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It's the Ten-Year Anniversary of Realizing 'Garden State' Sucked

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It's the Ten-Year Anniversary of Realizing 'Garden State' Sucked

From the Streets to the Homeless World Cup: How Soccer Is Changing Lives

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From the Streets to the Homeless World Cup: How Soccer Is Changing Lives

Omar Khadr Tells His Side of the Story in New Documentary

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Omar Khadr looks out a window after being held in Guantanamo Bay for more than a decade. Still courtesy TIFF

"He's a murderer. He's a terrorist."

That's how one man describes Omar Khadr in the opening minutes of Michelle Shephard and Patrick Reed's documentary, Guantanamo's Child: Omar Khadr.

The Harper government agrees with this assessment. But to many others, Khadr's a victim, a child soldier. A kid who got caught up in something he didn't understand and who paid dearly for it.

The facts are these: on July 27, 2002, 15-year-old Khadr was involved in a firefight in Afghanistan that left one US soldier dead. He was then captured by the US, held in a prison in Bagram for three months, tortured, interrogated, and ultimately transported to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he'd spend the next ten years of his life. In 2010, Khadr signed a plea deal and was convicted of five war crimes, including murder. He was sentenced to eight years, and in 2012, he was transferred to a prison in Alberta to serve the remainder of his sentence. But on May 7 of this year, the now 28-year-old Khadr was released on bail while his Guantanamo conviction is appealed in the US.

In Guantanamo's Child: Omar Khadr, Khadr is finally given the chance to tell his story. Shephard and Reed followed Khadr during his first few days of freedom and spoke to him about the events that led to his imprisonment, the last 13 years of his life, and the extreme challenges that still lie ahead.

VICE sat down with Shephard and Reed to talk about their documentary, which premieres September 14 at the Toronto International Film Festival.

VICE: Michelle, you've written extensively about Omar Khadr, both as the Toronto Star's national security reporterand in your 2008 book Guantanamo's Child. Why did you want to make a documentary?
Michelle Shephard: I think one of the frustrating things about the story over the years is that I had been writing so much about it and the debate in Canada really stayed the same. And I felt that it would be great if people could actually see him, decide for themselves, and he could tell his side of the story. That's why I wanted to do the documentary and I was lucky enough to meet up with Patrick and go from there.

You've reported on this story since 2002, but you only got to speak with Omar in person for the first time earlier this year. What was that experience like?
Shephard: Being able to speak with him was the biggest challenge of the documentary because we had fought for so long to get access to him, and when he came back to Canada we assumed we'd be able to do these jailhouse interviews. We fought, but the Canadian government wouldn't allow us to do that. So it did take him getting bail to finally meet him, and we had a couple days with him. It was really rewarding to finally be able to ask him the questions that I know I've been dying to ask for many years. It was great for Canadians to be able to see him, too.

Patrick Reed: It was a challenge as a filmmaker because usually when you're making a film about somebody, you can spend a lot of time with them before the cameras start rolling. In our case, we had two half days with him. That's not a lot of time to gain somebody's trust. We'd met him and literally 60 seconds later the camera is starting to roll and you have to get what you can in the limited amount of time you have. So it was a challenge.

Going into that first interview, did you have any preconceived ideas about who this guy actually was? Did anything surprise you when you actually met him?
Shephard: I think, probably more than most people, I had a good idea of who he was just because, at least from a distance, I could watch him grow up over the years in Guantanamo. And together we'd interviewed so many people who'd had access to him. So we'd heard a lot of stories about him. And a lot of that was consistent with who he was. Probably what was most surprising is that, I thought after spending half of his life, essentially, in prison, maybe the first couple days of freedom—which was the time that we were with him—he would be completely overwhelmed. And he wasn't. And I think that's probably his survival mechanism kicking in. I think he learned over the years how to survive in prison and he was a lot more serene than I expected him to be.

Reed: Yeah. I expected him to be pretty bitter. I mean how can you not be? He spent half his life in prison. He'd been tortured, he came back home to Canada and it took him a couple years before he could get out. And, in our case, he said he wanted to talk to us and he wasn't allowed to. But he was very chill, he was very relaxed. Some people who have seen the film will respond to that and think, Wow! This guy is almost like a philosopher, he's so centred, this is amazing. And other people will see it and say the guy is a charlatan. He's a survivor, if you want to be nice about it, or he's somebody who's pretty good at manipulating the media and knows how to be on camera.

He addresses that in the film. He says that people are going to think he's a fake.
Reed: It's a tough one. He also says in the film that he doesn't really like publicity. But he comes out and there's a scene in the film that a lot of people would have seen just in the media of him addressing this throng of reporters—which is scary for virtually everybody—and the guy looks like he's had handlers for his entire life. He's very charismatic and very relaxed, but there's this duality because, at the same time, he says, "I was reluctant to do it. I really just want to become a regular person and I really just wish all the attention would go away and I could move on with my life." Some people look at that and think, Well why are you so comfortable on camera then? So he's a contradictory guy who has lived a very extraordinary and difficult life.

How did Omar feel about telling his story? Was he anxious or eager to do the interview?
Shephard: He didn't actually want to. There was a period when he was in prison and he agreed to do the interview, but when he actually got out, he didn't want to do the interview. It took us spending some time and convincing him. He says in the film, "My greatest wish would be to just disappear and become an average guy." As we said to him, "Well, that's not going to happen. At least not for a long time." But it did take some convincing to get him to speak. At first, he was pretty reluctant to talk. I would say it wasn't the easiest interview. We both interviewed him over the course of a couple days and we both have very different styles. I think in the back of my head I was thinking a lot of the time that this was someone whose been interrogated for so much of his life, which makes it hard to talk to him in some ways. Because you don't want to mimic the interrogator. At the same time, you want to get at the truths and you know that he probably knows how to answer questions. So it was kind of tricky.

Reed: The other thing [is that] it's the first two days [and, as he says in the film,] he feels like he's on this freedom high. He talks about the fact that he didn't sleep at all the night before, because there is that obvious element of, Is this a dream?I don't want to sleep. What am I going to wake up to? Because he goes from a situation of being in prison to the next day being in a suburban house in Edmonton, basically with an adopted family—his lawyer and his lawyer's wife—and all of a sudden, you've got all the choices in the world. What are you going to do with your day? It does become a bit overwhelming. And [in the film] he takes us up into his room and he's very comfortable with us being there, I think partially because the entire experience for him at that stage of his life was so weird and so uncomfortable that, Okay, so a camera's in my room? Like what the hell am I doing out of prison anyways? This is so strange, so let's take it to the next level. And then, you know, he can't even open his window. The basic life skills. You go from 15 [years old] and then you wake up a number of years later and the world's changed and what are you going to do next?

Patrick, I wanted to talk to you about your motivations for doing the documentary. Your last film, Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children, explored Romeo Dallaire's attempts to end the use of child soldiers, specifically in Rwanda, South Sudan and the DRC. But the way we perceive and treat child soldiers in those countries is very different from how Omar has been treated. Was there something about that juxtaposition that drew you to the story?
Reed: I've made some films about child soldiers, particularly in Africa with General Romeo Dallaire. Within one documentary we do touch very briefly on Omar Khadr and [how] people seem to really get behind the issue of child soldiers in Africa, but when it becomes a Canadian, Omar Khadr, it becomes far trickier for a lot of people. Or they take a very strong stance either way, often negatively against him. So he was on my radar. But I didn't start this film coming from an activist perspective or thinking, This is going to change things. As a filmmaker, what really interested me about him is just the idea that everybody seemed to have an opinion on this guy. A very, very strong opinion often. And he's obviously lived a complicated life and has great notoriety. So it's just that opportunity to meet with him and then also meet with all the other people who surrounded his life and show the complexity, allow him to tell his own story, have his story challenged by other people who he's met and then let the audience decide. So my initial motivation was it's a great story and it's a complicated, polarizing figure. So let's explore that.

You filmed the moment when Omar first speaks to the press. This was the first time the Canadian public ever heard from him. Do you think that Canadians' perceptions of him have changed a little bit since that first media interview?
Shephard: I think so. Just from a very unscientific poll of people coming up to me, making comments, or emails you get. For so many years, the dial never moved on that story. And anytime I wrote about that story I would get the angriest emails. And sometimes, on the same story, from both ends—the far right and the far left. So there were always these two groups that had very strong opinions. And then a grey area in the middle. I think that press conference was probably the first time that the dial moved a little bit and people thought, Oh, well, maybe I don't have this story exactly right, or Maybe he's not quite the monster he's been portrayed to be.

You interview a lot of very high-profile people, including Guantanamo's chief prosecutor at the time, a former CSIS official, and cell mates of Omar's. What challenges did you experience getting these people on camera?
Shephard: In some ways we were kind of lucky with the timing because enough time had passed in this case and [from the time of] his guilty plea and what happened in Guantanamo. I think some people were finally willing to tell the story—or their side of the story. We have someone who was at the firefight, one of the special forces soldiers there. He does talk on camera and we were really excited to get that interview, but he used a pseudonym, so there are still some sensitivities around the case.

Reed: I think the main reason why people talked to us was because of Michelle, because she wrote a book, obviously, about Omar Khadr. And the thing that is particularly special about the book is that it either pissed off everybody or everybody seemed to find something about it that they'd like. It's pretty rare that the Special Forces guy who was there, the hardcore US military true believers in the War on Terror, read the book, and liked the book. And then you've got people on the other side who have been very supportive of Omar and his advocates who also liked the book.

Shephard: It's a product placement for the book.

Reed: No, but it's an unusual situation because usually there is such a battle in terms of—you can often get people from one side to talk to you, but [it's rare] to get people who have different opinions to respect your past work, in this case, and open up because they trust the fact that you're going to be relatively objective, as far as you can be.

Shephard: This goes back to what you were saying earlier, that Patrick had no intention of making a point-of-view film. We didn't go into this with an activist mindset. We did it very journalistically. So, in that sense, we wanted to tell all sides of the stories and I think people trusted us to do that. Some people in the film see him as an absolute victim, some people see him as an unrepentant terrorist. And we said, "Let's give all their voices some air time."

And there are some people in the documentary who have some very strong opinions about the political system and the role it's played in Omar's case. There's a scene early on in the film where Edney tells a group of reporters that Harper is a bigot. Later, a CSIS official says that Harper probably hasn't read the Khadr file and Omar's just been wrapped up in a political agenda. Was there any sort of political message that you wanted to send with this film?
Reed: It's not so much a political message, I think it's a human message. What we focused on, or what we discovered, is that the amount of people who were very intimately involved in Omar's case, in Guantanamo Bay, in the War on Terror, many of them were transformed or their opinions changed, largely because of Omar. In the sense that they could have strong opinions and principles about what they were doing when they were interrogating people, when they were basically doing these Kangaroo Courts in Guantanamo Bay, but then on top of it all, when you're dealing with the fact, you're looking across at somebody and he's 15 years old, and he speaks English and he reads similar magazines to you and you start to think, This is weird. There's something not right about this. It's just one of those gut-level checks about I've got to look in the mirror and maybe reevaluate what I'm doing. So to me it's less a political thing. People who work with CSIS, people across the board, because of him as a kind of symbol, really did change their minds about things.

Shephard: I think the only thing to add that is that you've heard over the years people who have talked in the political arena about him and what the comments were in that arena were so different from the people that actually know him and work with him. From the bureaucrats, from the former head of the counter-terrorism intelligence unit. There's always been that disconnect. So in that sense, I think that does come out. It wasn't our intention to bring that out in the film, but it does come out that he was a political pawn in a much greater drama.

People have been following Omar's case in the news for more than a decade. Why do you think they should see the documentary?
Reed: I think people should see it largely because it's a great story and it forces you to ask basic questions about how you see the world. And whether you want to come at something from a position of simple judgement, or whether you want to open your mind and have your mind challenged, and possibly changed through the course of 90 minutes. In the same way that many of our characters in the film had their own lives changed when they experienced Omar, when they met him. I know a lot of family members who would've been very gung-ho, pro-War on Terror, and hearing Omar might change their minds about things. Probably not. Hearing somebody like the US military interrogator who is like the biggest true believer and tortured some guys and thought he was doing things to get revenge, and seeing that guy change throughout the course of the film and say, "I look at life in a different way now," that would convince them to reconsider things.

Shephard: I think that's why his story has always been so interesting. His own story, of course, is compelling and incredibly surreal. But he represents so much more. He represents how the world really changed after 9/11 in incredible ways. Every little part of his story has a piece of that. So, I think, while of course it's a documentary about Omar Khadr and his saga, it really is about the last 10 years.

Omar's Guantanamo conviction is currently being appealed in the US. So the film ends and you naturally want some kind of conclusion, but there isn't really one yet. What do you think is next for Omar?
Shephard: From what I understand he's now off to university. Still trying his best to fly below the radar and stay out of the attention.

Reed: I think one of the most touching things, for me, at the end of the film is just his admission, "What am I going to do next?" It's not the usual question that people who are in their mid-20s ask about what kind of job am I going to get? Or where I'm going to go? Am I going to hang out with my friends? It's the larger question about what am I going to do next when I can actually finally relax and crawl under my bed and cry? And deal with what has actually happened to me? Not perform for the camera, not be a symbol, just be myself. And that's probably going to be a pretty difficult, messy place to be for a while.

How to Enjoy Pop Culture When You're Black

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Still via Family Guy episode 'Jerome Is the New Black'

There is a point in every young person's life when they have a rude awakening about how they fit into the world. For me, this point came when I found out that the cartoons that I spent so many hours watching were, unfortunately, all racist.

FOX's Animation Domination Sunday night block—at the time, it was The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and American Dad!—had long occupied a sacred space in my weekly schedule. It was a time when I could unwind, relax, and laugh without regard. But after taking a class in college that explained how racial stereotypes persist through visual representation in television and film, I quickly started to notice just how much each of my beloved cartoons fit right into the racist mold.

Dr. Hibbert was a Black doctor on The Simpsons, voiced by a white actor, who once sang "Ol' Man River" to his Bill Cosby best; a 2003 episode of King of the Hill is titled "Racist Dawg," spelling intact; and, to give you an idea of the sort of humor commonly employed in Family Guy, the creators once used the Precious movie poster to promote themselves during Emmy nominations season—placing the phrase "VOTE FOR US OR YOU'RE RACIST" at the bottom.

Although I knew that I couldn't stop watching these shows cold turkey, I did try to find additional things that were entertaining without being simultaneously (and blatantly) offensive. What I immediately realized, however, was that even the most seemingly innocent content still manages to somehow, in some way, tie back to racism.

It will always be difficult to enjoy popular culture as a person of color.

There's a part in Trainwreck where Amy Schumer's character, giving a eulogy for her father, says: "I know he fucked up, and I know he probably offended every person here, but raise your hand if he was your favorite person." It's a touching moment that comes after we've seen Schumer's character riff on her father for being racist, misogynist, homophobic, and overall, a terrible person.

Although I laughed along with the film when I saw it a few weeks ago, I couldn't help but reflect on a similar situation: There I was, sitting in a movie theater, enjoying a movie that was written by and starring a public figure who I had recently vowed to stop supporting due to some of her previous racist remarks.

Just as quickly as she was crowned the unapologetic feminist we had all been waiting for, Amy Schumer's shine started to dim. She was criticized for advocating for a brand of feminism that routinely ignores the experiences of non-whites. During a standup special, Schumer mentioned that she "loves joking about race" before poking fun at how strange black names can be ("something wild, something crazy") and, although she said she wasn't "going to do some racist impersonation," she began to mock the ghetto black girl ("guuuurrll," some obnoxious yelling, and a casual reference to double-dutch). She concluded by acknowledging that the joke "doesn't always work" but that, "nothing works 100 percent of the time... except Mexicans."

That skit—coupled with a pair of jokes about how all Latina women are crazy and all Hispanic men are rapists—pushed Schumer into the media for her "shockingly large blind spot around race." Then, she justified the material, writing on Twitter: "It is a joke and it is funny. I know that because people laugh at it. Even if you personally did not." She insisted that she was "not going to start joking about safe material" before adding, "Trust me. I am not racist."

Naturally, being black, I did not trust this.

Black people have been at the butt of the joke in popular culture for longer than the term 'pop culture' has existed.

With all the recent buzz about political correctness destroying comedy, I constantly struggle with my anger. It's just a joke, right? I don't want to be the Debbie Downer that turns everything into a racial attack.

But the thing is, racist jokes just aren't funny—not now, nor have they really ever been. My culture, especially stereotyped approximations of it, is not something that I care to see packaged and exploited for the layman's appeal to laughter.

Black people have been at the butt of the joke in popular culture for longer than the term "pop culture" has existed. Back in the late 1830s, white audiences were particularly partial to seeing white performers in blackface, and minstrelsy helped to propel the idea that black people were loud, stupid, indignant, unkempt, and sexually insatiable. This trope continued when blacks were employed to portray themselves as these same characters, thus permanently pigeonholing them into stereotyped caricatures. Though blackface has long been considered a faux pas, its impact on the way that popular culture characterizes black people lives on.

This is why jokes like the ones Amy delivered during her standup special are so hurtful and destructive. Sure, a joke about "crazy" black names may seem perfectly innocent on the surface, but it takes on unprecedented power when you consider that people with white-sounding names on their résumés are 50 percent more likely to receive callbacks than those with black-sounding names. These jokes don't exist in a vacuum; they affect my everyday life.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

I went to see Trainwreck anyway, because I wanted to be part of the same pop-culture conversations as every other 20-something. But as I sat in the theater, I felt guilty about every joke that I laughed at—regardless of whether or not it was offensive or insensitive (of which there were many). I felt guilty about enjoying anything that was created at the hands of this woman who I had so vehemently railed against a few weeks prior. Amy Schumer was not my friend. She was not someone whose views and opinions I agreed with. She was the enemy—and yet there I was, in the theater, uncontrollably laughing.

At the end of the day, it will always be difficult to enjoy popular culture as a person of color. Many of its core producers are white and routinely have revealed themselves to be particularly insensitive when it comes to topics of race. To truly stand firm against racial insensitivity would mean cutting oneself off from just about every facet of mainstream entertainment, which would ultimately be neither possible nor enjoyable. Alternatively, we, as black people, are placed in an unfortunate position: In order to enjoy popular movies, TV, and music, we must eschew our personal feelings about the people behind the product.

For those who aren't black, it's the same cognitive dissonance that makes people uncomfortable with The Cosby Show in light of the ongoing Bill Cosby scandal. Are we still allowed to love Cliff Huxtable even though Bill Cosby is a serial rapist? Is there any possibility of comfortably consuming entertainment even though it was made at the hands of someone so utterly contemptuous?

On Thump: Kele Okereke on Being Gay and Black in the Dance and Rock Worlds

I've asked myself that question more times than I can count. In the February 2015 issue of The Gentlewoman, Björk said, "Sound is the nigger of the world, man." She was discussing the subpar quality of museum speakers. Justin Bieber came under similar scrutiny when a four-year-old video surfaced of him unapologetically telling a joke with a disgustingly racist punchline. Even Tina Fey, who is frequently lumped in with the current wave of white feminists like Amy Schumer, wrote in her 2011 memoir Bossypants that it was OK for her father to warn her about black kids "coming from West Philly to steal bikes" because, after all, "this wasn't racism; it was experience."

It's easy to write these off as small, incidental slip-ups, to defend these people because they're just offhand comments and they didn't really mean to sound racist. But if we ignore these small microaggressions, then we ignore how they create a larger picture of anti-black racism and oppression that pervades modern society today. Sure, Tina Fey might not have intended to be racist, but the stereotype that black men are crooks has real consequences: I can't even begin to count the times that a white storeowner has followed me around a store. On an even deeper level with far worse consequences, this automatic (mis)categorization of Blacks—specifically males—as being thugs and crooks has lead to a large number of innocent people being killed by the police, particularly in the past few years. The more that instances such as these are ignored and swept under the rug, the more the greater public internalizes the overarching ideas that they represent.


Voguing, though heavily appropriated in white popular culture, originated in the black underground ballroom scene. VICE talks to a House of Ninja superstar.


So what am I to do? In a culture so heavily saturated with these underlying prejudices, it's impossible to actively boycott the work of every problematic person unless you're willing to ostracize yourself completely from society. So, ultimately, I've made the decision to separate the art from the artist. I will not allow these examples of racial insensitivity from the producers of popular culture to taint my enjoyment of the product itself. I don't deserve the punishment that comes from excluding myself from something that others are free to absentmindedly enjoy.

I respect and admire people who boycott content because its producers have done or said unsavory things, but at the end of the day, it's futile—at least for me. Racism isn't going to disappear as a result, and all that really comes about in response to self-inflicted forfeiture is the fact that white people are free to carry on in ignorance, while the rest of us are left out-of-touch, unengaged, and unentertained.

I would be lying if I said that I didn't still watch those same cartoons years after finding out how racist they were—even if I do binge watch them on Netflix now rather than giving up my Sunday nights. But now, when I see Cleveland—Family Guy's "token black" character—dreamily describe his (stereotypically racist) post-church meal, I scoff instead of laugh.

Follow Michael Cuby on Twitter.

A Notorious Harlem Drug Lord Turned Witness Is Supposedly Out of Prison

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Alberto "Alpo" Martinez before his arrest. Photo courtesy the author/F.E.D.S Magazine

The name Alberto "Alpo" Martinez tends to elicit strong reactions. He's been celebrated as a street legend of epic proportions—an iconic figure out of hip-hop mythology who was played by the rapper Cam'ron in the movie Paid in Full. At the same time, Alpo is often reviled as a snitch, a rat of the highest order who allegedly betrayed the street code to save himself, tarnishing his legacy in the chronicles of gangster lore.

One thing is for sure, though: Word of Alpo's apparent release from a little-known federal prison witness protection program—they're called "cheese factories" on the inside—is resonating on the street. Don Diva magazine, probably the longest-running periodical devoted to the drug underworld and street life in New York City and beyond, reported that Alpo was released on its website last week.

Alpo was known as a trendsetter in crack-era Harlem, transporting hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Washington, DC, while flaunting his wealth and flamboyant lifestyle with cars, clothes and jewelry. But when he killed his best friend and business partner Rich Porter—another Harlem drug dealer who's been immortalized in hip-hop lore—Alpo's rep took a serious blow. When Alpo went on to testify against the man believed to be his former Washington, DC, enforcer in open court—apparently to spare himself a life sentence—he was branded a traitor.

To get the real deal on this infamous figure, VICE turned to another former Harlem drug dealer, Kevin Chiles. Chiles served over a decade in the feds for his own drug organization, founded Don Diva from the cell block, and was a contemporary of Alpo's back in the 1980s. Back then, the crack epidemic was in full swing and young hustlers like Alpo, Rich Porter, Azie and Kevin Chiles were making a name for themselves by perpetuating the lifestyle and fashions that rappers would go on to emulate.

Here's what he had to say.

VICE: Now that we think he's out of prison, do you suspect Alpo will come back to New York? Harlem, even?
Kevin Chiles: I am most certain that Alpo won't come back to New York. He knows he has a bullseye on him. That situation with Rich left Harlem scarred and people have strong feelings about it. And he admitted to playing a part in the death of another with a well-liked figure, Domenico Benson from Brooklyn. I could see a younger dude, on the come-up, try to make a name for themselves by taking Alpo out. They would be instantly infamous. I'm sure these are things he should be considering.

How did you learn Alpo was out?
It's been speculated that he's been home for years. But I know it's true now because he had been speaking to a mutual female associate of ours. In the conversations, Alpo was trying to fill in the blanks of years past and my name came up. She seemed excited about speaking to him and she thought that I would share her enthusiasm, but she sensed after talking to me that I wasn't.... I explained to her that I wasn't checking for him, but I didn't go into details about the specifics because she was outside the lines as far as that lifestyle was concerned.

You and Alpo were once friends right?
I was cool with all of them—me, Rich, A, and Po. We would play basketball, gamble, compete over girls, swap cars; we did all those type of things on the regular. At any given time between me, Rich and Po, we may have had 15 to 20 luxury cars like Porsches, Benzs, BMWs. etc. If one of us pulled up in a car the other liked, we let him hold it.

What was Alpo like?
He brought attention to himself. He was charismatic and outgoing. He had a party always going on around him and people gravitated to him. What ultimately was unique about Alpo was that he would go from uptown to downtown from the East side to the West side almost like he was campaigning. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was crazy about them bikes. Anybody that knows anything about Harlem, especially in the summertime, is that you have different groups that ride through Harlem doing tricks on bikes and Alpo was one of those dudes that was notorious for that. Po would be on a bike doing wheelies like 15, 20 blocks at a time.

What did you make of the film Paid in Full and how it represented Alpo, Rich, Azie and Harlem?
I don't think it captured the essence of what it was like being a twentysomething millionaire in Harlem. The influence and power was overwhelming. It made you feel invincible. We were young and had a lawlessness about us—you felt like you owned the city. The music and the fashion of the era just added to the allure.

What happened when Alpo killed Rich Porter?
We originally didn't know Alpo killed Rich. It was speculated but it wasn't until he did an interview and told on himself. But Rich's death had a huge impact on Harlem. The timing couldn't have been worse—Richard was in the middle of negotiating the release of his 12-year-old brother, Donnell, who had been kidnapped and was being held for $500,000 ransom. Rich was killed, and then a few days later the body of his little brother was found in the same vicinity.

What do you think about snitching in general?
We all signed on to live our lives outside of the law. There's a certain principle or mindset that is put into play. For me and anybody of that mindset or lifestyle who chooses to live outside the law, there's a certain understanding: It's never right in any instance to take your situation and then pass it on to somebody else to suffer the consequences of your actions. A man takes responsibility for his actions.

What is up with Don Diva magazine for those who aren't hip?
We call ourselves an urban lifestyle magazine. It doesn't just encompass the gangster lifestyle —we touch on all aspects of the urban existence. The magazine was created because I didn't want to see people follow in my footsteps. I know this new generation is infatuated with what they think that the gangster lifestyle represents, but they have no understanding of the consequences and collateral damage it causes.

When I came up with the idea for the magazine, I was probably at one of the lowest points of my life and wanted to be able to do something to affect change. One of the only upsides to being incarcerated in the federal prison system was that I was able to meet other individuals of my stature from all over the country. We all had our own experience with the legal system and the other consequences that come with our lifestyle. I knew if I could tell the stories of individuals who are respected in their communities like Larry Hoover from Chicago, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory from Detroit, Akbar Pray from Newark, New Jersey, Guy Fisher from Harlem Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff from Queens and The Chamber Brothers from Detroit—just to name a few—we could help this generation make better decisions.

These individuals and their stories serve as a cautionary tale. No one wants to end up dead or in jail for the rest of their life.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter and check out his book on Alpo here.

One Person Dead, Active Shooter Still Sought at Delta State University

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One Person Dead, Active Shooter Still Sought at Delta State University

How to Attend an Orgy

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How to Attend an Orgy

Stephen Colbert's First Week on 'The Late Show' Proves He's Ready to Be America's Therapist

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Screencap from'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' on YouTube

There's a mile-wide gulf between a satirist and a late-night talk-show host. A satirist usually deals in caricature. A satirist has to do the "speak truth to power" routine, critiquing institutions, staying on-message, suggesting virtue by dramatizing its opposite. A satirist can subsist on applause instead of laughter. But a late-night talk show host has a more intimate obligation. He's somebody you invite into your home, usually your bedroom, to make you smile, and help you forget about the horror of being alive. By taking over The Late Show, Stephen Colbert can't just be a public wit anymore. He has to be America's avuncular therapist.

So obviously, The Colbert Report, not just the name but the concept too, is no more. This is a good thing, considering Colbert had burned out on the whole thing. "I play[ed] a character on my show, and he's modeled on punditry, and I no longer respect my model... I don't really know if I could have done it much longer, because you have to be invested in your model. And I am really not," he said in Judd Apatow's book of interviews, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy.

The central question following his first week as The Late Show host, then, is whether the change was worth it. He's effectively killing the character that made him famous: the insane cable-news pundit whose real personality we could comfortably map to our own political biases. He's vulnerable now. He can't be Stephen Colbert, king of the cartoon pundits. He has to be Stephen Tyrone Colbert from Charleston, South Carolina, by way of Washington, DC, 51 years old, a real person.

That's why you could almost hear his heart beating too fast as he sped through his first monologue last week. He had never done this before. He had never performed without his market-approved character. He had to be earnest all of a sudden. And his first earnest act when he sat down at The Late Show desk as a real person was to pay tribute to his predecessor David Letterman, whose influence on comedy is incalculable and whose outstanding achievements in the field of late-night TV set an impossible standard to match.

The principle joy of watching Letterman's final days, as he openly rode out the clock to retirement, was how little time he had for Jimmy Fallon and what Jimmy Fallon represents: the importance of social media in modern comedy. Fallon is always up, always trying to go viral, always chasing after an anonymous 5 million YouTube hits as much as he is the audience getting ready for bed. If contemporary late-night stardom meant having a breakdance conversation with Brad Pitt, Letterman was having none of it.

Colbert lacks Dave's gleeful misanthropy, but it's clear the new host isn't interested in the tenuous renown that virality offers, either. As his first week went on, and Colbert kept reminding us that he's an affable guy with no interest in being divisive, it also became clear he wasn't trying to play to the TV and the internet at the same time. Colbert's show is leisurely paced, and while it may have stunts (Paul Simon showing up under a pseudonym, Jim Brown being there at all), it is not driven by them. Jimmy Fallon essentially hosts a variety show, a blissed-out New York City–centric reimagining of Pee Wee's Playhouse that could air at 2 PM almost as well as it could at midnight. But Colbert is firmly in the tradition of Letterman and Carson: tell some jokes, put tired people at ease, and try to have authentic conversations with guests.

Fallon's brand of high-concept giddiness can only exist post-viral comedy, but Colbert's approach could have easily existed before it. By and large, the first four episodes felt less like an episode of The Colbert Report than they did an episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2003 or so, before the baggage of the NBC fallout: goofy, irreverent, and ultimately not too topical.

The Conan stamp showed up more than once. Les Moonves holding a switch to turn on reruns of The Mentalist is a dead ringer for the Walker, Texas Ranger bit. And the cursed amulet demanding Colbert shill for hummus is right out of Conan's playbook. Which is not a problem.

Maybe this is because of Brian Stack, Conan's former right-hand man on the writing staff, who left Conan's side after almost 20 years to write for Colbert. His presence suggests the show will continue navigating away from the minefield of ultra-topical comedy and toward material with longterm staying power. In the first week's big comedic highlight, ostensibly a series of Donald Trump jokes, Trump is never really the punchline—the presidential candidate is just the vehicle that allows Colbert to debase himself with Oreos. That joke gets a laugh even if you don't know who Trump is, or what Oreos are. It feels like classic Conan, and it's brought home by Colbert's impeccable timing.

Meanwhile, Colbert's interview approach has been hit-or-miss because he tries to extract conversations out of the guests—and both parties have to be willing to participate for that to work. This doesn't quite jibe with the "pretend we're buddies, share an anecdote about my new project, plug my new project, be out of the studio in 15 minutes" interview format, upon which many late-night interviews rely. Letterman could get around that with his "dig your own grave" approach, which found him being as rude and caustic to guests as possible, but Colbert doesn't seem to have that level of acidity in his personality. So it was impossible for him to make Elon Musk sound like anything other than a Popular Science feature from 1997, or for Jeb Bush to sound like anything at all. He has to get guests out of plug mode for his approach to succeed. But when he succeeded, with Joe Biden, the result was probably the most intimate, empathetic interview of 2015. Neither of them asked you to listen, and that made it more rewarding.

This is why the real Colbert may very well be a more durable public figure than the pundit Colbert. The line between schtick and earnestness is clearly demarcated, and he can cross from one to the other seamlessly. He can mix verbal wit and 1930s screwball physicality in a way no one has since Phil Hartman on NewsRadio. He's as topical as the format demands without becoming an outright topical comedian.

And if nothing else, he's the antidote to Fallon, who carries himself with the scatterbrained urgency of a party host who tries too hard to make sure everybody has a good time. You know, the one guy who sort of knows everybody, and talks to you for ten seconds before he bounces to the next person, with a manic enthusiasm that's tiring even to bystanders. Fallon damned himself to playing a 19-year-old who spends his time between classes reading BuzzFeed. Colbert doesn't have that problem. His approach will get better with time. He'll age into this show well. It'll probably be better when he's 60. Therapists derive their gravitas from their age and wisdom, anyway.

Follow Kaleb on Twitter.


Everything We Know So Far About Jeremy Corbyn's New Shadow Cabinet

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Jeremy Corbyn and his mate John McDonnell when they were just Labour back-benchers. Photo by Jack Pasco

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Newly elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, socialist destroyer of worlds, killer of firstborns, and ruinous lunatic, if David Cameron's social media account is anything to go by, has shaken up the party by choosing his new shadow cabinet.

Among them is John McDonnell, a man who once said he would "swim through vomit" to vote against benefit cuts, appointed as shadow chancellor. He is somewhat of a lightning rod for controversy, saying things like he'd "assassinate Thatcher" if he could travel back in time, and that IRA terrorists should be "honored" at a Bobby Sands memorial.

It wasn't so long ago that McDonnell and Corbyn were a couple of back-bench stirrers. When VICE interviewed them before the election, McDonnell said "you can't change the world through the Parliamentary system."

Tom Watson, elected deputy leader, is a more contemporary choice. A large figure on social media, Watson was a big player in the inquiry into the phone hacking scandal, which cost many people their jobs after the News of the World was forced to close as a result of it. He is also a prominent voice in trying to tackle what he has called an "epidemic" of historical sex abuse.

Something which many media outlets are picking up on is a distinct lack of women in the party's top positions. Shadow chancellor, home secretary, foreign secretary, and deputy leader are all occupied by men. This is strange, considering Corbyn's stance on wanting "half of MPs to be women," and strong ideas about fixing the gender pay gap and mooting the idea of a women's only train carriage to protect against sexual assault. However it's also strange that nobody's pointing out that, with the full list yet to be announced, Corbyn's team has as many women as the current Conservative cabinet.

Among the women appointed are Angela Eagle as shadow business secretary, Heidi Alexander as shadow health secretary, Dianne Abbott—who lost out on the deputy leader position earlier this year—is shadow international development MP. Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury is Seema Malhotra and former aide to John Prescott Rosie Winterton has been made chief whip.

In a sign that Blairism and old-fashioned hierarchy haven't been completely swept away, Tony's Blair's former flatmate Lord Falconer has been appointed shadow justice secretary.

Your boy David Cameron is currently in Lebanon at a refugee camp, probably telling them why he doesn't want them in Britain, which he's trying to make Great again.

How the Military Sifts Through All the Data on Earth

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How the Military Sifts Through All the Data on Earth

DAILY VICE, September 14 - Searching for Harper, Omar Khadr, The Chickening

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Today - Justin Ling takes the pulse in the Prime Minister's Calgary riding, an update on Omar Khadr's bail conditions, and a new short film mixes Kenny Hotz with The Shining.

Feature: Canada's Waterless Communities, Part 1

VICE News travels to Shoal Lake 40, a First Nations community two hours away from Winnipeg that has been under a drinking water advisory for 17 years, while sitting on a lake that supplies drinking water to Winnipeg.

VICE News went to California to witness the proliferation of water-intensive crops, and to find out why the industry has continued to operate during the historic drought.

DAILY VICE is the first mobile news and culture show in the VICE universe. Every day, through the DAILY VICE app, we deliver the top stories from across the VICE Network in Canada and beyond.

Aside from being a really awesome overview of amazing stories, from our brains to yours, DAILY VICE also provides a first look at our newest documentaries before they hit our websites. And every Saturday, we lighten up with a culture story from the realm of travel, music, food, sports, or technology.

DAILY VICE is the best way to keep up on all of our best stories while you're commuting to work, waiting for a doctor's appointment, or any other time you need a roughly six-minute-long diversion from your ordinary life.

If you want to watch this amazing daily dose of all things VICE, you'll have to be on Fido. But if you just want to get a sense of how exciting the show is, check out the fancy preview videos above.

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A Group of White Supremacists Is Promoting Itself on Canadian University Campuses

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I'm sure they have lovely get-togethers, mostly talk about tea. Photo via Twitter user Phraz.

Universities around Toronto found themselves bombarded with posters advocating for white supremacy Monday morning.

Vaguely reminiscent of World War II propaganda, the signs feature an image of two stoic-looking white guys in winter attire with the CN Tower in the backdrop; they promote a White Students Union.

A URL at the bottom of the poster directs people to the website for Students for Western Civilisation, a group that hopes to advance "the political interests of Western peoples."

In a post on its homepage, the group takes on York University, claiming the school's liberal arts programs are dominated by "leftist perspectives."

"All white people are racists, we're taught, and only white people can be racist, because white people are the sole beneficiaries of this white supremecist (sic) system."

To balance things out, the group claims its platform "would serve as a venue to explore those perspectives on ethnic politics that our Marxist indoctrinators seek to suppress and ignore."

Joanne Rider, a spokeswoman for York, told VICE eight posters were removed from the school's Keele Street campus Monday morning. She said Students for Western Civilisation is not a school-sanctioned group and that its members are unknown to York.

Reached by VICE Monday, Ryerson spokesman Michael Forbes said a security team was investigating the origin of the posters, several of which appeared on school grounds.

"We saw it as offensive. We don't condone it and we hope we can get all the signs down as quickly as possible," he said.

Bee Quammie, 32, an alumnus of the University of Western Ontario and York, who is black, said the posters show that racism is still a major problem here, even amongst young people.

"We have youth who are recruiting other youth who say they have interest to proceed with this idea," she said. "It just shows there is a lot more work to be done and there isn't room to be complacent about racism in Canadian society."

Toronto criminal lawyer Chris Rudnicki said the posters amount to hate speech and should be investigated by police. The Criminal Code prohibits inciting hatred against any identifiable group.

"It's enough for them to say we support and promote white supremacy," Rudnicki told VICE.

A spokesman for the Toronto police could not say offhand whether police were looking into the posters but said a complainant generally needs to come forward in order to start an investigation.

Students for Western Civilisation did not respond to a request for comment.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Inside the Garage of the Internet's Most Hated Self-Help Guru

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All photos by the author

If you've watched a video on YouTube in 2015, chances are you've seen Tai Lopez. Lopez bills himself as a self-help guru on the "good life," who can help you reach your full potential through his "67 Steps Program to the Good Life." His famous video advertisement, shot selfie-style, extolls the virtues of knowledge over materialism—moments after showing off his Lamborghini. The commercial, dubbed "here in my garage," became so instantly loved/hated that parody and remix videos soon followed, and the internet collectively wrote Lopez's business off as a "get rich quick" scheme.

Those who have tried Lopez's "67 Steps Program" also have their complaints. One such man, Scott Godar, purchased the program and made it though 15 hour-and-a-half videos of Tai talking before he asked for a refund.

"Tai seems like a very knowledgeable person, a very smart person, but he's an internet marketer. That's all he is," Godar told me. "I've watched a dozen and a half motivational videos on YouTube and got more out of them than Tai's program. They are one in the same and preach the same regurgitated information. Read a Tony Robbins book for God's sake! Tai's program is Tony Robbins and YouTube motivational videos rolled up into hour-and-a-half long sessions of listening to Tai talk."

Read: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Sims

The program—which includes the aforementioned 67 steps, videos of Lopez pontificating, life-coaching calls from Lopez, book-of-the-day recommendations, and other "super bonus content"—costs $67 per month. A recurring complaint among those who have signed up is that they didn't realize they were entering into a recurring billing cycle or that they weren't able to cancel their subscription. Others have argued that Lopez's advice isn't all that novel, since many of his talks piggyback off more established luminaries of the motivation and business spaces. Many point to Jack Canfield's The Success Principles, a 2006 book with it's own 67 steps, which they claim Lopez straight-up stole and repackaged.

A few months ago, Tai released the follow-up ad to his Lamborghini spot, this time showing off a Ferrari. Who the hell is this guy? I wondered. Is Tai Lopez a snake-oil salesman, a business savant, or something else entirely? I met up with him at his house in the Hollywood hills, in the very garage where he filmed his most famous video ad, to find out.

Lopez lives in a chic, modern house on a winding road. Like most of these mansions, the unassuming, single-story-appearing front leads into a multistory dream home with a breathtaking view from its perch on the side of a mountain. Despite having no qualms about asking every single renter I know how much they pay per month, it seemed a bit gauche to ask Lopez how much his mansion is worth. Zillow creeping later that night gave me a good idea, though, as neighbors on his block were listed at between $900,000 and $3.4 million in value.

"The modern world makes it hard to be happy. We're bombarded with stuff. I know it's an oxymoron, because I have the Ferrari and Lamborghini." — Tai Lopez

The interior of the house was well-decorated, but lived in. Naturally, books were everywhere, in keeping with Lopez's "book-a-day" ethos. The place wasn't dirty, but could've used some tidying. For a guy teaching others how to best organize their goals and lives, you'd think the dude could just make a stop at The Container Store. Lopez pointed out a not-quite-as-fancy couch in the living room that was his reminder of worse times when he was literally sleeping on a couch.

"That's the couch?" I asked.

"No," Lopez replied, "but it sorta looks like it."

Tai Lopez in his backyard

According to his assistant, the home and cars belong to Lopez. "Tai has never rented a car except from an airport on a business trip," she said. The home, along with his others, is owned through his companies, LLCs, and estate trusts, not rented out like a tawdry porno shoot, as many have asserted online.

"I did a video earlier this year, that one in my garage," Lopez said after he took me for a spin in his Ferrari. "It's almost the most watched video campaign in history."

I didn't bring up the absurdity of touting viewership figures on an ad you're paying to put in front of eyeballs.

I also didn't tell Lopez that many people watched it because they loved to hate him. Instead, I asked about the point of the video.

"I think it has an important message," he replied. "It looks like it's about me showing off Lamborghinis, but that's what I call 'interruption marketing.' We see about a minimum of 2,000 ads a day in the modern world." The Lamborghini, he explained, is designed to break through the noise—so that you can learn about Lopez's self-help program, which he says actually has nothing to do with material wealth. He knew the ad would catch peoples' attention, but he says he "had no idea people would find it this interesting."

Lopez is full of contradictions like this. One of his claims to fame is his commitment to reading a book a day—though he later admitted that he sometimes has someone else read the books for him, which puts a big, honking asterisk next to that claim. While he emphasizes that knowledge is more important than materialism, his office is filled with books. It looks like a Barnes & Noble window display, with the towers all meticulously askew, pristine spines all facing outward.

"The modern world, however, makes it hard to be happy. We're bombarded with stuff," he said. "I know it's an oxymoron, because I have the Ferrari and Lamborghini, but I read a book on happiness from a top scientist specializing in happiness. He talked about the difference between conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption."

Lopez went on to tell me about how, just the other day, he made the decision not to buy a Rolex because he realized it wouldn't make him happy. "That said, if I was the last guy on the planet, I would still head right to a Lamborghini dealership and grab some of those," he added. "Those are just fun to drive."


More on people who are internet-famous: VICE meets Shoenice22, a YouTube sensation who will eat anything for fame.


I asked Lopez how he accrued so much money and he told me about his first taste of entrepreneurialism, when he was 19 years old, running a farm in Virginia. He says he told the farm owner, "If you put the money up to buy the cows, I'll do all the work, then you get paid back first, and if there's any money left over, we'll split it." He claims he made $12,000 that summer.

Lopez told me his "family situation fell apart," so he went to live with the Amish for two and a half years. It was there that he says he learned what little value there is to material wealth. "The Amish are the coolest people," he said. "If I had a million dollars in a sack I had to leave with somebody for ten years, I'd find a random Amish family and I guarantee I could come back in ten years and there'd be the whole million there."

After that, he claims he became a certified financial planner and started working in wealth management in the early 2000s. He says he was the "founder, investor, advisor, or mentor to more than 20 multi-million dollar businesses." Of these, he is probably best known for owning several dating sites for gold diggers, including EliteMeeting.com, ModelMeet.com, and MeetingMillionaires.com. Each of the sites dealt with complaints ranging from fake profiles to unauthorized charges on credit cards tied to accounts. One complaint, from 2009, called Lopez "the most unscrupulous dirtbag on the planet."

Lopez shrugged off my questions about this part of his career. These sites were "just part of [his] portfolio," he said, despite the videos of him on each of the sites. And the complaints? Lopez says their scant handful of Better Business Bureau complaints were nothing compared to the thousands big competitors like Match.com received.

According to his LinkedIn, Lopez started his self-help business in 2001. He describes his program as a series of "online education systems that help people solve the 4 hard problems of life."

Lopez knows that some people see his business and think it's a scam. He says those assertions are baseless.

"Basically, the only people who say this are people who have never tried any of the programs. The positive testimonial rate is beyond belief. Literally thousands—even tens of thousands—of people love it," he said.

He also added that there is a 100 percent refund rate for anyone who isn't satisfied with his products, and so "therefore, it logically could not be a scam since anyone who wants their money back gets it all."

Read: Did Instagram Bro Hero Dan Bilzerian Get His Start Thanks to His Father's Dirty Money?

This seems to somewhat be at odds with some of the personal testimonies about trying to cancel subscriptions to Lopez's programs, but others have said they were able to secure their refunds.

"When people hear me or anyone talking about money, there's a part of their brain that immediately thinks: Get rich quick scheme. But there have been get rich quick schemes since the dawn of time and I never say anywhere that you're gonna get rich from my steps," Lopez said. Which is true, I guess—he never says you're going to drive off in a Ferrari tomorrow—but he does imply that you'll be able to drive a Ferrari someday.

Leaving the Lopez estate, I was unsure if I'd even peeled back the first layer of this onion. I scheduled a follow-up call with him, but even then, it was difficult to tell if he was knowingly scamming people or honestly trying to help them. Lopez has a habit of speaking in riddles, and seemed more interested in quoting public figures and going on an endless catalog of tangents than giving forthright responses to my questions. Like a feral child raised by Ted talks. But there were also times when I saw his humanity shine through, and against all odds, it made me feel for him.

For all his wealth and success, Tai Lopez doesn't have the bravado or swagger of someone who knows in his marrow that he's done something substantial. He spoke multiple times over the course of our conversation about searching for happiness and, if I had to guess, I'd say he hasn't quite found it yet. Maybe he's internalized all the online hate, something he had to know he'd get when starting this kind of venture. Maybe the struggle to prove himself weighs heavy. This is a guy who has "MENSA Member" in his Twitter bio, after all. Maybe he even feels some guilt about siphoning money from people with nowhere else to turn, even if nothing illegal is going on.

Lopez says he's focused more on fulfillment than momentary happiness. I sincerely hope he finds both, two things everyone deserves, although I doubt they will come in the form of another exotic car.

Follow Justin Caffier on Twitter.

What Have Canada’s Politicians Promised to Do For Syrian Refugees?

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This photo from a march in Melbourne is evidently not representative of our political leaders' feelings. Photo via Flickr user Takver

The Syrian refugee crisis has long been out of control, but the past several weeks have solidified the assertion that the richest nations on earth aren't pulling their moral weight, Canada included.

While many of the countries being urged to take in refugees are in Europe, Canadawith its assload of land and natural resourceshas seen the issue come to the forefront on the federal election. Since the photo of a Syrian boy who had drowned trying to reach safe land shocked the world and captured international headlines earlier this month, each of Canada's main political parties have taken a (sorta) unique view on how the country should respond to the humanitarian crisis, some four years after it began.

Since release of the photo, Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper's campaign has faced significant criticism from those who say that his administration's lack of action, which falls in line with the general complacency that has plagued the EU and North America over the past four years, has resulted in the refugee crisis hitting a boiling point. A problem that has now landed right on Canada's doorstep.

Harper has said that the main obstacle in bringing in refugees lies in possible security threats they might pose and that, if elected, his government would not allow refugees access to the country prior to going through rigorous security checks. Harper has been resistant to changing the current Conservative policy, ruling out suggestions that he send strategic airlifts to help ferry the refugees to Canada.

Near the outset of the crisis, the Conservatives pledged to resettle just 1,300 Syrian refugees, a number it reached only this year. From there, at the beginning of 2015, it vowed to bring in another 10,000 Syrians by 2018and is thus far only about a tenth of the way there. Most of those refugees have also been privately-sponsored, with the Government of Canada funding the resettlement of just over 600 Syrian refugees.

On top of this, the Conservatives have resettled more than 20,000 Iraqi refugees.

When the ongoing election campaign kicked off, the Conservatives vowed to bring in another 10,000 refugees from Syria and Iraq, specifically targeting persecuted religious minorities.

Harper has been clear on the campaign trail that he believes the key to solving the refugee crisis lies directly in addressing the issue of terror in the regionwith further efforts made on the mission to dismantle ISas opposed to bringing in more refugees as his opponents have suggested.

The Conservatives have also contributed more than $500 million to help mitigate the impact of the refugee crisis in Europe, and to help humanitarian agencies on the ground in the war-torn area. During the campaign, under pressure to do more, they announced up to $100 million in matching fundscontributing a dollar for every loonie that Canadians donate to approved charities in the area.

A Syrian refugee camp in Turkey. Photo via Flickr user Fabio Sola Penna

"We need to help people who are actually there and can't get away. And part of the way we need to help them is to stop the awful violence that is being directed at them, displacing them and killing them," Harper said.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May has been one of the Conservatives' loudest critics on the file, calling out the current Harper government for doing a shoddy job of addressing the escalating crisis in the Middle East, adding that Canada should be a humanitarian role model.

"We need to get back to the kind of country we were where we welcomed people and we didn't allow a humanitarian crisis to be wrapped up in red tape," May said at a campaign stop earlier this month.

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau has suggested that talks between himself and his two main opponents, Harper and NDP leader Tom Mulcair, commence immediately in order to find a middle ground that all parties could agree on.

Although no such talks have taken place yet, Trudeau has said that Canada should take in 25,000 refugees before next yeara number almost 15,000 higher than what was proposed by Harper at a rally last week. Contrary to that of Mulcair's stance, however, Trudeau said that the Liberals would not end Canadian military operations in the region.

Mulcair, who appears to have the most ambitious plans in terms of sheer numbers for the refugee crisis, has put forth two major goals: granting 10,000 Syrians refugee status by the end of the year, with a total of at least 46,000 by 2019alongside a vow to remove the cap on privately-sponsored refugeesand a complete end to Canadian military operations in Syria and Iraq upon his election as prime minister. Both of these targets are in clear competition with Harper, whose militaristic and security-focused approach have been staples during his campaign.

Both opposition parties have slammed the Conservatives for their vague plan to assist refugees, with the NDP and Liberals laying out their own budgets for aid and plans to appoint designated advisors to handle the situation. The Liberals in particular have also sounded off about the Conservative Party's plan to prioritize religious minorities when selecting refugees for resettlement.

"The government's decision to discriminate against refugees who practise certain religions violates basic Canadian values and is simply unacceptable," wrote Liberal MP John McCallum in a letter to Andrew Bennett, the Canadian Ambassador for Religious Freedom.

Critics calling for more action from the government have come from a variety of sources. Yesterday, former Canadian general and chief of defence Rick Hillier (who was once considered as a successor to Harper himself) went on CBC's Power and Politics with the bold claim that Canada could bring at least 50,000 refugees by the end of the year, a target higher than all three main political parties' goals combined. He also noted that the Canadian Forces should be directly involved in helping to maintain security when resettling refugees and that it would not be as big of an issue as Harper suggested.

"We're used to, as a nation, running big operations around the worldwhether that's the Canadian Forces putting 3,000 soldiers on the ground in a war zone 12,000 kilometres from home in a very short period of time or bringing 50,000 war brides back from England in 1955. We can do this kind of thing," he said.

Another image from Melbourne. Photo via Flickr user Takver

In comparison to much smaller nations, Canada's response to the refugee crisis has been pretty weak. According to Amnesty International, there are around four million Syrian refugees that have been taken in globally, a number that has been handled almost exclusively by the country's neighbours.

Turkey and Lebanon have taken in the most, hosting 1.6 million and 1.2 million refugees respectively. Also carrying the weight of the region are Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, which have collectively allowed entry to almost one million displaced Syrians. This is a shocking disparity when compared to the measly 2,300 refugees Canada has taken in to this date.

And it's not like Canada is a stranger to welcoming victims of conflict either. Between 1972-1973, Canada took in 7,000 Ismaili Muslims after they were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin's regime; in 1979-1980, the Canadian government worked to bring 60,000 Vietnamese refugees to the country following the fallout of the Vietnam War; in May of 1999, Canada brought in 250 new Kosovar refugees every day for 21 days. The list could go on.

Both Trudeau and May have stressed the point of Canada's history as a refuge speaking for itself, with a recent appearance by Jean Chretien at a Liberal rally making headlines for his direct callout of Prime Minister Harper's lack of action on the issue. However, it should be noted that Chretien himself has a questionable record on humanitarian issues, mainly due to the deep budget cuts of the 1990s.

Despite where the political leaders stand on the issue, Canadians have made their dissatisfaction clear. In a recent poll, nearly half of Canadians surveyed said they were unhappy with how the government is handling the situation, and a whopping 70 percent said Canada should help clean up the mess.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Taking Trump's Place on 'Celebrity Apprentice'

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Image via Flickr user BagoGames

Read: We Asked a Theoretical Physicist How Time Travel in the Terminator Movies Works

Aging badass and ex-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been tapped to replace Donald Trump as the host of NBC's The Celebrity Apprentice, reports Entertainment Weekly.

"I have always been a huge fan of The Celebrity Apprentice and the way it showcases the challenges and triumphs of business and teamwork," Schwarzenegger said in a statement, apparently forgetting that the show mostly eschews all that stuff in favor of delightful reality TV clusterfucks, like Arsenio Hall going batshit crazy and accidentally channeling Truman Capote.

"I am thrilled to bring my experience to the boardroom and to continue to raise millions for charity," he continued.

As EW pointed out, NBC and the Donald parted ways after the business magnate announced his presidential bid and began courting the white supremacist vote.

Schwarzenegger will make his debut in the Apprentice boardroom during the 2016-2017 season, where he'll ask all the essential questions, like "Who is your daddy and what does he do?" and "Why do you cry?"


VICE Vs Video Games: Remembering the Mutant League Games and Their Bizarro Sports Sim Brethren

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Yes they do, horribly. 'Mutant League Football' screenshot via vgmuseum.com

As a kid, I was obsessed with larger-than-life figures. Why settle for Batman, who merely represented the upper limit of human potential, when you could have Superman, who wasn't human at all? Every battle had to be a clash of the titans; every encounter had to be like something out of Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon comic series, which consists of nothing but fistfights between enormous alpha beasts. Even when it came to sports, I wanted to watch only the strangest of the best: mutants, freaks, cyborgs, and other hyper-real specimens competing against one another in arenas where the normal laws of physics were suspended.

And no, I'm not talking about performance-enhanced athletes like baseball outfielder Barry Bonds and UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem, although both were impressive at their respective sports. I'm talking about the bizarre characters that populated early-1990s games such as EA Sports' Mutant League titles, Konami's Base Wars, and SNK/Tradewest's Super Baseball 2020. I used to live and die for games like these, even if they weren't always all that great, and only with the passage of time and Maddens (Madden 2016 marks the 2016th installment of that series, I believe) have I been able to realize why.

A screenshot from 'Mutant League Football,' via Ryan VGD's YouTube channel

This isn't specifically an examination of sports games, which thanks to the likes of EA and 2K Games have reached a once-unimaginable level of development, or of games involving monsters and robots, of which the same might also be said. In fact, gaming today is better than it's ever been: the competitive games are the most balanced, the retro-styled games are superior to the ones that inspired them, and even the worst releases don't descend into Action 52 territory. All that the contemporary video game market of slick sequels and perfectly crafted remakes might be said to lack are limitations. In other words, when almost everything is possible, not everything seems worth attempting.

Once upon a time, Electronic Arts published without much fanfare every manner of game: a few were good, a few were bad, and most were simply oddball offerings that fell somewhere in-between. Madden, its various NBA playoff simulations, and NHLPA (later simply NHL, once both the league and player association licenses were acquired) ranked among the company's best releases during the early 90s; Mutant League Football and Mutant League Hockey added a considerable amount of gameplay variety to Madden and NHLPA, respectively. The Mutant League franchise also happened to originally be exclusive to the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, because SEGA, despite its 16bit system being inferior in many respects to the Super Nintendo, far exceeded Nintendo in its willingness to license "Mature Audiences" games (the first Mortal Kombat for the SNES didn't even have blood!).

Now imagine this happening today: EA or 2K looks at one of its signature franchises and says, "Hey, let's Space Jam the heck out of this!" It's inconceivable. Yes, there's a pretty good Blood Bowl high fantasy football remake available via Steam, but that's not a signature property of any kind and, though quite good, is really just a colorful visualization of Games Workshop dice rules. And yeah, you might still see something like NFL Street, but that sort of gameplay isn't exactly on par with Mutant League Football's all-everything star Bones Jackson accidentally killing a referee during a pileup.

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Mutant League Football is one of those aforementioned very good EA games, by the way. It spawned an animated series and should've kept generating medium-budget sequels right up to the present (though it should be noted that Mutant League Football creator Michael Mendheim is trying to piece together a DIY follow-up). But it didn't, and neither did Mutant League Hockeywhich was even more fun to play, in principal part because the NHLPA series on which it was modeled was perhaps the best 16bit sports simulation ever created. The Mutant League games constituted bricolage at its finest, their development perhaps born out of necessity yet nevertheless capturing and then distilling the cartoonish essence of professional sports: demon goalies exploding into flames, slug zambonis eating the dead bodies of fallen players, defensemen brandishing horsewhips, right wings wielding chainsaws. We don't just want to see amazing feats from our pro athletesfor them, the amazing is commonplace. We want to see ludicrous ones, which is why the WWE remains a billion-dollar business and the Harlem Globetrotters have been around for nearly a century.

In that vein, Konami's Base Wars imagines a dystopian baseball future in which owners have decided to cease meeting the salary demands of their ostensibly overpaid players and replaced them with a variety of high-performance robots (the game is set in the 2400s; some recent research suggests that automation may lead to the replacement of vast swathes of the workforce far earlier than that). The game features a lot of Konami-style theatrics, including fights between fielders and baserunners that call to mind the widescreen set-tos in its classic NES hockey title Blades of Steel. In some ways, the limitations of the NES maximize the value of Base Wars' vivid colors and choppy movements: It's much easier to track the fluorescent futuristic ball in this game than it is to follow the regulation baseball in the R.B.I. Baseball series.

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'Base Wars' artwork detail, via Classic Game Room

Base Wars wasn't anything special: I rented it many times, and it usually held my attention for a game or three, but it wasn't transcendent. Which is fine; not every video game needs to be the best you've ever played. SNK's Super Baseball 2020, set in the fast approaching but still space age-sounding year 2020, is more ambitious and a bit better. In my youthful navet, I assumed that the latter was a sequel to Base Wars, failing to realize that Base Wars' backstory is set several hundred years after both Super Baseball 2020 and the events of the Mass Effect series. Super Baseball 2020 straddles the line between past and present: both male and female cyborgs as well as Base Wars-type robots are available as players, with the chief difference between the two being the fact that robots can explode from overuse. You can actually earn money and enhance your players in real time over the course of a nine-inning game, a feature I wish had been included in one of the many Major League Baseball releases of the past decade (for example, Jose Canseco or Sammy Sosa slips away to the locker room for a celebratory shot of testosterone after cranking a tape-measure home run). It too lacks the replay value of the Mutant League games, but there's still something here that isn't present in most of today's sports offerings.

What you had in these four games, as well as in related releases like Pigskin 621 A.D. (Pigskin Footbrawl on the Genesis) and slightly more conventional games such as NBA Jam and NFL Blitz, was organized sport not simulated perfectly, as is the case today, but boiled down to its primal, ludic elements. These were sports-as-games, intended solely as wild fun because there wasn't yet the technical know-how to provide more than that. Real sports, the sports on which these games were modeled, evolved more slowly albeit in a similar vein: efficient record-keeping and scientific training ended the golden age of impossible, sui generis athletes like boxing champion Jack Johnson and Yankees star Babe Ruth. We can't go back, because the Maddens can only advance in quality and sophistication with each annual roster update, but we should pause occasionally to consider what has been lost.

All bets are off when it comes to rugby, of course. There's never been a rugby game that wasn't utter rubbish, and as long as there remains no easy way to model ruck mechanics, there never will be. Sigh.

Follow Oliver Lee Bateman Twitter.

The VICE Guide to Right Now: A Colorado Park Had to Close Because Visitors Kept Taking Selfies with Wild Bears

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Colorado's Waterton Canyon park has been closed to visitors for over two weeks because of the presence of a couple of families of bearsbut it's not the animals themselves that are causing problems, but the throngs of visitors who are trying to take with them.

"The current situation is not conducive for the safety of our visitors or the wellbeing of the wildlife," Brandon Ransom, Denver Water's manager of recreation, told ABC 7.

"We've actually seen people using selfie sticks," he said, adding some would get "within ten feet of wild bears."

Another spokesperson for the park described hikers trying to snap the perfect #bearselfie as making a "poor choice." That seems like a minor understatement, since bears are hulking, hairy predators that can completely decimate a puny human with a small swat of their paws. The US Forest Service has been warning against turning your back to a bear so you can snap a selfie on your iPhone's front camera since last year, but apparently people aren't listening.

This is just another addition to the endless list of reasons why selfie sticks are unholy creations.

Follow Scott onTwitter.

Living with a Partner Who Has OCD Is Hell

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Illustration by Alex Jenkins

I'm still convinced that I've met the most important person in my adult life, but I never imagined I'd be planning my future with someone who is often afraid to touch me. I've dated sociopaths, drug addicts, and alcoholics, but I never imagined what life could be like with someone battling OCD.

When I met Tony (not his real name) over a year ago, he immediately revealed he was suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, an anxiety disorder marked by intrusive, uncontrolled thoughts and performing repeated rituals. The fact that he felt the need to disclose this information is a testament to how much OCD controls his life. The disorder can be manageable, but it can also be all-consumingone psychologist told me about hospitalized OCD patients who were too afraid to drink water they believed was contaminated.

The National Institute of Mental Health reports that 2.2 million people live with the condition, but men are thought to suffer in greater numbers than women, and most people are diagnosed by the age of 19. Tony was diagnosed over a decade ago, and has since been hospitalized twice. He says he just "went crazy," unable to leave his room because of perceived threats. Today, his OCD manifests itself in obsessive thoughts about hygiene; his hands are often flaky, cracked, and bleeding from repeatedly washing them. He won't touch anything he perceives as "dirty"public door handles, used towels, even me.

Read our work on OCD, anxiety, depression, and much more in the VICE Guide to Mental Health.

But we fell in love from the start. Tony was a good listener, well-read, compassionate, and had a great sense of humor. We met on a Monday, and when I left for a trip that Friday, we were already inseparable. Though we hardly knew each other, I quickly understood that Tony was a very sensitive, loving guy. It wouldn't be until later that I fully grasped the scope of his illness.

A day with Tony looks something like this: I wake up next to him and have to stop myself from touching him. He won't touch his face or hair until he's had a shower, because of the "hidden oils" on his hands (I can't touch him either, for this reason). At one point, he wouldn't even hug me before going to work if I hadn't already showered. He still refuses physical contact if I brush against something he considers "unclean," like a public wall, or if my coat has dropped on the floor.

I do the laundry every day so that Tony can dry himself with a fresh towel after he showers. Tony needs a new one every day, and prefers them to be white, so he can see any stains that aren't readily visible on a colored one. If he dries himself with a stained towel, he will shower again and dry with a new one.

Once, I dried our mattress cover on an extremely hot cycle and when it melted, Tony refused to sleep in the bed until we'd replaced the destroyed cover. Even then, he still felt "unclean" in bed. Another time, when I used the wrong cleaning product on our sofa, he avoided sitting on it for three weeks.

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It's no secret that relationships take work, but the pressure to thrive is magnified beyond belief when the most minor actions can cause a breakdown. Even when Tony can't directly communicate his boundaries, they silently dictate everything we do. I've come to view his illness as an entirely separate entityTony wants to be loving without constraints, but the OCD wants to control our lives. After he throws a tantrum or we have a fight, I can tell that he wants to make up like a "normal" couple wouldwith physical affection, a warm hug that says "I'm sorry"but the OCD won't allow him to.

There are so many times that I've cried wishing that Tony could just be "normal." I've come to dread fun activities and special occasions because with more excitement comes a greater level of anxiety. Tony has stormed out of restaurants and bars after someone accidentally spilled drinks on him; when we're at parties, I know better than to sneak a kiss and trigger a freak-out in a public place. One time, Tony even refused to eat his meal at an upmarket restaurant because his umbrella fell on the floor. In his mind, accidents don't really happen since everything he does is premeditatedhe can never be careful enough and I'm expected to follow suit.

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There is no "cure" for OCD, but like most other mental illnesses, it can be managed with the right treatment and support. Tony is currently in therapy, and takes 40 to 60 milligrams of Paroxetine (a common drug for OCD management) every day. These things are helping him, but he's still not functioning as well as he wishes he could. Without treatment, the condition rarely resolves itself.

After a year together, it's easy enough to anticipate what will bother Tony, and as his partner, I try to be a support pillar. But supporting a partner with OCD is an every-day, all-day affair. I'm constantly on edge, preoccupied with the next thing that will throw him off, and it saddens me that we struggle to enjoy the simplest things in life. Spontaneity can't exist. And without spontaneity, how can you have romance?

And yet, this is the person I love. If anything, watching Tony has made me a more compassionate person, but it's also filled me with a deep sadness as I've grown to resent the part of him that's still suffering. But in my quiet moments, I have to remind myself that Tony's living with a crippling illness, and if he could change things, he would.

Before I met Tony, I used to laugh when I heard my friends flippantly say, "Oh, I'm so OCD." Now I don't find it so funny.

In Defense of Economic Migrants

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Supporters march in solidarity with refugees in London. Photo by Jake Lewis.

After being described in terminology usually reserved for Biblical plagues by British Prime Minister David Cameron, and having endured calls for their extermination whilst drowning in the Mediterranean by Sun columnist Katie Hopkins, the refugees who managed to survive the asylum gauntlet that runs from the battlefields of the Middle East to the borders of the Schengen zone have finally earned themselves some sympathy. Well done chaps, you deserve it. Economic migrants, though? They're a whole 'nother story. Fuck those guys.

An unintended consequence of this outpouring of basic human empathy is that, in their attempts to catch up with popular sentiment, cynical conservative backpedaling has drawn a very clear line in the sand: refugees? Kinda OK. Economic migrants? Bad. Having been an "economic migrant" myself once upon a time, I resent my ilk being transformed into shadowy, job-stealing bogeymen opportunistically exploiting global conflict for our own gain.

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If you were to subscribe to right-wing rhetoric, you'd think that economic migrants read news reports on Syrian atrocities like they're LinkedIn referenceslooking for new opportunities to move. There are certainly people surfing this migratory wave that aren't fleeing war and probable death, but their situation isn't the equivalent of moving to Dubai for a tax-free pay rise, or relocating to Berlin because of London's absurd rent prices, nor is it equatable with marrying your gay Dutch friend so you can stay in the UK, like this moneyed Ukrainian girl I know.

Walking the first steps on the road that leads you towards scurrying across the Hungarian border while fascist camerawomen trip up your children isn't something driven by lifestyle, it's fueled by hopelessness. Calling them economic "migrants" diminishes their struggle. What they really arelike my family and I once wereis economic refugees.

A banner at the Refugees Welcome march in London. Photo by Jake Lewis.

I was born in Belgrade just a couple of years before the Yugoslav experiment turned genocidal. Although we never witnessed the horrors that our neighbors in Sarajevo and Vukovar did, we still experienced all the everyday knock-on effects that come with living in a war zone: things like hyperinflation, sanctions, petrol rationing, and food shortages.

Growing up, I was told stories of how, on payday, people had to decide between sprinting to the shop to spend all their earnings on basic necessities, or legging it to the nearest black market to exchange them for Deutsche Marks. Because the value of the dinar was dropping in real time, you had to figure out which was more cost effectivemere meters and minutes factored into your thought process. The military reality of war didn't reach Serbia until the NATO bombing campaign of 1999, but civil society crumbled while kleptocracy and organized crime filled its void before that.

Under western sanctions, the black market economy thrived: People would drive over the border to Hungary, stock up on petrol and cigarettes, then drive back to hustle them off at marked up prices. Belgrade's murder rate doubled within a single year. Key figures in the Milosevic regime were suspected of peddling heroin. Crooked politicians and mobsters never had it so good. To maintain a sense of normality during NATO bombing raids, nightclubs would open in the day then shut at dusk, giving people time to make it home before the next wailing of the bomb sirens.

Our lives, admittedly, weren't at risk, nor were we forced from our homes, which disqualified us and many other ethnic Serbs within Serbia's borders from refugee status. Most people don't realize how narrow the criteria are: To qualify for asylum, you usually have to be at direct risk of persecution or death. My family didn't put in a bogus asylum application, nor did we attempt storm the Calais tunnel; we were granted a visa based on my parents' professional qualifications. We weren't in danger of being maimed physically, but our prospects in life were.

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Serbia currently sits eighth in the Cato Institute's "world misery index". With youth unemployment perpetually fixed at around 50 percent and an average monthly salary that reportedly clocks in at $443 (average, that is, plenty earn less). I'll happily concede that the hardship of staying would have been utterly banal compared to what the populations of Aleppo or Kabul or Srebrenica have suffered, but I won't quietly accept being demonized by some posh Tory twat whose biggest personal hardship is his resemblance to a condom.

It's interesting how contradictory the British Conservative stance on economic migrants is to their purported ideals. For a party that worships at the altar of Thatcherism, that preaches the gospel of deregulation and deifies the free market, their stance on migration contradicts their core neoliberal principles. It appears that a borderless, globalized world is great when it allows corporations to exploit cheap labor in developing nations, but when those principles are applied in the opposite direction they're countered with bureaucratic razor wire and land mines.

But the Conservatives aren't the only offenders: A member of Germany's Christian Democratic-led caucus, who happen to be led by a certain Angela Merkel, the current It Girl for beleaguered peoples everywhere, recently declared "economic distress is no grounds for asylum. We don't want migration into the social welfare system." Yeah, because people who've trekked across an entire continent(s) come across as really fucking work-shy. I'm sure all they really want to do is sit around scratching their arse whilst watching German daytime TV at the taxpayers' expense.

This current hysteria surrounding economic migrants makes a mockery of the humanist principles that European nations are usually so keen to espouse. What it essentially says is that ambition and self-advancement are a privilege reserved for a Schengen zone elite, while the rest of the world should be content with simply being alive. Rather than being the spiritual home of progressive, liberal ideals that it's usually depicted as, Europe is a continent with a caste system, one built upon nationality and enforced by visas.

Follow Aleks on Twitter.

We Went to the Real-Life Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer

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All photos by Michelle Alexis Newman

If you're between the ages of 30 and 40 and have a hankering to publicly make out with someone while wearing a novelty t-shirt, the Catalina Wine Mixer may be for you. The first ever Catalina Wine Mixerbased on the event from the movie Step Brothersoccurred yesterday, and nearly 1,000 people jumped at the opportunity to spend the day drinking wine while singing along to Sublime covers. Other than the misplaced anticipation of seeing one the movie's stars at the event, a big draw to the Mixer was the musical headliner, The Dan Band, who is known for their appearances in some notable bro comedies (Old School, The Hangover) of the '00s.

The island of Catalina is an hour-long ferry ride from Los Angeles. When I first got on the boat, it was remarkably difficult to distinguish between Mixer attendees and your run-of-the-mill Catalina-goersboth looked like they could be background extras on The Real Housewives of Orange County. That was of course until people started chanting "The Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer!" and consuming copious amounts of Bud Light before 10 AM. The ferry was my first exposure to the type of person that would attend an event based on a scene from a Will Ferrell movie released in 2008. The main characteristics of a Catalina Wine Mixee seemed to be their willingness to get embarrassingly drunk in public, coupled with the insatiable desire to act like a frat boy (regardless of age, gender, or sense of common decency).

After getting off the ferry, I had about 15 minutes to enjoy the scenery of Catalina. I walked along the beach towards where the event was being held and was surprised by the serenity of the island. The ferry arrives in the town of Avalon which is a resort community on Catalina, an island off the coast of California primarily populated by restaurants, tourist shops, and golf-cart rental stores. The peacefulness of it all was soon interrupted by the arrival of another ferry filled with more excitable bros ready to get their wine on. I followed the pack of dudes in straw fedoras to the Descanso Beach Resort, where I would spend the rest of the day trying not to get vomited on.

Admission to the event was $35, which offered access to the event area as well as an empty plastic cup. Wine, food, and inflatable animal floaties were available for purchase once inside the event. Most of the Mixer took place on a grassy hill that both looked and felt like a university quad. The beach was on the other side of the quad, where you had the option to throw down some more money on renting a cabana. Shirtless bros and various scantily clad hot people laid out in the sun while eating poke bowls and sipping down $10 Ross. Paying homage to the fictitious Catalina Wine Mixer, a helicopter was available to lease or at the very least available to take a selfie with. "Pow!"

Wine vendors from across California were lined around the quad and charged between six and twelve dollars per glass. The pours were a little light for my liking, but the other attendees didn't seem to mind. At 2 PM, one girl shouted "YAAAAS" when the first band played the opening chords of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz.

Mixer attendees alternated between drinking wine, dancing around barefoot, and swimming in the ocean for most of the afternoon. I regretted not bringing my bathing suitit was hot as hell and, due to the drought, they had to import bottled water from the mainland so they charged for water.

Mixees took the event as an opportunity to show off their finest witty hats and novelty t-shirts. And trust me, a first-rate graphic tee did not go unnoticed. One guy wearing a shirt with a Step Brothers photo printed on it told me he was offered $100 for the shirt right off his back. He declined, I assume because he wanted to see if there were any higher offers on the table. We then watched a man in a Chewbacca mask get on stage and dance while former American Idol contestant Adam Lasher sang a cover "La Bamba" with many of the lyrics changed to "Chewbacca." (As in: Chew... chew bacca.)

Other than the attendees sporting references to Step Brothers on various hats and t-shirts, there wasn't much of the movie at the event itself. My guess is that the beach club was probably in the process of organizing a public social event that happened to feature wine in some capacity, when someone realized they could brand it as the Fucking Catalina Wine Mixer, book the Dan Band, and let the novelty-seekers scramble over each other to attend the thing.

Regardless of the event's tenuous connection to the movie Step Brothers, people remained hopeful well into the event that there would be cameos from John C. Reilly & Will Ferrell, or at least Adam Scott. Rumors circulated that other celebrities might show up. My favorite of which was when I overheard, "Zooey Deschanel may come but it won't be until later."

The wine vendors stopped serving at 6 PM, which was horrible news for an event that went on until 9. Also, it's the fucking (Fucking) Catalina Wine Mixer! You can't just cut the wine off three hours before the mixing concludes! And yet, this is a thing that happened. Everyone sobered up (a little) while waiting for the big performance at the end of the mixer when The Dan Band took the stage. If you're not already familiar with them, the Dan Band is a group of middle-aged men who sing anachronistic covers of pop songs. They add their own signature to the tunes by dropping f-bombs and talking about titties.

I was actually impressed by them. For one, they proved to me that even well into middle age, men still love talking about cumming. More importantly, the crowd was eating this shit up. They were definitely the highlight of the day, and everyone was dancing and flailing around to their cover of Christina Aguilara's "Genie in a Bottle" in addition to an original song inspired by Step Brothers. They didn't mention the name of the song but if I had to guess, it was probably called "THE FUCKING CATALINA WINE MIXER!" Following a Shakira medley, they asked an audience member what his favorite quote was from Step Brothers, to which he shouted into the microphone "I'm gonna put my nutsack on your drumset!" Following that, another mixer attendee went on stage and put his bare testicles on one of The Dan Band's snare drums. The Dan Band closed out the event by saying that maybe Ferrell and Reilly would show up next year. I supremely doubt it.

Follow Zo on Twitter.

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