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Mount Polley spill. Photo by Kieran Oudshoorn

The company responsible for Canada's largest-ever mining waste spill has filed an application to reopen its collapsed Mount Polley copper and gold mine in British Columbia's central interior.

A spokesperson for BC's ministry of energy and mines confirmed the province accepted Imperial Metals' application for formal review on Friday, March 27. A month-long public consultation begins today, April 1. At least one resident near the disaster site says this amounts to a cruel April Fool's prank.

"I couldn't believe it," says Douglas Gook, Quesnel area forestry consultant. "One of the problems is—I've been phoning people like crazy—yet nobody's heard about it," he says of tonight's meeting, hosted by Imperial Metals. "I've signed up on all their email lists... only through other connections did I hear about this meeting."

Last summer's massive tailings dam failure spewed 25 million cubic metres of mining waste into Polley Lake, Quesnel Lake, and Hazeltine Creek. Joe Daniels, a Fraser Riverkeeper water advocate familiar with the remediation efforts, estimates less than one percent of the sludge and wastewater have been "recovered" since the disaster. Imperial has yet to repair the dam walls that contain mining byproducts including arsenic and mercury. There's also a pending investigation that could result in criminal charges.

Despite the minimal cleanup, ongoing inquiry, and potential safety hazards posed by the failed tailings pond, the open-pit copper and gold mine could be up and running again as early as June. While some locals are happy to go back to work at the mine, other residents, academics, environmental advocates, and First Nations are surprised and concerned by the provincial government's decision.

Because the old wastewater storage pit is still broken, the company has proposed to dump tailings in an unused mining pit instead. Mines ministry spokesperson David Haslam explains if the application is successful, mining will resume at Mount Polley's "Cariboo" pit, and waste will be stored in the mine's "Springer" pit.

This is a red flag for Will Koop, coordinator of the B.C. Tap Water Alliance. "One of the issues there is the pit is not secure," says Koop, who authored a 200-page report critical of the mine's engineering history, its management, and the environmental fallout since the Mount Polley disaster. Without proper lining, the wastewater could seep into local groundwater, he says.

When asked about this, Imperial Metals' VP corporate affairs Steve Robertson says, "nobody has brought up that concern." He says the pit is "solid bedrock" and the inflow of water is very slow. By keeping the tailings under 1,030 metres above sea level, he says water will flow into the pit rather than out.

As for the old tailings pond, Koop sees lasting integrity issues that can't be fixed before June. "What's going to happen to that existing tailings storage facility?" he asks. "It's still holding a lot of toxic tailings—how are they going to secure that forever?"

Robertson dismisses this claim as well, adding the storage facility doesn't have any pressure inside it. "I would say the facility has been very well examined over the last seven months and there are no questions about the stability."

Daniels, whose background is in fisheries biology, says there's not enough research to move forward with a restart plan. He says the jury's still out on bioaccumulation of toxins in fish and animal tissue, for example. "I personally feel we're not going to know how tailings have impacted that ecosystem for five or 10 years," Daniels says. "I don't feel the science is there." So far the company has claimed the micron-sized sediment particles aren't small enough to be absorbed by wildlife.

Northern Shuswap Tribal Council mining response coordinator Jacinda Mack says she is concerned with the "expeditious" review timeline. "We are still in the beginning stages of consulting with the membership about this application," she wrote in an email yesterday. "Thirty days may not be enough time to go through everything." As of today, April 1, Mack is no longer mining response coordinator for the Northern Shuswap Tribal Council.

For every critic of the mine planning to attend the consultation, Gook says there's probably at least one supporter or Mount Polley worker choosing to stay home. "That component of the community hasn't been at the meetings," he says. (The union representing hundreds of the mineworkers came out in favour of a restart weeks after the disaster). "I'm hoping a lot of the reopen-the-mine supporters are there, because they need to hear this stuff."

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

The New York Police Department is probing an incident of verbal abuse after a video of a police detective cursing and making xenophobic remarks toward an Uber driver surfaced on YouTube Monday. The incident, which has accumulated more than 600,000 views since it was posted, apparently started when a man identified only as "Humayun" honked at the cop.

"In an unmarked car, the policeman was allegedly attempting to park without using his blinker at a green light," Sanjay Seth, who took the video, explained on YouTube. "The Uber driver pulled around and gestured that he should use his blinker, casually and non-offensively, and kept driving us."

The plainclothes cop ended up following the Uber driver before pulling him over and unleashing a tirade. Through the driver's side window, he let loose on an apologetic guy who spoke with an accent and said in the video he's only been in the country for about two years.

"I don't know what fucking planet you think you're on right now," the cop snarled. After Humayun replied he wasn't "planning" anything, the officer violently slammed the Uber driver's door.

Video by Sanjay Seth

"I'm sorry," one of the passengers in the backseat offered while filming on a phone. "You picked the wrong guy to honk at obviously."

But it wasn't over. "Pull over five fucking feet. Do you understand me? Pull over!" the cop yelled when he came back for more. He eventually issued a ticket to Humayan after saying he wasn't "important enough" to arrest outright.

In a statement, Uber called the incident "unacceptable." An NYPD spokesman told VICE on Wednesday, "After review of the video, the subject has been identified as an NYPD Detective. This investigation has been referred to the Internal Affairs Bureau and CCRB." (The Daily News is reporting that the detective is named Patrick Cherryand had just visited an ailing fellow cop at the hospital.)

This incident is especially bad given some recent reform efforts announced by the department. Back in November, the new NYPD head of training, Michael Julian, said he wanted officers to stop cursing. And in February, it was reported that a mandatory retraining program for 22,000 officers was screening scenes from Road House to teach cops how to shrug off confrontation.

"If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice," Patrick Swayze's character says in the movie. "Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice."

The detective in question is apparently no Swayze fan.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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All images by Yani Clarke

Note: Some of the images below are disturbing.

This year Australian photographer Yani Clarke spent a month documenting life and death at Nepal's Pashupatinath Temple, a site that incinerates more than 40 bodies a day. Despite the constant presence of death and grief, Pashupatinath is hardly somber. Clarke's photos are full of holy men, monkeys, and festivities. But it was still a shock for the photographer, at the age of 21, to engage with death so intimately for the first time.

VICE: Why did you decide to spend this time at the Pashupatinath Temple?
Yani Clarke: I spent a few weeks at Pashupatinath a few years ago when I was helping my mentor Jack Picone run a workshop in Kathmandu. Since then I couldn't stop thinking about it. After leaving I felt a strange sense of guilt for not being there. I came back this year because an electric crematorium is set to be opening in a few months . When the cremation facility opens, the practice will eventually cease.

It was your first close encounter with death—was that an eye-opening experience for you?
I remember the first body I saw, I remember the smell of the flesh, my mind just slowed down. Throughout the next few weeks I slowly stopped becoming affected by what I saw, and that feeling became normal.

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Can you tell me about the holy men in your photos?
There are a lot of fake holy men at the temple who are basically there to make some cash and chill out. They spend their days hanging out in the sun, getting high smoking chillums, and having their photo taken with tourists. I have strong reservations about paying for photographs because making an image of someone shouldn't involve a financial transaction; it kind of defeats the whole purpose. These holy men, holy or not, are really nice guys, and a few of them even added me on Facebook.

Women are banned from a lot of the gatherings you shot. How did you get around that?
It has so much to do with how you react—they test you. As soon I walked into the crowd of about a hundred men, one of the naked holy men came right up to me and put his penis on my lens. I shot it and laughed along with everyone else, then went and sat down with the other naked men. For hours they kept testing me. After they realized they couldn't scare me off, they stopped noticing my presence.

What was the ritual that most impacted you?
It was a Buddhist cremation right before I left. The body was wrapped in orange silk shrouds and covered in orange marigolds. In Buddhism it's the daughter who has to light the body on fire. So I was only meters away from this young girl who was about my age, and she had to light her mother on fire and she was weeping. At about this time a woman I'd never met before came over and started hugging me. We both watched the whole cremation, which was incredibly graphic. Something had happened to this woman, it was like her spine was coming out through her sternum, her body had noticeably started to decay, because in Buddhism they purify the body for four days; when they removed the silk shrouds and plastic wrapping, one of her arms almost fell off.

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Do you think these experiences have affected how you feel about death?
When you don't see death in your day-to-day life, you kind of feel like it's something that happens to others. Death and dying is locked up; we don't even speak about it. You've caught me at an interesting point because last night I found out that I've lost a friend back home in a car accident. Life is so fleeting, and it's different when someone close to you dies.

Seeing so much death has left me feeling quite reverential about my surroundings. More than anything, I feel an urgency to do exactly what I want to do in my life, to be honest and open in all my interactions and let go of my attachment to material things. Everything is impermanent, and there is nothing really wrong with death at all. Only how we look at it is wrong.

Interviewed by Laura Rodriguez Castro. Follow her on Twitter.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

What with journalistic integrity and media transparency being the big issues of our day, I decided to interview Caitlin Moran, who has been a close friend of mine for years—and to do the interview in my kitchen, using a wide range of alcohol for background research.

There are three or four hours of tape recordings, most of which are so painful to transcribe that I have basically missed out most of what I said and just put Caitlin's bits in. We began by talking about her novel, How to Build a Girl, the story of a teenage girl called Johanna, who comes to London to be a music journalist, re-invent herself, and learn to give blowjobs. It's just been nominated for the PG Wodehouse prize for comic fiction, which I am really pissed off about, so I aired my grievances with Caitlin.

Sophie Heawood: Given that you're currently working on two screenplays and the second series of your sitcom, Raised By Wolves, as well as all the journalism you've been doing since you were a teenager, I was really annoyed when you managed to write a novel. I was hoping there'd be one form of writing you couldn't do but the book was poetry. How did you know that you could pull it off?
Caitlin Moran: I'm ashamed and embarrassed that I haven't written more novels, because when I was ten I absolutely presumed that I would have written about seven by now. I'm nearly 40. But I got kind of derailed by weed and pregnancy... Not at the same time.

What I love is that the whole way through the book, which is based on your experiences of working at Melody Maker, Johanna keeps pretending to hate U2 because all her male colleagues are obsessed with hating U2, and in her reviews she won't call him "The Edge," only "The Cunt." But all the way through she quietly loves them and is humming their songs to herself. I used to be a music journalist and that was exactly what it was like.
Yes, and now it's internet cynicism, you preempt other people's disdain and roll your eyes and go "O RLY" and just write cynical stuff. Because cynicism is armor. But armor limits you. You can't dance in armor.

I think it's very important you hold onto the idealism you had as a child—that's how you grow. Twelve-year-olds are often more switched-on than people in their twenties and thirties because they have such a strong sense of right and wrong. It's quite good to see the world in simplistic terms, you can get a lot done. Pete, my husband, always says the classic idea of cool is that you put on black sunglasses and a leather jacket and you don't really say that much. That's because you're scared. That whole Bobby Gillespie, Velvet Underground thing—it's far braver to wear a cardigan and throw your arms out and go, "I love Crowded House! I'm incredibly excited about baked potatoes! Life's going to be amazing!"

So your next book, the sequel to the novel, is called How to Be Famous...
Yes! Johanna and John Kite get together in the sequel, and he is not an asshole and it's great...

...and the third part of the trilogy will be How to Change the World—can I print this on VICE?
God yes, then we can copyright the title so no one can fucking nick it.

But this is confusing because How to Be a Woman was your non-fiction book, and then How to Build a Girl was the novel and they're all kind of about the same thing—i.e. YOU—and they all have the same name. How do you get away with this shit?
I just decided not to waste energy worrying about the rules and the way things have always been done. It's funny though, the number of people who have opinions on me and who think they know what I stand for, when my Times writing is behind a paywall so they haven't read it. If you just saw me on Twitter you would think I was just shouty and screamy: "Woo—here's a petition. Woo—here's a sexy picture of Bruce Springsteen." You wouldn't know the things I'm trying to do.

I remember when one of your editors at the Times was like, "Oh you've not written about the coalition's austerity measures AGAIN," and you were like, "Yes, AGAIN." I also remember sitting at your kitchen table at about 2 AM and you just crying because someone connected to the Tory party had said that if you were right about what the experience of poverty is really like, then they would have to rethink their whole plans. And you were just praying that he meant it and that he'd get back to you and he never did.
Was I actually crying? Fucking hell.

Well, your eyes were a bit watery. But you've never been overly bothered about how you look, which is one of the things I like to think we've always had in common...
I used to feel that I should look as nice as possible when going into a meeting at work, wearing a nice dress or heels for a photo shoot even though I couldn't fucking walk in them, and that I should be deferential. But I've realized that a lot of what I thought was to do with gender was actually to do with power. As I've become more powerful, I'll turn up looking really scruffy, and I'll interrupt people, nicely, but going, "No, that's not going to work, that's not right." Once you're the most powerful person in the room, that's how you can behave.

[Halfway through this conversation we go for a wander around my house for some reason. Caitlin sees her own book How to Be a Woman on a shelf and brings it back to the table so she can stab herself in the eye with a fork.]

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That thing that Aric Sigman said about schools, that what we need to do to stop teenage girls thinking they're fat is get boys who are two years older than them and say what body images they like in women, to say, "We like pear-shaped women, we don't care about you looking like a model!" NO! For the last thousand years, women have worked out if they are all right or not by whether their body is what a man wants to fuck. What if you don't want to be fucked by a man? What if you don't want to be sexy at all? What if you're already building a city in your head? You're trying to make teenage girls feel better by saying, "YES, I WOULD have a wank over you"?!

Half the moms I know are feminists, and they don't let their daughters watch MTV and those kind of images. I can see why they ban it, it's out of love. But instead of banning it, in my house, the way I do it with my two daughters is we sit down and watch Rihanna and go, "OK, this is the 17th video in a row where she's in her bra and pants in a field wanting to fuck someone—let's look at the stats on that. Statistically, on at least five of these shoots she would have had her period or been suffering from a very heavy cold. The minute the cameras went off her they'd have put her in a massive puffa jacket and she'd have been freezing and crying and eating Nurofen. Just to get through the fucking day." I make sure that they know that.

As long as you empower teenage girls to have fun with it and question it and not feel they're being crushed by it. I don't think you should ever ban anything. But also let's make it clear that pop music is about people being sexy and wanting to fuck people. Lots of people hit out at Rihanna for always thinking about sex—of course she should be singing about sex. That's what pop music is about. I believe in tools, not rules. Not banning stuff.

You used to be fat and now you're not because you lost a lot of weight. Was sexiness a part of that?
I had hypnotherapy when I'd got really big, about ten years ago, and I was having to eat ice cream to write everything. He said to me, under hypnosis, imagine you're in a bikini on a beach and some men walk past you and go, "Mmm that's nice." And I came round out of the thing thinking: No, I don't want that to happen. His idea was that I was eating in order to be fat in order not to be fucked, because I was scared of the male gaze. I was like, "No, I like food and I'm going to be clothed at all times. I holiday in a cagoule in Wales. You're trying to prepare me for a holiday on a beach in Barbados with One Direction, which is never going to happen. I simply want to overcome my abusive relationship with food where I eat so much ice cream that my stomach hurts. Because I used to have to eat a liter of ice cream for 800 words. But the hypnotism did end that—it did work. I now don't have to eat to write. I just drink tea instead.

Something that has always interested me about your writing is that you manage to make strong arguments without slagging people off. Most big columnists fall under the sway of negativity.
When I slagged off Ed Sheeran at the Queen's Jubilee three years ago, I said on Twitter that if my children ever came home saying they liked him I'd put them in a weighted sack and throw them in the river. Literally 20 minutes later Ed Sheeran himself popped up in my timeline saying, "I'm sorry to hear that Caitlin, I love you."

[We are cackling now.]

Then in the next video he did he looked completely hot, and it had Muppets in it—I love the Muppets more than anything—and he was best friends with Taylor Swift. And now I've completely fucked my chances of being best friends with Taylor Swift. So that was the last time I was bitchy. If you don't like what exists now, don't spend your time criticizing the people who created it. Spend your energy creating the alternative. Invent invent invent. Can I have one of your real cigarettes? [ Caitlin has been vaping all night.]

[body_image width='1250' height='760' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='sophie-heawood-caitlin-moran-body-image-1427794985.jpg' id='41403'] Illustration by Dan Evans

Do you remember that night you were hosting a quiz at the Groucho and somebody nicked your Marc Jacobs handbag, and afterwards we were having a cigarette outside and the police turned up to talk to you. And we were just sort of giggling at the ridiculousness of any of this being real?
I know, they seemed to think it was a really big deal. It was a TINY Marc Jacobs bag off the Outnet for $300. In my life I have bought two branded handbags. Both bright orange—I like things that look like bollards or road signs. One of them, I had to put my daughter's knickers in when she pissed herself with fear at a Doctor Who launch party when a Dalek came towards her, and then the cat smelt the piss and pissed in it too, so it was ruined. And the other one got stolen after I'd had it for two weeks. So that's the end of it.

I've tried to buy posh clothes and they look terrible on me. I am of peasant stock. The Groucho banned me twice before they made me an honorary lifetime member. When I was 16, I was put up in the bedrooms there to do Loose Ends, and I brought a band back with me. We'd all done shit tons of E and we made plasticine animals and crushed them into the carpet with our feet. The second time, I'd been to a mustache conference, and it was 1992 so everyone was bisexual, and me and my friend, a girl, started getting off with each other in reception, and they got funny with us. We were going, "But Julie Burchill's a member here and she's bisexual!" And then Keith Allen was at the bar still wearing his Glastonbury backstage wristband from two weeks ago, and I'd been there too, and I went, "Why have you still got THAT on?" So him and Damien Hirst started following me round the club going, "Caitlin, you're dead, you're fucking dead," and I got banned again.

Were you frightened?
YES! [The story continues into some unprintable details about someone kicking in the door of a toilet cubicle looking for Keith but finding Damien taking a shit]. Anyway, then they made me a lifetime member and my bag got nicked and a couple of days later, a Net A Porter van turned up outside my house with a new Marc Jacobs bag on it, so I immediately looked on the website to see how much it cost and it was £1,500 [$2,200]. So I gave it away.

At this point the tape descends into a discussion of what it's like when you make a lot of money and all your friends, including, err, me, end up borrowing money off you. I am just going to stop transcribing it here because the sound of me eating and wheezing and going, "Let's go and look at my sleeping child!" is getting embarrassing.

After Caitlin went home I was sick. She emailed me the next day saying I probably shouldn't print any of it apart from the bit where she asked for a drink.

Follow Caitlin and Sophie on Twitter.

How to Build a Girl is out now in hardback, published by Ebury. The paperback comes out on April 9.

On a recent episode of her family's TV show, Khloe Kardashian publicly admitted to wanting to put a tapeworm inside herself. Her half-sister Kylie Jenner balked at the idea, to which Kardashian replied, "Do you know how skinny you get? I googled it to see if I could really have one."

If that conversation wasn't purely made-for-TV and she actually searched for that sort of information, she probably would have found Tapewormeggs.com, a shady-looking Russian website that I would expect to see in a comedy sketch about buying a tapeworm. "PLAY PRETTY GOOD JOKE ON FRIENDS," it suggests. The worms sold there cost $34 and come with instructions: "Use promptly on arrival by applying to salad or uncooked food."

The motivation behind putting a parasite inside you on purpose (a depressingly common scheme) is that it will live inside your digestive tract and gobble up calories from the cheeseburgers and cake you keep eating, but saying a tapeworm will help you lose weight is like saying a knife wound in your throat will ease your sleep apnea—it might have the intended effect, but it's also a terrible, terrible idea.

In 2012, Io9 dug up a horrific case of an Indian woman vomiting out a pair of tapeworms. Not only are the little critters gross, they can cause malnutrition and anemia—and, according to parasitologist and leading tapeworm researcher, Dr. Ana Flisser, they won't even guarantee you lose weight.

"That's totally, fully wrong," she told me. There are a number of different sorts of tapeworms, including two kinds found in livestock that seem to have evolved to live in the human digestive system: one typically found in pigs, and one typically found in cows. If the Russian website is offering to send you the eggs of the one found in cows, she said, you can't even get a tapeworm that way—the eggs would die off in transit. As for the one found in pigs, she explained, "if you eat it with a salad, you will get cysticercosis."

Cysticercosis is just an absolute nightmare—that's when immature tapeworms infect the tissue of parts of your body other than your digestive tract. Often, they get into your brain and form cysts. That can cause seizures, eye damage, cognitive defects, and fluid around your brain, Flisser said.

An old article in The Veterinary Record describes other disgusting symptoms, including something called "discharge of proglottids," which is described as "a sensation in the rectum, followed by a discharge of the segments through the anus, and then a crawling sensation in the perianal region." The article details a case study in which a minister "had to bring his sermon abruptly to a close when 5 feet of tapeworm segments slipped down one of his trouser legs." The article goes on to note that only 21 percent of tapeworm patients lost weight.

Flisser told me it's "very difficult to find" the kind of livestock-borne tapeworm that lives in your intestine and helps you lose weight (you'd have to eat fresh raw steak, basically). Tapeworms found in fish—which are usually asymptomatic—can also cause weight loss, but that's only in very severe cases, and comes with other nasty complications. A third variety of tapeworm, called Hymenolepis, in some cases can help you lose weight in a terrible, terrible way: It gives you diarrhea.

Giving oneself diarrhea to lose weight is a symptom of an eating disorder, and doing so can be deadly. Googling it took me to some very unsettling message boards where I found that one way people accomplish this is by eating a bunch of probiotic sour milk products like Activia since they're full of bacteria.

Those sorts of weight-loss methods are extremely dangerous, and if you're thinking about them you should look for help. And if, like Khloe Kardashian, you're considering the tapeworm diet, you should think about taking up jogging instead.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Herring. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

For three days and nights, members of the Heiltsuk First Nation on British Columbia's central coast have camped inside a federal fisheries office, calling on the department to put a stop to commercial herring fishing in the area.

The long-simmering conflict kicked into high gear when Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) abruptly opened herring roe fishing in Spiller Channel on Sunday, March 22—a move one hereditary chief called an "illegal... surprise attack."

Over the decades, commercial herring fisheries have closed a few times due to population collapse. The central coast herring fisheries were closed in 2006, then reopened to a 10 percent catch rate in 2013 after some stocks grew back.

The Heiltsuk maintain herring populations are still recovering and cannot sustain commercial harvest. They say the DFO's 10 percent catch rate bends to industry requests and ignores its own scientists.

Tensions escalated over the weekend, resulting in a full-scale occupation near Bella Bella, BC on Sunday, March 29. The Heiltsuk vowed to stop all gillnet herring fishing in "area seven"—a DFO management area that stretches from Hunter to Pooley Island.

[vimeo src='//player.vimeo.com/video/123725807' width='500' height='281']

"They've already taken out 689 tonnes from area seven, and that's enough," said Kelly Brown of the Heiltsuk's integrated resource management department. The First Nation has also taken to the water, keeping a close eye on contested areas like Kitasu Bay and Powell Anchorage.

The DFO's regional director general Sue Farlinger arrived on the scene late Monday afternoon to begin formal negotiations with the Heiltsuk. Since talks began, the First Nation has said two of their demands have been met: the DFO agreed to increase herring monitoring and training on Heiltsuk indigenous knowledge.

DFO spokesperson Karen Calla did not confirm those agreements in an email statement. "DFO is continuing negotiations with the Heiltsuk First Nation," she wrote. "We cannot provide any further update at this time."

The government is taking negotiations seriously, as recent aboriginal land and title rights cases have supported BC First Nations in court. The nearby Haida Nation recently won a court order to block commercial fishing on their territory.

But so far, the government hasn't conceded on the commercial gillnet herring harvest. On Tuesday, following a day of negotiations, Chief Marilyn Slett said she's not going to budge on the issue. "If the DFO doesn't have the authority to shut down area seven, we do," she said. "And we will exercise our authority."

Both Slett and Brown have occupied the DFO office overnight since Sunday. Dozens more supporters have set up tents in front of the building.

With files from Damien Gillis.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

[body_image width='640' height='427' path='images/content-images/2015/04/01/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/01/' filename='the-arches-glasgow-saved-liam-turbett-732-body-image-1427891196.jpg' id='42040']

Police outside the Arches last year. Photo by Anton Zhyzhyn

This post originally appeared on VICE UK.

The police failed in their bid to have one of Glasgow's largest clubs and arts venues shut down permanently today, after their proposal was rejected by the city's licensing body at an emergency hearing.

The Arches, a cavernous warehouse space lying underneath Glasgow Central Station, is a cultural institution in the city. The prestigious venue is famous for both its massive club nights and eclectic arts programming. Lately, however, it has been attracting more attention for its run-ins with Glasgow's licensing authorities.

Last Saturday, 2,000 clubbers packed into the Arches for GBX, a regular house and trance night run by a stalwart of west of Scotland commercial radio, George Bowie. But it would be forced to shut an hour early after the police served an emergency closure notice. This followed a woman falling unconscious within the venue from an "alcohol related episode," and police officers on the scene recording up to "26 offenses for drug and alcohol related incidents" in or near the venue. The woman later discharged herself from hospital.

Today, the club—which is run by a non-profit charity who subsidize their highbrow arts events with lucrative club nights—was hauled in front of an emergency sitting of Glasgow City Council licensing officials. With the police pressuring the council to shut down the club for good, the licensing board reached their decision this morning. Thankfully, it's good news for the city's EDM aficionados and avant-garde theater fans alike, with the committee rejecting the police's line of argument and refusing to revoke its license.

Any sanctions placed on the club would have been devastating news for Glasgow's burgeoning club scene, with the potential for this level of scrutiny to start hitting other venues too. If even the Arches, with its masses of security, lack of drinks promos, on hand-drugs workers, medical staff, chill out rooms, plethora of non-club events and er, council arts funding, wasn't safe, other venues—with a fraction of their resources—would have faced a crisis.

This wasn't the first time the Arches management have found themselves in this position. Just over a year ago, 17-year-old Regane MacColl died in hospital after taking pills tainted with PMA at the venue. On that occasion, a near moral panic ensued, with much of the media outcry surrounding the tragic events failing to differentiate between the relative safety of ecstasy/MDMA, and its potentially much more dangerous imitators. The Arches—in contrast to Manchester's Warehouse Project, who in similar circumstances in 2013 announced plans for a drug testing pilot—found themselves backed into a corner, reiterating their "zero tolerance" stance towards drugs and agreeing to step up body searches of those entering the club. No sanctions were taken against the venue in the end, although an over-21s entry policy was adopted for a short time in a further bid to placate the council and police (in 2008, though, the Arches was forced to shut for a six week period, after two police officers walked in on a 30-strong orgy during a club night).

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Police outside The Arches last year. Photo by Anton Zhyzhyn

What has become a persistent feature in recent events surrounding the venue, though, is just how clueless the police are at understanding what night clubs are and why people might want to go to them. Last year, the police demanded that the Arches enforce "moments of calm," an idea that would see DJs stop playing music for five minutes each hour, with the lights switched on. This proposal was rejected by the venue, but not before it made the cops come across like a bunch of overbearing teachers at a school disco, so worried that someone might be necking vodka in the toilets that they send everyone home.

It emerged during this morning's hearing that 11 of Saturday's 26 arrests came after the police forced an evacuation of the venue, with them then charging clubbers who'd taken alcohol outside. Such was their desperation to make a compelling case against the club, they'd neglected to previously mention that it was their own actions in shutting the club early that led to so many offenses being recorded.

This bumbling ineptitude and rigid adherence to a "just say no" policy can sometimes prove dangerous in itself. In March 2014, just weeks after the club agreed to step up body searches, a 39-year-old ended up in a coma after swallowing four pills at once, after he was "searched and confronted" about them at the door. Taking mysterious pills is never going to count as a particularly safe past time, but cultivating an environment where people are so scared of being criminalized that they're prepared to down their stash in a queue doesn't seem particularly conducive to public safety either.

Of course, people could just stop taking drugs. That's the advice from Mark Sutherland, the police commander for Glasgow City Centre who this week said, "I am keen for young people to enjoy the city but please do not use drugs of any kind and drink responsibly. We remain committed to working closely with those who own and operate the licensed premises across the city but will take decisive action against those who fail to ensure public safety."

Decisive action was taken today, and despite the best efforts of Police Scotland, the Arches will not be closing down. Whether the police like it or not, tens of thousands of people—of all ages—will still go out this weekend, take drugs, and maybe drink too much as well. Some of them might do this at the Arches, but it remains one of the most well managed club spaces in the city, and the shameless scapegoating of one venue isn't going to solve problems that exist across society for a multitude of reasons. Nor is it particularly clear why the police have decided that one club—and one of the key, non-commercial cultural venues in Glasgow at that, which would be unable to fund itself or function without its license—poses more of a danger to public safety than anywhere else.

Last February, the former owner of another Glasgow clubbing institution, Sub Club, spoke out on the issue in light of the reaction to Regane MacColl's death. Paul Crawford, who ran Sub Club for two decades, told the Herald that, "People are scared to even debate drugs, especially people in the nightclub industry or any industry that is licensed... you're scared to put your head above the parapet because you're worried that the authorities might take a dim view on your point of view and might make life difficult for you."

That culture of intolerance to anything except "zero tolerance" is doing a huge disservice to everyone, regardless of whether they take drugs. Hopefully today's level-headed decision to reject the police bid to shut the Arches can now spur a real debate about how we can take an approach to alcohol and drugs that actually tries to keep people safe, rather than just demonizing one venue.

Follow Liam Turbett on Twitter.

Misra Records has been releasing eclectic, innovative work from artists like Phosphorescent, Destroyer, and Hallelujah the Hills for a few years. Now they are reissuing Adam Torres's exceptional DIY album, Nostra Nova, which dropped back in 2006 and garnered the singer-songwriter a great deal of acclaim in the state of Ohio. It's awesome to see a talented songwriter from the Midwest who can create beautiful, melancholy tunes get wider recognition. Misra gave us the exclusive premiere of one of the album's standout tracks, "The Butlers and the Maids." It's an American bar song in the tradition of Tom Waits or a bizarro Leonard Cohen. Give it a listen.

Preorder Torres' new album here.

MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good new photography. Each issue is devoted to the work of one artist, and the magazine is printed in full color with no ads and sold for the cost of production. MATTE is collected by the libraries of MoMA, ICP, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art . As photo editor of VICE, I'm excited to share my discoveries with a wider audience. Issue 27 of MATTE features photos by Sam Clarke, a 21-year-old student at School of Visual Arts in New York, with an introduction by one of his favorite musicians, Alex G.

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i saw jenny
bending backwards
i held her hand
she showed her teeth she looked me right in my beady eyes
she opened her wings to show me

i remember
eating worms
i chewed the mud

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MATTE Magazine no. 27: Sam Clarke is available for purchase at mattemagazine.org

See more photos by Sam Clarke on his blog.

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White academics celebrating their African studies journal. Photo via Facebook

On the evening of March 25, the hashtag #CadaanStudies ("cadaan" meaning "white" in Somali) emerged amongst Twitter timelines as a small collective of Somali academics and writers spoke out, 140 characters (or less) at a time. Initiated by Safia Aidid, a Canadian Harvard PhD candidate, the hashtag gradually became a commentary on the whiteness and privileges prominent within academia. More specifically, the online conversation served as a direct response to the launch of the Somaliland Journal of African Studies (SJAS), a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that claims a particular focus on East Africa—the absence of a single Somali editor, advisory board member, or contributor left many pointing out that the only thing Somali about this journal is its title.

Founded by Rodrigo Vaz, a white male MSc candidate for The School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London, the journal was made in collaboration with University of Hargeysa's Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies. Yet somehow, it lacks any Somali involvement. This fundamental error is one often repeated in academia or any platforms that narrate the black or African experience.

"The content of [our] first issue had, unfortunately, no papers on Somalia...or by Somalis for a simple reason: we received none," says Vaz on the public criticism SJAS has received. "I take the blame for that. This happened likely because the call for papers didn't reach as many students and scholars as we would like to. That is something we are working on."

The content featured in SJAS's first issue involves no representation or inclusion of Somalia and its people, but rather material regarding the ECOWAS mission in Sierre Leone, migrant domestic work in South Africa, and the relationship between ethnicity and violence in Kenya elections. (They are currently in the midst of preparing the second issue.) But its description stating that SJAS is dedicated to "covering an academic research area in clear expansion" led many to wonder if this journal was simply created by an aspiring young, white academic hoping to attain credit in an area with growing scholarship that's still garnering little attention.

"The Horn of Africa and the Somali diaspora are 'hot' topics of academic and policy interest, and concern to many states, institutions and organizations for a number of reasons: states and their collapse, civil war and post-conflict society and restructuring, religion, radicalism and terrorism, gender, migration/diaspora, assimilation," said Aidid, a few days after #CadaanStudies attracted the attention of Somali academics and activists globally. (With 44,995 Somalis reportedly situated in Canada as of 2011, it is currently the country's largest African diaspora.)

Twitter activism is nothing new. In the case of #CadaanStudies, people used social media to deconstruct the privilege within academia while connecting communities internationally, strengthening the message that black voices will no longer be undervalued in African and Black studies. "The #CadaanStudies hashtag, Safia, and many others are completely right on this... reversing that is our top priority right now," said Vaz.

#CadaanStudies assembled 1,500 tweets in its first few days of inception and its Storify has been viewed around 1,200 times. "It wouldn't be a stretch to say that is information and debate [that has reached] more people than [those that] have downloaded most academic articles," said Aidid on the outreach of her hashtag.

This is a larger conversation about challenging the right for white scholars to frame Somali and African narratives. #CadaanStudies
— Hawa Y. Mire (@HYMire) March 25, 2015

Without Somalis, there is no Somalia, there is nothing to study. You cannot continue to produce w/o Somalis engaged. #CadaanStudies
— Hawa Y. Mire (@HYMire) March 25, 2015

Richard Burton in 1850s called Somalis superstitious for believing mosquitos carry malaria #CadaanStudies pic.twitter.com/m8UiyVLmfB
— safia aidid (@SafiaA) March 26, 2015

Somalis are saying enough is enough w racist academic depictions. The academy, the media, western policy: all need a refit #CadaanStudies
— Rima Berns-McGown (@rimabernsm) March 28, 2015

could you imagine if we spearheaded a European scholarly journal w/o a single European represented? so why is it okay now? #CadaanStudies
— King Riya. (@HausOfRiya) March 25, 2015

He thinks Somalis r not interested/qualified enuf 2 b part of a journal dat claims 2 b about Somalis? #Cadaanstudies pic.twitter.com/YrUfw0GXPG
— Saynab Mahamud (@Zaynabu) March 25, 2015

Critically engaged scholarship that interrogates its colonial foundations. Self-reflexive methodology and analyses. #CadaanStudies
— safia aidid (@SafiaA) March 28, 2015

When an East African panel looks like this. #CadaanStudies pic.twitter.com/oYfiVPOJKS
— Muna Abdi (@Muna_Abdi_Phd) March 27, 2015

Vaz, who is also the Editor-in-Chief of SJAS, has yet to take to Twitter to respond to any of the hundreds of tweets directed to him: "My team and I want to show results attached to our words. Replying to the comments about SJAS without concrete measures would be empty talk. Once we have results to show, which should happen very soon—this week—we will upload them on the website and social media platforms. Until then, 140 characters won't do," said Vaz.

There is, of course, a long history of white people finding something untapped outside of their own peripheries and attempting to claim full ownership of it. Somali Studies as a field has formal origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and during its time as an existing scholarly field, it has had an overwhelming presence of white academics who have intellectualized what has always been common knowledge to Somalis themselves. "

Abdul-Rahman Jama, a blogger and Oxford University student, believes that Somali Studies still maintains a "colonial flavour" in its production of knowledge on account of white academics: "The technique is simple; collect local stories, publish them as exciting new research, publish them, get further funding [and] repeat," he said. The knowledge that is produced becomes groundbreaking information despite it already being common knowledge to its "subjects."

"There has been certainly, and unfortunately—for colonialist reasons and legacies—a disproportion of white scholars on many levels of study fields, African studies included. That should change and if SJAS can contribute to that, then I can only be glad," said Vaz when asked if he recognized the ways in which the mistakes of SJAS thus far were reminiscent of a history of white monopolization in academia.

The conversation revolving around #CadaanStudies went far beyond these fundamental questions, however, when Markus Hoehne, a white German anthropologist and a co-editor of SJAS, discovered Aidid's initial announcement of her intended Twitter debate via her personal Facebook page. In one of his many responses to the growing concern of SJAS's lack of Somali presence, Hoehne insisted that there is a general absence of Somalis in academia because they don't seem to value scholarship. He went further to claim that this issue would subside if Somalis were willing to do the work.

"To add insult to injury, he suggested the reason none of us could grasp this is because we are Somali, and could benefit from looking 'beyond your Somali navel.' So not only was he wrong, he was wrong in the most patronizing and insulting way possible," said Aidid. She has since then published an open letter, A Collective Response to Dr. Markus Hoehne and the Somaliland Journal of African Studies, which has gathered signatures from over 200 academics, writers, and activists, primarily of Somali or African descent.

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Screenshot

"I completely disagree with Markus Hoehne's remarks. Not only they are disrespectful to all Somali academics in Somalia and Somaliland... they were unnecessary and needlessly provocative," said Vaz on whether Hoehne's comments were reflective of the journal. "SJAS doesn't subscribe to statements made by its advisory board members, whose responsibility and accountability for what they say or do starts and ends with them."

Hoehne's comments ignited a further firestorm of debate, including responses from Somali activists, academics and writers, which led to his public response in the Sahan Journal that ran a few days after the same publication ran Somali writer Hawa Y. Mire's essay: "#CadaanStudies, Somali thought leaders and the inadequacy of white colonial scholarship."

"It is not just that Somalis are absent from academia. Why are they absent? Who benefits from this absence? Because we know who it benefits and it is not us," asks Illyas Abukar, a PhD candidate of University of Maryland College Park.

The online conversation has shed light on the continuous and prominent issues that lay within the production of knowledge about Africans and black people. #CadaanStudies challenges us to continuously ask the question: Who is granted the privilege of telling these narratives and why?

Huda Hassan is a Somali-Canadian writer based in Toronto. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Still from the documentary

Bangladesh is dealing with a lot of heaviness right now. Besides the fact that that secular writers keep getting hacked to death by mobs armed with meat cleavers, they've also got a serious rape problem. In fact, rape and gang rape in Bangladesh has reached alarming proportions. Despite being a crime punishable by death, 1 in 8 Bangladeshi men admit to having committed rape. A culture of impunity has developed in the nation: women are terrified to come forward, while those that do, face a disinterested, often ­hostile police force.

As part of VICE's mission to make Canadian television not terrible, tonight at midnight CityTV will be airing our investigation into Bangladesh's troubling rape culture.

Vice News travels to Sylhet province, an epicentre of the issue, to meet victims, authorities, and perpetrators alike to try and understand the culture of abuse that is flourishing in Bangladesh.

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As you've probably heard, on March 26 the governor of Indiana signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. SB 101 allows people to use their faith as a defense in court, but legal experts also agree that it basically legalizes discrimination of gays and lesbians. People protested, businesses balked, Wilco canceled a concert, and the NCAA—which is hosting the Final Four in Indiana this week—was forced to issue a statement. Although Pence claimed people were mischaracterizing the law, and plenty of people thought no one would actually put up a "No Gays Allowed" sign in their storefront, the staff of Memories Pizza, a religious memorabilia–filled joint in the tiny town of Walkerton, didn't waste any time making their homophobic views known in an interview with a local TV station.

"If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no," a woman named Crystal O'Connor told a reporter.

Later, her father chimed in, likening being gay to picking toppings for a pizza. "That's a lifestyle you choose," Kevin O'Connor said. "I choose to be heterosexual. They choose to be homosexual. Why should I be beaten over the head because they choose that lifestyle?"

Together, the two interviews beg the obvious question of who, exactly, would choose to have pizza at a wedding. But the restauranteurs's logic is not what's important here. What's important is that Memories Pizza has gone from being an ordinary restaurant in an obscure bit of the Midwest to the latest battleground in the culture wars. As of right now, the restaurant has close to 1,500 Yelp reviews (most of them presumably from people who have never eaten there), and its rating has been dragged down to a lowly one and a half stars. And while the pizza place didn't have a website before this online firestorm, some enterprising hater made one for them and filled it with softcore gay porn.

The site, pizzamemories.com (which was up briefly today before being taken down) boasted of a signature "dick pizza," contained a stream of the negative Yelp reviews that have been pouring in since the interview with ABC, and featured an embedded YouTube compilation called "Hot Guys Kissing Make Out."

Besides cheese and pepperoni, the fake website also listed "sausage (The big thick kind)," "discrimination," and "repressed homosexual urges" as toppings. There's also a picture of Crystal O'Connor with the fake quote, "I love the gays!"

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The O'Connors couldn't be reached for comment about the criticism. Their phone was ringing off the hook—presumably the same outraged people signing their Yelp reviews as "One Pizza Loving FAGGOT" were calling them—so it's unclear if they're aware of memoriespizza.com. They probably aren't, given that they don't seem to spend a lot of time thinking about their web presence.

"No servers were hacked during the making of this website," the prankster or pranksters noted in the site's small print. "If you own a business, buy a domain."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Cymbals don't look all that dangerous until vulnerable parts of your body are in incredibly close proximity to them, a churning crowd is pressing at your back, and the man beating down on them is doing so like an ADHD colossus. At All Tomorrow's Parties' 2006 "United Sounds Of" festival at Camber Sands' dilapidated Pontins holiday park, I swear I was inches from having my throat cut by Brian Chippendale's kit—so I pushed back, ducked out, and got myself a nerves-calming pint of some lousy beer.

I watched the bodies writhe from a position of (relative) safety; the band, Lightning Bolt (no idea? Check out this Noisey interview), buried somewhere within the throng. The stage wasn't for them—they'd set up on the floor, in one corner of the center's second room. Even from outside the epicenter of the racket, though, I was moved to thrash a limb or two in wild celebration of this duo's blithesome bombast. Lightning Bolt have always done that to a man, and a few drinks in the effect is only ever going to be amplified.

The band's other Brian, Gibson, has a lesser known side-line to his bass-slaying position as 50 percent of Lightning Bolt—indeed, it's been a full-time gig for him more often than not. He's served as an artist on several games for Harmonix, the studio behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band, as well as the about-to-relaunch Amplitude and the Disney-affiliated Fantasia: Music Evolved. But much of what he's done in the past will be cast into shade when the colorful aggression of Thumper strong-arms its way into the rhythm action genre sometime next year.

A project several years in the making so far, Gibson collaborating with now-Seoul-based programmer Marc Flury on its creation and the pair coming together under the umbrella of Drool, Thumper is pitched as a "rhythm violence" game. "You are a space beetle," says its website. "Your goal: kill Crakhed!" Some further explanation is offered—"You control a space beetle while careening towards a confrontation with an insane giant head from the future"—but, really, all most people have to go on is the electrifying trailer that came out in February, which you can see below. (And just imagine it in VR, without throwing up on yourself.)

Of course, I had to call Gibson up to learn more for myself.

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

VICE: I know you mainly because of Lightning Bolt, but you've worked in the games industry a long time, right?
Brian Gibson: Yeah, I was hired at Harmonix in 2001 as an intern. I guess I was that, for a few months, and then I got hired properly after that, as an artist. But at the time I didn't really know how to do game art, at all. The art director had seen some of my paintings, a lot of which were abstract, and he knew me through Lightning Bolt too, so I think he was interested in helping me out. I was so into learning stuff, though.

And now there's Drool, and Thumper. What did you learn at Harmonix that you've been able to take across into this more personal project?
I guess, with a lot of music games that I've seen, I feel like there could be ways of better tying what's happening with the cues that are coming at you with the fiction that's happening in the game world. And also, I wanted to simplify things, to strip things down, to make it about simple, physical interactions. I was really into music games, but I like other video games where the character on screen is doing something that's "real," that you can connect with, and I think Thumper is taking some of the abstract mechanics of music games and trying to make them into something worth caring about on a more primal level. It's more about survival.

It certainly looks like "survival" is very much the name of the game. Is it as tough as it looks?
It's definitely supposed to be tough. It looks tough, and it feels tough, but the gameplay itself eases you into it—we help people learn the game, so it's not so punishing as to be alienating. But a big part of the game is to try to create this sense of impending danger, and being in this precarious state where you can die on any corner. It's a really threatening environment.

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And that's reflected in the music that's on the trailer, isn't it? This doesn't sound like your regular rhythm action game, does it? There are no pop ditties here...
It's definitely not playing along to pop tracks. The music in the game is there to serve the mood, more than anything else. I don't even know if you could call it music. The musical side of the game sort of emerges from the physical interactions happening in the world, and also the atmospheric feeling of it. A lot of the musical sounds in the game are these noisy, textural drones and throbs that I think of as the sounds of its world, and it's a world that's very alive but also machine-like. So it's sort of a music game, but all the "music" in the game is really sound effects, too. It's totally built around elaborate sound effects.

That makes me think of Rez, which wasn't a rhythm-action game but had this musical side to it which developed as you used your various abilities.
Yeah, it's definitely more in that vein [than a regular rhythm action game].

And in terms of the game's development, it's been some years in the making so far for Marc and yourself, hasn't it?
Yeah, we've never really been doing it intensely, full-time, as both of us have had other projects. I've definitely had plenty of things going on simultaneously, not least of all my Harmonix job. But we've both been really consistent about it. We talk twice a week on Skype, and we've been making this gradual, but steady progress. It's amazing to see how far it's come, if you saw some of the early prototypes we had, as it's all built in our own engine. From the very beginning, we've had to build everything, and we've slowly developed it to the point, now, where it does look pretty polished. It looks like a real video game! Which is quite exciting.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/rJwKEcG-94o' width='560' height='315']

Lightning Bolt, "The Metal East," from the album 'Fantasy Empire'

So how ready is it? How far away are we from actually being able to play it?
It's pretty close to us being able to build out the game, but we've been really refining the first few levels so we can reach this point where we can say: "This is what the finished game will looks like." And from there we'll be building out all of the later levels around that frame. You don't want to build all the levels before you've established the core fundamentals of how scoring works, and so on. I don't think the rest of the process will take too much time, because we've got really efficient tools for modular level building. Marc built the engine, and I'd give feedback, and it's pretty incredible. We've both been so committed to this, for such a long time, and that's amazing–especially as he's been away, overseas, for so long. Our enthusiasm hasn't waned at all.

When you've been able to show it off, as you did at PAX East recently, what's the reception been like?
It's been going really awesomely. Everyone who's played it at PAX and at GDC has seemed on our wavelength. We've been staring at this thing every day for so long, it's hard to know exactly how it comes across to other people. You know, when you get so close to something you can't really see what it is anymore? We're in that place, so to finally get it in front of people was just super rewarding, and a lot of people seemed to be really affected by it.

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How does that kind of player feedback compare to when you're reading reports or reviews on your music, or just speaking to fans about it?
It's pretty similar. I was thinking, when we were at GDC, that it was a bit like being on tour, but you don't have to actually play a show—you just stand there and let other people perform. I guess making a game is a bit like making a record in so much as you do the performance once and then you can make a million copies of it, and send it out to people and get their responses for free. It was awesome to just stand there and watch people play the game and tell us it was really fun. And I'd already done all the work! There was nothing I had to do, unlike when I'm on tour with the band.

If the game isn't the easiest to describe—and I've seen journalists struggle to express exactly what it is—is it something that just makes sense when you actually get your hands on it?
Yeah, I think so. Most people—the vast majority of people—who played it, they figured it all out. There were a couple of things that were being misinterpreted, in the way we were cueing them. The game starts off being pretty clear as to what you do when certain cues come towards you. There was the occasional person who had a problem, but it is simple to play—it just uses one button, and the stick. It's not like other games where you have to learn all these different combinations of button presses. I'm personally into simplifying things like that, and I think that's evident with Lightning Bolt, too—just the way we have the drums, bass and vocals set-up, and that's it. Music doesn't need to be about these elaborate patterns, and likewise I like stripping a game down to its rhythmic elements, this backbone, and just having the player do the right thing at the right time in a really satisfying way.

I just want to play it, frankly. What formats will it be available on, and when?
It won't just be for PC. We're at a point where we're unsure what other platforms there will be, but there will be some. As it's just the two of us, it'll take us a while to work through all the options, but virtual reality is a definite possibility, and something that a lot of people who played the game mentioned to us. I'm kind of familiar with VR, and I do think this game could be cool in that context. It could also be pretty scary, but I think that's a good thing! So far as a release date, we're looking at early 2016, we think.

Lightning Bolt's new album, Fantasy Empire, is out now on Thrill Jockey. Find the band here and Drool here.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

[body_image width='1000' height='1223' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='i-attended-the-taping-of-the-roast-of-justin-bieber-444-body-image-1427837869.jpg' id='41763']For someone who only recently turned 21, Justin Bieber is remarkably well known for feats few people would try while sober. Whether it's drag racing in a 30-MPH zone, drumming (and mugging) in his briefs, or falling off a skateboard in front of Madison Square Garden, he is seemingly always doing something that would only be attempted by your most obnoxious friend in college.

Certainly the guy must be aware of just how much people love to hate him. But does he actually, deep down, care about what people think? Let's say you gathered together 50 comedians and celebrities to hurl their worst insults at him for a televised event—how would he take it? And by watching him, would we see a glimpse of the "real" Bieber, human, pitiable even? Or would be it, as Hannibal Burress noted in an unaired barb, an "extremely transparent attempt to be more likable in the public eye"?

This was what I wanted to find out. And so, on a recent, sweltering afternoon in March, I drove to Culver City to attend the taping of "The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber" at Sony Pictures Studios. I had been set up with a press pass and even a spot on the red carpet, where I could ostensibly behold the young pop star in the flesh.

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It turns out the red carpet was actually white and the guarded domain of some of America's most indefatigable and socially adept celebrity video, radio, print, and internet reporters and bloggers, bearing a phalanx of camera crews, microphones, and digital recorders. Attired in bow ties or flowing dresses, nearly every one of the journalists appeared to possess preternaturally square, periodontally sound white teeth. As for me, I had unknowingly arrived looking more like a member of the catering staff (black pants, black shirt, black shoes). Every now and then I'd catch one of the servers directing an admonishing glance my way, as if to say, "You belong to us," before hurrying off to rearrange stream trays or locate napkins.

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As celebrities began to arrive, the other members of the press jostled me out of the way as they vied for the attention of the various VIPs and almost-VIPs, shouting out the same list of inoffensive questions, for which they would always receive equally inoffensive if occasionally confused replies:

Question: "Why do you think Justin agreed to be roasted tonight?"

Reply: "He doesn't have to prove himself—he's a millionaire!"

Question: "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your level of Bieber Fever?"

Reply: "Zero! No, but seriously, he's very handsome and successful."

Question: "What's your favorite Bieber song?"

Reply: "I don't know, man. I'm not really that familiar..."

At the end of the white carpet, a headset-wearing conductor coordinated a bandstand of teenagers, dressed up in their best piano recital wear, to scream on cue. Their shrill, piercing cries helped bring a kind of Kids' Choice Award flair to the proceedings, while also keeping us miserably conscious beneath the oppressive heat. I snapped blurry iPhone photos of passing celebrities, which I then texted to my boyfriend.

[body_image width='1000' height='1383' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='i-attended-the-taping-of-the-roast-of-justin-bieber-444-body-image-1427837969.jpg' id='41769']The other journalists, more experienced in Hollywood affairs, dominated the carpet, deftly maneuvering their cameramen into the best spots, weaving their microphones through mazes of each other's heads, and baiting celebrities with provocative tactics. One journalist had even dressed herself as Bieber, complete with "Baby"-era bowl cut, leather hoodie jacket, and individually glued on mustache hairs. In the end the only notable person I managed to actually speak to was Gloria Allred, the powerful Hollywood attorney. I had been standing directly in front of her, awkwardly snapping my cellphone shots while she calmly answered questions about Bill Cosby's repeated denials of rape and her 1987 induction-through-lawsuit into the previously all-male Friars Club, originators of the celebrity roast. As she was about to leave, I whispered, "YOU'RE AMAZING," and she winked at me, and for a moment I forgot about the stultifying, sun-choked atmosphere all around us.

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After two hours of sweating and taking snapshots of Ludacris and Martha Stewart, I looked up to find that Justin Bieber had finally arrived, hair slicked back, mustache pubescent, although his mouth was set in a kind of grim expression, as though embarking on something unpleasant (which he was). Sweeping past the throngs of reporters yelling his name, he looked relieved to reach the orchestra of shrieking Beliebers positioned at the end of the carpet.

Once Bieber had completed his lap, the studio crews immediately set to work dismantling the carpet set, breaking down the bandstand, rolling up cables. We were ushered into the press room, a curtained-off area in the center of a cavernous studio lot, where we the press sat together on plastic folding chairs and viewed the roast as it was broadcast across two 40-inch TV screens. Reporters typed furiously on their laptops as I doodled on a legal pad and helped myself to catered brisket and an open bar.

Throughout the broadcast, the press room collectively chuckled or groaned appropriately, and although the roasters dutifully lambasted Bieber's dumb teenaged hijinks, it was all a little uncomfortable to watch. Not because the roasters were especially harsh—roast regular Natasha Leggero noted that, "Justin's fans are called Beliebers because it's politically incorrect to use the word retards," while fictional anchorman Ron Burgundy defended Bieber as a "full-grown man... a man who sings songs for nine-year-olds and cuts his hair like a gay figure skater"—but more because Justin looked so painfully earnest and expectant, almost fearful. We were watching a handpicked court of celebrity jesters politely indulge a tyrannical boy-king who very clearly and desperately wanted to be liked.

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At the end of the proceedings, Bieber launched into an apology for his past bad behavior and thanked God for "never giving up on him." Through the television screens, I could sense a sudden hesitation in the audience. Could it really be so simple, that our obnoxious millionaire antihero was just a misunderstood and lonely child?

My warm feelings, as it turns out, were short-lived. After the taping, Bieber swung by the press room with Snoop, Shaq, and Jeff Ross in tow. For an international pop sensation, the guy has less offstage charisma than you'd expect. He suddenly became an uncomfortable, gawky teenager in a room full of curious adults, answering several questions with "yes," "no," or "whatever." Only when a younger reporter from Buzzfeed asked conspiratorially, "What are you doing to celebrate tonight?" did he respond with any enthusiasm: "I'm going to Vegas... on my jet, bitch!"

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A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a link to the below video, with the instruction "Click through to some random points in it." Here's an embed of it, if you'd like to do the same:

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/rCp_e0oL2w0' width='640' height='360']

If you don't want to watch the whole thing, just know that it shows a nerdy 16-year-old named Eddie Oliver Smith putting on an amazing 70-minute DIY tribute to Lady Gaga in an empty theater. Also, it is an utter joy.

I have a soft spot for anyone who pours their time and energy and money into recreating something because they love it so much. The kids who remade Raiders of the Lost Ark, the guys in Bangkok who recreated that Rihanna video, and the kids who did their own live-action version of Toy Story are all personal heroes of mine.

In the description for his video on YouTube, Eddie says "be your own Hollywood." Which is what all of these people have done.

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Gaga's "Mother G.O.A.T." animatronic (left) and Eddie's homemade version (right). Lady Gaga screencap via YouTube

Where Gaga was introduced to the stage by a rotating, animatronic replica of her head surrounded by neon, in his video Eddie was introduced by a projection of his face beamed onto a sheet and surrounded by rope lights. Where Gaga had a full-size motorcycle, Eddie rides a miniature Power Wheels version. Where Gaga wore custom-made Versace, Eddie wore a sheet.

"It was obviously inspired by her costumes, but I created them in a way that I wanted to," Eddie told me when I called him earlier this week.

Eddie first discovered Gaga in 2008 after hearing "Just Dance" on the radio. Shortly after, he launched a YouTube channel where he made video tutorials on replicating Gaga's costumes and props. His videos started racking up thousands of views.

At the time, Eddie was being bullied badly at school. "No one really spoke to me at all," he said. "I went through school literally ignoring everyone... People didn't like the way I sounded, they would call me gay, call me this and that. It was really heartbreaking."

While school was miserable, when Eddie got home he could retreat to a place where he was popular. "Lady Gaga was my world to get away from everything that was happening," Eddie told me. "People liked me on the internet... It was so weird."

Eventually the bullying got so bad that Eddie's mom, Bonnie decided to transfer him to a private school. "I was concerned for his welfare," she told me.

"I thought I was going to be able to leave it all behind," Eddie added. "I was going somewhere where nobody knew who I was or what I did and I was trying to keep it that way." But eventually, kids at the new school found his Gaga videos and Eddie, once again, became the unpopular kid.

Eddie made the decision to recreate the Born This Way Ball, Lady Gaga's third concert tour, after Gaga broke her hip and canceled the Chicago concert that he had been scheduled to attend. "I was like, Chicago didn't even get to see the Born This Way Ball, so then and there I decided," Eddie explained, "I'm gonna make it happen."

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Gaga and Eddie perform 'Electric Chapel.' Gaga screencap via YouTube

Eddie filled his mom in on what he planned to do, and she told him that he could put on the performance if he could find a venue in which to stage it. She did this under the assumption that he probably wouldn't be able to find one. "I, looking at a 15-year-old said, 'Sure, find a venue,'" Bonnie told me.

Eddie wrote to the Beverly Arts Center, a 400-seat theater on Chicago's South Side. The director liked the idea so much that she agreed to let Eddie use the theater for free. He just had to pay the insurance and for the services of a technical director.

Using money he got from his family, as well as donations made to an Indiegogo campaign he created, Eddie set about making his props and costumes, which he built at home after school and on weekends using things from thrift shops and hardware stores. His granddad helped him make the giant castle set, and his grandma helped him with the costumes. Eddie estimates that he spent about $1,500 making everything over the course of two months.

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Eddie put on his concert in early 2013. On the day of the performance, Eddie called in the entire family to act as a crew for his show. "He utilized everyone in our family and darn near every waking minute to pull this off," Bonnie told me.

He brought in his grandparents, parents, and a couple of kids from his school to act as a 20-person crew on the production, badgering them into helping him put on his one-man-show. "I bugged them to death," Eddie said. "Each had their own little roles, like costume or crew or moving the staging around or being camera people."

Though he had a whole theater, no audience was invited to watch his show apart from his family/crew. "I wanted to go into it like an HBO special, with no audience," he said.

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Though it hasn't been seen by that many people, the video has received a fair amount of criticism online. One Lady Gaga forum user called it "One of the most embarrassing moments in the history of our fan base." Another's review was much more succinct: "hahahahahahahahaha." A YouTube commenter wrote, "Gaga probably watches this when she's sad so she can laugh hysterically at how much this sucks."

But, Eddie explained to me, he doesn't care about the naysayers. "Obviously there's critics and there's tons of people who have hated on it," he said. "It was for me and not for anyone else. It was something I wanted to do."

I was worried that the kids at Eddie's school might have seen the video. And as much as I like Eddie's performance, kids are fucking assholes. And if school is anything like it was when I was there, uploading an hour-long video of yourself recreating a Lady Gaga concert would be a really efficient way of making an already miserable school life even more miserable.

But miraculously, nobody at his school, with the exception of the kids who helped him produce it, saw the show. "I couldn't believe he pulled it off as successfully as he did with no backlash," Bonnie told me. "I've always been proud of the fact that he takes a stand that he's different and he doesn't let kids bully him into becoming a recluse."

She was also a fan. "It was breathtakingly beautiful to be a part of something like that," she said. "The entire family encouraged him, and we were all very, very proud of him. It was impressive to be there, to be a part of it, and just to watch him be so proud when he went out there and performed all those songs."

Eddie isn't entirely happy with what he shot. He told me that he wished he could've gotten a full-size motorcycle and that the castle had looked more like real brick. But, he explained, "I don't know how many other 16-year-olds can say that they put on their own show at a huge million-dollar theater."

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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For the past ten months, I have been stalking transgender icon Amanda Lepore. It all started one night when my curator friend Kara Brooks and I were out on the town and Lepore walked into the Hotel Chantelle, where we were chatting at a table. Kara had asked Lepore to pose with her for selfies in the past and wanted me to sneak a photo. "I always take a photo with Amanda when I see her," she said. From there, we set out on a quest to get 100 photographs of Amanda, with the hope of one day putting together an exhibition.

Owner of the self-proclaimed " most expensive body on Earth," Lepore is a nightlife entertainer. But in many ways she's also a performance artist. She dehumanizes herself through exaggerated body alterations, making light of popular taste, consumerism, and fame. Lepore looks more like an amplified fantasy woman rather than an actual woman. She mocks female brainlessness, and holds up a mirror to American capitalism, all the while selling herself.

As a side effect of following her around, I began to photograph a crew of rotating regulars as well as all the usual partygoers. Since being on the trans spectrum has become more accepted, the scene is not as underground as it once was, and that has change the atmosphere of trans hangouts that used to be secret or illegal. While it's great that the blurring gender of lines has become acceptable, accessible, and even profitable, I worry that the purity of some forms of performance is being replaced with consumerism at a time when issues of gender still represent a deep, emotional struggle for many. These photos, I think, show that conflict and document a mixture of expression, celebration, and entertainment.

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[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842536.jpg' id='41830']

[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842556.jpg' id='41831']

[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842565.jpg' id='41832']

[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842575.jpg' id='41833']

[body_image width='998' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842588.jpg' id='41834']

[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842596.jpg' id='41835']

[body_image width='999' height='665' path='images/content-images/2015/03/31/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/03/31/' filename='stalking-amanda-lepore-body-image-1427842614.jpg' id='41837']

See more photos by Jacqeline Silberbush on her website.