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Sandra Bland's Arresting Officer Says She Assaulted Him Before Her Arrest

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Sandra Bland's Arresting Officer Says She Assaulted Him Before Her Arrest

The VICE Guide to Right Now: This Saskatchewan Man Is Filing a Human Rights Complaint Because He Likes the Confederate Flag

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Photo via Flickr user Serfs Up

Read: The KKK Stirred Up White-Hot Rage at the South Carolina Statehouse This Weekend

Dale Pippin is a Saskatchewan resident and lifelong Canadian, but he's incredibly proud of his family's Southern United States roots (they relocated from North Carolina 110 years ago). He's so proud of it, in fact, that the current climate of anti-Confederacy rhetoric encouraged him to file a human rights complaint regarding media coverage of the debate over the Confederate flag.

That debate began anew after the mass shooting in June of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina by a white man with a documented fondness for symbols of bygone racially oppressive societies. Until a few weeks after the shooting, the Confederate flag was displayed prominently near South Carolina's statehouse; it's still part of some of the US state flags, and resistance to retiring it is strong despite the fact that the flag calls back to the side of the US Civil War that fought for the right to keep black people as slaves.

Pippin launched the human rights complaint because he thinks "racism and hate have been linked to the flag for far too long and it's incorrect." He also said the current climate of discussion discriminates against people like him, who want to celebrate their Southern heritage. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has yet to confirm if it has received Pippin's complaint.

Despite the fact that no part of what is now Canada fought alongside the Confederacy during the Civil War, Confederate flags are not uncommon, especially in rural parts of the country. Though rarely flown by people who openly espouse pro-slavery views, they are often held up as a symbol of rebellion or non-conformity... or Lynyrd Skynyrd fandom.

"As soon as you display a flag, you are questioned about it, and you need to be prepared if you're going to display a flag," said Pippin, apparently ignorant of the near-universal acceptance of many flags and symbols of nationality.

It's also possible, of course, that Pippin was actually referencing the fact that most, if not all, national flags are contested by someone (for instance, many Indigenous Canadians consider the Canadian flag a symbol of their oppression), and using that point to argue for the legitimacy of the Stars and Bars he holds dear.

Follow Tannara Yelland on Twitter.

Meet the Guy Who's Been Eating Chipotle Every Day for Five Months

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All images courtesy of Andrew Hawryluk's Chipotlife blog


More on diets:
This Guy Only Eats Pizza
This Guy Only Eats Raw Meat
One of Our Writers Tried to Survive on Alcohol Alone

Every day for the past 153 days, LA-based freelance animator Andrew Hawryluk has been going to Chipotle and ordering the rice bowl with chicken, guacamole, and lettuce. It started as a joke with his brother, but it has turned into a bona fide lifestyle—he's spent over $1,500 at the popular Mexican eatery, where he rarely deviates from his rice bowl order, and consumed over 100,000 calories in the process.

The 23-year-old, who believes that Chipotle is "objectively the best restaurant," keeps an online food journal, Chipotlife, and documents his excursions to the "unburritable" establishment by photographing all his homogenous receipts next to his homogeneous meals. The blog even features meditations on various locations' quality and his diet's impact on his health. (He claims that his Chipotle-only regimen has lowered his cholesterol.)

He plans on continuing his routine until he either gets a modeling contract from it or hits a full calendar year of daily Chipotle consumption. I called him up to chat about all this and learned he doesn't even like Mexican food.

VICE: Why do you order the same thing every time? I get the same restaurant, but why not tweak the meal to keep things interesting?
Andrew Hawryluk: All this originally started after I jokingly told my brother I'd do it for the 40 days of Lent. But I kept ordering the same thing because I'm into weightlifting, and a big thing in that world is that you have to keep a macronutrient diet and keep a certain ratio of calories and proteins to carbs. Beyond thinking it's the best combination of food, it's all about my macros.

I'm already in pretty good shape, and I don't need to lose weight or anything like that, but I'm doing this whole weightlifting thing because it's another hobby or activity to have. I've been approached about doing modeling before, but never anything related to bodybuilding. I'm open to the possibility of anyone who wants to scout me for modeling, especially if they found me because of my Chipotle love.

What are you favorite Chipotle menu offerings other than the rice bowl you order?
I really like the barbecoa hard shell tacos. It's a huge departure from what I regularly get. It's rare how frequently I order the tacos, and you can see that on my blog. I'll get them with white rice, fajita veggies, mild salsa, and lettuce. I've ordered every ingredient on the menu at least once—minus the burrito and the quesarito.

This will sound really dumb, but I don't like Mexican food. I've eaten super authentic Mexican food in California, New York, Miami, etc., but there's something about Mexican food that is so wheat and carb centric. There's rice and beans and so much stuff. The option of streamlining your meal and specifying what you want to a T is what makes me keep going to Chipotle. I'm going to get the exact same thing for the same price with the same ingredients. I don't like Mexican restaurants and that whole concept of authentic cuisine is not appealing. Burritos are like the fucking thing here in LA, but I've never ordered a burrito from Chipotle in my entire life. They have 300 extra calories and carbs that are empty. Plus, burritos fall apart every time you eat them—which is tragic—and I don't like eating with my hands.


For more unique digestion stories, watch our doc on the guy who will eat anything for fame:


Have you brought a date to Chipotle?
I have brought a date to Chipotle, yes. I've gone on a date where we went to a bar, and then brought her there after. You better believe I've posted Chipotle photos to my Tinder moments. It's not somewhere I'd bring as like a romantic thing, though. Girls like Chipotle. It's trendy. It's a fact girls like it. It's GMO-free, it's organic, and everything is so transparent. Transparency is such a hot thing in food culture. There's no reason for girls not to like it.

Have you ever seen that episode of South Park where they watch a commercial for "Chipotlaway," a fake product to remove stains from Chipotle-induced diarrhea?
I can single-handily can dispel that myth. So many people ask me about my shit. People even ask me about that on Instagram. I joke that my bowel movements look, smell, and taste exactly the same as they did before this diet.

Besides the food, what else do you like about Chipotle?
Before Chipotle, I wasn't really into GMO-free food, or aware of how food chains treat animals. Now, because they pimp that shit out so much at Chipotle, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. I love that the décor is exactly the same, the exact same menu, exact same everything—that's one of the best thing about it.

How much longer do you want to do this for?
I don't want to keep this going because it's entertaining, I'm just so comfortable with it and it's nice not having to think about what I want to order. Maybe this is a bad comparison, but it's like how Steve Jobs wore the same shirt every day.

Next Lent I might exclusively eat Chipotle, but that may be a bit much. Right now, the next milestone is 200 days of Chipotle, and then after that it's 365. It's a long haul, but 365 is the destination. My motivation is to make this the funniest thing possible. I think doing it for a full-calendar birthday year would be the best. I'd be able to look back 50 years from now and think, I ate this every day for a year when I was 23. I want to remember the year of my life I just ate Chipotle.

Follow Zach on Twitter.

What's Next After the War on Drugs?

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Between Bill Clinton denouncing the overreach of his own crime policies during the 1990s, and Barack Obama making some refreshingly unequivocal statements about mass incarceration during his historic visit to a federal penitentiary, last week was something of a pivotal moment for criminal justice reform. Yet as we reach the tipping point in the national conversation about the failure of the war on drugs, it's increasingly frustrating to hear experts rehashing the damages of failed policies—over and again—rather than proposing any solid alternatives.

This glaring problem was on display at Thursday night's symposium in Denver called "Legalization, the Next Phase in the War on Drugs?"

The event touted a diverse panel of government leaders like Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, experts like Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse Nora Volkow, progressive advocates like Drug Policy Alliance chief Ethan Nadelmann, and co-founder of the anti-pot group Smart Approaches to Marijuana Kevin Sabet. But the symposium mostly boiled down to these supposedly adversarial speakers all regurgitating the same politically safe talking points about how the war on drugs has failed without suggesting what's supposed to take its place.

Nadelmann spoke with an evangelical fervor about how the US prison system "makes Soviet gulags look like a walk in the park," and credited Colorado's pot legalization with forcing Obama into "a new global drug policy doctrine." Meanwhile, Sabet—who was previously a senior advisor on drug policy for the Obama administration—denounced weed legalization, claiming it could open the door to the marketing of marijuana products to children, making a strong comparison to the tobacco industry of the 20th century.

The panel of Hickenlooper, Volkow, and Lagos continued down the path of criticizing the war on drugs, with all three mostly in agreement that decriminalization (if not outright legalization) is the best answer to the widespread availability of illegal drugs. Lagos praised Uruguay's model, wherein the government controls the production and sale of marijuana, but stopped short of saying it should be applied in his own country of Chile. Volkow made perhaps the only substantive policy suggestion of the evening, advocating the treatment for children who exhibit impulse control failure early in life as a preventative tactic against future problems with addiction. But mostly, she focused on how harmful marijuana is to young, developing brains—something pretty much everyone on earth agrees with.

For anyone following the state's marijuana news, Hickenlooper's contribution to the symposium was nothing more than a greatest hits of his familiar one-liners: "We haven't seen the destruction we anticipated," "If I'd had a magic wand and could've erased [legalization] in 2012, I would've used it, but now I don't think I would," and, "We need to make sure we're not sending the wrong message to kids."

"This debate [over drug laws] has moved so quickly, it's a lot like the gay marriage debate," moderator and former media mogul Tina Brown said toward the end of the evening.

But if that were really the case, we'd be a lot further down the road than we are. If gay marriage were at the same stage as criminal drug policy, than we would be having public debates over whether homosexuality was a sin, a mental disorder, or a crime. Thankfully, we're long past that now. Over the years, we as a society admitted that we had sexuality all wrong, and now we're enacting policies to fix the damages of the past.

Advocates for LGBT rights have been fairly direct and consistent on how to fix the problem: Allow gays in the military (done), allow same sex couples to get married (done), prevent employers from discriminating on the basis of sexuality (not done, yet). When it comes to drug policy, all we've done is come together in agreement to say that the policies of locking up drug offenders—endorsed by Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton—were and are bad.

Which is a start. But we're still a long way from being able to come together as a nation about how to deal intelligently with drug addiction and proliferation.

Follow Josiah Hesse on Twitter.

Whole Foods, Expensive Cheese, and the Dilemma of Cheap Prison Labor

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Whole Foods, Expensive Cheese, and the Dilemma of Cheap Prison Labor

Photos: Night Rooms: Al Zana, Gaza

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This article appears in The Photo Issue 2015

All photos from 2014 by Grey Hutton, who is the photo editor of VICE Germany.

These homes in Al-Zana, Gaza, lie close to the border shared with Israel. The photographs were taken in September 2014 just after the end of the conflict that killed over 2,100 Palestinians—most of them civilians, according to the UN—and 70 Israelis. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) claims that over 500,00 Palestinians were displaced due to the fighting in Gaza. The majority of the homes in these pictures had been destroyed by Israeli tanks driving through them.

Related: Molly Crabapple on the devastation in Gaza

When lit with car headlights at night, the front rooms seem exposed, like empty theater sets in the darkness. My work from Gaza concentrates on the destruction of lives and homes, particularly the effects conflict has had on the children in the region.

–Grey Hutton

The UK Labour Party Wants to 'Reconnect' with People by Doing Nothing About Welfare Cuts

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Andy Burnham, who abstained from the bill, before saying, "We simply cannot abstain from this bill." Photo via the NHS Confederation

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

According to a recent report by the British Election Study, the shock Conservative victory in this year's election didn't, in the end, have anything to do with "shy Tories"—people who told pollsters that they were voting for someone else, but then once in the voting booth, trembling with masochistic excitement or puppeteered by the robotic instruction to bow to one's betters, ticked the box by the Conservative candidate. Instead, the liars were all Labour voters.

A big chunk of the electorate said they would vote Labour, out of a hazy sense of duty, but it's not as if the party had really given them anything to be excited about: When polling day came, they couldn't be bothered. It's in this context that Labour's mass abstention over yesterday's welfare bill starts to make sense.

The party's humanoid grandees, wittering clones in suits that look like they've been stitched directly on to their necks, can't shut up about how Labour needs to "reconnect with the public." This is what that looks like. Clearly someone has decided that we're all slumped and catatonic, marinating in our own sweat and stupidity in front of a flickering TV, indifferent to suffering, neutral to evil, and silently hoping for our own deaths—and that the best thing to do would be to imitate us.

The welfare bill that just passed is a recipe for mass social cleansing. The proposed cap on benefits payments to £20,000 [$31,100] per family (£23,000 [$35,800] in London) would make the entire south of England—and many cities in the north—effectively uninhabitable for thousands of families. It's a Londonification of the whole country—this island is now a fortified playground for adult babies with swollen pockets, and anyone who can't afford the price of entry will be bussed out to some managed slum in the wind-battered hinterlands, where they will hopefully die without costing anyone too much money.

There's not much point in getting angry with the Tories for all this: birds fly, fish swim, the Conservative Party is the sublunar manifestation of a howling evil from beyond the stars, it is what it is. But when it came to a vote, Labour, who as an opposition party should at least be expected to do some opposing, instructed its MPs to abstain.


Related: Watch VICE's latest documentary, 'ICEMAN'


According to Harriet Harman, the acting leader of the opposition, the decision to abstain was supposed to let voters know that Labour were a realistic party capable of sensible reform. In a way, this is a good move. The British have always prided themselves on being a gentle, mild, and faintly boring people. But across our tepid moat, we're surrounded by fanatics: spittle-flecked Christians with incomprehensible signs, murderous Salafists zooming about the desert, swarming Continental mobs roaring their unreasonable demand that they be allowed to live. Believing in something is dangerous; here, it's tantamount to treason. This is why any attempt to articulate "British values"—for some reason, this is something governments keep on trying to do—always ends up producing a list of empty nothings. British values are no values.

The Tories have done a good job cloaking their deeply ideological policies in a kind of reality principle—it's just what needs to be done, like changing a tire or mowing the lawn. Labour, who still call themselves a socialist party, are stuck in a bind. If they oppose the bill, they look like ideologues; if they support it, it looks like a betrayal. So the Parliamentary Labour Party collectively jammed their fingers in their ears and rolled around on the floor of the House of Commons, because in our political system the most inspiring thing they can do is to do nothing.

In the Book of Revelation it is written: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." But the Labour party, a limp and lifeless thing expressing nothing but a feeble desire to not be spued, has found a way around this: to be hot and cold at once. In the aftermath of the vote, Andy Burnham, a Playmobil figure that wants to be Prime Minister, posted that the party "simply cannot abstain on this Bill." On the face of it, this is a strange thing to say, given that abstaining on the bill is precisely what he'd just done. But really it's a symptom of the party's general personality crisis: trying to be all things to all people, a national party that wants to reflect a deeply divided public, it ends up precisely nowhere.

Follow Sam Kriss on Twitter.

In Canada, Parents Vow To Give Their Sick Children Medical Marijuana—Even If Doctors Won’t

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In Canada, Parents Vow To Give Their Sick Children Medical Marijuana—Even If Doctors Won’t

How I Figured Out the Rules of My Three-Way Relationship

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Me, my husband, and our boyfriend

Recently, while I was at lunch with a friend, she asked me about intimacy. She did it in such a way that it was clear she wasn't really asking me, she was telling me what she thought about intimacy. More specifically, what she thought about the intimacy involved in my relationship with my husband Alex and our boyfriend Jon.

"I just don't understand," she said, picking at her salad as if meaning might be buried under her kale. "If you give 40 percent to Jon, then you only have 60 percent left for Alex, your husband, and I guess... Marriage is hard. Relationships are hard. Can a relationship survive on just 60 percent?"

On Motherboard: Cyborgs I Have Loved

The implications were clear: Somehow my intimacy with Alex was being diminished because of our relationship to Jon. According to my friend's theory, love was finite: There was only so much, and if you tapped into it for another then you were ultimately taking some away. I was robbing Alex of my love to give to Jon.

"I know that Daniel is my soulmate," she said, speaking of her husband. "He is my true love. I know that I was meant for him."

I believe in soulmates, I wanted to tell her. And I believe in love. I just don't believe that love is limited to one person, or that we are meant to live only one life dedicated 100 percent to someone else.

I thought about her kids. How when he son was born she told me he was everything, the love of her life. And when she was pregnant a second time, she worried she would never love another child as much as she did her firstborn. But then her daughter was born and she fell in love. Completely. She loved them both infinitely and separately and the love of one didn't jeopardize or diminish the love of the other.

When you are in a triad you get used to these questions, though. People always want to know if we really love Jon. If there was some problem between Alex and me. Is it about the sex? What is it that made this happen? Why? I am often shocked by the intensely personal questions people ask, mostly about our sex lives, the kind of questions they would be appalled at if someone were to ask them.

"Doesn't it bother Jon?" my friend continued. "Knowing that you and Alex are married? That in the end, he has no legal rights? That the two of you are so legitimate?"

And Jon isn't legitimate, is the not-so-subtle subtext. How could he be?

When I met Alex I knew I had met my soulmate. We met on Scruff, a gay hookup app—his username was Spy in the Cab, a Bauhaus reference, that was a throwback to my youth. He was supposed to be a trick. Just a fuck. He was working on a movie and suggested we go to dinner. I was disappointed; I didn't want to go to dinner, I wanted to get straight to the fucking, but I conceded.

I remember the moment Alex walked into my house. Stunned is the only word I can think of. He was so handsome it was breathtaking.

He couldn't look me in the eye. Later he told me it was because he was sure I hadn't seen him right, that at any moment I was going to realize how ugly he was. Which is idiotic because Alex is gorgeous. He is huge and muscular and Dominican, with the most beautiful, innocent, wondrous eyes I have ever seen on a man.

We went for Thai food in Hollywood. He told me about going to film school in Vancouver and we talked about the movie he was working on, Sharknado. He did special effects makeup. He loved horror movies. I was recently sober after a four-year relapse. I was broke and jobless and living off my father's financial kindness. After dinner we went back home and did all the things we talked about on Scruff.

Alex is my lover and my travel buddy and my best friend. He is my partner in adventure. I obsessed over him and longed for him and fell madly in love with him. He likes to tell people I gave him the keys to my house after two weeks. I'm pretty sure I made him wait seven, but either way, we moved fast. After six months he was moving out of his mom's place in Huntington Beach and in with me. Two years later I proposed to him in Laguna.

Alex and I were not open. We had no interest in being "poly." We had what we called a kind of "monogamy-ish" arrangement. Whatever we did together was allowed. If there was a guy we both wanted, fine. We had three-ways and four-ways with other couples. We picked up guys and went out flirting together. I loved watching Alex fuck another guy. He was so sexy and strong, such a stud. It just made me want him more. These adventures enhanced our sexuality and our relationship.

Related: What it's like to grow up in a polyamorous household

None of this is to say I didn't get jealous. I can be an extremely jealous and possessive person. I can be dark and moody, stormy and unpredictable. There were times where what I wanted (and sometimes still do) was that fantasy of one love, that idea that he wants me and no one else, that I can satisfy all of him—but that came up against the hard reality of my own needs and wants. I wanted him to want only me, but I also wanted the freedom to go out and do whatever I wanted.

Jon was supposed to be just another three-way. A fuck and nothing more. We met him on Scruff. He was living with his ex in Orange County; it was complicated. We chatted for a few days before we all decided to meet. It was going to be brief. He was driving back from his mom's house in Bakersfield and I was working the door at the Faultline, a gay leather bar. He was going to stop by on his way home.

It was a Sunday beer bust, busy and chaotic. We were going to meet at the bar for a quick kiss and to check each other out. Jon pulled up in his silver Volkswagen Beetle. I still remember watching him walk over to me, his hunched old man gait, kind of awkward and shockingly handsome. He smiled his crooked smile. His nose was off center from being broken, his eyes serious and vulnerable, his hands at his sides, fists clenched. He was so beautiful and lost in that moment, so perfectly himself without pretense.

Alex and I took him into the green room where the strippers go to get into costume. We all took turns kissing. It was strange and magical. I knew that something different was happening. I knew that this was not going to be just a hook-up. It was in my heartbeat, in my nervousness. Hook-up Jeff would have thrown Jon down on the couch and said sexy, dirty things to him because hook-up Jeff can be aggressive. But this felt different, slower, easier, more meaningful and natural. It didn't need to be forced or turned into a porn. This moment had a life all its own.

So we agreed to meet another night. We made a plan to watch David Bowie's Cracked Actor and eat pizza and then fuck around. Then we invited him back again. And suddenly we were texting him every day: "Good morning," and, "How are you?" and, "We miss you" and, "Good night." Sexy chats and romantic chats and banal chats.

Alex and I would go on long walks and have endless discussions about what this meant. We were supposed to be getting married in six months. We both knew where things were headed: The question was, did we want to be moving in that direction? We had always been disdainful of triads, thinking the idea silly and overly complicated. I bought books, like The Ethical Slut and Opening Up, but none of the people in those books felt like me. Like us. I didn't want to join poly groups. I wasn't looking for a lifestyle.

I was jealous. Jealous of Alex. Jealous of Jon. I wanted them to love me but I didn't know how I felt about them loving each other.

What became clear to me is that there is no map here. No guide to how this is done. We weren't new-ageist or vegans looking for some new tantric style of love. Alex and I weren't looking to open up. We weren't struggling in our relationship or our sex life. Things were good. We fucked a lot. We had fun. We were happy with how things were.

So then why? Why were we heading down this road? We had a choice. We could stop. We were getting married; we had our hands full. The TV show Alex was working on got picked up for a second season. We were busy. And the answer was simple: Jon. And it was fun. It felt right. The road seemed clear and open and easy.

It was strange watching Alex fall in love with someone else. Seeing the process, sharing in it, being a part of their experience while having my own. In the beginning, when Jon started sleeping over, I couldn't sleep. The bed was too crowded. The room too hot: It was January and we had the AC on high. Three big guys in one queen-sized bed. We were drenched in sweat.

And I was jealous. Jealous of Alex. Jealous of Jon. I wanted them to love me but I didn't know how I felt about them loving each other. And all the books and web sites said that while jealousy was normal it was dangerous: ugly, bad, wrong. I watched myself becoming someone I didn't understand. Someone who would lay awake at night counting affections: where did Alex put his hands, how was Jon curled up against him, counting the minutes he curled up against me, could I divine, in their sleep, their love for each other? Their love for me?

There were nights of high drama. Nights when I would storm out of the room, knocking things over, purposely trying to wake them, because I was mad. They had spent too much time wrapped around each other, leaving me out, on the far edges of the crowded bed, alone. Once, while on vacation in Vancouver, I pretended to fall out of the bed and then stormed around the room yelling, "This isn't working! Nothing is working!"

A lot of these fights involved Alex and I going into a room and whispering furiously to each other, leaving Jon to sit alone on the couch. Or we would text each other madly through out dinner, believing naively that Jon didn't know what was going on. During this period Jon felt left out of the decisions and the fights. We had a rule about texting: Alex and I could have our own texts, but all texts with Jon went through a group three-way chat. Alex and I were trying to maintain our relationship while building one with Jon. In the beginning we liked the idea that Jon thought of us as a Unit, one entity, but the truth is, that isn't sustainable. In the end, each side of the triangle has to be equal or it falls apart. Without equality there is no actual relationship.

But what did that mean? Did it mean dissolving what Alex and I had built? Did it mean losing what I loved so much? Again I went back to the books, googling "throuple" and "triad" and "poly relationships." But there was no clear rule. Many couples maintained their autonomy, regulating their third to a kind of second-class station. Some tried for unity.

We came to realize that each relationship has to stand on its own, and that the idea of equality isn't always going to work out in a perfectly balanced way. Jon can never have the three years Alex and I had. We can't change that, and I wouldn't want to. We were still getting married. We were going to be who we were. And it would go like that for all of us. Sometimes they would bond without me, sometimes Jon and I would bond without Alex. Each relationship: Alex to Jon, Alex to Jeff, Jeff and Jon, Jeff-Jon-Alex, had to survive independently.

Now we keep a three-way chat, but we all get to have our own private chats as well. Jon is included. If we fight or get jealous we tell him, we work it out as a team. Or at least we try.


Watch: Meet the Brooklyn rapper with over 200 "wives"


Our first official three-way fight occurred in Spokane, when Jon and I had gone to visit Alex while he was working on season two of his show. I don't even know how it began, but somewhere along the way Alex was threatening to divorce me, break up with Jon, and kick us out. I have a lot of experience fighting with Alex. He and I are similar. We are passionate and volatile. Jon is different; he isn't used to that kind of fighting. So without saying anything he booked us a room at a hotel, sure that this was over. The fight lasted close to six hours and cost us $200. It felt endless. Once two of us were OK the third was mad. It kept going. On and on. We took turns forming alliances, ganging up on the other, switching back and forth, until finally it just kind of broke, like any fight, just a little more complicated. Some of it was related to the fact that Jon and I were alone for six months while Alex was away working. Some of it was related to the fact that we were all tired and Jon and I missed Alex. And some of it was just learning how to communicate with each other, learning how to relate.

Because this is all new.

I have had to learn a lot about myself. I've learned that I am afraid of being abandoned, of being left. I had dark fantasies of the two of them running off together and leaving me alone. I am 17 years older than Alex and 15 years older than Jon. I played games in my head, horrible, movies about when I was 60 and they weren't even the age I am now, an old man with nothing left to offer his two young lovers.

And that is the thing: I am afraid, I am insecure and anxious, terrified of being left, of being alone, of growing old, having no one, nothing. These feelings occur in a normal dyad relationship and they become magnified in a triad. And what you are left with is yourself. I have learned to trust myself, to be secure in who I am and in what I have to offer. I have learned to be secure in the fact that they love me, even as they love each other. I have learned that just because they might want to fuck someone else doesn't mean they don't want to fuck me. This learning curve is sharp, and it has often been painful, but through it I have some how come out stronger, happier, maybe even braver.

I can't legitimize Jon or his experience of this. All I can do is try to be honest and try to be supportive. We talk about his feelings and concerns about being in a relationship with two married guys. There are no legal protections for him. And I can't imagine they will be coming any time soon. He doesn't get to be on Alex's union insurance. My father doesn't offer to buy his ticket home for Thanksgiving. There is no simple solution to these things, so we come together, we split the extra ticket three ways, we agree to help Jon with his insurance and to all take care of each other the best we can. But still, is it enough? Does it appease that feeling of being left out? Sometimes. And I'm sure sometimes not. There is a price for the choices we have made.

Jon is like a perfect mixture of the two of us. He shares things with each of us. Sometimes he and Alex will be going off on some tangent about something they saw on Tumblr that has nothing to do with me. Sometimes Jon and I will be talking about some book we loved that has nothing to do with Alex. That's the thing we each have to accept: sometimes you aren't a part of it. Sometimes you have to learn to love them for loving each other. To enjoy their enjoyment, even when it doesn't involve you.

Me, Alex, and Jon on the day of mine and Alex's wedding

We decided to introduce Jon, officially, to our families and friends at our wedding. This might have been a flawed decision, but it seemed like the only time everyone would be at one place at the same time. My 13-year-old nephew, Eli, probably handled it better than anyone. He didn't seem to really care. He just called it an "alternative relationship" that made his Uncle Jeff happy.

I have put my family through a lot. I was a heroin addict for 13 years. There isn't much I could do to surprise them. My father mostly wanted to know if I was happy. If I was happy he was happy. He's 78. I think a certain zen comes over you by that point in life.

Not everyone gets it. I don't get it half the time. Most people think it is a phase, but if you look at the divorce rates, it would seem most relationships are phases.

Alex and I got married in our small craftsman-style house in Hollywood. Our friends, mostly people from LA and New York City, welcomed Jon. Triads seem to be a thing that is happening now. I still remember someone saying to Jon, "So how do you know Alex and Jeff?" and Jon replying in his bookish, quiet way, "Oh, I'm their boyfriend."

There were moments when I would find him hiding with the cats and dog in our bedroom, overwhelmed by everyone and everything. He had suffered family rehearsal dinners and brunches and endless explanations of who he was. Everyone knows who Alex and I are. We're the married guys. But who is that Jon?

Two weeks later he moved in.

People always ask about the sex. They imagine constant nights of three-ways and orgies, and to some extent they are right.

People always ask about the sex. They imagine constant nights of three-ways and orgies, and to some extent they are right. Every night in my house is a three-way. Our rule of monogamy-ish still exists: What we all want we can all have, together. Sometimes there are fourways and fiveways, we talk about finding another triad, but the truth is that there is a normalcy to it as well.

I am in a relationship with two guys, each having their own insecurities and needs and goals. Each of us is a complete universe unto ourselves. Three-way sex is hot. Three-way fights suck. Sometimes they annoy me. Sometimes they charm me. Sometimes I want to run away and hide, be alone. We are lucky because we have a three-bedroom house and a back house that we can escape to if we need it. It's nice knowing there's a place I can go to that is all mine. It's important. It's hard not to get lost with all these people around. It is important to me that we are each given the opportunity to maintain our selves, to have our own lives and our own experiences inside all of this. That isn't always easy. It is something we work at very hard.

Recently we were in Seattle meeting Alex, who was on a break. I had booked a room for us with a king-size bed. The woman at the desk said that the hotel had a strict no guest policy, only couples allowed in the room. When I tried to explain to her that we are a couple (ish) and that Alex was not our guest, she just looked at me like I was crazy. "You aren't allowed guests, sir," she kept insisting. No explanation was going to change her mind. Eventually I had to upgrade to a room with two queen-size beds that we ended up pushing together into one bed.

Beds are a really big deal for us. A queen doesn't really do it. A California king can be a stretch sometimes. We've discussed getting three king mattresses and turning our bedroom into one giant bed.

When we were flying to Vancouver we all fell asleep with our heads and hands all over each other. I woke up to find people staring, not sure what was going on. A woman in the aisle next to us shook her head at me, like I had slapped her. The stewardess had the exact opposite reaction: She kept saying how adorable we were. Both reactions made me feel like a strange museum piece or an exotic animal at the zoo.

When trying to find a place to go for Valentine's Day we ran into all the pre-fixe menus for couples. Nowhere was willing, even when I said I didn't care about the cost, to do a pre-fixe throuple menu. We ended up ordering pizza and watching My Bloody Valentine.

Nothing ever comes in threes. Everything is set up for two people. Finding three seats on the plane, renting an Airbnb room, shopping, navigating other people's perceptions, all these things are challenges. But then, in the end, any relationship—whether with yourself, another, two others, or 20 others—is complicated and full of challenges. The question is: Is it worth it?

Sometimes I will be sitting at my desk, writing or reading, and I will look over at the two of them on the couch, giggling at stupid cat .GIFs, or holding hands quietly, and I will think, I am lucky. I am loved and safe. And together we will face the world, the three of us.

What I wish I had said to my friend over lunch is that life isn't easy, and things have a way of going terribly wrong, but love, love is huge and it is a gift and I don't think it's about percentages. I think love is something expansive, something that grows if you let it.

Because that is the one thing I know for certain: Our ability to love is not limited. It is not small. It is vast and huge and ever-expanding and if we allow ourselves we might even find ourselves growing and expanding with it because we are huge and vast and capable of anything. I believe that now. I see it. When I am laying there at night, drenched in sweat, bodies wrapped around me, surrounded by them, listening to them breathe as they sleep, I know that there is a magic in this life, a gift, and it is buried deep inside the love I have.

Follow Jeff on Twitter.

The Totally Enduring Legacy of 'Clueless'

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Clueless turns 20 this month, but Cher Horowitz remains timeless. The miracle of Amy Heckerling's iconic retelling of Jane Austen's Emma is that it never feels dated and it never fades from American cultural consciousness. To this day, an all-yellow ensemble still triggers visions of Alicia Silverstone debating the rights of Haitians. The film also features what is probably the best reference to Monet in all of cinema. Clueless sits as a merry flag in the jaded drought of 90s youth culture. In an era when the prevailing mood was just that—moody— Clueless was shamelessly optimistic.

"I think what [director] Amy Heckerling was able to do—and this is very hard—is make the film satirical, but at the same time not mean-spirited," said Jen Chaney, author of As If!: The Oral History of Clueless. The book, released this month by Simon & Schuster, is the first in depth look at the film from inception to reception.

"The thing that struck me about Clueless when I saw it—and I wasn't necessarily in the film's target demographic—was that it reminded me of how I felt ten years earlier when I was [a teen]," said Chaney.

This sort of cross-generational appeal is key to the film's power. In the book X Vs. Y: A Culture War, a Love Story, authors and sisters Eve and Leonora Epstein tackle the nuanced taste and trends of two generations: Gen X and millennials. Clueless finds its sweet spot at the center of the book's Venn diagram: The two generations manage to love the film equally.

"I think the film really represents the younger generation falling in love with Gen X and vice versa," explained Chaney, quoting the book's broader thesis about the romance between Cher and her former-stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd). "It's about the merger of these two ideas. And I think that Josh does represent what we were seeing not just with teens, but youth culture in general at that time. He was more emblematic of what the prevailing pop-cultural tone was, as far as young people were concerned."

If there is connective tissue that binds Austen's work with Heckerling's script, it's the inventive use of language, precise and exaggerated at once, flowing from the mouths of sharp-witted women.

Watching Clueless in the context of its time is a bit like watching a dream sequence in the middle of a drama. Alicia Silverstone plays Cher with a lightness that makes her feel like the cheery older sister for an entire generation of disgruntled ennui—she's a warm hug in a mosh pit. Cher's steely self-determination, which shines through as she negotiates her report card, sets up her teachers in order to bring up the class average, and finds a potential love interest for her new friend Tai (the late Brittany Murphy) could be read as a cunning use of feminine wiles. However, it's her firmly rooted sense of self that embodies the character's strengths.

"Even with riot grrrl and all that, I don't think that in 1995 young girls were growing up with that sense of confidence embedded in the culture," notes Chaney. " Clueless feels like the vanguard of a type of feminism in which you can have complete confidence in your own self-resilience and identity while still wanting to shop."

It helps to have source material as beloved as Emma, considered by many to be Austen's masterpiece.

"Emma is fascinating because it's about a woman who isn't likable," said Marilyn Francus, an English professor at West Virginia University, and the recent recipient of the Jane Austen Society of North America International Visitor Fellowship.

"Emma is bossy and she likes to control her world, and she can be demanding," Francus told VICE. "And yes, Cher is adorable from the beginning, and because we get voiceover, we as viewers are aligned with her from the start. But to see a character like that develop is masterful."

If there is connective tissue that binds Austen's work with Heckerling's script, it's the inventive use of language, precise and exaggerated at once, flowing from the mouths of sharp-witted women. Cher doesn't just get denied, she gets "brutally rebuffed"; when Dion's boyfriend gets called out for repeatedly calling her "woman," he delivers what amounts to a soliloquy on the legitimization of street slang. Tai's response—"Shit, you guys talk like grownups"—both nails it and misses the point.

"Both Austen and Heckerling love their female characters for their messiness, and both are really good at exploring female relationships, especially through language," Francus explained. "The use of language in Clueless is so smart and so unique. It introduced a level of idiom that has withstood the test of time, which you wouldn't necessarily expect."

Though Austen's work has been celebrated for over 200 years, the prose of teen films hasn't had quite the same level of longevity. Phrases like "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" from Heathers never found a foothold in teen-speak; the failure of "fetch" seems a bit like a self-fulfilled prophecy; and the overload of quirk in Diablo Cody's script for Juno quickly became both the film's calling card and fodder for its detractors.

"Amy did a ton of research and has always been a keen observer of how people think, and has kept her own slang dictionary," Chaney says. "Somebody knew what they were talking about, and you could tell. So that's part of her observational acumen."

This fusion of imagination and reference also fueled the film's other notable contribution to popular culture: its iconic costume design, crafted by the singular Mona May. May met Heckerling early in the development of the script (then written as a TV pilot), and the two immediately hit it off. Their creative relationship seems to have stayed pretty steady; May is currently slated to develop the costumes for Clueless's recently announced Broadway adaptation, which Heckerling is also writing.

"We didn't want to shy away from being girly," said May, who actively wanted to avoid the era's emphasis on side-eyeing fashion. "We wanted this innocence; they weren't walking models to us. The clothes were never wearing them. It was just an extension of them coming alive."


Speaking of fashion, check out our doc 'Iran's Fashion Revolution':


Clueless isn't quite ahead of its time—the film didn't predict trends as much as dictate them—nor is it a time capsule of the 1990s—even at its most grounded, everything Cher and Dion rock veers into the same type of fantasy that Patricia Fields would infuse Sex and the City with. Instead, May culled from the past to create something entirely other. Those knee-high stockings? 1920s Clara Bow. Shift dresses with cap sleeves? Think Jane Seymour in the 1960s. Throw in some quintessential schoolgirl pieces (Mary Janes, vinyl, plaid skirts), and you have a design that manages to eclipse an entire decade's worth of trends without once feeling like anything distinctly 90s.

"What was great about working with [Heckerling] was that she was like a phenomenal fashion editor, where she would push me and say, 'What else you got?' and also know when to pull back and stop," said May. "For that first outfit, we knew red was too bold, green was something Cher would never love, blue wouldn't pop. And we knew that it was her first day of school, she would want to stand out. That yellow plaid piece wasn't us trying to be cool or use Cher as a mannequin. It was something that felt true to what this character would love."

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More than anything else, the fashion in Clueless serves an interesting aesthetic purpose in that it aids the film's subversion of genre. While most teen films frame the popular girl as a type of antagonist, Clueless frames Cher as not just worthy of our love, but as emotionally and intuitively insightful. These characters are, upon first glance, seemingly vapid and removed from any recognizable reality (the film's title referring both to an inability to run their own lives and a lack of understanding for how the other half lives). But the girls' clothing hints at something more creative, eschewing brand names in favor of originality. Their taste immediately establishes these women as worthy of deeper consideration.

"When the movie came out, the time was right," said May. "Girls were ready to shed the plaid shirts and baggy pants, and to return to fashion as a kind of special creativity. People wanted to embrace a kind of hopefulness through their dress with loud colors. They wanted to return to a kind of innocence and beauty."

The film's contribution to popular culture is its perfect storm of feminism, classical allusions, and pure wit, with a genuine affection for both the women on the screen and off.

This is the thread that runs through Clueless: the film's relentless optimism in the middle of an epoch-defining decade. "It's everything from Ren & Stimpy to the US occupation of the Middle East—you're part of a larger cultural and political world that helps make the movie both timely and timeless," Francus said. "And in that sense, Heckerling is picking up on some of the same things that Austen is. How is it that these novels are still speaking to people around the globe some 200 years later? It's because they get at something broader and speaks universally. It's a kind of genius."

Now more than ever, in a cultural climate pushing for feminism and equal representation both on-screen and off, the girl power on display in Clueless finds continued relevance. Heckerling wrote and directed; Silverstone signed a much-discussed $10-million contract with Columbia afterwards that contractually positioned her as a producer.

"After 1995, you see more and more women asserting themselves as feminists," said Chaney, "even if they didn't fit into some preconceived idea of what a feminist was. I think that might be a way Clueless still holds up. That idea of feminism is one that people are much more invested in and can buy into now, as opposed to the first time around."

Clueless has endured as the 90s' most distinct product, yet has managed to hold separate from the era's nostalgia. The film's contribution to popular culture is its perfect storm of feminism, classical allusions, and pure wit, with a genuine affection for both the women on the screen and off. Even 20 years later, its reputation feels remarkably in place—a brilliantly constructed work in a culture that looks fine from far away, but up close is one mess. A total Monet.

Follow Rod on Twitter.

I Spent 24 Hours in a Las Vegas Casino

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All photos by Cynthia San

For 110 years, Las Vegas has stood in the desert as a monument to the sheer weirdness of human potential. It's a collection of impossible structures shining in the middle of a wasteland, a bunch of windowless buildings where you can go if you want to lose money according to the vicious laws of probability. Casinos are traps, everyone knows this, and yet Vegas attracted over 41 million visitors in 2014. But how do these places part patrons from their money? How does the gambling machine work, hour by hour? I spent 24 hours in the D Hotel and Casino to find out.

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The D—yes, really, "The D"—sits smack dab in the middle of Fremont Street, the heart of Old Vegas. Atomic-era neon fills the tightly packed streets here, in stark contrast of the gaudy, ultra-modern behemoths that comprise the Ocean's Eleven version of Vegas down the Strip. Fremont is in the midst of a concerted revitalization effort, with its legacy casinos getting facelifts and CEOs like Zappos's Tony Hsieh pouring hundreds of millions into sections like "Fremont East," a hip enclave that's the Vegas answer to Williamsburg or Silver Lake.

That's to say this slice of Vegas is quieter or less VEGAS, BABY than some parts of town, and therefore maybe the best place for a relative gambling newbie like me to watch the never-ending festivities for an entire day and night. In any case, that's what I did. Here's how it went.

9:00 AM

I meet with Kara, from The D's PR department and she excitedly gives me a tour of the property and I take mental notes while simultaneously trying to will myself to not take too much in. This is only the first hour, after all.

The first floor has state-of-the-art video slots pretty much everywhere, with two long rows of various table games cutting a swath through the middle of the room. On the borders are cashiers, restaurants, a bar, and a station for sports betting. The second floor is the "Classic Vegas" casino with another bar, restaurant, and theater.

There's a surprising crowd of people already out getting a jump on their day. The games run 24 hours a day, but I hadn't expected this level of attendance on a Saturday morning. These early birds have an "aging bro" vibe to them, but they never cross the line into being so loud and obnoxious that I could fairly deem them "douchey," and it's making me anxious. It's like waiting for a balloon to pop.

9:50 AM

A friend had Venmod me $50 to "put on red" for her once I'd arrived so I find my way to the roulette tables, where I realize I have to go to the cashier, who then informs me I have to make my way to the ATM to withdraw $60 (with a fee, of course), then take that back to the roulette table to hand to the croupier who then gives me chips with which to place my bet. A friend had just digitally sent currency from her bank account to mine, from a state away, with no fees, and here I was basically trading seashells. I make the bet, the ball hit 22 black, and I send a picture along with condolences to my friend.

10:00 AM

Breakfast at the D Grill seems an appropriate and leisurely way to eat both food and time. I order an eggs Benedict from the menu and watch a surprising number of elderly men sit down at the tables around me with newspapers. They read and nibble on toast and sip coffee. Is this what growing old in Vegas is like?

10:41 AM

I set a goal for myself to finally learn how craps is played. A legendary player, Stanley Fujitake, rolled a 118-shot streak on his second time ever playing the game and took the house for millions, so I have a chance at glory if I can figure out what's even going on.

I go over to a moderately active table and start watching the shooters, hoping osmosis will take care of the rest. When that doesn't work, I pull out my phone to try and read the rules as I watch. There are a couple of people who seem to know what they're doing—I have no clue if they're up or down, but they are playing the game with the same kind of enthusiasm and profanity of a 14-year-old playing Call of Duty on Xbox Live.

10:55 AM

Fuck that. Craps is basically the Enigma code. I'll try again later.

11:25 AM

Cynthia, who has come along with me to serve as my photographer, friend, and tether to sanity, finally makes it down to the casino and meets up with me. I give her a carbon copy of the tour that Kara gave me only a few hours earlier.

I point out the piece of Blarney Castle wall with fresh metal clamps wrapped around it. As Kara had explained, some idiot had just run off with the slab a week prior, only to return it after the casino's CEO had plastered the thief's face from security footage all over the web. Apparently, patrons are supposed to rub the bit of castle for luck—but the Blarney Castle wall isn't the same as the Blarney Stone, and even if it was, the stone gives those that kiss it, not rub it, eloquence, not luck. So really, pretending for a moment that the concept of "luck" actually exists, you just have a bunch of people in your casino rubbing a powerless rock. But Kara wasn't around anymore, so I went on my little diatribe for Cynthia.

12:45 PM

There are so many branded video slots—Wheel of Fortune being the most popular slot theme of all time. Old people love them some Wheel, and they love them some slots. Why not marry the two? But who is the Bridesmaids video slot machine for? Or this Willy Wonka slot using the smug pic of his face from the meme? Is that intentional?

Apparently these companies put lots of research into what nostalgic factors appeal to their Boomer target demo, but I have to question the process by which they produce The Mummy machines.

1:20 PM

Alcohol seems like a foregone conclusion for a Vegas afternoon, so we go to the outdoor bar that has far too many flavors of booze-infused slushies. Not wanting to fuck up our stomachs this early into the day, we choose the least neon-colored tumbler, Piña colada.

1:35 PM

I felt an obligation to try something from each of the casino's restaurants, so we continue down the side of the building to American Coney Island Dog. I get the signature item, the Coney Island Hot Dog. It's not bad, though not remarkable, like most hot dogs. It is a meal I will never think about again the second I finish typing this sentence.

2:00 PM

The music in the casino is obnoxious—high BPMs, dubstep drops, oversinging. I already know this will be torture by 5 AM. I guess it suits the crowd in here. The people milling about now are the sorts of people who drink their slushies out of those things that look like big plastic bongs, unlike the sensible plastic cups Cynthia and I chose.

2:12 PM

Cynthia and I make our way up to the second floor of the casino where the "old games" are located. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean chrome-plated slots from the world of Fallout, just some slots that aren't computer screens. Chief among them: more Wheel of Fortune.

2:36 PM

In the middle of the second floor is a mechanical horse race track—a crown jewel of The D's gaming fleet. We sit and watch others bet on this for a while. The jerky clopping of the pewter steeds is hypnotic and I have to agree with Cynthia that it's "so cute."

3:55 PM

Cynthia and I decide to sign up for The D's player club card to get $5 of free play credit for slot machines. It's highly unlikely we will ever use these cards again, but $5 is $5 and it's not like we're pressed for time.

We each swipe our newly minted plastic at a kiosk to see if we would be "emailed millions." We are not. We're only emailed a message informing us that we've lost but would now be on a mailing list. Great.

4:15 PM

I watch Cynthia try out the Bridesmaids-themed game. We can't use our free play credit on this one, so she puts down $20 of her own and fumbles around with the buttons, trying to figure out what to press to just place one bet on a dashboard that looks like it belongs in a cockpit.

Two minutes later, the $20 is gone. Just like that. You lose money so much more rapidly than I could've ever imagined. How the fuck do social security–dependent seniors sit at slots all day? Is that a false stereotype? They must be playing at the penny slots that I hear so much about. We move over to play some of those.

4:30 PM

Turns out there is no such thing as a true penny slot any more. They hook you in with the promise of frugality and then you see some bullshit "50 cent minimum bet" sticker. Thanks, Obama.

4:51 PM

A waitress brings us free drinks—and they aren't weak. I forgot this was a thing at casinos. Since we're already flushing money down the toilet on gambling, Cynthia and I resolve to not pay for any other drinks the rest of our stay.

5:13 PM

I have a buzz again and have somehow parlayed my $5 of free play into a redeemable $11.17 voucher simply by slapping buttons randomly. Even so, the win doesn't feel like a high. It feels like if my cat walked across my keyboard and, in doing so, somehow wrote a paragraph of this article for me.

5:40 PM

We sit at the bar watching the people around us, and I eavesdrop on the two couples in their 50s yukking it up next to us. After discussing how difficult it is to program universal remotes, almost like he's giving highlights from his 90s stand up routine, one guy launches into a diatribe about how lazy millennials are.

"Like, if I asked you to take seven from 100, I'm sure you could do that," he says to his lady. "But you know most of them would just take out their phones to figure that out." I'm too in awe of the absurdity of the claim to be offended.

6:21 PM

After wandering around some more, I put $20 into The Walking Dead video slot. Sorry, I mean the AMC's The Walking Dead: Brought to you by AMC video slot. Daryl and Rick look at me over their shoulders with an appropriate amount of scorn from the game cabinet. Despite the flashy "GUTS" that appear on the screen during my spins, this is just like any other slot machine and my credit is gone in minutes.

7:00 PM

The CEO and owner of The D, Derek Stevens, has agreed to meet with me for an interview and a "behind the scenes" tour. We rendezvous at his spot at the end of Long Bar, which is indeed a very long bar.

Derek is the face of The D, almost its mascot. He has the twinkle in his eye of a little kid about to try and get away with something his parents told him not to do. He's wearing a sharp navy windowpane suit, but has enough jewelry on to remind you that, yeah, this guy owns casinos.

I ask him to just take me on his normal rounds and we start our little Sorkin walk-and-talk going through the kitchen area that connects the D Grill and Andiamo Steakhouse, the fancier eatery on the property. Derek shows me the keg room and the wine room and food storage and I have to wonder if he's really in there on the regular checking ranch dressing expiration dates.

What I observe as he goes through each zone is how he interacts with almost everyone. He thanks bartenders for "a phenomenal Thursday night," he asks how a cook's kids are. Even a janitor greets him with what seems to be a non-perfunctory "hello, boss!" Derek tells me the property has 11,000 employees. I don't find it hard to believe at all that he's interacted with each and every one of them.

Derek's approachability extends to the patrons as well. A table of high-rollers seated in Andiamo motion him over and he glad-hands like a seasoned politician. He tells me about the car giveaways he does, the most recent one offering a Dodge Charger Hellcat.

"So, you just buy a flashy car for yourself through the company, drive it around for fun a while, and then give it away as a prize. And then repeat?" I ask.

"Yeah, pretty much," Derek chuckles.

7:50 PM

Derek takes me and Cynthia back to Long Bar and orders us drinks. I'm asking him something dumb, like what his drink of choice is, as if we're out on some Tinder date, when a pair of suited-up security guys sprint past us. Derek stops what he's saying and we all start craning our necks to see what all the commotion is about. Moments later, the security bros are leading a young man out of the casino right past us with his arms behind his back. His face is covered in blood. Cynthia raises her camera only to have the lens swatted down by the PR rep, Lorena, who had been walking with us. No hard feelings, Lorena. We know you were just doing your job.

When the dust settles and enough people have conferred with Derek about what just happened, we find out that the bloody guy had thrown a beer on some old guy's daughter. The old guy—who we'd seen at this point, unscathed and dressed like Jimmy Buffet—had proceeded to sock the guy right in the eye. Forehead cuts bleed profusely, so I guess it looked a lot worse than it was. Still, my adrenaline was racing and I was loving that such a "rare event," as Derek put it, had happened right in front of me as I sat talking to the CEO.

"No fights here are premeditated," Derek says. "Think about it: There's a billion cameras. This is the worst place in the world to fight or steal something. Something like that has happened maybe once before since we opened."

Unfortunately, biomaterial (usually puke) spilled in a public setting like this requires a clean-up crew to jump through a fuck-ton of hoops to deal with the situation. Derek grimaces at the paperwork and hassle this tussle is going to cause him.

Cynthia and I have a show to catch and Derek has matters to attend to so we thank him for his time and tell him we'll rendezvous at the bar later.

8:25 PM

We queue up for Defending the Caveman, one of the three comedy shows playing daily at The D's theater. We're seated and given more complimentary drinks.

Then, the show starts.

"All men are idiots," says the host, and the crowd cheers. "Imagine if I'd come in and said, 'All women are bitches!' Think how you'd all react then!" More laughs. Hoo boy.

We're only a few minutes into this guy's schtick when I just can't anymore. It's Tim Allen's humor reheated and framed in the context of Neanderthals. The audience is heckle-y as fuck, but in a supportive way. He's killing with them so who cares what I think. I flag down more drinks.

9:00 PM

People come to Vegas for the shows as much as they come for the gambling and nightlife. I remember the last show I saw in Vegas: by Cirque du Soleil. It was better than other Cirques I'd seen. One section of that show had a girl just twirling and throwing a baton with such grace and elegance that I was nearly brought to tears.

"A man doesn't just watch TV. A man becomes the TV," says the guy on stage at this Caveman show. I wish I was back at KÀ watching baton girl.

9:50 PM

After the show, Cynthia and I get dinner at Andiamo. Our waiter is like the suave "paging Mr. Herman" version of Pee-Wee from Big Adventure. We get champagne and seafood because neither of us wants a steak sitting in our stomachs for latter half of the night.

11:15 PM

Cynthia doesn't know how to play blackjack so we go to a table and I teach her. She doubles the $20 she put down in only ten minutes and I tell her to cash out while she's ahead. She's giddy, and says she wants to play again later. I might've done a bad thing here.

12:05 AM

We check out the slushie bar again and re-up on Piña coladas. There are street performers doing freestyle battles, and the energy of Fremont Street is at spring break levels. The contained ids from the morning and afternoon are out of their cages. Guys in cargo shorts holler at every girl who walks by. Clusters of women out for bachelorette parties or 21st birthdays shriek at compatriots spotted across the way. I feel old.

1:17 AM

The D's features "Dancing Dealers," go-go dancers who step down off their platform to deal a few hands every few songs. It offends me in the way Carl's Jr. ads offend me—like I'm such an id-driven lunk that I can't have burgers or table games be their own thing, I also need the appeal of bouncing titties.

Derek mentioned earlier that if some UFC fight went long tonight it would really fuck The D over as people might too be tired to go out after and continue partying and gambling. I guess the fight went long, because the casino should be way more packed than this on a Saturday night, right?

2:30 AM

I chat up a lonely looking elderly woman at a Willy Wonka slot. She isn't really reciprocating my pleasantries, and keeps her eyes ahead on the spinning Oompa-Loompas.

2:34 AM

Cynthia goes upstairs to sleep and I'm one of the last few people left in the casino. The night before, The D had hosted a Dropkick Murphys show and apparently the crowd was partying until 5 AM. It seems like there really is no "average day" at The D.

3:50 AM

I nodded off sitting at a slot for a good 20 minutes, but when I wake up, I notice that a cocktail waitress has left me a fresh whiskey ginger. She did this while I was asleep. I'm confused, but not ungrateful.

4:20 AM

I decide to walk around the outer perimeter of the casino to see if there's anything cool I might've missed by staying (mostly) inside this whole time.

I notice that The D has a party armored truck parked by valet. That's a party bus built into the body of a stretch armored truck. I guess for when Obama throws a bachelor party?

5:00 AM

The casino is dead. There are maybe ten people gambling on the first floor. I haven't been offered a free drink in a while. The dancing dealers are long gone and have been replaced with dour, no-nonsense pros. There are only few folks sitting at the bar and I wonder how the bartender isn't just checking his phone when there's this little to do.

In the stillness of the early morning, I notice something that has apparently been present this whole time: You can smoke in here. Indoor smoking feels like something from before my lifetime, so this startles me a bit.

6:55 AM

A guy is at a craps table. I do my best to really learn the rules this time but I'm already at dwindling brain function levels and I give up, mad at myself for throwing in the towel.

7:20 AM

Old people start coming in off the streets. When I'm retired (pretend with me, for a second, that my generation will have that luxury) I think I'll want to spend my free time in whatever crazy Occulus Rift wonder world game designers have dreamed up. Then I realize that's not too different from how these people are choosing to stare at screens.

8:18 AM

I have no comprehension of how any of these games work anymore. I decide to follow my unlucky friend's advice and put $50 of my own money on red at a roulette table. I don't even hear the guy tell me I've won. I just see a stack of chips get pushed next to my chips. I try to pick up 100 $1 chips with both hands like an idiot. The croupier asks if I'd like to cash out and get larger chips. I mumble an affirmative and go get my money.

8:30 AM

Feeling like a zombie, I head back to my room to get some sleep. I shed my clothes like they're on fire and collapse onto the bed.

On the one hand, I'm happy that this experience didn't coax any dormant inner gambler out of me. On the other, I was partially disappointed that I couldn't get swept up in some sort of mania and feel the peaks and valleys of a hot and cold streak. The D showed me a good time, but all good times must come to an end. And mine should have ended hours earlier.

Fortunately, as I drifted off to sleep, there were plenty of hopeful gamblers making their way to the casino floor to pick up where I left off. Cash in one hand, plastic bong of alcoholic ice in the other, a whole day in Las Vegas lay ahead of them. Anything could happen if they just got lucky.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Part of England Has Basically Just Decriminalized Weed

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A guy holding a big bag of weed, maybe in Durham

A police chief in the North East of England has effectively given weed smokers the go-ahead to grow plants for their own use. Ron Hogg, Durham's Police and Crime Commissioner, says that local cannabis users will only be targeted if they grow for commercial gain or if they smoke it in a "blatant" way.

Related: How Marketers Are Capitalizing on Pot's New Lady Demographic

Hogg said that he hoped to open up the conversation around drug policy in the UK: "We are not prioritizing people who have a small number of cannabis plants for their own use. In low-level cases we say it is better to work with them and put them in a position where they can recover.

"In these cases the most likely way of dealing with them would be with a caution and by taking the plants away and disposing of them," he continued. "It is unlikely that a case like that would be brought before a court.

"Of course it is up to the government to change the law but I am trying to open up a debate about drugs and drugs policy."

Ron Hogg, Durham's Police and Crime Commissioner and hero to the North East's stoners

The move is a rare ray of light for Britain's drugs reform campaigners, who have spent recent times watching lawmakers worldwide rethink their attitudes to drug use. Meanwhile, the Tory government has only become more anti-getting-fucked-up, using bullshit statistics to introduce a blanket ban on legal highs earlier this year.

"By and large we are saying it is not the top of our list to go out and try to pick up people smoking joints on street corners," said Hogg, who in the past has called for harder drugs like coke and heroin to be made available to addicts on the NHS, "but if it's blatant or we get complaints, officers will act."

Want More Stories About Drugs in the UK?

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3. What the British University You Go to Says About Your Drug Taking
4. The VICE Guide to House Parties
5. In Defence of Poppers: The Banned 'Gay Drug' That Everyone Loves to Ridicule

Civil Liberties and Media Advocates Have Filed A Legal Challenge to Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Law

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Civil Liberties and Media Advocates Have Filed A Legal Challenge to Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Law

Austrian Firemen Turned Their Hoses on Syrian Refugee Kids to Help Them Cool Off

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All photos courtesy of Martin Peneder | FF-Feldkirchen

Speaking at a recent summit in Brussels, Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner announced her country would soon stop processing new asylum requests and that it wouldn't be accepting any of the 40,000 refugees that the EU planned on redistributing across the continent.

That doesn't mean that Austria isn't full of kind, loving people who are eager to help refugee. A group of these people, for example, work voluntarily for Feldkirchen an der Donau's fire department in Upper Austria. On Monday, when temperatures reached 96 degrees, they opened up their hoses in an attempt to cool down the 78 mostly Syrian refugees who are currently being housed in the town's vocational school.

Watch our documentary about the migrant crisis: Europe or Die

"We'd already brought them some clothes and food but, on Sunday, my family and I got to thinking about the weather," said Lukas Reisinger, a member of the volunteer fire department. "We wondered if they knew about the lake only two kilometers from the school. We decided we'd just bring the water to them, instead."

As for those who have been complaining that this was a waste of the town's resources, Reisinger couldn't care less. "Yes, those people exist," he said. "But you can't put a price on a child's smile."

MIT's Free Online Poker Class Shows You How to Win All Your Friends' Money

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MIT's Free Online Poker Class Shows You How to Win All Your Friends' Money

We Had a Serious Conversation with the Guy Who Wrote the Sharknado Movies

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Still from 'Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!' via IMDB

Two years ago, the SyFy channel released what should have been just another of its many cheesy, low-budget monster movies: Sharknado, a film about a freak hurricane that causes a tornado of live sharks to rain down on Los Angeles.

The film was produced by The Asylum, a company known for its "mockbusters"—movies that either piggyback on big studio successes (like Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, and Atlantic Rim) or go balls crazy with absurdity. Sharknado was shot in 18 days for less than $1 million by director Anthony C. Ferrante, the man who brought us 2012's Red Clover (also known as Leprechaun's Revenge). To Ferrante and others, the film was a chance to go crazy with the premise, relatively assured that they'd make a modest profit, like all Asylum movies. He, and most others, suspected that it'd have its brief run, and then fade into ultra-B-movie obscurity like most of SyFy and Asylum fare.

That didn't happen.

Somehow, Sharknado built a reputation as the right kind of bad movie. Brainless fun, just aware enough of its own insanity to evade pity, yet never breaking the fourth wall, the movie took off as a cult hit, reaching 82 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (amongst critics—its audience scores are just 34 percent). Buzzfeed proposed potential punny sequels, like Tsharknami: The "T" Is Silent But Deadly; Mother Jones actually dissected the physical possibility of a sharknado (spoiler: it's not possible); and someone even wrote a cheeky How to Survive a Sharknado and Other Unnatural Disasters guide, with supposed contributions from the films protagonists, Fin Sheperd (Ian Ziering) and April Wexler (Tara Reid, somehow). And the world eagerly awaited to see whether the one-off would become a valid franchise.

Still from 'Sharknado 2: The Second One' via IMDB

A year later, SyFy indulged us all with Sharknado 2: The Second One, and an entire Sharknado Week of creature features, built around Sharknado's fame. The sequel received less acclaim (only 59 percent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes this time); transferring the same disaster to New York City just wasn't enough to keep the first film's crazed spirit alive. But it was nonetheless a ratings coup for SyFy, which was the fifth-most viewed cable channel that week—a big win for the people who brought you 2010's Sharktopus (a poor man's Sharknado).

Now, almost inevitably, SyFy has announced that we're about to be treated to yet another installment in the franchise. Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No premiers at 9 PM tonight, during the network's second annual Sharknado Week. In the latest installment, Fin Sheperd will attempt to save the entire East Coast (including characters played by Michelle Bachman, Michael Bolton, Ann Coulter, Mark Cuban, Bo Derek, Frankie Muniz, Jerry Springer, and Raymond Teller) from a supersized sharknado disaster, with help from Gilbert Sheperd (David Hasselhoff) and his spaceship. I swear to god, I shit you not.

Let's face it: We're all going to watch this. We can't not watch this. But just as it's impossible to look away, it's also impossible not to suspect that this franchise is about to hit a wall. Eager to know just how much further the team behind Sharknado can push its premise, and whether or not we're all going to regret our life choices later tonight, VICE spoke to Thunder Levin, the writer of all three Sharknado movies. We talked about the source of the first film's success, the challenges of delivering on that magic again, and the future of the Sharknado universe.

Still from 'Sharknado' via IMDB

VICE: OK, so, where did the idea for Sharknado come from in the first place?
Thunder Levin: I did not come up with the word "sharknado." That was actually mentioned in [Red Clover]. There was just a throwaway line of dialogue: There's this town in the movie that's, I guess, being besieged by leprechauns—I haven't actually watched the whole thing. And somebody says, "Gosh, I hope we don't go the way of that other town. They never recovered after the sharknado hit."

One of the execs at SyFy, that stuck with them and they thought, "Hey, we should make a movie called Sharknado!" I had just written a film called Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood! and so I guess they figured I could handle the lighter tone.

They just gave you the name, and nothing else?
The director of Asylum did put together some notes—like, half a page of notes on where they thought the story could go. I ended up changing most of that anyhow. They had it taking place in Australia, first of all. Although I will give him credit for the idea of throwing propane bombs into a tornado.

But basically, it was a matter of coming up with a story that would justify the title Sharknado. And that's what I did.

Still from 'Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!' viaIMDB

Did you have any notion that the movie would turn into a touchstone for modern schlock?
I had hoped that it might turn into a little cult movie like Rocky Horror Picture Show or Buckaroo Banzai, which is a personal favorite. But there was no way to predict just what was going to happen.

Related: We spoke to Eli Roth about making a horror movie for Snapchat.

How has the success of the series affected the way that you're writing it?
The biggest change has been how many eyes are on it now. When I wrote the first one, they left me alone. Nobody gave a damn. I got notes from The Asylum; I got notes from SyFy; I addressed them, and that was it. The script was done.

On both the sequels—and it seems like it's becoming more the case for each one—every minute thing is examined by a dozen different pairs of eyes. There's a lot more politics and time involved, because a whole bunch of different people need to improve it and they all need to have their input as well. So making everybody happy is the biggest change.

At the same time, I feel a need to make the fans happy, now that we have fans. I do feel beholden to them to give them what they want—or at least what I think they want. For the first one, I just went in and once I figured out the basic premise, I just said, "OK, what would I do if this crazy thing happened to me?" Then I proceeded that way as far as the underlying structure. Now I'm writing to Ian Zeiring's performance as Fin Sheperd. I feel like the second one was more of what the fans were trying to make the first one into.

Still from 'Sharknado' via IMDB

What is it that you think the fans wanted? And how are you delivering even more of that now, three iterations into the franchise?
The only way to judge what the fans want has been from the feedback on Twitter and other social media. It seems to have been a case of them wanting just the craziest stuff to happen—enjoying the campiness of it and the over-the-top comic book dialogue moments. And crazy cameos, which developed almost entirely out of the Twitter response, because we had all of these celebrities saying that they wanted to be in it. Really, we didn't have much in the way of celebrity cameos in the first movie. John Heard was there, and he leant the whole film a little legitimacy, but he wasn't a cameo—he was a supporting role.

I guess just the sense of fun—the sense that we really can't go too far; that people are embracing the absurdity of it. But at the same time, I don't think any of that works if the film doesn't have heart—if it doesn't have characters you can root for and in some way empathize with. You've got to be able to follow these characters on their journey, or else it's just goofball. We can't go too far into mockery, nor can we stray too far into serious disaster movie. It has to walk this tightrope.

Actually, the thing I'm proudest of is being able to walk this tightrope, where everything in the film is played straight, yet it is done to humorous effect.

Something to look forward to: Mark Cuban stars as the President of the United States in 'Sharknado 3'

What's the heart of that story, in your own words?
The whole trilogy now has been this story of our hero, Fin Sheperd's sort of redemption—of rebuilding himself as a man. It sounds ridiculous to talk about these crazy movies in a serious way, but the truth is that there is something going on with his character. He has an arc. He starts out as this ex-famous surfer whose life has been destroyed by his own fame and his own ego. He's lost everything that was important to him and he's running a bar at the beginning of the first movie. And it's about how over the course of the three movies, he resurrects himself, restores his family, wins back the heart of his ex-wife, gets his kids to love and trust him again, and goes on to save the world. By the end of this third movie, that character arc is basically complete, where he's started his life over and he has a chance for a new family and a new life.

While we're doing all this wild and crazy stuff and having all of this fun, there is a real character there at the heart of it, giving it this emotional base. Maintaining that while doing all of the crazy stuff that is now required of a Sharknado film is another one of the challenges. Keeping Fin true to himself. Keeping the logic... I hesitate to use that word—we actually have a logic jar; anytime someone uses the word "logic" in an argument about Sharknado, they have to put a quarter in the jar—but there is an internal logic. Making sure that the film sticks to its own rules is important.

Still from 'Sharknado' via IMDB

Is there any other B-Movie out there that follows that dictum, or is that why we haven't seen any other movies take off like Sharknado out of the genre in recent years?
Maybe Buckaroo Banzai, but that was a long time ago. Maybe the Evil Dead movies, and they do have a cult following. Everybody loves Ash [that franchise's protagonist] to the point now where it's going to be a TV series. But not a lot, and I think that's one of the reasons why we did strike a nerve, because we were able to walk that very narrow line successfully.

Now that you've been walking the line between serious and ridiculous, what do you think of the other stuff that The Asylum puts out, which is really sometimes just ridiculous?
Obviously, I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me... There are two different flavors of Asylum movies: There's one where it's just ridiculous and bad and it almost seems like nobody cares. And then others where the filmmakers are really trying to do something worthwhile, whether it's campy or whether it's trying to make a good film, and just not having the resources to make it look as polished as the audiences might expect, but still having the interior content there.

The whole idea behind the "mockbuster" that The Asylum is famous for isn't so much mocking the concept of any of these big studio films. It's more about mocking the idea that you need $200 million to make a movie. So some of their movies actually have good stories and they succeed to greater or lesser degrees based on just how ambitious the production requirements are. The film I directed while Sharknado was being shot that prevented me from directing Sharknado, called AE—it's a big science-fiction film, but I went out of my way to make sure that there was nothing in the story that we couldn't do. So I'm very proud of that film, because I think it works even on the incredibly low budget that we had without making a mockery of itself.

Speaking of terrible movies, why are there so many of them on Netflix?

Do you think that there's some other Asylum movie that should have the same following as Sharknado then?
Obviously both of my films. But it would be for very different reasons. Anyone who went to watch my other Asylum films thinking they were going to get something like Sharknado would be sorely disappointed. My first film [Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood!] would appeal to the Sharknado fans a lot more. That's got the same tone where we walked that very fine line between all-out parody and a serious, dark horror film.

The guys at The Asylum are very determined that their films be seen as serious. They won't let you wink at the audience, so Sharknado is kind of an aberration in that regard. It had to be because of the title. But in general, the partners at The Asylum don't want you to do that kind of humor. And of course, we never actually wink at the camera in Sharknado. The characters never actually break the fourth wall. They don't really intentionally tell jokes unless it would be appropriate for their characters in the moment. It's more about the filmmakers being in on the joke, which allows the audience to be in on the joke.

There really aren't other Asylum films that play to the same dynamic. So I don't think there's really a good answer within the Asylum land—except, there was one film that the visual effects supervisor did called Nazis at the Center of the Earth. It plays it straight, but it's still so over-the-top ridiculous that it can be a lot of fun.

You said that Fin's character arc is done now. So can the series go any further? Or have you basically taken fan service, wish fulfillment, and the concept as far as it can go?
I absolutely think that there are places we can go. We've already started batting around ideas. There are a lot of ways that the story can go. Just because Fin has completed his redemption, I don't think that means that his character is done. I don't think we're anywhere near done.

To cap this off, what is peak Sharknado? What is the high point of the series?
I don't think there can be any doubt about that: It's the moment at the end of the first movie where Fin dives into the shark [that his love interest Nova's in] with a chainsaw, cuts his way out, and he pulls her out and she's still alive. That just sums up Sharknado perfectly.

We had a moment like that in the second movie, where he surfs the shark through the sky and lands it on the spire of the Empire State Building, then pulls [his wife] April's severed hand out of the shark, takes the wedding ring off it, and proposes to her with it. And in this one, there's another moment like that. I can't tell you what it is, but I think the audience will enjoy it.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Watch the Trailer for ‘Prince,’ a Striking and Stylish New Coming-of-Age Flick

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VICE Benelux has partnered with 100% Halal to co-produce Prince, the debut feature film by Dutch writer and director Sam de Jong.

The stark, stylish bildungsroman follows Ayoub (Ayoub Elasri), a Dutch-Moroccan teen in the projects of Amsterdam. Ayoub takes care of his estranged junkie dad and tries to be the "man of the house" for his mom and half-sister, all the while lusting after Laura (Sigrid ten Napel), the beautiful girl dating the bad guy. Determined to impress her, Ayoub falls in with a decked-out and coked-out "businessman" who provides him the duds and cash he covets. But de Jong is aware of the tropes he's playing with: Soon Ayoub is forced to confront ideals of masculinity and status, leading to a finale that is as surprising as it is hopeful.

As with Kids and other movies of the genre, Prince employs non-professional actors to portray life in the streets of contemporary Amsterdam. The 80s-style soundtrack also conjures up classic coming-of-age stories like Heathersand The Breakfast Club, but the anachronism of the music speaks to the rest of the film's style, which takes its cues from what's hip today—street style, high-waisted fashion, 90s throwbacks—more than from, say, John Hughes. The film utilizes a muted and spaced-out vibe, setting a shiny purple Lamborghini and glittering platform shoes against a bare urban landscape.

De Jong conveys the pervasiveness of gender roles and the nature of friendship with quick, sharp dialogue. When Ayoub and his friends are checking themselves out in the mirror while talking about girls, one says to another: "You're a real pervert." He shrugs it off: "I'm just chivalrous." Prince gives us a glimpse into what royalty looks like in Amsterdam's poor neighborhoods and just how dangerous these codes of courtly conduct can be.

Prince is set to be released in North American theaters by FilmBuff on August 14.

An Interview with the Punk Whose Bullet Belt Got Him Arrested by the Police

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An Interview with the Punk Whose Bullet Belt Got Him Arrested by the Police

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Does Drake Write His Own Raps? Meek Mill Thinks Not

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Photo of Meek Mill via his Instagram

Read: These Photos of the Lives of Houston Rappers Are Amazing

Philly rapper Meek Mill went on a Twitter rampage last night, accusing Drake of not writing his own lyrics and pretty much the entire rap illuminati of conspiring to hide that fact from the rest of the world. Meek claimed that the guy didn't even write the lyrics to his guest verse on "R.I.C.O"—the track Drake features on from Meek's new album, Dreams Worth More Than Money.

In fact, had Meek known, he says he would've taken the song off his album, especially since Drake says something along the lines of "the girl of your dreams to me is probably not even a challenge"—the dream girl being Nicki Minaj, Meek's current girlfriend and the long-term subject of many of Drizzy's most thirsty lyrics. Meek did, however, recognize J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar for writing their own raps, rare points of humility in an otherwise unbroken night of ranting.

Later this morning, even Tesco waded in on the debate:

The rant comes following a string of freestyles Meek has been dropping recently, which basically revolve around letting the whole world know that he's the best rapper there is. The message from his Twitter rant is clear: don't compare Meek to those he claims use ghost writers, Drizzy included. He signed off his tirade with a new hashtag: "#whenkeepingitrealgoesright."

There Is a New YouTuber Magazine Called 'Oh My Vlog!' and It Makes Me Feel a Thousand Years Old

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Do you ever look at something and have the sudden realization that your simple human brain cannot comprehend it? A magic trick, a dog standing on two legs, an impossible Jenga tower: the ordinary, jolted just two or three degrees out of kilter, until it is wrong, somehow, unreal, disconcerting. Related: here's the cover of a new youth-centric YouTuber magazine, Oh My Vlog!

I mean, what am I seeing with my eyes, here? What is this? What is happening and what is going on? Because I see human beings but I do not identify them as my own. I see a language with which I am familiar but the words make no sense. I mean, essentially, what I am saying is, looking at this cover for the new youth-centric YouTuber magazine from All About/Egmont publishing, what I am saying is: Am I actually the same species as these people? Look at their clear skin and joy, look at their energy and their wristbands: I am not them and they are not me, they are the T-1000s sent from the future to kill me, I am Arnold Schwarzenegger emotionlessly driving a truck off a bridge, I can only survive this vlogger onslaught with the help of my friends, alone I cannot defeat them.

Trending on NOISEY: Every Single Person I Saw At Lovebox Was Having The Time Of Their Life

Secondly: what in the blue, deep, and infinite fuck is "THIS MEgAZiN iS My BAE"? Because I comprehend those are symbols taken from the Latin alphabet, an alphabet I am intimately familiar with, and yet: and yet... I guess "MEgAZIN" is some compound of "mega" and "magazine"? I mean... can a magazine really be bae? No matter how mega, no: a magazine cannot be bae.

These happy white people have so much hair. So glossy, so thick. The boy ones have the same haircut, each and every one. They all smile with their teeth. Look at the dynamic and fun shapes they have contorted their joyful bodies into. I bet these people go to the doctor just for check ups. I bet these people have smoothies every day. I bet they know what flaxseed is. I had Maltesers for my breakfast today. The more I look at these vloggers—the more I stare into the abyss of their happy little eyes—the more I wonder if I could get 10K likes, one day, if I cheered up and tried. The more I worry that I am wasting my life. That I am a horrible, horrible dog.

I do not know who Tyler Oakley is or why a video phone call from him might be considered a prize worth winning, and it makes me feel infinite, ageless, so old I transcend age, like a billion-year-old meteor found on a sad, crap beach, like a distant planet, like a fossil. I am 28 years old.


Watch the latest VICE documentary, ICEMAN:


But this was never for me, was it? When I look at vloggers—so cheery, so full of advice, like your friend's older brothers or sisters who are inexplicably popular despite being Really Into Church—I get sincere Blue Peter vibes, as though the BBC's flagship magazine show has been reborn, made anew, with less of the making Tracey Island and more jump shots and cooing at dogs. Because I never really understood Blue Peter, even when it was aimed at me: even when I was a kid I rejected wholesomeness, the eerie joy of youthful adults who just want life to be fun, who sincerely want me to go to National Trust houses and do brass rubbings instead of playing Sega. Even as a kid I hated all that. But now I realize I was the one devoid of joy and fun. Now I realize that this is what people want.

This is the future, isn't it? This is what people like. I have been wrong all my life. People like pop music and shampoo that smells of fruit. People like people who pose for photos by joyfully kicking a Topman Chelsea boot at the camera while saying "Hi–yah!" People like five-minute videos where someone enthusiastically tells them what they just bought from the shop. Here I am, thinking forever that vlogging was vapid and awful, but it isn't: it's a coddle, a sweet cup of tea, a pat on the head, careful notes on how to put lipstick on, a heartfelt coming-out-as-bi announcement with urgent pleas to like and subscribe.

This is the future, and web celebs are a thing. This is the future, and Marcus Butler is afraid of bees. This is the future, and this megazin is bae.

Follow Joel on Twitter.

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