White Fright Flight

In 1992, way back before the Gansevoort Meat Packing District and Chelsea became the destination hot spots they are today, you wouldn't find anybody but meat cutters and hookers along 9th and 11th Avenue. And the most intrepid destination in the area remained the old High Line, a 1.5-mile elevated train track which stood decaying above Manhattan’s West Side. Today the funky Western Beef is preparing to morph into something less affordable and presumably more appealing to the wine and dine crowds, while the gangs of the fun-loving street walkers seem forever lost to time. Things change. Futhering the sadness, the Meat Packing District has become the exclusive domain of the Connecticut Sweater-Set while the formerly secretive getaways of the High Line are prepping to open Prada slipper-friendly walkways to facilitate the safe passage of champagne cocktails between ubiquitous boutique hotels. Like walking? I am afraid it's time to walk somewhere else, boys.

The Kings of Kariki

Sometimes certain people are blessed with such pristine genome double-helix's that they resemble what geneticists call 'total babes'. Take our friend Steve for example. Here he's seen here with his doppelganger twin, Mark David Chapman. They are identical aside from one's long buttrock mane and the other's knowing smirk. Well, except for the fact that the Hessian is a Hollywood star and our pal is in the employ of a corporation involved with smooches of the Gallic variety. It should be noted that his lovely lady will be moving East shortly, effectively ending her days of lounging with B-list nymphettes and washed up goth rocksters. Paging Agent Mule! Rumor has it that when they first met, she was under the assumption that poor Steve was in fact, the other 'Steve' errr...Jared. No, not THAT Jared. What all does this have to do with VICE? Well the impending move has thrown hearts all aflutter far across the East River in our dear offices. Will a certain someone's take this well? Go ask Alexis.

Happy Hour

The VICE New York Office is one horny place. The goings on at the intern table itself are a bewildering swirl of intrigue and innuendo but it's the heavy hitters with drawers full mind altering and schlong-bending concoctions that is the craziest. A cursory glance in even the most unassuming player's desk yields sexual dynamite. So if you notice Trevor washing down a handful EXOTICA with Black Pearl Libido Enhancer you should probably step back about about 10 inches or so. Or be prepared to step up your game.

Canadian Funny Business

Along with assorted yuks this great interview with our man Mr. McInnes contains a nice summation of the differences between Canadians and Americans. These, however, may soon disappear with the results of last night's national elections in Canada in which the conservatives soundly thrashed the liberals. Everyone reports this outcome will lead to Canada jumping happily into the sack with America at every opportunity. Oh Canada!

The Hound of Buskerville

Some of the guys who work at VICE Magazine go to trade shows on occasion to busk for the company. I have no idea what really goes on at events like ASR in San Diego or Magic in Vegas, but I'm certain that some of it involves hero worship by young asian-canadians and the debauched behavior of our Murse. This picture captures Toronto hotshot-hustler Nick Chen-Yin, decked out in straightedge gear downing a bit of liquid courage before meeting Bam Margera. The two-hour wait to get Mr. Margera's autograph, ostensibly for a sister conveniently named Nicki, is something we'll never forget. Brothers this good are hard to find even if there's really no evidence of said sister.

Dadderall In The Headlights

Having kids is the most selfish thing in the world no matter what anyone sez, and yet also totally understandable. Everybody wants to dial in a kid that will elicit roars of approval from friends and teachers alike. Beautiful, brilliant children are the dream of every man, drunk or sober. The funny part is when wooden cigar store indian salesman like James Stockbauer start cranking out offspring, the kids are so much cuter and composed they make the father look like a nervous wreck on a failed business trip while she is as beautiful and perfect as a Russian doll.

While The Cats Away The Mules Will Play

Sometimes the dazzlers here at VICE have to travel and thus miss out on important family events like bat mitzvahs, birthdays, and even Valentine's Days. So it is with tremendous glee that us lowly interns, who rarely go anywhere but to the horrible Williamsburg post office, are invited to an uptown downtown party. Our wonderful friend is having a birthday party and all the boys are planning to make a big shirtless splash. Well except one!

Friday Night Lights (OUT)

This past Friday the ad sales team went out to the local pub to say goodbye to our good friend Will Evans over some cold drinks and hijinx. When we all head out on Fridays, or any other night for that matter, we rarely back track. On this particular night, aside from being Friday the 13th and another day Thobey made a false promise, things went pretty much as usual. John Martin's shirt was off and Intern Bill and Melissa were dazzled by Thobey's open tab and ankled pants. Beckles and Gavin did their routine countlessly and the rest of us argued and flirted and stumbled eventually home. But perhaps the jinx of wearing a pink sweatshirt on such a historically unlucky day or the pressing nerves of the impending Patriots battle with Denver caused Duffy's jaunt home to detour. And not to another bar or his lady friend's pad, as one would expect, but back to the office-- his reasoning lost to us in spent brain cells and urine. Luckily, our crack editorial staffer captured this image late that very evening, or about 11pm. The photo depicts Ryan Duffy one of VBS/MTV's shining-stars drooling and/or dreaming about something obviously untoward while drunkenly snuggling with himself on our high-brow Italian leather couches. Like drinking? Like blackouts?

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UPDATE! on Friday 13th Post

As of 12:18pm on Tuesday, January 17th, Thobey has yet to close the MiBoy contract as promised.

Extra: 12:19pm, Thobey stumbles into the office, smelling like smoke and CK1, wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday. Still no ad sale.

Politics Makes For Strange Fellows

This is the year for wild men in politics. Texas has the unique vision of Kinky Freidman's gubernatorial candidacy to worry about while Minnesota has much darker problems as Jonathon "The Impaler" Sharkey is a the favorite of vampires in the Land of a 1000 Lakes. They both wear both dark clothes, sleep late and make great campaign promises, while each race has poignant theme song: Kinky has the Texas Jew Boys' "God Bless John Wayne (People Who Read People Magazine)" while Sharkey favors Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi Is Dead." It’s refreshing to see politicians who are overt freaks. Saves the public the expense of costly inquires, congressional hearings, and impeachment proceedings to wrest the skeletons from the closets. Hooray for exposed skeletons.

Martin Luther King

Thinking about MLK, JR., today I felt a book recommendation might prove a nice change of pace from another contrived Internet history lesson. Contrived books are simply more fun. So if you are interested in the American 60's and how the wildest shit you ever imagined went down, delve into James Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy. From MLK to Howard Hughes, Sonny Liston to JFK with endless waves of drugs, assassinations, wicked Mafioso’s and dim-witted movie stars, shit is hitting the fan continuously.

In talking about the first book, American Tabloid, Ellroy has said

America was founded on a bedrock of land grabs, slavery, religious extremism, colonial ambition, and genocide. The notion that America was innocent prior to Jack Kennedy's murder is preposterous; by the rules he lived by, Jack got what he deserved. He took aid from organized crime during the 1960 election; he repaid the debt by siccing his kid brother Bobby on the Mob at large. He betrayed the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. He pissed off a hot-headed troika of mobsters, exiles and renegade CIA men involved in the Cuban cause. They whacked him for it. His death derived from the perennial motives of money and turf. It was a gaudy homicide that set the stage for the out-of-control America that I portray in The Cold Six Thousand.

And in this second book, The Cold Six Thousand Martin Luther King makes his troubled appearance:

Martin Luther King, the greatest 20th-century American, was a true hero of the 1960s. His promiscuity was directly related to, and served as a counterbalance to, the terror he experienced during his 13-year tenure as a marked man, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the time of his death. King's social agenda expanded during the last 2 years of his life -- almost in the manner of a kamikaze attack on American society. He was physically and morally exhausted. His agenda was a shriek of self-martyrdom. He wanted to alienate as much as he wanted to heal. His long transit of courage brought him to the point of calling forth his own death.

But believe you me, it is much more than merely that. I can think of very few books that will make you heard spin faster and longer. Book #3, tentaively titled Police Gazette is still in the workshop but you'll want to be read it, I promise. So get cracking and enjoy the Holiday.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie For Fuckin' Godsake

Here at VICE they make all new employees, even us lowly interns, sign a host of legal docs, one is a confidentiality agreement to protect corporate secrets like Andy Capper's hushed penchant for walking in circles on LSD, another is a non-compete agreement, so none of us immediately rush over to Teen Beat after getting our feelings hurt by Timothy, plus a notarized affidavit swearing we believe in both Good and Evil, for the obvious reasons.

Personally, I have no problem believing in the Devil. And though I am not afraid of him or worried about him sticking his crooked nose into my business, I am pretty content to avoid provoking him. No so complicated, eh? Throwing sticks in cages can result in gunplay or worse. And that's what is so funny about religious people; they are constantly provoking their enemy. Most of us learn to avoid this shit in primary school. Ignore the bully; just walk away, your mum will tell you. These lessons will be put to test hundreds of times in a life and mostly they are the smart play. Why do you think everyone in New York is reading all the time? Because they like books? No. It's because they know the moment they catch the Devil's eye with a wayward glance there will be hell to pay.

But apparently Muslims are never taught this simple lesson. In fact, it's a mandatory tenet of Islam to make the Haj to Mecca once in a life and while there cast stones at the Devil. Okay. Now I understand that people need beliefs but if I was to throw rocks at every perceived devil in this hellhole, I am certain I'd have a dead arm and probably a dead rest of me to boot. So when this strategy backfires the common refrain is to blame the victim by proclaiming the devil made me do it but in reality didn't someone just trip over their jalaba on the way to the party?

BirdDoggin' The Man

A funny article on the World Wide Internet about the intrinsic pitfalls evident in comparing sports stars across the gulf of race and time went on to note that

Aging American white people have been waiting for another Larry Bird in the same way aging hippies have been waiting for another Bob Dylan, but nobody ever gets what he or she wants: Tom Gugliotta ended up being Beck; Keith Van Horn turned out to be Conor Oberst; Mike Dunleavy is probably Ryan Adams.

Hahaha. As long we are comparing assholes to oranges, I nominate VICE's John Martin as the new Bird. Quasi-racist, funny looking and from small town America. A match made in a heavenly KKK rally. Plus they both own restaurants that serve crappy reheated food. Like Eating? Don't eat here. There must be differences you say. Well, yes, John loves Earth Crisis while Larry enjoys cooping up animals and in Scotland “John Martin” is slang for a queer boy who licks tramp’s dingleberries in public toilets and Larry is rightfully a legend.

all apologies to Chuck

Happy 100th, Dr. Hofmann!

This may look like a harmless old guy with some tinker toys but this is actually one of the most famous men of the 20th C. and one to whom all of us at VICE owe a mind blowing amount of credit. Today is Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday, a pretty amazing fact for anybody but for the guy who not only synthesized LSD and psilocybin but also inspired, via Texas, the most important Holiday in the VICE calendar, Bicycle Day, it is mother fucking incredible.

Read VICE Rumor Mule, Flunkies!

Like Generating Complaints?

I have no idea who Scott Pankin is but the guy is clearly some kind of genius. His sinister internet toy is a favorite fallback and comes in oh so handy for disrupting work place efficiency in a jif. Check out what his brainchild did to this poor site:

Unless you're a newly hatched pod person, you already know that the VICE Rumor Mule uses people and destroys lives without compunction. But let me add that cannibalism is both a belief system and a material, institutional reality. To get right down to it, the VICE Rumor Mule's thinking is fenced in by many constraints. Their minds are not free because they dare not be. The VICE Rumor Mule favors manipulative psychological techniques over honest discussion, and besides, some organizations are responsible and others are not. The VICE Rumor Mule falls into the category of "not". The VICE Rumor Mule insists that it can override nature. In the long run, however, it's only fooling itself. The VICE Rumor Mule would be better off if it just admitted to itself that it respects the English language and believes in the use of words as a means of communication. Officious, wild schmoes like it, however, consider spoken communication as merely a set of noises uttered to excite emotions in sententious, filthy ogres in order to convince them to batten on the credulity of the ignorant. If you think that this is humorous or exaggerated, you're wrong. In the end, the VICE Rumor Mule's behavior is completely out of line.

The Generator!

I Am Not Gay But...

The gang here at VICE spent much of this holiday season waffling over bilinis at brunches about whether or not to see Brokeback Mountain. We love rugged individualism and rolls in the hay but some were afraid the subject matter might prove too enticing for our hedonistic sensibilities. But before we could muster up the manpower to untrap ourselves from our closets, after seeing what had happened to R. Kelly, we allowed our friend Larry David take the lead with a Times Op-Ed..

New York Times
January 1, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

Cowboys Are My Weakness
By LARRY DAVID


SOMEBODY had to write this, and it might as well be me. I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I have any intention of seeing it. In fact, cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears.

And I love gay people. Hey, I've got gay acquaintances. Good acquaintances, who know they can call me anytime if they had my phone number. I'm for gay marriage, gay divorce, gay this and gay that. I just don't want to watch two straight men, alone on the prairie, fall in love and kiss and hug and hold hands and whatnot. That's all.

Is that so terrible? Does that mean I'm homophobic? And if I am, well, then that's too bad. Because you can call me any name you want, but I'm still not going to that movie.

To my surprise, I have some straight friends who've not only seen the movie but liked it. "One of the best love stories ever," one gushed. Another went on, "Oh, my God, you completely forget that it's two men. You in particular will love it."

"Why me?"

"You just will, trust me."

But I don't trust him. If two cowboys, male icons who are 100 percent all-man, can succumb, what chance to do I have, half- to a quarter of a man, depending on whom I'm with at the time? I'm a very susceptible person, easily influenced, a natural-born follower with no sales-resistance. When I walk into a store, clerks wrestle one another trying to get to me first. My wife won't let me watch infomercials because of all the junk I've ordered that's now piled up in the garage. My medicine cabinet is filled with vitamins and bald cures.

So who's to say I won't become enamored with the whole gay business? Let's face it, there is some appeal there. I know I've always gotten along great with men. I never once paced in my room rehearsing what to say before asking a guy if he wanted to go to the movies. And I generally don't pay for men, which of course is their most appealing attribute.

And gay guys always seem like they're having a great time. At the Christmas party I went to, they were the only ones who sang. Boy that looked like fun. I would love to sing, but this weighty, self-conscious heterosexuality I'm saddled with won't permit it.

I just know if I saw that movie, the voice inside my head that delights in torturing me would have a field day. "You like those cowboys, don't you? They're kind of cute. Go ahead, admit it, they're cute. You can't fool me, gay man. Go ahead, stop fighting it. You're gay! You're gay!"

Not that there's anything wrong with it.