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Secrecy, Dark Rooms, and Patriotic Drag Queens: A Gay Night Out in Moscow

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[body_image width='2558' height='1627' path='images/content-images/2015/03/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/02/' filename='this-is-what-a-gay-night-out-in-moscow-is-like-body-image-1425301892.jpg' id='31997']All photos taken on location by the author.

Midnight is falling in Moscow, and I'm trudging my way along the city's abandoned side streets, covered with piles of graying snow. It doesn't really feel like a prime location for a party venue, but this club is different. Tonight, we're taking a tour of Moscow's gay scene—a world too many people in Russia seem intent on making disappear, or at the very least fade into secrecy.

"People go to the gay bars so they don't have to hide their homosexuality. They can be free," my Russian friend Sasha (I've changed her name) tells me before I head off. "But you always have to be super careful—you never know when there can be a group of bullies waiting outside. That's happened to me before, but I told them some story and they believed me. Make sure you don't hail a cab right outside."

My guide for the night, John (I've changed his name, too), is quick to reassure me. "Moscow is the gayest city I've ever been in," he says. John, from the UK, first came to Russia to study, and after graduation returned to Moscow to work as an English teacher. He says that, for him, coming back was never in question simply because of Russia's notorious anti-gay laws: "you just need to know where to go."

We'll be starting our night at Moscow's biggest and most notorious gay club: Central Station. Tucked into a respectable side street far from the city center, Central Station is as out and proud as it's possible to be in modern day Moscow. This building is a new location and was picked for safety, not style. In late 2013, a group of men sprayed the outside of the last premises with bullets. Weeks later, a gang released harmful gas inside the building with more than 500 people present. The final straw came when a group of men tried to bring down the club's ceiling, aiming to crush the people inside.

"It was a real shock to me when the attacks happened," John tells me. "I'm pretty sure the club now has bulletproof glass. The club is now a ten minute walk from the nearest metro station for a reason. If you're willing to drag yourself all the way out here, then you really have to want to cause trouble."

We've deliberately come early, because if we're going to risk being turned away from anywhere tonight, then this is the place. This is a men's club, and women—gay or not—will often get refused entry. If you are so blessed to be permitted without a penis, then you'll be paying for it; tickets for girls can be up to 2500 roubles ($37).

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We leave to head into the city center. Located in a quiet courtyard, our next bar has a name above the door, but seems far more discrete. Once inside, the club is full of white polystyrene balls on the floor designed to make it look like it's been snowing. We both instantly pray that this floor décor does not continue in the dark room. There's no suggestion of bulletproof glass here, but the toilets are plastered with several rainbow-colored ads for "safe LGBT taxis."

The real pull here is the drag act. Tonight is a Maslenitsa special—a bit like the Russian Orthodox version of Shrove Tuesday—and the stage is decked out with a traditional Russian Samovar and food. "I have no idea why drag acts are so popular here," says John. "But almost every bar will have one. Maybe it's because in the UK there would be specialist drag bars, but here there isn't the amount of bars for places to specialize in just one thing. Almost every bar has the same things: a drag queen, a karaoke bar, and a dark room."

I start to appreciate what Alexis meant earlier in the night when he said that the official scene was "all the same." Aside from the creative floor décor, this bar offers in many ways the same music, the same performances and the same experience as Central Station, or any other gay bar I'd been to in Moscow. The risks posed to gay clubs in the city may not have wiped them out, but has drastically cut their number and the diversity on offer.

[body_image width='1200' height='1607' path='images/content-images/2015/03/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/02/' filename='this-is-what-a-gay-night-out-in-moscow-is-like-body-image-1425303310.jpg' id='32011']

Our host for tonight, Veronika, comes out to a rapturous welcome, miming to Russian pop hits. "People like Lady Gaga aren't the big gay anthems here," John shouts over the applause. "It's all about the Russian music. A lot of the Soviet songs are really popular, too. Russian singers like Alla Pugacheva have a big gay following."

Veronika's act ends with a dance to the Soviet classic, "Kalinka." "Happy holidays, bitches!" she shouts as the song ends, giving her place on the tiny stage over to the next act.

[body_image width='1200' height='1607' path='images/content-images/2015/03/02/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/02/' filename='this-is-what-a-gay-night-out-in-moscow-is-like-body-image-1425303673.jpg' id='32015']

The club doesn't close its doors until 8 AM, so we leave early again. It's been a successful night and, as we walk down the main street, John points out all of the straight bars which also have unofficial gay nights. It almost makes me feel hopeful. The openness of straight bars is giving LGBT people a wider choice of venues and freedom, and can optimistically be seen as a sign that Russia's LGBT youth aren't content to stay in the shadows forever.

Since we're a boy and a girl together, we chance it and hail a regular taxi. "The homophobic attacks won't stop me from going out," says John. "To be honest, I don't really feel scared going to the gay clubs in Moscow. But there is always the underlying worry that someone will be waiting outside—the gangs who wait to beat you up. That's the feeling that never goes away."




Why I Quit Smoking Weed

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With decriminalization and legalization sweeping the country, it's easy to assume that everyone is becoming a pot evangelist. But there are still plenty of folks out there who don't worship at the altar of ganja. For some, herb represents their rambunctious past as a petty criminal making bad choices. For others, smoking the stuff strips them of their sanity and leaves them mumbling paranoid non-sequiturs to themselves while they cry in the fetal position. We're pretty used to talking to potheads who think smoking weed could stop the polar ice caps from melting or solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So we thought it was about time we heard from the other side—people who just can't stomach a slice of space cake or handle a one-hitter anymore.

These are their stories.

PSYCHO PHISH

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After college, I really got into weed and other psychedelic drugs. I was smoking pot every single day, and it was awesome. But then things started to get really weird. Out of nowhere, I began having some intense reactions to weed. The first time it hit me was at a Phish concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion. I was standing with friends having a good time, puffing on some weed, and listening to Phish play "Reba." Then, out of nowhere, I could see the world closing in on me. It was like the sky went black, and I fainted.

As fucked up as that was, I still wasn't ready to give up weed. But a similar thing happened to me when I went to Jazz Fest in New Orleans later that year. I felt the same way after hitting a blunt (luckily I had a place to sit down, so I didn't straight up pass out). But I also started to get these crazy delusions. My girlfriend was supposed to pick me up from the concert and she was a few minutes late. I became convinced that she was late because she was off screwing some other guy. Then I was certain that she was dead and I left the festival to search for her body. She had no idea where I was at and found me hours later wandering down the Bourbon Street, totally out of my mind.

I really think it had something to do with the other psychedelics I've taken over the years. But pretty much every time I hit a blunt now, I just lose it to the point that it's no longer worth it for me to even risk smoking. It's ruined too many moments of my life that I'm cool with just drinking a cold beer when I want to unwind.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

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I quit smoking weed after one crazy night when I was 19. Basically, I spent several hours toking up with a towering, harmonica-playing homeless man in an abandoned house with no electricity. My djembe-carrying friend and I had met the crazy dude while we were busking on the street. And being hippie stoners, it didn't seem weird at all for us to follow him back to a creepy bando and spark up. But by 2 or 3 AM, my friend, the djembe player, had abandoned me to drop another one of our friends off. So I was just sitting alone in this decrepit building with my new acquaintance, who resembled a wizard and would have stood around 6'6" if he hadn't been hunched over with an enormous tree branch walking stick.

I was really fucking high by the end of the night. So I'm not exactly sure what happened next. Either Gandalf produced a knife, was talking about producing a knife, or was reminiscing about people he had knifed back when he was in Vietnam... Whatever it was, I was suddenly certain that this veteran was bent on gutting me like a fish and playing catch with my vital organs. Eventually, my friend returned and drove me to his parents' house, where I slept off my high in one of his mom's guest rooms. I haven't picked up a blunt or listened to Phish since. Being a hippie is fucking dangerous.

MAD MUNCHIES

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When I was in college, drinking on weeknights was my shit. My only problem was being hungover in class—until I discovered that smoking weed was just as fun without giving me a rippling headache the next morning.

So every night, I would smoke pot with my stoner roommates. Everything was perfect until I started working at a bougie-ass bakery that sold fancy pastries. When I'd get off, I'd bring home about $50 worth of baked goods that I told myself I'd share with my roommates or eat over the course of a couple days. Of course, that never happened. Instead, I'd get baked and then tear into all the croissants, artisanal hot pockets, and loaves of miche, a French-style country bread, like Chris Christie at a Golden Corral. It was disgusting.

Eventually, I had to quit smoking because eating all the baked goods made me so fucking full and bloated that I would have sugar nightmares. And then in class the next day, I would be constantly going to the bathroom to shit my brains out. So yeah, I stopped smoking weed because the munchies were wreaking havoc on my colon.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

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I smoked and sold a shitload of pot back in college. I mean, it only makes sense—if you're going to be a weed head, you might as well be a weed dealer, too. I wasn't Nino Brown or anything like that, but I'd buy about a half-pound every week and use the profit to pay for my habit. I used to be slick about it and keep my shit in a fly, black leather briefcase.

It was great—until I got caught.

I was rolling around with my dudes, who just looked like they did a lot of dope, and of course we got pulled over. The cop thought we were "suspicious" and called for a fucking drug dog. I had about an ounce in my briefcase at the time, and the pooch sniffed it out.

I was lucky though, because in Vermont, if you have under two ounces and you're under 21, you aren't considered a dealer in the eyes of the law. So I didn't face any jail time. I just had to go to this thing called Diversion, where I was given regular drug tests and paired up with a therapist.

My first therapist was terrible, but my second one was actually really great and is responsible for me quitting weed. Up until I met him, I was sure that once the drug tests ended, I would get back to doing what I was doing before. But he made me think about it in a different way by just stating the truth: There was no way I was going to know whether my life was better with or without weed unless I quit for a bit and compared the differences.

Later on, after Diversion was over, I realized every time I smoked weed I was dissatisfied and anxious and paranoid. I was making bad decisions and I couldn't think clearly because I was smoking that shit every day. So I stopped and my life improved. My grades improved and I was more aware of what I was doing and where I was going in life. I'm not saying everybody is negatively affected by weed, but it had my life fucked up. It's been ten years since I smoked any weed, and I haven't looked back.

FLYING OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

[body_image width='2000' height='1152' path='images/content-images/2015/03/26/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/26/' filename='i-quit-smoking-weed-because-it-sucks-456-body-image-1427392749.jpeg' id='40225']

I think acid ruined my weed high. I had a terrible trip once that did something irreparable to my overall outlook. I did the trip with a friend at my parents' lake house, which looks like a cabin that sits right on the water. It's an idyllic little place, but it brought some seriously dark and repressed feelings out of me. Maybe it was because the house is filled with all of my mother's bird houses and weird little trinkets? When I was tripping, something about them made me feel incredibly sad and detached. The feeling was so deep, it's hard to even put it into words. I felt like a child in a bad way, like I was not the one in control of my destiny or my decisions. The trip was so traumatic, I moved across the country to shake the lasting effects of it.

Unfortunately, ever since that trip, every time I smoke weed, I return right back to that intense and terrible feeling. A hit of a blunt puts me into something that is kind of like a panic attack. It's like my thoughts are out of control, they start racing and I can't reign them in. Everything I think gets perverted, even things that I used to have positive feelings toward. I start asking myself, Why are my friends my friends? They are really just trying to use me... It's really overwhelming and it makes it so that I can't cope with other people. Imagine having these intense feelings when you're just hanging with a friend who wants to share a joint in the park and you end up curled in a ball mumbling paranoid shit to yourself. I'm good.

All illustrations by Nick Gazin. To see more of his work, check out his Instagram.

If you are seeking treatment for drug abuse, find helpful information at the website for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

VICE and HBO Enter Major Deal to Expand News Programming

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VICE and HBO Enter Major Deal to Expand News Programming

I Talked to the Actress Who Says She Was Tricked Into Smuggling 3.5 Tons of Pot

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[body_image width='800' height='534' path='images/content-images/2015/03/25/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/25/' filename='this-actress-says-she-got-tricked-into-smuggling-35-tons-of-pot-by-the-korean-paris-hilton-125-body-image-1427314459.jpg' id='39804']
Photo by Sean Paul Franget

Everyone had at least one shitty friend growing up. The kind of girl who would peer-pressure you into stealing earrings at Claire's and then make fun of you because your mom only gave you $10 to stock up on Invader Zim merch at Hot Topic. But Meili Cady, who is now 29, says she fell in with an adult version of that mean-girl BFF archetype when she moved to Los Angeles ten years ago.

Lisette Lee, who called herself "the Korean Paris Hilton," was one of the first people to befriend Cady when she moved from small-town Washington to try and make it as an actress. She also dazzled the naive newbie with stories about being the Samsung heiress and a pop star in Asia. With a combination of expensive gifts and over-the-top praise, Lee won over Cady to the point that she would do anything for her. That's why, according to Cady, at least, when Lee hired her as a personal assistant—and had her chauffeur suitcases from LA to Ohio—she didn't ask any questions. Later, when she put together that the two were smuggling pot, Cady claims she didn't go to the cops because she was terrified of her powerful friend.

Although her story of Stockholm Syndrome and complete innocence is at least a little hard to believe, the cops apparently ate it up. Cady says she helped with the investigation and as a result only served 30 days in prison. (Meanwhile, Lee got six years.) And on Wednesday, Cady's book about the whole experience, Smoke: How A Small-Town Girl Accidentally Wound Up Smuggling 7,000 Pounds of Marijuana With The Pot Princess of Beverly Hills, hit the shelves. She's hoping her new claim-to-fame will jumpstart her career, and it seems like it could be working: Although the most recognizable thing on her demo reel before the bust was pretending to give an under-the-table BJ in Californication,she told me she just finished filming a Toyota commercial.

I called up Cady to get more details about her incredible story, and to find out exactly how you gets manipulated into becoming a drug trafficker. I'm still not sure I believe her.

VICE: Tell me what it was like to move to LA and what that city was like as a newcomer, especially for someone coming from such a small town.
Meili Cady: LA was very overwhelming. When I moved here it was very exciting, even just driving down the street. It's a completely foreign world from anything I knew when I was growing up. I felt just as much a tourist here as I did when I was backpacking through Europe after graduating school.

I think LA has a lot of great opportunities but it also has an equal amount of traps you could walk into. As someone who was very young and wide-eyed and ambitious and excited to explore it was a very stimulating town, but I don't think I was prepared for it. And I certainly wasn't prepared to be independent and succeed. I think I finally found my footing after years of failing and learning from my mistakes.

How did you and Lisette Lee come to be friends? And why did she pick you?
I think that she doesn't get along with many personalities in general, particularly women. And I think that she had expressed interest in finding a new friend almost in the way that you'd say, "Hey I was thinking about buying a puppy!" [laughs]

We me through a mutual friend of ours. Lisette was not going to get along with most personalities and I think that the only personality, especially for females, that she would be likely to get along with would be a personality that she could easily manipulate and use for whatever means she wanted. So I don't think she had a master plan in mind when she reached out to befriend me. I think it was just something to do. It's like, Why not collect the minions just in case I want them to do something for me? Part of me thinks that maybe she was in search of companionship. I think she does have some dualities. I think part of her thought was that I could be useful and I think, probably, part of her thought it could be fun to be in this friendship.

Do you think that you were ever actually friends or do you look back at it now and think it was a farce?
I genuinely cared about and genuinely had feelings of loyalty and friendship toward her. My belief that she had any loyalty or friendship towards me, those beliefs were shattered when certain truths came to the surface after our arrests. And I realized how deep in the rabbit hole I went with her. I don't know that she's capable of having a normal friendship or caring for someone in the way that I have experienced with a lot of friendships and relationships in my life. Part of me would like to believe that what we had was real in ways but ultimately it really doesn't change anything so I don't spend much time thinking about that.

Your friends or your parents from Washington—what did they think of this? Did your parents ever meet her?
My parents did meet her and my brother met her. Lisette never wanted to meet any of my friends, but over the years there were a few exceptions that she made and she did meet a couple of my friends. My family comes from this—they're very intelligent, grounded, good people, but they are also from the same background that I am and none of us were... there weren't a lot of red flags that were raised for us. I think that we just didn't have a frame of reference, so my family didn't claim to understand her or her background. But they were supportive of the friendship that I apparently had with her.

Because on paper it looks like, "How could you be that dumb?"

My friends were more skeptical. I've always had really close friends. My best friends since first grade, I am still really close friends with them. They are all flying in for the book launch tomorrow. I've never not had close friends. So my core group of friends in Washington were very skeptical of this outsider laying claim to me in Los Angeles, because I had been best friends with these girls since I was in first grade and there was a lot of defensiveness over our friendships that were so rock solid and then this newcomer comes in and she criticizes my friendships with the girls that I had always known.

She would always look for a weakness to try to dig at and try to isolate me or say, "Well they're not really your friend if they did that to you. I would never do that to you. I am your best friend." She was very subtly manipulative in the beginning, and then it just went deeper and deeper until I was entrapped in a poisonous relationship. It was platonic but it felt like an unhealthy relationship more than a friendship.

You're right that your relationship seemed like more than a friendship in a lot of ways. She used to give you rings and call you "angel." Did you ever think she was in love with you?
I think she used sex as a weapon. I don't know if I want you to print this but she always seemed sort of asexual to me. I think I wouldn't imagine her...I don't know how to answer that because I'm afraid you're going to print it [laughs].

I think that being in love with someone can come in many different forms.. and it was sort of this obsessive, jealous, unhealthy, possessive friendship in a lot of ways that was very....You know, she would be incredibly hurtful but then she would beg forgiveness and tell me she would rather burn in hell than not have me in her life. She'd be very jealous that I'm hanging out with another friend. She'd say, "I understand you wanting to keep busy when I'm not available just as long as no one steals you away from me."

We would joke around that if I was her husband or her wife then we'd be the happiest girls in the world because we would just go to some state where it's legal and we would run away together and be together forever. She said she wanted to be the godmother to my children some day. She said that was something she expected. I don't think there was a limit to where things would go and I shudder to think how it would have ended up, if I had not been extracted from the relationship and from my employment with her, which was incredibly dangerous as well.

You said that your friends were a little skeptical. When did you first suspect that she was full of shit?
My experience was like a psychological roller-coaster from the beginning with her. My suspicions really started building up fairly early on but I just internalized them because I had been so conditioned by her to believe everything she was telling me -- and you have to understand the level of manipulation that is possible that you can be taken by if someone is clever and wants to be able to have that control over you. There are things that I can't believe that I fell for. That this is my story.

It's been crazy for me, so since it has happened, I've done some research and I've tried to trace everything back to the roots to try to understand it better myself so I can move on with my life and not repeat any of the mistakes. Because on paper it looks like how could you be that dumb? But it's a lot more complicated than that and I think that this kind of poisonous relationship is something that a lot of people experience. A lot of times it's more in emotional or physically abusive relationships.

So she hired you to transport suitcases on a private plane to Ohio. What did she tell you it was for, if not to move drugs?
She didn't really tell me. The way she presented the proposition to work for her, I was not working for her as some mule. I was working for her as her best friend. So the way she presented it was, "I know that you're struggling and looking for a job." She knew that I had been looking for a job and that I hadn't been able to find one. And this is just on the heels of the recession, so it was difficult to find a job. She said, "I want to help you. It's good timing because I am starting a new business operation and I'm breaking away from my parents to start my own thing. It's new. It's private. I need someone I can trust to help me out, to be my executive personal assistant so you can be there for meetings or for travel when I'm unable to because I have business obligations in town already. Are you interested?" And I said, "Yeah, sure."

It wasn't like someone on LinkedIn scouted me out. It was my best friend saying, "Hey I know you need help. I need help, too. I think we can help each other."

Come on, she had to have told you what it was for. Or you had to have at least asked.
She didn't actually ever say. I drew my own conclusions. So that's the way she presented it. Then she followed up later that week saying, "Okay, we're going to be—she had said before, "You'll be traveling to the east coast. We'll be using private jets. I need you to act like you've been on one before. Don't geek out about it. Keep your head down." She emphasized, "You are very under-qualified for this position. I know you can do it. I know you can rise to the challenge. You just have to keep your head down and listen to me and do as I say." And I said, "Yeah, sure."

...I guess she had a 9mm hand gun at her home and she said that her family used a hit man named Angel, for business, and that they'd been working with him for years.

I had never known her to engage in any criminal activity whatsoever in the more than four years I'd been best friends with her. So I had no reason to think this was some sort of criminal enterprise. She liked to present herself as someone who liked to live on the edge, but not over the edge. So I thought it had to do with the casino industry, and I had good reason for believing that. She had always told me that if she could ever choose to start a business of her own, away from her parents and Samsung, that she would want to be in the casino industry and she had told me, over the years, many times, that she would help her father with some casino business locally. I had never known or really cared about any of the details of it but I was sort of peripherally aware of that. And I was present when she met the person she ended up starting this new business with and all they talked about was the casino industry. For hours, it was all they talked about. So when she told me she was going to be going into business with him, after she was always telling me that was what she aspired to do, I thought probably it was the casino industry. And when we brought suitcases to Ohio, I thought it was probably money.

I had some blinders on. I didn't look at things as they were. I saw them through the filter of thinking: Well I'm just working for my best friend, and I'm just here to help out. Rather than going in and being aware and having my wits about me, I had these blinders on for the reality of the situation. It was sort of: Well, it's probably okay, and I'm doing it anyway. One thing led to another and by the time I had found out what I had become a part of, and what I was actively a part of, I was in very deep and it was too late to get out safely.

When you finally smelled weed in the suitcases, did you say anything about wanting to quit?
I was terrified. She said that she was tapping everyone's phone. She said that she had had a private investigator on multiple people and she said that there was a private investigator tailing me at one point. I had met someone who was supposedly involved in a Mexican gang. I just sort of naively wandered into this thing after she had lead me into it. But I couldn't grasp that reality of what I was a part of. It was terrifying. I don't think I slept a night without horrible nightmares after that. I would have dreams of being arrested or being hunted down by Mexican gangsters. It was terrifying because the only person who knew what I was a part of was my best friend and I couldn't trust her anymore. It was like the one person I trusted had become the person that I feared most.

What was your relationship like when she was threatening you? Were you still getting together and acting like friends when you weren't working?
Well, they were indirect threats. There's a difference between holding a gun to someone and saying, "Hey I might shoot you," or saying, "Hey, I have a private investigator on you and you better watch it." That's a direct threat. An indirect threat is saying, "Oh yeah, there's a gun in my place." Because I guess she had a 9mm hand gun at her home and she said that her family used a hit man named Angel, for business, and that they'd been working with him for years. She said she had surveillance installed in her business partner's apartment and she was tapping everyone's phone except for mine. Those are all indirect threats, but they are threats. So that's incredibly intimidating. And maybe none of those were true. I mean I saw the gun, so that's real, but maybe none of those [other ones] were true. I don't know.

So when you got caught, were you relieved at least a little?
Ultimately, I was incredibly relieved that we were caught and I had no part in that. I never told a soul. I was kind of imploding after I found out what we were really doing but I never breathed a word of it to anyone. But looking back, once I had already become entrapped in this hell ride. I really don't know that I would have done anything differently because even in retrospect, I don't see any options that I could have exercised because you're exactly right, if I had told the cops, then I would have feared for my life, for the rest of my life. I would have spent the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I can't even imagine the consequences of that, if I had snitched in that way.

It's also good I think that I was in it to the end because even if I had been fired, and Lisette did incidentally fire me twice and then sort of encouraged me to beg for my job back—it was a very sad cycle. But because I stayed to the end, they knew that I wasn't the undoing for the operation. I'd say that was set in motion from when the groundwork was laid. It was really built to fail. And that is another thing I was incredibly lucky for, because after we were arrested there was no—I didn't have to face that tough decision of: Do I break away from the plan? Am I going to be the one who sings, or whatever? Because there was no plan.

Are you worried about being the girl who got duped? Or at least the girl who played dumb and flipped? That's going to be your claim to fame, at least for a little bit...
I mean I think any claim to fame wouldn't define me. I'm glad that I've had some experience in the world and my life to know that that's the case. Anything someone writes about you or what someone thinks about you or the media, which can turn on a dime, that just doesn't define you. It doesn't even define that moment for you. I used to care a lot what people thought and said but I've grown to have pretty thick skin now and I think from the beginning when the arrest made news five years ago, I thought: I can't let this define me. So sort of in response to that, I felt compelled to share my story, and actually a lot of people have written to me through my House Arrest Girl blog with very similar stories.

And I know I'm not the only one who's had this experience. It's a very strange experience, so I don't expect people to understand it who haven't had it, but you just can't let your opinion of yourself or your feeling of self worth be contingent on what other people think you're worth. So that's their label. It's not mine.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

A New Art Film Inspired by Your Favorite Kids' TV Shows

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[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/123003768' width='1000' height='563']

Tonight, in the School of Visual Arts's Mentors Show, Claire Christerson will debut her most ambitious project to date, a short film titled Off Season. This 20-minute short has everything—frisky green mermaids, a giggling nude woman dressed as the sun, and murderous scantily clad blue waves. What more could you want? To top it all off, actress Hari Nef plays a scheming, pink supervillain named Clamindia (who has chlamydia).

A man getting eaten.

"My new film is my homage to cult children's shows that I grew up watching, like Spongebob, Sesame Street, and Teletubbies," Claire told VICE. We have featured her work many times before, as part of the collaborative duo Mike and Claire, but this is Claire's art school thesis, which she had to make on her own. Mike still helped out, and appears in the film as a bright red teen heartthrob named Flemo. His work (featured in this month's issue of VICE) is also included in the Mentors Show, and it's easy to see the connection. "Mike and I have been working on a concept that we call Human Animation, treating humans as cartoons," says Claire.

VICE is proud to debut this trailer for Off Season, along with some stills from the film and animated GIFs Claire made for us. See the film installed in tonight's Mentors Show at SVA's Chelsea Gallery, on view through Saturday, April 4.

If you can't make it to the gallery we'll be premiering the film in its entirety here on VICE April 4 so you can watch it Saturday morning cartoon-style.

A man getting eaten.

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A man getting eaten.

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A man getting eaten.

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A man getting eaten.

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A man getting eaten.

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Chef's Night Out at Han Dynasty

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Chef's Night Out at Han Dynasty

Comics: Envoy - 'Meeting the Prime Minister'

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Look at Lane Milburn's website and get his book from Fantagraphics.

Indiana Is Threatening LGBT Rights Before the Supreme Court Takes Up Gay Marriage

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Governor Mike Pence, via Flickr user Gage Skidmore

A few hours ago, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law a bill that could allow the state's businesses to refuse services to gay, lesbian and transgender customers. The governor's signature comes after organizers of a large tabletop gaming convention threatened a boycott and NCAA officials said they were "examining the bill," which presumably didn't jibe with the college sports association's ethos of inclusiveness. Organizers of Gen Con, the gaming convention, say their event brings a $50 million boost to Indiana each year, and the NCAA's Final Four games will bring an untold number of millions as well.

Although there are similar laws on the books in 19 states, those were passed in a bygone era, long before the Supreme Court was set to take up the issue of gay marriage and maybe even make it the law of the land. In anticipation of their worst fears being realized, conservatives are apparently pulling all out the stops to make life miserable for the LGBT community.

Supporters are saying that the law in Indiana specifically aims to protect business owners from providing wedding-related services, among other things, to same-sex couples by giving them a "religious freedom"exemption. But that's just an excuse state Republicans are using to pass blatantly discriminatory laws in a country where the majority of likely voters approve of gay marriage.

Recently passed measures in Arkansas and Tennessee were branded as anti-anti-discrimination laws, which is to say their purpose is to prevent protective laws from emerging in the future. In an even trickier maneuver, Utah passed an anti-discrimination bill earlier this month with the support of Mormon leaders that included protections for religious people. Essentially, while gays were nominally protected, Mormons were also protected from providing them goods and services.

Indiana's law was also passed under divine auspices. "The Constitution of the United States and the Indiana Constitution both provide strong recognition of the freedom of religion, but today, many people of faith feel their religious liberty is under attack by government action," Governor Pence said in a statement.

But even though SB101 is also known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, not all Christians agree with its premise. On Wednesday, leaders from the Disciples of Christ suggested that if the bill was passed, they would reconsider hosting an assembly in Indiana two years from now.

Of course, liberals are condemning this law as hate by a different name.

"By signing this blatantly discriminatory bill that will only drive business out of his state, Pence reminds every Hoosier and every American that the Republican Party is more focused on its ideological social agenda than it is on expanding opportunity for the middle class and growing our economy," Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Ray Buckley said in a statement.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.


Kevin Stebner Is the Hardest-Working Musician in Calgary

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Kevin Stebner Is the Hardest-Working Musician in Calgary

The Trailer Park Boys Talk Pot, Kittens, and Their Show's Ninth Season

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The highlight of the Trailer Park Boys' recent Still Drunk, High, and Unemployed Tour stop in Oakland, California came about midway through. John Paul Tremblay, who was very much in character as "Julian," invited fans of the long-running Canadian comedy franchise to come up on stage and buy a $10 hamburger. Hundreds of drunk and stoned fans took him up on the offer, handing over real money for real meat, along with a chance to get some quick face time with their working class heroes. The line only abated after Julian had cleared, by my estimate, about $1,500 cash. And it only ended because he ran out of product.

Now, to the uninitiated, literally stopping your show to sell overpriced burgers to the audience hand-over-fist, and then spending that windfall on booze and pot, may sound like a greasy way to go through life. But fans of the series—which started with a low-budget independent short in 1998, and has since spawned eight TV seasons and three feature films—wouldn't have it any other way. Not just because we've shared so many laughs and good times with Julian, Ricky (Robb Wells), Bubbles (Mike Smith), and the other denizens of Sunnyvale Trailer Park over the years, but because we've also shared copious amounts of love, hope, friendship, community, and an old-fashioned kind of solidarity you don't often see on television these days.

Also, let's be honest, even the boys' more illicit capers—from growing and selling dope, to bootlegging Russian liquor—are actually far more honest hustles than what the rest of society does for a living. Because whether you're a greeter at Walmart or a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, most of us work, for the man, while these three best buds manage to get by on the margins—at least when they're not in prison.

Ricky grows the finest herb in Eastern Canada. Julian runs an unlicensed bar in his living room. Bubbles "finds" broken shopping carts, fixes them, and then sells them back to the mall. And, of course, all three star in an altered-reality show perhaps best described as Cops from the other side of the story.

Two years ago, the principal actors acquired the rights to Trailer Park Boys for themselves, and then subsequently signed a deal with Netflix to produce new episodes going forward. Still proudly made in Canada, the show's ninth season will premiere on March 27, with at least one additional season already in production.

Since the boys only do press in character, I caught up with Julian, Ricky, and Bubbles earlier this week by telephone from Sunnyvale Trailer Park, as they prepared to indulge in the first joint of the day.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ubeQtlkX8O8' width='100%' height='360']

You guys just toured the US, and now you're back in Canada—so who's got better weed?
Julian: They call it medicine down there, or they use these fancy names. I'd rather just call it weed. If it gets me high and I'm happy, that's all that matters.

Ricky: I've always thought our dope was way better, but I don't know, the last couple trips down there, I've been pretty blown away—especially in Colorado and places like that where's it's legal.

So then are you still against legalization?
Ricky: Well, legalization sucks for people like me trying to make a living growing it, but you can get a lot better quality stuff and it's a lot more available. I've got mixed feelings on the whole thing.

Legalization is emerging as a pretty big election issue in Canada, how is that playing out?
Ricky: Yeah, well, the dick that's in power now [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] is against it and his opponent, who might or might not be a dick [Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau], is for it. So hopefully, he'll get elected.

And if marijuana is legalized in Canada, how will you guys replace that income?
Ricky: My stuff is way better that any shit the government can grow, so I'm not really worried about it.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/EwJIDrOEPts?list=PLlMMi2QrE8SEV2j-BWSDCMdNSWfe3r35y' width='100%' height='360']

How'd the rest of the tour go? What was the greasiest experience you guys had out on the road this go around?
Bubbles: Probably the strippers that Julian picked up. It was the first time we performed in Vegas and it got out of hand. Julian had about 40 strippers hangin' off him.

Were they fans of the show, or how did you get them so interested?
Julian: They thought we had lots of money.

Do Americans recognize you more now that you're on Netflix?
Bubbles: Oh absolutely, everywhere we go people buy us drinks and give us free dope. And ladies come up and smooch me and grab my wiener!

Any downsides?
Bubbles: Not really.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/QOe5-qzk2JI' width='100%' height='360']

You've got season nine of the show coming out very soon. What are some of the highlights?
Julian: I was close to retiring again, which was awesome...

Bubbles: It's hard to talk about the upcoming season, because the people with the—you know, that edit it all together—we don't get to see it until it goes up on the TV, so we've learned over the years that a lot depends on what they use and what they cut out.

Do you like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black and some of the other shows they make?
Ricky: Bubbles has been trying to get me to watch that stuff, but I find it very hard to follow. It's just, I don't know, written by a bunch of people who think they're too goddamn smart and it drives me crazy. Bubbles likes it.

Bubbles: I like the shows, but I wish Netflix would give me a goddamn free account.

They're making you pay every month?!
Bubbles: Well actually, J-Roc's got it rigged up, he's foolin' the thing somehow, so I mean we get it, but it would be nice to not have to do that, cause I love all of those shows.

Who negotiated your deal with Netflix that you didn't even get a free account? Who is your representation in the industry?
Bubbles: Julian.

Julian: I was worried about making money, not free accounts. It's $8.99 a month, isn't it?

Bubbles: Yes! That's a lot of money!

Julian: I was trying to get us hundreds of dollars, not $8.99.

Bubbles: You could have just said, "Oh, by the way, I need a free fuckin' account."

Julian: I'll try next season.

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The writer hanging with the Trailer Park Boys

What will you guys do when the new season premieres online? Do you get the whole trailer park together and binge-watch?
Ricky: Yeah, it'll be a big party, I'll probably have about 50 joints rolled, and Julian's got a bunch of booze, and were just gonna get lit up.

Axl Rose is a big fan of the show, right? Think he'll show up?
Bubbles: I just talked to him a couple days ago. He sent me a platinum record for Chinese Democracy. It's awesome.

You performed with him once, right?
Oh more than once, I went on tour with him and played about 80 shows all over the world.

What did you do on the tour?
Bubbles: I got up on stage at the end of the night for the encore. Axl and I would sing a song I wrote years ago called "Liquor and Whores." It was fantastic. And Axl has this whole touring thing all figured out. He's got a private jet, all the booze you can handle and ladies around. You know we usually tour in Ricky's car, but for this last one we got a nice big bus—that's a trick I learned from Axl.

Ricky: We also just talked to Snoop a couple of days ago.

Julian: He says he wants to come to the trailer park and visit, so we're hoping he does.

If you were going to host Snoop at Sunnyvale, what would the preparations for that be like?
Ricky: We'd roll up a shit-ton of joints. All hands on deck rolling joints.

Bubbles: And hopefully Snoop would bring the party himself. Snoop rolls big, right? We did his show and he gave us 200 bucks each straight from of his pocket.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/YrRKrj3-kLU' width='100%' height='315']

Did Snoop give you anything else?
Julian: Two-handful's of dope each.

Ricky: It was really well done, whoever was growing that.

Do fans often bring you gifts?
Julian: In addition to tons of dope and liquor, we've gotten bongs, clothes, hats, knives—all kinds of crazy shit.

Bubbles: I get sweaters and socks that people knit with kitties on them.

How are your kitties doing? It's been a tough winter in Nova Scotia, right?
Bubbles: Yes, very tough winter, but they're all doing great. I got a nice little wood stove in my shed, so we all huddle around that and it's awesome.

Follow David on Twitter.

One Direction Fan-Fic Writers Have Not Taken Zayn's Departure Well at All

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[body_image width='1250' height='1164' path='images/content-images/2015/03/26/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/26/' filename='1d-fan-fiction-zayn-maliks-departure-body-image-1427385550.jpg' id='40130']

A troubled Zayn. Image via Wiki Commons.

The fan-fic writer knows no obligation to reality. While the media might be full of rumors about what really caused Zayn Malik's departure from One Direction— cheating on Perrie, smoking too much weed, just being a 22-year-old guy who is bored of the whole world imagining what it would be like to have sex with him—fan-fic authors are free to dream up stories far more ludicrous than any that would ever appear in a tabloid newspaper.

In the hours since Zayn announced he was leaving, the 1D fan-fiction community has gone into overdrive, flooding the internet with fresh, new, semi-conspiratorial stories. Most of them are prefixed with apologies for their hasty composition and overly mushy subject matter, and most, obviously, depict Zayn leaving and a histrionic imagining of what went down, although some fans have announced that they're retiring their pens in protest and shock.

One of the strange things about the fan-fic that's been published since the split is that so little of it seems to fantasize about Zayn changing his mind and coming back. Almost every plot I read features scenes of backstage crying and clammy hugs, using the kind of quasi-apocalyptic language that wouldn't seem out of place at a funeral. The tragedy of the situation is clear: Zayn's gone for good.

Here are some of my favorite literary reactions:

EXHIBIT #1

Author: fetchlylarrystylinson a.k.a. Larry Smut
Title: Goodbye Zayn
Previous works: Togehter we'll get through Anything (sic)

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In review: Goodbye Zayn frames the Zayn revelation from a point in the not-too-distant past, the moment everything started to unravel. Were the signs always there? "Yes," says fetchlylarrystylinson, "they fucking were if you opened your eyes." Here, Harry—the de facto "main one" now, remember—approaches Zayn in the weird, five-dorm house that One Direction fanfictioners seem to think they all live in, and asks him if he's OK. This is teenage wish fulfilment at its most basic: who has asked the Directioners of the world if they are OK? Because they are not OK. They are sat on their beds being sad about that good-haired prince fucking off to go and do an undoubtedly shitty solo record.

Sadly, all that tension—all that angst, all that parallel lives stuff—is quite rapidly destroyed when Zayn cups Harry's perfect face in his hand and it all, as One Direction fan-fiction is wont to do, gets homoerotic up in here.

What grade this would get if it were a high school creative writing assignment: C

EXHIBIT #2

Author: Bearcat
Title: Ready to Run
Previous Works: Dangerous (A Liam Payne Love Story)

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In Review: What Bearcat is saying with Ready to Run, beyond "I know a lot of descriptive verbs for talking," is that she's above the One Direction hype. Who cares that Zayn has left? Because Tracy fucking Chapman still exists, and turquoise paint still exists, and teenage fucking rebellion still exists. Heh, you think you know Zayn pain? You do not know Zayn pain. You do not know Zayn pain until you have deleted your Facebook page and smoked exactly three clove cigarettes and walked in your galoshes in the rain just really, actually, thinking about life.

OPEN. YOUR. EYES. SHEEPLE. PAINT. YOUR. NAILS. PURPLE.

What grade this would get if it were a high school creative writing assignment: A low B, and a note to student services about their wellbeing.

EXHIBIT #3

Author: sunnysideup
Title: The Storm
Previous Works: Something Called Payne


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In review: You know when proper grown-ups write for young adults and it's a bit, "Well, you tried granddad, but you did just describe a cardigan as being 'well dapper'?" That times a million for sunnysideup, author of The Storm. At its heart, The Storm is a story of five lads who have appalling, unworkable nicknames for each other (why would you call someone called Liam "Li"? Liam takes like, a millisecond to say), and who are in love in a bizarre, sexless (I think?) way, and they don't know how to swear, but they do understand each other, but they also punch each other in the bollocks on the reg. Liam and Zayn are in love, here, but in that kind of bromantic love where they sit on the sofa with their legs on each other's laps, but they never actually jerk each other off. What is happening? Nothing. How long is it taking nothing to happen? Forever. This is puberty in a nutshell, basically. The Storm is the most meta out of all of these.

What grade this would get if it were a high school creative writing assignment: Low D and a whispered conversation at parents' evening where it's suggested additional tutoring might be necessary.

EXHIBIT #4

Author: JessieAmari
Title: Zayn Quit 1D for me

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In Review: Think it's pretty clear what JessieAmari is trying to say with Zayn Quit 1D for me: It's that Zayn quit 1D, for her. So what is Harry Styles doing at the door, with his fuck-eyes on? He is in love with her too. What JessieAmari is saying here, and this is a brave admission, is that One Direction was torn apart by not one but two members' love for her, and the weirdly competitive feelings Harry and Zayn have over laying a stake on her. She's walking into the One Direction fan-fiction community with her hands above her head and she's saying: "Hear my voice, sunnysideup. Hear me well, Bearcat. It is I who broke up your favorite band, with my insanely powerful badonk-a-donk. I am like a double Yoko Ono up in here."

A brave piece of writing.

What grade this would get if it were a high school creative writing assignment: Oh, like a U.

EXHIBIT #5

Author: John the Craptist
Title: It Feels Better Biting Down

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In Review: Kerouac never died, he just went into the ground and re-emerged years later as John the Craptist, renowned stream-of-consciousness One Direction fan-fiction author. Burn, burn, burn, John the Craptist. Burn like the fabulous yellow roman candle that you are.

What grade this would get if it were a high school creative writin : A*********, a new categorization invented especially for it.

Follow Roisin Kiberd and Joel Golby on Twitter.


Poland's First Transgender Presidential Candidate Doesn't Worry About the Trolls or the Polls

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This article originally appeared on VICE Poland

After the 2011 general election in Poland, Anna Grodzka became the first openly transgender MP in the country's history. As expected in a place as conservative as Poland, her election caused quite a stir, with both the local media as well as her opponents focusing on her gender identity instead of her political agenda.

Not that that did anything to combat her ambition. On the contrary, this past January, Grodzka announced her plans to run for president later this year. However, there is a chance that today these dreams might come to a halt. The politician has had trouble collecting the 100,000 signatures required by the Polish Electoral Commission to validate a candidacy and the registration deadline expires tonight at midnight.

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of sitting down for an interview with a still-optimistic Anna Grodzka.

VICE: What exactly was it that inspired you to run for president?
Anna Grodzka:
The media has been focused on my transgender identity since I first got into politics. I completely get it but I am also set on showing people that my political abilities have nothing to do with my gender. A presidential campaign would be a great platform for me to do that—it would open up my reach and more people would get to hear my views and beliefs.

Are you prepared to be the president of Poland? Are you willing to represent all Poles—including the guys with the swastika tattoos?
There is no way a president can represent the whole nation—it's just not possible. Politicians have supporters and enemies. In my opinion, the most important thing for a president is to objectively recognize the needs of the citizens of his country. To me, it seems that our previous presidents have been mostly concerned with their own agenda and that they've tried really hard to maintain a neutral stance when pressed with questions about controversial issues.

I believe it should be the other way around—the president should be a person who initiates the dialogue. An ambassador of their own ideals.

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What is the ideal that Poland is in need of at the moment?
The most important issue that Poland faces right now is rampant inequality. But, to be honest, it's not only our problem. The whole Western world has to deal with that issue. One percent of humanity owns the rest of us.

In Poland, people have jobs but they cannot sustain themselves on their income. Economic difficulties create social phobias, and make the world-views of a large part of the society more radical. That would be at the center of my presidential agenda.

There is a lot of unpleasantry aimed at you. How do you cope with that?
I cannot really deal with it, but I try to do my best. I don't read online comments—I try to ignore all of them—because I have a feeling that there's nothing of use in them. On the other hand, constructive criticism is much appreciated. Critical opinions on my words or my actions—I'll gladly accept those.

Have you ever been made to feel particularly hurt by someone's comment?
I remember being take aback by a hate speech by another Polish MP, Krystyna Pawłowicz. She said that I look like a professional boxer and that a person like myself has no right to even be in a public space. She said those things at a meeting in the town of Mińsk Mazowiecki. It was around the time that we were debating the issue of civil partnerships and same-sex civil unions in parliament.

How is all that hate connected to freedom of speech? Should we encourage as unlimited freedom of speech as possible or control it?
If you're assuming that in Poland we have freedom of speech, I have to stop you right there. There is no freedom of speech in Poland. Sure, we can say almost anything, but in private conditions. It's impossible for an individual to take part in a civilized debate. There's evidently censorship at work.

The situation is almost worse than in the communist years. I was a book publisher then, and I can say that we had more options. You at least had the option of arguing with the censor face to face. To make him consider saving some fragments of a book or taking an author off the blacklist.

Now, certain persons, events, and opinions are simply expelled from the public debate. In Poland, this is also largely the work of certain media.

According to the most recent polls, you're supported by only 1 percent of the voters. Why do you think your predicted position in the elections is so low?
Take a look at the amount of time the mainstream media gives me and the amount of time that other candidates receive. I can sit at the conversation table with any of my opponents—discuss any issues and my views—but I am never given that chance. Even when a channel finally invites me, they have no interest in my political platform, all they want to discuss is my transition.

Polls are an entirely different case and they rarely get it right. In the last election, the polls gave the Green Party 0-1 percent and we got 10 percent. So, I don't worry about the polls too much and the fight goes on.

Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Grodzka.

Striking Grad Students on What It's Like to Live on $15,000 a Year

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The picket line at the University of Toronto. Photo via Flickr user OFL Communications

As the strikes at both York and the University of Toronto move into their second month, anyone following the news knows that one of the main issues for U of T students is their guaranteed funding package of $15,000 per year. That's technically the minimum amount of funding, although few students (at least in the arts and humanities) get more than that. Living on $15,000 for an entire year in Toronto means living several thousand dollars below the low-income cutoff, which is another frequently mentioned piece of information. But what does that mean? It may sound nearly impossible to live on such a tight budget, but clearly some people manage to do it out of necessity. We spoke to three U of T students on strike right now about how they manage to survive on such a paltry income.

Some helpful numbers

  • There are 15,000 graduate students at U of T, of whom about 6,000 are currently on strike.
  • The poverty line in Toronto was $23,298 for a single adult with no dependents in 2011.
  • Just under 3,900 new Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants were awarded in 2013-14. In that same year there were 61,530 masters and PhD students in the "social sciences and humanities research community."
  • Graduate students are guaranteed a minimum funding package of their tuition plus $15,000 for the first four to five years of their studies, depending on the department. After that, they have to pay both living expenses and full tuition either out of pocket or from whatever teaching and research positions they're able to secure.
  • Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 3902 Unit 1 is on strike right now. Unit 1 represents all students and post-doctoral fellows employed at U of T in teaching capacities.

Jessica Thorp—second-year drama PhD
Quite frankly, you can only survive in this program by incurring a lot of debt. I ran out of money last summer. I was like, 'I don't know how I'm supposed to pay rent or eat or do anything for the next four months.' When you're getting lump sums of grant money in September and January, and you're only making wages in between, it's really hard to make ends meet. After April I won't get any money again until September. But you also can't apply for EI, because you're still technically a student over the summer. So I end up taking the lump sum in September and paying down whatever debt I incurred over the summer, and then I don't end up actually keeping any money out of the January amount, because I use it to pay my tuition for both semesters.

In my cohort, there's eight of us. Everybody had partners at the beginning of our program, but everybody who wasn't married has since broken up. I think that's really interesting; it speaks to the stresses of grad school and what it does to you. This would be very, very, extremely difficult to do without family support. You're basically living hand-to-mouth, and constantly paycheck-to-paycheck.

Contractually, I should be working about 10 hours a week for the class I'm TA-ing this year. But almost every single week it's more than that, and when you're marking, it's a lot more than that. You have to attend the lectures for the class, and then the tutorials themselves. And then my prep time for the classes: I probably spend four to five hours marking their weekly assignments. Also time spent in office hours, and emailing with students—I mean, that in and of itself feels like a full-time job. And then there's marking. I think in my contract I'm given 25 minutes per essay for marking. It's the B-grade and below papers that are very time-consuming to mark because you need to find the things that are wrong with it, but also the constructive things about it. The stuff that's really amazing or really awful? Quick mark. The stuff that's in the middle, which is most of it, is very time-consuming to mark, and part of this is because I care about my students and I want them to succeed, so I spend time on their work.

For a typical week I would say I'm spending 15 hours on my TA work on the low end, sometimes up to 25. And then I have my own coursework and research. And I also have to be a research assistant for a professor in my department. The time commitment for that really varies. The breakdown of all of those roles would probably be something like at least 10-15 hours a week minimum for each of those roles, and probably more like 20 hours a week. And at the PhD level, they expect us to be presenting at conferences, so when I'm working on conference papers, that sort of thing, I could be looking, easily, at an 80-hour work-week. Easily. And that's not remarkable.

My take on what's happening at U of T and what's happening at York is that none of these are new issues. But I think that graduate programs, as they're getting larger and larger, students are feeling like they've done all the right things, undergrad degrees, masters, now PhDs, but they don't feel valued. Universities have basically created an academic underclass who do the majority of the teaching. And I understand why people are frustrated. I'm frustrated. I'm really angry. And I love teaching, I would love to be a professor. But will I ever be able to do that? I don't know. Because once I'm finished all of this, I'm still going to have to, at some point, pay off all the student debt that I've incurred. When all is said and done, I'm going to be $70,000 in debt, probably, and working sessional jobs. Something doesn't quite add up there. Our knowledge is not valued, and I don't understand why an academic system would do this, other than to create serfs.

It's also interesting: there's a new Times Higher Education ranking that came out, and U of T is now ranked as the 16th-best university in the world. So they're boasting about this, about the prestige of the university. I think that's something to be taken into account: If U of T cares that much about prestige on the international stage, they need to be willing to compensate the students who are also doing much of the teaching and research that brings that prestige.

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U of T picket line. Photo via Flickr user OFL Communications

Emil Marmol — social justice education PhD at OISE*
I'm from California, which is a fairly expensive place to live. So when I came here, I thought, "Okay. I can live on the funding package. I can make do. Plus, Toronto's probably not that expensive, right?" Well, no. I've discovered that's not the case. Living on $15,000 has meant that I have really had to actively restrict how I live my life. In my first year here, if I was invited out to eat with my friends, I would tuck a cheap protein bar in my pocket and have that at the restaurant, and just say that I wasn't hungry.

It's also meant that I've had to live in housing that is what I would consider substandard. I had to look for a very long time to find something that was not only reasonable in price but also reasonable in quality. And I am a PhD student, I'm a mature student. I just turned 40. It's just not the way that I'm used to living. When summer came around after my first year, I came awfully close to actually running out of money, and I became very distressed. Fortunately, a good friend of mine allowed me to move in with her. She had this small little bedroom and offered it to me. Which was great, but otherwise I don't know what I would have done. I was saved by her good graces.

So for that summer, I scrambled to get a job, because I thought if I couldn't get a job, I didn't know what I was going to do. I wasn't going to last through the summer. I was lucky enough to get a job working in another capacity at the university, which is great because I'm managing to supplement my income. However, supplementing my income has meant I have less time to focus on my own work. My first year here, I completed all my coursework. But ever since taking on another job, it's been hard. My comps [comprehensive exam, part of the PhD process] are due at the end of this summer, and I'm trying very hard to get them done, but since I've had to take additional employment, I have to split my time and I just don't know if that's going to happen.

In addition to impacting how long I'll be working on my degree, it's also affected my future career prospects. There was this great summer institute put on at McMaster that I really wanted to go to. I talked to the organizers, they reduced the fees greatly, but even then I couldn't attend. I just couldn't fit it into my budget.

Our level of pay is also impacting my personal and family life. My partner, who's also a grad student at the university, has had a child, and because of the low wages we make, even with both of our salaries combined or our funding combined, we can't get to California so my mom can meet her grandchild. It's been a major source of stress for us, for my mom, for my partner. My partner really wants to get to know my mom better. My mom really wants to meet the child. She freaks out, she cries, she says things like, "I'm watching the baby grow over Skype! I want to see the baby!" It's crushing, emotionally, to hear her talk like that.

In my collective contract for my second job it stipulates that I'm allowed one month of paid parental leave if I or my partner has a child. Well, I took my one month paid parental leave in November, and the university has been stonewalling. After repeated communications between the union and that department, from what I've seen on emails it's gone on to labour relations at human resources in the university, and now they've been stalling. Parental leave pay is a way to keep getting paid with no gap, because if there's a gap you're screwed, basically. And here we are, it's almost April, and the employer still hasn't paid out my one month of parental leave pay. As you can imagine, this has put a very heavy tax on my partner and on myself. She's on academic leave, so she's not receiving any funding and she's not able to do any work. So we're relying on my income, which is almost impossible to do, and then on top of that, the employer is withholding one month of my pay. I don't know when I'm going to see that money. I don't know what the law is around this, but some kind of action should be taken against the employer. You can't withhold wages like this.

*Emil is not on strike through his program, which is not represented by CUPE 3902, but he does receive the same amount of funding. He is a part of CUPE 3902 Unit 1 through his second job on campus.

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Flags from union chapters walking the picket line in solidarity. Photo via Flickr user OFL Communications

Noa Shaindlinger — seventh-year Middle Eastern studies PhD
If you're doing ethnographic work like I am, you have to do about two years of fieldwork. So my program does two years of coursework; the third year is your comprehensive examination; and then your fourth and fifth years are in the field. So your funding runs out before you even begin to write your dissertation, which takes a few years. I'm in year seven. In order to support myself, I had to teach courses, which obviously held me back. So the position of students, particularly upper-year students who are out of the funded cohort, is particularly dire. We have to pay tuition, and we're not funded, and we have to support ourselves.

A lot of us have families, and a lot of us are also at the same time trying to apply for post-docs. In recent years there's been an influx of new PhDs, [but] there are not enough tenure-track positions at universities for everybody. So a lot of us have to look for something called a post-doctorate: you're not a student, you're not faculty. You're there for a year or two to do research. You get a stipend and often you have to teach a course or two. Because it takes a very long time between the time of applying for a post-doc and the final stages of being accepted anywhere, a lot of us are applying while we're still "ABD," which is all-but-dissertation. So we're still in the process of writing our dissertations while we're going through the process of these applications.

Surviving on $15,000 in Toronto is pretty much impossible. I was lucky because one year, when I was still funded, I taught a course, and because of my contract a portion of that pay was on top of my funding. But it is incredibly hard to survive on that little, even if you have a top up like I had that one year. Looking back, I have no idea how I did this. I have no idea.

The $15,000 the university offers in funding, that's not free money: you have to work as a teaching assistant for a certain portion. Sometimes you manage to get a little more in terms of internal rewards: $2,000 here, $3,000 there. I had a SSHRC, which was $20,000, but it's not like you get $20,000 in addition to your funding. I'm basically not seeing that money, it just looks nice on my resume. Every year, I take out a student loan. I get the maximum amount, which is about $18,000, which of course is still not enough to live on and pay tuition. So I need to TA, I need to teach courses. Last year I did both at the same time, TA and teach a course, which of course left zero time for me to write.

I think that the problem is obviously systemic. It's not just about $2,000 less or $2,000 more. It really is about living wages: what is a living wage in Toronto, and why are no graduate students making them? No graduate students I know are ever, ever making any kind of living wage. Why are we doomed to be steeped in debt for many years to come? Why don't the funding packages actually correspond to the average number of years it takes to finish a PhD program? Those are just a few of the questions that need to be addressed. And I think this strike in particular is really about the university trying to break organized labour on campus, and we're trying to respond and not lose this war of attrition.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

A London Drug Dealer Just Went to Prison After Taking Selfies with Wads of Cash

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A drug dealer from the London borough of Lambeth has been sentenced to six years in prison after cops found a bunch of photos where he posed with wads of money held up to his head as though he were speaking into a cell phone.

Besides actual drugs and those little see-through bags, a cell phone is generally a drug dealer's most essential tool. Unfortunately, this man got so carried away with his own hype that he confused a wad of money for a Nokia. It's sad, in a way.

33-year-old Junior Francis will be in prison for the next six years and eight months. As the Standard reports, after Francis initially denied all charges, the main evidence the police hooked him for was a trove of selfies on his phone where he can be seen holding up cash to his ear. Also useful were the Instagram photos he took where he has a bunch of crumpled notes bound up on a kitchen counter alongside a container of squeezable ketchup. Never have thousands of dollars in cash looked so underwhelming.

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Francis was found with £7,000 cash [$10,000] and £75,000 [$111,000] of heroin in a police raid on his home last November, and further investigation uncovered the photos, some of which are captioned on Instagram with Notorious BIG and Method Man lyrics. After initially denying all involvement, Davis admitted possession with intent at London Crown Court on Wednesday and was nabbed for money laundering, too.

"Francis used bullying and intimidation to facilitate his drugs business," Detective Constable Matthew Clark said after the hearing. "From start to finish he denied having any money or dealing drugs but was ultimately undone by his vanity, taking selfies and boasting on social media. Removing Francis from our streets has removed a key contributor to the drugs trade in Lambeth."

After putting so much coke on a lacquered desk that it forms a mountainous pile, having a tiger as a pet, putting spinning rims on a blacked-out Audi, or calling people "chief," taking a cash money selfie is about the most stereotypically drug-dealer activity a person can engage in. So if you're in the business, maybe don't do that, because then people like the police will know you are a drug dealer. I know you want to brag about your hustle, and that you've done well to make so much money from dealing a shitload of drugs. But tamp the ego down a bit, and maybe next time you won't go to prison.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

I Humiliated Myself by Busking in London with the Most Annoying Instruments I Could Find

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All photos and videos by Ben Smith

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A couple of years ago my brother ended up living rent-free at someone's place in New Orleans with a bunch of gutter punks. As is often the case when you spend extended periods of time staying at someone's home without helping out whatsoever, it wasn't long before the owner of the house made it clear they wanted some kind of remuneration.

Unable to get a proper job as an Australian traveling through the States, my brother thought he'd busk. Problem was, my brother's not very good at playing any instruments. This is an issue in New Orleans, where the majority of people inexplicably seem to be retired session musicians for legitimate R&B icons, or at least know what a guitar played right is supposed to sound like.

So, my brother decided, the best way to get past his ineptitude was to play instruments not many people had heard much of. Theremins, washboards, Aeolian wind harps. And it worked: scraping together the weirdest, cheapest stuff he could find at a local pawn shop, he managed to double his daily earnings to $20.

I wanted to see whether the same tactic would be as effective in London, where you can't get on the subway without seeing some journeyman virtuoso play that really technical DragonForce song from Guitar Hero and be completely ignored by literally everyone walking past.

My musical experience extends to the 18 months I spent playing bass in a band that was continuously looking for my replacement, so I guessed I'd have an uphill battle. However, I picked two areas that I knew would be full of tourists, i.e. people who can't necessarily differentiate between the various silvers, meaning I might actually have a chance of achieving the optimistic target I'd set myself: the national minimum wage, $9.60 an hour.


[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/118916586' width='640' height='420']

Instrument: Accordion
Time spent: 20 minutes
Number of depositors: Three
Money earned: $4.75

First up was the accordion, which I chose following some advice from my brother. "It's got that romantic connection, so dudes on a date trying to impress girls are more likely to throw you some coin," he helpfully pointed out. "And it pumps loud, so you can be heard over the traffic."

I picked one up immediately on Gumtree for $45. I don't know why it was going so cheap and didn't ask, but I'm going to presume the previous owner finally sobered up to the realization that wandering around pubs and squeezing out Lady Gaga covers to drunk office workers probably isn't the decision if you want to continue paying to live in London.

Given that I'd never played this instrument before there were a few audible teething problems, but I held strong, cranking my way through some of my own tuneless compositions while pedestrians kept a wide berth around me. Luckily, it didn't take me too long to find three major notes, and to be honest that's pretty much all you need. I didn't bother with the fiddly piano key section too much, because every time I did it sounded like someone screaming into a well.

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Blending my three-chord-progression with some bum notes and the odd bit of silence, the money started coming in a lot faster than I'd expected. The first contribution: a sympathy dollar from a man in a North Face jacket. Then a Polish guy in a leather jacket and gloves asked for a photo with me and handed over $1.75.

The thought of my face being posted on Facebook next to the caption "Me with an authentic London busker!" still makes me guilt-sweat, for I am not authentic, from London, or a busker.

After about ten minutes the interest and money slowed. As I was about to pack up an older lady approached me and asked if I was going to keep playing. I said no. She smiled and dropped a quarter in my suitcase.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/118922144' width='640' height='420']

Instrument: Thumb piano
Time spent: 15 minutes
Number of depositors: Zero
Money earned: $0.00

This one was by far the most unusual instrument in my arsenal: a thumb piano—a mini piano you play with your thumbs—with a pick-up and a delay. Following the law of obscurity-to-earnings, I figured playing this in public would be like printing money. It wasn't. Instead, it felt like I was live-soundtracking a yoga class that nobody wanted to be at. That people actively avoided being at by walking on the road instead of the stretch of pavement in front of me.

It was easy to play, though, and I felt like I was really starting to come into my own in terms of stage presence. Because the thing is, I play the thumb piano for the love, not the money. I play the thumb piano to inspire, to transcend creed and race and culture and connect on a sonic level with strangers who want nothing to do with me or my thumb piano.

Next.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/118922249' width='640' height='420']

Instrument: Cow bell
Time spent: 15 minutes
Depositors: Four
Money earned: $4.84

If you've ever heard any hard rock released in the decade between 1965 and 1975, you'll know how vital cowbells were. However, they've slightly fallen by the wayside since, which is a shame, because as you can see in the video above people fucking loved it. Even the man who spends all day, every day dressed in a Yoda costume pretending to levitate for pocket change broke character to enjoy what I had to offer.

It's also a surprisingly easy instrument to play. You just hit a piece of metal with a piece of wood. And people go crazy for it. In fact, these people demonstrated their joy by handing over my biggest pay-packet yet: $4.84.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/118925169' width='640' height='420']

Instrument: Beat box
Time spent: 15 minutes
Depositors: Three
Money earned: $3.27

I really didn't want to do this one. Unlike the other instruments, where I could play and pretend to be somewhere else, this required a high level of commitment that I 100 percent did not have. I also have no idea how to beatbox, and no real intention of ever learning how to beatbox, so I just had to wing it.

After some initial stage-fright I let go and actually kind of got into it. I felt like that actor who played Eminem in 8 Mile; I was losing myself in the music, I only had one shot and I used it to repeatedly go, "Bah-bahka, bah-bahka, bah-bahka, bah."

It's hard to beatbox when you're also trying not to laugh, but I managed to keep it together long enough to earn $3.27. I also drew my biggest audience of the day: a group of school kids who stood staring at me and my monotonous, entry-level beat boxing for a couple of absurd minutes before finally figuring out that I wasn't making the wah sound with my mouth.


Overall, I managed to earn $12.87 in just over an hour. It's not a huge amount, but it is considerably more than minimum wage, and only slightly below the London living wage. So if you're thinking of moving to the capital to live a life that isn't quite as comfortable as you'd like it to be, heed my advice: buy a cowbell and spend an entire day embarrassing yourself in public.

Follow Marcus on Twitter.


At the Bar with Duke and UNC

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At the Bar with Duke and UNC

VICE Vs Video Games: This is What It Takes to Earn Thousands for Playing ‘Call of Duty’

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A screen shot from 'Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare'

No big deal or anything, but the world Call of Duty Championship is starting right about now—from March 27 to March 29, to be exact. Thirty-two teams from across six continents will converge on Los Angeles' LA Live venue to compete for the grand prize of a cool million dollars. Not bad for shooting a pretend gun at some guys who aren't really there.

One of the crews competing this year is Britain's own TCM. Two of their members, ShAnE and Gunshy, aka Shane McKerral and Tomas Jones, respectively, got together to tell me about what it takes to compete at the very highest level.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/MUsh8TV3ZwE' width='560' height='315']

VICE: What differences are there between preparing yourselves for this particular tournament and any other event? Do players feel differently going into the bigger games, the biggest games? Or once you're in front of the screen, do the matches mostly feel the same?
TCM: Playing at the Call of Duty Championship is like no other tournament. It's the most prestigious tournament of the year, and the pressure on the players to perform is like no other. With such a prize pool on the line, nobody wants to miss out on placing in the money. If there was one event in the year to perform at, it has to be the Call of Duty Championship.

In terms of your timetable, how many hours per week do you have to commit to remain a competitive CoD player? Do you eat, sleep, drink CoD?
For this certain competition it has literally been eat and sleep CoD for the past two weeks, with us pretty much playing for ten to 12 hours every day, just grinding as much as possible. For a normal tournament, we'll play about six to eight hours in preparation. The reason we play so much for this Championship is because we want to make sure we get the best practice possible, ready to play against the best players in the world.

CoD is massive in the West, but as an eSport it's not so globally regarded as DOTA or League of Legends. Is that a cultural difference, do you think? Or is it something more to do with the genre of the game?
I think the reason it's not big in the East is because Xbox consoles weren't being sold throughout China until recently, and the fact the East is far more into the PC strategic scene than anything else. Call of Duty is similar to Counter Strike, which is also only big in the West.

Do you feel any competition between eSport disciplines, between the different games, for popularity?
Publicly, I don't think there is any competition between titles—I feel like all players from each game want the same thing for eSports, and that's for it to be one of the most mainstream sports out there. Whether that's Call of Duty or LoL, I don't think people are that bothered. Amongst the pro players obviously they'd like most of the money flowing into the game they compete on, but if there's big viewing numbers on another game that's a good thing for eSports in general.

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TCM win the 'CoD: Ghosts' European Championship in 2014. Image via.

How are European eSports teams regarded by stateside crews? You go to the US as one of the bigger teams this side of the Atlantic—but where does TCM rank beside the teams over there?
The Europeans have always been looked down upon in CoD, but there have always been one or two teams that can compete on their level. At the moment that would be us and Epsilon. Americans have always seen the EU players as having the same skill level with reaction speed and how good their shot is, but when it comes to teamwork that's where the US players come out on top. EU teams have done some damage in the States but not on a consistent level for them to be regarded as the best region.

What would winning in the US mean to a European team? And do you feel, generally, that teams in Europe are beginning to impact on global rankings? You look at the top earners and, generally, we're seeing individuals from the Far East.
Winning in the US is the best feeling for a pro CoD player—if you beat the Americans you can claim to be the best in the world. The reason the individuals in the Far East are wealthier is because they play games that are for individuals, like Starcraft. Not only that though, gaming in the East is far more socially acceptable than in the West; it's like what football is to us over there. Gamers are superstars [in the East], so yes they will be earning more with that much more interest shown from their public people.

The night before the biggest of big games, are you practicing like mad or trying to relax? How does a pro-gamer even relax? I'm guessing you don't play video games?
The day before we play a big game we just try to relax and focus on what we have to do to win the next day, having a laugh with the lads. Being stressed going into a big match can throw you off your game quite easy.

When at this Championship—or other big competitions—are you able to mix relatively freely with other teams, or is that frowned upon? If you were out the night before with someone from the opposition, would you get into shit for potentially spilling strategies?
Not at all—there isn't much to hide from other teams, to be honest, in terms of strategy. Everyone gets along with each other very well, and you'll chill with each other a little bit before the event, just seeing how they are. But from when the tournament starts, until it ends, we'll try to focus on just being with the team as much as possible. Then, on the last night, we tend to have a few drinks with everyone and just enjoy ourselves before everyone goes home again.

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TCM competing in a previous 'CoD' event. Image via.

I've seen some eSports stars get mobbed by fans, to the extent where it looks a little scary. Do you have first-hand experience of that, and can it actually shake you up before a game?
Yeah, it can be surreal to people breaking through to the top of the scene. I have never been swamped so I couldn't imagine how that feels—but when people are asking for autographs, that's fun. A lot of professional players like the feeling of being a superstar to someone, so to taking a minute to sign something isn't too much to ask. However, when you get knocked out of a tournament you're normally so mad you just want to be left alone, because all you've worked hard on for so much time has gone down the drain.

There's big money in these competitions, more even than major sporting events of a more "physical" nature—so why do you think some people have such a hard time appreciating the scale of eSports, and even the scale of the global competitive CoD scene? Is it a game growing in eSports popularity?
I think that most of the people who don't appreciate eSports are generally the older generation. People who haven't grown up around video games seem to find it hard that people are making a living from this. In 20 to 30 years, everyone will have been around video games. That's when I can see eSports being on a totally new level. Call of Duty has been increasing in numbers ever since Black Ops II came out. Because of the developer support it had for the competitive players, things like social media exploded. As long as the game developer supports CoD it will increase in numbers for years to come, especially with CoD having the biggest game fan base in general in the video game industry.

What do you actually play for? Your career? Money? Profile? Or can pro-gamers experience something more... well, spiritual, I suppose. It's one thing to be good at a game, but some players must feel a connection with it that's quite beyond thumbs on a controller.
It started off with me just being a competitive person by nature; even when I played sports with friends when I was young, I just wanted to win. You'll find that with almost all professional players, and you need that drive within you to put the time in to be at the top of your game. There is no denying money has kept me here, but it's not life-changing money, and most pro players earn the same amount of money as someone in a [regular] full-time job. It's just we'd rather be playing our favorite game, traveling to tournaments, instead of the day-to-day office job.

Have you ever felt any kind of negative stigma as a competitive CoD player?
When I was in school I'd hide it from my friends, because seven or eight years ago people had no idea what it was and if they knew they would stereotype it as a geeky thing. But as I kept competing, I was earning more and more money, and felt like I had to tell people—and when they found out I was surprised that they thought it was cool. It was the same with my parents. When I earned $50,000 from one tournament they could not believe it and supported me from then onwards. Without my success I don't know what they'd think about it, but in general I feel like gaming in our day and age is on the rise. A lot of people don't see it as a negative thing anymore.

For more on eSports, watch our documentary on the competitive gaming community here.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

VICE Vs Video Games: The Greatest Moments of ‘Final Fantasy,’ Part 2

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Squall illustration by Stephen Maurice Graham

Looking for part one of this piece? It's over here, where the selections are explained. So before you head to the comments to complain about your favorite scene being absent, maybe click that way, first.

Squall in limbo – Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII gets a bit weird towards the end when everyone starts talking about time and space and all sorts of plot points that start to fall apart if you think about them for too long. The party willfully manipulates Ultimecia to compress time and space so that they can jump to a point where they can confront her in person. They defeat the sorceress, the game's primary antagonist, but this creates circumstances that set new events in motion, as the main player character Squall and Ultimecia are sent to our hero's childhood where he watches her pass on her powers to Edea. Out of time, however, Squall is stuck in some weird parallel-dimension limbo, where his memories begin to fade away, Rinoa's face gets all blurry and he's left alone in the darkness.

Things start to get freaky and he begins to glitch out and fall down a lot, all alone on a big rock. Thankfully Rinoa, using her own magical powers, is able to find him and bring him back and everyone lives happily ever after. Except those of us that have seen those horrible hallucinations, because there's no going back from that.

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Kefka destroys the world – Final Fantasy VI

VII's Sephiroth may be the iconic villain that most FF fans remember, but he never even came close to achieving his goal of total global domination. Creepy-ass clown Kefka Palazzo did, however.

It's impossible to take Kefka seriously in the early stages of FFIV. In the service of Emperor Gestahl, he cuts a ridiculous figure with his painted face, colorful robes, and whooping laugh. And he's often quite funny, like when he berates his subordinates for allowing sand to get in his boots while they're in a desert. It's only when he poisons an entire village's water supply and doesn't even bat an eyelid at murdering scores of innocents that you realize he's rather more sinister than you first suspected. Then he kills a bunch of other people, steals the life forces of a load of espers, and usurps the power of three gods (known as the Warring Triad) and becomes an all-powerful one himself. What happens then? Only what pretty much every other Final Fantasy villain has dreamt of but never quite pulled off. Kefka destroys the entire world.

The land becomes a ruined husk, people die horribly—the monster even wipes out almost all the moogles. The party that you've spent so long getting to know and putting together is utterly scattered, and hope is lost so completely that Celes even attempts suicide. Things get dark, is what I'm saying, and even though your party will (of course) get back together eventually, overthrow the mad clown god, and save the day, they can't erase the fact that, well, Kefka won. And he remains one of the most dangerous and memorable villains in the entire series. That laugh isn't so funny now, eh?

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Fran's mist rage – Final Fantasy XII

XII was a bit forgettable. I actually had to Google a few of the main characters' names for this feature. In case it comes up in a pub quiz, Vaan was the main protagonist in the stupid vest who just stood there gormless while everyone else saved the world around him; Penelo was his best friend with the unfortunate fringe and badass boots; and Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, or Ashe, was the kind-of cool but ultimately not cool princess who wasn't scantily dressed enough to remember.

The two characters I never forgot, however, were Balthier, the dashing, roguish sky pirate, and Fran, his accomplice who also happened to be an anthropomorphic rabbit dressed in a cross between armor and lingerie. They were fun, they stole the game's best lines, and they kind of reminded me of Han and Chewbacca. If, you know, Chewbacca was really lithe and sexy. Which I guess depends on who you ask. Despite being a bunny in a teddy and completely ludicrous stilettos (which are justified because of her race's physiology—whatever you say, Squeenix), Fran was so far above everyone else in that game, I had to have her in my party all the time, even though her stats were, for want of a better word, shit.

The physiology of the Viera also makes them involuntarily freak out when exposed to Nethicite, a magical substance that everyone wants control over. One enemy of the party, Judge Magister Ghis, finds this out to his detriment—though he deserves nothing less when he spouts nonsense like, "Ah, we've found it at last—true deifacted nethicite. The power of the Dynast-King in my hands!"

Despite being tied up, Fran goes berserk, breaks free, and fly-kicks a bunch of soldiers in the face. It's totally awesome. It also prompts Balthier to tell a filthy S&M joke to a princess. Told you they were like Han and Chewie.

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Vegnagun destroys Spira – Final Fantasy X-2

I expected to hate X-2 so much that I avoided it for many years after it launched. I mean, they gave Yuna guns and a short skirt and turned her into a pop star for crying out loud—and then they teamed her up with a sassy blonde best friend and a new totally emo chick who wasn't so much a character as an aesthetic counterpoint to the other two and a stand-in for Lulu, who for some reason decided that her adventuring days were over and that she'd have some redhead's child instead. Essentially I found the entire concept of dresspheres vaguely insulting in a Final Fantasy with an all-female cast.

But, it turns out, X-2 was awesome, the songs were dope, and the storyline was surprisingly dark. The whole adventure begins because Yuna believes she has seen Tidus in a really old sphere, but it turns out to be the spirit of a young man resembling him named Shuyin, who was the lover of a songstress and summoner named Lenne. The two were gunned down over 1,000 years ago, an event that made the unsent Shuyin mad with grief. It's recounted during Yuna's performance of "1,000 Words" in Thunder Plains, due to her dressphere somehow holding Lenne's essence. "1,000 Words" is a pretty good song. Yes it's cheesy as hell (then again, so was "Eyes on Me"), but hey, it's better than Leona Lewis's "My Hands."

Anyway, one of the best, or at least most dramatic moments from X-2 is one that the majority of players will never even see. Angry and vengeful, Shuyin wants to destroy the world, and with it ,any fear of people dying unnecessarily in war (that's some good logic there, sport). So he unleashes Vegnagun—basically a sort-of-sentient weapon of mass destruction. You face it down at the end of the game and, if you lose, X-2 actually shows the destruction of Spira instead of just going to a simple "Game Over" screen. Watching the blasts rip apart the Calm Lands is pretty horrific, to say the least. And yet most people were more horrified over the game's unbelievably kitsch opening, which was fuckin' A if you ask me. Lasers! Flying guitars! Magical costume changes! Sexy male back-up dancers! What's not to love about that?

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Cyan sees his wife and child cross over to the afterlife – Final Fantasy VI

Cyan's a bit of an idiot. He's one of those party members who people always just tend to gloss over in favor of a more powerful or more interesting character (hey there, Cait Sith), and who's going to choose some faux-Shakespeare spouting nincompoop like Cyan when they can have Edgar, who's basically Batman? When the game forces you to, of course.

Events early on in VI see Cyan join the party after he sneaks behind enemy lines during a siege on his home of Doma. This infiltration means Cyan alone escapes death after Kefka poisons Doma's water supply, killing everyone including Cyan's wife and son, Elayne and Owain. In his grief, Cyan tries to take on the Empire's forces alone but meets up with martial artist Sabin, and they escape into a nearby forest.

Here they accidentally board a ghost train, transporting the souls of the dead to the afterlife. After Sabin actually suplexes the entire train, and it agrees to let them off at the next stop, they disembark just in time to see the souls of Cyan's wife and son boarding for their final destination. It's a sobering, heart-wrenching moment that you feel all the more because it comes right after a downright ridiculous one, and after an hour spent buying goods from ghosts and eating at a little phantom restaurant. As he runs alongside the train to the end of the platform and they say a few last words of love and encouragement and you're fairly sure you see the moment his heart actually breaks, you find new empathy and respect for a man who previously you'd only seen as kind of a loser.

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Ramuh summon – Final Fantasy XV

I haven't been one of Final Fantasy XV's biggest supporters—I've complained about it on this very site in the past—but the recent "Episode Duscae" demo of the game has given me cause to eat my words, and I couldn't be happier about that. Not only did playing through the demo instill me with a sense of wonder and intrigue that, for me, has been missing from the series ever since X-2, but it even made me care less that all the party members thus far could have been picked out of a sample chart of J-pop boy band clichés. I'm slowly beginning to hope that this game might not suck, but I'm still wary—I've been hurt before.

One of the most mind-blowing aspects of the demo, however, is that you can actually hunt down a summon hidden somewhere in Duscae—and bloody hell, it's pretty. It's a fairly well-known summon—Ramuh has been present in almost every Final Fantasy since III—but it's probably safe to say he's never been a massive favorite. You wonder if that's why Squeenix chose him specifically for this moment, because if this is how good they make an old dude with a staff look (I love the fact that X's Ixion makes a cameo appearance in the staff's carving), just imagine how badass Shiva or Ifrit or Bahamut will look. Actually, don't, because I'm not sure we're ready. But honestly, everything about this looks amazing—from the sheer scale of Ramuh himself, to the destruction caused to the landscape by Judgment Bolt, to how you can still see him on the horizon after the battle ends, before he slowly dissolves out of sight. My body is ready.

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This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I had to stop typing at some point. Shout-outs to the Opera, the coin toss and Rachel's temporary revival from FFVI; the motorcycle chase, leaving Midgar, the destruction of Nibelheim and cross-dressing in the slums in FFVII; Kuja destroying Terra and leaving Burmecia in IX (actually, Kuja doing anything in IX—his "Later, bitches" hair flip is everything); changing classes in the first FF; the petrification of Palom and Porom in IV, the ballroom dance and Sorceress Edea's parade in FFVIII; the sending, the wedding, and anything Kimahri or Auron are a part of in FFX, and Balthier and Fran's eventual fate in FFXII.

Oh, and this obviously.

Great, now I've got to go back and play them all again, don't I?

Find Part 1 of this piece here.

Follow Aoife and Stephen on Twitter.

A Building Exploded in New York City Thursday Afternoon

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Adam Mashaal was working from home when he heard what sounded like a car crash. He was meeting with a contractor at his apartment on 2nd Avenue near East 7th Street in Manhattan's East Village, and the two deemed the disturbance loud enough to head downstairs and check it out.

What they found was a building with its face blown off.

An explosion rocked the East Village around 3:17 PM, with initial reports and comments from city officials suggesting at least a dozen and perhaps as many as 30 people are injured, three of them critically. So far, there have been no reported fatalities. Flames quickly engulfed 121 2nd Avenue, the apparent site of the explosion, as well as a neighboring building, both of which collapsed. The chief spokesman of the New York Fire Department suggested to the New York Times that a gas leak is probably to blame, although that hasn't been confirmed. (NYC gas giant Con Edison was reportedly checking up on a meter installation at the building around 2 PM that did not pass inspection.)

Con Edison has shut off all gas to the building, and a slew of police cars, fire trucks, and NYPD hostage negotiation units have blocked off 2nd Avenue from East 14th Street all the way down to Houston—to the frustration of nearby residents and workers apparently undaunted by the threat of smoke inhalation.

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Videos by Adam Mashaal

The explosion left pedestrians confused, with a clerk at Abacus Pharmacy on 2nd Avenue near East 10th Street suggesting it was enough to shake the drug store counter. "It was like a bomb," she said, as a woman stood nearby crying. "It was horrible."

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Mashaal ran back upstairs to get a phone charger when he realized the severity of the situation, and that he'd likely not be coming back to his apartment for a while. But when he got back downstairs, he was mesmerized by the scene and only left when the police started streaming in around 4 PM. He continued to take video of the situation as the cops pushed the crowd back a quarter of a block, and then a half a block, and finally an entire avenue away. A policeman on the scene said it would be "many, many hours" before the area was safe to re-enter.

This is officially a seven-alarm fire, which means there are about 250 fire fighters on the scene. Mayor Bill de Blasio slipped under police tape at 1st Avenue and East 10th Street at about 5 PM as Mashaal watched and worried that his residence, too, might be lost to the fire. Despite those concerns, he excitedly showed me his captured footage.

"It's hard to grasp time, because it was happening so fast," he said while lighting a cigarette. "But the next-door building started to get bright red and brighter red, and within 30 minutes, I'd say, it went up in flames."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

We Asked Some Geeks to Predict the Plot of the 'X-Files' Revival

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Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Earlier this week, FOX officially announced that X-Files is coming back! We last left off with the (pretty terrible) feature film X-Files: I Want to Believe. In that movie, we see Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) adrift amidst a government full of impostors, "super-soldiers," and secret keepers. The movie itself follows them as they track down a group who steals human organs... but forget that, because it's rubbish.

As a new lover of X-Files (thank you, Netflix) and general geek about town, I wanted to know what my like-minded friends expect from the reboot of the series. So I polled all the geeks I know to find out their thoughts on what the new season of X-Files has in store. Please, share your theories in the comments section.

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"Given how the world has changed since the show went off the air, and the idea of the government spying on US citizens has gone from conspiracy theory to actual news, I believe the invasion of 2012 happened, and was successful, but the vast majority of people don't know. A figure like Edward Snowden is threatening to release secret government documents, which Mulder believes will prove the invasion is real and aliens live among us and control the world. As they try to track this whistleblower down, they fight off shadowy forces determined to stop them. Scully raises the question, "The truth may be out there, but what if it's more dangerous than the lie? What will people do if they knew what was really happening?" And what does the whistleblower really know? And Mulder and Scully are most likely in a relationship, after all, knowing what they know makes them undateable."

Leo Jenicek, Writer and Genre Fan

"Given FOX's recent track record, we'll get six unimaginative trope-filled stories with cliché monster-of-the-week plotlines. The overarching 'conspiracy' tying all six episodes together will leave us all longing for the Cigarette Smoking Man of yore. "

—Rich Stein, columnist for Hipsters of the Coast

"Mulder realizes he has been asking all the wrong questions and has sublimated his own insecurities about his sexuality through his pursuit of the x-files. Scully admits she's always been a lesbian, and Mulder was just a marriage of convenience. Then they go track down their missing daughter. They find that she has started a pagan religious cult, and are unsure if the magic she is practicing is real or imagined. Scully falls in love with a cult member and starts worshiping the Goddess. Mulder bleaches his hair and starts an underground dance scene, which sparks its own x-file investigation by his successor at the FBI."

—Zil Goldstein, Nurse Practitioner

"At the end, we were told that the alien invasion of 2012 was unavoidable since they had infiltrated the highest levels of the government. Are they going to retcon that or will they deal with the fact that it is 2015 and no invasion took place?"

Jeff Berger, Lawyer and Sci-Fi Enthusiast

"Obamacare."

—Hunter Slaton, Writer/Editor

"Mulder and Scully must return to the FBI in order to find their daughter, who has gone missing."

—Dana G., Sci-Fi Nerd

"Bryan Cranston returns as their ghost consultant."

—Nick Greenwald, Illustrator

"I'm hoping that the Aliens have decided for a more passive invasion rather than a hostile one. They just get their agents in place, create laws, and facilities to allow them to achieve their goals undetected, and maybe fabricate some flashy events to keep the public looking elsewhere. Or maybe they have some kind of mood manipulation resource that makes the masses more docile and easily led. Or more hostile and likely to tear ourselves apart and save them the trouble. As I reread this, I realize that I'm describing Ghostbusters 2."

—Sean Ewing, Marketing Operations Manager

"The gentrification of Area 51."

Andrew Solomone, Writer and Maker

Follow Giaco on Twitter.

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