The World Hates You Issue by VICE Australia

VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 11 NUMBER 5

FREE VOLUME 11 NUMBER 5

THE WORLD HATES YOU ISSUE 2013

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S P E N C E R H A M I LT O N IS PROUD TO S K AT E I N T H E PISTOL.

TEAM MODEL ROYAL SUEDE / RED CANVAS SUPRAFOOTWEAR.COM TWITTER: @SUPRAFOOTWEAR

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Afends is a family devoted to fashion and lifestyle. Our mission is to combine quality and style in every product we make. Afends promotes a free-living lifestyle by expressing ourselves through art, music and the spiritual side of the activities we love. Our motto is “Question Everything” which isn’t about us educating you - it’s about you educating yourself.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

What do you do when you’ve just thrown your ﬁrst-ever party in Sydney and one of your international guests orders two high-class escorts to your hotel room as a joke? Pretend to be asleep so you don’t have to deal with it. This is a picture of former music editor Jordan Redaelli taken on the night of the VICE launch in Sydney. This issue marks the tenth anniversary of VICE in Australia, so we’re including a smattering of birthday related content. Happy anniversary, us!

VOLUME 11 NUMBER 5 Cover by Robert King In August 1996, in the Chechen capital of Grozny, a Chechen fighter shows off the ID tags of dead Russian soldiers that he has collected. Chechen soldiers take the dog tags so they can demand a ransom from the Russians who, without the tags, will not be able to identify their dead.

AN ORAL HISTORY OF VICE IN AUSTRALIA It All Started with a Jewish Punk Rock Cover Band . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

A LONG WAY FROM HOME It Was Probably the Internet, not Chechnya, that Radicalised the Boston Bombers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

THE SUBTERRANEAN SCENE On the Rails with Mexico City’s Reggaeton-Loving Subway Gangs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

THIS IS WHAT WINNING LOOKS LIKE My Afghanistan War Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

THOUGHT AND MEMORY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

NIVEK OGRE IS TOTALLY DOOMED Skinny Puppy’s Front Man Is Obsessed with Weapons . . . 74

12 Masthead 14 Employees 16 Front of the Book 32 DOs & DON’Ts 40 Fashion: Tattoo Thai Boys 66 Bob Odenkirk’s Page 68 Li’l Thinks: Friends 69 Rat Tail: The Debut Single 70 Skinema 76 Reviews 80 Johnny Ryan’s Page

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FOUNDERS Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER Eddy Moretti EDITOR Royce Akers (royce@viceaustralia.com) EDITOR AT LARGE Briony Wright (briony@viceaustralia.com) EDITOR IN CHIEF Rocco Castoro GLOBAL EDITOR Andy Capper MANAGING EDITOR Ellis Jones SENIOR EDITOR Aaron Lake Smith ASSOCIATE EDITOR Harry Cheadle FASHION EDITOR Annette Lamothe-Ramos PHOTO EDITOR Christian Storm LAYOUT inkubator.ca WEB DESIGN Solid Sender DESIGN ASSOCIATE Ben Thomson (ben@viceaustralia.com) EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Wendy Syfret (wendy@viceaustralia.com) WORDS Xavier Aaronson, Ben Anderson, Kate Carraway, Brett Gelman, Knut-Eirik Lindblad, Bernardo Loyola, Chris Nieratko, Bob Odenkirk, Chris O’Neill, Ed Park, Johnny Ryan, Lorenzo Vidino PHOTOS Rodrigo Abd, Ben Anderson, Janicza Bravo, Mauricio Castillo, Chad Elder, Uli Kohls, Kristin Lee Moolman, Iram Nayati, Chris Nieratko, Elke Thionke ILLUSTRATIONS Alex Cook, Penelope Gazin, Yina Kim, Olov Lagerqvist, Ben Montero, Johnny Ryan, Michael Shaeffer COPY EDITOR Nicole Jones VICE AUSTRALIA Send us: Letters, DOs & DON’Ts, all CDs for review, magazines, books, neat stuff, etc. PO Box 2041, Fitzroy, Victoria, 3065 Phone + 61 3 9024 8000 Fax + 61 3 9486 9578 VICE NEW ZEALAND PO Box 68-962, Newton, Auckland Phone +64 9 354 4215 Fax +64 9 354 4216 VICE NEW YORK 97 North 10th Street, Suite 204, Brooklyn, NY 11211 Phone 718 599 3101 Fax 718 599 1769 VICE MONTREAL 127 B King Street, Montreal, QC, H3C 2P2 Phone 514 286 5224 Fax 514 286 8220 VICE TORONTO 360 Dufferin St. Suite 204, Toronto, ON M6K 1Z8 Phone 416 596 6638 Fax 416 408 1149 VICE UK New North Place, London, EC2A 4JA Phone +44 20 7749 7810 Fax +44 20 7729 6884 VICE NORDICS Markvardsgatan 2, SE-113 53 Stockholm VICE ITALY Via Watt 32, 20143, Milano Phone +39 02 4547 9185 Fax +39 02 9998 6071 VICE GERMANY Brunnenstr. 196, 10119 Berlin Phone +49 30 246295-90 Fax +49 30 246295-99 VICE NETHERLANDS PO Box 15358, 1001 MJ Amsterdam Phone +31 20 673 2530 Fax +31 20 716 8806 VICE BELGIUM Lamorinièrestraat 161, 2600 Berchem, Antwerp Phone +32 3 232 1887 Fax +32 3 232 4302

PRESIDENT Andrew Creighton PUBLISHER Michael Slonim (michael@viceaustralia.com) FOUNDING FATHER John Reid SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR Jamie Brewer (jamie@viceaustralia.com) BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Alex Light (alex@viceaustralia.com) ADVERTISING & MARKETING Jonny Goldcoast (jonny@viceaustralia.com) NEW ZEALAND ADVERTISING Jamie Brewer (jamie@vicenz.com) Tim Barnett (tim@vicenz.com) DIGITAL PUBLICITY & CONTENT Josh Gardiner (josh@viceaustralia.com) ACCOUNT DIRECTOR Damien Miller (damien@viceaustralia.com) OPERATIONS MANAGER Reuben Ruiter (reuben@viceaustralia.com) ACCOUNT MANAGER Heather Young (heather.young@viceaustralia.com) CREATIVE PROJECT MANAGER Leah Consunji (leah@viceaustralia.com) DIGITAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Todd Andrews (todd@viceaustralia.com) PRODUCER VICE FILMS AU Katy Roberts (katy@viceaustralia.com) PROJECT COORDINATOR Ramona Teleçican (ramona@viceaustralia.com) FINANCE Raye D’apolito (raye@viceaustralia.com) INTERNS Nate Anderson, Oscar Strangio, Marina Diaz, Emmeline Peterson, Adnan Khan, Joel Snyder, Lily Joviç, Stephanie Jones, Katelin Meredith VICE FRANCE 21, Place de la République, 75003 Paris Phone +331 71 19 92 23 Fax +33 958 267 802 VICE SPAIN Joan d’Austria 95–97, 5 1, 08018 Barcelona Phone +34 93 356 9798 Fax +34 93 310 1066 VICE AUSTRIA Favouritenstraße 4-6/III, 1040 Vienna Phone +43 1 9076 766 33 Fax +43 1 907 6766 99 VICE MEXICO Merida 109, Col. Roma, Del. Cuahutemoc, Mexico DF 06700 Phone +52 55 5533 8564 Fax +52 55 5203 4061 VICE BRAZIL Rua Periquito 264, São Paulo, SP, CEP 04514-050 Phone +55 11 2476 2428 Fax +55 11 5049 1314 VICE BULGARIA 5 Ogosta str., 1124 Sofia Phone +359 2 870 4637 Fax +359 2 873 4281 VICE AFRICA Unit 3, The Rosebank Fire Station, Baker St./Bath Ave., Rosebank, JHB Phone: +27 11 447 3613 Fax: +27 11 880 0233 VICE CZECH REPUBLIC Hasˇtalska´ 1, 11000 Praha 1 Phone +420 222 317 230 Fax +420 222 317 230 VICE GREECE 22 Voulis Street, 6th Floor, 105 63, Athens Phone +30 210 325 4290 Fax +30 210 324 9785 VICE PORTUGAL Praça Coronel Pacheco, nº 2, r/c—4050-453 Porto Phone +351 220 996 891/2 Fax +351 220 126 735 VICE POLAND Solec 18/20, 00-410 Warszawa Phone +48 22 891 04 45 Fax +48 22 891 04 45 VICE RUSSIA 4th Syromyatnicheskiy Lane, 3/5, Building 5, Moscow, 105120 Phone +7 499 503-6736

ALL SUBMISSIONS PROPERTY OF VICE MAGAZINE INC. THE ENTIRE CONTENT IS A COPYRIGHT OF VICE MAGAZINE PUBLISHING INC. AND CANNOT BE REPRODUCED IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT WRITTEN AUTHORISATION OF THE PUBLISHERS. VICE Australia Pty Ltd and its related entities (“VICE”) makes no guarantees, warranties or representations of any kind, whether express or implied, as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the information provided. VICE will not be liable for incorrect use of the information and will assume no responsibility for consequences that may result from the use of the information. VICE is not responsible for damages of any kind arising out of use, reference to, or reliance on such information. While all reasonable care is taken, VICE will not assume responsibility for unsolicited material.

PRINTED IN AUSTRALIA VICE.com 12 VICE

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EMPLOYEES OF THE DECADE

Alex Light

Ben Thomson

Briony Wright

Chris Sharland

Damien Miller

Dave & Derry

Eden Baker

Hannah Brooks

Hayden East

Heather Lighton

Heather Young

Imogen O’Neal

James McManus

James Shirley

Jamie Brewer

Jo Ryan

Johann Rashid

John West

Jonny Goldcoast

Jordan Redaelli

Josh Gardiner

Julian Morgans

Kashi Somers

Katy Roberts

Kristy Rosser

Kyoko

Leah Consunji

Max Finch

Myki Slonim

Nick Ahlmark

Ramona Teleçican

Raye D’apolito

Remi Carette

Reuben Ruiter

Royce Akers

Sean

Sharkey

Simon Keck

SJ Owen

Todd Andrews

Wendy Syfret

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F R O N T

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T H E

B O O K

KANGAROO SCROTUMS ARE THE NEW VICTIMS OF GLOBAL WARMING Climate change is a huge concern for many, many reasons: the ice caps are melting, droughts are sweeping the world, and mega-hurricanes are striking cities that have never before had to weather such storms. But it’s only recently that climate change has threatened Australia’s hilarious but substantial kangaroo nutsack trade. The hopping marsupials’ scrotums, which are crafted into souvenir bottle-openers and key rings, have made manufacturer John Kreuger, hereby known (by me) as the King of Ballsacks, hundreds of thousands of dollars. These days, however, John’s trade is suffering due to a series of ﬂoods in Queensland—which some meteorologists believe to have been caused by climate change. The ﬂooding has purportedly pushed kangaroos inland and away from the areas where they’re normally culled and castrated. John told me how it feels to have his balls literally on the line.

Apparently Europeans Don’t Care if Pop Stars Dress Like Nazis VICE: How have the floods affected the scrote business? John Kreuger: The older animals tend to sense weather patterns. They know it’s going to rain. They then head to the desert country away from cull areas, especially the big guys. Consequently, I’ve found it harder and harder to get people to supply me with the bigger scrotums I need. Scientists are blaming the floods on climate change and saying that this has caused kangaroos to flee to habitats that would normally be of no interest to them. Do you believe global warming is the cause of the Great Kangaroo-Scrotum Shortage? You’d have to be pretty dumb to not notice the signs. I’m 72, and if you talk to the older people, they say, “Oh, everything is changing, we weren’t getting these cyclones as regular as we are now.” A cyclone might have hit the coast once every seven years, but now it’s once every few. So many things are pointing to a change—scientists have been saying this for years. Where are all the kangaroos heading now? They head inland away from the lower-lying areas. By instinct or whatever, I don’t know, they know they can get trapped in the lowlands. The ones left behind are the younger, which are not so smart, and of course their scrotums are not big enough for what I need.

BY WENDY SYFRET Illustration by Ben Montero

What will you do if they don’t come back? I am stockpiling a lot of scrotums; I’ve probably got about 50,000 in storage. We process about 1,000 a week, so we have a 12-month supply there. And we’re buying them as soon as they become available. The basis of my successful business is having all products. If I haven’t got them, I’m out of business. So you’re prepared for an environmental scrotum crisis of immense proportions? I’m well aware of climate change. I think we create heat and it’s affecting the world. I plan ahead, but I take things one day at a time. I can afford to at my age.

BY XAVIER AARONSON Photo illustration by Alex Cook

Since its inauguration in 1956, the Eurovision song contest has been the biggest, cheesiest pop-music event in Europe, showcasing schmaltzy, sometimes bizarre entertainers and launching the careers of such culturally base phenomena as ABBA, Celine Dion, and RiverDance. This March, however, Europe’s version of American Idol featured a few unexpected guests: Nazis. Or, more accurately, drummers wearing Nazi regalia. A performance by Denmark’s Eurovision entry, singer Emmelie de Forest’s “Only Teardrops,” featured drummers in Waffen-SS outﬁts that were reportedly grabbed by a costumer who was unaware that they were worn by the propagators of one of mankind’s worst atrocities. (They were made for a TV show about Nazis.) Luckily, DR, the network broadcasting the performance, realised the mistake and made the last-minute decision to blur the arm stripes that would have made the origin of the outﬁts clear. Everyone involved has since apologised for the blunder, chalking it up to an unfortunate oversight. Even Danish left-wing radicals seem pretty relaxed about the gaffe. “It was human error,” said René Karpantschof, a sociologist and former member of BZ, a militant Danish squatter movement. “It’s quite clear that the artists used these costumes by accident and that no political agenda was involved… Danes are very sensitive people, but it depends on who the actors are. Hugo Boss designed very handsome SS uniforms. The artists must have seen the uniforms and thought, Wow they look nice… But I don’t know how they didn’t notice the band on the sleeve.” Silas Adler, co-founder and creative director of Danish menswear label Soulland said that the reason for the lack of outrage could be that the Third Reich is ancient history. “Nazi symbolism is just as powerful today, but newer generations don’t associate the symbols with history as much.” He added that, for some young people, Nazi iconography isn’t always linked to events that happened long before they were born. “For a lot of people, history is just a couple of sentences on Wikipedia,” Silas continued. “In general, military clothing is something that has always been in the fashion loop. I guess people are drawn to its tightness.”

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F R O N T

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B O O K

TEACHING EVIL TO NORWEGIANS Norway has been linked to grandiose notions of evil for centuries. In the Middle Ages, some Europeans believed the country was full of witches, and in the 1990s, the country’s black-metal scene made headlines for alleged ties to satanism, burning shit, and even murder. Though Norway’s crime rate is laughably low when compared with most of the world, the country’s fascination with evil is still apparent and widespread. And this fall, Norwegians’ preoccupation with wickedness will manifest itself in its most insidious form: a university class.

BY KNUT-EIRIK LINDBLAD Illustration by Olov Lagerqvist

GayProofing the Bible BY HARRY CHEADLE Photo courtesy of the editors of the Queen James Bible

Last March, Soltun, a folkhøgskole (a school Norwegians attend for one year after secondary school) in the town of Harstad, announced that it will be offering a new course devoted to a yearlong in-depth study of the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. According to the ofﬁcial description of the course, which is simply called Ondskap (“Evil”), pupils who enroll will experience “one year when you get to explore who you are and at the same time try to ﬁnd answers to questions that carry with them gruesome, grotesque, and horrible actions.” The class’s instructor, Kristine Edith Morton, explained to me exactly what that means.

Are Norwegians keener to venture to the dark side than other nationalities? Maybe, but I also think evil has made its comeback in Norway with Anders Behring Breivik [who, in 2011, was responsible for a brutal shooting spree that resulted in 69 deaths]. It’s pretty much established that he is evil, although there are still supporters of his ideology. In my class, we will reﬂect upon what it is in our society that allows us to think those kinds of thoughts. We will also consider things like, is a deed still evil when you think you’re doing something good? Young people need to answer questions like that.

VICE: First thing’s ﬁrst. Are you evil? Kristine Edith Morton: I believe that everybody has something evil inside, and that this surfaces during certain circumstances. Everyone knows it’s there. During my classes I won’t try to ﬁnd the answer to evil, but I will analyze it, tear it apart, and try to understand it. Understanding evil is the gateway to being good.

What else will be included in your curriculum? It would be interesting to have people who worship Satan as guest lecturers. To let them tell their stories, and see if the students ﬁnd that kind of thing appalling or appealing. I’d like to put evil and good up against each other. For example, we can reﬂect on the similarities between Hitler and Mother

It could be argued that the main reason gay marriage has yet to be legalised throughout the US is that a majority of Christians can’t deal with two dudes doin’ it. Most conservative Christians cloak their objections to same-sex relations in a few Bible verses that say stuff like, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22) But an anonymous group of Christians is claiming that, actually, the parts of the Bible that are interpreted as references to homosexuality don’t say anything at all about diddling someone who has the same type of junk as yours—and they’ve gone a step further by retranslating the respective passages. They’ve named their resulting text the Queen James Bible, and while it only contains about 100 words that have been changed from what can be found in the King James Bible, the altered passages read quite differently. That famous line about homosexuality being an “abomination,” for

instance, was tweaked in the QJB to read, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind in the temple of Molech: it is an abomination” (emphasis added). The QJB’s editors explain that this change was made due to historical context. It’s their view that this section of Leviticus is all about banning forms of pagan idolatry, which included “lying with” male prostitutes in certain temples, and wasn’t intended to condemn speciﬁc sex acts. The editors have drawn criticism from conservative Christians for using historical context to interpret verses rather than relying on literal translation of the Hebrew. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM), a right-wing group that opposes gay marriage, posted an especially harsh line-by-line attack on its website, claiming that the editors “altered [Leviticus 18:22] to ﬁt their sexual preference.” “To take offense with historical context is to take offense with historical fact,”

Theresa. Were they driven by internal motivations or were they products of their times? After nine months of reﬂection about things like these, I would like to think that my students will hopefully be able to go out into the world and do some good.

the anonymous QJB editors wrote me in an email. “To fixate on the idea that God and the Bible hate gay people based on a few words is like worrying about the intonation of a vocal harmony on a Beatles demo instead of enjoying the music and letting it enrich your life. We encourage any non-Christian to sit down and read the entire Bible front to back. Nobody’s going to come away from that experience hating gay people.” The academic argument over translation is mostly symbolic—if the majority of Christians decide to ignore the parts of the Bible that condemn homosexuality, as they already ignore the bits banning tattoos and eating shellfish, they’ll do so. But the editors of the QJB believe that it’s important to fight their opponents on their own terms, rather than just dismissing certain verses as archaic. “People point at the Bible and say, ‘Gay people are bad because this book says so,’” they said. “We wanted a Bible people could point to and say, ‘Not anymore.’”

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F R O N T

IS YOUR DOG A BUTTERFACE? THIS GUY CAN HELP Just about everyone loves dogs, and if you don’t, you’re one of those “cats only” people who has trouble connecting with the human race. So it’s no surprise that dog owners around the world spend bazillions to ensure that their butt-snifﬁng buddies are happy, healthy, and looking good—including paying plastic surgeons to achieve their ideas of pooch perfection. Brazilian veterinarian Edgard M. Brito is one of the world’s leading plastic surgeons for animals. He and his clients believe loving your pet means helping it look its best, and if that means surgically straightening ears, performing eye-widening lifts, replacing testicles, or smoothing out wrinkles, so be it. I wanted to know exactly what he does— and why—so I asked him.

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VICE: What are the criteria for a dog to be considered good-looking? Edgard M. Brito: Firstly, in my opinion, the attraction that humans have for dogs is natural. The beauty, symmetry, and hygiene [of the dogs] help make this relationship a perfect one. If it’s such a perfect relationship, why do you think some dogs need cosmetic surgery? For reconstruction and sometimes for corrections of anatomic defects and physical or functional abnormalities that can appear during an animal’s life. What’s the most common defect you correct? Damaged or inappropriately positioned ears. Doesn’t that seem a bit shallow? We aren’t painting dogs pink to match their owners’ nail polish. Our focus is on improving the animal’s quality of life and helping to achieve a perfect relationship between animal and owner. So you’re saying that this relationship hinges on the owners ﬁnding their dogs attractive? Certainly. An ugly dog is an unloved dog, left forgotten in the backyard, without a ride, dirty and mistreated. A clean dog, with bright teeth, is loved by his owners. Do you own any dogs? Yes. I’ve bred Dobermans since 1973. Have you operated on your Dobermans? Yes, I’ve straightened their ears.

BY WENDY SYFRET Photo courtesy of Edgard M. Brito

In your professional opinion, does a dog experience a higher quality of life postsurgery? Yes, because he will be shown to the public more, go out more with his owner, and be given better products and top food.

B O O K

These Rappers Hate Ecstasy BY CHRIS O’NEILL Illustration by Michael Shaeffer

When ecstasy became widely available three decades ago, it was largely consumed by suburban white kids wearing baggy cargo shorts who sucked pacifiers in abandoned warehouses, while listening to electronic music of some sort or other until they collapsed in exhaustion. Over the past decade, it seemed to fall out of favor with drug users, who veered more toward cocaine and other stimulants to fuel their partying needs. Then some narcotics-marketing genius (I’m convinced this is a real job) decided to rebrand MDMA, ecstasy’s key ingredient, as “molly,” and everyone from Kanye to Rick Ross to your little sister at this very moment is putting it in his or her mouth and asshole with reckless abandon. The hip-hop community’s embrace of the drug has been especially striking, since historical stereotypes dictate that rappers are normally more interested in chilled-out drugs like cough syrup and weed. But one hip-hop group from Brooklyn is not onboard. Stereo Marz, a trio who formed earlier this year, titled their debut track “Anti-Molly,” and the message is pretty clear: “Yo, this drug is fucking wack! / [they] ain’t fucking with that molly / and if you do you can’t come to my party.” I spoke with two of Stereo Marz’s three members, Desi Dez and Shaun “Bizy” Gabriel, about what was wrong with a drug that makes you love strobe lights and songs and sticking your tongue down some stranger’s throat all night long. VICE: Why do you hate molly so much? Desi Dez: I’m disgusted, in fact, very disgusted with all these artists being big advocates for this molly thing. We’re totally against that—for us, it’s weak. We don’t feel that. Shaun “Bizy” Gabriel: The atmosphere in schools has changed in the past five years with kids doing molly. They’re selling it in candy wrappers, tricking kids. Why do you think its popularity has increased so much over the past few years? Most rappers seem to love it. Desi: That’s the reason! All these top-notch artists are the voice for this drug, so the younger kids see it as cool. Same with any propaganda, if it’s repeated enough, people just accept it. Bizy: I don’t know if people are being paid to rap about molly, but I’ve heard people say that could be a possibility. It just came out of nowhere. What we do know is it’s being promoted every day. Do you think molly will become a sort of new crack epidemic? Desi: Definitely. It’s targeted at kids. That’s what it’s geared up for. The suppliers are going to put more stuff in to make it more addictive, and by that time, you’ve got a lost generation caught up on this, just like what the crack game did. It’s all a setup. Do you have any parting words for rappers who can’t get enough of it? Bizy: Man, pop the molly up your ass! We don’t respect molly.

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The Phillips Sisters, featuring long-serving employee Jonny Goldcoast, performing at the Melbourne launch.

AN ORAL HISTORY OF VICE IN AUSTRALIA It All Started with a Jewish Punk Rock Cover Band BY VICE STAFF PHOTOS BY VICE STAFF

decade is enough time for anything to feel like it’s been around forever—especially when it’s constantly putting free magazines, intellectual blog posts, mindbending video documentaries, and super-fun events into your direct field of vision. So it may come as a surprise that his issue you’re now holding marks ten years since VICE first came to Australia. We took this as an opportune moment to delve into our shadowy history. To do so, past and present Australian editors Briony Wright and Royce Akers sat down to talk about how it all began.

VICE: Royce Akers: Hey Briony! We should probably start by talking about how VICE came to Australia in the first place. Briony Wright: Well, it was the end of 2001 when our publisher, Myki, and his ironic punk band, Yidcore, went to play some shows in New York. I tagged along for the fun. We knew of VICE from friends bringing back the occasional copy and we’d really never read anything like it. It was like the well-written ramblings of your funniest friend on truth serum but it also seemed really mysterious given our limited access. You really had to work for stuff before websites came along. Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, we made our way through the snow

to check out the VICE store and met Eddy Moretti (now Executive Creative Director) who we bonded with instantly. He came to see Myki’s band and invited us to a few house parties where I remember lots of enviable Electroclash record collections and Ryan McGinley in warpaint and people doing lines off hunting knives. Eddy introduced us to everyone over there and explained how they’d just launched VICE in the UK and were keen to introduce it elsewhere. As Myki was in media and I was a writer and we all enjoyed a party—the three main components were covered—it was agreed that we should take it to Australia. It’s fitting that it all started basically from partying. What was the actual setting up of the magazine like? Right at the beginning, while we looked for a proper space, we worked from a makeshift office in the basement of our rented apartment in Melbourne. It had a borrowed trestle table, a couple of PCs, and a fax machine that we bought for $3. Then we got on the phones and set about convincing the local distributors of all the street wear brands that their overseas owners would get very angry if they didn’t advertise in VICE here. It wasn’t too long before we had a shiny new office with individual desks and Apple Macs and could comfortably hold our meetings there instead of having to meet everyone at the pub. When did you first come across VICE? It was on a Sunday night at Honkytonks. I was sitting across from the bar when you guys came up and put a magazine in my girlfriend’s hands. It was the Special Issue, and the cover was a Terry Richardson portrait

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TOP LEFT: Current editor Royce (thin arms, asian features) at the VICE launch in Melbourne. TOP RIGHT: One of Jonathan West’s photos from Wadeye. Possibly the last meaningful graffiti in Australia. BOTTOM LEFT: VICE AU’s publisher/ director Myki Slonim inventing the iPhone back in 2003. BOTTOM RIGHT: Founding Australia editor, Briony Wright, performing “Islands in the Stream” (probably) with global sales guy Erik Lavoie.

of Bobby Bird from How’s Your News. That was also the first time I met you and Myki. That issue was incredible but would have been weird as an introduction to the magazine. We’d always see you around and liked your long-haired, laid back attitude. It’s poetic that six years later you’d become the Australian editor. Do you remember us inviting you to the launch party? I definitely remember going to it. It was at a bar called Bourgie that isn’t around anymore. Well the original venue where we’d been meticulously planning to have our Melbourne party pulled out at the last minute so I spent a frantic day, about a week before the launch, going from venue to venue, getting progressively drunker and looking for a new spot. Thankfully our friend Bo offered us his nearfinished venue Bourgie. I think its not being around anymore probably has something to do with this party. I remember the police turning up too many times over the night and from that point on it seemed the bar had something of a hex on its head. I remember A.R.E. Weapons played and there was a weird fight during a set by The Outfits because this big gay guy kept trying to grab Jordan’s legs. Also, a girl from American Pie or something was there. Yeah. We picked up the band from the airport and it turned out that Natasha Lyonne and Waris Ahluwalia, the Indian guy from all of Wes Anderson’s films, had been out partying with them the night before and on a whim decided to come along too. It was kind of mayhem from the beginning. The first time the police turned up was well before the party even started when one of the A.R.E. Weapons guys took a piss off the balcony during sound check and the neighbour called it in. I have a feeling that

copious litres of free alcohol at an event was still a relatively new thing back then. Maybe that explains the fights. Let’s talk about the magazine for a bit. How did you go about putting those first few issues together? As VICE had already existed for eight years, there were so many incredible classic articles that it would’ve been a travesty not to shove them all into the first issue as a ‘best of’. So that one had a picture of a dead rat on the cover and included articles like “The Vice Guide to Eating Pussy” and “The KKK are Super Fucking Gay”. If that wasn’t challenging enough for our advertisers, the second issue was all about Erik Lavoie, the Business Development guy from the New York office. It included articles by his mum and ex-girlfriend and pieces detailing things like his smile. It was a really funny idea but a lot of people got quite angry and Erik received more than one death threat as a result. Our third was the Party Issue, which was basically an easy-to-follow guide to the most debauched night of your life. It was at this point that advertisers began cancelling ads all over the place. We stuck to our guns though and continued to print the stories we’d want to read and over time, with a few more issues and some further context, we won most of them back. Guys still talk to me about the pussy eating guide and how they burnt it into their brains. It’s weird to think how many women around the world have been touched intimately by that story. Is there a story you remember as being tough to get? It’d have to be the time we went to Wadeye, a remote town in the far north of the country. We’d heard that the Aboriginal gangs there were all based around allegiances to 80s heavy metal bands like Slayer and Judas Priest and had to check it out for ourselves. Getting there involved light airplanes, driving precariously through rivers and not sleeping for legitimate fear of being taken by a VICE 23

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LEFT: An early staff photo. RIGHT: The cover of the Coober Pedy issue was a fair example of Australian irony.

crocodile. Once we arrived, it was really crazy being shown around their near-empty houses covered in graffiti, witnessing how infrequently the kids went to school and seeing the injustice in things like the inflated prices at the town’s only supermarket. But we’d gone there to investigate the music and it was incredible, on our last night, being led through the dark streets to an epic heavy metal house party where everyone just came together to head bang. And your favourite story? I really liked putting together the Coober Pedy issue about the opal mining town in the centre of Australia where lots of people live in underground houses to escape the heat. We spent a week there hanging out in this surreal environment with all the miners—those who’d made a fortune and others who had worked for years never to find a thing. We hung out with the young guy who dug the graves, we went to an incredible drag race, shot guns at the shooting range, played community bingo and really got into the lifestyle. This was before we started regularly filming our stories. VICE TV has become a much more sophisticated beast since you started in 2008. Do you have a favourite story? I think my favourite story was probably our least sophisticated one. We’d heard that eating cheese before bedtime made you dream intense and weird dreams so we made some friends of ours test it out. It’s not quite Wadeye, but driving around to people’s houses and force-feeding them cheese was a fun experience. What else should we talk about. How about weirdest complaint or threat of legal action? It was thanks to a Richard Kern bondage fashion shoot that you ran actually. I remember sitting at Sydney airport reading a newspaper article about us running those particular photographs and it saying that the publisher would likely face jail time. It

seems funny now but right then we really thought Myki was going to be arrested. The funny thing about that shoot was that the model in question happened to be Richard’s wife, Martynka Wawrzyniak, who’s an incredible artist herself. But yeah, that got some press. The other story that drew a lot of complaints, weirdly, was a fashion shoot featuring cute little dogs dressed up as hookers and drug dealers. Do you remember the cover image? Wasn’t it a whippet in a gimp costume? Yeah. We got more calls about that than any other story. Some people really didn’t get that it was all just dress-ups. That dog wasn’t actually our sex slave. Nope, it was just pretends. What’s the best day you’ve had? I remember one day very early on—like in the first few months of setting up—we were sent turntables and drugs. Really? Yes. By different people. On the same day. By contrast almost every day since has seemed very productive and substantial. Firstly, fuck you. Secondly, with days like that, did you ever think we’d make it to 10 years? Yeah. Although I didn’t really count on was how incompatible working on the magazine would be with creating miniature versions of myself. Thankfully you stepped in just at the time my hankering to feed my baby biodynamic wheatgerm took over from my desire to drink at breakfast time. You’re the best Royce. Shucks, Briony.

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The subway authorities move passengers to different cars so that the Sikarios will bother the least amount of people possible.

THE SUBTERRANEAN SCENE On the Rails with Mexico City’s Reggaeton-Loving Subway Gangs BY BERNARDO LOYOLA PHOTOS BY MAURICIO CASTILLO

t’s Saturday morning in a Mexico City subway station, and the members of the Panamiur gang are headed to a party. Their leader, Cidel, is wearing huge sunglasses, a fauxhawk slathered in hair gel, cargo pants, and a T-shirt with a giant 2 and 6 airbrushed across it—a reference to November 26, 2010, the date the Panamiurs were founded. The four dozen kids surrounding Cidel are similarly adorned in fake gold chains, oversize shades, brightly coloured baseball caps, and tight jeans. They shout chants at a member of a rival gang on the other side of the platform. “Jori’s fucking mom is taking a bath, eh, oh!,” they holler. “She’s very close to our territory, eh, oh! With a huge dick in one hand and a rag with PVC glue in the other, eh, oh! And the gang says, we are gonna rape her, we are gonna rape her. Hard, hard in the ass! Fucking bitch!” They are laughing because it’s all a joke, but the rest of the passengers look anxious. Panamiur is one of a

group of local gangs known as combos made up of reguetoneros (“reggaeton fans”) in their late teens and early 20s who haunt the subway stations of Mexico City. Like all of the combos, Cidel tells me Panamiur is first and foremost about music, partying, and supporting the crew no matter what. From the perspective of the passengers, however, it’s also about huffing pipe cleaner and industrial-strength glue from rags, throwing up gang signs, and yelling obscenities about raping someone’s mother, so any nervousness is understandable. Especially considering the stories about the combos that have been circulating in the regional media over the past year. The combos first made headlines last July, when more than 600 disgruntled reguetoneros, diverted from a canceled reggaeton show, decided to go wandering around subway stations in trendy neighbourhoods instead. Signs were torn off the walls, fights broke out, and more than 200 kids were arrested and taken to jail for a bit before being released. A few weeks later, on August 4, a full-scale battle broke out at another station, when 50 combos were ambushed by 150 members of a rival, reggaeton-hating gang. Surveillance videos of that brawl, which depict improvised bombs exploding on the platform, went viral, and Mexico City suddenly had a new youth trend to worry about that had the

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DEMONSTRATIONS IN LIGHTNESS Robots can be intimidating. All def-con this and laser-eyes that. But this isn’t science ﬁction – it’s science fact. The robot is 380g. The Derby Beige just 320g. Using super-light outsoles and soft leather uppers, we make shoes for gravity-defying humans. See more demonstrations in lightness at rollienation.com

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The Sikarios pose for a photo outside the Garibaldi subway station before heading to a club to celebrate their third anniversary. Their jersey incorporates the logo of the subway station where they hang out.

public wondering if they were living in some Spanish-language remake of The Warriors. While most combos are undoubtedly guilty of general rowdiness and huffing chemicals in public, like American greasers in the 50s and heavy metal fans in the 70s, they’re not as threatening as their media profile might suggest. According to many combos there’s been a concerted effort on the part of the gangs themselves to organise and avoid serious conflicts, mostly thanks to the efforts of a soft-spoken 20-something known as Brenan. In 2011 he founded FU Antrax—a sort of United Nations for glue-sniffing, subway-riding teenagers. Brenan fi rst interacted with the combos while working the door of a dance club popular with the reguetoneros. He noticed that attendance would dip whenever word spread that a certain group had a beef with a rival gang, and fi gured that he could organise better, bigger, and more peaceful parties. “In the first meeting, they were all tense and skeptical,” Brenan said, “but we talked out our differences and started with a clean slate.” Later, some combos broke off from FU Antrax and formed a second federation of combos named La Familia. Brenan told me that although some of his people wanted to attack this splinter group, he talked them out of it. “People see me not as a leader, but more of a coordinator,” he said. “I coordinate the people. I try to guide them so they don’t do things they shouldn’t be doing.”

The occasion for this Saturday-morning gathering of combos is Brenan’s birthday party. And while the event is intended to be entirely peaceful—just 300 of his closest friends from various combos getting loaded and dry-humping to reggaeton in a warehouse—its details are shrouded in secrecy. We arrive at the venue, which is nondescript and without signage. At 4 PM the doors are locked. “The government calls our parties clandestine, but it’s just because we can’t have our own space,” Brennan says. “If the government saw us getting together, let’s say at a house party, immediately a bunch of police cars would show up to shut us down. Even if we weren’t doing anything bad. People are scared of us.” There’s no doubt that the authorities are keeping a close eye on the combos’ activities. Jose Alfredo Carrillo, who oversees security for Mexico City’s subway system, said that on an average Saturday his employees keep a close eye on 3,000 reguetoneros, soccer hooligans, and other potential troublemakers who ride the trains to parties or sporting events. “During the last few years, these groups started to represent a problem not only for the trains and our facilities, but also for other users and for themselves,” he said. “They have become increasingly violent and aggressive, and we have to prepare operatives to be able to transport them and guarantee their security and the security of the rest of our users. Once they come in, we can’t mix them with other passengers. We’ve seen them robbing people or ﬁghting

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The Sikarios, the biggest combo in Mexico City, celebrate their third anniversary at a club near the Ciudad Azteca subway station.

between them.” Often, police ofﬁcers in riot gear monitor the combos on the subway, clearing out train cars to separate them from other passengers. I asked Carrillo if he thought the combos were criminal groups or just rebellious kids looking to have a good time. “We understand it as a cultural phenomenon,” he said. “They are young people looking for a way to express themselves. Fortunately, they’re not all the same; we’ve seen many of these groups that behave themselves. The problem is when they cross the line between what’s legal and what’s illegal.” Some combos play into their stereotype as violent troublemakers, like the Sikarios, the biggest and most notorious subway gang in Mexico City. Boasting hundreds of members, its name is a play on the Spanish word for “hitman,” and its logo features a graphic of an AK-47 where the k should be. But the Sikarios aren’t associated with drug cartels or organised crime and aren’t as dangerous as their reputation might suggest. Regardless, the authorities often target them. In December, they celebrated their anniversary by doing what they do best: bringing together 400-odd kids at a club and dancing, drinking, banging drums, and snifﬁng glue all night until the cops spoiled their fun. “The police said that we had robbed a bakery, but that wasn’t true,” said Micky, the Sikarios’ leader. “We were outside

with our drums, and they just didn’t understand what was going on. They took some of our guys, put them in the police car, drove them around, and stole their money and their cell phones… We have been stigmatised; they have made up their minds that we are drug addicts, violent people, and thieves. But that’s not true.” When I brought up the high-profile combo brawls reported last year, Micky blamed them on smaller, lessorganised groups whose leaders can’t control them effectively. At his birthday party, Brenan agrees that the combos are unfairly profi led. “Just because of how we dress, [people] see us on the streets and think we’re gonna rob them, when we’re just on our way back from school!” he says. “Many think that we don’t [work], but we do. For example, I have a degree—I’m an electrical engineer.” I ask about his friends huffing glue all around us, but he shrugs it off. “People don’t do drugs because they belong to a combo or listen to reggaeton. Many have family problems and end up doing drugs to escape from that. And just because one of us does drugs, it doesn’t mean all of us are drug addicts; just because one of us steals, it doesn’t mean we are all thieves. There are politicians who do drugs, there are celebrities that do drugs, but I’m not gonna say they all do drugs… I’m not one to judge.” Watch our documentary about the combos of Mexico City, coming soon to VICE.com

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DOs

Is it just me, or have most of us always wanted to have our holes ﬁlled with black stem? I’d love to get rag-dolled by these two fools—drag me through a ﬁeld, throw me in a barn, and break-dance all over my face.

When’s the last time you got this creative in your fuckin’ job? I got more begging costumes than you assholes have suits. That’s right! I dress appropriately for work. I make an effort, you pieces of shit!

Best way to spend the summer after high school, right before you enlist in the Serbian military? Tent by the beach. Swimmin’ every day. Christ on your chest.

Let me grab on that tatted yellow back and ride with you into the night. You’ll show me many things. Some ugly, some beautiful. I will learn wisdom through the buzzing of your sweet bike’s tail pipe. You will never tell me you love me, although you might tell me you’ll kill me. And all the while, my heart will beat like a gong.

This is my Fairy Drag Brother, Creation. She is one of the best human beings I have ever met. She took me in when I was a nobody and made me a somebody. This bitch knows how to hold a head up when it’s dangling above a toilet, and she knows how to light a spoon when your hands are full. She know how to pay her rent.

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DON’Ts

The bad news is these are my big sisters. The good news is they let me drink with them. The bad news is they fuck me. The best news is, it’s just in their butts, so that’s not REALLY sex, right? RIGHT?!

When Lucifer was cast from the Kingdom of Heaven, he then began to rule his own Kingdom of Hell and renamed himself Satan. Right after he did all that, he ate a big silver brick, and out of his dirty red asshole, I was born.

Greetings, I am Turdulous of the Deer People. My people are not a proud people. Our diet consists mainly of wet saltines, mayonnaise, and trucker speed. Our national pastime is begging for handjobs from drunk, fat women who tell us we remind them of their sons. My people will soon be extinct, and no one will give two shits.

Fuck your performance art! Would I let you suck my dick? Yes. Would I like to see you squirt secretions across the room? Yes. Do I want to hear you talk about where you come from? No. Do I want to hear about the kind of work you’re starting to make and what it means to you? No.

When I live in my house, I live in one room. When I live outside, I live in all this space. When I’m by myself, I don’t feel good. When I’m surrounded by all my friends, I feel good. When I’m on my blades, I feel free. When I’m drinkin’ water, I’m not thirsty. When my muscles are hard, I am strong. When I wear my pants, they my towels.

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DOs

It’s hard to say on which side of the Holocaust these three stood. Were they for the cause? Were they so scared that they had no choice but to participate? Were they ripped from their homes and separated from their families, never to see them again? Whatever the case, I’d probably ask them to skip those stories and just tell me where they shop for their sick Euro greys.

Online. 1,834 feet away. Twenty-nine years old. Relationship status: single. Looking for: dates, networking. Safe, aggressive fun. Horse lips. HIV negative. STD free. I have paperwork to prove my health. I expect the same. No paperwork, no love. Hung BTTM looking for a hung TOP for a long fuck session. Let’s bust.

My daddy didn’t raise me, but I know he love me. I remember one time, when I was little, before he ran away with my auntie. He came to see me. He bought me a big ol’ bear and told me when I felt scared, all I had to do was wrap myself in Teddy’s arms, and he would be hugging me through Teddy, even if daddy wasn’t there.

Yeah, I’m 15, but I tell you one thing. If that Hello Kitty bitch ever tried to move in on my man, I’d slit that cartoon-cat cunt’s throat and jump-ﬂip-chop all the way back to my dojo.

I’ve been through a lot of bullshit! And I still laugh. I wear my big plaid coat, my orthopedic shoes, and I laugh. I look at all these stupid, young pricks. They think they know pain. They think they know love. They think they know me. Bitch! You don’t know me! I ain’t your grams! I run these rues!

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DON’Ts

I don’t know what your relationship is per se. But if I were sitting across from you two, watching you slow dip that teabag and wearing an obese man’s sweater, I’d push you down that hill and drown you in that lake.

I’m just starting my thesis. It’s a little complicated and kind of hard to explain. Anyways, it’s titled, “How Rape Culture Effects the Role of Female Empowerment.” That’s right. “Effects,” not “Affects.”

Dolla make you holla. Dolla ought to make you go get them teeth checked ’cause they nasty. You got a blackness growin’ on your gums, and if that ain’t a cancer, it’s your body trying to tell you somethin’. Somethin’ like, “YOU NEED A CLINIC!”

Very few things are only for blacks, but whites need to understand that DREADS are NOT theirs. You don’t look Rasta cool, you white-boy fool. You look like a guy who still lives with his parents because he took some dirty acid in the Phish lot when he was a junior in high school.

This little demon goes to market. This little demon don’t sleep. This little demon’s full of sickness. This little demon’s got a black bag full of blades.

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JDED, member of the FEDFE BOYBAND comedy collective

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THOUGHT AND MEMORY BY ED PARK ILLUSTRATIONS BY YINA KIM Ed Park has quite the résumé. He’s the former editor of the Voice Literary Supplement and one of the founding editors of the Believer. He’s taught creative writing at Columbia University and curates the Invisible Library, an online collection of ﬁctional books that appear in other books. Pretty cool, huh? These days he holds down the literary fort over at Amazon Publishing. His debut novel, Personal Days, was called the “layoff narrative for our times” by the New York Times and was nominated for the PEN Hemingway Award, the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and the Asian American Literary Award. It was named one of Time’s Top Ten Fiction Books of 2008 and one of the Atlantic’s Top Ten Pop Culture Moments of the decade. In his increasingly valuable spare time, he makes bootleg covers of 80s new-wave songs and sneaks acrostics and anagrams into his very funny Twitter feed, @thaRealEdPark. (A recent tweet: “I need there to be a store called FOREVER 41.”) Somehow he still manages to knock out essays that examine continuums you didn’t even realise exist, like the connection between the magical logic of children’s books and Borges, plus write great short stories like the one below. In “Thought and Memory,” the author of a mystery novel sets out on a book tour, and from there, things don’t exactly go as planned. The narrator encounters two talking crows, named for Odin’s information-gathering ravens in Norse mythology, who belong to a mysterious woman with a glass eye and an oddly chosen tattoo, before discovering the bizarre, time-bending novels of a science ﬁction writer, whose works we hope will get call numbers at the Invisible Library. We paired Ed’s story with illustrations by San Francisco-based artist Yina Kim. We thought her work evoked the same sense of spectral absurdity, softened by an eerie and familiar pathos.

1. Back in 2008, when my ﬁrst novel, A Tree Grows in Baghdad, came out, my publisher sent me on a West Coast tour. Sometimes folks came out in droves, sometimes they didn’t. It was great to see my public, regardless. The public, I suppose I should say. Most hadn’t read the book. And even though it was ﬁction, based more on stuff I’d heard about rather than experienced, I might as well have told all present that I’d written a memoir, and that in the pages open before me, every vegetarian pita eaten, and every thought thought, was true. No one cared about the book, really, only about what I’d been through in Iraq, and what my current position on the war was and whether I wanted to go back. The audience tended to be older. The men were what you’d call barrel chested. The women, too. I found I liked signing books. I mean, the actual pen-meeting-paper part. I started appending a peace sign to my name. I must have shaken a thousand hands.

2. By the end of the week, I was going a little crazy. In Seattle, I woke up at 6 AM to do a live interview with a radio station in LA. But why six? The cities were in the same time zone. It must be for a station no one listens to, I thought, and after I hung up the phone, I wasn’t convinced that an interview had in fact taken place. Had she really asked me about my health, my diet, my bad back? Had I perhaps called my mother, out of instinct, or simply dreamt it all? I’ve had dreams like

that, where I think I wake up, but I’m still asleep. I’ve had dreams in which I slap the alarm clock, over and over again, until I’m ﬁnally sprung from the clutches of sleep, grateful and gasping for air.

3. In Portland, my handler, Jonas, took me to lunch at a locovore haunt that featured seafood haggis and artisanal fortune cookies. He looked vaguely like me, the same eyebrows and ears, which I found both troubling and comforting. Over lunch he told me how Oregon was originally established as a whites-only state. “O Negro,” I blurted. “What?” “It’s an anagram for Oregon.” “That’s wild, man. I’ve lived here 13 years, and I never thought of that one. Guess that’s why you’re the writer.” We got in the car. Jonas regaled me with tales of other authors he’d escorted around town, dished about which ones were cool, which ones stuck up, which ones smelled. Then he asked if I wanted to play ultimate frisbee in some park with his friends. I was exhausted, paranoid that this was some kind of test. If I said no, he’d tell the next novelist who passed through town what a conceited, smelly douchebag I was. I pretended I hadn’t heard him. On the radio, they said that a science-ﬁction author named Vernon Bodily had died. He had written more than a hundred novels.

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“Well?” Jonas asked. “What do you say to some ultimate?” I mentioned my bad back, citing the questionable Los Angeles radio interview as evidence. Jonas dropped me off at my hotel, where I tried to write a letter to a woman named Mercy Pang on the embossed stationery. The paper was so nice I got writer’s block and took a three-hour nap. When I woke up I stared at the ceiling, wondering where I was. On the ceiling was a bright patch of overlapping circles, the reﬂection of water somewhere outside. I didn’t recognise the enormous armchair across from me, nor the ice bucket, the carpet, the drapes. There was no noise. It occurred to me that maybe it was 1979 and I was in the house where I grew up, lying on the sofa, imagining where I’d be in ten, then 20, then 30 years. It was a game I used to play. Sometimes I’d think of a word or image and use my brainwaves to send it to my future self. So was this me, sending a message back in time to the boy I used to be? I wasn’t even sure he was there anymore.

4. In Berkeley, I read at a transgender open-mic night at a bookstore that isn’t one of those legendary Berkeley bookstores. It looked more like a police station with a few shelves on the walls. I wasn’t transgender, sadly, but it was all my publicist could line up. When I walked in I thought maybe everyone in attendance was transgender, or at least that the other readers probably were. I ﬁgured all the guys to be girls, the girls guys. Mimi, the organiser, took the stage and introduced me. My name isn’t hard to pronounce, but she mispronounced it. I instantly thought: Canadian. She looked like the kind of person who speaks English but whose every third thought is French. I greeted my public in an unnaturally low voice that I thought might make me sound transgendered. It hardly mattered, since the passage I’d selected couldn’t have been less appropriate. It was about a team of art forgers who inﬁltrate the basement of the Baghdad Museum, intending to surreptitiously replace ancient Mesopotamian artifacts with cunning copies. They have come at a bad time. Fighting breaks out in the streets. Shells rock the building, and by the end, they don’t know which icons and ewers date from two millennia ago and which were browned in a kiln the week before. They wind up leaving everything behind, the real and the false.

5. Afterward, Mimi bought me a microbrew with runes on the label.

“Are you Canadian?” I asked. “A lot of people think so,” she said. “I guess it’s because of the tattoo.” “What tattoo?” She turned around and lifted her shirt. At ﬁrst I thought it was a port-wine stain, but then it resolved into a maple leaf. “I just like maple leaves,” she said. “Are you transgender?” I asked. “Would you like me to be?” I shrugged. “I do have a glass eye,” she said. “I don’t know you well enough, and my hands are dirty. Otherwise I’d take it out.” “Which one is glass?” We were staring at each other. “Guess,” she said. “The left one.” “My left or your left.” “Yours.” “Right.” “Right as in right or right as in correct?” “Right as in right.” “Wait. So.” “Right.” “What?” “Come here,” she said.

6. That night Mimi drove me to Los Angeles. She had to go anyway, she said. At a rest stop she took out her glass eye and put on a pirate patch. I should have offered to take the wheel, but I’ve never learned stick. In the backseat was a huge birdcage in which her two pet crows, Thought and Memory, kept saying hello to each other. I don’t mean hello in crow-speak chirps and clucks, but hello in English. They said it over and over, “Hello, hello.” They sounded like confused old men, happy to see each other again, even though they had just seen each other a few seconds ago. The idea was that Mimi would drop the birds off with her brother. They’d been his to begin with. “What does your brother do?” I asked. “He’s a science-fiction writer,” she said. “Have I heard of him?” “Probably not. He’s never published anything. Just some online fan fic.” “Did you hear that Vernon Bodily died?” I asked. “He wrote more than a hundred books.” “There are about five that are any good,” she said, but she couldn’t remember which ones. I watched the headlights carve the road out of the night. The radio was off, and in the backseat you could hear Thought and Memory sigh in their sleep, dreaming their way through a backlog of crow frustrations.

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THOUGHT AND MEMORY by Ed Park

My big LA reading got canceled. I arrived at the store, a place called Book Ark, a half hour early and they told me there’d been heavy water damage to the room, and that in any case, the shipment of my books had yet to arrive. One excuse, and I would have believed him; two made it sound like a cover-up. The manager felt bad about the whole thing and said that I could take any book I wanted, as long as it wasn’t an art book. “No worries,” I said. “I don’t like art.” I’m always saying things I don’t mean, just to fill up the silence. Later I’ll think that maybe I do mean them. I went straight to science fiction and found the Bs. There was a single thin Vernon Bodily title, with gaps on either side suggesting that his death had driven sales. It was called Handle with Care. I got a muffin from Book Ark’s café and then walked down to a record store but didn’t buy anything. I called Mimi but she wasn’t picking up. Her outgoing message was Thought and Memory saying “Hello.” “Hello,” I said, talking to the crows more than to Mimi. “Goodbye.”

I was booked for a noon lunch interview with a reporter from the LA Times. We were supposed to meet at a noshery called Barney Greengrass, an outpost of the famous Barney Greengrass in New York, which was on the top floor of Barneys, an outpost of the famous Barneys department store in New York. I waited for the reporter to show up. His or her name was Lane. Googling only turned up images of people Lane had profiled. I sat down, alone at last with my Vernon Bodily book, a trio of novellas. In the first one, a brave space explorer from the Terraplex, a gigantic floating city the size of a planet, is approaching the edge of the known universe. He has been on his journey for 10,000 years but has been frozen for most of it. Everyone he has ever loved has been dead for centuries. Soon he will be crossing into an area completely beyond human and, for that matter, alien comprehension. He braces himself, closes his eyes. There’s a sound, like the bursting of a membrane. Then he looks at his scan-screen. His pyramid-shaped ship floats in brightness. Behind him on the screen is what appears to be a huge, beige package, a parcel of immense dimensions. He can see the star-shaped hole through which his spacecraft has exited. Below it, in letters of the Common Tongue somehow printed a mile high, are the words handle with care.

8. The next morning I took some stationery to the hotel pool. For the whole tour I’d been trying to write one lousy letter to Mercy Pang. I had four pages of false starts. She was in the middle of a six-week writers’ retreat in North Dakota. There was no phone service, no internet. The only way to be in touch was by letter, and since I was traveling so much, it was my duty to keep her apprised of my movements. But I couldn’t think of much to say. We’d left things too ambiguous back east. There were no histrionics, just an email from her saying, “I think I like men.” The sun came out and I could see the wobbly net it made at the bottom of the pool, the light working through the water. I put that in the letter then drew a big x across the paper. My false starts looked like they’d been written by someone else. I thought about just sending these to her, my abandoned epistles. Mercy knew all about giving up, and she was a certified expert in not even starting. She was the smartest person I knew, but she could never get anything done. She always claimed to be tired yet had trouble going to bed. Even sleep was a failure. At night she’d slip on the eye mask, plug her ears with foam bullets, and flip the white-noise machine to the highest setting. Still she’d toss and fidget. In the pool someone was doing a splashless butterfly, lap after lap, so smoothly she, or possibly he, didn’t seem human, more like part of some giant living clock. I took out a fresh piece of paper and wrote, “Dear Mercy,” and left it at that.

10. At three I got into a cab for LAX. My bags weighed a ton. Halfway to the airport, traffic came to a halt, as though a power blender had just been switched off, so I made another go at writing a letter to Mercy. I told her about Seattle and Portland and Berkeley, about the transgender audience and the event organiser with the eye patch, the talking crows with the funny names. I told her about how hard it was not to lie during the Q&A, since everyone assumed I’d fought in Iraq, when actually I was an embedded reporter—not one of those grizzled journalists on a hard-hitting, truth-finding mission, but instead a freelancer for Cigar Aficionado, doing a think piece on the fate of the country’s humidors. I wrote to Mercy about O Negro and the butterfly artist in the pool. After signing my name, I drew a peace sign. It was my best one yet. I tilted my head back and looked out the window at the clouds. I had another moment when I thought back to being nine years old, sitting in my parents’ station wagon on the way to violin camp, wondering where life would take me. It had taken me here. I was the same person, a body moving through time. Till what point? High above me two birds soared through the air, and though I knew they weren’t Thought and Memory, I added a PS and put it in my letter that they were.

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A Chechen fighter tosses a hand grenade into a Russian armored personnel carrier. In August of 1996, Chechen rebels successfully booted the Russian Army out of the Chechen capital, only to lose it to Russian forces once again in 2000.

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A LONG WAY FROM HOME It Was Probably the Internet, not Chechnya, that Radicalised the Boston Bombers BY LORENZO VIDINO PHOTOS BY ROBERT KING

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Lorenzo Vidino is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. We’ve paired his text with archival images from photographer and videographer Robert King, who cut his professional teeth dodging bullets and rockets in Chechnya in the mid-90s. As one of the very few Western photographers covering the region at the time, we found them a prudent depiction of just how different the situation in Chechnya appears next to the specter of homegrown, socially networked terror allegedly perpetrated by the Tsarnaev brothers. A family takes an afternoon walk amid the rubble and burned-out apartment blocks destroyed during the fighting between Russian forces and Chechen rebels.

he Tsarnaev brothers are the first Chechens to have been implicated in alleged jihadist attacks on US soil. But the more we learn about Dzhokar and Tamerlan, the blurrier their motives become. Why would these two seemingly well-integrated young men indiscriminately kill citizens of the country that welcomed them with open arms? What has America done to Chechnya? And is the horror we witnessed in Boston the beginning of a frightening new trend—an amalgamation of foreign and domestic terrorism into a bouillabaisse of confused and largely undefined hate? While we’ll still be searching for more information about the Tsarnaev brothers and what motivated them for months—if not

years—to come, their roots in Chechnya and the history of that country are a good place to start. In the early 19th century, Chechnya resisted Russian attempts to occupy their small mountainous motherland, nearly 1,000 miles south of Moscow. The fight intensified when the region was assimilated into the Soviet Union. To quell rebellion in the 1940s, Stalin forcibly relocated the entire Chechen population to remote areas of Central Asia, repopulating the mountains with ethnic Russians. Some 200,000 people, one-third of the Chechen population, lost their lives to this process, called Operation Lentil. While Islam remains a central part of Chechen identity, religion didn’t play a major role in the nationalist struggle until recently. In the mid-90s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chechens again attempted to wrestle their independence from Moscow. Volunteer fighters, preachers, and NGOs espousing Wahhabism (an Arab Gulf version of ultraconservative Islam) flocked to the region to fight against Russia and instill Chechens with their radical views. A Chechen administrator explained at the time, “They [the Wahhabis] went to the market, and they paid with dollars. There was no power here; there was disorder everywhere, and their influence was very strong. The poor Chechen people were already suffering so much, and our young guys simply couldn’t think. They were ready to accept any ideas.” Over the last 20 years, Chechen militants have kept up a low-level insurgency against Russian authorities and moderate Islamic institutions. In 2004, militants invaded a school in Beslan, a town in Northern Ossetia, and gruesomely slaughtered more than 300 schoolchildren and parents. In separate incidents, Chechen female suicide bombers, dubbed “black widows,” blew themselves up on Russian airplanes, in a Moscow theater, and inside Moscow’s airport and subway system. Most Chechens abhor this violence and the radical interpretation of Islam that incites it. They remain staunch nationalists seeking Chechen independence and the majority do not harbor animosity toward the United States, a country that has repeatedly criticised Russia’s tactics in the Caucasus and granted asylum to leaders of the Chechen resistance. Still, for political reasons, it’s expedient for Russia to characterise Chechen fighters as al Qaeda-linked terrorists. This incorrect analysis is motivated by Moscow’s desire to garner global sympathy, while simultaneously crushing the Chechen resistance. But links between Chechen militants and various al Qaeda groups undoubtedly exist. Jihadists from all over the world have fought in Chechnya. And Chechens have also fought alongside jihadists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and, more recently, Syria. But are these religious and political dynamics really responsible for radicalising the Tsarnaev brothers? Videos posted to Tamerlan’s Facebook and YouTube pages indicate a clear interest

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A young glue-sniffer stands next to a bulletriddled wall in Grozny, 1997.

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A group of Chechen citizens gather around an unexploded rocket fired at their village by Russian forces, 1999.

in Salafist and jihadist ideology. But you won’t find battlefield footage of the Chechen struggle. Instead, he seemed more interested by extremist activities in Afghanistan and the speeches of Feiz Mohammed, an English-speaking radical preacher popular among Western Salafists. It is possible, even likely, that indirect memories of the struggle in Chechnya did influence the Tsarnaev brothers in some roundabout way, but it remained a region they barely knew. In the aftermath of the Boston attacks, Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov stated, “Any attempt to make a connection between Chechnya and the Tsarnaevs, if they are guilty, is in vain. They grew up in the United States. Their attitudes and beliefs were formed there. One must look for the root of the evil in America.” As with most politicians, the president’s statement should be taken with a grain of salt, but the facts seem to increasingly show that the Tsarnaevs’ radicalisation took place where most things originate today—on the internet. Before discovering that the Tsarnaev brothers were allegedly behind the attacks, many commentators speculated on whether the perpetrators had been “domestic” (i.e., right wing/militia)

or “foreign” (i.e., jihadist). This analysis is deeply flawed and glosses over the more pervasive homegrown-jihadist problem that has spread throughout the US in the last few years. Some of these American youth are deeply religious and fit into comfortable stereotypes of fundamentalist Muslims. Others live a hybrid existence—espousing jihadist ideology, while at the same time smoking weed, wearing trendy clothes, dating, and listening to rap. The more we learn, the more confusing it all becomes. In 2012, Tamerlan traveled to Dagestan, near Chechnya, allegedly to link up with local jihadists. It seems he failed to do so. But he attracted the attention of Russian intelligence, who then tipped off the FBI. After interviewing him, the Feds decided not to monitor him. This decision was obviously fatal. After the events of Boston, nothing could be more counterproductive than stigmatising the American Muslim community, which is as horrifi ed as any other by the attacks and could be a huge asset in preventing new ones. Moreover, the problem should not be overemphasised or politicised—both things are likely to happen.

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THIS IS WHAT

WINNING LOOKS LIKE My Afghanistan War Diary WORDS AND PHOTOS BY BEN ANDERSON

US Specialist Christopher Saenz looks out over the landscape during a patrol outside the village of Musa Qala, Helmand province. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

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I didn’t plan on spending six years covering the war in Afghanistan. I went there in 2007 to make a film about the vicious fighting between undermanned, underequipped British forces and the Taliban in Helmand, Afghanistan’s most violent province. But I became obsessed with what I witnessed there— how different it was from the conflict’s portrayal in the media and in official government statements.

Lieutenant Will Felder, left, after speaking with a villager in the Baghran Valley in Helmand province. (AP Photo/ Rodrigo Abd)

ll I had to do was trek out to one of the many tiny, isolated patrol bases that dot the barren, sunbaked landscape and hang out with British infantry troops to see the chaotic reality of the war firsthand: firefights that lasted entire days, suicide bombers who leaped onto unarmored jeeps from behind market stalls, IEDs buried everywhere, and bombs dropped onto Afghans’ homes, sometimes with whole families of innocent civilians inside. In 2006, when troops were sent into Helmand, British command didn’t think there’d be much fighting at all. The mission was simple: “Facilitate reconstruction and development.” The UK Defense Secretary John Reid even said he hoped the army could complete their mission “without a single shot being fired.” But with each year that followed, casualties and deaths rose as steadily as the local opium crop. Thousands more British troops were deployed, then tens of thousands of US soldiers, at the request of General Stanley McChrystal, following a

six-month review of the war after President Obama took office. Still, the carnage and confusion continued unabated. Suicide bombings increased sevenfold. Every step you took might reveal yet another IED. In February 2013, on his last day at the helm of NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen described what he thought the war’s legacy will be: ‘‘Afghan forces defending Afghan people and enabling the government of this country to serve its citizens. This is victory, this is what winning looks like, and we should not shrink from using these words.’’ The US and British forces are preparing to leave Afghanistan for good (officially, by the end of 2014), and my time in the country over the last six years has convinced me that our legacy will be the exact opposite of what Allen posits—not a stable Afghanistan, but one at war with itself yet again. Here are a few encapsulated snapshots of what I’ve seen and what we’re leaving behind.

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November 2012 – “Chai B oys” For the vast majority of troops in Sangin, a city of 14,000 and a hub of opium production in the south of the country, the war was already over by late 2012. The US Marines had abandoned the patrol bases they’d established at great cost over the last six years and pulled back to the safety of their headquarters, just north of the city center, which they rarely left. Sangin was firmly in the hands of the Afghan government. Two teams of 18 marine “advisors” occasionally visited the patrol bases, which had been repurposed by the Afghan police and army, but in no way could this be construed as a sign of success. Transition is the fourth and final stage of NATO’s counterinsurgency policy, but it isn’t supposed to happen until the Taliban have been cleared out, infrastructure has been built up, and the Afghan security forces have been trained and recruited to the point where they are ready to take over without outside support. After spending five weeks in Sangin, it was obvious to me that Afghan security was nowhere near ready. I’d seen policemen so high on heroin they couldn’t stand up straight or tie sandbags, and soldiers firing hundreds of rockets, bullets, and grenades at the smallest of suspicious movements in the desert—“Fuck them, they are all Taliban here,” one blurted out when he was told to stop shooting at a father and son—and on at least six different occasions, the use of child soldiers. The Taliban was still active, too, kidnapping civilians for ransom or as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges. Weapons, fuel, and equipment NATO had supplied to the Afghan National Army were being sold at the local bazaar, and “ghosts”—officers who technically didn’t exist—filled police payroll sheets. “Have you ever seen The Sopranos?” said Major Bill Steuber, the marine in charge of the police-advisory team, describing the corruption. “It’s vast.” Worst of all, police commanders were routinely abducting young men and using them as “chai boys,” house servants who were also kept as sex slaves. In separate incidents, three of those boys had been shot dead while trying to escape. One was shot in the face and one was shot at police headquarters. When a fourth boy was shot, Steuber marched into the police chief’s office and demanded action. The police chief first said that the boys had chosen to live on the patrol bases: “They like being there and giving their asses at night.” He also claimed that the practice of soldiers sexually abusing them was necessary. “If my commanders don’t fuck these boys, who will they fuck? Their own grandmothers?”

January 2011 – “The Taliban Will Be Here Half an Hour After You Leave.” The man who came out of the mosque told the marines standing in the street that his daughter had been shot in the shoulder by a stray bullet the day before. The family had taken her to a hospital themselves, with no help from either the marines or the Afghan National Army. One of the marines blamed the shooting on the Taliban, saying that they use civilians for cover. He added that in the present scope of things, this was a good sign because it meant they were losing control and becoming more desperate. The mullah who accompanied the man from inside the mosque smiled as if his suspicions had been confirmed, then

spoke directly to an Afghan National Army sergeant nearby. “There is no security beyond the road,” he said. “They are just saying this to make themselves happy. The Russians did the same. God willing, they will suffer the same fate as the Russians. “Yes, the Taliban are here, but who are the Taliban? They are Afghans,” he continued, waving his hand at the marines. “Who are they? We two have to come together! Because my orphans will be left to you, yours to me. They,” he waved at the marines again, “will be leaving. God will cause them such problems that they will forget about here.” Instead of imparting the mullah’s words to the soldiers, the translator balked, saying instead, “We used to live in the Green Zone but it was dangerous, so now we live here and it’s very good. The children can play.” “That’s good,” said one marine, unaware of how badly he was being misled. “We are trying to increase security, and I’m happy that you feel safer.” The interpreter spoke directly to the mullah. “I told him you said it was very secure here. I didn’t tell him what you said. I told him the security was good here.”

The mullah argued that the three of them—the ANA sergeant, the translator, and himself—should unite against the foreigners. “Yesterday they killed six people in a house,” he said. “Only two babies were spared. Is that the meaning of democracy? We don’t want this democracy. We don’t want this law of the infidel. We want the rule of Islam.” The mullah’s claim that six people had been killed in their home was eventually translated for the marine. “Well, we do drop a lot of bombs,” he said, “but when we do, we are very careful where we drop those bombs, and who we are dropping them on.” “If you don’t get upset, I will tell you something,” said the mullah. “Whatever you have brought into Afghanistan, your people are here for killing. Your tanks are here for killing. Your cannons are here for killing. Your planes are here for killing. You haven’t brought anything that we like. All you have brought are the things for death.” “I understand that you don’t like us here because we attract bullets and we make a lot of noise and sometimes people get hurt because of us,” said the marine. “But these things are going to have to happen before your country can become peaceful, and if you help us and help the ANA and we win, we’re not going to have to be here in your lives.”

An Afghan National Army soldier prepares for an operation in Taliban-held territory.

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“The Taliban will be here half an hour after you leave,” said the mullah, smiling. “They don’t kill us. With them, we don’t worry about going outside. They don’t touch us. We don’t touch them.” It was difficult to tell if the mullah was on the verge of laughter or rage. “Thousands of people have died in this area. As you can see, it’s empty. All you have done is build one and a half kilometers of road in the bazaar, but against that, more than 5,000 people have lost their lives. Men, women, and children. Now you can compare these two things against each other, which one of these do you say is better?” When the conversation ended, the mullah softened slightly. He said there was a small guesthouse inside the mosque and invited everyone in for a cup of tea. The marine looked at his watch and replied, “I would love to drink tea with you today, but unfortunately I’m all out of time, and I need to continue my patrol. But the next time we come down here, I would be more than happy to sit down with you and drink tea and discuss things.” The mullah’s smile turned back to a snarl. He gave up on whatever he thought talking could have achieved.

The Afghan police HQ is full of jeeps that have been destroyed by IEDs or shot up. US and British soldiers drive around in million-dollar bombproof trucks, but Afghan soldiers are given unarmored pickup trucks.

January 2010 – “Jesus Fucking Christ. It Was Right There.” Outside a house in Sangin, several large rocks were suspiciously strewn along a path. Lance Corporal Jeff Payne was on his knees, scraping at the ground with his knife, feeling for metal. Lance Corporal Blake Hancock slowly followed, stretching each leg straight out and pressing lightly on the ground with his toes before each step, looking like someone trying to avoid puddles in his best pair of shoes. Hancock thought the rocks were a guide for someone at the other end of a command wire. “They see someone walk by it, they know that’s when to pull the trigger... Boom!” He fanned his hands out to demonstrate the explosion. “See that hole filled with rock?” said Hancock. “I’m not going there. That’s like the one that hit McGuinness,” a fellow soldier who was the victim of an IED. We approached an S-shaped bend in the path, a junction of four alleys.“There have to be IEDs on this fucking corner,” Hancock said. No one knew it at the time, but Hancock was absolutely right. Buried underneath our feet was a seven-IED-long daisy chain, designed to kill or maim an entire platoon. Two command wires led down a pair of alleys; at the end of one,

someone watched, waiting to detonate the bombs. That person held the power source, probably a battery, in one hand and the command wire in the other. As soon as he connected the two, the daisy chain would go off. This method left no metal in the ground for the soldiers to detect. I held my breath until I got past the corner. Four marines appeared behind me, looking down each alley through the sights of their rifles. Payne propped a ladder against a wall, trying to find a route off the path—the “fucking path,” as everyone now called it. As he reached the top of the ladder, a huge explosion roared behind us. I turned to see two plumes of brown dust rising in the air. Stones and rocks rained down on us. “IS ANYBODY HIT? IS ANYBODY HIT?” screamed the marines. I couldn’t see around the corner but could hear a few awful groans. I walked back to see what had happened. Everyone had frozen where they stood. The groans became horrendous. As the dust cleared, I saw a crater with the fragments of a yellow plastic jug in it. The jug was big enough to have held about 40 pounds of explosives, enough to blow several people to pieces. “Jesus fucking Christ. It was right there,” said a marine. He pointed at the crater, about eight feet away. Another marine was on his knees, his right hand reaching for something to grab hold of. But his palm couldn’t find the ground. In the distance a medic was screaming: Could he hear? Could he see? Could he crawl away from the corner? At least three IEDs had gone off together, but everyone was certain there were more around them. Payne appeared next to me. He surveyed the corner for a second, then quietly walked forward. He stepped over the first crater and bent down to assess the casualty. It was Corporal Christian Thomas, known as Big T. The other marines used to playfully mock him because he flinched at any explosion, even small, controlled ones. “Can you stand up, can you see?” asked Payne. “He’s blind! Big T’s a priority!” someone screamed into a radio. Less than three feet away from Big T’s head was another crater, full of a fizzing dark powder that sounded like a fistful of matches being scratched alight at once. Payne tried to get Big T onto his feet, but he just patted the ground around him and groaned. “Can you see? Can you stand up?” “Huh?” “Can you see?” “Huh?” “He can’t hear you, man,” the medic shouted. Big T was blind and deaf. Payne helped him to his feet, but he collapsed, groaning. “Arrrggggh, fuck.” “Follow me, grab my shoulder,” said Payne. Putting Big T’s arm around his neck, he staggered back down the path. I was suddenly alone, standing between two smoking craters. “Stay where you’re at, don’t move,” yelled a marine in front of me. Big T was lowered to the ground. He groaned some more as his arms hung lifelessly from his body, like a stuffed dummy’s. The black powder in the crater was now on fire, crackling ominously. Big T put his hands to his ears. His mouth was wide open, and his glasses were covered in thick dust, hiding his eyes. I shouted to the nearest marine that the powder was still burning. “Could it explode?” “I don’t know, I’m not going over there,” he said. Miraculously, none of the marines had been directly on top of the IEDs when they exploded. No one other than Big T had been seriously injured. The people at the front of the

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patrol—Payne, Hancock, four other marines, and me—had been standing on top of a bunch of the IEDs for about ten minutes before we had walked around the corner. Payne returned to continue sweeping the path until we could get up to a roof. A marine pointed down one of the alleys. He said he was sure that was where the triggerman was hiding. “It’s all right,” he said. “He’ll be dead soon.”

August 2009 – “This Is Some Vietnam Shit.” The marines slept on the concrete floor of a long, thin building that was once a school. I was told to sleep with the medics, who had one room to treat casualties, one room for the doctor, and a mud courtyard that I shared with about 15 others. My bed was a stretcher, when the medics weren’t using it. “Have you seen what’s next door?” said a marine. “A gynecologist’s bench with a dustbin at the end. How apt for this country.” There was one casualty at the medical center. He was a local boy, a paraplegic who, despite being “somewhere between 16 and 30,” couldn’t have weighed more than 85 pounds. He’d been discovered in a nearby house that was ablaze after being hit by a Hellfire missile. His family had fled, along with everyone else, when the marines first landed. Unable to move and barely able to talk, the boy had almost starved to death. He told the interpreter that he’d been injured in a farming accident, which none of the marines believed. They assumed anyone who had been injured in the area was either involved in combat or making IEDs. The marines patrolled the surrounding area daily, but the Taliban were all but invisible. “This is some Vietnam shit,” said one. “Most of the time it’s like we’re getting shot at by bushes.” One soldier was miserable because his first phone call home had not gone well. During the pep talk before the operation, Echo Company had been told that “the world is watching,” but his friends back home told him that most Americans didn’t know there had been any fighting. He was just 21, had completed a tour of Iraq, and spent some time in prison for assault. “Our families know what’s going on,” he growled. “People in the military know, but the general population doesn’t. America’s not at war. America’s at the mall,” he growled. “No one fucking cares. It’s, ‘What’s up with Paris Hilton now? Britney Spears fucking this...’ The average American doesn’t fucking know when people die over here.” Another marine agreed. “Every day, we get shot at. I finally got to make a phone call today, expecting it to be like, ‘Oh, I miss you so much.’ No. It’s ‘Everything’s fine. I’m partying, having a good life down here.’ Doesn’t even ask me how I’m doing. That’s when I realised that people don’t give a shit. No one even really mentions 9/11 anymore. To me, that’s the whole reason I’m over here. That’s why I went to Iraq, why I joined the Marine Corps. Now we’re here, and I really don’t know why.” Some of the marines were just 11 or 12 years old when 9/11 happened. And the younger they were, it seemed, the less convinced they were that they were fighting the war on terror. One private, who had signed up exactly one year before, five days after his eighteenth birthday, said, “I don’t know. Where I was, the economy wasn’t good, you couldn’t get a job, my stepdad was suffering, had a hard time finding a job. I knew this was a good organisation, regular paycheck, they take care of you. Sitting here now, I’m helping my parents out a lot.” His pay was just over $20,000 a year. A fellow marine stroked a small bush with his gloved hand. “Look at this fucking thing, it’s nothing but thorns. It’s just angry. It literally has no function except to cause pain. Everything in this country is just so fucking angry.”

June 2007 – “They Are Our Kings.” The finger of the Gereshk district police chief trembled as he raised it in emphasis. He was a small man with a neatly cropped, greying beard. “The ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] operations are not useful,” he said. “They leave, and the Taliban come back. They are indiscriminate. They see no difference between women and children and the Taliban.” I thought he was going over the top, trying to let everyone know that he empathised with them. But then I realised that he too had lost several family members to an air strike, which surprised no one but me. “They have hit me so hard that I am stunned. What can I do? I have lost four of my brothers. How can I look after their families now?” When he had finished, the elders raged about the bombings, saying that the Taliban were often far away by the time the bombs were dropped, that security was getting worse, and that more civilians would soon start joining the Taliban if things didn’t change. “Life has no meaning for me anymore,” said one man. “I have lost 27 members of my family. My house has been destroyed. Everything I’ve built for 70 years is gone.”

Metal containers were brought in, placed on tables in front of the group, and opened. The elders were given bricks of 500-afghani notes, signing for them by dipping their right thumbs in ink and making prints. They received roughly $2,000 for each family member killed. “I lost 20 people, and I was given 2 million afghanis [about $36,000],” said one man. “It was before 12:30 at night, when your forces came to our area. They were involved in a fight, but the Taliban retreated. Later, a jet came and dropped bombs on our house. Two rooms were destroyed. In one of the rooms, my two nephews and my son were there. My son survived. I rescued him from the debris. Six of my uncle’s family were in the other room. All became martyrs. They were buried under the soil. I moved the children away and came back to rescue those under the debris. While we were trying to do that, the children were so frightened they started running away. The plane shot them one by one. “All we want is security, whether you bring it or the Taliban. We are not supporting war. We support peace and security. If you bring peace and security, you are my king. If they bring security, they are our kings.”

An Afghan police officer so high on heroin that he can barely stand or tie sandbags.

For more misery and hopelessness from Afghanistan, watch Ben Anderson’s new film, “Mission Accomplished,” on VICE.com this month.

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+ + + + +

ENDORSES

JIPSON TALMADGE The “Bike Lane” Candidate for Mayor of New York City! BIKES ONLY Manhattan Plan One Way ONLY

Cab Entrapment

Both Br Ways

Unicycle Trick Riding

Photo by Christian Storm

Cab Entrapment

One Way ONLY

Both 12 Ways

10 Both Ways

Both Ways

Both FD Ways 2

Velodrome Oak Flooring FIXIES ONLY

One Way ONLY

BY BOB ODENKIRK

ipson Talmadge is a 32-year-old resident of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, occasional crasher of couches in Manhattan, ad exec, and inventor of the essential smartphone apps Chocolatefinder, Snifterfinder, and Familycrestmaker. He is also VICE’s choice for the next mayor of New York City! Jip, as we have come to call him over the course of long hang-out sessions at the office, where he inevitably pitches us TV shows (sadly, VICE Presents: Cooking with General Noriega didn’t get picked up), recently won our hearts and our votes with his grand plan for an “ALL-BIKE NEW YORK!” Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to two professors and raised in an environment of complete acceptance and unconditional encouragement, Jip believes that there is a simple solution to NYC’s myriad problems: EVERYONE RIDING BIKES EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME (and trombone lessons for the homeless)! THE ENTIRE CITY WILL BE BIKE-FRIENDLY! Even better, it will be BIKES ONLY! As a bonus, the Jip plan will actually be BETTER FOR CABS because they will have their own dedicated lanes that encircle the island! THE WEST SIDE HIGHWAY and FDR DRIVE will be ALL CABS, ALL THE TIME (but in the outer lane only)! Taxis will also be allowed into the city on special CAB HOLIDAYS between 3 AM and 5 AM, while ALL MAJOR AVENUES will be converted into SIX-LANE BIKE PATHS! Avenue of the

Unicycle Trick Riding

Both Br Ways

W Both Ways

One Way ONLY

H Cab Entrapment

One Way ONLY

D Cab Entrapment

One Way ONLY

North-South

Both Ways Ch

Cab Entrapment

One Way ONLY

BOTH WAYS 6

6th Avenue / Avenue of the Americas

East-West

Both Ways

ONE WAY ONLY

12 12th Avenue W West Street

Ch Chambers Street

WS West Side Highway FD

Cab Entrapment

Br Both FD Ways

D Delancey Street

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive

H Houston Street (W&E)

10 10th Avenue

14 14th Street (W&E)

Br Broadway 2

2nd Avenue

Americas will be paved with VELODROME OAK FLOORING from uptown to downtown and will be designated FIXIE ONLY!! NO GEARS OR BRAKES ALLOWED!! Check out Jipson’s map of the NEW New York, and you’ll be convinced, too! It’s an exciting vision of the future. So get on your mark, get set... and VOTE!

Ca Canal Street

30 30th Street (W&E)

Unicycle Trick Riding

42 42nd Street (W&E)

CAB FINES will be doubled in the first day of Jipson’s mayoralty, and doubled again each day hence.

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LI’L THINKS: FRIENDS BY KATE CARRAWAY, ILLUSTRATION BY PENELOPE GAZIN

Kate Carraway writes the weekly Obseshes column for VICE.com.

I pushed him into a snow bank on the way home from the bar. He was drunk and had to pee and went down, soft like a wool mitten, and then got up, and then I pushed him down again. I hadn’t—this should be “haven’t”—seen this dude in, like, three years, but that—the “pfooo” of a grown-up man falling slow and landing facedown in the fresh snow, the 2 AM winter-empty side-street echo of us scream-laughing, hard—repeats, for me, as something like an advertisement, not for friendship exactly, but more speciﬁcally for the corny, syrupy-sweet juvenilia that is what I liked so much about how and who we were when we were together. Friendship is a constantly self-renewing frontier of human relationships, a Wild West of emotional and temporal adventure times. Without the common and commonly necessary strictures that the lamer side of biology and collective culture and whoever else is set up to dictate sexual, romantic relationships, and without the near-eternal nature of literal families, friendship is expansive and truly wild. It’s the only type of relationship that can run steadily for months or years or ever-afters, without sliding down an emotional valley or being punctured by another person’s need or someone else’s

betrayal. Of all the ways for two people to be together, and be in some kind of love, it’s the way that is most defined by genuine, wanted, cohesive closeness—the kind that can only be created by making a choice that isn’t required by law or money or blood or boners, and least of all by obligation. The stuff of great friendships applies to shy kindergarteners sharing a snack as much as it does to Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks watching movies together after dinner. In most other, more organised types of relationships, the bond is expected to be somewhat static, and the assumed parameters and consistency of character are as determining as the relationship itself. Being without heavy mutual obligations and contingencies—being one of many, not being the only one—affords more opportunity to be an inconsistent, fluctuating, positive presence, and as such, an enormous, creative, productive promise. Each friendship, in an ideal form—and similarly ideal groups of friends who take on the togetherness qualities of a pack of wolves—can be without those certain rule-things that both complete and complicate everything else. It’s weird that we look to love love and sex stuff for completion. Companionship, yes, but “completion” in the sense of being seen and being known is usually rushing in from the direction of someone who doesn’t need you to be anything in particular. In that way, friendship is more revealing of our truest natures because it’s not about the “best self” that a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife is supposed to invoke; it’s about the best, worst, weirdest, least guarded, careless, and most released. Inside of the culture of a particular friendship, the usually demarcated roles and restrictions, and who we are within those roles, can be spun into whatever we’re not getting anywhere else. Like, when else can a dude be his most feral or most aggressive? Or cry? Where else can a girl—with another cool girl, a guy, anyone who gets it—turn away from the various bright, blinding gazes focused on her the rest of the time? A good, working friendship should slice open whatever air pockets of tension and desire that can’t, in any other pairing, get sliced. It also happens that the friendship requirements and necessities of any given person—who is “allowed” to be their friend—tend to be obscured to the same degree that family and boyfriend (or whatever your deal is) stuff is always very apparent. And, because I have a lot more friends serving different functions than I have anyone else, that fundamental thing of who your friends actually are, who it is that you can get loose and come undone with, can be complicated and troubling. Friendship is as much a chemical reaction as any sexual thing, but asking someone if they want to hang out, without wanting to put your tongue on them, is beautiful, inelegant, and embarrassing all at once. It’s so naked, more so than sex, to ask someone who owes you nothing, who can become nothing more, “Will you be one of mine? Can I be one of yours?” over and over again. For all of that, any definitive, destructive shape-shift of a friendship can be even more devastating than another kind of end because there is no socially sanctioned space for that loss. Until then, it’s just the two of you falling into new snow, screaming.

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RAT TAIL: THE DEBUT SINGLE BY BRETT GELMAN, PHOTOS BY JANICZA BRAVO

The following is an excerpt from the liner notes of Rat Tail’s one and only album, The Motorola Pimp. His whereabouts are unknown. We do know that he seemed to be on the rise when his album was ﬁrst released; however, shortly after getting in an altercation with rapper Ice T, Rat Tail vanished. Ice T denies any knowledge of or involvement in his disappearance.

1. INTRODUCING RAT TAIL: (A. Goldstein, D. Goldenberg, L. Nachman) Produced by Janet for Cyrk Records. Recorded at Cyrk Studios in Hollywood by Doo Doo Dune Dune. Mixed by Conch Shell at Cyrk Studios in Hollywood.

Introducing Rat Tail / Rat Tail got a fat tail Eight ball in the thermos of my Muppet Movie lunch pail Want dick? Got it / Want nuts? Got those I like to hang with strippers ’cause they take off their clothes New Air Jordans, so you know that I’m rockin’ Rolex on my wrist tick tockin’ like my dick Diamonds in my ears / Rhinestones on my shirts Make them teen panties wet, give ’em ring-around-the-skirt And you know I am a flirt, biggest flirt on earth I drink champagne that’s yellow like Bert And Ernie’s rubber ducky, girlies whisper “sucky fucky” Got ’em feeling real lucky ’cause they got the chance to fuck me I’m soooo handsome / My looks will pay ya daughter’s ransom No fear of the five-0, I run up on ’em and pants ’em! Breath stank like milk / Hands smooth like silk Sending ’nuff love to my man Harvey Milk Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! We want to fuck you Rat Tail! THAT’S FREE! I like my butts round plus hanging to the ground I like my tits round and my eyes doo-doo brown I like it like this and like it like that I like to chill in Hollywood ’cause that’s where I live at One compound / Five mansions / One fence I speak a little broken, but that don’t mean that I’m dense Talking on my cell phone, that’s when I speak my mind I’m always on that hustle and forever on that grind Speaking of that grind, I love to grind behind I get behind that behind, and I grind that behind Blast this song in my boom box / Then after I rewind Then after I rewind I get behind behind and grind My shotgun spray and my 45—BLAM! I’m fly, dope, fresh, def with a splash of glam My real name’s Aaron, and my middle name’s Sam Rat Tail is the man / And you know that’s who I am Rat Tail is the man / And you know that’s who I am My name’s Rat Tail / That’s the name of the man You know who I am / Rat Tail is the man Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! Introducing Rat Tail! THAT’S ME! We wanna fuck you Rat Tail! THAT’S FREE! Listen to Rat Tail’s long-lost debut track, “Introducing Rat Tail,” at VICE.com/rat-tail.

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SKINEMA BY CHRIS NIERATKO

BELLADONNA’S DICK SAUCE (ANIMAL STYLE) Dir: Aiden Riley/ Belladonna Rating: 10 Enterbelladonna.com/ Evilangel.com

My eyes are currently bleeding semen. Each moment they remain open, it feels like vats of acid are being poured into my retinas. The excruciating pain is a direct result of watching porn for the past 12 hours straight. I look and feel like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange when his eyes are propped open and he’s forced to watch acts of horrendous violence to “cure” his more despicable tendencies. But, in my case, the saddest part is that I volunteered for this punishment. I’ve been in the middle of editing the latest episodes of Skinema, which focus on the extreme-sex performer Belladonna, so myself and Andy Capper (the series’s co-producer) have been saddled with the task of going through more than 200 of her Evil Angel DVDs to look for the best selects. Over the past half day, I have witnessed her do just about every possible sexual act a person can partake in, all of which usually involve anywhere from one to four penises. I have watched her body change from an 18-yearold’s to a 30-year-old’s in one sitting. She has transformed from a doe-eyed, ditzy dame to a strong, cocksure woman before my eyes… and, as of this writing, I’ve only made it through ten DVDs. Porn was not meant to be watched this way, but on the bright side, I only have 98 more to go. Please kill me. (I’m pretty sure this is my payback for the past 12 years of my not really watching any of the movies I’ve “reviewed” in this column.) I’m sure many of you are wondering why I’m pissing and moaning, questioning how hard it could possibly be to fast-forward through hardcore sex scenes to find the rare, usable parts of the videos that will keep my show at an R rating. And you are entirely justified to wonder that; the process is quite simple and quick. The difficult part comes with watching the behind-the-scenes footage shot by Bella’s estranged husband/director, Aiden Riley. Over my year and a half of filming the couple, their relationship changed into

something else (which you’ll see play out in the episodes), but for the better part of the past decade, Aiden was the man behind the lens shooting as his wife took two dicks in her ass—and every other manner of fuck, suck, and jerk. When Bella wasn’t having sex, Aiden liked to point the camera at her and have very personal conversations for the BTS footage, which generally provides an additional two hours of supplemental material for each feature ﬁlm. It’s in these conversations that I’m ﬁnding the real gold. She discusses her personal life frankly and without hesitation: how she cheated on Aiden, how she liked to service other men, just not her husband, and how she fucks other men while Aiden waits at home to paint her toenails. There is no fast-forwarding. I must watch each and every minute to make certain I don’t miss any gems. In the past 12 hours, I haven’t had one boner. I am desensitised. I’m considering raping my sleeping wife to see if I’m still human. Instead, I will watch one more DVD, Dick Sauce, because the silly animal hats the girls are wearing are oddly familiar—they look exactly like the hats Belladonna and I wore to dinner with her preteen daughter and her daughter’s friend when I was in LA last month. But they couldn’t be. Could they? Could that possibly be the lovely Katie St. Ives blowing Mr. Pete in the very same bunny-rabbit hat that Belladonna gave me as a gift to wear when playing with my children? The same bunny hat I put on my grandmother’s head to take a funny photo? Yes, yes it is. At least it was only a blowjob, right? In the BTS footage Katie admits, “I have a raging yeast infection. That’s why I can’t have sex today.” I’m going to bed with the belief that Belladonna must have had the hat dry-cleaned. Right? She had to at least do that. More stupid can be found at ChrisNieratko.com and twitter.com/ Nieratko. Also, check out the Skinema show, now on VICE.com.

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MAY

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JUNE SAT 1 - Belle & The Bone People (EP launch) + Yetis + Jacob Pearson WED 5 - FIRE UP! Presents: State of Origin with Stephen Ferris & Brett Oaten THU 6 - Amy Rose + Gordi + Revier FRI 7 - Alphamama with special guests SAT 8 - Solkyri + Setec + SEIMS

K?L )' $ Godswounds + Toydeath + Simo Soo + The Love Your Rights J8K )) $ Ali E + special guests N<; )- $ :CL9 :89 J8M $ g\i]fidXeZ\# Zfd\[p Ôcdj K?L ). $ Christine Jane + special guests =I@ )/ $ The Preatures + special guests J8K )0 $ Big White (album launch) + special guests

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VICE: Here’s an almost stupidly obvious question to start with, but I’m curious: Why did you call your new record Weapon? Nivek Ogre: I recently came to this weird gestalt in my mind that everything we do has the potential to either harm or cause good. This is a choice we all make with every action. But I view the human being primarily as a weapon, and a lot of the things that we’ve created have had disastrous effects on us as a species. Guns are a tiny element of a much larger iceberg that’s latticed throughout history. Did the Newtown massacre spark this record? No, this started way before: March 11, 2011, when Fukushima melted down. It was at that point that I began to view abstract things as weapons. Right now we’re being inundated with a huge amount of radiation, so much so that in April, the EPA relaxed the amounts of radioactive iodine-131 allowed in water in the event of a radiological disaster like Fukushima. It was three picocuries per liter, now it’s 81,000 picocuries per liter. Now here we’ve got a huge Machiavellian death shroud being pulled over people, all based on nuclear power, and the underlying reason for that energy system is a weapons system. My question here is this: What inhuman force could possibly allow this atrocity to take place? Speaking of inhumanity, I’ve read that Jeffrey Dahmer once came to a Skinny Puppy show. Is that true? Yeah. Apparently Dahmer came to a show in Milwaukee to stalk a victim. I heard it from some people at a hotel I was staying at. We were playing a club that was sort of a gay and straight club. He would hang out there, stalking his victims. Nivek Ogre perched on a boulder near his home in the Santa Monica Mountains.

NIVEK OGRE IS TOTALLY DOOMED Skinny Puppy’s Front Man Is Obsessed with Weapons BY BENJAMIN SHAPIRO PHOTO BY CHAD ELDER

n addition to logging time with parent-repellers like KMFDM and Ministry, Nivek Ogre (né Kevin Graham Ogilvie) is best known as the guttural screech that is synonymous with Skinny Puppy, who arguably invented electro-industrial in the early 80s. This pedigree, coupled with a history of serious drug use and a penchant for slitting his throat onstage, has led generations of depressed teenagers who are curious about things like Anton LaVey and animal sacrifice to embrace Ogre’s macabre worldview: one in which we are all currently coasting along on a dying sphere, counting down the hours until life on Earth is made impossible due to human stupidity, negligence, and aggression. This month marks the release of Skinny Puppy’s 15th record, Weapon, which features a giant spider made of guns, bombs, and knives on the cover and a quote from atom-bomb developer J. Robert Oppenheimer in its liner notes. I recently spoke with Ogre about such joyful matters as the Fukushima meltdown, mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, and the giant “Machiavellian death shroud” that imprisons us all.

Getting back to the record, I keep listening to the second track, “illisiT.” In the chorus you keep repeating, “This is the Criminal Age.” Considering you started your career at the height of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, do you really think of 2013 as any more criminal than the early 80s? Absolutely. At least during the Cold War, the militaryindustrial complex kind of trickled down [laughs], and that’s why there was this huge boom in the middle class. I’m not a proponent of this, but at least people’s dayto-day lives were a bit better, and there was a glimmer of hope. But if the 70s and 80s were the Plastic Age, today we’ve entered an age where we’re openly embracing criminality. Although there’s apparently less death from wars these days, so I guess we’re living in a comparatively more peaceful time. People are living longer. I’m really worried about the average lifespan increasing, honestly. I’m concerned that people living longer is profoundly unhealthy, and creates a pretty serious strain on the economy— Oh, you shouldn’t go there, Ben. You’re talking about eugenics. That’s not what I mean, though. No, I know. And look, I almost agree with you. There is a dark side of me that thinks that if we were all living like cavemen, things would be better. That’s for your generation to figure out. I feel like I’m fucking tipping the scales here at 50. Weapon is out this month on Metropolis Records.

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REVIEWS BEST HIP HOP 10 OF THE DECADE: KILLER MIKE

If you missed the earlier mentions of it, or if you read your magazines backwards, this is VICE Australia’s 10 year anniversary issue. In accordance with this fact, we’re running a collection of 10-out-of-10 reviews which span the last decade. As you can see, we pretty much got it right 100 percent of the time with no mistakes whatsoever.

CLAMS CASINO Instrumentals Self-released, 2011

EMINEM, DR. DRE, JAY-Z, 50 CENT, STAT QUO, AND CASHIS Syllables AOL Radio, 2011

This track’s a deadstock banger from 2007 only recently released to promote some stupid online-radio thing AOL’s doing. Every MC drops a verse of gold over a beat that lays in the back, spooky and hypnotic. Eminem’s in top form—pre-sweatpants and Vicodin binging—while Jay-Z does that “roll-call everyone else on the track endearingly” thing that makes me almost like Jay-Z. Shit, even 50 sounds smart here. If this is what Detoxis’ going to sound like, then maybe it’s actually been worth waiting a decade. A CURSED MUMMY

You may know Clams Casino as the guy who sampled Imogen Heap and made one of the best rap beats ever, Lil B’s “I’m God” (aka Soulja Boy’s “2 Milli”). Clams has a penchant for chopping up songs by wacky female pop stars (Björk, the aforementioned Heap) and working with gremlin-voiced male MCs. This combination makes for a truly awesome male-female tension that will change the way you think about rap music. In case you think I’m laying it on a little thick: Clams will be one of this decade’s best and most influential producers and will live in a jillion-dollar house that makes Versailles look like a stack of shipping pallets. ALEX DUNBAR

KILLER MIKE R.A.P. MUSIC Williams Street, 2011

CHEMICAL BROTHERS

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

GANG GANG DANCE S/T Fusetron, 2004

These mildly Satanics all star locals play very bewitching live shows full of Yoko Ono wails, echoey electronics and banging on stuff. This album is what it would be like to see them play live if you were blind. But then it’s sad because you can’t see how foxy they all are. Maybe they’d let you feel their faces. I bet they would, they’re nice. SNORRI STURLUSON

The Singles ’90–’03

EXCEPTER

Astralwerks/Virgin, 2003

Alternation 5RC, 2006

Tom and Ed prove that you can be an E-tard and still get a college degree. Totally ho! Disc one is a CD/DVD spanner of their greatest hits, including the untouchable “Leave Home.” Part two is the real prize though, live and previously unreleased material. Because, you know, hearing, “BOOM-TAAA-BOOM-TSSS-BOOM-TSS,” is so much better live. MARK VON PFEIFFER

So, finally got an album together, I see. What took so long? Oh right, those fucking 20 something EPs. Almost forgot. Well, uh, keep up the being weird then. THACEY GRUNGE

HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR

Killer Mike is so smooth and ﬂuid, yet hard at the same time. He’s like a nanostructured amorphous solid, or Slimer with a boner. If he were to pull up in his car in front of my place of business right now, I’d take a knee at his wheel like they do at football games when a player’s been injured. It would be the only way I’d know how to fully express the sentiment, “You killed it, black man.” RYAN GOSLING

Blue Songs

COACH WHIPS

Moshi Moshi, 2011

Bangers vs. Fuckers Narnack Records, 2004

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

I’m no zoologist, but the cover looks like a brown goat kissing a white dog with little pencilled love

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REVIEWS BEST ELECTRO 10 OF THE DECADE: EXCEPTOR

hearts floating around their heads. The Coach Whips don’t let up from the get go and give over their third album; 18 minutes of pulverising, blues infused tunes. It’s a concentrated mayhem that settles in and messes up the earlobes, plus there’s a CD-ROM with house party footage of them playing in the Narnack House. The Couch Whips are the perfect distillation of everything that is great and trash. SHANE JESSE CHRISTMAS

ANDREW W.K The Wolf Island/Universal, 2003

of a sudden, she rips his cock out and starts going to town on the thing. She punches his dick so hard I almost puked, then tells him it’s a useless piece of shit and keeps pummelling it. Closed fist, no mercy. He seems to be enjoying most of the punishment up to the point that she spreads his legs and stomps his balls before delivering at least ten to fifteen high velocity place kicks to his dick and sack region. I can’t stand the pain when someone flicks me in the nuts with a towel and all this crazy, crazy dude can say is, “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yesyes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes!” Lightning Bolt make my mind feel like his penis. GEEZER

FUCKED UP

What the other magazines don’t seem to be getting is that this is not only the killer party rawk Andrew is know for, it is also the best Jim Steinman and Hooked on Classics records since 1980. Try listening to it when you aren’t drunk. This music can pull you out of that lump, slap you on the back, and make you do pull-ups until you feel better! JERRY MCPHERSON

MOUTH Victim Chant Colar/Sonar, 2005

This is one of the best Australian albums ever. I had three of these songs on a cassette twelve years ago. This is pure, isolated fucked off music. Unfiltered and anti-establishment. Confusion never sounded more cutting. Tasmania in the 90s. Hate. Get it. MC HAMMERED

Year Of The Pig Remote Control/Matador, 2007

For this review I decided I would do something different and let my mum review the record. Take it away, old lady: “Ok this is starting out nice. So far this kind of reminds me of a band my Johnny liked when he was 13, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. This record has a lot of energy but a really good sense of melody, too. I think this would be a really good starting point for anyone looking to get into knitting or great music to get you pumped up for a Girl Guides meeting. It’s really motivational and moving stuff.” Thanks, mama Sharkey! UNCLE SHARKEY

LINDSEY LOW HAND Poached Eggs Fuken Stoner Records, 2007

in high school: he was always having a laugh. Poached Eggs, two dudes sitting in a bath naked: it’s bloody brilliant! Not even the Red Hot Chilli Peppers could dream this shit up, this is something that’s instinctual. Only a weird dude from Adelaide and merry band of outsiders could muster this kind of conviction. Oh yeah, musically the album’s pretty good too. YEP YEP

NO AGE Nouns Stomp/Sub Pop, 2008

When Dean Spunt and Randy Randall aren’t hanging ten on the halfpipe out the back of their Hollywood home, they play good-times punk rock with loads of FX pedals. No-one needs to make records on 4-tracks anymore but Nouns remembers just how ace it sounds when nostalgic melodies and loud guitars are soaked in fuzz and delay, and recorded on a cassette tape that warped slightly when you left it on the dash. It’s only half-an-hour long and it feels sort of light but that’s great in its own way, like drinking on an empty stomach. DWAYNE BRAVO

THE FALL Fall Heads Roll Narnack, 2005

Not so much “rock” as “the mantle upon which our Earth rests for survival,” the Fall releases another good album. In related developments, water recently determined to be “wet”. DAVID COTNER

LIGHTNING BOLT Hypermagic Mountain Load, 2005

Last Thursday, I went to the bookstore and bought what I thought was a straightforward stick movie. It’s pretty standard blow-job missionary shit but then all

THE HORRORS

You have to hand it to Scottie; he’s a rare dude! Every Band I’ve seen this man play in has been gold. Ok,so he’s not the most technical guitarist in the world, but who is? Kurt Cobain was technically retarded, and look what he achieved. Scottie is the living, breathing example that simplicity and a “who gives a fuck” attitude can take you places. He’s the kind of guy you always wanted to hang with

Skying XL, 2011

Have you noticed how hard it is to keep track of time these days? Your iPhone says it’s 9.15 AM,

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REVIEWS BEST LOUD 10 OF THE DECADE: NO AGE

your laptop says it’s 9.12 AM. What the hell’s going on here?! There’s simply too much technology. Thankfully, the Horrors have always been able to navigate the murky ocean of lies that the geeks, with their infinite computer babies, each with its own internal clock, have been trying to drown us in since they came to power alongside Ceefax in 1974. If Faris and co’s first album traversed 50s psych and 60s freakbeat, and their second 70s kraut and 80s indie, we should have known all along that Skying would pitch up somewhere between early Verve, Suede and Deerhunter. If their course holds, next time around we’ll be in the future. DAZ BOOT

CRASS The Feeding of the Five Thousand Crass Records, 2010

I’m not gonna compare them to anyone cuz that’s an easy way out and I find it cheapens the music. Instead I’ll say that the music sounds exactly like the name of the band. Broken Social Scene: the days when you suddenly find yourself listening to music alone instead of in a group. A band that seems private to you, and then you get annoyed when other people show up at The Knitting Factory or whenever to see them play. Then you start to realise you’re growing up and suddenly the wind blowing through the curtains feels really good, and you’re in your bedroom throwing away things that once seemed so important, and now you just don’t care. Concert ticket stubs, Strawberry Shortcake pencils, ceramic bowls shaped like stars, and pictures of you waving to your mum from a moving van in the summer. Your hands, they move like mercury. That’s this band. CHEROKEE BAT

FRANCIS PLAGNE

Not satisfied by our 14-page feature on anarchopunk godfathers Crass last month in the Anti-Music Issue? Well, lucky you: there’s a reissue of punk’s angriest anarchists’ finest hour. As well as the album, which blokelit bore Tony Parsons described as, “a nasty worthless little record” on release, you get a miniature replica of the LP insert, a beautifully rendered booklet with a stack of never-before-seen photos and Gee Vaucher artwork, a bunch of demo tracks, part of a 1978 live show in Soho and even a couple of tracks performed by the elusive Penny Rimbaud/Steve Ignorant duo, Stormtrooper. What more could you possibly want in life? GENRAL BACARDI

Idle Bones Synaesthesia Records, 2006

upbeat record Cass has made since Dropping the Writ. Words wise, these are some of his best ones, including my favorite: “Not you again/ I thought you’d died.” By the way, if you haven’t seen the sketch with Cass being interviewed by the fat music journalist by the swimming pool, please go to YouTube and watch it now. ANITA CRAPPER

YOU AM I The Cream and the Crock BMG, 2003

If everyone I know didn’t already know and love You Am I, I would be running around to all their homes raving on and on about them. I would then walk them down to their local record store and make them buy The Cream and the Crock, then I would make them play it over and over till they understood how bloody unreal every song on it is. SCATER

BEACH HOUSE

Once in awhile, a record lands on the desk that’s almost impossible to review. Whether or not it’s the completely twatted, gnomey folk jams, sloppy string drone sections or the busted concrete passages and fold back into spacious fields of 60s pop, this Melbourne venison had four-tracked his way into that extra rare place, smack bang between the chest and the head. Possibly the neck or shoulders. I guess the clavicle would be the closest approximation at this point. The mind wanders and the dingers waffle and now this has to stop. KAREN CARPENTER

Devotion Mistletone/Carpark, 2008

I was a bit scared that this wasn’t going to match up to their first album (which I love so much) but it does. Thank fuck for that! Officially brilliant. Perfect in the morning, perfect at night. Great on headphones, great quietly going in the background. Wonderful when you’re alone pondering life, even better to hold hands to. Aaaawwwww. TIP TOE

CASS MCCOMBS BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE

Humor Risk

S/T

Domino, 2011

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI Worn Copy

Arts & Crafts, 2005

Paw Tracks, 2003

This band is great. Classic noisy indie-rock that people will be talking about for years to come.

If the soul-crushing, slow sadness of Wit’s End was too much for you because you’re a pussy then you’ll be glad to know that Humor Risk is the most

There is a store in Cambodia that sells old tapes of western kids who were kidnapped while on a

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REVIEWS BEST SOFT 10 OF THE DECADE: ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI:

school trip and forced to churn out their own original songs that sounded like naive, wonky versions of Grace Jones, Human League, Steve Miller Band, Boomtown Rats and that “She’s Like The Wind” song. Ariel Pink is in the extended Animal Collective family so he obviously isn’t one of those poor kids, but he could be if he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time instead of the right place at the right time. Genius, and that’s no joke. KAREN CARPENTER

ANTHONY & THE JOHNSONS The Crying Light Spunk, 2009

I have immense difficulty giving a good record review. It’s incredibly rare that a record is actually good so I don’t get that much practice at it. Don’t blame me; blame the dickheads making them. Seriously, I actually do want to like things, it’s just that 98 per cent of records I get to review sound like a defective penile implant. The bottom line is that this record is great and intensely beautiful. Fuck Ru Paul. UNCLE SHARKEY

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES The Supreme Genius of King Khan and The Shrines

DAVID LYNCH Crazy Clown Time Sunday Best Recordings, 2011

A debut solo album by David Lynch could have been anything. It could have been 74 minutes of him scatting about meditation and playing drums on a Folgers Coffee can. It could have been an operatic tribute to putting cigarettes out on the carpet. What Lynch actually made is a movie for your earholes; parts of it are hilarious (in one song he says, “Buddy screamed so loud he spit!”) and parts are creepy-spooky and talk about stalking women. The fact that the song Karen O sings on isn’t the best song on the album says a lot for what an utter fucking treat this is. CREAM CORN

MICHAEL YONKERS Grimwood Stomp/Sub/Pop, 2007

This is pretty different to Microminiature Love, which you’d expect seeing that this is solo Yonkers. It’s a lot quieter in mood but the crazy sounds are still there, buried in gillions of layers and some pretty heavy feelings. There’s something depressing about giving a reissue “album of the month” but since my Yonkers and the Blind Shake CD is still in the post and this is pretty close to the sound of one hand clapping, that’s the way it is. YU TU TU

Vice Records, 2003

CANDI STATON

We felt so bad that no one had really heard about this ten-piece band who effortlessly squidge garage, soul and rockabilly together while featuring Stevie Wonder’s live percussionist, a saxophonist called Big Fried Rollercoaster and a singer going by the name of King Khan (who looks a little like Santana moonlighting in a Bollywood funk orchestra) that we decided to re-release the cream of their back catalogue in one handy morsel. Thanks us! BOBBY STEALS

S/T Honest Jon’s Records/EMI, 2003

Real deal soul on this compilation of songs by M.s Candi Staton, an Alabama native with a warm voice that can alternately shred and ooze. If you’ve ever put your little toe into the world of Northern Soul, you

know that there are 5,000 female singers touted as the true powerhouses of soul singing. Sorry, but there are really only ten. A lot of this stuff was recorded at Muscle Shoals, Cani eloped with Lou Rawls at 17, and she toured with The Staple Singers and Aretha Franklin. You cannot get a better pedigree if you want to be drooled over by desperate completist soul fans. LARA MARRS

ENNIO MORRICONE Crime and Dissonance Ipecac, 2005

This ear-dazzling two-disc set highlighting Morricone’s spookiest film scores of the 60s, 70s and 80s Italian crime/horror/giallo films is untouchable. A friend who heard it said the one possible flaw in the collection is that, with the pieces removed from their individual soundtracks, it makes for a selection that is slightly erratic. Please. That’s like saying you’re disappointed at winning $1,000,000 because the bills are in different denominations. Shut up and bow to the creation of a musical GOD before I stab you repeatedly in the eye (and film it stylishly). NELLA KRAM

JD EMMANUEL Wizards Northstar Productions, 2003

Old dude with white beard spends the last 30 years in the lab making some of the most perfect tripped out, cosmic electronic synth jams this side of the solar system and nobody notices until now. It’s like all the lonesome space drifter pulses emitting from his sequencer got swallowed up by a black hole and transmitted them to the red planet before some wayward comet dragged his Edgar Froese/Klause Shulze/Harmonia inspired jams back to our humble planet, exploded upon re-entry and showered us in electric meditative perfection. The truth. JEAN HOYOUX

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VICE MAGAZINE VOLUME 11 NUMBER 5

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