You can't hack a smashed phone. via Flickr.

There are a lot of exciting topics to discuss when it comes to the issue of smartphone surveillance. Just how completely wiretapped are the vibrating, light-up mini-computers that we tuck inside of our purses and pants pockets? Well, based on information that German newspaper Spiegel broke earlier this month—thanks to top-secret information given to them by everyone’s favourite surveillance industry fugitive Edward Snowden—it appears the NSA has boundless access when it comes to collecting the data we type into our smartphones and bounce off of satellites.

For anyone who has been following the waterfall of privacy-crushing leaks that have been pouring out of Edward Snowden’s attaché case, it’s not necessarily surprising to hear that American cell phone providers and hardware manufacturers have been compromised—especially now that we know the NSA has paid “millions” to make companies like Google and Yahoo more compliant with their gigantic spy network. What is surprising, for Canadians and non-Canadians alike, however, is that BlackBerry has been implicated in this latest rush of smartphone spying news as well.

BlackBerry, based in Waterloo, Ontario, is obviously the most successful Canadian telecommunications hardware manufacturer of all time—and unfortunately they’ve had a shitty few years. In 2011, BlackBerry got a bad rep during the London riots after it was discovered many demonstrators were using the proprietary BlackBerry Messenger to organize their protests, sweeping service outages later that year prompted an incredibly awkward, public video apology from Mike Lazaridis, one of BlackBerry’s co-founders, and in 2012 and 2013, roughly 5,000 jobs at BlackBerry were cut.

With so many business failures piling up—the Guardian referred to BlackBerry’s recent history as a “calamitous decline”—so evidently, drastic Hail Mary maneuvers needed to be pulled out of their telecom playbook. Last August, after a “four-year standoff” with the government of India, BlackBerry quietly gave the Indian government complete access to its encryption keys, in exchange for BlackBerry’s entrance into the Indian market—allowing BlackBerry to expand its wounded empire, while also compromising the security standards that have made the Canadian made keyboard phone the official choice of Barack Obama (even though he now prefers his iPad for security briefings).

So, could this mean the sharp drop in BlackBerry stock has forced the company to compromise its once famous security standards, in order to expand its reach globally and keep its business alive? When I reached out to BlackBerry to ask them about how and why the NSA is able to spy on their network, I received this pre-approved response:

It is not for us to comment on media reports regarding alleged government surveillance of telecommunications traffic. However, we remain confident in the superiority of BlackBerry's mobile security platform for customers using our integrated device and enterprise server technology. Our public statements and principles have long underscored that there is no “back door” pipeline to our platform. Our customers can rest assured that BlackBerry mobile security remains the best available solution to protect their mobile communications.

The breathtaking architecture of BlackBerry HQ. via WikiCommons.

Spiegel, who basically got the same answer from BlackBerry, rightfully pointed out the potential complications that would arise from the NSA working with a Canadian corporation, in order to collect the personal data of its users, or worse still, break into the BlackBerry network without the company's knowledge:

“According to several documents, the NSA spent years trying to crack BlackBerry communications, which enjoy a high degree of protection, and maintains a special ‘BlackBerry Working Group’ specifically for this purpose… It is awkward enough that the NSA is targeting devices made by US companies such as Apple and Google. The BlackBerry case is no less sensitive, since the company is based in Canada, one of the partner countries in the NSA's ‘Five Eyes’ alliance. The members of this select group have agreed not to engage in any spying activities against one another.”

To try and get more clarity in this tangled issue of whether or not BlackBerry knows the NSA is spying on them, and how the Canadian government may be cooperating, I spoke to Robert Masse, a computer security and surveillance expert who now runs his own start-up called Swift Identity. First, Robert shed a bit of light on how Canada functions within the Five Eyes itself:

“[Canada is part of the] Five Eyes, but the US controls it in the end. If Canada has pissed off the US for one reason or another, then the US will shut down the flow of intel. If Canada doesn’t do what the US asks, then Canada gets less access. It’s in everyone’s interest to cooperate with the Americans. It’s all a game of give and take… but the US always has the upper hand.

Say you’re in the RCMP and you go down to the states for a conference, you’re a Canadian and you’re always blown away with how much budget they have. It’s not ten times bigger—it’s infinitely bigger. When guys go down to the states and then come back, they’re just like ‘holy shit.’ They can’t believe the stuff they have access to.

The US has the ability to collect more intel than Canada. The US has submarines that can tap undersea cables. Canada has submarines that barely function as submarines. You can’t even compare the intel machine of the US against anything else in the world.”

So clearly, with so much influence and power coming out of the US, if the NSA really wanted to forge an intelligence partnership (aka build in a backdoor) to the BlackBerry network, they probably would have more than enough leverage to make it happen. That flexing of power, coupled with the recent decline in BlackBerry’s market share, might have produced the perfect storm that the NSA needed in order to get access to the BlackBerry network. Robert elaborated on all that:

“Originally, I know BlackBerry did not want to cooperate with law enforcement. But in the past few years, with [BlackBerry giving India their encryption keys], maybe things have changed. It wouldn’t surprise me if they put in a [NSA] backdoor for the survivability of their business. You want to get the contracts… As things went down I’m sure that they had to make compromises.”

The possibility that customer security was compromised in order to strengthen BlackBerry’s overall business certainly seems more likely after the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that BlackBerry will be cutting up to 40% of its workforce by the end of the year. It seems like the company is a sinking ship that’s being stripped for parts—which is bad (but not surprising) news for the Canadian economy. Plus, in this era of total corporate compliance with government surveillance, it seems highly unlikely that a genuinely security-conscious telecommunications company could ever rise from BlackBerry's once secure ashes.

These layoffs sure do sound like BlackBerry’s death knell—but the issue of NSA surveillance is still relevant to its existing consumer base. While it’s impossible, without some kind of information leak, to definitively say when and how the NSA cracked the BlackBerry network—though Spiegel does allude to a breakthrough from the British GCHQ intelligence agency in 2010 that was cause for “champagne”—it doesn’t seem like the Canadian government would have much of an issue with increasing our own surveillance powers at home by gaining access to the BlackBerry network, possibly with the help of the NSA.

Canadian law enforcement agencies work hand-in-hand with telecom providers to eavesdrop on phone calls, secretly read text messages, locate the whereabouts of suspects, and decrypt encrypted communications. Plus, the New York Times recently reported on how CSEC, Canada’s own NSA, helped the NSA become the “sole editor” of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s encryption standard in order to make it deliberately weak for government surveillance purposes—which is a revelation that has shocked even the most well-informed cybersecurity experts.

Clearly BlackBerry is of interest to the surveillance agencies of the Five Eyes. Even with millions of lost customers in 2013 alone, over 75 million human beings worldwide still use BlackBerry devices. That’s a lot of BBM conversations and phone calls to keep track of. Whether or not BlackBerry willingly cooperated with the NSA is unknown—but if their massive losses in 2013, and the deal they made with India, are any indication of their corporate mindset these days—it seems likely they could have shook hands with the NSA as well to keep their heads afloat.

Follow Patrick on Twitter: @patrickmcguire

More about Canadian surveillance issues:

Is CSEC, the Canadian Version of the NSA, Trustworthy?

The Canadian Government Is Not Bothered by PRISM and the NSA

Canadians Should Be Concerned about the NSA and PRISM

For the second episode of our new series, Canada's New Cinema, we were honoured to hang out with Hubert Davis. Hubert is best known for his short Academy Award nominated documentary Hardwood, that covers the complicated, but ultimately beautiful relationship between his father (a famous Harlem Globetrotter) and his mother. Since then Hubert's documentary lens has covered the troubled Regent Park neighbourhood of downtown Toronto and the painstaking craft of a Canadian portrait artist--who got to paint the Queen herself.

We met up with Hubert at the beginning of pre-production for his first feature film, to talk about the differences between fiction and documentary, his work in the commercial world, and the help he's received from the government funded National Film Board of Canada--after we barged into their offices unannounced.

The super special September issue of VICE was exclusively culled from the archives of Bob Guccione Sr.—the legendary magazine publisher who built a media empire that started with Penthouse. This portion of the issue features artwork originally published in Guccione's science and science-fiction magazine OMNI. 

Artist: Tony Roberts; Date Published: April 1980

Artist: John Holmes; Date Published: August 1981

Artist: Chris Moore; Date Published: December 1979

Artist: Tim White; Date Published: January 1980

Artist: Bob Layzell; Date Published: February 1979

Artist: Thomas Akawie; Date Published: April 1980

Artist: Gervasio Gallardo; Date Published: April 1980

Artist: H. R. Giger; Date Published: November 1979

Artist: Chris Foss; Date Published: November 1979

Artist: Paul Lehr; Date Published: March 1980

Artist: Andrei Sokolov; Date Published: May 1979

Artist: Chris Moore; Date Published: January 1980

For more previously unpublished documents visit the Guccione Archives Issue page. For even more unpublished archival material, please visit The Guccione Collection website, which is devoted to illuminating all the varied corners of Bob's legacy and creating new content in the spirit of the Guccione empire.

Image via YouTube

The careers of gangster rappers are usually short-lived, kind of like professional athletes. After all, there is something cringe-worthy about 50-year-olds rapping about drug deals, gang-banging, and drive-bys (not that this doesn’t happen); the same way it is mildly upsetting when an overweight, coke-addled soccer legend like Maradona is carted out for the occasional charity match.

To avoid such embarrassment, most successful MCs change their artistic tack. Others find God.

In the wake of Notorious B.I.G’s death, Harlem native MA$E was catapulted to the summit of the Bad Boy Records roster only to quit the rap game in 1999 to pursue a new life as Pastor Mason Betha. Fellow Bad Boy alumnus, Shyne, freshly sprung from a ten-year jail sentence in 2009 proclaimed himself an orthodox Jew. He promptly moved to Jerusalem to study the Torah and started to beef with Rick Ross over who was more Jewish.

Last week another example of gangster rapper who found God made news in an altogether more tumultuous arena.

@ScotinBeirut

More from Syria:

More and More Journalist Are Getting Kidnapped in Syria

I Ate Ice Cream with a Member of al Qaeda in Syria

Ground Zero Syria: Snipers of Aleppo
 

Photos by Raf Katigbak.

Montreal might be known as the North American capitol of euro-sophistication (albeit a teensy bit of a racist one), but let’s face it: a significant chunk of our tourism depends on Boston steakfaces coming up to visit our sex workers, eat at topless breakfast joints, or peruse our galaxy of strip clubs with weird names like La Caleche du Sexe (literally “the horse-drawn carriage of sex”), places that allow all kinds of touching.

It comes as no surprise that Montreal is also the third largest porn-producing city in the world—after Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Giant porn corporations like Manwin have set up shop in this French speaking flesh-palace creating a multi-million dollar industry.  But beyond the porn titans, smaller adult entertainment companies also manage to thrive thanks to Quebec’s unique star system—it’s the only province in Canada that proudly supports its own celebrities, TV shows, and controversial set of values. Somehow Quebec’s culture bubble allows the ultra-local French-Canadian porn industry to stay relevant in an overcrowded online sex landscape.

That brings us to AD4 productions, a company that gained notoriety last year when they took a viral video capturing police brutality against student protesters and turned it into a spoof porn thereby proving rule 34 of the internet. Evidently, the company has a pretty special and locally-motivated approach to porn-making. As one of the producers told me over the phone, “if you don’t want to be like the others, don’t do like the others.”

Naturally when I heard about AD4’s recent porn casting party where they promised squirting, wet t-shirts and an RV where normal folks like you and I could be chosen to go at it with actual porn stars, I had to check it out.

The event took place at a bar called Eclipse located on a street aptly named Beaver Hall. When I walked in it felt a bit like a mix between an awkward high school dance and a cheap Serbian sex trafficking den.  There’s probably a bar called Eclipse in every major city in Europe and they probably all feel like this. I braced myself for what could be the most depressing night of my life.

The scene upon entering was pretty much what I had expected: a bunch of drunk and overly excited dudes: bros sporting “Fuck Buddy” shirts and starry-eyed guys who’ve probably never interacted with women IRL.

Once I decided to mingle I was assaulted by the music: ultra loud euro-electro dance courtesy of this guy, DJ Crazy Mike. We’re not sure if the moniker really suited him, but maybe DJ Retired Golf Dad was taken.

Despite the overpowering music and overwhelming tangy funk of testosterone, everyone looked pretty harmless and in good spirits.

My vagina, however, started shriveling when guys started taking pictures with me and following me around despite my carefully selected frumpy attire. Apparently this guy is at every AD4 event and is a superfan of one of the actresses. My mother—who once said “porn destroys lives”—would have been thrilled to hear porn groupies tell me that I have a future in the biz. Things were getting uncomfortable so I went out to check out the RV.

A sketchy stairwell at the back of the bar opened into a dark alley with an overflowing dumpster presenting the most unsexy scene I could have imagined. Despite a rule of ‘only people filming or fucking’ being allowed in, we managed to sneak into the RV and grab some shots before the action started.

This is where the magic happens. Okay so it may look like the kind of place your grandparents would play canasta while waiting for the Niagara Falls bingo hall to open, but sometimes you have to make do. Note the decorative flair of matching the pink blanket bench covers to the weird floor pads that are obviously meant for a child’s playroom. It really balances out the cheap faux rustic Ikea cabinets.

Plenty of masks and condoms were available for all sorts of protection, both disease and shame-based.

I made the mistake of opening the fridge. What sort of sexy food items do they stock for a porn shoot? Maybe some champagne… or sexy fruit like peaches or strawberries and whip cream or…what the hell is that? Okay, maybe it’s just there to catch the freezer drippings or something, but my mind wandered to strange and dark places. We decided that everything was getting too creepy so we went back into the bar as apparently the wet t-shirt contest was starting.

Before you scoff at how vanilla a wet t-shirt contests are (Oooh, I can see your breasts through your now moistened translucent top, boner time) keep in mind this is Quebec, things are done a little differently around here. AD4’s version of it goes as follows: take some girls in white outfits…

… duct tape an 8-foot plastic tarp to the stage…

…and bring in Vandal Vyxen—a raver-punk Suicide Girl pornstar with an albino snake and a “SWAG” belt who's specialty is female ejaculation. What do you get?

If you said “a slip ‘n slide-squirt show-wet t-shirt contest,” then you be both right and disturbed. It might not come across here but there was a LOT of liquid shooting out of that vagina. I imagine it was sort of like being at a Grand Prix podium celebration but slightly saltier. Attempting to comprehend this Squirt-du-Soleil where girls volunteer to dive head first across a stage, under and through a seemingly constant rain of bodily fluids, broke my brain. I had so many questions. How does she reach orgasm so quickly? How much squirt can she possibly have? Where does it come from? Who are these girls and do their mothers know what they’re doing? What could they win that could possibly be worth this? Why am I enjoying this so much?

While I still don’t even know if those girls actually won a prize, I do remember that at this point, everyone was ready to get their porn on, so the host began to invite audience members to the stage to see what lengths a human male would go to have his penis touched by someone whose job it was to touch penises. One guy put a finger up his own ass. This guy—who we named Baby Gary Busey—tried to suck his own dick.

Then the host asked if two guys would come up and French kiss each other, nobody volunteered. I guess sticking a finger up your own butt or attempting auto-fellatio in front of a room full of strange men falls on the not-gay side of the masculinity scale. Instead he asked someone to lick the entire length of the splooge tarp, which at this point has been squirted on, slid on and stepped on…

Before he could finish, this guy ran up and did it. Apparently risking some sort of horrible stomach virus or mouth-AIDS is not as gross as touching tongues with another guy. Go figure. Then came the final dare for the last spot in the RV: Doing pushups while getting squirted on.

Sure, no problem.

I guess this guy’s the “winner”.

We decided we’d had seen enough so we returned outside to the RV where these guys were getting ready for their big debut. Keeping yourself erect prior to a scene is known as “fluffing” and these guys clearly wanted to be professional. Again: two guys kissing equals too gay. A bunch of guys standing around jerking themselves off in an alley while looking at each other equals totally not gay. Surprisingly everyone was pretty blasé about what was going on despite it being totally strange and insane event. Maybe this sort of stuff happens all the time to guys, but my mind was constantly being blown while everyone else seemed pretty chill. The other girls who were there all seemed to be in high spirits and not once did I feel threatened or unsafe. 

In fact some of them felt so comfortable they felt they could wear anything. Even, well, whatever this is.

You know how some strip clubs are just tragic? Where the collision of daddy issues and the grim consequences of capitalism slap you in the face like a pair of tits tattooed with the words “Change The World”? There was none of that here (except the tattoo). If it wasn’t for their outfits and the fact that they’ve probably had more dicks inside them than I’ll ever see in my life, these girls seemed like well adjusted gals just pallin’ around.

But surely there was something weird and sinister going on in that RV. After all, isn’t porn the domain of dark exploitation, drug abuse and damaged girls? I needed to go in there and see just how bad it was.

Turns out it wasn’t as bad as I thought. In fact it all seemed sort of silly and fun. The whole night I tried to wrap my head around the reason why people were here. In the end I realized, why the fuck not? When are they ever going to get a chance to have an orgy in an RV in a Montreal alley again? Likely never. In an oversaturated industry where you can find whatever makes your dick hard in a split second on the interweb, standing out is hard. AD4 isn’t interested in producing porn where girls have hot-air balloons tits and guys get to drill them for hours without ever coming. That’s why AD4 has a sex RV, I guess.

Clearly there was actually a business model hidden underneath all the squirt, engaging your audience to the point where they can actually fuck a pornstar—while they’re at a party, and being filmed for a future AD4 project—is a smart business move. Even if the attendees and lucky fuckers don’t become porn stars themselves, those who attended the casting party will now feel like they’re part of the greasy porn family AD4 is curating. It’s about doing something different and creating a community. And that’s good, because it ensures the internet will have even more thrusting cocks on it—but these cocks aren’t just any cocks. They’re made local and organic. Right here in Montreal, where anything can happen.


Follow Steph on Twitter: @smvoyer

More about porn in Canada:

A Pepper Spray Loving Lady Cop from Montreal Is Mad about a Porno

Filtering Out Online Porn Is a Dumb Idea

I Got Creeped Out at Vancouver's Last Porn Theatre

It's time, once again, to roll our eyes at some people who are scared of the world:

Cry-Baby #1: Holy Trinity School

(via)

The incident: A school found out that one of their employees was in an abusive relationship.

The appropriate response: According to the website dosomething.org, you should follow these steps: Speak up, be sensitive, listen, be there for them, connect them to resources, stay with them. 

The actual response: The school fired her. 

Back in January, second grade teacher Carie Charlesworth was forced to call the police three times on her abusive husband, after what she described as a "very bad weekend" with him. A temporary restraining order was put in place against him.

When she returned to her job at Holy Trinity School in San Diego the next day, she told the principal what had happened, and confided in her that she was being abused. 

Later that day Carie's husband showed up in the school's parking lot, prompting a lockdown. He was arrested and jailed on two felony charges. 

As a result of this, the school put Carie on indefinite leave. They also pulled her four kids out of the school. 

After three months on leave, Carie received a letter from the school, telling her she was fired:

"We know from the most recent incident involving you and Mrs. Wright (the principal) while you were still physically at Holy Trinity School, that the temporary restraining order in effect were not a deterrent to him. Although we understand he is current incarcerated, we have no way of knowing how long or short a time he will actually serve and we understand from court files that he may be released as early as next fall. In the interest of the safety of the students, faculty and parents at Holy Trinity School, we simply cannot allow you to return to work there, or, unfortunately, at any other school in the Diocese."

According to a report on NBC 7 San Diego, several parents were planning to remove their children from the school if Carie was allowed to return.

In an interview with the station, Carie said, “I mean that’s why women of domestic violence don’t come forward, because they’re afraid of the way people are going to see them, view them, perceive them, treat them.” Adding, "they’ve taken away my ability to care for my kids. It’s not like I can go out and find a teaching job anywhere."

Caries (now ex) husband is due to be released at the end of the month. 

Cry-Baby #2: Escambia Academy High School

(via Reddit)

The incident: A Native American girl wore a feather in her cap at her high school graduation ceremony, despite being warned not to. 

The appropriate response: Nothing. Or telling her off if you really care. 

The actual response: The school are refusing to let her graduate until she pays a $1000 fine. 

Chelsey Ramer, a 17-year-old, is a member of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. She, along with several other Native American students, were planning to hang a traditional feather from their mortarboards at their graduation ceremony.

The school, Escambia Academy High School in Atmore, Alabama, found out about this, and warned them not to. They also asked the students to sign a contract that stated, “students and staff shall not wear extraneous items during graduation exercises unless approved by the administration.”

According to Chelsey, she didn't sign the contract. 

On May 23rd, the day of graduation, Chelsey ignored the warning and took to the stage with the feather hanging from her hat. The school refused to hand her her diploma and transcripts.

They are now saying that, in order to get them and graduate, she must pay a $1000 fine. 

In an interview with her local news station, Chelsey said, “I don’t think it’s fair at all. I feel like it’s discrimination.” 

A former teacher of Chelsey's, who is also a Native American, was interviewed by the station, and said, “Being honored with a feather for graduation is a wonderful experience. It’s a lot more than showing off your culture. It has ties in to our spirituality as well.”

Chelsey is planning on taking legal action against the school.

Which of these schools is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll:

Previously: The guy who made his son quit the Scouts vs. The guy who murdered three people over a prank

Winner: The (alleged) murderer!!!

@JLCT

Marc by Marc Jacobs, Prabal Gurung, Philosophy, Alexander Wang, MM6, DKNY, Adam Selman

New York Fashion Week has been over for a little bit. Every season, we try to prepare our mind, body, and soul for it, only to find at the end of the week that our entire world has been flipped on its side and we have to scramble to piece our lives back together. It can take weeks to regain any level of normalcy—which is why our fashion week roundup is a little late this season. We also just wanted to take our time, sans hangover, to really go through everything we’d seen and bitterly browse through the shows we didn’t get invited to, to compile for you the best, worst, and unavoidable trends that will be forced in front of your faces come spring 2014.

Get Naked

J. Mendel, Brandon Sun, Sophie Theallet, Michael Kors, Jeremy Laing, Philosophy, Milly, Lacoste

Of all the trends we saw for next year, the “sheer fabric/no bra/I actually paid money for this shirt so you can see my titties trend” is by far our #1 favorite. This isn’t necessarily a new thing, nearly every season someone tries to pull off this look and normally it goes unnoticed. But the number of labels that decided to go this route for spring is a little overwhelming. In fact, I didn’t even include all of them in our post because we kept getting everyone’s shows mixed up and got sick and tired of having to re-make our stupid little collage every time we found someone else made exactly the same barely-there item. 

Boobs are great and all, but we can’t help but be a little concerned about this—like, why is everyone suddenly making items that leave nothing to the imagination? Is everyone secretly way sluttier than we thought? Are we so wasteful as a society that we’re now OK with spending tons of money on clothing that technically isn’t really clothing? Is global warming worsening at such a rapid rate that by next season we won’t even be able to survive unless our asses are hanging out? Are we about to die? ARE WE DYING IN 2014?!

Clueless

Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren is one of those designers that’s been around, creating the exact same thing every season for so freakin’ long that we normally expect to be really unimpressed by his shows. His collections always seem to have some sickeningly romantic back-story to them. The kind that could be found in a trashy romance novel a neglected Upper East Side trophy wife would sit and cry over if her face wasn’t so frozen from all of the Botox and collagen she’s injected in order to “stay young” for her fat, ugly, cheater of a husband.

However, after seeing the spring 2014 collection, we think she might need to find a new go-to designer. This season, the clothing Ralph made was for a much younger audience. Instead of throwing a bunch of berets on chicks clad in dusty rose equestrian pants with periwinkle detailing or whatever the hell he typically tries to push, it appears as that he finally realized he needed to knock that shit off. This time around he designed the collection of our wildest 90s childhood fantasies—the perfect Clueless-fangirl wardrobe. Mini skirts, knee-high socks, neckties, and neons. We can finally all dress like Cher and Dionne. We’ve only been waiting for this collection for like half our goddamn lives!

Dirty Hippies

Anna Sui, Gypsy Sport, Elder Statesman

In case you were wondering, hippies are in now. At least that’s the verdict we received this fashion week after viewing collections like Anna Sui, Donna Karan, Gypsy Sport, and the Elder Statesman. This is definitely not a look we support. It’s lazy. The 60s really weren’t that long ago, our parents still wear this crap, and it’s a little “meh.” In fact we’d support any other time period in fashion over this. We can get down with some Victorian vibes, girdles, monocles, cone bras, foot binding, anything but this please for the love of God!

But we want to make a big shout out to the Elder Statesmen for at least nailing it on the casting. We had to do a double take when we saw the guy they decided to use for their presentation. It's always great to see celebrity casting for runway shows, but how they landed Jesus H. Christ of Nazareth Modeling Agency for their spring 2014 presentation, we'll never know. 

Mars Attacks

Jeremy Scott

“Aliens, Flock of Seagulls hair, Flintstones, B-52’s music videos, Nicolas Cage in Valley Girl. Go! Fuck everyone if they don’t like it.” This is what we like to imagine Jeremy Scott said to his design team at his pre-production meeting for spring 2014. He’s one of the only designers who never fails to excite us each fashion week—in fact his is the only show we ever actually want to go to. Jeremy definitely has some big balls, and season after season he miraculously manages to create garments even more insane and generally unbearable for the average Joe than the last. But that’s why everyone loves him. In an industry where most designers try to play it safe and manufacture designs that can be worn by the masses, he’s the guy we admire most because you can tell he just doesn’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks. That monster collection did kind of suck though, sorry! Still… Respect!

Blue Jeans

Rachel Zoe, Jen Kao, Creatures of Comfort, Jill Stuart, DKNY, L.A.M.B.

Denim is never a bad idea. It’s literally the safest direction any designer can go in. You’re never going to hear a critic go “Those jeans were fucking disgusting! They ruined the whole collection!” It’s literally impossible for anyone to hate on denim because it can be worn by anyone, it goes with everything, and it’s never going to go out of style. So it was no surprise that this season we saw a lot of it on the runway in the form of dresses, button downs, jackets, vests, and even some onesies we weren’t completely mad at. However DKNY’s use of denim was kind of questionable. It’s really hard to see a pair of denim overalls without remembering the good ol’ days rockin’ OshKosh B’gosh while trying to force the new kid at the park to eat the “mystery rocks” we found laying at the bottom of the sandbox. Apparently some guys are really into that whole hot "girl who dresses like an overgrown baby" thing these days, so maybe we’re wrong. Still kind of pervy though.

Wild at Heart

Rodarte

We don’t have a very good track record with Rodarte. We’ve said some not so nice things about their pretty dresses in the past. But we’d like to make peace with them finally because for once we actually love one of their collection! Let’s shake hands and put the bad vibes behind us—we want to be your best friend. Maybe we’re just psychos and have some creepy obsession with Nicolas Cage that causes us to compare everything we see on the runway to characters in his films. But we know we’re not crazy here by saying this collection screams Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune in Wild at Heart. Literally everything from the fringed leather and the animal prints to the wide pointed blazer collars and snakeskin ankle boots is pure perfection. We want to put on everything in this collection, drive out to the middle of the desert in a convertible, and start pit-kicking the shit out of some dirt. Kate and Laura Mulleavey, you’re both invited to come with.

Work It Out

Jeremy Laing, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Louise Goldin, Assembly, T by Alexander Wang

Gym anxiety is a very real thing. Do you wear your regular clothes to the gym and then get naked in front of a bunch of nasty out of shape creeps? Do you change at work and risk having all your co-workers seeing what your butt really looks like in yoga pants? What if you just wear your regular clothing to the gym—are they going to judge you because you’re dressed like an idiot in your lame plebian attire? What should you wear to work out? Is it safe to Soul Cycle on Xanex?

These are many of the thoughts that go through people’s heads when that pre “I can’t believe I’m doing this” gym fear sets in. Perhaps some of these retarded issues can be dealt with now due to the abundance of sports inspired gear we’ll have available to us early next year. You can wear your T by Alexander Wang to the gym, work out in your Marc by Marc Jacobs, and then put on your Assembly dress to go for drinks post-sweat. If you’re like most normal human beings and don’t go to the gym but don’t want people to judge you, wearing any of the aforementioned designers probably will help you to weave a semi-believable web of sad little lies.

Shiny Everything

Diane Von Furstenberg, Zimmerman, Zero Maria Cornejo, Ralph Rucci, Reem Acra, Richard Chai Love

It’s a fact, all women are like cats. They see something shiny and they collectively lose their shit. No matter what a garment looks like, when it’s walking down the runway hanging off a 6-foot Amazonian chick, even in the most hideous of lighting set ups, every girl in the room is going to freak the F out. They’re going to gasp, smack their hand over their chest in disbelief, turn to the first chick they see next to them, whether they are a total stranger or a mortal enemy, and they’re going to say “OMG. I want that!” They’ll giggle and chit chat for a few seconds about how chic it is, scribble some notes on their little Kate Spade notepad, take pictures with their huge fucking iPad, and that’s it. The show ends, the 30-second friendship is over, and everyone goes back to being a dick. Next show…

Slacker Chic

Theory, Band of Outsiders, Gypsy Sport, Karen Walker, Mark McNairy

There were a number of designers this season who decided to go the casual route. They made the kind of clothing you can relax in, attire befitting of a Saturday morning hangover chill session. The kind of hangs where you roll out of bed, smoke a bowl, watch a Pixar movie, walk to the deli to get a burrito, then venture back to your couch to do it all over again. We’re not saying designers like Theory, Band of Outsiders, Gypsy Sport, Karen Walker, or Mark McNairy are a bunch of slackers or even partake in such soul crushing activities on the weekend. But they definitely know a thing or two about comfort and looking cool without any effort.

WTF

Thom Browne

This seasons “WTF?” award goes to Thom Browne. He’s come a long way from his first collection. Forget skinny suits with cropped pants, the man is capable of a heck of a lot more than most people give him credit. This past summer he astounded critics at his menswear presentation, which featured male models dressed as manic cross dressing Nazi toy soldiers. Now for his women’s line he decided to keep things just as bizarre by incorporating the same military theme and mixing it in with Elizabethan silhouettes on models who look like they just walked out of a shock ward. It was kind of terrifying but in a really good way. The gowns were beautifully crafted. Although—like most of Alexander McQueen’s designs—there will probably never be an appropriate time or place for you to wear this shit, we still can appreciate the hard work that went into it.

More fashion from VICE:

On the Street at New York Fashion Week

NYFW Reviews: Opening Ceremony Made Us Bust a Nut

Return to New Zealand Fashion Week

The first round of the bus-fare protests called by São Paulo’s Free Pass Movement were met with bursts of rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas. The images from the protests, broadcasted live by the mainstream media outlets, and all the reports of the police's ultraviolence that were spread around the internet created an atmosphere of shock and indignation.

The state's violent reaction created, at least at that moment, a curious climate of consensus between the left and right wing—the speeches were totally in favor of the demonstrations. From media outlets and the most reactionary pages on Facebook that shouted "vandalism," to the pro-government blogs that condemned the Free Pass Movement in the beginning of the demonstrations, they were now all in favor of the people out in the streets.

After the fare increase was nullified and the police withdrew, there was another peculiar escalation of violence, as you can see above in part two.

If you missed part one, watch it here.

Special thanks to Antônio Jordão and TVT.

More about the bus fare protests in São Paulo:

Teenage Riot - São Paulo

The Battle of Consolação

A Hundred Thousand People Marched in São Paulo Monday

A year from today, a computer in a office cubicle somewhere will have just finished tallying the votes for and against Scottish independence. One possibility is that England's northern neighbor will remain a part of the UK, keeping the Queen, the pound, and its key to the NATO clubhouse. Another is that it will wave goodbye to its companion and ruler of 300 years and leap off into independence—possibly with the same Queen, the same pound, and the same set of keys to the NATO clubhouse.

Hardly anything noticeable—on a day-to-day basis, at least—is set to change even if Scots vote for independence. (The Union Jack might lose its blue; everyone north of the border might end up with slightly different passports.) But there are signs that the independence movement is getting a little more serious and a little less like the vanity project of Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) leader Alex Salmond, who is on a quest to be remembered as his generation's lavishly-browed William Wallace, only presumably wihtout the beheading part.

In August, the SNP's councilors—low-level elected politicians—endorsed an economic manifesto called Common Weal. It's an old Scots term meaning "shared wealth," and it aim is to "abolish poverty" in Scotland through higher pay, higher taxes, and a beefed-up welfare state based on the policies of Scandanavian countries.

Salmond, the man who actually has the power to decide whether the manifesto becomes the party’s policy, made no comment on the matter. But he did recently praise "our neighbors and friends in Scandinavia, who have managed to build more prosperous and more equal societies," indicating that he's at least not hostile to the Common Weal.

Were the SNP to adopt the manifesto post-independence, that would obviously have a marked effect on daily life in Scotland. But even that might not be enough to quiet the qualms of a growing number of pro-independence campaigners and activists who are disillusioned with "independence-lite." They want an independent Scotland to be tangibly different to the one they currently inhabit, and they don't feel that the SNP's current post-independence policy proposals will provide the upheaval they want.

Enter the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), a loose coalition of Scottish lefties, eco-warriors, socialists, militant trade unionists, republicans, veterans of the anti-nuclear movement and those dudes from the Proclaimers. The RIC is essentially a coalition of Scots who are furious that thanks to the conservative-leaning voters of rural England, they're destined to live approximately half of their lives under a Tory government.

"We have to posit something that is radically different to what we have with Westminster," Jonathon Shafi, the co-founder and organizational workhorse of the RIC, told me. "This isn't just about waving Scottish flags, it’s about a modern democracy that doesn't have a queen or king as head of state. We demand a social alternative to austerity—a break with neoliberalism."

Last year, Shafi's party's campaign began in earnest with an 800-strong conference in Glasgow, a city recently awarded the unenviable title of being the unemployment capital of the UK. Locating their first major gathering there was no accident on the RIC's part—it's people like Glasgow's unemployed who the RIC believe should benefit the most from independence.

Kat Boyd, a trade unionist, is aiming to get the radical independence message into disadvantaged communities and workplaces. Well known for her firebrand politics, Boyd says she was wrongly accused of organizing the ambush of Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti–European Union UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Edinburgh last spring. But while she rejects the "rent-a-mob Kat" tag she's been given since, she says she supported the action because it showed the independence movement had "nothing to do with" nationalism as the libertarian-leaning UKIP knows it.

"Scottish nationalism is different," she told me. "It's actually about internationalism." The next RIC conference, scheduled for November 23, aims to convince Scotland's immigrant population that belonging to a renewed civic Scottish identity would be far better than living under the shadow of a Tory government—which has been accused of demonizing the immigrant community with aggressive tweets and billboard campaigns.

The RIC are essentially relying on the belief that Scotland is more left-wing than England, and they may be right in their assumption. In 2010, the Scots voted in just one Tory member of Parliament; since then, local councils controlled by the SNP have been flexing their muscles, using what powers they has to slow the tide of austerity and privatization programs implemented by a coalition they didn't vote for.

But though the population is anti-Tory, that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be receptive to the RIC's fiery leftist message. Gerry Hassan, co-editor of the book Radical Scotland: Arguments for Self-Determination, told me, "Yes, Scotland is more left-wing than England. But that doesn't make Scotland a culture where a socialist agenda can win a large part of the public."

Gerry sees the RIC as in danger of advancing an "unreflective socialist nostalgia," but nevertheless applauds them for challenging Scotland's usual routine of tribal politics and deference to the establishment. He has identified what he calls "Third Scotland," which exists outside the standoff between old Labour and the "bright, shiny SNP establishment." He predicts this new force will grow and engage the young and previously apolitical as the independence referendum approaches and that it will represent a "generational and gender shift."

On September 2, a Panelbase poll found that Scots favored independence by a percentage point, while another survey found that the campaign to stay with the UK was ahead by 30 points. But the referendem isn't for another year, and a lot can happen in 365 days as the respective campaigns whirr into action.

Whatever the results of the referendum, the efforts of the RIC and the SNP to promote Scottish nationalism will likely get a chunk of Scotland's population more engaged with politics than they have ever been before. As Hassan alluded, rallying against a common enemy is always an effective way of bringing people together and Salmond, the dudes from the Proclaimers, and the others involved in the broad, sometimes divided movement toward independence are united against one big common enemy: not the English people, but the British state.

Follow Niki on Twitter @NikiSethSmith

More from Scotland:

Diazepam Is Killing Scotland's Drug-Using Poor

Someone Put Anthrax in My Heroin

Scotland's Shadows

Satellite imagery of the site (the spills are marked with yellow boxes).

For several months now, oil has been bubbling up out of the ground in four locations near Cold Lake, Alberta. Over 1.5 million litres of “bitumen emulsion” (a combo of heavy crude and water) has been found on a military base that’s also used by Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) for oil extraction. Officials have no way of capping the underground oozing, which has many scientists, environmentalists and First Nations worried.

The leak “represents a new type of industrial incident that differs fundamentally from a typical spill,” reads a new investigative report by Dr. Kevin Timoney of Treeline Ecological Research and Peter Lee of Global Forest Watch. In other words, the oil isn’t simply coming out of a pipeline. According to Timoney’s research, it could be coming out of deep cracks in underground rock formations, created by the company’s high-pressure steam injection.

CNRL doesn’t mine for bitumen at its Cold Lake operation. Instead the company uses a process similar to fracking, where it injects 300-degree steam at super-high pressures into the ground for several weeks. The hot steam liquefies the bitumen, while the pressure pushes out sand. When the pressure is released, bitumen flows up through the injection well.

On May 20, CNRL told regulators bitumen was coming up in at least one area it wasn’t supposed to. In July, a government scientist leaked photos of the growing spill to the media, forcing provincial regulators to go public with the mess. Since then, over 20 hectares of impacted water, muskeg and forest have been fenced off for cleanup. (To put the size into perspective, the Cold Lake spill is nearing one half the volume of the Enbridge spill that devastated Michigan’s Kalamazoo river back in 2010.) 

“There are four bitumen-to-surface releases,” confirmed Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) spokesperson Bob Curran in an email. “All remain ongoing.” The oozing leaks will continue until the underground pressure subsides. How long that will take is anybody’s guess.

“What this spill has revealed is that there are a lot of questions about this type of technology,” says Mike Hudema, campaigner for Greenpeace in Edmonton. One of several “major unknowns” highlighted in Timoney and Lee’s report is that bitumen could be seeping sideways—as well as to the surface—affecting local groundwater. 

The oil company put out a press release saying the leaks are coming from abandoned wells—not cracks in the rock formation. Alberta’s energy regulator says it’s too early to tell, as all four leaks are under provincial and federal investigation. Curran says the AER is currently reviewing Timoney and Lee’s report.

As a precaution, the AER asked CNRL to suspend operations in the affected areas. In response, CNRL says it will accelerate production elsewhere to meet targets. “With these steaming restrictions [the company] has begun the production cycle in some areas earlier than would normally have been the case,” reads the July 31 release.

This sends up all kinds of red flags for Timoney and Lee, who recommend that all high-pressure steam injection projects be suspended until “an in-depth, independent scientific investigation of the geological, hydrological and ecological risks” is completed.

First Nations have also criticized the company and the AER for not publishing information about two additional “process water” spills on their traditional hunting and trapping territory. “Both incidents were reported to the regulator, were minor—small volumes and contained on lease, and cleaned up in short order,” says Curran. “They are not connected to the bitumen releases.” 

But with the AER publishing CNRL’s self-reported measurements, Crystal Lameman of the Bear Lake Cree Nation wants to see the site for herself. “It’s stated in our treaty: we can hunt, fish and forage. And if you are affecting my ability to hunt and fish, then you are infringing on my treaty rights,” she says. The Bear Lake Cree Nation is currently fighting a constitutional case that argues the cumulative affects of the tar sands violate constitutionally-protected rights to hunt, trap and fish.

Lameman was denied access to the site, while some local and international media have been allowed to visit and film. She says one of the spills is nearby a gravesite where her elders are buried. “I want to know that those graves are undisturbed,” she says.

Lameman says trust has broken down between regulators and First Nations. “They’re not telling us everything, they’re not being 110 percent transparent with us,” she says. “It’s like the AER lost their backbone somewhere and forgot to pick it up.”

One of the areas has leaked before in 2009. The cause was never fully determined, but the AER wrote "geological weakness in combination with stress induced by high pressure steam injection" may have contributed to the incident.

While industry experts and scientists try to answer all of the serious riddles surrounding this incident, this story is a very serious reminder of the risk we run through energy extraction in Canada. In the ghost of the Lac Megantic tragedy and numerous other oil spills throughout the country, this is an incredibly important issue to watch as more and more industry gets developed.

More about the Canadian environment:

I Left My Lungs in Aamjiwnaang

The B.C. Government Trusts Nestlé with the Province's Fresh Water

British Columbia Should Keep an Eye on the Fukushima Disaster

On Friday, I drove into LA to catch a showing of Partly Fiction, Sophie Huber's new documentary about Harry Dean Stanton. Stanton is 87 years old. I will be sad when he dies. But do I have the right to call him one of my favorite actors? I've only seen 13 of his films, less than 10 percent of his total output. Could there be—buried deep in his early westerns or crime capers—performances so terrible they negate his work in Alien, Escape From New York, and Repo Man?

Also, celebrities creep me out. Approaching the Nuart theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, I could make out the huge slab of David Lynch's face on the sidewalk out front. Inside the theater, I saw the place was crawling with faces from TV and movies. It was real work to avoid making eye contact with any of these people as I scurried for my popcorn.

Here is what's not creepy: LA audiences fawning over live celebrities. I love witnessing this phenomenon, and the Partly Fiction premiere did not disappoint. Stanton tottered up to introduce the film, and the room oozed hero worship. The onscreen version of Stanton mentioned losing Rebecca De Mornay to Tom Cruise, and the crowd sighed in sympathy. When he mentioned his roomie days with Jack Nicholson, everyone chuckled conspiratorially. When he hinted at multiple illegitimate kids, no one tsked, or rose to announce they were his son or daughter.

Several brief stills showed him in the Navy during WWII. As a young soldier, his face looked raw and unformed. He was born to be an old man.

Much of the documentary involves nothing more than head shots of Stanton singing old country songs from his living room couch. These close-ups were filmed with HD video, so every pore and burst capillary on his face is rendered in bright, perfect detail, like a massive Chuck Close portrait. I realized I'd never had such an opportunity to study an old man's face before, and I searched the screen for clues to how my own features will eventually decay. It took most of the film to figure out what was so disconcerting about these shots—his eyes are completely clear. He looks like an imposter wearing an old-man mask.

For a film that is essentially a lazily-paced clips show, there weren't that many clips: perhaps a dozen or so of his estimated 180 to 250 films, and nothing from his prolific TV work from the 50s and 60s. Much of the discussion centered around 1985’s Paris, Texas. At one point, director Wim Wenders discussed Stanton's reluctance to take on a leading man role, and someone yelled out, "Bullshit!" I felt a surge of mortification, then realized it was Stanton, heckling his own film. Wenders' giant, stern German head belabored the point. Stanton bellowed, "Wrong!"

Afterwards, filmmakers and subject gathered for a question and answer period. Q&As are one of the few structured formats where the lowest and highest rungs of Hollywood can interact. They always make me nervous. Sure enough, one man stood and haltingly called Stanton a hero, as if he were addressing one of the 9/11 firefighters. It was awkward. I thought back to a time when I was 13, at a comic convention, watching a young man explain to James Doohan (Star Trek's Scotty) how his performances had psychically affected the young man's mother. Are sci-fi fans, I wondered, more prone to delusional fits of love and rage?

One of the last questioners asked, "What are you most proud of?" "Paris, Texas," Stanton said without hesitation, then quickly added. "Oh, and Repo Man." A cheer went up, and I suddenly felt my own burst of delusional love, hoping against hope that, unlike the rest of us, Harry would never, ever, ever die.

Previously - Filming the Unfilmable

Skateboards are silly, amazing toys. Those seven-plies of Canadian maple hold the magical power to blur the reality of an addict. Scientists have been unable to pinpoint the exact reason why, but habitual users are often affected with the notion that the board somehow makes them invisible, like Tolkein’s ring, allowing them to go wherever they want so long as they wield the object.

Skaters say their board is a ‘ghetto pass,’ meaning it allows them to enter any hood, anywhere, and play with their toy on any ledge/bank/rail they choose, regardless of how high the area ranks on America’s Deadliest Neighborhoods List. I chalk it up to the fact that most skaters are burnt or borderline retarded. I’m no exception, and the feeling of invincibility a skateboard provides has nearly gotten me killed on numerous occasions. Over the course of a year in a half beginning in 1993—before New York was power-washed—I would make the trek up to Harlem to buy bricks of rat-weed armed only with my skateboard. During that time I watched two drug dealers get gunned down, was brought into tenements full of automatic weapons and drugs while infants crawled about the living room, mugged in alleys, had guns put to my head on the subway platform, and a number of other shitty situations.

Twenty years, a wife, and two babies later, I’ve gotten just a little bit smarter and am thankful that I didn’t end up face down in a Harlem gutter at the tender age of 17.

Philadelphia photographer and former skater Jordan Baumgarten, however, is still plagued with the fearlessness that puts skaters in places they don’t belong. These days his camera serves as his ‘ghetto pass,’ but at age 30 he has enough sense to know the neighborhoods he photographs in are not very welcoming, so he’s chosen to arm himself with a Kahr CM9 full of hollowpoints in addition to his camera.

VICE: What is your history with the city of Philadelphia?
Jordan: I was born in Philly in 1983 and raised across the river in New Jersey. In 2002, I started college at the University of the Arts in Center City Philadelphia and lived in a different apartment almost every year. I left for graduate school in 2009 at RISD in Providence. My fiancé and I loved West Philly, so when we moved back that’s where we wanted to live, no question. Only, we couldn’t afford to live in Spruce Hill. So, we settled in the West Powelton/Mantua section of West Philly. It was the dead of winter, so the neighborhood looked pretty great; it wasn’t until it warmed up and people really started to come outside that we realized we had made a big mistake.

Why is that?
The street we lived on was the veritable DMZ between University City and Mantua, a neighborhood colloquially nicknamed, “The Bottom.” When we first moved in some of the people in the neighborhood were less than welcoming. I once was told, “City limits is that way, cracker.” Somebody called me a “pussy ass whiteboy” (which, at the time, my fiancé insisted was because he obviously knew me). Someone in a car even offered to eat my fiance’s ass out, “All night long.” Then summer came around, and when it gets hot in Philadelphia people get short-tempered and it feels like something is always on the verge of popping off. Add that to the abundant amount of guns here (legal or not) and the racial tension in this city, and you get a pretty volatile environment.

What made you want to take photos there? And if the neighborhood is that bad why would think people would be OK with you photographing them?
I can’t say that I really WANTED to shoot photos of Philly, but I was pretty broke and unable to travel elsewhere. So, the work came out of necessity. About 98 percent of the images I’ve made since moving back here were never made with the intention of going out to make images. I had my point and shoot or iPhone in my pocket as I moved around the city and just photographed what happened.

Giving myself permission to take photos here is something I struggle with on a daily basis. On one hand, I live here like everyone else and feel as though I have a right to make images. On the other hand, I acknowledge the built in power dynamic that exists between me—a white, 30-year-old MFA kid with a camera—and many of my subjects. I feel horrible even saying that, but it’s a reality. Sometimes I feel like I’m ‘photo-raping’ people or their situation. It’s a hard thing to rectify in my mind, and I think that’s a good thing; it means I’m human. I suppose I want to show that Philly is an amazing place with incredible people but some pretty severe problems.

When did you start carrying a gun with you while taking photos?
I started carrying a gun to take photos shortly after moving to West Philly. I am a white guy with some nice cameras, so I stand out like a sore thumb. I’m not really in the best shape so if something happens running isn’t really an option. Also, I hate to say it but I don’t really have much faith in the Philadelphia Police Department. Their response time sucks and every time I’ve had to call them about something they don’t do shit. I have more faith in my own ability to protect myself than I do in their ability to do their job.

What kind of gun do you carry?
I bought my first handgun when I was living in Providence. I was working on a project about gun culture at the time and had to have one in order to get the access I needed. I wanted a reliable gun with some name recognition in the communities I was operating in, so I bought a Glock 17. It was mostly a range gun and a home defense gun, so, for the majority of the time, it lived in my gun safe. When I got my carry permit I decided to switch it up to something smaller—a full size Glock isn’t really conducive for concealed carry. Also, it held 17 rounds (plus one in the chamber), and who really needs that much firepower walking through the streets if you aren’t police or military? So, I traded it in for a subcompact Ruger LC9 and then eventually I moved on to a Kahr CM9, which is what I currently have. Hollowpoints are legal in the state of Pennsylvania, so I use those.

Have you had to use the gun?
I’ve never shot anyone or shot at anyone and I hope I never do. I did have to brandish it once though. A guy approached me and tried to take me to an ATM. I showed him I had a gun so he would back off, but he tested me and got a little closer. I lifted it from its holster, and he took off. After that experience I spent a lot of time visiting scenes of recent shootings. As weird as it sounds, I wanted to place myself at these murder sites to try and understand the place of the victim, and the aggressor. I became consumed with what it would have been like to shoot and kill that man who tested me. I even visited a county morgue near Gettysburg and had them walk me through what happens when a body gets brought in. It was a pretty intense experience and I didn’t really handle it all that well.

What’s the neighborhood you’re living in now like?
The breakdown of our block is like this: families, young couples, drug dealers, junkies, and prostitutes. I love my neighbors, though. They are super caring, family-oriented, and extremely vigilant when it comes to watching the drug dealers, junkies, and prostitutes. As troubled as it must look from the outside, once you’re in, you’re IN, and we take care of our own.

We’ve got one crack house on the block that has been a good source for crazy shit. There have been fights, arguments, people showing up looking for money. A couple weeks ago a drug dealer came by looking for a crack head who was known to be squatting there and said to the block, “if anyone finds him and puts him in the hospital, I’ll give you two g’s.” The neighbors want that house gone so bad that a couple of them even broke in to disconnect the electricity, just to make their life unpleasant and motivate them to leave. Actually, as I’m writing this, smoke is pouring from their windows because one of the junkies set her bed on fire.

Does your fiancé ever worry you won’t come home alive from a shoot?
Yes, she worries. She recognizes the necessity of the gun in our life as it is right now, and she made some rules when we first talked about buying it. 1.) If it’s in the house, she has to know how to use it, and 2.) No more than one gun in the house while we’re renting. She hates that I carry and prefers that I don’t carry when we’re together. She knows that I’m risking more than I have to when I carry, and that terrifies her. She’s always had nightmares about me leaving her, or me dying.

You just released your first book, Briar Patch. What are you working on next?
Briar Patch came about as I was trying to figure out my relationship to the city after being gone for a couple years. I didn’t set out to make any of the images in the book; they just happened as I navigated life in the neighborhood. Right now, I find myself in a slightly similar situation: living in a new place and trying to photograph my way through it, making sense of it. This new place reminds me a lot of a chip-toothed smile: it’s friendly and familiar and welcoming, but it’s just a little bit “off.” After a while all you can see are those little things that make it a little unsettling. I’d like to take that idea and use it as inspiration for my next project.

Follow Jordan on Instagram @Jordanbaumgarten or check out his photos at http://www.jordanbaumgarten.com/.

You can pick up his first book, Briar Patch, today through Sunday at the Parts and Labor stand at the New York Book Fair, or order it online here.

More stupid can be found at Chrisnieratko.com or @Nieratko.

Rest In Peace to the great Uncle Lonnie.

Newspaper headlines read, "That's Enough!" and "We Won't Be Scared".

On Thursday morning, I found myself in Athens' Schistos cemetery. As I arrived, I was met by hundreds of grieving Greeks, all staring at the white coffin of murdered antifascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas (known as Killah P.) as it was carried inside the church. Everyone huddled together in reverential, shocked silence, with the exception of Fyssas' mother. "Why?" she cried. "Tell me why? Why, my son? It's unfair! Unfair!" Fyssas' father followed her, looking exhausted.

This was a private event which had become a public one. The death of Fyssas is more than just a tragedy for the man and those who knew him, it's a watershed for Greece and its torpid moral slide which has allowed the Golden Dawn to opperate beyond the law. For some people, Fyssas now resembles Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the teenager shot by police in 2008, whose murder inspired the greatest period of rioting in the city's recent memory. Much as the death of Grhgoropoulos inspired a generation of anarchists to resist the state, people are now saying Fyssas' murder may be the cause which finally unites Greeks to kick the Golden Dawn into history.

There were many cameramen at the ceremony, trying to shoot some of the procession, but whenever they did Pavlos' friends and relatives surrounded them and made them delete the footage. A few yards away, a young guy was waving an antifascist flag, but two women approached him and demanded that he put it down. "No one will hijack Pavlos' memory," they said. 

This monument standing in the center of Nikaia commemorates the assasination of thousands of Greeks by Nazi brigades on August 17, 1944. The graffiti reads, "Pavlos, you are alive."

On the steps of the church, tattooed men—Pavlos' friends from the local rap scene and the poor neighborhoods of Greece's west coast—stood smoking. The mood was one of quiet, seething anger. Across the street, a group of elderly men were chatting: "How is it possible to be breeding fascists in 2013?" one of them wondered. "What sort of minds do we have in this country?" Those around him sighed in agreement.

A little later, as a procession carried Pavlos' coffin to the cemetery, the solemn mourning innevitably slipped into something more furious. People pounded through the streets chanting antifascist slogans like, "One in the ground, thousands still in the fight!" and, "The people don't forget, death to fascism!" As Pavlos was being buried, his friends sang his songs and someone screamed, "Immortal!" Pavlos Fyssas had become an antifacist martyr already.

Later on, I made my way to Nikaia to join the thousands of people marching from Davaki Square to the local Golden Dawn offices. The demonstration was to commerorate Pavlos' life and protest against the right-wing party's alleged involvement in his death. It had been organized by the Greek Communist Party (KKE), but the crowd was broader than that: antifascist activists, members of leftist parties, anarchists, trade unionists, students, and pensioners marched together.

The demo started a little after 7 PM. Thousands of people clustered in blocks, some holding placards that read, "Kick the neo-Nazis out of here," others chanted slogans that referred to the Greek Civil War. The march was supposed to head for the local Golden Dawn offices, but fearing a re-run of the violent clashes that hit Athens the previous night, the police redirected it.

I spoke to one protester—Spyros, a 25-year-old member of the SYRIZA party (the Coalition of the Radical Left)—who told me why he had come to honor Pavlos' memory: "We are not putting up with the fascists any longer—not in Nikaia, not in Keratsini, not in Kokkinia, nowhere," he said. "First, they were allowed to beat up immigrants, and now they've started freely attacking anyone with views opposing theirs. They are criminals, thugs; it is a disgrace for the country that gave birth to democracy to have fascists in its parliament."

Kostas, a 66-year-old who's been living in Nikaia for the past 45 years, told me, "That kid's death has got people worried—loads are scared of what will happen to the area, but we all need to keep calm. Our choices make up who we are. We need to think carefully to address the viciousness of the Golden Dawn."

The demo was a peaceful one, but the antifascist sentiment from those living in Athens' western suburbs was made clear. "Pavlos didn't lose his life for no reason; his death marks the beginning of the end of the Golden Dawn," said 23-year-old protester Katerina. "We're ready to fight them and we will not stop until we win. We are not tolerating them any more."

Previously: A Golden Dawn Member Murdered an Antifascist Rapper in Athens Last Night

More Greek fascists:

Immigrants Are Being Stabbed to Death on the Streets of Athens

Is Golden Dawn Turning to Terrorism to Get Their Message Across?

Greek Neo-Nazi Beach Party!

Roger Ballen makes some pretty freaky art. You'll probably recognize his black and white photo of the thick-necked, large-eared twins from just about every single photo compilation book published over the past 20 years. And you'll also know his slightly disturbing scribblings from the video he directed for Die Antwoord's "I Fink You Freeky"—a project that came about eight years after Ninja and Yolandi first contacted the artist to tell him that they loved his work.

Recently Ballen released a book, also titled I Fink You Freeky, that features a bunch of his photographs of the South African duo posing in front of his artwork and installations. I got in touch with Roger to have a chat about the project and what it feels like to stop by Ninja and Yolandi's house for a bowl of pasta, only to discover that it's covered in a bunch of his own artwork.  

VICE: Hey, Roger. How did this partnership with Die Antwoord begin?
Roger Ballen: I think it was in 2005 that Yolandi emailed me and said she loved my work and wanted to collaborate somehow. I said, “I don’t know you, I’m not really doing video and I’m in Johannesburg," because they were in Cape Town at the time.

What next?
In 2010, some people started writing to me and calling me, asking if I'd seen this band that had gone viral who were using my images and drawings, and what I thought about it. I looked the band up and saw that it was Yolandi and Ninja.

Were you OK with them using all your images without permission?
For every one photography fan, there are 10,000 music fans, which means that having Die Antwoord spread the Roger Ballen aesthetic makes my audience that much wider. We got in touch again and discussed how we were going to continue our collaboration. I'd been working on a book called Asylum of the Birds, going to this boarding house of itinerants where birds fly freely and people come and go, sleep and live their lives alongside these birds. I showed them some of the pictures, which they loved, and together we chose images from that series and from archives of my earlier work to inspire scenes for a film.

Oh yeah—the video for "I Fink U Freeky." Tell me more.
It was a five-day shoot at a warehouse in Johannesburg. I made the installations. I walked around the streets looking for things that fit—old mattresses, pillows, thrown away dolls, garbage cans... things like that. Then, in one of the warehouse outhouses, we found a lion. I guess someone had left it in there—a real stuffed African jungle lion. That was good. They decided to be white Africans, and then I think it was Ninja who said the African boy should take the machete and beat the lion over the head with it. Or maybe I said that—I can’t remember, we worked really synchronistically. Anyway, it went well with the beat of the music.

Is it coincidental that you use white Africans in your work? Or some kind of political statement?
I never do political work—I leave that to politicians. I happen to be white and my psychological quest happens to deal with me discovering my interior, but circumstances have also led me to being known for my photographs of white Africans. When I first arrived here [in Johannesburg, from his native New York City] in the 1980s, I wasn’t allowed into the black areas, so I had easier access to whites. I now have enough pictures of black Africans that I could publish a big book on just that. But my work isn't about white Africans, it’s about the human condition.

What aspect of the human condition?
When I began photographing here, I would come to houses where parents would let their children draw on the walls and where strange objects would be left lying around. They were poor or indifferent, uneducated or chaotic. Life was about survival. They were sometimes violent, dangerous places, where it was life or death. When you walked into these places, you would think it was insanity. But if you believe in creativity and liberalism, why do you think this is insanity? Why is this insane? Why not let the grass grow?

True. Tell me more about your relationship with Ninja and Yolandi.
Well, they always call me Mr. Ballen. After the shoot and the success of the video, they called and said, "Mr. Ballen, would you and your wife like to come to dinner?" They live in Johannesburg now, just three miles away. We rang the bell, got through the usual security gates that houses have here, then walked into their place. It was dark at first, but when my eyes adjusted, I realized that every wall and ceiling in every room—the kid’s room, the kitchen, the bathroom, all the rooms—were covered in my drawings. At the dinner table, as we were eating, I looked up, and on the ceiling looking down at me was one of my cheetahs.

That sounds kind of creepy.
I really liked it. Maybe it’s a womb. We all want to return to the womb, really, don’t we?

I suppose. What did you eat at this dinner party?
Pasta.

Delicious.

Two books of Ballen’s works have recently been released through Prestel: Lines, Marks, and Drawings: Through the Lens of Roger Ballen (June 2013) and I Fink U Freeky, in collaboration with Die Antwoord (September 2013).

For the fifth feature in our screening series with Martin Scorsese’s the Film Foundation at Nitehawk Cinema, we present Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. The film was originally banned in both France and Germany for its incendiary indictment of hegemonic military authority during WWI. It was also Kubrick’s first critical and commercial success and effectively opened the floodgates for his future classics.

To get you prepped, we reached out to noted Kubrick scholar James Naremore for a few thoughts on the film. We also unearthed a riveting, unpublished interview with James B. Harris, who was Kubrick’s creative partner for over a decade and produced The Killing, Paths of Glory, and Lolita.

—Introduction by Greg Eggebeen

JAMES NAREMORE – AUTHOR, ON KUBRICK

Loosely based on Humphrey Cobb’s 1935 novel about an actual incident in World War I, Paths of Glory is everywhere marked by Stanley Kubrick’s recurring themes and techniques: a fascination with the underlying absurdity of rational planning, an interest in the grotesque, and an ability to make a realistic world seem strange. As in Kubrick’s other war movies, the enemy is mostly invisible. Here, its only visible representative is a female German captive, innocently played by Kubrick’s future wife, Susanne Christian. The real war is internecine. Near the beginning of the film, in an elegantly choreographed sequence, two French generals stroll around a baroque drawing room while discussing an assault on a meaningless target called “the Ant Hill.” It’s obvious that something awful is going to happen to their troops. Soon, the horror advances toward us with geometric precision, in a series of mesmerizing, wide-angle tracking shots leading straight to death. The gut-wrenching climax, photographed against the background of the Schleissheim Palace outside Munich, Germany, functions almost like an illustration of Walter Benjamin’s argument that every achievement of human culture is also a monument to barbarism.

Apparently there was another kind of warfare between Kubrick and producer-star Kirk Douglas, who, in his autobiography, calls Kubrick a “talented shit.” Douglas claims that he had to angrily insist on the picture’s unhappy, historically accurate ending. Whatever the case, he also made sure that the character he plays was built up into one of the most sympathetic and courageous protagonists in any Kubrick movie (to find a similar character in a Kubrick picture see Spartacus, which Douglas also produced). The tension between star and director was nevertheless productive: Paths of Glory is a dark, emotionally powerful film in which Douglas’s passionate humanism tempers Kubrick’s harsh, traumatic view of European history.

JAMES B. HARRIS – PRODUCER(The Killing, Paths of Glory, Lolita)

The Friday night Paths of Glory opened in 1957, it was playing at only one theater in LA, down on Wilshire. Stanley and I decided to see it with an audience. We called the box office and asked, “What time’s the late show?” They said: “What time can you get down here?”

We were the only people in the whole city who’d wanted to know. By the time we arrived there were, at most, six other people waiting to see it. When it was over they were dead silent. They stared and shuffled out. I’m always gratified these days when a good crowd shows up for Paths of Glory. Even so, I have to laugh: “Where were you guys 50 years ago?”

Stanley had a theory that the less you said about a picture, the better. Let the picture speak for itself. It’s the old T.S. Eliot thing: “If I could have said it any other way, I would have.” As he got bigger and bigger, Stanley stopped giving interviews altogether. Back in the 1950s, people wrote down what you said—and if you were misquoted, you couldn’t prove it. Even these days, with everything recorded on audio, there’s another problem—often you’ll say something about which you later have second thoughts. You say things you haven’t thought out, and you dispel the magic in the bargain.

Look at the diversity of Stanley’s work: Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange—they’re all so different, and they’re all so good. You wonder: What makes him tick? But he didn’t want people to know what makes him tick. It only dispels the magic if you discover he’s an everyday guy.

He was very different from what people imagine, after they see his work. They seem to expect a variation of Orson Welles: deep, strange, and full of darkness, like you’re going to have to cut through all these webs. Stanley had his little eccentricities, but on a daily basis he was down-to-Earth. We used to play the stock market. Even if we were in LA, we’d go to the Merrill Lynch office at 6:30 in the morning, because it was 9:30 in New York and we’d be day traders, buying and selling. We’d follow sports. Later, he was very devoted to his children.

We traveled and promoted The Killing when it opened in New York—touring at the bottom of a double-bill, with Bandito, starring Robert Mitchum. It got good reviews. Time magazine even did a story on Stanley and I, and listed The Killing in their “Current & Choice” column for weeks and weeks—comparing us favorably to Rififi. Around this time, Stanley told me, “There’s a book I read when I was 14 years old and have never forgotten. Let’s see about getting the film rights.” I found a copy at the public library, read it right away, and agreed with him: “This is terrific!” Something very different from The Killing—an antiwar story: Paths of Glory, by Humphrey Cobb. We shopped it around without a star and got nothing but complaints. "No women in the picture. It’s anti-war." What, do you want us to glorify war? Then, what happens: We get a call from Kirk Douglas. He’s a fan of The Killing, and we’re back in business.

I have only positive memories about Kirk. He made well over a dozen big films before we ever came along; he had a healthy right to his ego. In his eyes, we were two kids and he did us an enormous favor by consenting to play the lead in Paths of Glory, threatening UA that he would cancel their next picture, The Vikings, if they didn’t make Paths. Bear in mind, he also turned 40 while we were making that picture. Stanley and I were both 28. His attitude toward us was fatherly. In any disagreement, he was Dad.

At one point in the production, Time magazine asked to do an article on Kirk and our work with him. Of course, I said yes. I was young enough to believe it was a great honor, one you don’t question—but rather than be excited, Kirk took me aside and tore me a new one. “Don’t ever do that again without my express permission,” he told me. “We don’t know what they’re going to ask, or what they’re angle is. Next time clear it with me.” He was really angry. Mind you, Kirk was technically my employee. I hired him. He was on my payroll. But that was a valuable lesson learned, because we wouldn’t be making this picture without him. He’d gambled on us and we owed him that respect. The same was true when he and I showed up in Munich and discovered that Stanley and Calder Willingham changed the ending of Paths.

Stanley—who always kept his options open, when it came to telling a story—grew concerned that ending, cold, as we originally had it, with the execution, was just too dark. He was trying to find a way out that would give the audience something more hopeful to hang on to. His first solution was to come up with a happy ending altogether where the three guys escape the firing squad in a sudden twist. Stanley and [co-writer] Calder Willingham were already in Bavaria when they came up with this. Kirk and I were back in Beverly Hills. It wasn’t known to either of us what they were up to. Once we arrived in Munich, Kirk took one look and said, “Fellas? We either do the script I agreed to, or I’m on the next plane home and you can find yourself another actor.”

He was a bright man, and he was ethical. He was also very angry at me, because they’d surprised me with this new ending as well. He said to me, “Jim, you’re either a liar, or you don’t have the respect of your team that’s required of a good producer.” That put me in an awful spot. But God bless Kirk. He gave us a night to think about it, and of course Stanley and I did the right thing. Calder was foolish: his attitude was, “Screw Kirk. Let him go home.” I said, “No. This is the moment to grow up, Calder. There’s no way we’re letting Kirk walk off this picture.” Stanley and I went to dinner by ourselves, and Stanley said to me, “What if we just go back to letting them die? It’s a simple fix.”

It was also true that executing the men was what attracted us to the story in the first place. You have to stick by your guns. Kirk was delighted when we tapped on his door and told him the next morning. All was forgiven. And of course, Stanley came up with that wonderful alternative, to close the movie on a moment of real affirmation—the German girl singing for the French who took her prisoner. That piece of inspiration directly came out of Kirk standing his ground, forcing Stanley to think his way through to a much richer, more original “happy” ending.

The girl who sang the song even became Mrs. Kubrick. Talk about happy endings!

Stanley is missed by many, but never by me. The reason is simple. He’s still with me. He’s been with me for close to 60 years, ever since that day in 1955 when I became his partner and closest friend, and he’ll be with me until the day I die. After that, who knows? We’re talking spiritually, of course. Maybe we’ll wind up in the same place. Maybe we’ll start up the partnership all over again.

Interview with James B. Harris © 2013, F.X. Feeney

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. with funding provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and The Film Foundation.

35mm preservation print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Also courtesy of Park Circus Limited.

For tickets, click here. Complimentary drinks will be available from Larceny Bourbon after the screening in Nitehawk’s downstairs bar.

@nitehawkcinema

All photos by Jo Stewart

Lots of folks fantasize about “getting away from it all,” but few actually put their money where their mouths are. Backpacking in Europe or Southeast Asia or fucking off to some tropical island for some guidebook-approved relaxation might be a nice change of pace, but the bottom line is you’re still surrounded by people and all the problems that come with them. If you curse society long enough, however, the universe will provide you with an escape route, should you want to take it—or at least it did in my case, when I was offered the opportunity to work on a yacht that was filming a documentary in Antarctica.

I immediately said yes, of course, imagining the majestic sweeps of ice and rock and sea, the killer whales swimming freely, the penguins frolicking in landscapes so picturesque they could be accompanied by Morgan Freeman’s narration. But the reality of living on the massive, isolated seventh continent is very different from the glacial fantasy. Yes, there’s otherworldly beauty but there’s also the odd, the cruel, and the outright terrifying things that would never be found in any travel brochure. Some days, the soundtrack to Antarctica is Sigur Rós, on others, it’s a wounded seal barking on a frigid rocky outcrop. Here are some details of my trip that won’t make it into any nature films.

Getting There

For many, the trek to Antarctica involves sailing from the southern tip of South America and crossing the Drake Passage, a.k.a., “the Drake,”  which is known for whipping up some of the roughest seas on the planet. Just for the record: I hate the Drake. Most travellers get to experience the passage from a comfy cruise ship with an icebreaker hull (still not exactly a picnic), but if you’re in a smaller working yacht, as I was, it’s a whole different kettle of krill. In storms, these yachts lurch, roll, and shake so violently that eating is futile given the inevitable seasickness, sleep is nearly impossible, and a simple task like dressing yourself is pure slapstick. Being surrounded by a churning, featureless gray-black monster that has no regard for your life is a sobering experience for a land dweller.

I was on a bunk with a porthole, so this was my average morning wake-up call:

While I’m personally not prone to anxious thinking, conditions here breed morbid fantasies: ominous fog banks, white-capped waves, freezing, face-shredding winds capable of knocking you off your feet with no warning. In weather like that, your access to medical treatment is limited and beyond your control—and when something like a broken leg could be deadly, thoughts of injury (and improvised surgeries inside a storm-tossed boat) are never far from your mind.

I also occasionally worried the ship would sink, fears that were no doubt exacerbated by the visible wrecks we passed:

They acted as a reminder about the dangers that lurk in the white wilderness and the knee-weakening risks taken by the badass seafarers of yesteryear—imagine navigating these waters without radar. Boats can capsize, burn, hit icebergs, or get lost. One yacht last year sank after hitting a whale. (After visiting abandoned whaling stations and seeing the rusted remnants of devices made to process blubber and whale parts, I understand why these giant sea mammals might not be too friendly towards ships.) The spooky, abandoned detritus includes more than just boats—wreckage of an Air New Zealand plane which crashed into Mount Erebus in 1979 is still visible. Despite extensive recovery efforts, most of the plane (and some of what remains of the passengers) are still wedged in the mountain, cryogenically laid to rest for an icy eternity.

The Beasts

Major props to this little guy for standing still while I took a photo, despite having half his guts ripped out by a leopard seal not too long before. Chinstrap penguins are accommodating like that, unlike their cousins the King Penguins. In Fortuna Bay, I witnessed a gang of them slap a baby fur seal before moving on as if nothing happened. No one takes care of business like the King Penguin mafia.

But don’t feel sorry for the fur seal. Considered the puppy dogs of the seal world, I found out they were more Cujo than Lassie when one of them came running straight at me, forcing me to run for the hills. They only look shy.

This guy, on the other hand, posed like a model who knew which angle was his best:

He looks sexy but dangerous, doesn't he? The James Dean of seals. 

The Churches

Obviously whoever built Trinity Church on King George Island hadn’t heard the old sailor’s adage, “Below 50 degrees south there is no law; below 60 degrees south there is no God.” This little slice of Russian Orthodoxy is maintained by a priest year-round, and he does such a good job it even has a church-like smell—that unmistakable potpourri of candles, incense, guilt, and shame. That’s an impressive feat given the funk of penguin vomit and seal excrement almost constantly hanging in the air in Antartica.

It’s a lovely place of worship, but it would also be the perfect spot to film The Omen on Ice.

The Signs

There are signs everywhere. It’s an Antarctic joke that gets played out over and over in different languages—well, maybe it’s not so much a “joke” as it is a cruel reminder that you are a long ways away from anywhere that resembles home.

The Slaughter

Aww… Cute fur seals again! In the background, however, you’ll notice what look suspiciously like bloated reindeer corpses. South Georgia Island used to be home to thousands of transplanted reindeer that constituted the southernmost herd in the world. “Used to” being the operative words, because a reindeer eradication program has ended the non-native beasts' reign—herders have been shipped in to get rid of them, and they will keep going until they have slaughtered every last Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Blitzen on the island.

The Whaling Stations

With its ramshackle buildings, sheds, and doors leading into black holes, the whaling settlement of Grytviken is the perfect place for an ill-fated game of hide-and-seek. It also features a creepy church and a creepy cemetery that is the final resting place of some of Antarctica’s most intrepid explorers. Also chains:

Hollywood producers take note: It’s a pain to get to, but it ticks every box for your next slasher/torture porn franchise.  

The Ice

There are towering behemoths of ancient ice in Antarctica, but there are also football fields of floating chunks that make sailing a real pain. The outboard motor on our (inflatable) zodiac boat stopped working a few times thanks to unprecedented amounts of sea ice present during the last Antarctic summer—it was kind of like an old blender labouring under the strain of being forced to mix one too many margaritas.  

The Bases

Much respect is due to the upstanding people of Poland’s Arctowski Research Station on King George Island. While the fancy folk on McMurdo are living it up with soft-serve ice cream machines and hydroponic vegetables, these guys are pumping iron Dolph Lundgren-style in a Cold-War-era gym, complete with some very old instructional posters:

What’s surprising is that base life is remarkably similar to life elsewhere. Of course, there’s desperation and isolation, but it’s not so much more than you’d find in any nightclub in any city in the world. Base-dwellers display the same behaviors people do elsewhere when they have time to kill: vodka-drinking contests worthy of frat houses, arguments over the music selection that inevitably turn into arm-wrestling contests.

Yes, there are stories of people going nuts, and these are told and retold until they achieve the status of legend. Here’s one: According to Antarctic folklore, a doctor was looking forward to going home after a long stint on an Argentine base. When the replacement crew arrived, however he was told that there was no doctor to replace him, which meant that he wouldn’t be going home for another year. So he did what any upstanding member of the medical fraternity would do and burned the base down.

If that sounds a bit grim, then spare a thought for the men who used to work on the British base known as Port Lockroy, or “Base A.” Times were tough down there in the 1950s. This is an example of Antarctic porn from the era:

I believe that is meant to be Jayne Mansfield. And this is all that’s left of Elizabeth Taylor:

(In fairness, it’s still a better rendition of her than Lindsay Lohan’s turn in the made-for-TV turkey, Liz & Dick.)

The Payoff

Antarctica is known as a place of extremes: extreme temperatures, extreme isolation, extreme people. But it’s also a place of extreme emotion. The lows are subterranean—sometimes it feels like you’ve arrived at the watery gates of hell. But the highs are stratospheric. There’s no better continent for a gin and tonic on ice(berg) and a barbecue on the back of the boat.

More journeys to strange places:

I Kayaked to New York City's Abandoned North Brother Island

The Magician's Retreat

Afghanistan's Great Wall of Bones