The Bad & The Beautiful is getting hitched today

Rarely can any us of turn back the clock to a time when we looked dazzling and hip. Most of us merely limp along just behind the leading edge of fashion picking up second hand tips and last week's cool from generous friends or oblivious lovers. But to have a 90's photo in the archive complete with platinum hair, the still vibrant colors of a fresh sleeve, cool adidas kicks, and a radio flyer wagon loaded with pre-mixed margaritas, that should be at the top of every wish list. Studs come in all sizes and shapes but I assure you our man Trevor Silmser was a darling of the era. Can you say, hardcore?

UPDATE: TREVOR FOREVER IS OFFICIALLY OFF THE MARKET, LADIES, TODAY HE IS GETTING MARRIED!

FOX Loves Buttholes

Kind of a sweet piece for so dastardly a character.

Fuck the Gowanus Canal - Can We Please Party?

We chose Gowanus as the location for the 3rd Annual Celebrity $HAKEDOWN not only cuz it has draw bridges and toxic canals but because it is the best neighborhood in NYC. And now its home to the best music venue The Bell House. Besides what are a few poisoned oysters among the hipperati.

The ignominious James Stockbauer has tentatively agreed to MC the event in a purple velour jacket he claims to have purchased for the occasion from Saks 5th Ave. Or perhaps the velour is just a fun coincidence. You can email here And might i suggest, Subject: Can We We Please Party Sept 20th?

Oh, that reminds me, Ben Ritter, he is planning to sue you. Sorry to bring that up here.

Trust me the event will be a gas. The club is fucking cool, the stageFARM really does rock, KiDz in the Hall, Blitz the Ambassador and The Back C.C's will destroy and yours truly will be there glad handing each and every one of you. Plus Stockbauer does not disappoint unless your are naive enough to expect him to MC an event with professionalism. Like Sabotaging your own event?



THIS POST APPEARS COURTESY OF RIOT STYLE
So, our loyal Admiral Stockbauer flaked at the last minute and the show at The Bell House was left without an MC. Fortunately consummate showman Gibby Haynes stepped up to the plate and introduced the Back CC’s. Thus we must call out our dear old pal, proprietor of the Long Branch Inn and Scoot Inn in sunny Austin, TX and his Merry Band of Lawyers™.


Take us on, Stockbauer. Take us on.

Rest in Peace David Foster Wallace

It's not often you read a book and think wow this dude is genius. And when you watch DFW you get the same feeling wrapped in protective admiration. He was smart and he was a good guy. His death is a bummer bigger than literature. If you are curious for more listen to the KCRW interviews with DFW.

The Unending War On (a) Terrible Notion

On the morning of the 9/11, I was staring at lower Manhattan trying to wrap my mind about the improbable idea that a jumbo jet was lodged in 1 World Trade Center. Scorched trading papers were blowing all over South Brooklyn when the sound of a huge engine redlining, struggling like it was about to blow up, began to dominate. It was all sound. Eventually the slowest moving "black" airborn object I've ever seen came arcing over my head and flew back towards Manhattan. I assumed it was a survlliance plane. It turned out to be United Airlines Flight 175. When it hit the South Tower, I almost jumped out of my skin, backing quickly, instinctively against a wall. My first thought was whatever is happening, I'm way too close. My second thought was Osama Bin Ladin. And I'm no genius.

The fireball caused by the strike of UA175 was so vibrant and immediate it was like I was watching a movie. My eyes felt untrustworthy and I even asked a Jamaican dude standing next to me, "Did I just see that?" I wasn't prepared to process what had happened. No one is. Watching those buildings tumble with the naked eye was beyond surreal. The dust and debris quickly followed a sound like Godzilla tearfully roaring across New York Harbor. At the time I didn't have a TV, so for weeks I would have nothing with which to compare my almost psychedelic experience.

That evening as I was sitting by the radio staring at the hole in the sky and breathing in the wretched stench Stephen Schubert suggested we go see the site for ourselves. I jumped on my bike and rode over the Brooklyn Bridge towards the site as nervous as I've ever been. On the nights of the 11th and 12th of September 2001, we spent probably 16 hours exploring, and trying to help in the area around Lower Manhattan. You could go anywhere at that time. It was a like Romero movie, pulverized debris, fires, and a host of zombied emergency workers. But mostly abandonment. Quiet. Ghastly. No reporters, no sightseers, no homeless. We drank beer and wandered, wondering innocently how all the buildings could have fallen down so completely. It seemed even a movie couldn't have come off that perfect. People are still wondering. Me? I still can't wrap my head around any of it.

Schubert always contended mischief was afoot but today he's dead, the towers that so dominated this City are gone, and Osama too, has vanished like a puff of devilish smoke. At times, I dream of Schubert laying in wait for Osama Bin Ladin in some otherworldly way station ready to rip his turban off and lay a "flying ham sandwich" on the so-called Sheik. The thought of his hairy ass flying through the air and knocking that tower of a muslim phony on his is one of the few things that makes the memories bearable.

The most incredibly personal footage of 9/11 you'll ever see is here. You should watch it. Again and again. ~ What We Saw.

RELATED POSTS:
How To Beat The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Blues
Broadcasting Be Gone, Bye Bye TV
Man on Wire - The Artistic Crime of the Century
9/11 A Day Beyond Belief

Man on Wire - The Artistic Crime of the Century

Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974 is a nice trip back to a time before our memories were corrupted by 9/11. You should see it.

Like Protest?

Protest like these guys here

Lyndon Baines Johnson

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of LBJ, one of the great political dazzlers of all time. A genuine hard-ass, hell-raisin' Texas sumbitch. Without him, Obama wouldn't have a chance at even eyeing the prize currently within his grasp but rarely does LBJ get mentioned much these days. George Packer of the New Yorker recalls the man who with faults galore still tried to do Civil Rights and MLK justice. Cat was truly larger than life. His deeds as President make JFK's pale in comparison.

I nominate August 27th LBJ Day-- a no shit taking holiday.

Unconventionally Yours Truly - The RNC of Minneapolis/St. Paul

Unconventionally Yours Truly - The DNC of Denver

Trace Crutchfield Emerges From The Shadows

Iraq: Life & Death in Hell

War is a bad trip. Hell, even fern bar fights can make the most devout proponents of violence wobbly for a few days. But reading David Bellavia’s, account of battling jihadist jacked to the gills on epinephrine in the bowels of Iraq has lead me the only imaginable conclusion: “Allahu Mat.” (God is dead.) Apologies to Nietzsche, Muhammad & Yahweh.

The bad news continues as Captain Sims closes the laptop and turns to us. “We expect the insurgents have stockpiled drugs. We’ll be facing fighters hopped up on dope again.” Here’s a some logic from the book:


“I look over at [Staff Sergeant Colin] Fitts, and I know what he’s thinking. If this is true, these guys are going to be hard to kill. In Muqdadiyah, my squad watched a drug-crazed Mahdi militiaman charge Cory Brown’s Bradley. The gunner blasted him with coax machine-gun fire, shredding his legs. He tumbled off the Bradley and flopped face up onto the street. As we approached him, he started to laugh. The laughter grew into a hysteria-tinged cackle, then ended with a bone-chilling keen. That froze us cold. Watching us with wild eyes, he then pulled a bottle of pills out of a blood-soaked pocket and drained its contents into his mouth. Then he went for something under his jacket. Thinking he was about to detonate a bomb vest, three of us opened fire and riddled him with bullets. We shot and shot until he finally stopped moving.

Leaving my men behind, I went to investigate the corpse. His right arm was torn off. His legs were nothing but punctured meat. Most of his face was gone, and only a bloody lump remained of his nose. Both eyes had been shot out. I put a boot on his chest. The Mahdi militiaman didn’t move. I kicked him. No movement. Given how many times he had been shot, I didn’t expect anything else, but just to be sure, I shot him twice in the stomach. Then I marked him with a chem light so the body disposal teams could find him later that night.

A few minutes later, a Blackhawk landed and we started loading wounded insurgents into it. While we worked, two men carried the shattered husk of that Mahdi militiaman to the helicopter. To our astonishment, he was still alive. Blood bubbles burbled up through his mangled nose and mouth. Blind, in agony, he still managed to scream through broken teeth and punctured lungs. We loaded him on the helicopter and never saw him again.

We later discovered the Mahdi militia had gained access to American epinephrine — pure adrenaline that will keep a heart pumping even after its owner has been exposed to nerve gas or chemical weapons. A dude with that in his system is almost superhuman. Short of being blown to pieces with our biggest guns, he’ll keep fighting until his limbs are severed or he bleeds out.”



Read House To House: An Epic Memoir of War

John Brannon with FU at the Scoot Inn

Beth and Trace Productions Present

My Idol: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

At the Museum of Television & Radio in 2003, I met Mr Vonnegut. We briefly shook hands and exchanged a giggle before sitting down to watch a rough cut of Robert B. Weide's Kurt Vonnegut: American Made. The cut ran long and Mr. V. fell asleep in his chair. He was alone at the screening. At the conclusion he was expected to walk up to the stage and speak about the movie of his life. As he rose from the low seat he wavered off balance. I didn't want to embarrass him by grabbing prematurely but I was worried. As he began to fall back, Dick Cavetts's wife (?) screamed grabbed him and I reached up and steadied my idol. He looked back graciously but sadly into my eyes and thanked me. He was an important man and I am sorry to this day I waited till told to lend him the hand he had always granted so willingly. I will miss him.

God Bless You Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

OBIT THE DUST: Kurth Sprague

Heros show up in the damndest places and Professor Kurth Sprague was one to me. We met at the University of Texas and he convinced me of the possibility of almost everything. His life will be greatly remarked upon as the following shall attest. God Bless old man, may your beers be cold and your pisses warm.

Bill Stott:

Kurth Sprague was an associate professor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin from 1988-95, teaching seminars on the influence of King Arthur and medievalism in American literature, art, and films, and “How to Write about Culture.”

Among the qualities that made him such a special teacher were his fearlessness in expressing enthusiasm for good student work—in fact, good work done by anyone (no academic reserve for him)—his gentleness, his sense of humor and explosive laughter, and his reverence for and encouragement of clear prose. A master of prose himself, he saw no reason that others shouldn’t become as competent as he, and he was willing to do all the coaching students would work to take in.

He was a close friend of American Studies faculty and staff—very much one of our team. When Bob Crunden died suddenly in 1999, Janice Bradley Garrett, our Administrative Associate, arranging how we dealt with death just as she did our teaching lives, had him MC the memorial service.

A great bear of a man, enthusiast and life-lover, Kurth was also, as I knew him, a cynic who saw the truth behind most shams—but a cynic of such sweet heart, that, knowing the truth, he did his best to protect those of us who shouldn’t see it—even at the cost of his having to play straight man, even the buffoon. If he was Falstaff, as many have suggested, he was the gentleman Falstaff never was.


The newspaper obituary:

A poet, novelist, popular professor of English & American Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, horseman, and bon vivant, Kurth Sprague lived an eclectic life with gusto. He died March 18, 2007 in Fort Worth at the age of 73.

Kurth was born March 11, 1934 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He grew up in Manhattan and went to St. Paul's School and to Princeton, and later moved to West Lake Hills, where he and his second wife, Bushie, owned and operated Blackacre Stable. Their home on the top of a hill above a hunt course drew students and scholars, medieval musicians, writers and riders, and English ecclesiastics, often in overlapping categories, sometimes to the astonishment of their children, Mark, Quin, David, and Charlotte.

Falstaffian in his exuberance, Sprague was a large and imposing but gentle man. The workings of his mind were as colorful as the medieval Celtic art that he loved. He received his doctorate in English from UT-Austin, writing his dissertation on T. H. White, the British author of The Once and Future King. A revised version of the dissertation is in press, prompted by the renewed interest in medievalism. It will be published under the editorial supervision of Dr. Bonnie Wheeler of Southern Methodist University.

Related to his dissertation are collections that he edited of White's poetry (A Joy Proposed, 1980) and short stories (The Maharajah and Other Stories, 1982). These books followed his first edited publication in 1977, the poetry of Ruth P. M. Lehmann, his teacher of Old English and Old Irish at UT-Austin.

Sprague's own published writings include three volumes of poetry: And Therefore With Angels (1970), My Father's Mighty Heart (1974), and The Promise Kept, which won the Texas Institute of Letters poetry award for 1976. His deep knowledge of the American equestrian scene is displayed in his 470-page history of The National Horse Show, 1883-1983 (1985). Two of the strands of his life, academe and horses, are brought together in his murder mystery, Frighten the Horses (2003).

Oddly enough, the two strands had been brought together years earlier during his service in the Army, when he was assigned to the Department of Publications and Non-Resident Training at the Artillery and Guided Missile School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. As Sprague said years later, it was his writing ability in that assignment, rather than any athletic prowess, that caused him to be appointed to the United States Modern Pentathlon Team, which trained at Fort Sam Houston, Texas.

Sprague taught at the University of Texas at Austin from 1977 until his retirement in 1996. In 1983 he served as the editorial director for the Centennial Commission Report, and afterward he wrote the charter for the Texas Foundation on Higher Education.

The courses that he taught in the English Department and in American Studies included "King Arthur in English Literature," "Medieval Literature in Translation," "American Medievalism," and "American Chivalry."

A lover of English poetry, he would continue his conversations outside the classroom with friends, students, and former students. He was happy to spend hours passionately reciting and discussing the magic of Sir Thomas Wyatt's "The flee from me, that sometime did me seek," Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, Robert Herrick's "Delight in Disorder," or Swinburne's "When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces."

After Bushie’s death, Kurth lived in the Texas Hill Country in a house that reflected his epicurean hospitality and his love of books, horses, tweeds, England, Der Rosenkavalier, art, food, drink, and good friends. In recent years, he enjoyed the company of traveling and entertaining with Martha Hyder of Fort Worth.



Tom Cable, the Jane and Roland Blumberg Chair in English at UT and Kurth’s good friend:

If all the world’s a stage and if each man in his time plays many parts, Kurth’s multifaceted personality could populate a whole gallery of Shakespearean and Chaucerian characters.

From that gallery here are four: Shakespeare’s greatest comic creation, Sir John Falstaff, and from The Tempest, the wizard Prospero; and two from Chaucer, the Franklin and, less obviously, the young Oxford scholar.

Falstaff, of course, was always getting into trouble, in his high-spirited and irrepressible way, and getting his friends into trouble too, including the future king of England, Henry V. Well, I am not Prince Hal, nor was meant to be, but I know this, that during the 1970s and 1980s, I got in the doghouse more than once through what might be called dissolute behavior in the company of Kurth.

I’m amazed to think back on some of those Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. The Sunday afternoons were spent watching the Dallas Cowboys, either at Blackacre or on my hilltop facing Blackacre across the valley.

I really have no interest in football. But Kurth, like a Jupiter of a planet, pulled me into the gravitational field of Sunday afternoon NFL, and for the only time in my life I talked as though I was on familiar terms with Roger the Dodger, Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Danny White, and somebody named Hogeboom.

Part of it was the simple joy of seeing Kurth jump up from the couch with “Hot damn!” when Roger Staubach passed for a touchdown. I think Quin, David, Charlotte, and Amory must have wondered why grown men act that way—not to mention what Bushie and Carole thought.

Aspects of the Falstaffian side of Kurth extended into the normally placid English Department. Each year at the Department holiday party, to the delight of Miss Rattey, Kurth would bring a fifth of Wild Turkey, in flagrant violation of all university rules.

I don’t mean to say that Kurth violated rules.

Maybe I do mean to say that. Oh Lord, yes, he violated rules.

He once told me he went four years without paying income tax because it depressed him. That struck me as reasonable. The next April I told Carole I was too depressed to file income tax that year. She was not amused.

Another obvious side of Kurth is the hospitality and generosity represented by Chaucer’s Franklin, with a touch of the host of the Tabard Inn, Harry Bailey. Of the many moments one could name when Kurth presided at a sumptuous table, among the most recent and most brilliant were when he teamed up with Martha Hyder in Forth Worth or Sandy or San Miguel de Allende.

Chaucer wrote about the Franklin, these lines:

A Frankeleyn was in his compaignye.
Whit was his berd as is the dayesye;
Of his complexioun he was sangwyn.
Wel loved he by the morwe a sop in wyn;
To lyven in delit was evere his wone,
For he was Epicurus owene sone.

Or to continue in a modernized version:

Such hospitality did he provide,
He was St. Julian to his countryside.
His bread and ale were always up to scratch.
He had a cellar none on earth could match.
There was no lack of pastries in his house,
Both fish and flesh, and that so plenteous
That where he lived it snowed of meat and drink.
With every dish of which a man can think,
After the various seasons of the year.

The last two characters, I’ll name together, and they make an unlikely pairing, the young thin, Oxford scholar riding a horse as thin as a rake, and Prospero, the mature sorcerer, living on his magic island.

Kurth’s magic island in his last years was his hilltop in Sandy, Newbold Revel, named after the home of Sir Thomas Malory, the author of the Morte D’Arthur, published by William Caxton in 1485.

On that hilltop he was both the wizard Prospero and—although many may find it hard to imagine—the ascetic scholar, or clerk, because he loved being alone with his books.

Chaucer said that the Clerk would rather have at his bed’s head, twenty books clad in black or red, than to have rich robes. “And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.”

If these various aspects of Kurth seem contradictory, we can say, in paraphrase of Walt Whitman, “Very well, then, he contradicts himself. He is large. He contains multitudes.”

Or, what Kurth says of literature one could say of the man, Kurth Sprague, himself: “Literature resists and eludes our best efforts to reduce it, to take it to bits, down to the last infinitesimal hairspring, and to say, authoritatively, this is what it means and no more—for its variety is immense, its scope immeasurable, its profundity limitless.”

Soaring With Eagles

Trace Crutchfield meets Ranferi and test of broken wills

Thank God The Kids Were Not United

Wanna read the New York Magazine story?

Young Love In Action

Like drinking beer, champagne and rum? It's all free here. Come dazzle the I Dream of Genie crew of celestial gardeners at the Young Love release party tomorrow night. There are still a few spots left on the list, everyone is guaranteed entry and high fives from their manager. It's also Annette's big 21st birthday. She's been going to bars for years though.

And Then There Where Two

Long time VICE funhouse and Texas favorite, the Longbranch Inn has a sister it seems. With the rise of the Scoot Inn our brothers down south, Stockbauer and Kumbala, have unleashed a two-headed monster known as The East Inns of Austin. Anybody nervously curious? SXSW!

Check the local buzz this is already generating.

Girls Hit The Highway

Do Aliens Exist?

The Gawker Verdict Is In

Like Girls?

VICE Magazine & Autumn Skateshop Present
THE GIRLS ISSUE
Cover Photos by Billy Strobeck

A release party brought to you by adidas Skateboarding

Wednesday, January 17th, 9pm til late
205 Club (205 Chrystie St, corner of Stanton)

DJs: Amy Kellner, Meredith Danluck and Lissy Trullie

Free Flying Dog Beer, Free Entry

RSVP at girls@viceland.com

When You Are On You Are On

Actors are so full of shit and awards shows are the worst. So when a group of perpetually glad-handing bullshit artists haming on other folk jokes get together you know it's gonna get deep, thankfully Sacha Baron Cohen, who won Best Actor for Borat, took his acceptance speech seriously and refused to fudge in the traditional Hollywood fashion. Like Golden Globes?


This movie was a life-changing experience. I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America but I saw some dark parts of America. An ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian...

When I was in that scene, and I stared down and saw your two wrinkled Golden Globes on my chin, I thought to myself, I'd better win a bloody award for this.

And then when my 300-pound co-star decided to sit on my face and squeeze the oxygen from my lungs, I was faced with a choice. Death, or to breathe in the air that had been trapped in a small pocket between his buttocks for 30 years. Kenneth, if it was not for that rancid bubble, I would not be here today. Thank you.

Beers, Queers & More Queers

Last time we checked, adoption by a single homo in Texas was legal, but joint custody was a bit of a grey area. Also, there is some movement to ban gay adoption outright in Texas. Why, you ask? Well maybe it's because some liberal case worker decided that these two chuckleheads would make good parents for our dear wee one. Stability? Love? Drug free lifestyles? Someone was really asleep at the drunken wheel when they granted this finger pointing queen and his tattooed bear partner custody! It's definitely been said that "home environments with lesbian and gay parents are as likely to successfully support a child's development as those with heterosexual parents", but, our dear gay Texans, you will assurdedly have these two randy Andy's to thank for never being able to adopt. And for the record, "I am not gay I just like the way it feels."

Florida Wins?

Seems like a pretty shallow gene pool to me but you make the call!

The Treat That Keeps on Giving

There's many theories in human resource land about how to keep company employees happy and productive. One such involves wilderness retreats and seminars, team building exercises, and a "getting away from it all" mentality. Here at VICE, our version is similar in the sense that the shirts come off and there is lots of bonding. Male bonding that is, while employees of the fairer gender watch with amused horror. Recently, after a stressful week 1 of January, 2007, the VICE cosmonauts touched down at several bars, and really let loose to an Ipod mix of Flogging Molly and the Bouncing Souls. Lots of skin, shards of glass and a complete lack of patrons. One member was rushed to the hospital the next morning, because, according to the Brit himself, "he's allergic to Gay". If you can't run with the bulls, get out of the basement closet boyss!

Interns Adrift

On occassion VICE gets newbies piling into John James' Golden Intern Corral from all over the globe and when their buddies return to the Isle of Capper & Creighton without them, they're left with nothing but flatlanders from kansas and drummers on couches to tequila their sorrows away. Like salt with lime?

The Practice Space You'll Never See

Even though VBS.tv has yet to hit the internet by storm, there are already outtakes and censored moments galore. In this 'Too Hot For VBS' segment, we take a still from Practice Space, hosted the the king of Northsix's basement punky rock royalty, Ryan Duffy. Shown here with members of the celestial nourishment brigade, the look on our inky friends face is decidedly Dorothyesque. We're not in West Orange anymore kiddies! Like illegal beagles? Bryce didn't!

David Choe Does Chelsea

The opening party for Choe's latest efforts will be held on Saturday, January 6, from 7pm -9pm at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery 529 W 20th St, 9th floor. If you would like to read the attendant gallery speak, read here. If you wanna have fun, go there.

The Contrarian Bellows

Bye Bye Now!

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was a total fuckhead but killing is killing and you have wonder whose door the karma police will be knocking on next.

New Chemical Romance?

For the Holidays everyone who works in the VICE NYC office heads home to St. Augustine or Sag Harbor to frolick with old boyfriends out of sight of the curious Interns stuck here at the Central Office. But the Canadians, and in particular Québécois, rarely tread far from home, content to take pleasure from the familiar hands that feed. God Bless spooning!

Thobey Makes A Sale!

We hadn't seen him this happy since he found his ring at the Strip House.

Say It Ain't Show, Schouten

Pedophilia is a touchy subject. Zing! No, but really. Its one of those topics that’s way too sensitive to debate even for VICE. Try justifying or even rationalizing why pedophiles do the things they do and rest assured you’ll get awkward looks and a slurry of curse words hurled at you quicker than you can say 10 year old. Hangouts will be a thing of the past my friend.

In spite of this, it seems a couple of VICE staffers missed the memo on this social faux pas. Not 4 months ago marketing manager and Canadian publishing darling at large, Ryan Archibald commented on how he “understood why pedophiles love kids”. Naturally this drew WTF’s and an overall sense of uneasiness by fellow coworkers and passerbys. In a futile attempt to defend his statement, Archi reeled “…no…well everyone likes things fresh. You can understand that right?” Keep in mind this conversation took place in a Vegas pool at 11am with kids frolicking left and right.

More recently the pedophile syndrome seemed to regain its momentum in the Toronto office when newcomer Jon “Shit Show” Schouten was caught consorting with a 15year old. Yes, in the office. Professionalism aside, Shit Show maintains that her true age was unbeknownst and any clear indicators thatshe was not of age were nonexistent. Except for the profuse usage of “like”, the young boyish figure and her obsession with Pete Wentz we couldn’t agree with Shit Show any more.

The icing on the cake though, came in the form of a lengthy letter mailed in by Shit Show’s debutante. Hand written, bubbly cursive and sealed in a one-off envelope made out of her math textbook, a 3 page heart to heart details this young girls undying love for Canada’s very own My-Little-Pony Cassanova. Love that young stuff?

Why We Love Santa!

This Christmas gift is one I had been waiting for all year. And while many of you may have gotten to open your gifts early I was more than content to find Mr McInnes passed out under my tree this very pagan holiday morning. Like virgin births?

Santa's Little Urchins

The thing about elves is they come in all shapes and sizes while the thing about VICE is that all the worker bees look pretty much the same; therefore, we have to ID the drones with handy forehead tags to keep them from being mistaken for the Queens. Like divisions of labor?

ABC Television meet the Vice Broadcasting System

Check out VICE Magazine in this ABC news piece featuring the boys and their home movies. Of course, the commericial preceding is rightfully rigged to funnel revenue into the VICE coiffers, which in turn keeps the NYC office superstars swimming in well deserved free beer and hot soup dumplings. But hey, that's capitalism boys and girls and those dumplings are fucking scrumptious.

Look for VBS to blow your mind to smithereens very soon. Viva La VICE Squab.

What is It, You Ask?

Cripsin Glover meets with VICE correspondents Derrick Beckles and Trace Crutchfield in the streets of old New York to discuss how the fuck to get a movie made and how to stage a slide show. The answers are about what you would expect ~From Cripin Glover that is!

The Filthy Hands of David Choe

Dirty Hands begins chronicling David's life back when he was a starving artist in the year 2000. His skinnier, former self goes about spraying whales, non-sequitur statements, jokes, and random bible verses on the streets. From then until now, this is his journey. Illustrator Barron Storey likens David's journey to that of a "classic hero going through a series of life's passages." After his stint in jail, David gets a taste of fame and success. But as all the dreams of his former self comes true, David's newly born-again soul must grapple with the temptations that come with it. Everyday, David still struggles to maintain the verve of his art, keep his dedication with God, ignore his sinful impulse, and hold onto the love of his girlfriend without the medications.

Can We Please Put The Light Back On These Loafers

The VICE Guide To Travel finally steps out of the darkness with this mayhem.

On The Eve of 400 Blows National Tour

In this update from out west, Ryan Duffy's arch nemesis, the worst person in the world, and an all around bad guy, Will Heflin weighs in with some personel issues as his bandmate prepares to leave him at home!

Why did i think it would be a good idea to call in sick so i could stay home (ANOTHER 12 HOURS) emptying tiny little ziplock bags and drinking these retarded/supposed tequilla sunrises out of a clean (by bill p. standards) mason jar? Do i get a banjo with that or just relinquish i.q. points. I am the dead lettuce (that won't flush) floating in the toilet after a really strange shit. Or at least that's what i fell like. have fun storming the castle. And bring me some wet wipes, my hemroids are the size of cabbage patch kids.

Like pleas for help?

Save Yourself For Kinky

It is too bad poltics aren't this fun nationwide. Kinky Friedman's run for the Govenorship of Texas is a crazy drunken giggle brought to life. Despite almost all odds he got himself on the ballot and the political status quo is shitting themselves on the precipice of November elections. If you wanna help or just laugh along dial him in at Kinky for Gov. Mark Foley is a boring perv.

Emancipation Cohabitation

Following in the footsteps of Duffy and the Ambassador, Bleauxdog and Edgar, and other Viceroys too poor to have their own place, Bensonhurst Bill and itsSUE have decided to lay down powder and take up straw together in their own humble Bedford Avenue abode. Keep an eye out for the American flag that the Brooklyn Bopper plans to hang out his window.

Will their fridge be stuffed full of all manner of Pittsburgher and Bensonhurst goodies? Will the grandaughter of a Nazi and the 'This is America' Fred Perry model get along? Wagers on the amount of time until copulation? Until they get to know each other in the Biblical sense? And what happens, fair reader, when Chin comes to visit? Will Bill fly the coop? The clock is ticking. Lots of questions, no answers in sight. Stay tuned.

Survey Says...WHAT?

A British survey revealed that the average woman spends two years of her life studying herself in mirrors, store windows, and other reflective surfaces. Men, who take quicker peeks, only spend six months per lifetime checking out how they look. This survey obviously neglected to take into account the dusty glances male VICEers are apt to take of themselves with dollar bills delicately shoved in nostrils. Although those in the statistics world would like to call these 'outliers', we all know the truth and it is this: with the proliferation of VICE as a worldwide multi-tentacled media lifestyle brand and the hiring of many delicately powdered fragile egos, we have reached a point where we are not 'outliers' but these face down mirror gazers are the every night norm. Survey is invalid without VICE!

The Pinkster

The following interview by Johnny Ray Huston appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian about our pal.

A poodle-permed Rosie O'Donnell horrifying John Ritter? John Walsh in full effect? It's all in a day's tele-trawling for Derrick Beckles, aka Pinky, of TV Carnage. Beckles recently agreed to talk about the madness behind his method for this week's cover story on pixel piracy.

Guardian: Earlier this week I was showing the Rosie O’Donnell meets John Ritter part of Sore from Sighted Eyes to another writer at the Guardian and she was crying from laughter. How did you fall into making the TV Carnage videos, and how much time goes into crafting one? I’d imagine it takes more than a while to put one of your comps together.
DB: It’s a multi-leveled task of insanity. I moved recently, but I have mounds and mounds and shelves and shelves of tapes. Stuff I’ve been taping off of TV with a VCR. It’s not so much that I’m always in front of the TV set. I’d just say that I have this divining rod for shit. I just have these psychic premonitions when I turn my TV on.
I have years and years of footage, and some stuff that is more subtle. I pull all of it into my computer and have this mountain of footage there and say, “Now what?” Then I take a swig of whiskey and go, “You’ve got yourself into it again.” I’ll start randomly piecing things together. Sometimes I have a bit of theme already decided on, and other times it comes to me as I go. After that, it takes over my life, and I do its bidding as long as it takes. I have no idea how long each compilation is going to take. The process ends up being a good portion of a year at least.

Guardian: Do the themes reveal themselves over time? For example, A Sore for Sighted Eyes has a lengthy white rap section.
DB: I think that’s the most pronounced theme that I’ve had so far. The combination of making it a bit more obvious and figuring out the direction I wanted to go. The underlying theme for that one is mind control. All elements of it or most elements have to do with some form of mind control – that if you do something enough it becomes normal. The white rapping part is pronounced. I had so much footage of it because I was obsessed with it, and I decided, “OK, it’s time to unleash that beast.”

Guardian: Seeing that part, I was thinking about the way rap has worked its way into everyday vernacular in the media.
DB: There’s usually no good that comes from any of that, but there are some things that are so Exhibit A-ish that I just think, “Ah-ha, you’ve just written my entire thesis for me with this 30-second commercial!” That’s what I go for, and you string it together. I just picture a conveyer belt, and there are just so many lines or points at which someone could have pressed a big red STOP button. But it doesn’t happen. It blows my mind that people are paid for some of these ideas as well.

Guardian: Yeah – just one of the reasons the Rosie O’Donnell-with-Down syndrome footage from Riding the Bus with My Sister is amazing is that Angelica Huston is the director.
DB: That movie was just…I interviewed Crispin Glover yesterday for this new project I’m working on with Vice magazine – Vice and VBS are launching an online station, and he showed What Is It? He’s really excited about the film and the film is brilliantly bizarre. I asked him if he’d seen the Rosie O’Donnell movie and he said that the actors in What Is It? with Down syndrome were offended by it, or they felt uneasy.
It is uneasy to see Rosie O’Donnell do her Pee Wee Herman impersonation and think she’s embodying someone with Down syndrome. It’s the most offensive thing I’ve seen in my life. And John Ritter’s reaction to that is my reaction.

Guardian: That sequence is really well edited. With your stuff and Animal Charm’s at first you’re just laughing your ass off, and then you begin to notice all the work that’s gone into it in terms of editing. The Rosie O’Donnell footage is amazing on its own, but putting it on a TV screen and having John Ritter react to it is what really sends it over. Especially the ‘worst hits’ of clips from the movie you’ve put together.
DB: She’s out of control in that movie. It just blows my mind. There’s this hubris that exists when people become these unattainable spokespersons for others who probably want to say, “Don’t do that – please!”

Guardian: There’s no one saying no.
DB: There’s definitely not a boardroom full of people with Down syndrome saying, “I don’t think you should do that.”

Guardian: It’s interesting that you talked about that with Crispin Glover, though, because he knows a lot about bizarre appearances on TV. I was a fan of his early on, when he was just in things like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, so when he made that first infamous Letterman appearance (which I think was his second one), I saw it live and could not believe it. I was literally worried and shell-shocked. I was a teenager and didn’t have a keen sense of performance art pranks. Even if you were in on that, it was still sort of shocking that he turned the audience against him so thoroughly.
DB: Yeah – he did it, he actually went through the process. Everyone was so stupefied. And that’s what TV Carnage is to me – it’s my way of screaming!
I question people’s motives about so many things. There are so many ways that people misinterpret things and then assume that they’re interpreting it properly. Then hey put that forward as their ideal of what they want to represent and you think, “Jesus Christ, you’re so far off the fucking mark it’s not even funny!” It’s back to egos being so out of control.

Guardian: There's the old true cliche that TV is a drug and people want to be on it.
DB: It’s this drug and it’s also this tool that people use. People learn from TV. I see more and more kids that have TV as a parent. I’m just like, “Oh my god, you’re parent is so bankrupt it’s insane.” It’s become more and more of a carnival freak show.
I’m fascinated with the way things evolve, the way people act when they get in front of the camera. I’m serious about it, but I can’t be dogmatic, I have to use humor. People can take away what they will from it.
One of my favorite things is when people say, “Ah, it’s just a bunch of TV thrown together.” I laugh my ass off and go, “Yes, it is.” It’s not even worth trying to explain.

Guardian: Yep, it’s that simple.
DB: If only.

Guardian: What people were or are inspiring to you in terms of doing TV Carnage?
DB: I started doing this years and years ago in high school. Then I went to film school and worked for MGM for a good few years, so this has been my catharsis as well, because I was in the belly of the beast turning out shitty TV and laughing at it.
I’ve always actually been attracted to exorcising my own demons with television. I was always watching it when I was a kid. When I was making compilations with friends I didn’t know other people were doing it. Then I discovered more and more – I came to appreciate other people’s work afterward.
When I started doing it I was just really naïve.
I don’t want it to be overly analytical, or this discourse. To me it just becomes tedious and I start to feel like I’m in a lecture class I didn’t volunteer for, or in someone’s therapy that I didn’t volunteer to be in either.

Guardian: In Casual Fridays there’s a section devoted to children being adults and adults acting like children. That’s a great phemomenon to have singled out.
DB: There are always these precocious children on TV, the kind that I’ve never met, even as a kid. Or if I did, they didn’t last more than two or three days at school before being pummeled and forced to be kids again. Then there are adults that constantly have to know what’s going on with kids – and you know, teenagers don’t even know what’s going on with teenagers. From day to day, things change. One, you can’t keep up with it, and two, why do you want to? The reason kids are doing what they do is that they don’t want to be anything like an adult -- adults are their ultimate enemy. Adults are fucking idiots. Kids are like al-Qaeda – they’ll shift their plans every day to keep you wondering.
Then when you try to give it back to them, they’ll shift around even more. It’s a real cat and mouse game – good luck adults, you’ll never figure it out. You can slap on as much makeup as you want and squint your eyes and act like you’re not 35 but actually 18. I’m obsessed with teen shows where the hosts are, like, 30: “Hey, how’s it going!” I just fall on the ground whenever I see that.

Guardian: Some people on MTV are really working their hairpieces.
DB: You can just feel them trying to make their mortgage payments: “What are kids doing now? Slitting each other’s throats? Great! Let’s do a show about it!” They’ll jump on any fucking bandwagon – and way too late.
It’s that desperation that kids can sniff out so quickly.

Guardian: Can you give some background about the “swearing sandwich” in your When Television Attacks video?
DB: There’s this ad on TV for the American Cancer Society in which this guy opens up his fridge and this sandwich is telling him to drink a certain amount of orange juice per day. I just thought there are a lot of problems with that. A: if I opened up my fridge and my sandwich was talking to me, I’d check myself in or run out of the house screaming. B: if you take it in stride, now you’re taking advice from a sandwich. I thought, you know, if I was going to take it in stride, the kind of advice I’d want to hear from a sandwich – or the kind of advice a sandwich should be giving, because it’s in a refrigerator waiting to be eaten, so it shouldn’t be in the greatest mood – would be different. So I took audio from Winnebago Man, that tape where the guy is swearing: “Look, I’ve got something to say here, I’m not going to take any more bullshit. There’s going to be no more fucking around!” Then I kept cutting back to reaction shots of the guy nodding as he listens to the sandwich.
It kind of encapsulates my worldview. People who are into self-help – they might as well be taking advice from a sandwich.

Guardian: Can you tell me a bit about your next project?
DB: Yeah – the new one I’m doing is called Cop Movie. I’m taking 101 cop movies and making a full-length feature from them. It’ll be completely schizophrenic. I’m just completely obsessed with that genre. The same script has been used for hundreds and hundreds of cop movies – they just change the character’s names, using a name that sounds dangerous and slightly evocative of freedom or something.
There’s always a vigilante aspect to cop movies that people really celebrate. I don’t know if you want your law enforcement people to decide they’re going to do whatever is necessary to take the "bad guy" off the street – even if it means killing 80 innocent people. At the end, as long as the bad person is caught, everything is forgiven. I’m thinking, “You drove your car through countless homes looking for this drug dealer – are those people thankful?”
The reason I’m using 101 movies is this ridiculous mathematical thing that I’ve figured out. If I take a certain number of seconds from each movie it adds up to 66 minutes and 6 seconds, and the whole construct of 666 makes me laugh.
This is the most ambitious one I’ve done so far.

Guardian: You’re working within more rules – which is kind of great considering the theme that you’re working with.
DB: Yeah, and I wanted to step away from the randomness of TV Carnage. It’s not completely random but I didn’t want to put out something similar again. In the evolution of taking it way too seriously I decided to put out the cop movie project.
I’m going for the cop movies that take themselves seriously – it’s always a cop who just recently to get divorced or a cop who is about to retire and has a "last big case."

Guardian: I’d imagine it’s going to have big finale.
DB: I’ve already cut together a part where a guy gets hit by a car and there are five different people being hit by the car within four or five seconds. It goes from a blond guy getting hit to a black guy rolling over the car to a guy with red hair on the ground to a guy with a mullet being checked out by the cops, and it flows seamlessly. It’s a real acid trip. It’s kind of a psychological experiment.
So, after I finish it, I’ll probably just pick out a casket and go to sleep for a hundred years.

Guardian: You’re working with Vice as well?
DB: We started this TV thing, so I’m doing this on-air stuff. I’m going after stories that are semi-serious to me, such as environmental issues, and also adding my own approach to the more bizarre things that I see in the world. Basically, I’m lucky enough to find employment in being a jackass.

Guardian: Since you’ve worked in the entertainment industry, I’m wondering what kind of reaction TV Carnage has gotten from people within the industry, from stars to others.
DB: There’s a funny story. A friend of mine directs TV. He does a lot of stuff. He does videos fro bands that are half decent, but ultimately he’ll admittedly sell his soul and make horrible movies of the week. He’ll call me from sets – and I get this from other directors too who want to get in touch with me – saying, “I just made the worst movie in the world!” like it’s a badge of honor.
My friend Chris said on the set of one movie – it might have been the Showtime Queer as Folk – an actor did a scene and his delivery was particularly bad.

Guardian: Yeah. I believe it.
DB: Weird, huh? Anyway, the actor said, “I wanna redo that!” My friend Chris said, “I think we’re ok with that take,” and the guy snapped, “I don’t want this to be on TV Carnage! I want to redo this!”

Guardian: I had a bad experience in Toronto walking down Church Street – my boyfriend and I almost got corralled into a crowd scene for that show.
DB: You should have just gone to the craft services table and eaten tons of food and then split!
I also got this email from the US military once, I’m not shitting you. It was from the Entertainment Division of the US Military. I thought, “What’s more entertaining than the US military? They have an entertainment division on top of that? Wow!”

Guardian: It’s working overtime now.
DB: They were interested in getting TV Carnage to show to the troops. I was like, “Mm-hmm, I’m sure you are.” They sent me this document with all these questions like, “What is the motive behind your TV Carnage? Is there any underlying thesis or message you’re trying to get across?” It looked like someone had slapped together a bogus logo on some letterhead, but it was a real government division – I looked it up online.
The questions were so specific about TV Carnage, and so eerily “Feel free to narc on anyone!” that I didn’t respond. I never heard from them again. I showed it to a bunch of friends, and no one thought, “Oh, they probably want to show it.” They all thought it was creepy.

Guardian: What else are you working on?
DB: I recently did a documentary called Strip Club DJs, about the DJs that work as strip clubs, that will come out under the TV Carnage banner. And I want to go on tour with TV Carnage.

Opening Day

The VICE GUIDE TO TRAVEL is the for sale! It's a lot like VICE Magazine, except it moves. For this first one we dispatched correspondents all over the world to vist the planet's weirdest and most dangerous places. We went to such farflung locales as the Pygmy villages in the Congo, the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl, and the illegal arms markets of Pakistan. We looked for mythical beasts, met the PLO boy scouts (suicide bombers of tomorrow), chatted with a man who sold black market nuclear warheads and hung out with Osama bin Laden, and got shot at in the slums of Rio. This is travel at its most bizarre, equal parts LSD and adrenaline, and sometimes we can't believe we made it back.

World's Greatest Band

The Black Lips are playing tonight at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan. Pack a pipe, poncho and pogo stick and expect to get wasted, sprayed and tossed around. And if that doesn't sound like your of cup of pee check 'em out playing Cowboys and Indians for the big screen.

In Summation:
They’ve got three LPs and loads of singles on some of the coolest indie labels in America. They’ve toured Europe twice. They’ve been touring the States for the last six years. They’ve just become of legal age to hang out in the bars they play in. They’ve played five shows in the New York area in the last month, but call Atlanta home. They have songs called “Feeling Gay,” “Dirty Hands,” and “Everybody Loves a Cocksucker,” that alternate from Hank-drawled country, Soledad Brothers-esque blues and Stonsey rock with kerosene soaked vocals that go from yodels to screams.  They are the Black Lips, and the sooner you accept them into your life, the better off you’ll be.

Perry Caravello Day

Today is Scary Perry day. Windy City Heat the DVD has just been released and a million things are going on to celebrate it. They are:

ONE- the Perry Project’s website is going live which includes one of the stupidest blogs ever written.

TWO- we’re putting a teaser of an hour long prank call where they convince Perry to tell a prominent producer that he missed the audition because he was raped. (Perry even goes on to claim he “squoze” too tight and the bottle he was sodomized with broke in his ass.)

THREE- Hear The Big Three (Don, Mole, and Perry) on Adam Corolla’s radio show. Johnny Knoxville appears as the new Scary Perry and allows Knoxville to smash his penis in a mousetrap (click the picture to see the video) to show who is more deserving of the lead in Windy City Heat: Number 2.

FOUR- the guys at TV Carnage did a Perry thing where he substitutes Perry’s voice with The Thing from Fantastic Four because both Perry and The Thing think fedoras make you cool. Like movies?

FIVE- See The Big Three on Jimmy Kimmel Live here and here!  If that's still not enough Perry for one day you must be Randy Callahan.    

*Thanks to Dr. McInnes for this probing post!

YouTube.com: A New Musical Anthropology

Ten or more years ago, the best example I could give you of a subset of people who wasted large chunks of their time at work fiddling with personal publications was the hardcore music “fan ‘zine” set, many of whom worked at Kinko’s simply for access to the copiers, computers and paper so crucial to their output. In recent years, that subset has expanded exponentially to include enough of the contemporary workforce that employers often now utilize office monitoring software to keep their employees off of their blogs, their Friendster and Myspace pages, and so forth. No doubt that when Michel de Certeau wrote of la perruque (basically a French idiom for “stealing from the workplace”) in The Practice of Everyday Life he had no idea how fittingly it would describe 21st century Internet usage. The concept fits so perfectly for the vast amounts of time wasted everyday at an employer’s expense that one can imagine ads for the aforementioned software quoting de Certeau directly on the box: “LA PERRUQUE IS INFILTRATING ITSELF EVERYWHERE!” And now that the broadcast of web-based blogs has replaced the narrow niche of the photocopied ‘zine [and further, that what was once “subculture” has simply become “culture”], passively and/or aggressively, we’ve become de Certeau’s “very ordinary culture” of subversives engaged in “economic diversion”, stealing company time (and bandwidth) when we think no one is looking. The list of enabling vehicles for these “uses and tactics” grows with each new Internet phenomenon: my new favorite diversion is YouTube.com.

Even if you’ve wasted very little of your precious time on YouTube, you know what lurks there: fuzzy homemade videos of skinny emo boys punching each other in the crotch; infinite clips of half-naked 13-year old girls lip-synching to “My Humps” while rolling and shaking their own not-quite-developed humps to crappy off-camera boom boxes; shaky handheld footage of groups of guys beating the hell out of other groups of guys; stupid TV and movie parodies, re-edited with help from TiVo and iMovie; pixilated blooper reels of cows shitting on news reporters, monkeys attacking talk show hosts, and even a killer whale squashing a kayaker (fake, by the way). YouTube and its colleagues, like Putfile and Google Video, are the future (or at least the present) of a new democratic visual archive. If eBay is America’s yard sale, then YouTube is our A/V closet, and it looks a lot like an amalgamation of the Faces of Death series, America’s Funniest Home Videos, Jerry Springer, American Idol auditions, home made child porn, and the kind of footage previously only found at flea markets and thrift stores. It’s a mess, just like everything else.

But like so many closets, if you dig deeply enough you’re sure to find something interesting. Buried within the endless supplies of Numa song remakes and shitty “sponsor me” skateboard videos are some real gems: a friend of mine sent me this link (http://www.youtube.com/?v=F4wi_-oP-0E) to a clip of two Russian teens who can apparently run, jump or climb over anything, Jackie Chan-style. Or this Internet nugget (http://www.youtube.com/?v=L854AFW7GhU) mashing up a song from the Avenue Q musical with animation from a World of Warcraft video game. Or best of all, replacing the old ‘zine, with its poorly photocopied pictures of the Misfits or S.O.A. [to which my heart is still loyal, I might add] is an amazing, disorganized, and often equally amateurish archive of off-beat, early, or hard-to-find punk and hardcore music concert videos that people have culled from their private collections and posted to the site. If you’re willing to wade through the thousands of videos like “Alyssa and Patty Dancing Hardcore” or “Hardcore Kid on American Idol”, you’ll find a seemingly endless vein of videos by the Monks, Black Flag, the Misfits, Negative Approach, Bad Brains, Youth of Today, Naked City, Bikini Kill, Napalm Death, S.O.A., Void and so many more.

Due to the giant square pixels, overly compressed audio tracks, and various watermarks, these are certainly not archival quality pieces in online museum—but it’s all free. Like so many other inventions in the new economy, there’s no charge to host or to download the content. It is only a matter of time before some big institution steps in and messes with the site (like Napster or Myspace), but for now, it’s an interesting look into our collective psyche. Just whose psyche it is might up for grabs, though. I can’t speak for the volumes of weird homemade videos of kids dancing in their rooms or causing a scene at the mall, Jackass-style, but the music videos are obviously posted by fans—people who’ve spent a lot of time or money to collect rare videos of their favorite bands. Unlike on eBay, where collecting means hording away from everyone else, on YouTube, collecting means sharing. You can’t “keep” any of what is posted there; videos stream from the server, so you never download any actual content. And links often go bad, especially if the artist is well known (oh Prince, damnitall, please just let the world watch your 1985 American Music Awards clip whenever they need a lift!). But the specialist stuff is out there, if you’re willing to search for it. Judging by the number of hours so many have logged onto the site, apparently people are very much willing.

This Trailer Could Be Your Life

Funny how the times change. American Hardcore is now the height of fashion more than 25 years after it broke. Expect to see Negative Approach backing Nissan Altima commercials and Youth Brigade hustling Wendy's Frosty Dairy Desserts anyday now. But who can blame them? Hardcore broke long before MTV and Blogs, so the fact that most of America is just now catching on isn't really that surprising. But can it be merely hipster irony driving this rehash, when seeing fashionistas wearing a Black Flag shirts is about as poignant an Al Jolson blanket drapped across your dad or could it be that this shit rules?

Regardless, if you know the difference between slam dancing and moshing go see this move, skank around a bit in the auditorium then rent The Decline of Western Civilization Part 1, (and only Part 1 please) Another State of Mind and We Jam Econo. Like fist fighting to the oldies?

Bindi City Heat

Windy City Heat is finally being released on DVD. How great is that you ask? Look to Gavin's loving gospel in the most recent issue of VICE Magazine, if you are still out in the cold on this classic comedy. In the world of film, copycatting is a great way to get rich without doing any work, so Thobey thought we should do a remake right away. And because of VICE's ever encroaching international visibility, India was deemed the perfect place for this celulloid rehash tentatively titled Bindi City Heat Bollywood goes Bollockswood, if you will. Think the Peter Sellers classic The Party with a hint of Chi-Town Canadian dufus on top.

With the three red headed stars pictured, this is certain to generate a sub-world of south asian, if not world-wide, resentment. However, the abilities of this new Big 3 to sing and dance with daring aplomb has already proven untetherable time and again. And besides it's a dumb white guy story to begin with so please no complaints about make-up or bad accents. Whom exactly will draw the lead dumb role as GemStone Fury is anyone's guess. Care to vote for your choice?

Old Drug Buddies

Look we don't go all out for plays but when they're about drugs and Texans there is no way we can let that mayhem slide through the well worn boards of the stage unnoticed. So tonite you have to roll over to Fat Baby on Rivington and stretch out those flabby drama muscles at the Drug Buddy Launch Party where Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes will be DJing and Spank Rock will be performing. Could you find an event more tailor made than this to rope in a date? Simply ask the attractive person of your choice to go see the play, ok? Follow the simple instructions below and, of course, if it sucks you remain blamless. haha

Drug Buddy written by David Folwell and directed by our old chum Alex Kilgore will be playing at The Cherry Lane Theater beginning Setember 27th. For more information go to the stageFARM

For friends of VICE there are special $10 tickets for sale - simply enter the code "BUDDY" at Smarttix.

9/11: A Day Beyond Belief

There is not much more that can be said about 9/11 that smarter people haven't already. If you happened to have witnessed the shit hitting the fan firsthand, your thinking is forever your own. If you smelled the death and trudged through the waste I've nothing for you. But if you were lucky enough to have been somewhere else, this incredible video will perhaps demonstrate how ungodly and surreal the whole thing was to eyes unaccustomed to the most evil of bullshit.

Be good whenever you have the chance and beat the fascists wherever you find them.

My extended remembrance of 9/11

Politrix At Large

Rap Music is a funny thing. It is at times both provacative and stupefying, which is also an apt
description for many a political campaign. So most of us at Intern Central thought it brilliant (and perhaps a fitting end) when one of the drunken big boys headed south to curry favor from a group of rapsters destined to happily bounce a beanpole wannabe Politician out of town on his ass with grevious bodily harm. If this syrupy saga is to be believed, it seems VICE's plan to raise the South again might just work. What political intrigue is behind this cockamamie duplicity is anyone's guess. Can we please find this guy a Political Party Machine?

Meeting of the Mindless

VICE staffers are under a lot of pressure to look snazzy and original. Successfully ducking Gavin's league of fashion police and DOs & DON'Ts paparazzi only works three days out of seven, so you gotta keep sharp to look sharp. John Martin is our maven, taking to the streets to sniff out the fashion beat. Homeless ensembles are his inspiration: clothes so awesome you live in them!