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Hero. Screencap via WLKY TV News

The US Postal Service Creed is pretty hardcore, but apparently the Pizza Delivery Creed goes one step further: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night, nor being stabbed by a fucking carjacker, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

According to KLKY TV News, Josh Lewis, a 25-year-old pizza delivery guy left Spinelli's Pizzeria in Louisville, Kentucky on Sunday afternoon with a pizza that desperately needed to be eaten. When he arrived at the delivery location, which was a local hospital, he was confronted by a male assailant in his 40s. It's not clear exactly how the next part went down, since Lewis is still recovering from his injuries and hasn't given a detailed account, but we know the ensuing attack didn't stop the delivery.

Lewis was knifed in the back by the assailant, which is a type of attack that symbolizes cowardice and betrayal to many. One might also argue that by interfering with a pizza courier in the execution of his duties, the attacker defied the de facto contract Americans have with pizza delivery professionals: To ensure the quick arrival of our pies, don't fuck with the guys tasked with schlepping them around—or at the very least, make sure the pizzas get delivered.

We saw another example of this earlier this year, when Illinois cops busted a delivery guy for smoking pot, and then finished his delivery for him.

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Near the scene of the crime, via Google Street View

Perhaps energized by this important compact, Lewis managed to protect his piping hot parcel, even after the blade entered into his chest cavity and collapsed his lung. Despite the injury, he managed to deliver the pizza to employees at Norton Hospital, enabling a hungry medical staff to eat and carry on healing people. Unfortunately, Norton Hospital does not have an emergency room. So after the pizza hand-off, Lewis was rushed to Louisville University Hospital for surgery.

Related: Watch our documentary about another dedicated pizza delivery technician.

Lewis's manager Willow Rouben described the injured pizza guy as "coherent" when he was being rushed to his operation. As of this morning, Lewis was still recovering according to the appropriately named Louisville paper, the Courier Journal.

Rouben told the local news, "He's a sweet kid and we're just so sad that this happened to him." Spinelli's Pizzeria is reportedly trying to work out "a way to help Lewis and his family."

The carjacker, reportedly a black man in his 40s, is presumed to still be in possession of Lewis's Jeep Cherokee, which is black with light blue trim, and gold stripes. It's license place is from Michigan and the number is CDY6122. If you see it, hit up the Louisville police tip line at (502) 574-5673.

Also, reflect on what pizza delivery people go through next time you're calculating a tip. And don't pull that lame prank where you order a bunch of pizzas to someone else's house, because it doesn't clown the person you think it does.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Ta'une (Kelly Edzerza-Bapty) is Tahltan of the Stikine River and Headwaters, and is one of only three indigenous women to complete the Master of Architecture program at UBC.

"Tribal trends"
"Navajo hipster panties"
"Pocahotties"
"A tribute to the primal woman"
"An indigenous flair"

From fluorescent feathered headdresses at indie-pop festivals to Urban Outfitters "smudge kits," to runway fashion shows like Dsquared2's offensive "Dsquaw" line, racist knockoffs that appropriate indigenous art, culture, and identities have become a common controversy across North America in recent months.

While on the surface it may seem that the objection lies in the obvious issue of cultural and intellectual property theft, it's the robbery of indigenous peoples' right to represent themselves that's actually at stake, say activists behind a new campaign to reclaim control over the visual representations of indigenous women and culture.

"It's taking away our ability to even authentically represent our own cultures," said Kelly Edzerza-Bapty, an intern architect from the Tahltan Nation in northern BC and one of the founders of ReMatriate, a photographic campaign that provides a drastically different image of indigenous women than the stereotypical tropes found in popular culture.

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Angela Code is Sayisi Dene from northern Manitoba.

ReMatriate is the response to those stereotypes, said Clair Anderson, a Taku River Tlingit lawyer living in Whitehorse, who is also part of the movement, which is meant to put indigenous women back in control of the way they are represented and to honour the respected traditional roles indigenous women held before colonization.

Since launching on social media earlier this year, the campaign has attracted over a thousand followers and featured photos of indigenous women engaged in a combination of traditional and contemporary tasks in various locations, fighting the notion of the homogenous "aboriginal."

"We want to step away from being portrayed as monolithic or as historic relics," Anderson said. "We wanted to highlight the fact that we aren't historic figures; we are modern women. Some of us are academics, some of us are lawyers, some of us are architects, and we all continue to practice our culture in different ways, whether it's weaving or dancing or hunting or tanning hides. We just wanted to show the complexity, but also how we've incorporated these traditions into our modern life."

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Artist and actor Melaw Nakehk'o, Dehcho Dene from Denendeh (NWT), photographed by Kaska Dena artist Kali Spitzer from Daylu (BC).

Edzerza-Bapty, who is herself featured in photos harvesting wild salmon and receiving her Master of Architecture from the University of British Columbia, said communities are now beginning to bounce back from the impacts of colonization and residential schools, and this bouncing back is facilitated greatly by the regeneration of language and cultural practices.

Though some of those traditional art forms and regalia are meant to be kept sacred, she said others are offered openly for sale to the larger public. Unfortunately, according to Edzerza-Bapty, the appropriation of that work has a cheapening effect on those efforts.

"From an artistic sense, as clever and sophisticated as these big name designers think they're being, to the trained eye of indigenous people, they're extremely remedial and often childlike efforts at creating centuries-old traditional art forms," she said. "It devalues the actual art pieces when you have creations that are kind of gesture-like approaches to the art form. They really take away the value out of authenticity."

Recently, the New York Fashion Week designer behind KTZ said his fall/winter 2015 line—which caused outrage after it was pointed out that the clothes were blatant rip-offs of contemporary indigenous designers—said in an interview that the show was "a tribute to the primal woman, indigenous to this land, who evolves into a sexualized, empowered being."

Native Appropriations blogger Adrienne Keene wrote that, far from being a tribute, such a description constituted a "mockery and celebration of cultural theft."

It's a kind of crime that doesn't offer a lot of legal recourse, according to Anderson.

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Sister duo Meghann and Nalaga Avis O'Brien, Haida/Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw artists.

"We can't really turn to intellectual property rights as protections because these art forms have existed in our families or clan systems for multiple generations...and it's gotten to the point now where in copyright laws, it now belongs in the public domain because it's persisted with the one group for over 50 years," she explained.

Anderson said there is a trend in the law when it comes to who it protects and who it excludes, leaving indigenous peoples are often on the outskirts, not just when it comes to intellectual property rights, but on issues of child protection and criminal justice, as indicated by the record high number of indigenous children in care—three times that during the height of residential school—and the more than 1,200 missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada.

Apart from infringing on the intellectual property of indigenous peoples, Anderson worries about the ways that inaccurate and offensive representations "trickle" into other areas of society, where indigenous women and girls are vulnerable to violence, both on a personal and systemic level.

"The image of a hypersexualized indigenous woman portrayed by an outsider isn't just one isolated event; it's a pattern," she said.

The death of Cindy Gladue illustrates Anderson's fears. The 36-year-old Cree woman bled to death in 2011 after suffering a fatal wound to her vagina. Her preserved pelvis was then brought into the courtroom as evidence during the trial last month, where the man accused of first degree murder and manslaughter in her death was acquitted after the defense successfully argued the two had engaged in "rough, consensual sex," despite Gladue having been four times the legal blood alcohol level.

"It's hard to just ignore what harm there is in presenting the identity of indigenous women as hypersexual, passive beings," Anderson said. "Because we're not. We're complex, educated, smart, driven women. We're more than just the image that's being portrayed, and that image is actually having harmful effects that are seen in courtrooms and seen in police investigations.

"It's gotten to the point where, while we're able to, we have to voice that we don't consent to this representation, for all the women who weren't able to say that they didn't consent to the way that they were treated. We feel it's an obligation."

The actively unfolding ReMatriate exhibit is available on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, but with cascading interest in the project, Edzerza-Bapty said it's likely to grow into more types of media and likely a curated photographic exhibition in galleries across Canada.

Regional representatives of the campaign are also being recruited across the continent, with the hopes that participation in panel discussions and media interviews will continue contributing to the public dialogue around cultural appropriation, while simultaneously introducing the public to people and cultures they might never have known existed.

"In BC alone, there are over 200 distinct First Nations, and that says nothing of the number there are in Canada or North America," Edzerza-Bapty said.

"Really what we're trying to capture with this is just the breadth of the number of distinct First Nations cultures that actually exist in this landscape, from the urban indigenous to extremely rural communities. There's a very broad lens through which indigenous people sit. We're not this kind of homogenized or tokenist image; we're from very vast cultures over a massive land base."

Follow Meagan Wohlberg on Twitter.

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Follow Simon Hanselmann on Twitter and look at his blog. Then buy his books from Fantagraphics and Space Face.

Las Vegas, Nevada. Saturday. 10:13 PM, PST. Media Tent. MGM Grand. Casino employees enter with trolleys of cookies and cans of soda, tin barrels piled with bags of Sun Chips. Everyone is mostly quiet, calm, writing, charging their phones, considering walking over to the Sun Chips.

Behind them, at a low volume on a half-dozen televisions, Floyd Mayweather is saying dull and insincere things about boxing, pay-per-view, gratitude, God, Manny Pacquiao, money, loyalty, legacies. Eventually, you will remember little about the fight except that it happened at all. You came for an execution and barely got an arraignment. You came for an assassination and saw a man handed a severance check. You will feel duped, but only briefly, because you realize this is the only way this fight was ever going to end.

You will remember Floyd Mayweather, who has been convicted multiple times for domestic violence, building an empire selling the hope of vengeance to righteous people. A man who never loses, because he is not a loser, because no loser could be this rich. A man whose entire existence is cackling in your face. A man who will be survived only by his millions, the creepy adoration from the sort of people who run beer pong leagues in their 30s, and an apathetic celebration of his "mechanistic efficiency." You know what else is efficient? Toyotas. Boxing against Floyd Mayweather is like boxing a bark collar. It is like someone rubbing a pencil eraser on the side of your neck until you decide to kill yourself.

He is a villain but only by default, not because he is any good at it. He is excessive but without the gluttonous, belly-slapping charm. He owns three Bugattis. He wears hats with dollar signs on them. He tweets about the financial appreciations of his Ferraris. He is a man who seems so incapable of feeling actual joy that he builds a castle of Joyous Things to live inside. Because when the whole world is listening to you and you have nothing interesting to say, you can always at least count to a higher number. He is all setup and no punch line. Videos of him counting money are captioned with literally "help me out with a caption." Money only matters to him because it matters to us. He is only rich because he believes that we feel poor. He is the real-life manifestation of Tony Montana: palaces, sycophants, and at the center of it all a lonely man whose most intimate moments with women are when he beats them or has them give him baths.

There is noise but no rage; menace but no anger; speed but no fury. There is no thumping heartbeat, just the drone of a plugged-in machine. You will remember him as a man who would register additional phone lines simply to text himself pictures of his own dick.

Related: Watch our documentary about the Las Vegas International Lingerie show.

You will remember how Las Vegas and boxing are really about the same things. Pipe dreams and comebacks, being profoundly alone, at a blackjack table or in an empty gym, coming up from nothing, from nowhere. They both represent a sort of sanctioned hedonism, a rampant, dirty machismo. Doubling-down, back-foot haymakers, spitting blood and screaming to the sky, girls with big fake tits who can be yours, really sweetie, for tonight, for forever, for never in a million years. It doesn't matter. The point is that everything seems possible. Knockouts and jackpots, bombastic entrance music, faint cheers from craps tables, people in the Philippines shouting your name deep into the night.

In this desert, everyone can be a hero. You are Guns N' Roses riding a Pegasus chariot through the asteroid belt. It is a land of reputations, of memories, of hazy neon extravagance. But it is also where you can in an instant disappear, where you don't even have to exist at all if you don't want. You are at a $10 blackjack table, going broke before she even gets back with your shitty drink, leaving and never coming back again. The waitress never looks for you, the dealers don't give you a eulogy, and back in your room, the curtains hide any trace of sun, time, or chaos. It is a land where everything is simultaneously chillingly real and artificial. Where from most angles you can see mountains, earth, sand between the building edifices that look like scuffed plastic. There is money everywhere, but none of it ever feels real, none of it is ever feels like yours, not till the flight home, and by then it is not yours anymore.

You will remember guys with frozen drinks with indestructible straws in big stupid plastic goblets. Guys stopping girls going the opposite way on pedestrian bridges. "Baby what you all alone for?" Girls in dark clubs with strategically concealed erogenous zones. Girls on trading cards trying to sell you their erogenous zones. Not-rich people behind smudgy windows at Denny's. Rich-rich people stalling kiwi-green Lamborghinis. Slices of pizza so horrid your unborn children start biting their fingernails. Reckless men carefully tanning. A guy at the Yves Saint Laurent store trying to act casual when the sales associate tells him the broach costs $6,000. A guy at the Yves Saint Laurent store who is just particular about his broaches. A guy at the Yves Saint Laurent store who is getting the fuck out of there. Skinny blonde women with expensive noses hammered to a fragile tip, like if she coughed too hard it'd flutter off her face like a dandelion spore. The guy standing next to her, who's standing outside Omnia, who's positive his name is on the list, just check one more time, how were you spelling that?

In Vegas, if you try hard enough to be important, eventually you sort of are. Or at least the world will give up and pretend it believes you.

You remember every enclosed space in Las Vegas feeling air-conditioned to the point of refrigeration, and yet Saturday night, inside the Cosmopolitan, at the entrance of the Marquee—a mob of people surging, throbbing, horny, angry, sweating until wet spots are shining in the bends in their elbows—the atmosphere feeling humid and warm, like it has just rained.

A man claiming to be the younger brother of Les Moonves, trying to get into the Jay-Z after-party, but really just trying to get someone to surrender, to play ball, to tell him, "OK fine come in you are an equally important Moonves please forgive us." The bouncer is looking at Equally Important Moonves like he is a potted plant. Equally Important Moonves is perspiring like his entire body is made of armpit. He says to the bouncer, "Look let's just say I can bring some girls in here. I'm not saying it like I'm bragging, I just mean I can be good for you guys." In Vegas, if you try hard enough to be important, eventually you sort of are. Or at least the world will give up and pretend it believes you.

The magic of Las Vegas, and boxing, is their ability to sell answers without ever answering anything. Two men in colored shorts Fight for Everything, but neither one bleeds; they hug each other afterward and will both be back in the fall. You come to Vegas seeking wealth and pussy and meaning; you leave penniless and alone and forgotten. It's all there, it's all yours, and then it isn't.

Sunday. 10:34 PM, PST. Altitude: 35,663 feet. Beneath you: Las Vegas, Nevada. Land so flat it's as if the mountains were leveled and sanded down by giant robot carpenters. Yellow-white lights, sharp little dots all over, hundreds of near-parallel strips of them stretching into the distance. Then, abruptly, beyond that, nothing. Darkness forever. Darkness like a place deep in the ocean where only algae can survive. A darkness that makes a city look like just a blip. It is right there, civilization at its filthiest concentration, hookers and buffets and travel-size deodorants, miles of it that from the inside feels endless. And then it breaks off perfectly from infinity like it had a perforated edge.

Here, another thing you will remember: monumental showdowns, Floyd Mayweather, Las Vegas itself and everything in it—even the biggest things are actually very small.

Follow John Saward on Twitter.

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The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse in Boston. Photo by the author

Reporters covering the Boston Marathon bombing trial have not reached a consensus on whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shed a single tear in court on Monday. But this is the critical sentencing or penalty phase of his trial, where the prosecution hopes to get the 21-year-old put on death row by having victims and their families testify that he's essentially a monster. The defense, of course, is determined to "win" a life sentence in prison for their client by humanizing him.

When Patimat Suleimanova, Tsarnaev's aunt, tried to answer questions, she couldn't stop sobbing. That's when Tsarnaev "appeared" to cry himself, as the Boston Globe reported.

What's tricky here is that in the courtroom, all of the observers sit behind Tsarnaev, so it's hard to tell what he's doing at any given time. Reporters only get to scope the guy out for a few moments a day when he's walking toward them to be seated at the defense table. That means there's a certain amount of guessing involved with regards to whether or not he actually "wept" (as the New York Times put it), which would be a pivotal moment for the defense as they try to garner mercy for their client.

What we know is that Tsarnaev reached for a box of tissues and dabbed at his face. On the conservative side of the spectrum, the Wall Street Journal said he "showed rare emotion." And there's already a think-piece about the possible tear-up on Time.com called "Why Tsarnaev Cried." Its cringe-worthy opening line? "Savagery is harder than you think."

It's hard not to think of The Photo when trying to contextualize The Tear. During the opening arguments for the sentencing trial, the prosecution's mic drop came in the form of a security camera still: In a video that was taken in July 2013, three months after Tsarnaev was apprehended, he shoved his middle finger toward his cell's security camera.

There are plenty of reasons DzhokharTsarnaev would've legitimately cried that have absolutely nothing to do with remorse.

That infamous shot of the bomber flipping the bird was probably more of an act of boredom than outright anger, but reporters covering the case live didn't have that context. As such, the photo was legitimately shocking—a beautifully executed rhetorical flourish on the part of the prosecution.

As for what went down Monday, there are plenty of reasons Tsarnaev might've pretended to cry in court. There are also plenty of reasons he would've legitimately cried that have absolutely nothing to do with remorse. For instance, he's probably settling into the fact that the best case scenario here is that he spends the rest of his life in the federal supermax prison—an abjectly miserable place.

Last month, a jury found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts related to the bombing. Of those, 17 carry a death sentence. One of his attorneys, Judy Clarke, is an expert at defending the most hated people on Earth, and she's never had a client get executed. When she opened up arguments in the first phase of the trial with, "It was him," those words were a testament to how confident she is at her ability to humanize the most unsympathetic defendants.

We don't have a clear-cut answer about whether or not Tsarnaev showed remorse, but if so, it's the most important thing to happen in the trial so far.

The case is already shrouded in secrecy. As the Boston Globe reported, by the middle of last month, the word "seal or "sealed" had already been used 878 times in the trial. It's unclear who is asking the judge to seal all the documents, but that number is basically unprecedented. As of today, we don't even have a clear-cut answer about whether or not Tsarnaev showed remorse, but if so, it's the most important thing to happen in the trial so far.

Back in July of 2013, when the security footage was taken of Tsarnaev flipping off the camera, Rolling Stone published an article that showed the other side of him—a teenager who loved to smoke weed and watch Game of Thrones. The point was to ask: What went wrong? The most moving part of the lengthy cover story, which relied heavily on Tsarnaev's friends, came in the form of a rumor. According to a nurse, the bomber cried for two days straight after waking up in the hospital. Even if that's true, we'll never know what he was crying about.

In addition to the two instances of possible crying, we got another tantalizing suggestion of the alleged monster's humanity today in court: When he was exiting the courtroom—in plain view of every reporter there—Dzhokhar Tsarnaev blew his aunt and cousin a kiss.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

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Photo via Wiki Commons.

On Saturday night, every single person in America (give or take) tuned in to watch the most boring boxing match of all time. It was a contest between Floyd Mayweather, the undefeated woman-beating champion whose in-ring conservatism turns boxing into a numbers game, and Manny Pacquiao, erstwhile cockfighting enthusiast and the most underdogginest underdog ever to throw a punch. More than that, it was in many ways mainstream America's reintroduction to boxing. It was an Event, the Fight of the Century, bigger than the Super Bowl crossed with the World Cup crossed with a presidential election held on the moon. Unless Muhammed Ali had parachuted down from the ceiling of the MGM Grand Garden Arena and started wailing on Mayweather in some sort of WWE-esque surprise appearance, there was no way it was going to live up to the hype.

In the end, Mayweather's boxing-as-a-round-of-golf strategy took the day, and while efficient, made for one of the most underwhelming events in the recent history of performative punching. In three weeks, following a few last flurries of follow-ups on follow-ups on follow-ups, the news cycle will right itself and boxing will return to the cultural footnote that it usually is.

The way to make people care about something they don't care about is to create a sense of mystery, a sense of urgency, an arch fear of missing out on something that feels like a cultural event. This is how we engaged in a national debate about the color of some goddamn dress, tuned into the Bruce Jenner interview, and why every four years suddenly decide we all care about soccer. With Mayweather-Pacquiao, we had plenty of narrative, which led to legions of armchair analysts spontaneously generating opinions about boxing, feeling about as natural as the growth of a third arm.

It's easy to understand why the fight was a big deal. You'd be hard-pressed to find two fighters more diametrically opposed than Mayweather and Pacquiao. The former is an asshole outside of the ring and a chess grandmaster inside of it. He preens and flashes like an alternate-universe 50 Cent who takes the same clinical, only-take-the-safe-route strategy in picking opponents to maintain his undefeated record that 50 does when he's manufacturing hits. Pacquiao, meanwhile, might as well be a saint. He's humble, completely without guile, his out-of-ring exploits (politics, pro basketball, making bad music) seen as charming quirks rather than the side-effects of an overblown ego. He fights relentlessly, like a guy who became homeless at 14 because his dad ate his dog, which is a thing that reportedly happened. They are boxing's yin and yang, and on Saturday, we were told, they were finally going to come together in a mushroom cloud of pugilistic hype.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/fKuIHs1ELQU' width='500' height='281']

And so, a narrative cohered. The Devil vs. the Angel. The Guy Who Hangs Out with Justin Bieber vs. The Guy Who Is Bigger Than Justin Bieber in His Home Country. As a society, we like this stuff. It unites us, gives us some fodder for conversation with our coworkers while we awkwardly count the hours until we can not be around them. We like having a common goal, such as "getting out of paying $100 to watch this boxing match the world has decided everyone must watch or else the oceans will boil."

This is how I found myself, on Saturday afternoon, calling a Buffalo Wild Wings in Hollywood, asking if they'd be showing the fight. "Buffalo Wild Wings, how may I wow you today," an unenthusiastic Wild Wingsman answered the phone. "Oh. No, we won't be showing the fight, but Dave & Buster's down the street will." A quick call to my friendly local D&B confirmed that this was, in fact, true.

Now, there is no way to enjoy Dave & Buster's "ironically," even if you bargain with yourself by saying it's the most American place you can watch two men beat the shit out of each other, or saying it's a giving in to our basest desires for arcade games and mayhem. Much like Keeping up with the Kardashians or methamphetamine, Dave & Buster's transcends lines of economics, class, intellect, sophistication, or lifestyle. You either like it or you don't, and it doesn't matter why. Whether you're doing it as a joke or not, you're still playing the same skeeball machines as the next asshole.

No matter how much I tried to psych myself up for D&B's, the line for the place was around the block when I got there. Even desperate men have their limits.

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This is what flashes before your eyes right before you die. It is the interior of a Dave & Buster's. Photo via WikiCommons.

Salvation came, as it often does, in the form of a branded activation. A friend texted me that he'd been invited to a swanky party at a house a hip mattress company used as its headquarters (yeah, this is a thing), and that my girlfriend and I would be able to get in.

The party, held in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the expanses of Los Angeles, was one of those places where the real world and Entourage blurred into each other. An open bar, a free valet service, an extremely tall and extremely terrifying Celebrity Guest UFC Legend Chuck Liddell taking pictures with people, a DJ set by Celebrity DJ Balthazar Getty, whose name I had to google to confirm he is indeed famous. These are things that are only sustainable in LA, where people delude themselves into thinking things like this are fun because they have deluded themselves into thinking they are important enough to hang out there.

The energy of a room full of people watching a fight of any sort is insane. There were about a hundred of us in the living room watching two men in their mid-to-late 30s beat on other around a ring. No matter how much people might suppress it in their daily lives, it's times like this when the bloodlust comes out. People are screaming for one human to destroy another, and when their human starts getting destroyed himself, shit can turn ugly. As it became clear that Pacquaio—the party crowd's favorite, judging by the screams of support and the jeers for Mayweather—would lose the fight without a knockout, tensions ran high. Aggressions projected towards the TV became focused elsewhere, and the humanity of the party regressed a bit. Little arguments broke out by the bathroom. A woman angrily berated me for being too tall and blocking her view. By the time people were trollishly yelling, "Money Team!" in favor of Mayweather, I was worried about the possibility of the post-fight dance party turning into a post-fight fight.

Related: Bare-Knuckle Boxing in the UK

Not that we stuck around for much longer. Making our way back to the valet, my girlfriend and I chatted with security about the surrealism of keeping the peace in a room full of normal people who had transformed into maniacs. The security guards didn't seem to be having a good time, but one of them excitedly told us there had been a bunch of porn stars in attendance.

As we waited for our car, we watched other partygoers disperse. One group, consisting of beautiful rich kids waiting for their large black SUV, caught my eye. One of them, wearing jorts and a large, button-up designer shirt with the casual disdain that one is afforded by a life of privilege, had swiped a bottle of wine from the place and broke off from his friends to wander in circles, yelling to no one in particular. Two others secreted themselves against the neighbor's house and had begun making out. Such is the energy of watching people beat each other up on TV. It makes us primal, reduces us to our basest instincts. This was the true outcome of the fight of the century; what happened inside the ring was just spectacle.

Follow Drew Millard on Twitter.

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Bill Bottrell in Berlin last year. Photo courtesy of Bottrell

A couple of years ago, I heard the song "Black or White" by Michael Jackson on the radio in my car. When it got to the rap (" See, it's not about races, just places, faces, where your blood comes from is where your space is, etc...") I realized that I had no idea who had done the rapping on the song. After googling, I saw that it was credited to someone called L.T.B. who, according to what I could see online, had done nothing before or since dropping that verse.

A friend of mine who I mentioned this to emailed the producer of the song, Bill Bottrell, who is also credited with writing the lyrics to the rap, and asked him for more info on L.T.B.

Bottrell responded the same day and provided a Gmail address that he said belonged to L.T.B. I sent a message to the address asking for an interview, but never received a response.

The mystery of L.T.B. sat in the back of my brain for the next couple of years, rearing its head whenever I heard the song. Each time it crossed my path, I would take to the internet again to try and figure out who the mystery rapper was, but was never able to find anything. Despite the fact that he had rapped on a song that was number one in over 20 countries, with a music video that broke records by being watched by 500 million people on its initial broadcast in 1991, L.T.B.'s internet presence is limited to personnel lists for "Black or White" and unresolved Yahoo Answers threads asking who he is.

Then, last week, after hearing the song again, I thought fuck it, and decided to try hitting up Bottrell again to ask if he'd talk to me about the rap. "I can do that," he emailed back. "It's not a long story."

When I spoke to Bottrell on the phone the next day, he admitted that he was the one who had actually performed the rap, using the name L.T.B. as a pseudonym. He explained that, when my friend had emailed him, he had given us another email address of his with the intention of pretending to be another person named L.T.B. to fuck with us. "I was gonna do a ruse," he explained, but had backed out when he realized it would most likely fail. "I think there are a lot of people who already know and the joke wouldn't have worked so well," he said.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/F2AitTPI5U0' width='640' height='480'] The video for "Black or White." The rap, as lip-synced by Macaulay Culkin, comes in around 4:35.

The story of how Bottrell became, in a way, one of the most popular rappers of the 90s started because "Black or White," a song he had co-written and was producing with Jackson, had a big hole in the middle. "After the first few days of working on it, we really had the core of the song, the verses, the chorus, and Michael sang it really early on," he told me. "All we had was this big gaping middle section, that sort of just sat that was and on our minds for many months."

The idea for the rap popped into Bottrell's head one morning while he was at home, with lyrics inspired by the themes Jackson had covered in his parts of the song. Bottrell recorded a version of the rap which he intended to serve as a temporary filler and played it to Jackson. "He just loved it," Botrell told me.

Bottrell's initial plan with the rap was to get an actual rapper to record over his part, and suggested to Jackson that they use LL Cool J or Heavy D, who were both in the studio working on other tracks for the album.

Jackson, however, insisted that they use Bottrell's recording, something the producer told me he wasn't entirely comfortable with. "I'm, you know, a songwriter and record producer," he said. "I'm not a rapper, and I did not intend to be a white guy who's rapping on there."

But Jackson insisted—possibly, Bottrell thinks, because he's white and not a rapper. "The fact that I'm white and I did that rap kind of speaks to the content of the song. So in his mind, it all came together."

Related: The secret history of Cabbage Patch Kids

So Bottrell agreed, but, still not entirely comfortable with it, decided he wanted to use a pseudonym. He went with L.T.B. as a reference to the show Leave It to Beaver. "It's a white suburban kid, I'm making fun of myself," he said.

Jackson's faith in his rapping turned out to be well-placed. After the song sold millions of copies and spent seven weeks at the top of the US charts, Bottrell says his manager started getting calls asking L.T.B. to do a full album.

Though I've been confounded by the mystery of the rapping on "Black or White" for years, Bottrell told me that he has, in fact, publicly revealed that he is L.T.B. before. That was in a 2001 interview with Sound on Sound, a publication that describes itself as the "world's premier music recording technology magazine." But, Bottrell said, the revelation flew under the radar due to the technical nature of the publication. (Sample quote: "I just hooked up a Kramer American guitar to a Mesa Boogie amp, miked it with a Beyer M160, and got that gritty sound as I played to his singing.")

I'm no music expert, but I can't think of an earlier example of a huge pop star having a rapper come into their song for a guest verse about two-thirds of the way through the track (something that has become pretty ubiquitous today, on everything from Rihanna's "Umbrella" to Justin Bieber's "Beauty and a Beat"). I asked Bottrell if he had been the first person to do this, and he said, though he had never really thought about it before, he couldn't think of a song where someone had done this before him.

He also explained that, when the song had first been released, he had to make an edited version with the rap cut out because mainstream radio stations had no-rap policies and wouldn't play the song otherwise. "I believe this record might have opened some doors," he explained. "It's always a process, right? I think it changed over the next two years, very quickly."

When I suggested that this might mean that Bottrell might be, without realizing it, one of the most influential rappers of all time, he cut me off with a laugh. "Stop." he said. "No. Don't even go there."

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

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Last week, movie-theater mega-chain United Artists held marathon screenings of all ten Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, capped off with the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Being a huge nerd and firmly aligned in the Marvel camp, I felt compelled to subject myself to 29 hours of bombastic blockbustery mania. So, last Wednesday, I hopped on a $6 Megabus from New York City to my hometown of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, to go to one of only 11 theaters showing the marathon.

Here's a movie-by-movie rundown of what happened.

6:00 PM, Hour 0: Orientation

Before the marathon begins, I see marathon-goers streaming past in Captain America pajamas and plastic Thor helmets. Someone's carrying an Avengers pillow. Many are cradling blankets. It strikes me how woefully underprepared I am: All I have is a backpack full of pens, paper, and oranges, which I'd been recommended by a worried friend.

6:45 PM, Hour 1: Iron Man (2008)

The first movie in what they called the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" is Iron Man. I haven't seen this movie in years, but everyone was excited in the theater. I learn we have an MC for the night, Andre of Black Nerd Comedy, a YouTube star who asks us trivia and doles out posters as prizes. Sample questions include: "What is the name of Thor's Hammer?" (Mjolnir) and "Who are the new brother sister team in Avengers: Age of Ultron?" (Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch). The marketing rep stands nearby, frequently checking his watch.

Iron Man is full of fraught politics that haven't aged so well. The bad guys are "terrorists" from all over the Middle East, but the action takes place in a cave in Afghanistan. Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark blasts his way to freedom through sheer American ingenuity.

"Geeks abound," I jot down, glancing around to see people haggling and trading their character-specific 3D glasses, which we had been each been given. "Everyone still very lively," I note.

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The marathon schedule. Photo courtesy of the author

9:10 PM, Hour 3: The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Edward Norton took a break from being wonderful to play The Hulk in this movie. Starring opposite Liv Tyler, he is the saddest Hulk, ever. He's tortured, on the run, and literally walks with his head down in the rain through significant portions of this movie. I remember hating this film when I first saw it, but it's got a decent enough plot for a Marvel movie. Bruce Banner's been trying to keep it cool as the Hulk for five years, and lives a quiet life of hiding in Rio de Janeiro—until his girlfriend's army dad hunts him down and tries to subdue him. At this point I'm still feeling good from all the popcorn, but I realize that this will be my seat for the next 26 hours.

11:25 PM, Hour 5: Iron Man 2 (2010)

This movie was made during the time when Marvel still wasn't quite sure what they were doing. They had a big hit with Iron Man and then The Incredible Hulk was just OK. So... Make Iron Man 2, right? This movie stars Mickey Rourke as a dreadlocked Russian thug/nuclear physicist. (To his credit, Rourke later trashed the movie, calling it "mindless.")

12:15 AM, Hour 6

Halfway through Iron Man 2, I take a break because I need to stretch my legs and also because I'm starting to feel really shitty. I walk to the concession stand because our MC reminded us all to stay hydrated. A bunch of bored-looking teenagers mill about behind the stand.

I catch the cashiers gawking at all of us nerds with our geeky get-ups. They shout for us to enter specific lines, one for refills, another if you're actually buying something.

Standing among so many other customers, I can't help but feel this is a huge cash-grab for United Artists. With 400 marathoners each forking out $65 for their tickets, plus over a day's worth of megaplex-priced drinks and snacks, it really starts to add up.

Related: The Two Kids Who Remade 'Indiana Jones'

1:50 AM, Hour 7: Thor (2011)

I've never seen Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh (yes, Hamlet Kenneth Branagh—I don't know why he directed Thor, either). And although it's getting late, I'm determined not to nod off. Spoiler alert: I nod off. I'm awakened by the enormous sound of a 30-foot-tall robot's laser breath.

4:00 AM, Hour 9: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

By this point on the Marvel's movie-universe timeline, they knew pretty well where they were going. So with Captain America they took a chance and set it in the 40s. I like this movie a lot, but its pace is so slow. Maybe if I hadn't just seen four other Marvel explosions, I wouldn't be so critical. But good lord, move it along, Steve Rogers.

6:25 AM, Hour 12: The Avengers (2012)

This is a hard one for me. I've seen The Avengers three times already, and 11 hours into a movie marathon is not the best time to see it a fourth. Instead, I wander the halls of the megaplex. Someone's camped out on the ground with a blanket and pillows. All the doors to the other theaters are open, and I see a woman her mid-20s with a huge Hulk pillow sneak in. She turns to me and says, "I need to sleep in peace," and vanishes into the darkness. I wander outside, because we've got wristbands that let us come and go as we please.

I speak to a chubby dude chain-smoking who came all the way from Indiana to see the marathon. He complains that his buddy's fallen asleep and says that he himself won't.

"I suffer from insomnia," he boasts, "so I usually go two days without sleep."

7:30 AM, Hour 13

I return to my seat to catch the end of Avengers and immediately fall asleep. I sleep soundly until the crowd goes crazy for that part where the Hulk smashes Loki into the ground over and over, not unlike the repeated smashing that's been going on all damn night.

9:05 AM, Hour 15: Iron Man 3 (2013)

In the lobby, two young kids and their father walk back toward the theater. The kids are in Avengers pajamas and rub their sleepy eyes, seeming quite content.

"Dude, your kids are rock stars," a stranger offers.

The dad explains that they had a deal: They'd all go do this marathon if the kids went to school on Friday. Thursday, however, they were allowed to skip.

"But Dad," the little girl asks, "did you tell them we were sick?"

"Shhh..." the dad replies, "you are sick."

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Bathroom selfie during hour 15. Courtesy of the author

Back in the theater, I start to think about a woman I met earlier in the night who is dressed up like Tony Stark. With her short-cropped hair and penciled-in goatee, she had bragged about her Tony Stark collection of memorabilia and said Iron Man is her favorite hero. She also said she had a terrible panic attack during one of the movies in the marathon, and almost needed an ambulance.In Iron Man 3, Tony Stark is also struck with crippling panic attacks. It reminds me of the power these corny movies have to connect and empower people.

When an 11-year-old girl behind me was upset that she got a trivia question wrong (and therefore didn't win a prize) another fan, without hesitation, gave his prize to her. And when a young boy, suffering from developmental issues and dressed in a cape, stood in front of the crowd to give his best Iron Man pose (another competition) he was met with thunderous applause. When the community loves you as much as you love the content, there's a beauty to the fandom. The sense of unity—strengthened here by petty squabbles about who's the best Avenger, who's got the worst powers, and whether Bruce Banner or Tony Stark's the smartest—can be all encompassing as well as highly meaningful.

11:35 AM, Hour 17: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

By now I've withstood nearly an entire day's worth of explosions, gunshots, people screaming, and electronic gnashing sounds, but the question that pops into my head is: Am I drinking enough water? Again our MC is reminding us—"and not just soda."

From my notes: "Experiencing a sort of hallucination or lucid dream. Will occasionally slip into scenarios. Beginning to feel a little bit twitchy. Too much salt and sugar."

1:45 PM, Hour 19: Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014)

This movie is all about shaking up the universe the characters live in. I remember people freaking out about it when it came out, but in retrospect I think it's kind of whatever. When is Jon Hamm going to play a superhero? I ask myself.

4:20 PM, Hour 21: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I don't think my ears can handle much more. I keep writing that in my notes, "It's so loud... These movies are too loud..." and so on, again and again. I send an email to the concerned friend saying I'm fine. I remark briefly on how colorful Guardians of the Galaxy is, and as the movie ends I begin to feel relief. Like Captain America thawing after being frozen in ice for 70 years, I can see an end to my captivity.

7:00pm, Hour 24: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

I've finally made it. By now the smell in the movie theater is sweet, a sickly mix of spilled soda, popcorn, body odor, and farts (after hour 22, for some reason, people really began to let 'em rip). I put on my 3D glasses as the crowd stirs with excitement. The movie's pretty damn good, as far as I'm concerned. James Spader plays the big baddie, and unlike other stars-playing-villains, he doesn't phone it in (even though his character is completely CGI, so technically, he is phoning it in). The movie's got everything you want in a Marvel movie—clever banter, fluid action, a non-plot—and then it even tries to ask some big questions about responsibility. Not too bad.

9:45 PM, Hour 29

To really emphasize the fact that I just spent 29 hours watching comic-book movies, my mother swings by to pick me up. I'm staying with the family for the weekend, using the marathon as a nice excuse for a visit. I look haggard, I smell terrible, I feel greasy, and I'm cranky.

Before I leave, I speak to a couple of fans still milling about the theater. I ask Ella from Scranton, Pennsylvania, how she felt after 29 hours of movie marathoning.

"Better than I thought," she replies. She lets me in on her secret to her marathon success: "Caffeine and catching the sunlight when it's out."

I also speak to her friend Johnny, who came up from Washington, DC.

"This was a great experience," he said cheerfully, despite appearing visibly tired. "Seeing these movies with all these fans? I don't feel like a lone nerd anymore. I'm with my family now."

Avengers: Age of Ultron is playing in theaters now.

Follow Giaco on Twitter.

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All images by the author

[Editor's Note: Meet our friend @Seinfeld2000. He uses Twitter as a platform to imagine a surreal hellscape in which Seinfeld is still on in the modern era. @Seinfeld2000 started out as a parody of the relatively straightforward Twitter account @SeinfeldToday, but through S2K's unique style, consisting of broken English, an irrational hatred of Barack Obama, and a rich internal world in which the Seinfeld characters are murderous sex addicts who measure time with pieces of technology, Seinfeld2000 has in many ways transcended its trollish roots. He's made a video game, written an e-book, and been profiled by the New York Times. He was kind enough to write about the exciting news that Seinfeld is coming to Hulu, which besides that one Super Bowl commercial and that Curb Your Enthusiasm thing, is the closest Seinfeld has gotten to being on TV today.]

k so you know that hella trippy Richard linkleter movie Waking Life? I only mentien it here becase i spend most of my waking life imagening via twetes what seinfeld (hit 90s TV sitcom which revelutionize comedy) would be like if it still on the TV today with brand new modarn epsodes every week

Like, just for example off the top of my head? k, what if Krame bet his entire life saving on Manny Pacquito to win the big boxing fight aganst Floyd Maywathar this wekend and then he lose it all via Japanese mafia and he get evicted from his apertment but hes to embarass to tell Jery so he just start sleeping in the hallway outside of Jery apartment and jery is all "why r u sleeping on the gross halway floor theres probably so many bacteria and bedbugs not to mentien random semen stain's in the fabric" (Jerys eyes are shifting left to right suspicieusly during when hes saying this last part, about the semen stains) and Kran just break down full crying, he just go "Jery... my cripling gambling adiction has finaly catch up with me. I lost all my money, Jery. i have no food for nutritien, no internet acess, no place to sleep, i have truly hit bottom—" but Jery simply just interupt with his clasic catch phrase "GOOD LUCK WITH ALL THAT" and simply just SLAM the door in kram face lmao

I know what ur thinking, k thats kind of dark story line for seinfeld. K well ive got a news flash for u: its my imagenatien and i can do what i want with it. See, thats the beauty of imagenatien—theres no wrong answar. Its urs to conceive whatever u wish. Thats how the Wright brothers invented airplane. Am i comparing myself to the founding fathers of modern aviatien? Ya, i guess i am. So before u judge me, just take a moment and close your eyes to imagen your own modern epsode of seinfeld. Take as much time as u need, the remainder of this article will await u when u open ur eyes.

k now say aloud what u imagined. If theres ppl around, just whisper it. Dont wory, i guarantee it wont be creepy if someone walk by and see u whispering modern seinfeld concept's at ur computer monitor or ur iPhone 6 Plus

OK, that wasnt very good was it. But thats OK, its like, no judgement bro, ur in a safe space. This isnt ur algabra class from high school. Im not Mr. Zorosko, im not gona fail u and write on ur report that "ur son seems to not even understand the basic concept of numbers and for one of his answars he just drew a crude erotic drawing of a nude women and under it it said 'It my fantasy woman Elane,' this is full unaceptable"

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Let me be clear. The reasen im writing this article is becase last week, Jery Seinfeld made a landmark deal with Hulu. Can u imagen if Seinfeld was still on TV today, the all layer's of "meta" that they would engage in if seinfeld was to do a modern epsode of Seinfeld where Jery does a deal for his show-within-a-show "Jery" to sell the streaming rights? Gerge would probably fuck everything up agane, hed be like "I WANT THE STREAMING DEAL THAT TED DANSAN GETS!" And Jery would be like "Ted Dansan, what are u even talking about, Ted Dansan died in 2004" (Let me explane, so in the version of Seinfeld thats in my mind? If the show still on TV today, its a long story but Ted Danson would be decease even though hes alive and well in real life.)

Anyway so time for a buzzfeed quiz. Simply guess how much money Hulu paid for Seinfeld to be on Hulu today?

□ One dolar
□ One bilion dolars
□ Costco econo-pack of junior mint
□ $160 milion dollars

k the answar is D. $ 160 milion dolars! If u add that to all the monies that Jery made from the shows original run, plus syndicatien, DVD sales, and Bee Movie, Jery Seinfeld is literaly planking on a billion dolars rn (refarance to modarn Jay Z song "Gotta Have it")

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So i read this artical in a website called International Busines Times and it said that this deal with seinfeld is big for Hulu and the reasen why they were wiling to SHELL OUT so much guwop for seinfeld is becase the show will represent the cornerstone of their steaming service as traditienel TV become more and more obsalete. Thats rite, like at a certain point we wont be able to even imagen what seinfeld would be like if it still on TV today because—are u sitting down—TV wont even exist.

The article say that all the big networks and services start off like that. When Netflix started, it was just shitty old movies and TV serieses. When AMC started, it should have been called "Gramma and Granpas Boring Clasic Sunday Popcorn Movie Chanel" because that was there bread and butter until they stepped it up with originel scripted programing like "Beter Get Saul On The Phone" and "Game Of Thrones," not to mentien "Orange Not Orange Anymore, It Black Now." So they need a show like seinfeld to draw ppl in while they develop the TV shows of tomorow k

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Maybe the uncertainty of a modarn new fronteir of how we consume media has jery feeling a bit shook, and thats why hes been shooting off his mouth lately saying stuff like " Youtube is a garbage can" even tho he features the same garbage people from YouTube on his instant clasic TV show "Comedian In Cars Geting Cofee" smdh

Anyway, this major deal with seinfeld and hulu is all part of a major content arm's race between the major streaming sites.

Just as an analagy, remember the epsode of seinfeld where elane keep geting into catfight and then finaly she get into a BOSS-level cat fight with Raquel Welch (actress who is no longer modarn) and Raqual Welch just go BEAST MODE on her lmao. So just as an analagy, imagen that Elane is Hulu and Raquele is Neflix and then u will understand the sort of FIERCE competitien that we are about to witness play out as the way we consume media become even more more modarn today

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Just something to think about as u go about ur day

K i realy have to go now, see u

Follow Seinfeld2000 on Twitter.

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Ahmad Al-Basheer on 'The Al-Basheer Show'

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Extremism of any kind is always ripe for satire. This is perhaps why The Al-Basheer Show—essentially Iraq's version of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show—is doing so well in a country plagued by sectarian violence, government corruption, and the rise of a little-known Islamist group called ISIS.

The program, shown on YouTube and Iraqi TV channels, aims to build a better and stronger Iraq by exposing and lambasting everything currently dragging it down. With a viewership of 19 million, over half of Iraq's population have been tuning in to watch the weekly show, and unsurprisingly it's become one of the most popular programs among Iraqi youth.

I met the men who founded the television series, host Ahmad Al-Basheer and executive producer Hussam Hadi, at their office in the Jordanian capital of Amman. Ahmad, a household name in Iraq, was dressed in a flannel shirt, his thicket of chest hair poking through—a slightly different look to his dapper onscreen persona. A former news correspondent and political TV show host, Ahmad switched to comedy after realizing that traditional news wasn't the best way to engage an audience. Greased hair and a cigarette constantly on his lip, Hussam has worked his way up to owning a successful production company that makes cartoons and children shows for Iraqi television.

The pair met over Facebook, and similar ideologies and a drive to make a better Iraq brought them together. "Ahmad is a comedian, but he had borders around him and couldn't talk freely," said Hussam. "I'm a producer with my own production company, so we both complete each other."

Although the idea for the show had been floating around for two years, the pair launched the first episode at the end of August last year, soon after ISIS had effortlessly snatched Mosul away from the Iraqi army. While the circumstances were a blow to the country, the timing was ideal for Ahmad and Hussam; it provided them and their team ample ammunition against ISIS and enabled them to address the many mistakes made by ousted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"We made ISIS into normal human beings," said Hussam. "We showed people that yes they can fight, but they can also cry and get hungry. We put the reality back into them. When people started to see ISIS as a joke, they felt that they could then fight them.

"I think it's that humor we need to hold onto if Iraq is to fight her enemies," added Ahmad.

For more on Middle Eastern culture, watch our doc 'Heavy Metal in Baghdad':

Most generations in Iraq have witnessed at least two wars. Suicide bombers and terrorist attacks have become a daily occurrence. "What happened in France with Charlie Hebdo happens all the time in Iraq," said Hussam. "You can literally find dead bodies once or twice a week."

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It was a suicide bomber exploding himself near Ahmad that finally forced the presenter to leave Iraq and join the 700,000 Iraqi refugees in Jordan. "Wrong place, wrong time, but it was my final straw. I couldn't keep living like that," said Ahmad.

Constantly fretting about death has changed the Iraqi mentality. Both Ahmad and Hussam point out that, understandably, people would much rather just get on with their lives than continually worry about being blown up.

"I can be dead by an explosion or an assassination any second, so why not just live life to the full and not give a shit about anything else?" said Ahmad. "Eighty percent of Iraqis feel the same way as I do, and you can see that from our show's popularity. We say out loud what people are thinking in their heads."

Ahmad is Sunni and Hussam is Shia. Like most Iraqis living in exile, the pair have suffered greatly from the sectarian violence that has ravaged their country. Hussam was held hostage at his office in Baghdad for five hours by armed extremists, while Ahmad lost his 15-year-old brother and father to Shia militia groups. He himself was kidnapped for 40 days, until his family managed to pay his ransom. "I am Sunni, and my ID says I am from Ramadi [a city in the Sunni Triangle]. For the Shiite militia, it's a death sentence," Ahmad told me.

Addressing the sectarian crisis in Iraqi society has been an important focus for the duo. "We were run by dictatorship for 35 years, so after Saddam left we had no experience in democracy—we weren't even able to define what democracy was," said Hussam. "Now the problem is that the politicians are related to religious parties, so in Iraq the people took democracy to mean religion."

"I dream of the day when I can return to my country and present my show in Baghdad with the same peace and freedoms we have here."

Throughout the first season of the show, Ahmad explicitly mocked the religious clerics and politicians who incite sectarianism in Iraq. His sarcastic wit and sexual innuendoes were revolutionary. "We were the first in Iraq to criticize the government and religious leaders with satire," Ahmad declared proudly.

The content remained neutral and openly lampooned all of the different militias and religious extremists that afflict Iraq. A novelty for Iraqi television, where the powerful control the news and the agenda is dictated through pro Sunni, Shia or Christian channels. "Unfortunately in Iraq we do not have independent or moderate media that give messages in the truthful way," said Hussam.

When you Google Ahmad's name followed by the Arabic letter of " shin" (equivalent to the English "S") the first thing that pops up on the suggested searches is whether he is actually Sunni or Shiite. "It's an achievement to our show, as until now they can't recognize what religious sect I am, as our content is Iraqi and not religiously orientated," he laughed. "But it also makes me sad, as a lot of people have searched this. And why do they care what religion I am? The things I'm saying are the right things, so why should it matter if I am Sunni, Shia, or Christian?"

The crew of 19—a mix of Sunni, Shia, Christian and Kurdish Iraqis—film the show in Amman out of fear of being attacked, and to ensure their freedom of speech is not jeopardized. Both Ahmad and Hussam have had numerous death threats from armed militias and terrorist groups, and although the pair dream of returning to Iraq, they believe the reality is far from possible. "I will never be able to go back to Iraq at this time," Ahmad said sullenly. "I dream of the day when I can return to my country and present my show in Baghdad with the same peace and freedoms we have here."

At the end of the first season, an Iraqi TV network offered The Al-Basheer Show a million dollars to produce the second season, but the team chose to stay independent. "You can imagine how hard it was for us to turn down a million dollars, but it's not about making a profit," said Hussam. "It's about making something true."

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Royalties from channels broadcasting the series in Iraq helped to finance the first season of the show, but Hussam and his production company predominantly picked up the tab.

Season two is scheduled to start at the beginning of this month, but Hussam is struggling to find funding. He's optimistic that earnings from advertisements, YouTube views (from the beginning of May, YouTube will start paying for Iraq's viewership) and SMS services will keep The Al-Basheer Show afloat. Last year, the program's SMS connections were cut off for not toeing the government's line, an action the pair deems to be testament to the show's success.

"For us, it's a victory when you find out that the Iraqi Prime Minister and Iraqi President are watching every episode and are scared of what you are going to say that week," said Ahmad.

As the war against ISIS rages on across the border and Iraq breaks down into civil war, Ahmad and Hussam are busy preparing the content for season two. "We get told on our Facebook page all the time that as much as we make the people laugh, we make them sad," Hussam admitted. "Because people begin to recognize how many problems Iraq really has and who is actually controlling or responsible for them."

Follow Rosie on Twitter.

In the latest episode of our Canadian Cannabis series, we take a look at how Canada is missing out on an economic windfall by continuing down a path of restrictive marijuana policies.

Fucked Up's Damian Abraham, a medical marijuana user and overall weed enthusiast, went out to Vancouver and Denver to compare the grey market of dispensaries in British Columbia (which are now in the crosshairs of the federal government) to Denver's regulated legal weed economy.

He meets with weed entrepreneurs in both cities and chats with the decision makers who are trying to make pot easy to get on both sides of the border.

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The author in her lab coat. All photos courtesy of the author

The year I turned 25, I became a children's birthday party entertainer. Or, actually, I became a Mad Scientist™ children's birthday party edutainer. At the time, I was going through your standard-issue millennial crisis and came to the realization I should "try acting," because that's always worked out well for people. I based my decision on my love for the craft, as well as my acting experience (zero) and my acting skills (also zero). "It's my dream," I told my mother, who then politely hung up the phone.

The thing about acting jobs is that they tend to be given to actual actors. And while I had an A+ Kid Rock impression, my resume pretty much ended there. I was in graduate school for social work, but I dreamed of becoming a drop-out. But the only company to even respond to my email for acting gigs was Mad Science of Brooklyn, a science edutainment company looking for "funny and fun!!!! Mad Scientist birthday party entertainers!!!!!!!" While I've never really liked science and I've certainly never liked "fun!!!!!" I still showed up early to my interview, hopeful and deluded.

Mad Science was located in one of those Brooklyn warehouse buildings that looks like a great place to either stage an art show or kidnap someone. Their office was in the basement, in a room with no windows. There, I was greeted by Proton Paul (his Mad Science alias has been changed for privacy purposes), a jolly fellow who spent half the interview performing magic tricks. Once he discovered I met all of his qualifications (yes, I ran my high school's science league, no, I am not proud of it), I was hired. For the next two years of my life, I'd travel around Brooklyn as "Hydrogen Heather: Mad Scientist Children's Birthday Party Edutainer!!!" bringing joy to children, and shame to my family.

Most people tend to think of children's birthday party entertainers as tragic clowns, surly criminals with terrifying music tastes. But Mad Science was just the opposite. Though clown membership is on the decline nationwide, Mad Science operates on five different continents in more than 20 different countries. There's Mad Science of Bahrain, Finland, Spain, Qatar, Oman, Nigeria, Peru, and even West Virginia. Divided by country, united by slime, Mad Science is, without a doubt, the largest organization of mad scientist children birthday edutainers in all of human history.

Related: Kids Telling Dirty Jokes

Proton Paul was the perfect embodiment of all the science-positive ebullience Mad Science had to sell. He was a chemist by profession, and told me he started the franchise because it combined the two things he loved most: "science and kids!!!" While I obviously found Paul's answer to be gross, I loved him as a person. He was an enthusiastic coach and a patient teacher. Throughout the first month of my training, Paul helped me to build rockets and stop crying in the workplace. Paul was confident that one day—"with just enough practice, Heather!"—I too could become "The Chief Mad Scientist in All of Brooklyn" (not a real title).

Soon enough, "Hydrogen Heather" started doing parties all across the borough. Every week, I'd drag my 200-pound rolling suitcase up and down subway stairs to the Magic Jungle in Coney Island or the Creepy House in Crown Heights. Traditional science experiments, like creating soda bottle tornadoes, were heightened by outrageous science stories and my acting abilities. One of our most popular experiments involved me melting a Styrofoam cup with nail polish remover, then letting kids breathe in the fumes. "Smell that smell?" I'd ask them. "That's the smell of polymers, melting!" Thinking back, it might have actually been the smell of "your lungs, melting," but I was too drunk on my popularity with children to notice.

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I didn't understand these people. Every party I went to was full of loving parents and children scrambling to get to the front row so they could learn on their birthday. How beautiful, I thought, how disgusting. My clients differed in age (most were between three and nine, with some loser 13-year-olds thrown in) and class (although predominantly middle-class, because who else spends $500 on "Edutainment?") but they were all identical in character. These kids were intelligent, earnest—the future bullying victims of America. "What gives slime its elusive properties?" a child asked me once. "That's not a word you should know at seven," I told her. "What is the Kelvin to Fahrenheit conversion ratio?" another asked. "I don't know and neither should you," I said. I didn't worry about what I said to these kids. I knew they would all attend private colleges, join a cappella groups, land pushover partners. Their lives would be embarrassing and fine.

It didn't make sense that Hydrogen Heather could help four-year-olds make magic but Real Heather couldn't get adults the help they really needed.

The truth was, working for Mad Science felt so much better than everything else in my life. While I trucked around Brooklyn with enough Borax to decimate ISIS, I was also in grad school for social work. I had a social work job where, every week, I was responsible for finding different and creative ways to say no: "No, we can't find your family housing." "No, your son will not graduate." "No, you won't get that check." "We don't have space." "We don't have jobs." "I am sorry." While I had held social work-type jobs for years, it felt particularly painful to hold both of these positions at once. It didn't make sense that Hydrogen Heather could help four-year-olds make magic but Real Heather couldn't get adults the help they really needed. I wanted to give these people everything, but the most I could often manage was a bus card.

I started to spend more and more time at Mad Science, where—and I'm ashamed to say this—I felt important. But while I dominated every children's birthday party (it's hard not to dominate when you're 20 years older), my finances lagged. Mad Science collected between $225 and $375 per party, but I received just $40 of that total sum. Yes, I could receive tips, but because the families didn't know that I got just 17 percent of their payment, my tips never went much higher than $20. (Another possibility: I was not very good.) If I factored in the time I spent commuting, I sometimes made as little as $6 an hour. I might have imagined myself as the "New York's Hottest Mad Scientist," but my paychecks said otherwise.

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Sometime towards the end of my second year, I got a call to do a party at 9 PM on a Friday night. I thought it was a strange time to hold a party for a six-year-old, but I was a brazen and dedicated (single and bored) edutainer, so I took the gig.

When I first got to the party, everything appeared to be normal and boring. The just-vacuumed rug was home to a roving gang of violent tweenagers, covered in snot and Cheetos dust and filled with rage. "It's my dad's birthday too!" the birthday boy said when I walked in. There was lukewarm pizza and slices of bologna and an ambitious pile of celery sticks, clearly untouched. Just your traditional shitty American party, I sighed to myself, while downing some Capri-Sun.

About halfway through the party, I noticed something bizarre. A Jeep pulled up in front of the house, and a group of women—with great legs, Sketchers platforms, and hairstyles last seen in 1982—headed towards the back door. Have they all come to see me? I thought. God, I've really blown up. But weirdly enough, these ladies strutted straight past the living room and down into the basement, where I heard a group of loud men, shouting in Russian. "Party's in here!" I wanted to shout, before it hit me. These people weren't here to see Hydrogen Heather. This was a father-son joint birthday party. The kids didn't want to talk to the adults, and the adults didn't want to party with the kids. So they came up with a solution: For the child, they had hired a Mad Scientist, and for the father, a stripper.

I was in the presence of genius.

Needless to say, I made very good tips that night, no doubt benefitting from the "spirit of giving" that historically accompanies strip shows. While the kids had no contact with the strippers, I noticed they were slightly more feral than usual. Two punched me in the stomach, one asked me if I had "big balls" (I do not), and in what can only be described as a hate crime, a baby spit up on my lab coat.

Still, there comes a point in every Mad Scientist's life when you decide this needs to stop. I had come to Mad Science because some part of me actually, sincerely thought I could make it big. As lame as this is to say, I felt big on stage. But the paychecks, the slime, and the strippers—they all dissented. Handing out Metrocards at a methadone treatment center didn't make me feel important either, but at least the work was closer to my goals of creating substantive change in my community.

So I quit.

I believe this is the point in the essay where I'm supposed to go: "It's been six years since I last did Mad Science. Sometimes, I pull my lab coat out of the closet and wonder—what if?" But that's not true. I don't care and that baby did a fucking number on my lab coat, so I'll never put that thing on again.

Follow Heather Dockray on Twitter.

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Terri McComber silently stared into the faces of her neighbours and fellow community members who gathered outside of her family's home calling for her expulsion from the native reserve of Kahnawake.

The McCombers are a blended family and technically disobey Kahnawake's controversial residency legislation that prohibits non-natives from living on the territory.

Residents donning placards with "marry out, get out" rallied in favour of Kahnawake Membership Law last weekend. McComber's house was vandalized in the middle of the night.

"My kids are a mistake. They are not wanted," said McComber. "They are second-class citizens because they are half-breeds."

The graffiti on the home said "frog," a derogatory name for people of Quebecois descent, although Terri McComber is American.

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McComber has lived with her Mohawk husband Marvin McComber in Kahnawake, a small indigenous territory of about 6,000 people on the South Shore outside of Montreal, for 26 years.

In the fall, the family received an eviction letter from a group of community members asking them to vacate the territory by May. Since 1981, Mohawks who have chosen to marry outside of the town have had to leave.

The mixed McComber family has chosen to stay although they contravene longstanding legislation that has sweeping support. The residency law serves to fight assimilation while protecting the native community's culture, language and traditions.

It is a question of isolation for McComber. Her children, who are 24,18, and eight, do not fit in within the community simply because they are half Mohawk.

"It is hard for people, for community members to like me because it makes them look like they are taking sides," said McComber. "I don't want anyone to take sides—I don't and I don't want to take anything, and I don't want to feel like doing something so horrible. All I want to do is live like everyone else."

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The mobilization on Saturday included several chiefs from the band council who are vocal supporters of the membership law.

The McCombers, Olympian Waneek-Horn Miller, and several other blended families are suing the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake in Quebec Superior Court for infringement upon their rights.

Joe Delaronde, a spokesperson for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, said that many residents are frustrated with individuals who continue to break the law.

"They are not being kicked out of Kahnawake, but they are just being asked not to live in Kahnawake," said Delaronde.

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Graffiti defacing the McCombers' home reads "Frog," a derogatory term for Francophone Quebecois people.

Delaronde says the law protects a declining Mohawk identity. Everybody is welcome in the community but only indigenous members reserve the right to live there.

He also noted that families did not voice their concerns during two years of drafting amendments to the law, which was open to all residents.

"It is those who are in contravention that people are upset with," said Delaronde. "It's not the people who are with somebody else because you can't legislate love. You fall in love with who you fall in love with that's all there is to it."

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The seldom-enforced membership law has followed her since before the birth of her first son after she moved to Kahnawake because her husband missed his home. McComber keeps to herself because she doesn't know what else to do.

"It is what they want you to feel, it is what they want you to live. They don't have to say anything," said McComber. "I want nothing. They've never given and I've never taken anything from this reserve. I took a man that loves me and that was it. And why can't he have that right? Why can't they respect Marvin and embrace my children?"

Jeremiah Johnson, a Mohawk of Kahnawake who firmly defends the membership law, was present for the march on Saturday. Johnson once represented the group of residents in favour of evictions and is involved in drafting amendments to the membership law.

For Johnson, the law ensures his community's sovereignty and the lawsuit threatens any authority that Kahnawake has over its membership.

"When we were growing up we were taught that if you marry a non-native that you cannot bring that non-native here to live," said Johnson. "If we choose that path with them then we have to walk that path in their world."

His hope is that families start to comply with the membership law and the will of the community.

"We have so very little left," said Johnson. "We have a small piece of land left where our language can prosper and our culture can prosper and where we can live amongst our own."

Follow Kalina Laframboise on Twitter.