past few months and feeling like a real dirt bag. It’s all very surreal to me now that a few years have passed, but I’m still grateful I went through it—because now I know that fent is fucked up—and I will never touch that shit again.



Previously:

The Metha-DOs and Metha-DON'Ts of Shaking Your Addiction

In the Future Your Drug Dealer Will Be a Printer

Austerity's Drug of Choice

VICE News: Triple Hate - Part 2

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NEWS

The Wizard of the Saddle Rides Again

Is a Park in Memphis, Tennessee, the Epitome of Racism in Modern America? The KKK Say It’s Just History, Many Others Disagree  

By Rocco Castoro


A cross-lighting ceremony that took place near Tupelo, Mississippi, in late March following a Ku Klux Klan rally in Memphis, Tennessee, that was organized to protest the renaming of three parks in the city built in honor of the Confederacy. It is a “cross lighting,” not “cross burning,” because these Klansmen “do not burn, but light the cross to signify that Christ is the light of the world.” Photo by Robert King.

I

n the middle of an unkempt park in Memphis, Tennessee, stands an oversize bronze statue of a Confederate lieutenant general astride his mount. Its subject, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is considered by some to be one of the most infamous and powerful racists in American history. The first official leader of the Ku Klux Klan, some historians allege that Lieutenant General Forrest’s most heinous act was ordering his troops to slaughter hundreds of surrendered soldiers at 1864’s Battle of Fort Pillow, more than half of whom were African American. Others celebrate him as the physical manifestation of the South’s ethos during the Civil War and beyond: a rebel hero who relentlessly campaigned for his cause until it became untenable; he never gave up, even after his death.

Unveiled in 1905, the Memphis News-Scimitar reported that the masterfully sculpted monument to Nathan Bedford Forrest (or NBF) would “stand for ages as the emblem of a standard of virtue.” And today it seems the newspaper’s prophecy was correct, except for perhaps the “virtue” part. As of 2013, “that devil Forrest,” as he was infamously nicknamed by Union General William T. Sherman, is still sprinting across a Tennessee ridge on his stallion, kicking up dust in a city with historically tense racial relations. 

Pink granite tiles and modest bronze headstones that look like plaques skirt the sculpture. General Forrest and his wife, Mary Ann Montgomery, are buried underneath. NBF’s more celebrated moniker, at least in some circles, is the “Wizard of the Saddle,” a nickname he earned for his wondrous equestrian talents in battle, and one that calls to mind the highest modern-day rank of the KKK—the Imperial Wizard. 

The latest controversy surrounding the park and statue came to a head in early February, when the Memphis City Council unanimously voted to change the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park (at least temporarily; a special commission is still in the process of deciding its final name as of press time), in line with the downtown medical-student facilities of the University of Tennessee that surround it. Two other Memphis parks—Confederate Park and Jefferson Davis Park, named after the president of the Confederacy—were also renamed by the City Council, with the reasoning that they were publicly funded reminders of an era that could be considered offensive and unwelcoming to the majority of the city’s residents, 63 percent of whom are African American according to the 2010 census. 

Shortly after the City Council’s decision, a man identifying himself as Exalted Cyclops Edward announced that his chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was planning a massive rally to protest the renaming of the three parks. “It’s not going to be 20 or 30,” he told local NBC affiliate WMC-TV. “It’s going to be thousands of Klansmen from the whole United States coming to Memphis, Tennessee.” Later  in the month the city granted the Loyal White Knights a permit for a public rally to be held March 30 on the steps of the county courthouse in downtown Memphis, one day before Easter and five days before the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel.  

It was an eerily familiar scenario for Memphians. On January 17, 1998, around 50 members of the KKK held a rally at the very same courthouse in what they claimed was an attempt to protect their “heritage” in the lead-up to MLK Day and that year’s 30th anniversary of his assassination. Outnumbered by counterprotesters, the Klan’s vitriolic screeds incited a small riot that resulted in looting and the ill-prepared police force teargassing the entire crowd. 

One Memphian and self-proclaimed member of the Grape Street Crips seemed to take the Klan’s threats to return to his city very seriously. Following the announcement of the planned rally, 20-year-old DaJuan Horton posted a video on YouTube in which he states that he’s organizing a consortium of local gangs—some rivals—to unify and show their discontent on the day of the rally. Local and national media suddenly became very interested in the impending event, whipping a diverse cross-section of the city into a frenzy.

“They gonna come to Memphis, Tennessee… where Martin Luther King got gunned down,” DaJuan says in the video. “You’re going to come here and rally deep—really, really deep, in my language, just to talk? No, it’s not gonna happen like that. When you come to Memphis, Tennessee, we’re gonna rally right across from you, and it’s gonna be Young Mob, Crips, Bloods, GDs, Vice Lords, Goon Squad… I’m getting on the phone with them daily. I’m talking to the big guys, the big kahunas. I’m talking to the Bill Gates of the gang wars. You come to Memphis, we’re going to be waiting on you. It’s versatile down here. We got every gang you can think of; we’ve got the fucking Mob down here. Bring your ass on.” 

Had the City Council’s decision to rename the park sparked a potential showdown with what many law enforcement agencies consider America’s oldest terrorist organization and a mega-alliance of the country’s most violent gangs? Or was the Klan struggling to retain relevancy in an era when race relations have progressed so much that the US has elected a black president twice over? I traveled to Memphis about a week before the rally to meet everyone involved and find out. 

Continue reading on page two.


Please Start Banning Books Again

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It’s been a while since anything besides people and their weapons seemed dangerous in America. There’s a lot of attention—and a great deal of money—spent on determining where the next physical threat is, and how that threat is going to kill us, but when it comes to protecting our minds from dirty things our stance is about as liberal as it gets. Profanity, outside of mildly offending someone’s taste, seems nearly impossible. Compared to places where you can be killed for speaking out or using sacrilegious images, this freedom is a good thing, right?

I’m not so sure.

I kind of miss the idea of cultural lines that one can’t step over. One of my most memorable high school experiences was getting a permission slip signed by my parents so I could listen to an audiotape of Allen Ginsberg reading “America.” Our teacher warned us it included vulgar language and homosexuality and drugs. Something about having to break a permissive barrier to gain access to that material grabbed my teenage attention more than any of the other stuff we were made to read that year—much of which I’ve long forgotten even the most basic elements of.

But “America” stands out in my mind. And not even because I think it’s a particularly great poem, but because in some way I felt being allowed to hear it was a privilege. Before then, my reading had been waning. I was a voracious book-face child until somewhere during middle or high school, when I became terribly bored with what I was assigned. But even my 16-year-old brain could tell there was something much more volatile under the surface of “America.” From there I set off on my own, first to Burroughs and Henry Miller, and eventually to Joyce, McCarthy, etc. It took a sort of brain bomb to get me going, but once I’d started I couldn’t stop.

Looking over a list of the banned and challenged books in US history, it’s impossible to argue that some of our most important works weren’t at one point considered wrong:

Moby Dick - Banned from English classes in Texas in 1851 because it “conflicted with community values.” Plus, think of how many kids in school must be making dick jokes every time it’s taught.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Called “trash and suitable only for the slums.” Not to mention depicted race in a way that many people today wish they could forget.

The Great Gatsby - Teachers fired for teaching it; labeled “anti-white” and “obscene”; “blasphemous and undermines morality.”

The Grapes of Wrath - Pissed off a buttload of Christians because it contains the phrase “god damn.”

Ulysses - Burned and banned for more than a decade, despite how the so-called “sexy” scenes in the book are so disfigured by their own language most readers wouldn’t be able to know what’s going on.

A Clockwork Orange - One bookseller in Utah was actually arrested for selling the book, then forced to relocate his store to another city even after the charges were dropped.

The list goes on and on, including books like The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies, Catch-22, Brave New World, Animal Farm, As I Lay Dying, Beloved, Invisible Man, Native Son, Slaughterhouse Five, The Jungle, Naked Lunch, The Naked and the Dead, Tropic of Cancer… Oh just go here.

It’s hard to imagine an American lit class today without those titles, right? They’ve all become so central to our literary understanding that looking back one can’t understand why they’d been called sick. And while all are important works and well constructed and important, I also can’t help but wonder if a part—even a large part—of why these books were and continue to be touted has to do with their censorship and the interest built around what could cause such a reaction, as well as the acts of preservation spurred by their suppression.

These books don’t seem dangerous now because they’ve been accepted—we have fought for them, made them ours. A thing once called profane is now a benchmark; and that’s good. It keeps us moving. It makes us aware of where we are.

So why shouldn’t we ban more stuff? How much music did the RIAA end up selling because people wanted what the cops considered bullshit? You know you never would have heard about 2 Live Crew if it weren’t for all the old ladies trying to smash it. If there’s any way weird art and fucked up text can find a glory hole into a growing young person’s brain, it’s through authority figures telling them they can’t have it. That approach works wonders compared to trying to convince anyone anything is worth their time.

I guess what I’m getting at here is that there has never been a better time to start censoring art in America. As you can see by the works listed above, the stuff we ban doesn’t even have to actually be profane—most anything could offend someone somewhere given the proper context and fuel. Make people afraid of what William Vollmann is going to say next; what damage to reality Ben Marcus has up his brain-sleeve; how hard Kelly Link is going to screw our idea of what we are. Let’s make someone scared about a sentence or a song or an image composed by someone who never leaves the house or might want to actually hurt another person. Even if it doesn’t change anything, it’d be fun to watch people burning inert objects in the streets again, screaming about God. 

Previously by Blake Butler: Suck on the Monolith

@blakebutler

Murderous Fanatics and EDL Idiots Brought Darkness to Woolwich Yesterday

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Yesterday afternoon in Woolwich, South London, two men ran over a soldier from the local army barracks, before getting out of their car and hacking at his body with machetes, while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great). Immediately after the attack, the two men – who were armed with a variety of weapons – spoke at length to bystanders and made political statements to camera, before police arrived on the scene and attempted to secure the area. After 20 minutes, the Met's armed response team finally arrived, shooting them both. The soldier died at the scene and the two attackers – who expressed religious and political motives for the murder – are currently in hospital. The case is being treated by the police, the government and the media as a terrorist attack.

The story emerged quickly yesterday through a mess of unconfirmed eyewitness reports and social media posts – most prominently through Twitter user @BOYADEE, who relayed events to the world in a flurry of 11 tweets starting at 3.09PM and 3.33PM [all sic/gic]:

"Ohhhhh myyyy God!!!! I just see a man with hishead chopped off right in front of my eyes!" he said. "The two black bredas run this white guy over over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!

"People were asking whyyy whyyy they were just saying we've had enough! They looked like they were on sutn! Then they start waving a recolver.

"The first guy goes for the female fed with the machete and she not even ramping she took man out like robocop never seen nutn like it. Then the next breda try buss off the rusty 45 and it just backfires and blows mans finger clean off... Feds didnt pet to just take him out!!

"These times i was just going to the shop for some fruit and veg and i see all that!"

The fact that the attack was carried out in broad daylight in front of horrified onlookers, and that the attackers seemed calm enough to speak at length to those onlookers about their motives, only served to reinforce the shock. The fact that the incident took place on the aptly named Artillery Place wasn’t enough to mask the sense of horror shared by everyone.

Talking to a filming bystander in a chillingly calm voice for somebody with blood quite literally on a machete in his hands, one of the attackers said: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women had to witness this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you."

In a separate piece of footage, the man added: "You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start bussin' our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No, it's going to be the average guy, like you and your children.

"So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so you can all live in peace."

Once we had finished staring at the initial reports on our laptops in disbelief, we headed down to Woolwich to gauge people’s reactions.

We arrived to a heavy police presence which seemed to be dwarfed by the media scrum. The ubiquitous police helicopter buzzed noisily overhead. Unsurprisingly, everyone we spoke to was surprised at what had happened.

Julia Wilders, a 51-year-old local, told us what she saw. “The blue car was crashed against the lamppost. My husband went: ‘Oh look, there’s two people trying to resuscitate someone.’ So we walked back to have a look. And then suddenly we saw a tall black guy come with a gun. So my husband went: ‘No, get back,’ and he phoned the police... The police turned up and he ran towards them with meat cleavers before they could even get out of the car, so they shot him. And the other one looked like he was going to lift the gun up so they shot him as well."

Israel Ali, 62, told us how cohesive the community usually is: “I’m a Muslim. It’s quite peaceful here. I’ve been here for 20 years. I’m really surprised,” he said. Is there usually any ill-feeling between the locals and the soldiers in the barracks? “It’s very friendly. When they come out in public they say ‘Hello’ and we say ‘Hello’.”

Eighty-three-year-old Maurice Edwards told us, “You don’t get trouble in Woolwich most of the time. I’ve been here 46 years and there has never been any trouble with the soldiers in the barracks. We happened to be in a cafe having a meal. We decided to have a sandwich and a cup of tea, which was just as well because I would have been caught in the bloody middle of it. I’m not that keen on guns, not when there’s bullets flying around!"

Richard, a young Muslim, who didn’t want to be photographed, was concerned at the reports that the murder was linked to terrorism: "I hope that what they are suggesting is not right. I’m a Muslim myself, and this is a big issue to our community. And if it turns out that it was a terrorist attack it will really affect the Muslims in this community. That’ll be a huge disappointment.” Was he afraid of the potential for anti-Muslim reprisals? “Yes. That’s what I’m really scared of.”

As the sun began to set, it seemed increasingly likely that Richard's fears would be realised. Reacting to the attack with their typical sense of balance and serenity, the EDL had tweeted: "CONFIRMED WE HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO A TERROR ATTACK BY ISLAM, WE ARE CURRENTLY UNDER ATTACK." So it was only a matter of time until Britain's far-right Strongbow squadron turned up to do something about the situation. Despite the fact the killers were already lying in hospital with gunshot wounds, undoubtedly soon to be tried for one of the most widely witnessed and well-documented murders in British legal history.

We hung around the local train station, expecting them to arrive there in their furious, pissed-up hordes. But we didn't quite get the mass we were expecting – just a couple of slightly lost-looking fascists intent on defending the area from an imaginary Muslim militia.

Nothing much happened until we followed some police cars to a pub that had been chosen as the rally point for any EDL wanting to get in on the action. An English flag had been erected on a fence and a large group of shouty, pint-toting EDL were being held back by police in riot gear. More EDL started to emerge to yell abuse at the press and recycle their tired rally cries of, "Muzzie bombers off our streets!", "Shut down all the mosques!" and a bunch of other stuff that blindly tarred every single Muslim living in Britain as an abhorrent, extremist murderer.

By the time they'd all finished up their drinks and made their way outside, there were around 60 or 70 EDL standing outside the pub. There were minor scuffles as the police tried to stop them from advancing, before Tommy Robinson – EDL leader and recent perpetrator of identity fraud – stood up to deliver his speech.

The speech was much as you'd expect; Tommy, a man touting himself as a defender of the British people, exploiting the death of a British man to preach hate and intolerance against other British citizens. He kept repeating stuff like, "enough is enough" and "better late than never", but the speech fizzled out a little when he realised he'd exhausted his catchphrases, so encouraged everyone to march into the centre of town (which was one street away).   

Someone presented a box of EDL-branded balaclavas, which prompted a wild rush of screaming and grabbing hands. Anyone who didn't manage to get hold of a balaclava looked a little dejected, covered their faces with their hands and followed the mob into the town centre.

Everyone continued to shout anti-Islamic slurs and a few began chucking bottles at police – a move that was met with shouts of, "No bottles! Slow down! Let's properly fuck this place up!" By "this place", it's fair to assume they meant the nearby Islamic cultural centre, but there's no confirmation of that as yet.

Once the police managed to get themselves in place, a group of EDL found themselves cornered, angering the rest of the mob, who began lobbing more bottles and random masonry towards the riot cops. A pack of them tried charging through to save their trapped comrades, but were quickly put down by a retaliatory police baton charge.

The whole EDL effort was even less organised than usual and really achieved nothing but another embarrassing set of headlines for Tommy and his boys. They'd effectively gone in to prove that there are still proper British patriots out there who will defend the country from mindless violence, before being mindlessly violent, throwing a tantrum and being sent home to write badly-worded expressions of hate on their Facebook profiles. 

Today, two houses have been searched, one an address in Lincolnshire, the other in Greenwich. Both properties are believed to be the homes of the suspects and three women and a teenage boy were led away from the latter address by police. Following a COBRA meeting yesterday attended by David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and police and intelligence agencies, armed forces have been warned to be vigilant when off-base and to conceal their uniforms wherever possible.

"One of the best ways of defeating terrorism is to go about our normal lives," said Cameron in a speech given to media outside Downing Street this morning, "and that is what we should all do."

The soldier's family have asked for his identity to be withheld from the public for now, but reports indicate that he served one tour of Afghanistan. The attacker filmed speaking to the camera with the meat cleaver is thought to be a man of Nigerian descent named Michael Adebolajo, a convert to Islam in 2003 who had attended lectures by controversial Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary.

With reports of mosques being attacked and an EDL rally planned to take place in Newcastle on Saturday, the next few days will be a crucial measure of any anti-Islamic backlash. Hopefully the handful of arseholes attempting to leech political traction from this horrific and isolated event will be met with public derision. After all, it's worth remembering that for all our faults, most of us aren't murderous fanatics or bigoted idiots. We're just people who don't like it when other people get murdered with machetes in the street.

Find more photos of the EDL's battle with police here.

Follow Simon and VICE News on Twitter: @SimonChilds13 and @VICEUK_NEWS

More on fascists:

English Fascists Took Their First Beating of the Summer This Weekend

Psychic Melt: The Art of Alexandra Mackenzie

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Alexandra Mackenzie makes pretty trippy art.

She used to play in the band Dentata and she has been in a group show with Grimes. Her art looks like a mystical, sci-fi comic book meets a psychedelic Disneyland with a retro Wiccan twist. Faces are made of noodles, girls are holding guns, then there’s all the wolves, galaxies, reptiles, crystals… it gets weirder. My favourite drawing Pepto Bismol has a witch with a third eye standing with an army of girls whose brainwaves create a storm above them with quartz sticking out from their leader’s third eye, like sugar cane swords. All in all, it’s a mouthful.

Mackenzie is a Toronto-based artist and musician who graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She plays in Pachamama with Brandon Valdivia from Picastro and is gaining momentum with her new solo project, Petra Glynt. You can catch her play in August at this experimental, campground-friendly festival called Electric Eclectics in Meaford, Ontario. She will also be playing a show on June 6 at PHI Center in Montreal, as part of a festival curated by Renata Morales (Slim Twig and U.S. Girls are playing, too). Mackenzie is playing NXNE at Creatures Creating in Toronto, which will be put together by Wavelength on June 15.

That’s a lot of stuff. But then again, just look at her drawings. They’re more than just eye candy. Mackenzie is mother earth’s biggest groupie, with advocacy drawings that are all about anti-deforestation (I’ve never heard anyone talk about cell phones like she does). While her work is a telepathic universe with clairvoyant characters and the odd hint of Alex Grey, there is often a tangible meaning beyond just mushrooms and arting-out.

VICE:How did your drawings begin when you were young?
Mackenzie: I suppose I was always super crafty and took all art-related things pretty seriously. I was a very hyper active kid and arting-out seemed to be one of the few states where I could chill out. I gave drawing a lot of extra patience—I strongly believed that I could represent something exactly if I spent the time. I think I took it as a challenge and my family really encouraged the artistic parts of me. I would always overextend myself with artistic side of school projects before the academic side. I guess I had my priorities all figured out, [laughs].

The Open Fire drawing. It feels to me like a comment on the environment. What's the story behind the girl with the gun? (Is that flag from anywhere?)
Yes definitely. I guess without being overly militant with the imagery, it is a message of resistance against deforestation and clear-cutting. Open Fire is a play on the open use of a gun as resistance imagery against the logging method of burning the land for the acquisition of the trees, leaving behind dead land, killing the life that was there and the prospect of new life, for profit. This is the first of more to come so I find this drawing to be a bit shy. I drew a woman and often choose to draw women because it is the most natural figure to draw, being a woman myself, but she is masked because she represents my rage coupled with the anonymity of the many individuals who have stood against environmental injustice. The flag doesn’t represent any specific iconography, but more or less suggests the unification of people through common beliefs—it is like a call to action.

Prophetic Headacheseems to suggest the concept of the third eye, which is closely associated with mysticism and clairvoyance (though it varies by different cultures). What is your relationship to psychic phenomena?
Prophetic Headacheis an inside joke with myself—which I’ve learned isn’t necessarily fair for everyone else. I also call it P.H. Levels referring to levels of acidity. When I was doing my thesis year at OCAD, I was naively reading all sorts of books that claimed to have insight on the loss of human mysticism and spirituality due to industrialization. A person can get lost in the sea of books like this: one can get disoriented. At the end of my studies, I made this drawing out of exhaustion for this sort of literature. I realize now that the fault lies more on imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism for the loss of spirituality in our society. In terms of my relationship with psychic phenomena, I enjoy imagining a world that is unmediated by screens, media, propaganda, consumerism, and whatever else that goes unquestioned and what our minds might be capable of.

Drawings like Infinity and Pepto Bismol are extremely detailed. How long does it take to create a drawing?
Oooh they take a very long time. I drew Pepto Bismol when I was in school. I had the time and student lifestyle to commit to a drawing of that scale (5 x 6.5 ft). I also wasn’t playing music as much at the time. It took three months of monk-style commitment, drawing morning ’til night and often into the morning. I ate and slept by that drawing... it became a relationship similar to how one would tend to a garden—it had needs and only I could provide for it. Infinity took a couple months. I drew it when I was out of school, between moving twice, settling and unsettling, and adjusting to drawing on my own instead of being around people. 

Gee, your art sure is trippy. Are you influenced by visionary artists like Alex Grey or the readings of Timothy Leary?
Not so much anymore, but they have certainly sparked my curiosity in the past and have been part of my art education. Their work is important, and maybe this is directed more so at Mr. Leary, but though he is a brilliant man, I do not think ‘dropping out’ is a productive or revolutionary stance to take in regards to altering the consciousness of the masses, but maybe there's something I'm missing.

Have you ever had an out of body experience or a vision?
Dream states are baffling – I have had out of body experiences between states of being awake and dreaming and during instances of sleep paralysis (which have been terrifying), but I feel visions are much more common place and happen more regularly. They occur often throughout the day. I’m sure we all have ’em. I regard them as similar to how thoughts appear out of thin air. Images are a natural way for me to interpret the world and are thus how I often chose to communicate. Much of my work may start with a vision, followed by many until the work is realized. Sometimes they are the genesis of new directions and life movements, but they are also often project based.

There are some spiritual symbols in your work but you’re taking a new direction. Where are you headed?
As of late, I have been more privy to the B.S. our society promotes as normal, like how every individual requires a cell phone, even though their manufacturing involves the mining of the Coltan mineral, which in doing so perpetuates a deadly war in the Congo, which to me, looks far too much like the face of slavery. I am angered by the ongoing imperialism and colonialism experienced daily by the displaced and the oppressed—which includes the planet itself. People have been pointing it out since the beginning of industrialization. These things are not new, but they are now at a tipping point and have become issues that everyone needs to wake up to. I could take mushrooms and make art in a beautiful bubble of psychedelia, but the mushrooms would just tell me the earth is hurting and I’d be back at zero... so I guess this is the new direction (not to say mushrooms are a write-off) [Laughs].

You once said, “reality is really weird and psychedelic.” Is it one hit of acid or two?
Mmm, definitely two.

 

More Canadian art features:

Don't Tell Niall McClelland His Drawings Are Paintings

A Selection of Mark Peckmezian's Wonderful Photographs

The Ghostly and Intimate World of Claire Milbrath

Stoya on Peeking Behind the Porn Curtain

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Photo courtesy of Stoya 

I have this acquaintance in NYC. Her main career is in technology, but she occasionally works as a burlesque performer. Our paths intersect at shows and parties, where she's either in full costume or a version of it that is tamed down enough to wear comfortably on the street. A couple of weeks ago I ran into her for the first time without all the intricate hair and stylized makeup. It took me a full minute to realize that the charming and very pretty girl wearing slacks was the same woman I've had delightful conversations with about the engineering involved in costume construction. Usually when I fail to recognize someone I've met before it's because I was overloaded with new people at the time or because I'm just bad with faces… and names. In her case, I think it's more of a testament to how talented she is at changing her appearance with a combination of costuming and the way she carries herself in a given situation. Basically, the girl's got killer stage presence and when she turns it on and off, it's like flipping a light switch.  

There is something interesting about watching the process of physical transformation or seeing the differences between what a person looks like fresh out of the shower and what they look like in costume or uniform. As a culture, we are also fascinated by what entertainers and public personalities do when they aren't at work and how they became who they are. This is why demand for biographies, interviews, and backstage/on-set photographs exists. This is also why there has been what feels like 1 million documentaries and photo series attempting to show the People Behind the Sex Work. There aren't actually 1 million of these projects, but there have been enough that my initial reaction to the news of another one was to roll my eyes. Jonathan Harris's documentary I Love Your Work actually does look interesting, more for the process and presentation than for any deep-digging journalism promising to show a previously unknown side of adult entertainment. 

The superficiality in these projects is what rubs me the wrong way. In 2004 it may have been groundbreaking to show porn stars without the platform stilettos, false lashes, and lingerie or fetish gear that they were usually shown in. In the past nine years we've seen these garments come in and out of mainstream fashion and plenty of porn has been shot without them. Also, social media happened. Thanks to Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vine, and whatever other similar websites that have popped up in the past ten minutes, the fact that porn stars engage in normal activities is pretty well documented. Anyone interested in porn or the people who perform in pornographic videos can see us talking about our hobbies and house pets. They can see conversations in which we flirt with each other or discuss running into each other at the grocery store. As a group, we tend to take pictures of ourselves in various states of undress and with various amounts of makeup on and upload them to Twitter or Instagram on a regular basis. It's easy to look behind the curtain and see the multifaceted reality of both adult entertainment as a whole and most individual performers using any device with internet access. Social media has given the world a window into the real lives of all sorts of people in a way that ten minutes of a documentary or a couple of photographs cannot duplicate.

I think most people understand that people look and behave in slightly different ways when they are at work than they do outside of their place of employment, regardless of what their profession is. Anyone with the ability to think critically can easily see that not all doctors share the same hobbies, fast-food workers have a broad spectrum of long-term goals and occasional lack thereof, and porn stars do occasionally wear clothing even if it's only because being arrested for public indecency would make it difficult to show up on set the next day. As a whole, adult performers can definitely be quirky and are probably more sexually liberated than an average adult, but we aren't so far removed from the rest of humanity that we're some kind of otherworldly creature above concerns like utility bills and laundry. To pretend that we are underestimates the intelligence of people who are interested in the lives of porn stars or what goes on behind the scenes of the adult industry.

When I asked the hundred thousand or so people who follow me on Twitter what they found interesting about following adult performers on social media sites, a few people mentioned the nude or risqué pictures. A few more said that the porn stars they follow are interesting people or say entertaining things and just happen to work in porn, or that they followed for sex tips because they figure people who have sex for a living are likely to know what they're talking about. The overwhelming majority seemed to be responding with some variation of enjoying seeing adult performers as real people, gaining familiarity with our personalities or hearing about the 'normal' things that we do because these things humanize us. Again, anyone who wants to know what porn stars look like off set or the basics of what we do in our spare time can easily find out.

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders takes a beautiful portrait, but his portraits of porn stars have already been taken. The territory of what porn stars look like in jeans and T-shirts does not need to be covered again. I wish documentaries that went deeper received more attention. Buck Angel is a fascinating human being, and Dan Hunt's documentary about him is a relevant and unique part of the conversation about sexuality, gender, and XXX work. The people at Kink.com seem very happy about their representation in Christina Voros's and James Franco's documentary Kink, and to my knowledge BDSM pornography had not been explored that way before. Rather than rehash the topic of "Porn stars look like everyone else with no makeup on!" why not put resources into documenting Shine Louise Houston's efforts to make ethical porn and the social and cultural effects of the way that queer and feminist porn visually depict a huge range of bodies and sexualities? Nina Hartley, who is a porn icon, sex educator, and all around badass would be a fantastic person to feature in a film about the mainstream adult industry around. Hell, spend an hour and a half discovering exactly how cute Lexi Belle is. (Spoiler alert: she's really really REALLY cute.) 

In case you were wondering why my Twitter followers said they like to follow adult film stars on social media, here is what a few of them had to say:

@Stoya

Previously from Stoya: 

Art is Just as Powerful as Protest

Stoya on How to Perform a Meathook

Stoya on the Metaphysics of Cocksucking (NSFW)

We Photographed a Drunk EDL Hate Mob Attacking Police Last Night

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Yesterday, a British soldier was murdered in Woolwich, South London. Early reports suggested that the two men who had attacked the soldier were Islamic extremists, with one man telling a bystander that he'd carried out the attack because British soldiers kill Muslims every day.

Those reports were later confirmed, but far-right Islamophobes the English Defence League didn't need confirmation, just speculation, to spur them into descending onto Woolwich in their frenzied, drunken hordes. What exactly they were hoping to achieve is unclear – the two alleged killers had already been shot by police and taken to hospital – but it seems they were there to exploit a soldier's death and make wild generalisations about British Muslims all being extremists who want to behead people in public.

The fascist mob gathered at a local pub, where they listened to some rambling hate rhetoric from their leader Tommy Robinson, before trying to march through the streets, being stopped by police, throwing bottles at the police, being kettled by the police, then sent home having accomplished absolutely nothing.

I was there to take photographs of 60 to a hundred angry, confused men. 

Find full coverage of yesterday's events in Woolwich here.

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