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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Photo by Samantha Murasko
VOLUME 9 NUMBER 8 Cover by Stuart Griffiths
NEVER-ENDING DEATH Iraq’s Wadi Al-Salam Mega-Cemetery Knows No Bounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
GOD SAVE BELFAST He’s the Only Guy Anybody Here Can Agree On . . . . . . . . . . . 52
THE QUEENS OF BEEF WEEK High Quality Carcass! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN FROM AN OLD MAN TWICE MARRIED Love in the Time of Honduran Divorces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
I AM IRON MAN Boredom and Beatdowns in the Burbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
CHOKE IT DOWN Foul Eating with Dirty Beaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
14 Masthead 16 Employees 18 Front of the Book 34 Fashion: Li’l DOs & DON’Ts 44 DOs & DON’Ts 64 Toupee: A Hero Made of Shit 66 The Learnin’ Corner 68 The Cute Show Page! 72 Reviews 80 Johnny Ryan’s Page
10 VICE
Most people think that a cool new camera has to look like it came from the future. The PEN looks like it came from your dad.
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BOKI WEARS NIKE AIR MAX 1 HYPERFUSE PREMIUM SHOES, NIKE POCKET POLO
Hyperfuse revisits history’s best-loved NIKE products and infuses them with the latest technology. It’s kind of like digitally remastering a classic album or giving a cat super-fast robot legs. VICE recently teamed up with three modern-day Futurists to create the images you see here.
ARIELLE WEARS NIKE FUSED WINDRUNNER JACKET
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EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH
MICHAEL MOYNIHAN This particular Michael Moynihan has never written a book about Norwegian death metal and isn’t a member of Blood Axis. That’s a very different Michael Moynihan (the one who claimed he wasn’t a Holocaust denier because he’d “prefer it to be true”). Our Michael Moynihan, while married to a Swede and also from Boston, is a former political journalist and senior editor at Reason magazine, a soporific television talking head, and a frequent contributor to all sorts of journals your dad likes to rest across his chest while snoring like a chainsaw in the living room. He is now our managing editor. He is also diabetic. Deal with it.gif. See GOD SAVE BELFAST, page 52
STUART GRIFFITHS Photographer Stuart Griffiths joined the Parachute Regiment at age 17 and served in Belfast during the Troubles in the 80s and 90s. On leaving the army he found himself homeless and living on the streets of London along with other ex-soldiers. He found his way out through photography and making a film about his life, Isolation. Over the past year or so he’s been working with us on a documentary about post-peace-process Belfast and all its attendant dramas. We recently went there to take part in parade season (that’s when everybody throws rocks and petrol bombs at one another), and Stuart came along to snap photos. See GOD SAVE BELFAST, page 52
CLANCY MARTIN Clancy Martin’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times, Esquire, the London Review of Books, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. His first novel, How to Sell, was chosen by the Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and many other publications as a “Best Book of 2009.” His writing has been translated into Russian, Czech, and Portuguese, among other languages. Basically he's one of those people who are so much smarter than you, it's impossible to think of anything clever to say about them. In this issue, Clancy spins a cautionary tail of love, loss and being framed for incest in Honduras. See ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN FROM AND OLD MAN TWICE MARRIED, page 60
OLIVER PURSER Oliver's one of the few guys that live in Byron Bay and don't surf. Instead he spends his time taking awesome photos of things like the ladies of Beef Week, soaking up rays from his laptop and running a multi-media operation from his rainforest bunker. He does like fishing though and can often be seen in his underwear, waist-deep in waves, hooking flatheads by the dozen (or so he says). Oliver recently traveled to Jogjakarta with us to shoot photos of Indonesian transvestites for an upcoming VBS story. Oh, and at Beef Week we also learnt that Oliver is something of a sharp shooter, scoring 10 out of 10 on the rifle range—more than once. See THE QUEENS OF BEEF WEEK, page 26
STEPH CALDWELL Steph Caldwell went to the same high school as Prince Charles, which sounds posh until you find out it’s in Geelong. We don’t give her a hard time about it though, partly because she’s really nice but mostly because she sits kind of far away. Over the past two months, Steph has been our PR intern, helping manage newsletters, RSVP lists, as well as our upcoming Bloggers Network, which you’ll be hearing more about in the weeks to come. Oh, and just a reminder, we’re always on the look out for interns so if you have PR skills, writing skills, design skills, operations skills, or sneaking pictures of real-life DOs & DON’Ts skills, drop us an line. Send us an email with the subject line I CAN DO THINGS to stuff@viceaustralia.com
16 VICE
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FRONT OF THE BOOK
Albania Loves Bush
SEIZED IN SOMALIA For the past 20 years, UN security officer Rolf Helmrich has conducted operations in Somalia, one of the most dangerous countries in the world. He’s a tough son of a bitch and an old-school gentleman. We talked to him about his cheery time as a hostage in Somalia in 2004.
BY OSCAR RICKETT PHOTOS COURTESY OF ROLF HELMRICH
VICE: You worked in Somalia for a while. That doesn’t sound like it could have been too much fun. Rolf Helmrich: There is a Somali proverb: “Somalia against the world. My clan against Somalia. My family against my clan. My brother and me against my family. Me against my brother.” Somalia was never peaceful. The people are pastoralist and nomadic, constantly in search of water. As a baby you sleep with a dagger in your cradle. You always have a weapon. So how did you get kidnapped? Me and my UN colleagues were stopped at a bridge near a village, and we were met by a militia. Initially they tried to get money from us, but since I was trying to help the people in the area they changed their tactics. My five Somali colleagues were told to find their way back to Kismayo. I was alone with 15 militiamen with AK-47s. They squeezed into the vehicle and drove me deep into the desert. How long were you there? About ten days. We moved around a lot at night. I was very tense. They would throw hand grenades to each other and I would follow the grenade left to right, right to left. The worst part was not having a bathroom. I stank. How did your kidnapping end? Ahmed, my guard, came to me and said, “Get your shoes.” We walked 300 yards into the darkness, and two gentlemen from the same subclan as my captors came out with a bodyguard. A ransom of $18,000 had come from the business community to cleanse the name of the subclan, which had lost face because of my kidnapping. I was picked up and taken back in a 27-vehicle convoy. I spent an hour in the shower. Did you blame them for kidnapping you? No, I understood why they did it. I was a target because I worked for the UN. A week before, Somalis working for a UN agency were also stopped and asked for money. They agreed to pay but then broke their promise and threatened the militia. That agreement is important. Things are sealed with a handshake, like in the Middle Ages. You can’t break a handshake. I like that. I like Somalis.
18 VICE
BY WILBERT L. COOPER PHOTO BY FISNIK LAMA
The Balkans sure know how to treat a cowboy. In Albania, the village of Fushe Kruja recently erected a 9.5-foot-tall bronze statue of George W. Bush in the town square, celebrating the 43rd president’s first and only visit to Albania in 2007. They like Bush so much over there that his name has been immortalised as the moniker for a bakery, a café, and a street. It’s understandable that Albanians feel pretty pro-US, considering the Clinton administration’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia on behalf of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the country’s admission to NATO under Obama in 2009. But in light of the presidential alternatives, how does Bush warrant a statue in Fushe Kruja? Apparently, he touched an elderly woman’s soul there by comparing her to his mother.
FRONT OF THE BOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF ORIFICE WEAPONS
NEARLY RECTUM WORDS AND PHOTO BY HARRY CHEADLE ILLUSTRATION BY HANNAH KUNKLE
Fearmongering terrorism experts now want us to believe that Al-Qaeda bombers have started stuffing their bodies with explosives, be it through surgery or the old-fashioned “stick it up your ass” technique. We wanted to run this by someone who knew the ins and outs of removing foreign objects from body cavities, so we called up Dr. Nageswara Mandava, the chairman of the Department of Surgery at Flushing Hospital in Queens, New York, who wrote a paper on removing packets of coke and dope from drug mules. VICE: Could a potential body-cavity bomber use the same techniques as a drug mule? Dr. Nageswara Mandava: Typically they’d have some kind of operation, like an appendectomy, and a large package would be put in the empty space between the bowel and the abdominal wall, alongside the organs. No one really has the data on how large the packets are or how powerful the explosives are. Unlike drugs, bombs aren’t going to get out on their own. So it would probably be harder for you, say, to get bombs out than it would be to remove drugs. It’s a different mind set. If a drug mule’s pellets of heroin are leaking into his stomach, he’s willing to have the pellets removed and live. But the goal of a terrorist is to set it off and kill himself. So it’d be a harder sell to persuade him to have surgery. Do you think you could remove a bomb from somebody’s body, even if they didn’t want you to? I don’t know that you could actually do it safely. You could do an X-ray or a CAT scan to identify the problem and then quarantine the person and figure out a way to remove it without detonating it. Or you might just quarantine them and see what happens.
1887: Just before being executed, anarchist Louis Lingg commits suicide by exploding a blasting cap in his mouth.
1942: The CIA designs a kit of tools and knives that could be carried inside an agent’s anus and retrieved in case of capture.
2005: A corpse burning in a funeral pyre in Nepal explodes from a bomb implanted by Maoist rebels.
2007: Cops at LAX stop a man who has wires and a rock in his ass, in what they decide was possibly a “dry run” for an attack.
2008: Al-Qaeda sews bombs into a pair of dogs in an attempt to blow up a plane, but the dogs die before takeoff, possibly from having bombs sewn into them.
2009: An Al-Qaeda terrorist explodes a bomb in his butt in a botched attempt to kill the Saudi head of counterterrorism—the first and so far only true case of a human body-cavity bomber.
BY WILBERT L. COOPER
20 VICE
So, more than 50 percent of the squishy gunk that makes up butt plugs and rubber vaginas contain phthalates and other carcinogenic plasticisers, which are toxic enough to cause hormonal imbalances, diabetes, and even infertility. Because of this, manufacturers in developed countries like the US are starting to phase out plasticisers in all products; however, noxious toy cocks are still widely used, especially in Germany, where the consumer-safety study that came up with this figure was conducted and where the country’s Green Party is demanding that the government regulate these pestilent penises. Until manufacturers stop using phthalates, you can practice safe masturbation by buying 100 percent silicone sex toys or just using your fucking hands.
iStockphoto.com/AlexMax
Death Dongs
FRONT OF THE BOOK In Egalia, Everyone Pees Sitting Down BY MILÈNE LARSSON PHOTO BY EVAN LONG
THE ORDEALS OF THE MASTER Raven Kaldera is a polite, mildmannered farmer in rural Massachusetts who is also one of the world’s most prominent voices on paganism, BDSM, polyamory, and shamanism. He’s also a self-styled “Ordeal Master,” which… we’ll let him tell you about.
BY CHRIS O’NEILL PORTRAIT BY SADIE SEZ
VICE: So what is the job of an Ordeal Master? Raven Kaldera: People come to me asking for me to design ordeals and perform them. Often they’ll want to face up to and relive something that’s happened in their life, like child abuse, although it’s not always sexual. The process is basic role-playing, but it’s more like ritual theater with real pain. We talk beforehand about who we’re going to be and what will be done with them. Whether they’ll be beaten, branded, cut, or something like that. Will there be a permanent mark that will remind them of this or just something that will fade? Probably the longest and most involved ordeal I’ve ever done was for a guy dedicated to Odin—the god of wisdom. Part of why Odin gained such wisdom was that he gave up one of his eyes, lived as a woman for a year to learn their mysteries, and then was hung on Yggdrasil, the world tree, for nine days. This guy wanted to re-create this. On the first day, he was sent to sleep in a park. The next morning, we hosed him down, dressed him in skirts, and he spent all day being forcibly feminised and slapped when he wasn’t learning fast enough. In the evening when he came home, three guys threw him on the floor and had their way with him as if he were a woman. The first two were pretty rough, but the third was gentle. The next day, we taped one eye shut, then in the evening we stitched his lips shut so the words would build up but he wouldn’t be able to talk. The next day we took the stitches out and untaped his eye. Then I whipped him and sang Norse runes as I beat him, to get the energy of each rune into his body. Then we put hooks in his flesh and hung him from a tree. But not for nine days, only for about an hour. The whole ordeal lasted for four days. As an Ordeal Master, you go into it with the mind set that you’re helping this person have the experience they want. We are embodying the sacred darknesses that one has to go through. Did he gain the wisdom he wanted to, after all of this? It seemed to do the trick. He said he learned many, many things. I keep encouraging him to write about it, but he’s too shy.
22 VICE
Egalia, the world’s first gender-neutral preschool, is exactly where you’d expect it to be: in the socialist paradise of Sweden. The institution discourages the use of third-person pronouns “him” and “her” (all the kids are called “friend”) and believes that giving girls dolls and boys toy cars is a form of gender oppression. This means making sure that toys and books are free from traditional gender roles and letting the girls enjoy ball games and the boys play dress up. Egalia is either years ahead of its time, an Orwellian nightmare, or both. “They think we’re trying to turn boys into girls and girls into boys and that they’ll all end up homosexual,” says Lotta Rajalin, Egalia’s principal. “It’s clearly written into the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child that all kids should have equal rights and opportunities. Twenty years from now, we’ll look back and wonder why all schools didn’t share our values and education plan.” Incidentally, Lotta is a woman. Not that that should matter.
THE CATALAN CRAZY BY TONI L. QUEROL PHOTO BY RAFA CASTELLS
On the northeast coast of Spain lives 74-year-old Josep Pujiula. Over the past four decades he’s torn down and rebuilt a psychedelic labyrinth in the Catalan countryside at least three times. There’s a tower made of fallen branches and chicken wire that’s more than 100 feet high, a deerskin-clad E.T. surrounded by crucifixes and shotguns, a museum cave hidden underneath a maze, and enough other wacky shit to pique the interest of tourists, pill heads, gang members, and LSD fans. It seems Joseph can do anything—even tame a wild ram. He told us, “I grabbed him by the balls, threw him to the ground, and shouted, ‘I’m the boss here!’”
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Believed to be the most expansive necropolis in the world, Wadi Al-Salam is constantly expanding and therefore difficult to survey. The grounds cover at least 1,920 acres. Photo courtesy of the United States Department of Defense.
NEVER-ENDING DEATH Iraq’s Wadi Al-Salam Mega-Cemetery Knows No Bounds WORDS AND PHOTOS BY KARLOS ZURUTUZA
24 VICE
inding the way to where I’m going couldn’t be easier: Just follow the cars with coffins strapped to their roof racks. This grim procession happens daily as hundreds of Arab men in turbans and women wearing black veils drive through the unforgiving Iraqi desert toward Najaf, the third most sacred city for Shia Muslims after Mecca and Medina. Death is both their constant travel companion and their final destination—it literally hovers above their heads throughout the journey to Wadi al-Salam, which contains an estimated 5 million gravesites and is reputedly the largest Muslim cemetery in the world. I arrive at the same time as Hassan, a man who came from Basra along with his brothers, wife, and three children to bury his father. Theirs was not a funeral procession that allowed much time for grieving. “We only stopped once on the way here, a five-minute toilet break at the service station halfway,” Hassan says. “It’s five hours to Basra, and in this heat the corpse decomposes rapidly.” He has the content look of a son who has successfully carried on a family tradition. Hassan’s father will rest next to his father and grandfather, and, Allah willing, one day it will be Hassan’s turn himself to make the journey atop a car, and after that generations of his offspring. Every
F
Shia’s last wish is to be interred here, near the tomb of Ali—the first cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and, according to Shias, the original Imam. And Iraqi Muslims aren’t the only pilgrims—for thousands of years, travelers have flocked to the site from Iran, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, and farther locales. It’s virtually impossible to imagine how many rotting corpses and skeletons lie packed underground, resting on top of one another in a surreal vertical queue that will only become longer. Wadi Al-Salam currently spans more than three square miles and is perpetually expanding—its size increased by approximately 40 percent after the US and its allies invaded Iraq in 2003. The current plan is for American forces to completely withdraw by the end of 2011. In their wake they will leave wrecked buildings, angry Muslims, and a fresh layer of death atop a place that records Iraq’s history via strata of skeletons. “How many bodies are buried here?” says Beyan Shakir Abu Saib, repeating my question. “There could be millions. People have been buried in layers, one over the other, for centuries.” Beyan is a member of a clan of undertakers that was founded hundreds of years ago. His children work alongside him. The Saib family business is as ancient as the cemetery stones, and they certainly aren’t the only ones employed by the Grim Reaper. For instance, near an area where cadavers are cleaned and embalmed, Sadaw Ubeid sells burial shrouds for 10,000 dinars (approximately $8.50) a pop. According to Sadaw, it’s a hell of a good deal; in other parts of the cemetery, merchants charge up to 75,000 dinars (approximately $65) for an identical product. So why doesn’t Sadaw raise his prices? “What we’re doing is humanitarian aid financed by Muqtada
Al-Sadr’s NGO,” he tells me. “Money shouldn’t be an obstacle for the faithful who want to bury their loved ones alongside Imam Ali.” He says this underneath a portrait of Al-Sadr, Iraq’s most controversial political and religious leader. Americans might know Al-Sadr as the commander and founder of the Mahdi Army, a well-organised Shia militia that fought occupying forces, the US-backed Iraqi government, and other militias until they disbanded in 2008. Iraqis, however, view Al-Sadr as a legitimate political force. His party won 40 parliamentary seats (out of 325) in last year’s election and has provided oil, water, and food to the impoverished populace. It’s no coincidence that Al-Sadr is so popular among the workers and other long-term visitors who are still breathing in Wadi Al-Salam. The Mahdi Army and American forces fought an intense battle throughout the streets of Najaf in the summer of 2004, which inevitably spread to the labyrinthine graveyard. The US Army divided the cemetery into sections named after New York City boroughs, but this didn’t do much to improve morale. From “Queens” to “the Bronx,” insurgents used an underground network of passages between the crypts to move stealthily throughout the cemetery and fire RPGs on Bradley tanks and Humvees. The English translation of Wadi AlSalam, “Valley of Peace,” hardly seemed appropriate in those days. Many of the Mahdi loyalists who fought in this battle never left the cemetery; they are buried in a dedicated wing to the right of the main entrance. Their tombs are decorated with plastic flowers and portraits of the fallen martyrs in battle dress—or at least that’s what I’ve heard. Admittance to this area is forbidden to anyone without direct ties to al-Sadr’s organisation. In another part of the necropolis I meet two men both named Said, construction workers and occasional undertakers who today are working in an area reserved for unidentified bodies. “Most of them are victims of suicide bombings,” says the elder Said of the anonymous remains. “They all end up here. Sometimes they’re identified and taken elsewhere, especially if they’re Sunni or Christian.” The younger Said adds that the number of unknown corpses has dropped sharply since the worst years of the war, particularly the dead recovered from areas where US forces allegedly dropped white phosphorous bombs. Although the US denies that the deadly antipersonnel weapon was used on Iraqi civilians (after first denying that it was used at all), residents in places like Fallujah were somehow exposed to the substance, and its effects were devastating. The silence of Wadi Al-Salam, however, can make the travesties of war feel distant. It’s an insular community with its own workforce, grid of streets and avenues, and taxis. The cabbies must contend with uneven roads littered with thousands of discarded plastic perfume bottles, which are used in ceremonies, and an increasingly saturated market for their services. For local merchants, the local economy is grim in more ways than one. Ali Abdul Hassan, 32, had worked as an undertaker since the age of 12 until chronic back pain forced him find a new career selling incense and the aforementioned bottles of pink ceremonial perfume. “I arrive at 5 AM, and I work until the sun goes down,” Ali says. “I make about 15,000 dinars [about $12.80] a day. If it’s a holy day, then I can make twice that. My wife and eight children live in a rented room. It’s all we can afford.” Najaf’s perfume industry is cutthroat. Later I meet Hisham, a 14-yearold perfume peddler who is also dismayed with his profits: “If I can save enough money one day, I’d like to be a soldier or a policeman. The problem is that unless you’ve got contacts—family members who work for the government—you have to pay $1,000 just to fill out the application form. There’s no guarantee they’ll accept you.” Considering the alternatives, almost everyone wishes to be employed by the Iraqi government in some capacity. The main problem is that corruption here is perhaps even more rampant than death. Fortunately, young Hisham is able to put things into perspective and accept whatever fate he is dealt: “Did you know there are angels who take away the bodies of those who aren’t meant to be buried here? A while ago they opened a tomb over there and it was empty. It works the other way too. If you’re a good Muslim but are buried somewhere else, the angels will bring you. But I want to die here, in Wadi Al-Salam.”
Hisham quit school two years ago to work in the Valley of Peace. His greatest wish is to be buried here when his time comes.
Said and Said tend a plot that will soon be filled by new occupants.
Plastic flowers, bottles of cologne, and the flag of Imam Ali decorate virtually every grave in Wadi Al-Salam.
Family vaults can serve as a historical summary of Iraq’s wars and natural catastrophes. The portrait in the foreground depicts one of the many who perished in the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988.
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(Clockwise from top left) Tiarna Brooker, Cathy Broadrick, Anna Supple, Kathleen Hancock, Courtney Lane, Margaret Young, Amy Morton
THE QUEENS OF BEEF WEEK High Quality Carcass! BY HANNAH BROOKS PHOTOS BY OLIVER PURSER
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omewhere between Sydney and Brisbane is a town of about 10,000 people called Casino. If you’ve spent any time in country towns, you’ll know that they’re all famous for something. This one is no different. Casino calls itself the Beef Capital of Australia, even though Queensland’s Rockhampton does too. But while Rockhampton may have bull sculptures lining its main street—who’s balls are routinely removed by pranksters—Casino one-ups it with Beef Week, a festival attracting around 20,000 visitors each year. Despite its name, the Beef Week actually spans 10 days, hosting events such as steer judging, rodeos, whip cracking, drag racing, square dancing, orchids, hypnosis, a fashion parade, something called cow pat lotto, a big street parade, and a Slim Dusty tribute show called ‘Dustier Than Ever’. We decided to take the scenic drive to Casino for the 29th year of Beef Week. On the outskirts of town we tuned into the region’s own beef-themed radio station: C.O.W FM to get in the mood. What we most want to see is the Miss Casino Beef Week competition. It’s the festival’s premier event and is basically like a beauty pageant with beef instead of bikinis.
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This year six women are competing for the title: Tiarna Brooker, Cathy Broadrick, Anna Supple, Kathleen Hancock, Margaret Young and Courtney Lane. The pageant takes place at the official opening party, Casino’s night of nights. When we show up, the atmosphere is serious and prestigious. Couples arrive well-dressed: proud men in stiff suits, women in undulating shawls. Although the invitation suggests it as an option, no one has come in fancy dress. Amy Morton won the crown last year so this is her final outing in the official Beef Queen sash. She clasps her tiara in her left hand and when a photographer approaches, she digs its combs into her hair, completing her regal look. Amy explains that each entrant represents a breed of cattle, and that the choice is theirs to make. She chose Angus because “I’ve always liked Angus, I guess”. Like this year’s hopefuls, Amy says she entered to give back to the community. She’s passionate about the industry: she’s a qualified butcher who used to work at an abattoir and these days works in meat management. Of this year’s contestants, she says, “They’re all really great individuals in themselves and I think every one of them has a chance of winning”. When it comes time to question the entrants, I’m happy to find they’re all very sweet and a little bewildered by all the attention, walking carefully like kittens in their high heels and long gowns. Anna Supple is 21, works in financial planning and has been asked to enter the competition the past
Photo by Hanna Brooks
four years running. She likes her steak well done—“I don’t like blood”—and has travelled to Thailand and been on a cruise but is always glad to come home to Casino. Anna is representing Brahman and when I ask her about the breed she whispers “Oh Jesus, now I’ve got to remember this”. Composing herself, in a careful, textbook voice she begins: “They can adapt to any sort of environment. They don’t take in much water so their nutrients stay in their blood stream which makes them very good to… reproductive system?” The last part sounds unsure and since I have no idea what she’s talking about, she continues. “Ah… they came from… South… America and there was… they originated from four breeds in Indi… a and one from Britain. They’re very fertile, they’re low maintenance, and that’s why they’re such a good cow from Australia.” She dissolves into an orgy of giggles. Local girl Tiarna Brooker is 19. When she finishes her studies and traineeship, she wants to move to the Gold Coast and hopes to “live in a nice house, have a nice stable job, good income”. She likes her steak medium rare with barbecue sauce and is representing the breed Romangnola. “The Romangnola,” she says, “is well-known for its muscle capacity so it’s going to produce a high quality beef. Because it’s such a calm tempered animal it’s going to lower the risk of being injured or bruised.” I thank Tiarna and move on to the next. Like the Red Angus she represents, 18yo Margaret Young has a winning air. She’s confident and has Beef Week experience, having been involved for the past eight years. “And,” she tells me, “I live on a beef cattle farm. We’ve got just under a thousand acres just out of town.” Red Angus, she explains, has a great
temperament, making them safer to work with. “When they do get sent off to get slaughtered they don’t cut dark because they don’t get stirred up before. They’ll be nice and calm so the meat’s good. High quality carcass!” she concludes, blinding me with a winning smile. Like Margaret, Kathleen Hancock, 20, has also been around cattle from a young age. “I was involved in the parade and the junior rodeo and I thought now that I’m older I’d give Beef Week Queen a crack.” She used to want to run a feed lot, but is now hoping to stay working in aged care. I ask what breed she’s chosen. “I’m a Braford. They were bred for tick tolerance and heat resistance. And, like, the eyes… they um… what would be the word?… They reduce the risk of eye cancer, pink eye and blight so they’re really good in any climatic zone really. Really good muscle tone.” Do they taste good? “Ye-ah,” she laughs, “I spose.” Encouraged to enter by a workmate, Cathy Broadrick grew up in Casino but her family moved away for six years. During that period she travelled back every year for Beef Week. She chose Santa Gertrudis as her breed because “the Santa Gertrudis is a real high bio domin [sic] due to its high yielding of fat coverage in the market”. Her voice shakes. “The females have a natural maternal instinct so as soon as they become mums you can sometimes see one cow with about ten calves, around her. They’re very tolerant so it doesn’t matter what kind of climate, whether it’s in Victoria or Northern Territory, they’re very acclimatised.” She pauses for breath, getting ready to launch into more. I thank her. “That’s enough?” she asks, surprised. Yes.
VICE 27
Photo by Hanna Brooks
We move on to more personal topics such as boys. Cathy’s boyfriend of two and a half years is in the army, “somewhere in the bush at Singleton”. He knows that she has entered the competition but if she wins she’ll have to wait until he gets back to tell him. “I’ve seen him four times out of five months,” she says. I ask if she misses him and, sounding sad and sweet, she answers yes. I ask Cathy what she wants from life and she struggles to answer. “A family. Family is very important to me… um… just… I don’t know. Simple things; like family and my partner—I’d like to be with him.” Switching the subject, I ask about her taste in steak. “Medium to medium rare. I like a little bit of blood and a little bit of pink but anywhere beyond that it’s not really a good steak anymore. It’s… dead.” Courtney Lane is 19 and like most of the other girls, a Casino native. She’s in real-estate and just got a promotion. “I’m working in property management now,” she says proudly. Her description of Limousin, her chosen breed, is the most coherent I hear all night. “Limousin originated in France and they’re found in about 70 different countries. They’re the largest breed in the UK and the seventh largest breed in Australia. Up to about 80 per cent of their meat can be sold and eaten, so that’s pretty good. The French ones are all naturally born with horns but in Australia we’ve developed polled Limousins. If they are still born with horns they get dehorned at a very young age.” Like her explanation of Limousin, Courtney likes her steak well done. Inside the ‘Mirage Room’, 300 people sit at large round tables eating steaks about two and a half fingers thick. Amy and the entrants sit together while three photographers—one heavily pregnant, one who looks like he’s covered this event for twenty years straight and my guy—hover around.
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After speeches and jokes that I don’t get, the girls are individually introduced and quizzed, once about their breed and once about Beef Week. They’re well-rehearsed but nervous, resulting in statements like “Beef Week is a very spiritual event for Casino”. As a media person, I’m not given a seat. Instead, I stand in the back taking notes while waiters glare at me for being in their way. At some point I get hungry and go downstairs to the buffet where, as a vegetarian, I am served potato, pumpkin and bread. Finally, half an hour later, it’s announced. The winner of 2011’s Beef Week Queen is Margaret Young. Courtney Lane is the runner up. Someone yells out “Red Angus!” clearly more excited about the breed than the girl representing it. Clutching a large bouquet of flowers with a look of disbelief and studied humility on her face, Margaret bursts into tears. While Margaret and Courtney are hugged and hurrahed, some of the others look ready for a stiff drink. No longer burdened with representing the town, their masks start to slip. It seems that right now, they don’t give a fuck. Runner-up Courtney looks dazed. I ask if speaking in front of all those people was scary. “I was more scared of falling up the stairs than anything” she says, breathless and giggly. Margaret is swarmed. I squeeze through to ask how she feels. “Shocked. Proud though. I’m, like, honoured a bit.” Her eyes are still glassy and wet. She tells me: “I think I’m getting called to go over there” and my 30 seconds with the Queen are almost up. I quickly ask if she’s happy. “Ecstatic. I’m looking forward to the week ahead ’cause I’m going to have a great week with the girls. I think it should be really fun.” The girls on the couch, shoulders hunched and clutching empty glasses, seem thrilled.
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I AM IRON MAN Boredom and Beatdowns in the Burbs BY ANTHONY PAPPALARDO
Anthony Pappalardo helped write Radio Silence, one of the few retrospectives of 80s American hardcore that nobody hates. He also played in Ten Yard Fight, the band pretty much singlehandedly responsible for the jockification of straightedge in the mid 90s. Live… Suburbia!, a new book Anthony put together with author Max G. Morton, will be released in October by powerHouse Books. It’s like a personal, pictorial history book of everything Boston punk kids have been doing for the last 30 years. So you have the early, figuring-it-out years, then the youth crew stuff, then some diversions into skinhead, then posicore, and so on, all featuring the same group of people, just getting older and figuring new shit out. It’s kind of like a BHC version of the Up movies and will probably be on the coffee table or cistern of every person you know come Christmas. Below is an excerpt from the BMX years. Also, if you haven’t figured out by now, we are not talking about Anthony Pappalardo the skateboarder. ames Regan was a boy by age but not by stature. He stood well over six feet with broad shoulders and cold blue eyes. When he gripped his ruddy fingers together they looked like brick wrecking balls that could easily smash through walls or at least flatten the noses of young boys with one swing. The neighborhood was terrified of James Regan. From age 13, he rode his yellow dirt bike around town without a helmet, license, or care. He was above the law. No matter what the thermometers said, he wore a sherpa-lined denim coat that housed a weapons armory: Butterfly knives, Chinese stars, butane lighters, prerolled joints, and a switchblade comb were always by his side. Normally, young burnouts decorated their jackets with patches and pins of their favorite metal bands, but James’s jacket was bare. He didn’t have time to be a seamstress—he was focused on mayhem and destruction. I learned quickly that the more patches, the less threatening a kid was. This theory was proved later in my life when I saw crusty punks lying in their own filth with pregnant dogs begging for change in Harvard Square. There was nothing scary about junkies resembling shit-stained rag dolls asking for beer money. James was a loner who didn’t need backup. He was a oneman army… or at least capable of keeping a gang of preteens in check. None of the kids on my block had older brothers willing to challenge him to a fight, so when he roared through, we were pretty much at his mercy. Normally, it was easy to avoid James, as he was always busy fixing something, building something, smoking something, or fucking something, but things changed when we found an abandoned ski slope near our neighborhood that was full of paths perfect for racing BMX bikes. There wasn’t a black diamond trail, just amateur inclines descending the “mountain” that only needed a little grooming before they became our private raceway. We heard that a homeless guy lived in the woods there and hung himself, but that only added to the danger and excitement. We spent the winter sledding there, one friend even snapped a wing, but we persuaded him to tell his parents he did it playing football to make sure we wouldn’t be banned from the mountain. Our plan was simple: After the winter thaw, we’d grab shovels and build jumps along the trails and we’d have the only true racing track and stunt zone in a 30-mile radius. Spring came and we swapped our winter work boots for sneakers and set off to the mountain to begin construction.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Brian Ryder, Andy Jenkins, Michael Galinsky, Michael Galinsky, Chris Kelly, Casey Chaos, Brett Barto
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No sooner had ground been broken than did we hear the menacing roar of James’s dirt bike. We were fucked. James had a method to his torture: He’d single out one boy and then force the others to make decisions. For example, you might be asked to punch your friend or absorb a blow from James himself. He’d make you jump off things, eat things, and one time he even buried poor Joey Belisle in a mock funeral only to piss on his grave. James wasn’t nice. He power-slid into our construction site and covered us in dirt and rocks before dismounting his yellow steed. “Gaying off in the woods, faggots?” he asked rhetorically. Despite his golden shower, Joey hadn’t learned anything and actually responded. “No, man, we’re building some jumps…” he stopped and gulped emphatically, realising his mistake and trying to save himself. “We… we figured you’d wanna use the jumps so we’re gonna build them really high!” “Why the fuck would I wanna jump off a mound of dirt while you homos watch me? Do you think I’m a fag too?” James responded. This wasn’t going well. The mountain was sandwiched between two growing housing developments, and a construction site directly bordered the first trail where we were now standing. Building had slowed down and the site was merely a sea of discarded cinder blocks, lumber, nails, and mortar. James kicked around the piles of raw materials briefly before picking up a piece of plywood about three feet square. “OK, Joey, go stand over there and hide behind this piece of wood,” James ordered. Joey grabbed the wood and walked off about 20 feet into a grass clearing. “The rest of you, come over here now!” he demanded in between drags of a Marlboro Red. James directed us to a pile of rocks and chipped bricks. “OK, Joey is gonna hide behind his piece of wood for the next ten minutes while you guys throw shit at him. Don’t fucking stop or you have to join him, and there ain’t much room back there. OK, start NOW!” James said as his soulless eyes pierced all of us. It was a minor relief to not be behind the wooden shield, but this seemed too simple. There was no way it was this easy. We pelted Joey for what felt like an hour; he’d occasionally have to readjust the wood and James would chuck a rock right at his fingers. This was the only time he joined in. On James’s command, Joey emerged from his foxhole, ears ringing and fingers swollen.
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“Hey, I’m hungry,” James said. “Who lives the closest to here?” Apparently, watching the stoning piqued his appetite. Once again, Joey was the victim as his house was a five-minute walk through the woods. We followed James single file like an adolescent chain gang before arriving at Joey’s house. He was instructed to go inside and fetch some chips and soda in five minutes or less, or else he’d be back behind the wooden shield or maybe thrown off his tree house. As soon as his door opened, we heard a familiar sound: Buddy Mailloux’s dinner bell. Each night when it was time for supper, Buddy’s mother rang a bell, which was his cue to scamper home like a puppy before eating something overcooked and fattening. “Buddy… Buddy, dinner time!” sang his mother with her brittle bleached hair. Buddy thought he was off the hook, but as he took a step toward his home, he was quickly stopped by James. In one motion, he was body-slammed to the ground and pinned. James’s voice was suddenly two octaves higher as he screamed, “Fuck you, Mom! I’m not going to eat your meat loaf anymore. GO FUCK YOURSELF, BITCH!” Buddy was tearing up as James’s mammoth hand covered his mouth. His mother kept calling and James kept responding with more curses until things went silent for a moment and we heard a door slam. With a spin and a kick, James’s cycle was roaring and he was gone. Buddy’s mom ran over and saw him spitting dirt as the dust settled from James’s escape. She knew Buddy hadn’t cursed her out and silently escorted him home to dinner. The rest of us headed off to our fort, which was really just a plywood shanty that overlooked our neighborhood. Two pieces of plywood were configured around some rocks, creating a shelter from the elements and a perfect place to read stolen porno mags and light small, contained fires. No parents or cops could get close to the fort without us having ample time to scatter and flee back to the woods. The second-oldest kid in our neighborhood, Kenny LeFevere, was there smoking Winston cigarettes stolen from his dad and drinking something he stole out of a flask. Despite being older than us, Kenny was relatively cool. He might turn on you if someone cooler and closer to his age was around, but he generally didn’t give a fuck. He’d offer us cigs and swigs and occasionally would give us old bike parts and metal magazines that he had read cover to cover. We told him about the wooden-shield game and the meat-loaf beat down and he laughed. “If you guys are sick of James fucking with you, why don’t you all just fight him? He’s beating the shit out of you every day. You’ll probably lose, but there’s five of you. Maybe you can take him, and if not, he’ll probably just find someone else to fuck with,” Kenny reasoned. We stared at him blankly. I think we all wanted to just ask him to fight James for us, but we knew that would never happen. Five-on-one started to make sense to me. We asked Kenny a few combat-related questions before he pedaled off. James didn’t have any friends who would torment us in school as retribution if we did beat him up, and he couldn’t really do much worse than beat us up more. At the worst, we’d be confined to the safety of our yards for a while and avoid the usual secluded fishing spots, and at best we’d have the hairy, beastly monkey of James Regan off our backs. Suddenly we realised we were playing with house money. My potluck crew sat in our clubhouse planning our attack. “We should form an official gang,” I said. I think I was just excited about writing a gang name on walls or maybe even
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putting mailbox decals on my bike’s number plate proclaiming the newfound gang. Everyone agreed, and it was time to vote on a name. The Lions, Demons, Black Snakes, and Titans were quickly shot down. We went through a few more suggestions, including the Salem Swords and Salem Samurais, but alliteration didn’t sound tough enough. “Scorpions have those big stingers,” said Rick Hannigan. “They’re small, but they can really fuck you up. What about the Scorpions?” Balding German rock bands and women in cages were not on our minds—we completely forgot about the band the Scorpions as no one fucking liked them. The Scorpions was now our gang and we started training that second, without Buddy—he was a total pussy anyway. First order of business was to gather up our collective weapons. We had nunchakus made of sawed-down broomsticks and clothesline rope, sheet-metal shanks carved in shop class, and Rick even had a pair of brass knuckles he had stolen from his uncle. Well… they weren’t actually brass, they were some kind of silver alloy, but they looked cool. Our arsenal was set, we headed off to Rick’s basement to sharpen our hand-to-hand battle skills before having to go home for dinner. There was a wrestling mat lining his basement floor that served as our battle arena. In a few minutes we were confident that the Scorpions could take James or any bully—fuck, we could probably fare better against the damn Russians than the fags in Red Dawn. Years of recreating the WWF, NWA, and AWA wrestling moves in Rick’s basement boosted our confidence more. I was daydreaming of my finishing move—a variation on the Iron Sheik’s Camel Clutch—when Rick was called to dinner. We needed a good meal and some rest. Tomorrow wasn’t just Wednesday, it marked the beginning of a war. We hashed out our strategy on the bus ride to school. The trick was to play dumb, head off to the woods with our shovels (which could come in handy in case we needed to bury James’s corpse) and our weapons, and wait. At the least, we’d make progress on our dirt jumps and build some muscle. The day crawled by but eventually the bell rang at 3 PM and we were free to fight. My Walkman was blasting “Shout at the Devil,” and James was fucked. I was the first one to the clubhouse, armed with my weapons and a bulldog mentality. One by one, the Scorpions arrived, each bringing his own expertise to the table. This was one of those Dirty Dozen movie moments when the team is assembled. Rick was the calm, good-looking one; I had the most weapons; Joey and Buddy had taken the most licks and were hungry for revenge; and our wildcard was Greg Derosa, or Rosie, as we called him. Unlike the rest of us, Rosie had actually stuck with his karate classes. He even had a satin jacket with a dragon on the back, his name on the sleeve, and the dojo’s name in gold thread. He had recently learned how to chop through thin pieces of wood and was flexible enough to kick higher than his head. Rosie’s skills were our secret weapon: If things got sketchy, he could always deliver a Spot-Bilt sneaker to the jaw and give us time to regroup. We believed in the sting of the Scorpion. Off we were to dig and wait. We marched on like the random excavation crew that Indiana Jones employed to find the Lost Ark. We set up camp and anticipated the roaring grind of James’s dirt bike. We were ready. Burning gasoline and the familiar growl of James’s bike manifested about 30 minutes into our dig; he was so fucking predictable. The Scorpions exchanged stone-faced nods,
each of our heads playing a victory soundtrack. Our minds were fixated on punching Drago, blowing up the Death Star, and throwing that weird spiky thing from Krull at our enemy. Again, James slid his bike at us, creating a dust cloud as he pushed his kickstand down. As his loose tan work boot slid off during the motion, our window had arrived. Someone yelled “SCORPIONSSSSSSSSSS!” as we surrounded him and unsheathed our weapons. James sat on his bike unfazed and laughed loudly, tilting his head back like Goliath, looking toward the sky. “I’m gonna fucking wreck you guys!” he yelled. A bolt of lightning struck him and he grew to 30 feet tall, his bike now a Clydesdale breathing fire. I was frozen, afraid to flinch, but the rest of the Scorpions were already half a football field away. James jumped to his feet, his eyes fixed on me the entire time. My nunchakus lay limp in my hand, they were just parts of a broomstick and would probably just shatter on his thick skull if I even had a chance to swing them. I was screwed. I spotted a small piece of two-by-four lying to my left, threw my homemade weapon far into the woods, and picked up the lumber. “What are you gonna do with that, Jim Duggan?” James shouted. Not only was he going to fucking kill me, but he was also witty for the first time in his life. I reared back and emulated Roger Clemens’s windup and flung the wood at him, hoping it would hit his face and blind him, or perhaps knock the wind out of him. The small piece of pine spiraled at James and fell well short of his face or sternum, it actually just hit his bare foot. Before I could even feel a touch of disappointment James screamed like a stuck pig, gripping his foot. “I’m gonna fucking kill youuuuuuuuuu!” he exclaimed. It didn’t matter now—I had plenty of time to get the fuck out of there. My feet didn’t touch the ground on my way home. It took me half a second to flee to my bedroom, blast Diamond Dave, and airguitar to “Unchained.” As the adrenaline wore off, I debated penning my will on loose-leaf paper and asking my parents if they had thought about moving to another town, preferably tomorrow. My mom knocked on the door and told me I had a phone call. It was probably Rick checking to see if I was still alive. I told her I’d call him back, and she asked if she was my secretary before agreeing. I lied about a book report I had to finish and shut my door. I’d be safe at school the next day, but expected to see James waiting for me when I got home. Both of my parents worked until 5 PM, giving him a two-hour window to beat me to a pulp. I finished dinner quickly and asked to be excused. There was nothing on television so I fished around in my closet and found a handheld electronic football game that I hadn’t played in years. I swapped out the batteries from my Walkman, and suddenly the flickering red lights on the screen had me distracted. I was the New England Patriots squaring off against the Chicago Bears for a rematch, and I wasn’t going to lose this time. Rick had taped a bunch of his brother’s records and lent me the cassette so I could copy it. I was today’s Tom Sawyer and briefly forgot that I’d be dead in less than 24 hours. There was a knock on my door, I sprung up and answered it. My dad was standing there looking a little annoyed and confused. “One of your friends is here, Anthony,” he said. “Why don’t you guys hang out here while your mother and I talk to Mrs. Regan.” My whole body went numb. Why the fuck had my dad sold me out? There was now one flight of stairs between me and death… I couldn’t even fucking move. A large silhouette lurched up the stairs with a noticeable limp. The familiar scent
of “stinky kid” permeated the air. It certainly was James, but he wasn’t rushing to kill me. Perhaps he was building suspense. When he reached the top of the stairs, I noticed that his foot was mummified in white bandages and he was gripping his stomach. He entered my room and immediately sat on my bed and stared at me, only this time there was no venom in his gaze. “I had to get a fucking tetanus shot and a bunch of stitches, asshole,” he said. “I didn’t give a shit, but my mom fucking freaked out because I tracked blood into the house, then she made me go to the hospital.” Apparently, the piece of wood I chose to bludgeon James’s foot with had a rusty nail protruding from it that pierced his thin-socked foot. No one had ever seen James’s parents: We assumed he just lived on his own like one of the Outsiders, but he did actually have a mother, albeit one who smelled like boxed wine and cigarettes, according to my dad. Before I could even think of how to respond, James was mimicking the garbled beginning of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” playing on my stereo. “I am Iron Man!” he gurgled with his eyes closed, while Tony Iommi bent guitar notes that bounced around my skull as I envisioned my own funeral procession. I glanced up and saw my parents standing next to a rail-thin woman with a maroon leather jacket and poodle perm.
I was today’s Tom Sawyer and briefly forgot that I’d be dead in less than 24 hours. “Yous guys is friends now, right?” she asked in a thick New England accent. It was obvious she had been crying and her face was so wrinkled and pursed that it looked like she was permanently taking a drag of a Virginia Slim. Three… two… one… The waterworks began and my parents looked completely shocked. My mother actually curled her lips in and held back a smirk. “I know James is wicked big and can be rough, but he ain’t a bad boy and he likes yous guys,” she said between sobs. “He won’t push yous around anymore, OK. But my baby really got hurt today. He got stitches and everythin’,” she said, leaving the “-g” off everything as most in suburban Massachusetts did. James shot her a glare, presumably for the baby comment and letting everyone know that he was mortal. My dad realised this was his time to be the alpha male and resolve this so he could get back to watching VHS tapes of Sherlock Holmes and the Three Stooges. “OK, boys, so let’s see you shake hands, and Anthony, you apologise for hitting James. Only fairies use weapons in a fight, you know that,” he said while giving me a slight wink. His tone and gestures confirmed that he wasn’t mad at me, and fuck, James was taller than him, so I think he knew exactly why I had to throw shit at him. I almost died! We shook hands for about five seconds, and I thought the cycle was over. “Hey, can I borrow this tape? I’ll copy it tonight and bring it by tomorrow,” James asked. “Oh, this tape? You can just have it,” I replied, quickly lying through my teeth: “I have all the records anyway, so I can just tape them again.” There was no way in hell I wanted to see James again. There was a chance that he’d be off his dirt bike for a while and we could finish our jump, but I wasn’t really interested in going to the mountain again. From Live… Suburbia! by Anthony Pappalardo and Max G. Morton, published by powerHouse Books.
VICE 33
Our resolution for 2011 is to cull the boring “this town sucks” whiners from our pool of friends so we can focus our full attention on the ones who turn another year with nothing to do from “Oh my” and “A boo-hoo” into “Woo-hoo” and “Give me some more K.” 34 VICE
Versus dress, SpiritHoods hat; American Apparel dress, Spirit Hoods hat
LI’L DOs & DON’Ts PHOTOS BY VITO FUN Stylist: Paloma Perez Stylist’s Assistants: Nikki Gonzalez and Scarlet Giesbrecht
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H&M top, Volcom shorts, Tommy Hilfiger sandals, vintage sunglasses from Beacon’s Closet, Michael Kors belt, Céline purse; Marc Jacobs top, Converse sneakers, Ricky’s NYC wig, Versace sunglasses, Roxy belt, Hello Kitty bracelets
DO
Jesus, could these two have summer any more under control? Even their negatives are making me wonder how hard it would be to fake owning a yacht.
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Summer 2011 Collection available now - AFENDS.com
Element top, American Apparel leggings, Leg Avenue tights, The Sock Man socks, Opening Ceremony boots, Silly Bandz bracelets
DON’T
The one good part of dressing up like a Hello Kitty juggalogre is that most of us have been conditioned since childhood to avoid disturbing your slumber.
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“THE BEST BRITISH COMEDY IN YEARS.” SHORTLIST
“HILARIOUS... A TRIUMPHANTLY BRILLIANT MOVIE.” DAZED & CONFUSED
SUBMARINE a
RICHARD AYOADE film
9/10 “STOP BEING A CHUMP AND GO SEE THE DAMN MOVIE” AUSTRALIAN FILM REVIEW
★★★★
★★★★
THE VINE
EMPIRE
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
ULTRA CULTURE
GLAMOUR
DAILY MIRROR
MARIE CLAIRE
NOAH TAYLOR PADDY CONSIDINE CRAIG ROBERTS YASMIN PAIGE AND SALLY HAWKINS
IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 8
Check the Classification
S U B M A R I N E T H E M OV I E.CO M . AU
Etro shirt, Matix shorts, vintage sunglasses from Beacon's closet, Silly Bandz bracelet; vintage shirt from What Goes Around Comes Around, H&M shorts
DO
I envy the currently nonexistent fetus who someday gets to whip out this picture and say, “Here’s my mom and dad before I was born.”
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C@B9>7 CE==5B QSQTU]iRbQ^T S_]
adidas jacket, Burton t-shirt, O’Neill jeans, Nike sneakers, G-Unit hat, Topshop suspenders
DON’T
These jean wars have really got to stop. All the waffling between tight and baggy has left the vanguard of the pants community looking like two circus midgets trying to sneak into an R-rated movie.
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PORTISHEAD
THE NATIONAL THE FLAMING LIPS ȋ BRIGHT EYES
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DOs
The Supreme Court has finally declared that dressing your children up as giant merkins and forcing them to march in the Merkin Pride Parade is totally legal, as long as everyone pretends they have no idea what a merkin is.
Howie Mandel used to wear that glove purse onstage. It was filled with latex gloves that he would pull down over his face and blow up with his nose until they exploded. Howie did that bit so much he finally burst a major blood vessel and that was the end of glove comedy forever. 44 VICE
What if Batman was a radical gay Muslim? He would move the Batcave to the mountains of Afghanistan and would continue to solve crimes. But they would only be crimes against semen.
Now that Game of Thrones is a super-big megasuccess, George R.R. Martin has decided to celebrate by adding a couple more letters to his name: MGD.
I like this new thing they’re doing at music festivals now. After taking a dump in the Porta Potty, a Mexican girl rubs her perfumed head all over your ass. It’s incredibly revitalising and gets you pumped for several more hours of Kings of Leon.
BANDAGE DRESS /
WORN BY HANNA BETH / SHOT BY NATALIA BRUTALIA / BACKSTAGEPRESENTS.COM
DON’Ts
If you go to college and live in the dorms and one night your roommate crawls into your bed and fucks you, that’s not rape because you gave advance consent when you filled out your college application.
What’s the secret to staying so young and vibrant? It’s easy. Simply put a little dab of Oil of Olay’s beige goop on your face every morning. It’s the only beige goop on the market that contains semen that was taken from a porn set in 1975.
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Before Cinderella met her Prince Charming this is what she had to look at every summer during those horrible family vacations to Cape Cod.
Summer is in da house! And you know what that means. It’s time to cut holes in the pockets of your swim trunks and head down to the beach for some serious jackin’. But be sure to bring a baby with you, so if anyone gives you flak you can just say you’re looking for diaper pins.
Most people like the Beatles, right? But the thing is that most people are fucking douchebags. So, following that logic, the Beatles wrote music that appeals primarily to fucking douchebags. Therefore, ipso facto, fuck the Beatles.
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DOs
Fuck Team 6. This is real bravery right here. Going topless on a beach raft even though it kinda makes you look like a pile of plain donuts wearing an enormous crystal maxipad.
This is the perfect look for the hermaphro-dad on the go. Very sporty, but still says, “I wanna rock out with my scrambled genitals out!” And the bag can hold up to eight big bottles of Listerine, which is ideal when you spend the better part of your days jetting over to the next glory hole. 48 VICE
I was just thinking that if G.G. Allin were alive today he would be 55 years old. That means he would totally be eligible for the GoldK prescription discounts at Kmart. Up to 20% off. Way to miss out, shithead.
Speaking of heroes, looks like an emergency call is coming though—some lady got nipple burns from whipping off her t-shirt too fast. Just another day on the line for Spring Break 911.
Here at the DOs & DON’Ts we’re constantly assaulted by images of sweaty transsexuals teabagging each other or homeless people with tumors dripping out of their assholes, so when we see this it’s like taking our eyeballs to Brookstone and letting them sit in the Zero-Gravity Massage Chair for 5 minutes.
BLACKENEDWHITE
William Elliot Whitmore Field Songs
Jolie Holland Pint Of Blood
OUT NOW
OUT NOW
DON’Ts
If I remember my Sunday school teachings, Ash Wednesday is the day that Jesus Christ went to his apostles and said, “Watch this shit.” He then took a fistful of ashes, smeared it on some dumb guy’s head and said, “Now you walk around all day with that ash on your head. Don’t wash it off!” And that guy was all like, “Duh… OK.” And Jesus went back to his apostles and they were all like, “LOL.”
That’s right, dreadlock dude, take a look into the future at what your life will be like when you shave off those dreadlocks. Exactly the same except with less shirts.
Hey, it’s Cool New York Dad with his soul patch and his black leather satchel filled with jazz CDs he borrowed from his job at Borders, which he can blast all night long and into the wee small hours of the morning cuz his ex-wife has the kids this weekend.
“So do you want to have a cookie-sheet/Wiffle Ball bat war in the rain or do you want to be a fucking pussy for your whole life?”
Pleated jeans with double ankle belt straps? Who thought that up? Probably someone who saw Shaquille O’Neal in Kazaam and thought, “This movie would be so much better if there was more denim in it.”
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EGYPT
LIBYA
CONGO
BELFAST
KNEE DEEP IN NEWS ARAB SPRING HITS THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER.
FROM THE FRONT LINES OF THE REVOLUTION.
CONFLICT MINERALS AND THE REBELS WHO LOVE THEM.
WHERE THE TROUBLES NEVER END.
THESE NEW DOCUMENTARIES AND MORE COMING THIS FALL ON VICE.COM
GOD SAVE BELFAST He’s the Only Guy Anybody Here Can Agree On BY MICHAEL MOYNIHAN PHOTOS BY STUART GRIFFITHS
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A bonfire party organised by some amazingly friendly people from the loyalist community who treated us very well.
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here was a time when the conflict in Northern Ireland suffused popular culture, with its easily explicable cast of Catholics and Protestants and its deceptively simple narrative of joining the Republic of Ireland versus remaining under the protective wing of Great Britain. The IRA loomed large—an irregular force giving the Brits hell, a pre-Al Qaeda byword for terrorism. The Troubles, as the Cranberries called them, were everywhere. But in 1998, after a furious but low-intensity war that claimed almost 3,700 victims over 30 years, the two sides suddenly called it a draw. Political representatives of paramilitary groups and mainstream political parties hammered out the Good Friday Agreement, outlining a cessation of major sectarian violence, the decommissioning of weapons, and the release of prisoners affiliated with groups like the IRA and its unionist analogue, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). There would be no land swaps, no significant concessions made to those demanding a united Ireland, just a tenuous and long-overdue “peace process.” It marked, as an Irish journalist once told me, the effective surrender of the IRA.
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An 11-year-old objected to the Catholic Church’s conduit to God: “The pope’s a fucking cunt.” But in the unionist communities of east Belfast and nationalist enclaves of west Belfast—workingclass areas where militant sectarianism is one of few birthrights—there is little sense of peace and much talk of being “sold out by the tea-drinking politicians.” And every year on July 12, when unionists of the Orange Order celebrate the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James by marching through Belfast, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Troubles never ended. In the lead up to this year’s Twelfth parade, tensions were running higher than any period in recent memory: It was only a few months since a 25-yearold Catholic police officer was murdered by dissident republicans (to dissuade others from joining the force) and just weeks after altercations between nationalists and unionists in east Belfast ended in riots and multiple shootings, including a cameraman. What better time to explore Belfast and marinate in the divisive hate? Arriving a few days before the festivities, I quizzed a handful of young parade attendees, some from as far afield as Toronto, about the significance of the July 12 celebrations. A few offered platitudes about the brilliance of “King Billy” and the need to assert the primacy of unionist culture; the historical particulars of the march seemed almost irrelevant to its participants. It was odd, though, to listen to drink-sodden teenagers employ squishy political rhetoric rather than just nakedly sectarian slogans. They
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stressed that the march is a celebration of “culture,” one that is hamstrung by bigoted politicians and a needlessly aggressive police force. It’s the familiar language of multiculturalism, adapted for a schizophrenic religious conflict. But others were articulate, passionate, clever— although no less strident in their views. When I asked a group of local loyalist teenagers whether they planned on attending university—and at first blush, they seemed perfect candidates—all agreed that if forced to choose between earning an advanced degree and staying to “defend their community,” they would, without hesitation, choose the latter. That economic opportunities are scarce in Belfast’s working-class regions is beyond dispute (almost every young person I spoke with was out of work; a precious few worked in call centers), but these politically involved and mostly unemployed kids would forgo higher education for the higher calling of protecting the tribe. It isn’t uncommon to see the Irish tricolor flag in the staunchly republican areas around Falls Road in west Belfast. But nestled in among the Catholic estates, surrounded on all sides by hostiles, I stumbled into a tiny redoubt of loyalism, oddly adorned with both Union Jacks and the colors of the Irish Republic. Packs of kids scuttled about, constructing a July 11 bonfire: a pre-Twelfth march ritual in which Protestants fashion wooden pallets, tires, and various other bits of flammable scrap into a pyramid adorned with ornaments—the flags and campaign posters of their Catholic enemies. Burn, Edict of Worms, burn. Having asked whether I would assist in building his temporary monument to Catholic hatred, a cherubic 11-year-old kid, born a year after the Good Friday Agreement, provided me with a potted history of the bonfires (“something to do with the king”) and wanted my opinion of the pope. His line of questioning wasn’t designed to precipitate a conversation on Pius XII’s diplomatic relations with the Third Reich, but rather an opportunity to offer his preteen objections to the Catholic Church’s conduit to God: “The pope’s a fucking cunt.” If bonfire nights and Orange Order marches are manifestations of Protestant grievance, their Catholic equivalents can be found in Ardoyne, a rabidly nationalist area in north Belfast that straddles one side of a sectarian fault line (what the locals dryly call an “interface area”). In 2010, when the Orange Order passed in front of Ardoyne on their way to an abutting estate, young people responded with a shower of Molotov cocktails, rocks, and bricks. The police were expecting a repeat this year. It was a wellinformed prediction. As the march approached, heavily armored police divisions penned in protesters (and those of us who preferred being with those throwing, not absorbing, flaming bottles), preventing a hastily organised countermarch from confronting the Orange Order. Behind the police lines, away from the media gaggle and embedded with the protesters, an odd scene developed—an incongruous combination of the battle-ready
The sign “Bobby Sands 8 Fuck All� is a reference to IRA hunger striker and republican icon Bobby Sands. Loyalists hate him. They really love the Queen.
The Orange Day march attracts all kinds of different uniforms. Some look like the Village People if/when they were into fisting.
A lot of people travel from VICE 55 Glasgow to celebrate the marches.
balaclava set and middle-aged protesters invoking the American civil rights movement. There was a requisite singing of “We Shall Overcome,” a march organiser quoting Martin Luther King into a bullhorn, and a wild-eyed kid using his mask to obscure a bag of glue he was huffing. In a moment more reminiscent of the 70s antibusing riots in Irish Catholic South Boston than civil disobedience on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, veteran protesters and republicans quickly ceded ground to the young and agitated—rocks and paving stones flew, Molotov cocktails exploded, and police fired plastic baton rounds and water cannons. The neighborhood refrain in Ardoyne is that troublemakers are bused in and that the locals have little control over what these teenage interlopers hurl toward police lines. But it quickly became clear that a few dissident republicans—imposing men with fading prison tattoos and mangled teeth, and all keenly aware of the presence of journalists—have the power to turn off the spigot of violence at a moment’s notice. As I chatted with one local who, I was reliably informed, had rather close ties to a dissident terrorist group, kids wrenched cinder blocks from a house
The police held their line and Northern Ireland remained under the dominion of the United Kingdom. under construction, smashed them on the pavement, and distributed the resulting pile of ammunition to their friends. The police held their line, a few people were hit with plastic bullets, and Northern Ireland remained under the dominion of the United Kingdom. After a few days darting between enemy camps, conversing with experienced murderers and those who seemed interested in murdering nosy journalists, I realised that there are only two ecumenical truths in Belfast: Adidas tracksuits are the clothing choice of men from both communities, and if one asks “Catholic” or “Prod” kids when they last attended a church service—or to expand on the theological divide separating the two camps—prepare for a mumbling nonanswer. No one agrees on anything else. In Belfast, you either allow various factions to spin you in exchange for access or you return home with nothing—and every person, regardless of confessional affiliation, bombards you with his or her narrow version of “the truth.” This is, of course, expected. But Catholics and Protestants appear to be working off the exact same script: We’re secondclass citizens who get stiffed by the politicians, the private sector, the shriveling welfare state, and our masters in London. All denounce the terrorist tactics of their enemies, while offering convoluted defenses of the terrorism perpetuated by their friends. When cameras and tape recorders are switched off, the
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balaclava falls and the discussions of “culture” and trampled rights make way for the more unambiguous denunciations of fucking taigs (Catholics) and fucking huns (Protestants). Even more jarring are the calls to “KILL ALL TAIGS” daubed on brick walls in loyalist areas and spray-painted on bonfire pallets. When I asked one community representative whether this slogan wasn’t perhaps a bit much (“Surely not all of them?”), I was assured that while there was no impending Catholic Holocaust, one had to look at calls to murder in the context of the conflict. A graffiti tour of west Belfast demonstrates that 12 years of shaky peace haven’t exactly dampened nationalist enthusiasm to “KILL ALL HUNS,” either. I asked a young Catholic kid, who likely last saw the inside of a church when relieving his local parish of Communion wine, what he thought should be done about his Protestant neighbors, many of whom, he claims, menace the kids on the Catholic end of the street. He snarled that they should be dispatched to shallow graves or, perhaps, simply ferried back to England or Scotland. With a grunt, he clarified that his fantasy commando division of tracksuit genocidaires might allow the women to stay—a concession unlikely to assuage the young Protestant ladies of east Belfast. There are, though, causes for hope. With a shockingly high instance of teenage suicide (one young Catholic related that five people he knew had killed themselves in the past year), chronic unemployment, and the still-present allure of paramilitary organisations in Belfast, some veterans of the Troubles are offering their cautionary stories to the young and aimless. My two fixers—one Protestant, one Catholic, because everything in this city requires negotiation—both served long spells in the infamous Long Kesh prison on terrorism charges, and both provided smart, nuanced takes on the entire sweep of recent Northern Irish history. And while they agree on few political issues, they work together—often to the consternation of their former comrades—in an attempt to disabuse kids of the twin notions that armed conflict is both glamorous and part of a viable solution. To those divorced from the reality of a dirty war, one in which Catholics and Protestants killed their coreligionists with equal frequency and ferocity, the Troubles were an uncomplicated morality play: occupied versus occupier, liberationist movement against imperial aggressor. Those who lived through the darkest days of the Troubles, and who have regrets about their participation in what many now view as a pointless civil war, talk about their past without romance. I asked one former prisoner how many members of his republican paramilitary group were flipped by British intelligence—something they did with remarkable success. He says that he couldn’t count, “but in the leadership? Around five.” “How did you know?” “You just start putting the pieces together. They never confessed, but…”
Doesn’t that look like God’s dick spraying them and saying, “Peace please!”?
“Did Darren borrow the car today?” “Yes, love. He said he was taking his new girlfriend to the pictures.”
Kids a lot smaller and younger than that VICE 57 one were doing the same thing.
One knows the answer but must still ask the question: “What happened to them? Did any manage to successfully go into hiding?” He paused, breathed, and said, “We took care of them.” There was also the disarmingly casual conversation with a former UVF prisoner who, at the tender age of 17, shot a Catholic man three times in the head based on “intelligence” that later proved to be inaccurate. Did he regret what he did? “Absolutely.” Does he apologise to the family of his victim? “Of course.”
The moral and political complexities of this war are often lost to reductionist slogans—in Irish America, the IRA are the good guys, the alphabet soup of loyalist paramilitary groups more or less the bad guys. In England, which suffered deadly mainland bombing campaigns, they were all bad guys, but those who blew up Canary Wharf were surely the worst. And while the vast majority of Northern Ireland, as demonstrated by polling and voting patterns, wants nothing to do with (and has little sympathy for) the dead-enders and dissidents in either camp, there is a reluctant understanding in Belfast that while the war is over, the conflict isn’t going anywhere.
INTERVIEW WITH THE FUCKING EX-PARA WHO TOOK ALL THESE PHOTOS INTERVIEW BY ANDY CAPPER
VICE: What’s your history with Belfast? Stuart Griffiths: I was a British soldier there. I came when I was 17 and was a Parachute Regiment soldier in 3 PARA. At first I was kept in the canteen, as I was too young to go on the streets. When I reached 18 I was posted to B Company, 3 PARA. What made you join the Paras? At the time, there was a TV program called The Paras, and at school there was a big thing about joining up: Join the Marines or the Paras and all that macho bullshit. It looked cool. What was it like in Belfast as a teenage soldier during the Troubles? We got up about six and went out all day patrolling. It’d be four hours on, two off, and then we’d get food in between. People would shout, “You fucking Brit, shit, scumbag, bastard!” What would you say to them? Nothing. I took it on the chin. Early on a really fit girl said something nasty to me, but I didn’t really mind that. What was the worst abuse you got? We got shot at. Actually, the worst might have been having shit thrown on us. We had potties emptied from out of windows at us. It took a long time to get rid of the smell. It’s not you they hate, though; it’s the uniform you wear. That’s why I got out, I think. What was it like going back to Belfast? It was cathartic, an emotional release. It was all about facing my ghosts and demons of the past and
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exorcising them. In terms of therapy, it was a good thing to do. It was a very moving experience. How did you feel when we were in Ardoyne and the rioting kicked off? Well, I’d been in riot situations before, but I wasn’t expecting that. I was thinking, “What if a brick or a rock falls on my head, because this time I haven’t got a helmet on?” But when you’re out there trying to get good pictures, it’s the photography that takes over. And I guess it showed me how far photography has taken me in my life. As the photographer Patrick Zachmann said, “You photograph your own history. Everything else is tourism.” So I took that on board. But yeah, when they started hurling stuff, I thought, “These guys really know how to riot.” Yeah, that’s what I was thinking: “They’re pretty good at this.” It’s in their blood. And I don’t condemn it. You can see why they’re frustrated and angry. There is no work, the economic situation is bad, and the peace process is there but it’s gonna take a long time to see results. I saw this little kid, about ten or 12 years old, and he had this massive green bottle, and this other kid was saying, “Go on and throw it!” And the little kid was spitting on the floor trying to be the hard guy, but he couldn’t bring himself to throw it. And I really felt for him. When you’re in that situation you’re expected to go along with the crowd, or else people turn on you. I came away thinking, “Well, this situation is still very much a live wire.” Watch us dodge rubber bullets and Molotov cocktails in Belfast on an upcoming news special on VBS.TV.
Some of us wanted this as a cover but it looked like we’d photoshopped two tweens from Facebook and put them on top of a Pantera album sleeve as an art prank.
They made us amazing cocktails at the bonfire party. You couldn’t drink them but you could definitely throw them.
In six months time, some gay fashion magazine will duplicate this VICE 59 shot. We guarantee it.
ADVICE TO A YOUNG MAN FROM AN OLD MAN TWICE MARRIED Love in the Time of Honduran Divorces BY CLANCY MARTIN ILLUSTRATIONS BY JESSE GELAZNIK
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here’s a fire pit the men sit by at night in the Red Iguana, a restaurant on the edge of town in Copán, Honduras. They roast meat, smoke their cigars, and drink beer and Nicaraguan rum while the stars intensify and their wives put the children to bed. I was there trying to purchase a kinkajou for a friend. You can buy kinkajous as pets in the United States, but in Honduras the baby golden bears have a different temperament. For example, they do not like liquor. They never bite. They sleep both at night and during the day, and are awake in the mornings and evenings. And their prehensile tails are much stronger and nimbler than those of the American-bred species. If you want to keep a kinkajou as a pet, the place to get one is Honduras, and you must buy a baby fresh from the nipple and hand-feed it for as long as possible. It grieves at separation from its mother, but I have always been careful in my business not to buy a baby unless I see the mother with my own eyes. Otherwise the natives will kill the animal for its babies. By the fire was a young man, Juan: handsome, slender, full of bravado and enthusiasm, like a Latino Jimmy Page in the famous picture of Page gesturing grandly to the name LED ZEPPELIN painted on the side of their Boeing 727. The old men were teasing him because he planned to marry. He was a novio. Another man there, Javier, a friend of mine from Nicaragua who was born in Copán—they teased him too, because Nicaragua is considered déclassé by the Hondurans, and he was thought to have stepped down in the world by establishing his trade in an inferior, poorer country—stood up for Juan.
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“There’s one way to learn,” Javier said, rising to his feet and smoking a long Cuban Romeo and Julieta from a case I had purchased earlier that week. I had one too. They would last us three hours out in the cool night. “Let him find out for himself. There’s no rules in love. He could be one of the lucky ones.” Everyone laughed. We were all married men, divorced men, men who no longer knew where our wives lived, men of many children. “Let me tell you a story,” a viejo said, quietly. Everyone hushed. I didn’t know this elderly gentleman in his worn yet elegant white suit, but he had ridden a horse down from the mountains three nights before, sitting with us each evening and drinking an inferior Honduran rum neat from a glass. He rarely spoke. I guessed he owned a coffee plantation. He looked like one of the Hondurans you met when you were up in the bush for days and suddenly you see the long rows of glossy, almost plastic-looking green coffee bushes lining the mountainside and then a clearing opens up and you find the low hacienda, spread out in many buildings, and behind it a drying plant and perhaps even a small roaster, and horses wander the property along with the usual farm animals and when you are invited to dinner—as you must be—you cannot tell which of the women are wives and which are sisters and which are mothers and which are daughters, except of course for the very young ones. The women sit at one side of the long dinner table in the tiled dining room, and the father and his sons are at the other. This viejo could have ten wives, for all we knew. It was not unheard of.
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“You speak of love, and laugh.” He shook his head and sipped his rum. I felt embarrassed that I had been part of the teasing. “Two times I have married with a priest,” he said. “And these women, who you marry with a priest, you cannot divorce. This is the law of the church. The first time, I was like this one.” He removed his hat, nodded to the suddenly bashful novio, and then put it back on his head again. “Her name was Alfansa. A strange name. She was 15 when we married. I was 27. My father told me, ‘Wait eight years. No man should marry before age 35.’ It was excellent advice.” He gave a look to the novio, who blushed again, shrugged, and took a shot of rum. “This was a great love. So I could not ignore it. But a great love makes for a real husband. And a real husband is always suspicious, though he often suspects in the wrong place.” There were grunts of agreement. The men nodded around the fire. Waitresses came and went silently, refilling our glasses, replacing our beers, their faces appearing like pale moths in the firelight and then disappearing again into the darkness. The cook roasting the beef cut great slices of red meat, passed around on a platter for our plates, and I thought of what it might have been like to sit on the beach after nightfall with Odysseus and his men, only a few ships left, lost, on an unknown island, passing the serving plate of sacrificial ox or lamb and drinking the thick red wine that they had to mix with water. “It was a summer day. Summer is a dangerous season.” “Yes,” said another old man. “Dangerous for love. Spring, too. Especially around the end of May.” “De conejos [the rabbits],” another man said. We all looked at him curiously. He was sopping up blood from his plate with a tortilla, and nodding his head with the patience and mystery of a tortoise. “Jules was his name, my friend. Also a strange name. He was my closest friend. He was like a brother to me.” The old man took a silver case from his pocket, opened it, removed a brown cigarette about the size of a pinkie finger, and stood to light it in the flame of the roasting pit. The narcotic smell of a strange herb mixed with the sweet aroma of fat dripping into the fire and the strong perfumes of the Honduran mountain air. “They went riding together. When I found them he was cutting her a grapefruit from a tree. He peeled it with his knife and handed her the slice. The juice was running from her full lips. You know, in a single gesture then, the way she smiles at him, what she is thinking. No doubt nothing has happened. But in her heart it has already taken place. I watched them, full of rage, but still hoping. They rested in the shade. He released the horses to roam the pasture. Then, sitting by him, his arm barely brushing her arm, just as I saw her say, ‘I will never consent’—she consented.” A murmur rose among us, like a sudden wind: It is unusual for a man, especially in this part of the world, to admit he wears horns.
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“Pleasure’s a sin,” the rabbit man said, “and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.” Wait, isn’t that from Byron? I thought. But we were speaking in Spanish, and these were Honduran farmers, peasants, and coffee pickers, not readers of British romanticism. “I shot them both there in the field,” he said. “He died quickly, but she lingered. She said, ‘You are my first and most passionate love, you are my only love: This is nothing. Why?’ And her eyes closed. She breathed for a while, and I watched, impassive, until the end. When I inspected them more closely, I saw that I could have been mistaken. They were both fully clothed. I could not have been wrong about their embraces. But perhaps she was fighting him off? When I rolled her body over, I began to cry, and I saw a snake escape from beneath them. Then I thought, perhaps he was trying to kill the snake? Perhaps she had not said a word of what I supposed. Of course there is no way to know. It is equally as likely that if I had waited another ten minutes he would have died between her legs.” I looked at the novio. He was angry. His eyes were dark and sparking. I didn’t know if he was enraged that his future bride might be compared with this woman, at the obvious injustice that had been done, or if there was a best friend of his own, whom he suspected. I too had lost a lover to a best friend, and, unlike the French writer Édouard Levé, who boasts, “I have not made love to the wife of a friend,” I have had lovers who were married to friends of mine, like so many friends and lovers before me. I had no moral opinion on the viejo’s first story. The second, though, was quite different, and uncanny.
“The second time the priest came to my house I was already a man of 50 and my father was dead. My brother’s farm had failed, through no fault of his own—there were three hurricanes that year.” Several of the old men nodded and held their hands to their brows as they remembered their own losses that season. “He came to live with me with his seven wives and 11 children. His eldest wife, Simone— she was from Brazil, not Honduran, and though she was the oldest she still had him the most nights in bed. When he met her she was a dancer in a club in Teguc [Tegucigalpa, the great, dangerous, furious capital city of Honduras], and she conceived a plan for me to marry one of his daughters. I was ignorant. I had many children of my own. Simone told me the girl—who was a beauty, with eyes like a jaguar—had a great passion for me; they pretended she was a girl from the city. Nothing affects an older man like the admiration of a young girl. But it had to be done with a priest, or else it would not be a sin. You see, she wanted to damn me, and to have me thrown in prison, so that her husband could take my estate. It is dangerous when women plan the marriage, that is when they direct the man, because of his own passion, into making his promise to love only one; the women conspire to make him believe he should marry, and they have chosen his wife in advance. Otherwise, why should he marry? “He has everything to lose, and nothing to gain. A man marries so he can possess something he can never own, or so that he can be possessed by someone who will own him forever. Look at any married man, and you will see that it is true.” There was rueful laughter. I watched the novio. He shook his head impatiently. This is old man’s talk and old man’s laughter, he was thinking to himself. My love is of an altogether original kind. But when he raised his drink, I thought I saw his hand was trembling very slightly, though it could have been the firelight. “The priest married us. I took her that night. She was a virgin. The next morning Simone came to my bed with
the police and the priest. They arrested me and, to my surprise, they also arrested the priest, who screamed in protest and fought with them. This was most indecorous behavior for a priest, and we were all disappointed. The girl, to her credit, insisted that she wanted me as her husband. But it was a simple case of sacrilegious incest and an unholy marriage. Also during the trial it came out that there had been lesbianism and masturbation practiced among the sisters, perhaps also involving their mother. You should never marry a woman who is not from your own country, my father often told my brother. But once she has you by the balls, that’s it—you’re screwed.” The men were silent now. One or two relit their cigars. My own cigar had gone out and I decided I didn’t want it anymore, so I passed it to a teenage boy who sat at the edge of the restaurant, on the wooden steps. He smiled and ran to the fire pit to light it. “I served five years in prison. When I returned to my estate all of my horses were gone and the wild had reclaimed my coffee plants. My brother had become a drunkard and Simone had run off with a Mexican truck driver who once transported our coffee. The children had grown up as wild as the coffee plants and the women were running the place, but everything was in great disrepair, like a camp. They had thrown my own wives and children out of the main house. I got my whip and put things in order. But it was three years before we had a paying crop. All because of the schemes of a woman, and a virgin beauty. Who, as it turned out, was probably a very accomplished lover of women herself. I tied her to a tree and beat her with a stick until she was half-dead. Not because it was just. But to demonstrate that a man had returned to the house.” Many of the men around the fire had fallen asleep, with their chins on their chests. Javier was curled beneath his coat like a dog under a blanket. Others stared into the fire, thinking of their own lives, their own wives, their daughters, their troubles. My wife was divorcing me back in Kansas City, and I had no plans to return to the United States. The novio, though, was wide-awake, and he approached the viejo. He offered him a drink. The viejo took the drink, said, “To your happiness,” and drank. Then he handed the drink back to the handsome novio, who tossed the rest into the fire. It flamed up from the rum. “She wants a priest,” the novio said. “So do I. I want a real marriage. Not one of the Indian stupidities.” The viejo did not move or look at the young man. He was watching the fire now too. “I have eight wives now living,” he said. “Eight of these Indian stupidities, as you say. I have children from all but one of them. But I would go back to prison for that night with the girl. She still lives on my farm. But she works with the horses. I do not let her come up to the house.”
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TOUPEE: A HERO MADE OF SHIT BY BRETT GELMAN, PHOTOS BY JANICZA BRAVO
I’m done. I’m done with here. I’m done with this. Others pray. I am done. “Did I ever tell you my dream of all dreams, Toupee?” “No, Grunt. You didn’t.” “My dream is… to one day… RAPE THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND!” “The Queen of England, huh?” “That’s right. The Queen of England. I know just how I’d do it too. First thing I’d do is learn to talk in an England voice. Then I’d get a job as one of those guards with the big furry hats, who stand there all day.” “They’re called bobbies.” “Yeah. I’d be a bobby, and I’d guard her. But then at night, when no one was looking, I’d sneak into her castle and get it done. Nobody would stop me either, because they’re used to seeing bobbies walking around the castle. I’d find my spot. I’d do it, and I’d do it real royal.” I AM DONE! One of the neo-Nazis I was letting hammer me gave me a knife as a present. I keep it in my ass. In prison your ass is your wallet. Luckily, I’ve got a big wallet. And my cellmate’s got a big fucking mouth. I stab Grunt all up and down his flabby tits. I clench my lips to make sure blood doesn’t get in my mouth. I know the blade isn’t long enough to hit anything vital, and that’s fine. I’m not necessarily a murderer. I just need to hear this fucking rapist squeal. I’d like to think this is all in the name of some kind of justice, but really it’s that I’m at the point where I need to hear screams. Grunt’s taken to the hospital. I’m sent to the hole. The pigs actually don’t beat the shit out of me. Not only that, before they slam the door one of them shakes my hand. I guess that’s a thank-you. Everybody hates rapists. Especially pigs. So I guess I’m kind of a hero to these guys. A hero made out of shit. Two weeks later I’m out of the hole and cash-milkin’ my Nazi john like I never left. Turns out he’s pretty proud of my little stabbing too. Doesn’t attempt to hide his enthusiasm while he’s fucking me.
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“Yeah, man. All of us at the Brotherhood are real impressed with what you did to that Grunt. Real proud of you. And you know who else would have been really proud of you? Extraspecial proud of you? Hitler. If Hitler were here, he’d give you a high five.” After he busts his nut, we lie there. I get extra cigarettes if I hang around and snuggle afterward. Some sick maniacs are weird like that. They’d chuck a baby out of a moving car, but in the end they want to be the baby. They want a fucking mommy. Sure, I’ll be a mommy. I’ll be a daddy. I’ll be a fucking step-granddaddy if it means me getting a little extra. Didn’t know it would be a lot extra—a whole lot extra. Next day I’m in the yard. Lifting weights. By myself. No one around. No one’s ever lifting weights here. This has got to be the laziest prison in the whole fucking world. All these scum are just letting themselves get fat as houses. Don’t know why. Wish I could get fat as all shit, but there’s no fucking way. My body is my cash. Gotta keep that ass lookin’ like a little boy’s. I’m just now getting a good taste of my time alone. Really starting to feel jacked on these weights. I feel like my glistening muscles are about to bust out of my fucking skin, when up walks my Aryan john and the rest of the Brotherhood. They look serious. Maybe they’re going to kill me. Don’t know what I said. Maybe it’s what I didn’t say. Maybe it’ll be just to see my breath float away. We’re all fucking insects. The leader, Klaus (his real name’s George), steps forward and looks at me a long time. A real long time. Stares forever. “We’ve decided you’re one of us.” “Huh?” “We’ve decided you’re one of us. Do you want to be one us?” “Sure.” “Good. Tonight, we all fuck you.” “Obviously.” “Tomorrow, we break out.” “What?” “We’re breaking the fuck out. Heil Hitler.”
presents
SemiPermanent CREATIVE CONFERENCES
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Twelve creatives at the top of their fields, come to Melbourne to discuss their work, their lives and their philosophy on creating innovative and inspirational art & design. A creative conference surrounded by a week’s worth of exhibitions, workshops, installations and parties.
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Sam Leach
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THE LEARNIN’ CORNER: LOOKIN’ THROUGH THE SKIN LENS
Photo courtesy of the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente
ELBERT VAN PUTTEN AS TOLD TO HARRY CHEADLE
A comparison of how light travels through a conventional lens (left) and a scattering lens (right), coupled with the resulting images of gold particles.
Elbert van Putten is a scientist and PhD candidate at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands. The focus of his research is imaging with scattered light, which is a fancy way of saying makin’ pictures. Normally if you want to image things, like if you want to look at cells through a microscope, you use clear lenses, which focus light on a point to create an image. However, any defect in such a lens—any surface roughness, and in practice these lenses will always have surface defects— will cause the image’s resolution to deviate from the theoretical perfect limit. My team takes the opposite approach in our research and make lenses that are not clear but opaque, which causes light waves to scatter. Normally you cannot image with something like this. However, we found that if you can control every individual light wave with which you illuminate these lenses, it is possible to prepare for the scattering, allowing you to focus the light through opaque materials. So you can control scattered light by changing how it arrives at the lens. To control the light, we use small liquid crystal devices that work like computer monitors but are much smaller. When light reflects from such a device, the phase of the light can be changed— you can basically move it forward or
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backward in time with respect to the rest of the wave. And because the output is a vast amount of pixels, which you can control individually, you can direct exactly where your reflected light goes. You can predict how the light will potentially scatter through a certain material by measuring the transmission matrix, which determines the relation between the incident and the scattered light. Using a normal lens, the relation between light that comes in and out is very simple, because it begins as a normal wave that becomes increasingly focused. If a material scatters the light, however, this relationship becomes much more complex. You send light in at a certain angle and it comes out at all angles with different, random phases. A very large matrix with a lot of numbers is needed to describe this relationship between incoming and outgoing light, but once that information is obtained you can predict exactly how light will exit the sample. With conventional optics, 200 nanometers is the approximate limit of the smallest thing you can image. This is
because light is a wave, and the diffraction limit dictates that you can’t focus a wave on a point smaller than about half its wavelength, and visible light’s wavelength is between about 400 and 650 nanometers. In our recent study, however, we demonstrated that we could visualise things that were slightly smaller than 100 nanometers by exploiting materials with a significantly lower diffraction limit. Generally speaking, it really doesn’t matter how a certain material scatters light—as long as the light is scrambled and you have the correct transmission matrix, it works. However, if the material absorbs a lot of light rather than scattering it, things become a bit more difficult. We once executed a small experiment in which we focused light through some chicken flesh bought from the supermarket and essentially had no problems. The real-world applications for our scattering lens are mainly related to microscopy, although it also could be used in medicine, where very often scanners can only read above the skin, which, of course, scatters light. Imagine all the amazing medical applications and terrible art that would result from the ability to use your own skin as a lens to image what lies underneath.
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THE CUTE SHOW PAGE! BY ELLIS JONES, PHOTO BY ALEX DE MORA
Pygmy Shetland Ponies Watch a brand-new episode of The Cute Show! featuring these portly pygmy Shetlands later this month at VBS.TV.
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Don’t let their size fool you, pygmy Shetland ponies like to pig out big time. Carrots, apples, grass—they love it all, and will do just about anything to get food in their mouths. Running through barbed wire or risking a zap from an electric fence? Doesn’t faze them. At least not the adorably naughty ponies we visited at Misty Meadow Farm in Kent, England. One of the highlights was their daily exercise routine, which consists of trotting and jumping over tiny pony hurdles. When they leap, their stunted mini-legs swish in the air, and it’s so precious we almost died. Sometimes, if they’ve put on a few too many pounds, they have to wear muzzles when they leave their itty-bitty stables so they don’t eat everything in sight. They hate that! But it’s for their own good, and watching them try to push the muzzle off makes you laugh and feel sorry for the chubby li’l guys at the same time. These peewees are also quite intelligent, and some are even trained as guide horses for the blind. How noble!
CHOKE IT DOWN Foul Eating with Dirty Beaches BY BEN SHAPIRO PHOTOS BY ALEXANDER PERELLI
f the most putrescent aspects of New York City were boiled into soup, it would be a viscous chowder of sunbaked garbage, hairy cysts, street-meat gristle, and subway odor. And chances are, the best place to get a steaming bowl of this shit would be at one of the many Asian eateries in Flushing, Queens, the city’s secondlargest and oft-overlooked Chinatown. Taiwan-born Alex Zhang Hungtai is the man behind Dirty Beaches, whose songs sound like they’re being transmitted into the future by a band of Sun Recordsobsessed ghosts who were killed in a car crash on the way to their senior prom in 1952. Last month Alex visited New York, and we thought we had a bright idea: Invite him to a “nice lunch” at one of Flushing’s gastronomical nightmares and watch him get sick. Little did we know that Alex, a lifelong nomad, lived in the neighborhood in his early teens and finds things like goat’s-eye soup utterly scrumptious. So we ended up wandering around all day in shame, knowing that he was going to rub the backfired plan in our faces (which, by the way, involved eating an actual face). Here’s what Alex had to say about each of our meals after he finished laughing at our perpetual dry heaves.
I
TAIWANESE-STYLE STINKY TOFU There’s that tofu stink. I haven’t smelled that in a while. It’s the curd equivalent of a sweaty triathlon, for tough guys only. They make it by letting tofu rot until it ferments. It tastes like it smells: cheese thrown into a public toilet that hasn’t been cleaned in ten years. 70 VICE
INTESTINES IN DUCK BLOOD I think these are making me horny. They’re exactly how I remember them, but this place is stingy with the duck blood—it’s kind of thin. My mom’s coagulated into thick cubes that went squish when you bit into them. But this is still delicious, like marinated tripe. I can tell it’s well cleaned because it doesn’t taste like there are chunks of shit inside. SLICED PIG STOMACH IN SOUR CABBAGE SOUP The Taiwanese eat almost every part of the pig, so this is like a hamburger over there. They slow-cook the stomach until the fat completely melts off. It’s weird to think about digesting something’s gut, but it’s also delicious. Pork-stomach success! LIVE OCTOPUS ON A BED OF LETTUCE This is one of the most unique eating experiences I’ve ever had. The octopus comes out about two minutes after ordering—they just pull it from the tank, hack it up, and throw it in front of you. It writhes on the plate as you eat it, and you can feel it slimily wiggling around your mouth while its suckers stick to your tongue and grab the insides of your cheeks. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone. Food shouldn’t attack the person who’s eating it. CHILLED PIG FACE IN GARLIC AND SMASHED CUCUMBERS This is pretty refreshing after the octopus. It’s really savory, a great way to end the day. It’s hard to tell which part of the face you’re eating because it’s all hacked up, but I do know it’s a mixture of forehead, chin, cheek, neck, and ears. I was hoping it’d be served as a flat-face sheet, but I guess that’s Silence of the Lambs territory. Check out live sets from Dirty Beaches and a whole mess of other bands at Noisey.com.
Strong violence and coarse language
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REVIEWS BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: PANEL OF JUDGES
MAYBACH MUSIC CLUB Self Made MMG/Warner
COOL KIDS When Fish Ride Bicycles Green Label Sound
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Despite how interconnected the world is (apparently the internet is now more complex than a human brain) we’re still divided by the seasons, and the results are mixed. For example, it’s great getting winter sale clothes from the U.K right when it starts getting cold, but spare a thought for the dog my friend brought over from Germany who still gets its full winter coat in the height of Melbourne’s summer. Anyway, my point is that I find it really depressing trying to give a fair and balanced review in the middle of winter to an album where every song is about driving around with the top down because its really hot and that they’re gonna stop and get an ice cream soon. Fuck you guys, I’m freezing my balls off. BENJAMIN THOMSON
TIMBO KING From Babylon to Timbuktu Nature Sounds
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Remember that scene in every 80s movie where the cool kid runs past a line of nerds and slaps them all in the face in one fluid motion? Timbo King’s made one massive sonic montage of all of those scenes. A Wu-Tang affiliate, this guy has been honing his skills since 1993 and doesn’t seem concerned with adding on a bunch of flashy crap to “change with the times” or whatever. He can relax in the knowledge that he shits out more talent after his morning coffee than most rappers work up to in a lifetime. FRANKLIN PICKLES
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8
It was getting to the point where I was starting to think, ‘man, this has been a pretty boring year for music.’ Then someone came out with something as unrelentingly distasteful as the first half of this album. It’s like they hired a bunch of interns to find every tiny breath of dead air and fill it up with a siren sound or someone saying ‘whooooooo’. I’ve never wanted to own a car more than right now. I’d love to drive around being an asshole with this playing. Sure, the second half sounds like they made the beats by sampling the MacGuyver soundtrack. But whatever. BENJAMIN THOMSON
ROACH GIGZ Bitch I’m a Player Goomba
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Roach Gigz recently released this free EP via his website to hold people over until his debut album drops this fall. The beats are good, but he overuses those robotic transitional noises. Know what I mean? Like where in between songs all of a sudden it’s all BOOOOWHOOOOO? Albums like this always have one sensitive song that’s out of place, and it’s always the one I skip. I don’t care about your feelings, I just wanna hear more rhymes about your hairy balls. GINGER BEEF
NGUZUNGUZU Timesup Fade to Mind
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Oof, I just realised Underworld put out a record last year and promoted it by playing on Jimmy Fallon. Imagine a 90s party
guy watching that, wondering why his kid won’t fall asleep. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the early-morning hours, hundreds of smart dudes with laptops were ripping weird house parties apart with the first Nguzunguzu EP. Put this new one on in an empty concrete room with a strobe light and a huge system and see what happens. CX ZOLA
HUDSON MOHAWKE Satin Panthers Warp
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When the first track started it was all twinkles and low refrigerator groans, which made me think that maybe Hudson is chillwave now, a thing I’m told that you can be. According to Wikipedia, HudMo doesn’t like being referred to as “aqua-crunk” or “wonky,” which apparently are names that English people think are acceptable to call things. Back in my day, if it was electro that could double as hip-hop beats with sound effects like a science-fiction movie, then we called it chillwave and everyone was happy. LEONARD DUH-VINCI
PHILIPPE LAURENT Hot-Bip Minimal Wave
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One of my main pet peeves in music journalism is when pompous collector scum refer to records as “sides.” It’s not the 60s, jazzbos… but I guess I’m going to go ahead and be annoyed at myself by using it here because it actually applies. Side B is a totally OK collection of tunes. Side A, however, is now one of my favorite sides of all time. No exaggeration. Super-inventive, early-80s B-boy-influenced electro and proto-Euro-robo-bounce (a term I originally made up as a stoned joke but have since started using in earnest). I wish this thing
NEW ALBUM OUT NOW
NO MUSIC. NO LIFE. MODULAR
Architecture In Helsinki Moment Bends
AZARI & III AZARI & III
tom vek leisure seizure
WWW.MODULARPEOPLE.COM
WIM WIM
REVIEWS WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: SHLOMO:
CSS
were released like old NYC house and hip-hop records back in the day, with two copies in each sleeve so I could spin doubles all day, every day. JARDIN RADYELLY
La Liberación V2/Coop
good thing was giving me a copy. The Spits already have a song called “Drop Out,” but telling people to drop out is important. DIXIE
THE HAPPY THOUGHTS
8 BLOOD ORANGE Coastal Grooves EMI
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With Blood Orange Dev Hynes has kept the strained singing and painfully earnest lyrics of his past project Lightspeed Champion. In fact if you like staring meaningfully into space biting your lip, you’ll probably love this. But be warned, people without raging girl boners for Hynes could find it a bit soft. And over the years and through the name changes Hynes is still walking the thin line of disappearing up his own ass. But for any of you with unfulfilled wedding fantasies, it’s awesome. ERIC THE CLAPTON
HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR Blue Songs
I once saw these Brazilians play at a music festival and one of their members BROKE HER ARM, but she ignored it and kept partying until someone came out and carted her offstage. La Liberación is a lot like that performance in that not even broken bones, crippling hangovers, or the bubonic plague will keep you from dancing to it until you’re dragged away. Unless you’re some kind of nerd or something. AURORA MONTGOMERY
Swimming Through Sunlight
Cobraside Distribution/Roar Scratch
Old Flame
CHARLES ALBRIGHT Weight 7"
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Are the members of this band Mormons? It sounds like it. In the liner notes they credit the kids’ show Yo Gabba Gabba! for the chorus of their anthem, and the show’s creator, aka main guy from the Aquabats, is Mormon. Some of the most put-together people I’ve met were Mormon, but this record is pretty fucking dull, which is something else I’ve picked up from the Mormons I’ve met. BO REGARDS
TOTAL BABES
Hold on, we’re giving the Icarus Line a fucking six? What’s going on with this decade? THE EDITOR
Permanent Records
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2
Wildlife
6
8
HoZac
THE ICARUS LINE
Moshi Moshi
This is the kind of music you can imagine Karl Lagerfeld playing in his mansion while being fellated by a nubile twink whose cock looks like the top half of a question mark. Pretty much every track on Blue Songs puts two hairless naked Asian boys dancing on either side of whatever you happen to be looking at. If all the Eagles were super-queer, lived in Chelsea in 1992, and decided to pick up some Rolands and cash in way too late on acid house, they might have made this between tokes of crank. NED HEPBURN
The Happy Thoughts
Not enough people are glorifying serial killers these days even though it’s a surefire way to get some attention. Naming your band after the guy better known as the Dallas Ripper and the Eyeball Killer (because he would surgically remove the eyes of prostitutes after shooting them) is a good first step. Making a really noisy, screechy punk record where you command your listeners was the second good thing you did. The third
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If this band doesn’t scream FUN, I don’t know what does. See the album cover? It’s a fucking brontosaurus eating an ice cream cone. He doesn’t care about his lactose intolerance because he knows, for goddamn sure, that no amount of gassy bloating competes with the pure, ass-kicking bliss of Smurf-flavored ice cream. Total Babes blast it out with joyful sqwonks of exuberance that remind you life’s too short and lovely to worry about farting. DASSY DOTDOGS
WOODEN SHJIPS West Thrill Jockey
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Oh, this is sweet. My old coworker Amy hated these guys because they sounded like a Doors cover band under an 80-layer
Subscribe to Vice this month and you’ll probably win (no guarantees but it’s a pretty safe bet) a DVD copy of Essential Killing, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. He’s one of those directors where I would have seen his films if I was less of a philistine. Some of his past efforts have erotic titles so he’s probably pretty good. It stars Vincent Gallo who has an amazing online store, for one million dollars he will fertilize your womb. That’s all, you can go back to reading articles now.
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REVIEWS BEST COVER OF THE MONTH: TY SEGALL
lasagna of reverb and vocal delay. We used to get in actual, full-on fights about it, one of which ended with the C-word (cunt). Well, here they are now giving the drug-scarred Garfield treatment to Spacemen 3 (almost her all-time favorite band) and Amy ain’t around to say shit about it. Hahahaha. Enjoy working at the New York Times, SUCKER. THOMAS MORTON
400 BLOWS Sickness and Health ORG Music
RETOX Ugly Animals Ipecac/Three One G
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Retox made a solid rock album. I could talk about the Locust and how everyone loved the Locust and how this album kind of sounds like it could be a new, evolved Locust album because half of the band is from the Locust, but I’m not going to do that. Oh shit, wait. TOBAR MAYO
BATRIDER
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This record makes me feel like I’m trapped in a sweaty bathroom with a man doing copious amounts of cocaine and talking incessantly and I feel the walls caving in and there is no escape and what is that in the toilet and I think I’m going crazy and wait did he say he was going to stab me and I’m nervous but I like this feeling, which is coincidentally very similar to every single night I have been shanghaied by the singer of this band. CAPTAIN SPACEFOOD
MALE BONDING Endless Now
Piles of Lies Two Bright Lakes
I was halfway through listening to this album (and a quarter of the way to forming an opinion) when someone poked his head in and said it sounded like “Why We Can’t Be Together” except with a cold. That got me thinking. If the record did have some kind of virus, maybe it was that Hendra one. It’s said to come from bats, right? Let’s just say that while it’s a little more subdued than their back catalogue, it’s still catchy stuff. BON SNOTT
Ritual Union EMI
3
Apparently these guys are the future of soul music. They’re from Sweden. Apparently ‘big’ names like them and they are collaborating with everyone who’s anyone. Kiiiillllllllllllll meeeeeeeeeee. HIP BONE
TY SEGALL Goodbye Bread Pop Frenzy
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In terms of albums you’ll want to crank in summer, this is like a Pet Sounds for people who understand that The Beach Boys were a bunch of douchey Richie Cunninghams that you would never in a million years want to hang out with if you met them. COLONEL CON CARNAGE
WASHED OUT
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LITTLE DRAGON
6
Inertia/Sub Pop
I’m running late finishing my reviews this month so I thought I’d ask my family and friend who wears a lot of glittery pink stuff, has a handbag dog and actually uses the word ‘alternate’, for some help while enjoying our Sunday roast. Here’s what they had to say about Male Bonding. Mum: “Jumble bumble”. My friend: “A collection of rubbish”. My brother’s girlfriend: “It’s the musical equivalent of treading on gum in new shoes”. My friend, again: “Actually, it sounds like the intro to Friends”. Ouch. I, in fact, quite liked it. SLIM KEITH
you just got busted without a tram ticket, or, watching whales dance around white sail boats from a balcony by the sea, which is what I am doing right now. I hear rumours that this is their last album but frankly I am hoping the wind that blows news my way is lying. SLIM KEITH
Within and Without
PANEL OF JUDGES
Pod
Moods on the Move Mistletone
9
Basically, it goes like this: Sydney has the Opera House, Queensland has the Big Pineapple and Melbourne has Panel of Judges. Moods on the Move is their fourth album and it’s a whole new rainbow of rad. It’s the perfect accompaniment to being bummed out cause
4
I didn’t think it was possible, but this album is too mellow. It’s totally fine and non offensive, but it’s not an album, it’s a soundtrack. Soundtracks are great when they accompany cool stuff happening in movies. This accompanied me looking for a pair of shoes I think I threw out. Even the couple banging on the cover look asleep. It took me
“FUNNY, TOUCHING AND ALTOGETHER EXTRAORDINARY! ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR.” Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
++++ “WRY. MOVING
& SERIOUSLY FUNNY” Neil Smith, Total Film
A FILM BY MIKE MILLS
IN CINEMAS AUGUST 25
www.hopscotchfilms.com.au/beginnersfilm
REVIEWS WORST COVER OF THE MONTH: NGUZUNGUZU:
an hour to write this paragraph because I kept passing out thanks to this album. HUMANOID THUNDERA
EAGLE AND THE WORM Good Times Warner
7
Listening to this is like listening to a bunch of people who can play their instruments better than you can do anything, having more fun than you ever will, ever. But strangely, you won’t want to kill yourself. They weren’t lying when they named it Good Times. This could be the soundtrack to a Herbie film where the Love Bug travels Georgia to race fan boats driven by Cheech and Chong. Spoiler alert: everyone wins. BORIS FELCHIN’
GARDENS & VILLA S/T Inertia/Secretly Canadian
3
An endlessly dull and spiritless first album from a bunch of California dudes that like the beach and nature and somewhere along the line said yes to their lead singer also doubling as the band’s flautist. They also named themselves after their garden. Oh, and their house too. FLOOD GATES
jerking their batwinged shoulders unrhythmically in a New York club, I see a gang of Melbournians playing to six people in a backyard circa 1982 that, come two o’clock, abandon their avant sax and synth meanderings to watch Carlton vs St Kilda while eating stale sausages because they forgot to lodge their forms at the DSS. Awesome! SLIM KEITH
KOUROUSH YAGHMAEI Back from the Brink Now-Again
3
Kouroush is an Iranian fellow who played in a British Invasion/surf cover band called the Raptures in Tehran during the 60s, then grew a mustache and tried to start combining traditional Persian music with Kenny Rogers and the First Editionesque cash-in psych rock. After the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the new powers than be forbade him from playing and his music has sat gathering dust on the shelves, far removed from Western ears ever since. It’s possible this has more to do with his songs sounding cheesier than James Taylor’s palate after a Denny’s Grand Slamwich, but I’m going to go with my Uncle Ken and blame the Islam. TROY BIGGUNS
ILAIYARAAJA Solla Solla Finders Keepers
ESSENDON AIRPORT Palimpsest Chapter Music
9
About the only thing this vaguely sounds like is the soundtrack to Liquid Sky but, instead of junkie fashion models
78 VICE
7
Finders Keepers has now tackled one of the most prolific artists from the Kollywood film industry, and while Ilaiyaraaja already scored more than 900 films, he’s about to score every bar night you have for the rest of the year, because this stuff is heavy and dance-y. But please
stop Shazam-ing it and telling your DJ you know what album it is, because that’s annoying everyone. APRIL WOLFE
SHLOMO Bad Vibes Friends of Friends
2
You know that place your old friend from middle school takes you every time you’re visiting from out of town? The bar where the tablecloths are white, the staff wears black, the drinks all end in -tini, and every time you return from the bathroom the bartender is hitting on your date? This is the sort of monotonous, safe ambient music that those places use to lull you into the belief that it’s chic to pay $14 for a drink. BILLY HUNTER
BRIAN M. CLARK Songs from the Empty Places Where People Killed Themselves Discriminate Audio
7
If you don’t know Discriminate Audio, they mostly put out stuff that Boyd Rice or the Partridge Family Temple is involved with. This record is by Boyd’s biographer and features four tracks of vocal-less, organy numbers about different suicides. The press release says that they are tone poems, but I am pretty sure they were made in GarageBand. Track 2 is called “Downtown High-Rise Loft” (a drunken executive staggers around his apartment all evening, until—in an uncharacteristic moment of impulsive melodrama—he blows his brains out). This is a surprisingly fun record that is good to put on when you’re feeling suicidal. It’s actually cheering me up right now! NICHOLAS GAZIN
+++++ “ASTONISHING... AN AMAZING FILM...” BEN MCE A CHEN, EMP IR E
AUSTRALIA’S MOST INFAMOUS CRIME STORY
ON DVD AND BLU-RAY NOW WWW.SNOWTOWNTHEMOVIE.COM.AU
JOHNNY RYAN’S PAGE
80 VICE
THE CHUCK TAYLOR ALL STAR OUTSIDER BOOT
converse.com.au