Hey everyone,

The last time we spoke, I was writing from the venue in Detroit. After we played we ended up at a house with three big dogs including a saint Bernard.

The next morning, we went for a drive to look at the abandoned buildings. The best one we found was a old train station. The photo of all us in front a big building is the abandoned train station.

We then drove to Columbus Ohio and met up with the guys from Pink Reason. It was a fun show. Before the show we went to a Mexican bar and drank $3 margaritas.

The venue, The Ace Of Cups, had a cool sign with our name in it. The photo of the sign is that sign

From Columbus we drove to Cleveland. On the way we stopped at this huge outlet shipping centre that had a mini train and railway tracks. Just near the shopping centre was a shed with Lodi station painted on it. I took a photo of it because of the Credence Clearwater Revival song called “Lodi.”

We were in Cleveland from Thursday to early Sunday. We played Horrible Fest twice. Mr California also played on a roof as part of horrible fest. That's the photo of the man on the roof.

Horrible Fest also had a hot tub set up at the back of the venue which I got in before we played. It was a relaxing way to get ready to play. The photo of me in the hot tub shows me having a good time.

It's Sunday night and I am in Rochester, Upstate New York for our gig at the Bug Bar. Tomorrow we head to Boston to play Obrien's then. We will be in NYC on Tuesday where we play Death by Audio.

It's been great seeing all the different cities of America and the personalities they have. It's also been a lot of fun meeting people who are into our music.

I hope you enjoy the photos. I think they are entertaining.

Love Marcus

Previously:

Love Marcus: The Tour Started in LA

Click here for their US tour dates

Check our film about them on Noisey

Remember those billboards that were all the rage during the summer of 2011, the ones boldly claiming the world was going to end on May 21 of that year? When that didn't come to pass, they moved the goal posts a bit, because they forgot to carry a one or something, to October 21. And, as you now well know, that also proved to be false. Those predictions were put together by a California-based Christian cult called Family Radio Worldwide. (I interviewed one of them about it a while back.) Now, the religious group is destitute, because they spent all their money that summer thinking there'd be no need for cash post-Rapture. 

While it's easy to feel pleased with this news—charlatans getting their comeuppance always feels nice—it was no fun realizing that Family Radio was funded exclusively by listener donations. That means the estimated $100 million spent on billboards and commercials a few summers ago was not coming from the pockets of their own Board of Directors or some kind of insane hedge-fund gambling that this "end of time" prophecy was going to be right, but instead by the true believers among us. Which, if you've ever visited a church on a weekday morning, when only the most devout are littering the pews, means the money came from the generally less fortunate, the simple-minded, and the elderly looking for hope of continued existence after their final days. The ones with little money to spare. The same folks who throw their money away at state lotteries. But in that, at least they have a shot of winning, albeit an extremely long one. In the game of Which Prophet Is Telling the Truth?, there's never a winner. 

Onto the roundup!

- A 49-year-old pastor at a church was arrested for downloading and viewing child porn while at his other job, which is working as a custodian...  at Disney World.

- In Pakistan, a pair of bombs that exploded near mosques killing at least 15 people, while injuring at least another 100.

- Three Georgian soldiers (the country, not the state) were killed after a suicide bomber rammed his rigged-up-with-bombs truck into their base in Afghanistan. Later in Afghanistan, the Taliban killed three US soldiers with a roadside bomb. Still later, a pair of suicide bombings killed at least 16 people.

- On the subject of Georgia (the country, not the state), the Eastern European nation had themselves an antihomosexual protest march on Friday, which ended in a whole lot of rioting.

- Pat Robertson's advice to women on how to deal with their cheating men? Suck it up and fix the home you're living in, because he's a man and he has needs, and if you're not fulfilling them, he will look elsewhere.

- Awesomely named Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has declared the country to be in a state of emergency, in order to send troops to battle the current Islamic militant insurgency.

- In Iraq, gunmen using silenced weapons attacked a handful of liquor stores and killed at least 12 people in Baghdad. Folks are blaming the attack on ultraconservative Islamists who don't believe that liquor should be allowed. Later in the day, a bunch of car bombings killed at least 35 more. The next day, another 17 people were killed in a series of car bombings and gun attacks. But that was all the leadup to the big day, on Friday, when a series of bombs struck mosques in Sunni areas, killing at least 76 people, making it the deadliest day in more than eight months.

- A woman who saw Trey Parker and Matt Stone's The Book of Mormon has ignored their satirical take and instead converted to Mormonism.

- The Church of Scientology held an event to celebrate their new facility in Portland. They didn't think it was a good look to only have 450 to 700 people there, so they used their Photoshop skills to make it look more like 2,500. And failed miserably.

- A little while ago, a student athlete running the 100-meter-relay race in Texas was apparently disqualified for pointing to the sky to thank God. The right-wing media, always looking to hype some ways everyone's attacking religions, sprang into action and started condemning anyone and everyone involved. But then, with some further investigation, it was learned that the runner was actually pulling the ol' “we're number one” gesture, and was DQ'd for rubbing it in the faces of his opponents. But the aforementioned right wing media folks kind of just ignored this last little bit and continued beating the drum of Religious Persecution. So it goes.

- Maybe you were following this weird story about Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale, Arizona, and how the owners had themselves an old-fashioned meltdown after receiving criticism on their Facebook page? One of the stranger parts of the story is just how many references to them being chosen by the Man Upstairs there were during their rant. Things like “I AM GODS CHILD” and “WE WILL TEACH OUR CHILD EXACTLY WHAT >>GOD<< WANTS IN THEIR PATH” and “We have God on our side.”

- Bradlee Dean, one of those religious activists with a radio show, went apeshit last week after the good folks in Minnesota legalized gay marriage in their state (see below). It's a pretty epic rant that any kind of summary here won't do justice, so I'll just suggest listening to it.

- And Our Persons of the Week: The folks in Minnesota, who are apparently trying to make up for the fact they elected a verifiable insane person into Congress for the past six years (Michele Bachmann) by becoming the 12th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage. Well done, Minnesotans.

- And a bonus Person of the Week: The always-great George Takei, who went on Imgur, some kind of photo-based social network, and responded to a bunch of people's proclamations about why they love “traditional” marriage. Give 'em hell, George!

Previously - Obama Governs Like Bush on Reproductive Rights

If you’re a big racist, this is your kind of art. I found these paintings on the homepage of the Creativity Movement, a self-professed religion promoting “White Civil Rights, White Self-Determination and White Liberation via 100 percent legal activism.” And yes, it’s all wrong, but something about the paintings stuck with me. They’re the kind of awkward renderings Napoleon Dynamite might come up with if he was into military chicks and Nazism, which is a combo you just don’t see enough of. I tried to interview the artist, a guy named Ron McMann, but he wouldn’t speak to me. Luckily, the leader of the Creativity Movement—one Reverend James Logsdon—did agree to talk, so I called him at his home in Bloomington, Illinois. We were meant to discuss art, but we ended up in a conversation about life. From a very, very racist perspective.

VICE: Hi James. So when I write the article I’ll probably refer to you as a racist. Is that OK?
Reverend James Logsdon: Oh yeah, that’s fine. Racist is not a negative word. Over the last 30-40 years it’s become a bad word but there was a time in America and Australia too, when being racist was normal. It’s just these liberals that say society was horrible back then. Was it? You look at the 1950s, was society really that bad? So now the term, racist, no, I use that word with pride.

OK, let’s talk art. I’ve noticed all this blond hair, clean, Nordic landscapes – it all seems to scream purity. Can you tell me why?
Well, we’ve adopted the whole Aryan thing from Nazi philosophy. You know the blonde hair and blue eyes are all supposed to be the most pure aspects of the white race but that’s just genetics. People can have blond hair and blue eyes and not be of that purist European genealogy. Likewise, white people can also have brown or red hair so the idea that people have to be blond to be pure, I don’t support that. I would personally rather show pictures of white families as a symbol of pure genealogy. The symbolism of purity in terms of blood line is important to us but not the specifics. I personally don’t support the Nazi stuff at all.

And what’s with all the hot girls?
Women are the future of any race; of any people. Also we’re looking to inspire people and there’s nothing more that inspires a man than a woman. That’s just in general, for any heterosexual man anyway.

What percentage of pro-white movement are women?
I’d say 10 – 15 percent. Very few women become involved as activists and the problem is that we’ve got a lot of aggressive men who can be intimidating. You know, skinheads and fights – they’re not very appealing images to women.

Are you aggressive?
Well, five and a half years in a maximum security prison here in Illinois, yeah, I would say I’m an aggressive person. I’m also a former closed fist boxer so I’ve been a fighter all my life. As I’ve become more of a family man though, I’ve began to settle down.

So you’re a family man?
Yep. Married with four kids. So I’m pretty much what you might say is normal but unfortunately in this movement, and I’ll be blunt honest with you, 80 to 90% of the people involved are social outcasts. They were people who were never accepted and they find the pro-white movement easily accepting. That then encourages the negative stereotype that we have in the movement. That’s a stigma that me and a few others are trying to fix.

Can I ask why you’re so angry?
Well, I was raised by a Vietnam veteran and he was very disgruntled with Asians. This meant I was raised in an aggressive and, what you might say, racist household. Then I had to go to an all black school and I was the minority so I had to put my back against the wall. Being angry was always just going to happen.

Were you friends with any of the black students at school?
Oh I wouldn’t say friends but acquaintances, yeah. I wouldn’t use the word “friend” loosely anyway. I think if you have one or two friends, true friends, in your whole life then you’re lucky.

Alright, let’s go back to the art. What’s good art and what’s bad art?
I think good art is technical ability. I’ve seen a lot of art out there that is just complete garbage. It gets promoted by some of these art enthusiasts because of its message and I’m looking at it and you just see a bunch of paint blobs. Here’s another aspect of art – I’m covered in tattoos and I consider a lot of tattoo artists to be amazing, especially if they can do a free-hand.

Do you look like Edward Norton in American History X?
No, he’s got more tattoos than me. I’ve only got 19 and a lot of those are actually complete shit. I’ve got this 18 inch Celtic knight blending into a tribal art piece on my stomach and chest and it’s just completely horrible. It’s just a big black blob that’ll cost me $10,000 to remove.

I’ve seen a photo of it. It’s the one with the swastika and it looks pretty permanent. This makes me ask, have you ever wondered if you’re wrong?
You know, the only time I’ve wondered if I’m wrong, is when I’ve ran for my own people and they’ve given me nothing but negativity. It’s not that I feel then that I’m wrong in my mission, it’s that I’m wasting my time. Every time I’ve gone to a rally over the years, over 95% of the people who’ve showed up to protest are my own people. They just don’t even want to be saved. This makes me think it’s fruitless.

Does this make you feel alone?
Oh completely. Completely. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. The important thing is that when I lay my head down at night I know I’m doing the right thing.

So if you’re doing the right things, have your beliefs and actions made your life better?
Absolutely not. A few years ago I was building houses and I had 19 guys working for me and I was making $70,000 a year. Now, I can’t get a job pumping gas. Now the first thing any employer does is Google my name and believe me, no employer wants to be tied to someone with my history. So actually, it’s completely destroyed my life but in the long run I know it’ll be worth it.

Worth it how?
Believe me, things are going to get very, very ugly. You just look at the common decline of society; you’d have to be blind to say that doesn’t exist. And whatever the effects in my life, I just have to look beyond that. I have to put myself aside so that we can all have a better future.

Follow Julian on Twitter: @MorgansJulian

For more racism:

Triple Hate - Trailer

Introducing Hate, the Map

Public Transport Racists are Derailing Australia's Racism Debate

Vitray's first memories are of the tent cities in Thailand where Cambodian refugees found safety during the killing-fields era of the Khmer Rouge regime. Vitray was one of the lucky ones, as his family eventually managed to emigrate to America—to a Nashville ghetto plighted by bullets and crack cocaine. At 24, he traveled to Phnom Penh to get engaged. A handsome American citizen, he was quite a catch, so his father arranged for him to marry Dain, his pretty second cousin. They were happy for a while. And then the nightmares started.



Vitray was haunted with visions—bloodied bodies, tortured faces, flesh torn from bones. Night after night the horrors returned until he was too terrified to lie down. Then Dain began to change; she suddenly seemed ugly and her serene expression began to look stupid and infuriate Vitray. He began to hate her and the way she affected an American accent and laughed in a high-pitched shatter of tinnitus-inducing screeches.



Vitray was originally betrothed to another Cambodian girl before Dain—a girl who, according to Vitray's family, was pretty angry that she'd been snubbed of the opportunity to marry an American citizen. Vitray’s sister Molika told me the rest of the story: “I never believed in curses until I saw what happened to my brother. He was in love with Dain, and then he suddenly hated her,” she told me. “Then he got sick with Bell's Palsy. To this day, the doctors don’t know the cause, but people told me that the family of the girl he was originally betrothed to put a curse on him.”

But c
an curses really result in mental and physical reactions? Author and Druid Emma Restall Orr thinks so, which isn't all that surprising considering she's a Druid. “Whether we call it magic, cursing and sorcery, or we call it gossip and vindictive behavior, the effect can be the same," she told me. "People can be profoundly psychologically affected and the ramifications can be extreme—sickness, accidents and spiralling down." While that explanation might not exactly be palatable to the Western mind, magic is very real in Cambodia.  



In the village where I live and work for a small NGO, folk religion is woven into the way locals experience daily life. People swap tips about the best local fortune-tellers and healers. They chalk skulls and crosses on their door frames to protect their homes from malevolent ghosts, and leave fruit and incense out for the good ones. Western medicine is available in the town, but it's dispensed by poorly trained pharmacists and doctors at a price beyond the income of most villagers. Here, the vicissitudes and uncertainties of life are taken to the local fortune-tellers, healers, and sorcerers rather than doctors and psychologists.

The fortune-teller.

The village fortune-teller is a middle-aged woman with two gold teeth and a diamond ring—status symbols earned by her supernatural perceptions. She was born with no lower legs, and when I met her, the lower half of her pajama trousers were folded underneath her thighs, so—if you didn’t know any better—you'd assume she was just kneeling. Grabbing a deck of playing cards, she arranged them on a thin blanket in front of her. I immediately drew an ace of spades. She screwed up her face and made a noise like she'd just seen a horse kick a man in the groin. Apparently my pick meant that I wouldn't find my lost camera, which was kind of a relief after the teller's ominous groan. 



A different arrangement of cards for a different question, and it seemed two girls were in love with me. The fortune-teller grinned, her gold teeth snatching the afternoon sun. I asked her how she got her powers; “I was very sick when I was 18,” she told me through a translator, “then three spirits took pity on me and cured me of the disease. They have stayed with me ever since and help me tell fortunes.”

The spirits came from Phnom Kulen, Cambodia’s holy mountain and birthplace of the Angkorian king, Jayavarman II. She uses the cards in the same way as Western tarot readers: “The ghosts taught me how to arrange the cards so I can see the future of any person,” she explained. While I'm unsure if two women are in love with me, my camera is still lost, so I guess I've got to give her that.



The author after being coined.

While the fortune-teller relied on the supernatural for her powers, Sarong—the healer—learned her skills from her mother. I went to see if she could cure my cold. After the initial bows and salutations, she told me in English to remove my shirt and lie down on a wooden platform that Cambodians traditionally use as a sofa and eating area. She smeared eucalyptus oil on my back, took a coin, and began to scratch from my spine outwards. She scratched the same patch of skin over and over again. Then she scratched harder. I tensed up. It was far more painful than getting a tattoo.

The practice, known as “coining,” creates marks on the body similar to hickeys—incredibly sore, painful hickeys—and the hue of the bruise denotes the illness you're suffering from. Sarong made a clucking sound. “Your back is very red, you must be ill with a fever,” she said. Forty minutes later, and I felt like I'd been through ten rounds with Charles Bronson. The healer wrapped me in a thin blanket and put me in a hammock to recover. “There is bad wind in your blood,” explained Sarong. “Now it is escaping through the scratches. We put this blanket on you so the wind will not infect our family." While I can't say the treatment worked for me, I have seen sick Cambodians come up smiling after a coining session.

After my experience with the healer, I wondered how much worse the Apb Thmob (sorcerer) could be. Trying to locate a sorcerer in a Cambodian village was like trying to score drugs at a music festival: embarrassing and largely met with cagey, suspicious responses. “Why do you want to see this person?” asked my friend, Raksme. “They don’t want people to know their history. It's dangerous; I can't help you.” Sambo, the energetic village teacher, looked uncomfortable when I asked him the same question. “This is bad luck for you,” he warned. I pointed to the small cross I have tattooed on my wrist. “This will protect me,” I pushed. Sambo looked skeptical. “Yes, sometimes holy tattoos help protect us, but not always. And anyway, Cambodian ghosts don’t believe in Jesus.”

It was Pring, a handsome 20-year-old from a nearby village, who agreed to help me. “So he can curse people?” I asked on the phone. "Oh yeah, sure,” said Pring. I considered how I could use black magic within the boundaries of journalistic ethics. In the end, I decided to cast a love spell on a friend who had given her full consent.

The Apb Thmob.

The sorcerer lived on a jungle road in a wooden house with a palm-leaf roof. He was 40-ish, wore a collarless white shirt, and white pants. He sat cross-legged on a thin cushion. On the wall behind him were pictures of blue Hindu deities. To the side was a statue of Buddha, curtained with thin gold lace and surrounded by mounds of melted candle wax. Around him were offerings left by clients: lotus flowers, incense, and packets of cigarettes and herbs. His eyes opened, focused on me for a second and then closed in an expression of benign concentration.



Like the fortune teller, the Apb Thmob obtained his powers during a period of sickness. “I was very ill three years ago. I lost weight and thought I was going to die, then ghosts came into my head,” he told me through Pring's translations. “They cured me and have stayed with me ever since, and now they'll do what I command.” As if to prove his point, he handed me a hardback bearing a picture of Buddha. Inside, the pages were covered in a strange script. “The ghosts tell me what to write,” he explained. Pring, who knows Sanskrit and Pali – the religious languages of Cambodia – took a look at the book and told me he didn't recognize any of the symbols.



I brandished my Blackberry with a picture of the girl I wanted to cast the love spell on. The atmosphere became suddenly changed. The Apb Thmob’s family members, who had gathered around to see what this white man wanted, tensed up. “It is not good for you to do this,” he said. “Even if I did cast the spell, it will not last. One day she will stop loving you.” In my village, people love gossiping, and I didn't want to earn the reputation of someone who uses black magic, so I acquiesced and asked him instead to heal my cold. He began to chant and flicked holy water on my forehead. “You will be cured in three days,” he said.



I was better three days later, but then I had also been taking antibiotics and colds don't usually stick around for much longer than a few days. Molika, the Cambodian American sister of Vitray, remains convinced of the powers of the Apb Thmob. “I’m 85 percent sure that it was an Apb Thmob who was responsible for sabotaging my brother’s wedding and ruining his health,” she asserts. Molika, like most Cambodians, whether raised in America or in Cambodia, doesn’t believe in the existence of ghosts and magic—she knows they exist.

More from Cambodia:

Evil People Are Exploiting Cambodia's Orphans

Is Kok An Trying to Become Cambodia's Next Dictator?

Watch - Cambodia Fashion Week

Northern New Jersey looks like a cluster of idyllic suburbs, but each of those seemingly normal towns has a dark side that’s constantly gossiped about, but never publicly acknowledged. They seem to thrive on their strangenesses. West Orange, where I grew up, is the hometown of Ian Ziering from Beverly Hills, 90210, Scott Wolf from Party of Five, David Cassidy from the Partridge Family, and Mike Pitt of Boardwalk Empire and Dawson’s Creek. It’s also the childhood stomping ground of Charles Cullen, who might be the most prolific serial killer in American history. The salutatorian of my high school class lit herself on fire in college. Thomas Edison’s labs were in my town, and he paid local kids to kidnap cats and dogs so he could electrocute them to death as part of his efforts to convince the world to adopt direct current instead of alternating current. The town’s history is all teen idols and strange deaths, and that’s a really unnerving foundation to stand on as a youth.

The street I lived on for the first handful of years of my life was lined with modest, lower-middle-class houses with small front yards and cracked driveways—your typical North Jersey neighborhood, with all the odd hidden darkness that that implies. The neighbors at the end of our block had a kid my exact age, Steve, and the two of us naturally wound up playing together a lot. That friendship ended after Steve killed his pet rabbit by tossing it into a ceiling fan. His father buried it in their backyard, and Steve decided he wanted to dig it back up to see what it looked like. I was over at his house that day, and when I returned home with reports that I had exhumed a dead rabbit, the lack of parental supervision at Steve’s house was made evident, and I was prohibited from playing there.

There were kids who lived across the street, but they were slightly older and very into break-dancing on cardboard boxes. People who grew up in the 80s will remember that if you liked break-dancing or punk rock, you were considered a dangerous person, and my parents refused to let the break-dancing miscreants corrupt their young sons. The neighbors on one side of us used to sic Dobermans at my brother and me for fun and also ate food off the hood of their car in events they referred to as “carbeques.”

This meant my only childhood playmate was the dwarf who lived in the house next door to me. And that dwarf came to physically torment me.

The first thing I’ll say is this: I don’t blame the dwarf for anything. Our parents fucked up. I was three years old, still weaning myself off diapers. The dwarf was seven. Our parents decided that since only a rusty chain-link fence separated us, we should be playmates. The dwarf was really mad about it.

I get it! If I was the dwarf, I would have tortured me, too. No seven-year-old wants to play with a three-year-old, especially not when that older kid is the same size as the younger. I was a small child with a big head who was just learning to master things like walking upright and syntax. The dwarf must have looked at me as a mirror image of sorts, but one that was mentally and physically far behind him. I’m sure on some level the fact that we were the same size was a rage-inducing indication to my dwarf neighbor that he was not the same as everyone else.

The upshot was that he lashed out at me physically a lot. I have vague memories of sitting in a child-sized pool on the lawn in my backyard, while the dwarf climbed halfway up the fence that divided our properties and chucked rocks at me. I fell while trying to leap out of the pool, and the dwarf pointed and laughed.

I didn’t understand his aggression. On most days, the dwarf and I were good friends. I had an impeccable collection of He-Man action figures, and I remember that he was the first kid I knew to move onto the far more sophisticated world of Transformers. Later, he would be the first kid I knew to have items from the wildly underrated M.A.S.K. toy line. We were action-figure connoisseurs together. We got along.

But when darkness crept into that dwarf’s eyes, my toddler’s instincts told me to flee. The dwarf moved on from rock tossing to more up-close-and-personal attacks, like pushing me to the ground when I was trying to figure out how running worked. He’d pinch me and pull my hair. That friendship is the closest I’ve ever had to being in an abusive relationship—things were generally fine, and on our best days there were few people I was closer with than the dwarf. But things would get violent quickly, with no provocation or explanation. I had to be on guard around him.

And the dwarf was devious! He was extraordinarily good at only letting his violent tendencies come out when there were no adults around to see. As my parents tell it, I would often run into the house crying, making wild accusations that a dwarf had been physically abusing me. My parents knew the dwarf. They knew his family. He was of good stock. They had no reason to believe he would abuse me. But my complaints were becoming more consistent, so they knew something was wrong. And soon, physical evidence began to show up. Bruises, scratches, and most tellingly, sand.

My father had recently installed a sandbox in my backyard. It was nothing special—your average four wooden walls around a bunch of sand. Still, in our modest neighborhood, a private sandbox wasn’t common and was therefore seen as something of a luxury item. The other kids in the neighborhood often stopped by to take a turn in our sandbox, and the dwarf was a frequent visitor.

Shortly after the sandbox’s installation, I started running into my house very irritated and itchy, with piles of sand in my diaper. As I told my parents, the dwarf had launched a new campaign on me—he’d wait until my guard was down, then he’d pull on my diaper and throw sand into it. Nobody wants sand in his butthole and on his pee-pee. No wonder I was crying and moody.

As the months went on and my human personality developed, my parents noticed a shift in my behavior: I was no longer a hapless victim, I was becoming angrier about all of this bullying. It was the earliest sprouting of my rage issues.

Part of North Jersey life is that everyone is obsessed with being tough all the time. This wouldn’t be a story if my parents had simply picked up the phone, called their neighbors, and said, “Hey, we think your kid might be throwing rocks and sand at our kid. Maybe you could talk to him.” Or they could have come outside with me and the dwarf and said, “It seems like you guys are fighting a lot, if you do things like that you’re going to get into a lot of trouble.” But my parents saw this as my first steps into a world where you have to look out for yourself and be ready to stand up for what’s right. They let it happen. They weren’t witnessing it directly, so it wasn’t their place to step in. They felt like it was my problem to solve.

The moment of truth came one sunny morning when I was sitting in my sandbox and the dwarf sauntered down my driveway. With a smile on his face, he asked, “Can I play?” I smiled back and nodded, but in my heart I was ready for the sunshine and smiles to go away. I was expecting shenanigans, and I was ready for them.

True to form, the dwarf struck. When my back was turned, I felt a tug at my underpants, and then the by-then-familiar feeling of gritty sand invading my private area. I spun around, then fell onto my butt. The dwarf laughed.

This time instead of crying, I laughed back.

The dwarf looked confused. I reached over the edge of the sandbox, where I had craftily hidden a bright yellow plastic wiffle-ball bat. I raised the bat and brought it down upon the dwarf’s sizable head. He looked shocked. After the initial moment of defiance, I went all in, thrashing the dwarf with the bat all about his head and neck.

He screamed. My parents heard this and ran to the windows that looked out over the back yard. They saw me, their infant son, beating an older child with a weapon. They chose to do nothing, satisfied that vigilante schoolyard justice was being meted out to my pint-sized tormenter.

This is a pretty grim, fucked-up story, but in the end I turned out fine, and I hear the dwarf did as well. I work in entertainment, where rejections are swift and cruel and paychecks are never guaranteed, so despite how strange the particular methodology was, I’m glad my parents let the dwarf teach me toughness.

And while I haven’t spoken to my former neighbor for decades, word did reach me a few years back that he had achieved greatness—apparently, after graduating high school he got very into weightlifting, then powerlifting in particular. One year he got on a hot streak and won a state championship, meaning that of all the dwarves in New Jersey, he lifted the most weight.

I have no idea if his strength was related to our war all that time ago. But if I had anything to do with his ascent to such great heights, I am both happy and humbled.

@ChrisGethard

Previously by Chris: Why I Love My Meds

Follow Wendy on Twitter: @Wendywends

The VICE Podcast Show is a weekly unedited discussion in which we go inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people we come across. This week, host Reihan Salam talks to adult performer and VICE columnist Stoya about gender roles, homeschooling, safe sex, and the future of monogamy.

Here is just the audio from this week's discussion:

Previously on the podcast, we spoke with Ben Anderson about his thrilling new documentary, This Is What Winning Looks Like.

You can read all of Stoya's VICE articles here.

When it comes to women's rights, Saudi Arabia takes baby steps to a whole new level of infancy. (In utero steps? Spermy steps?) Sure, the King Khalid Charitable Foundation launched the country's first ever anti-domestic-violence ad last month, but women are still unable to defend themselves against those same domestic-violence cases in court. In 2013. 

One other huge breakthrough that I'm sure would have Susan B. Anthony setting off streamers in her grave is new legislation that allows women to ride bicycles. Granted, they still have to be supervised by men—but bicycles! Think of the endless freedoms that come with finally being able to cycle around Riyadh, a city not built with cyclists in mind whatsoever!

Oh, also, girls in private schools are now allowed to play sports, but girls in state schools still can't. So, much like in other parts of the world, the amount of rights a person gets depends entirely on their wealth. 

Despite these forward-thinking changes, Saudi Arabia was still ranked 131 out of 134 countries for gender parity in the 2012 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report. So recent, optimistic reports of Saudi Arabia going through a "feminist revolution" seem a little off the mark.

I spoke to Nouf Alhimiary, a 20-year-old photographer from Jeddah, about the challenges she faced when trying to put on an art exhibition about Saudi women in a country where basically every minutely inflammatory art piece gets banned from public display.

VICE: Hey, Nouf. How come you were only allowed to display half of your exhibition?
Nouf Alhimiary: You know that thing where you take a picture of your outfit every day and post it on Instagram or Twitter? I thought it was interesting that a lot my Saudi friends do that when they’re out of the country, but can’t do it here because they have to wear the exact same thing every day: the abaya. I wanted to create a parody of that by photographing women wearing the same thing in different places. I wanted to call it What She Wore/ What She Wore Underneath. The plan was to take pictures of all these women in the abaya, take pictures of whatever they were wearing underneath, and then display both pictures together.

But you weren’t allowed to do that?
The curator for the Mostly Visible show told me I couldn’t do it because the government would have rejected it. In Saudi Arabia, the government has to look at every art project that's going to be exhibited to decide whether or not it can be displayed. The curator told me that if I included pictures of women outside their houses not wearing the abaya, they wouldn’t display it.

So what did you do?
I settled for What She Wore, which I actually like because it makes you ask, “Why do all these women look like they’re wearing a uniform?” But even though I only displayed pictures of women in the abaya, a lot of people at the exhibition came up to me and asked, “Why are you trying to change women?”

Are you trying to change women?
I’m not really trying to change anything. I’m just asking for the option to either wear the abaya or not. I’m not asking for tradition to be diminished, I’m just asking to be able to make that choice for myself and not have other people do it for me.

Were you angry that your work was censored?
Being born in Saudi as a woman, I’m used to it. I wasn’t really outraged. I kind of saw it coming.

I imagine these photos have a different impact on people who aren't from Saudi Arabia and don't see a whole population of women dressed like this all the time.
To someone who’s not from Saudi, it looks strange because you’re not used to people looking very similar. If you’re from Saudi, you’re used to seeing women dressed in the same thing. But seeing these pictures together makes you think, You know what, maybe we’ve taken it too far. Saudi men have the option of wearing traditional outfits or jeans and a shirt, and women don’t have that choice.

A lot of the Western press is saying that Saudi Arabia is going through some kind of feminist revolution, what with the release of the recent anti-domestic-violence ad and the change in bicycling laws. What do you make of that?
When I heard about the cycling law, I thought it was ridiculous. I mean, come on, you can now ride a bike with a guardian? You might as well be driven in a car. The streets in Saudi are not made for cycling. It’s like the government is saying, “Look, we’re giving you something! Shut up, women!” No one wanted this. No one demanded the right to cycle.

Do your friends share your opinion?
Everyone jokes about it. Everyone thinks it’s really ridiculous. As a woman in Saudi, you’re always a minor, no matter how old you get. You always need a guardian watching over you. Even if you need surgery, a man has to give you permission. I also know a lot of people who want to travel outside of the country, but they can’t because their guardian won’t give them permission.

Do you think your photographs will help to change things at all?
The change is very slow and there are a lot of obstacles standing in its way. Young, educated women are trying, but most people are too brainwashed to think for themselves. But I do think art is the most useful tool when it comes to promoting feminism in Saudi Arabia, because you can speak about so much and still be vague.

How did you get into photography?
I started doing photography when my dad bought me a camera in middle school. In Saudi, you don’t really hear about photography that much. I used to look at pictures in magazines, but the people in the magazines we had didn’t look like the people around here.

What was different?
You wouldn’t see pictures of women in the abaya. Even in Arab magazines, the pictures you’d find were westernized. So I started taking photos of things around me and tried to make them look like the stuff I saw in magazines.

And now you’re exhibiting in Venice?
Yeah, I’m doing Venice with an arts initiative called Edge of Arabia right now. I’d love to exhibit more abroad; it’s given me an insight into what Saudi culture is like to other people. I think it’s interesting as a cultural experience.

Thanks, Nouf. 

Follow Tabatha on Twitter: @TabathaLeggett

More from Saudi Arabia:

Let Them Build a Women-Only City in Saudi Arabia

What's It Like Being a Stand Up Comedian In Saudi Arabia?

Saudi Arabia vs Israel: It's Cyber Warfare!

On February 7, 2013, there was a dispute inside Guantanamo Bay over prison guards searching Qur'ans. For the following two days, inmates ate the remainder of the food they had—including stuff that was reportedly two years past date—and, once finished with all of their decomposing rations, embarked on a hunger strike. Yesterday was the 100th day of the inmates' protest against their treatment and, out of the 166 still being held at Guantanmo, 102 are on hunger strike, with 30 being force-fed.  

Authorities at the prison camp have revised their guidelines to allow them to shackle hunger-strikers to a chair, before fitting them with masks and inserting tubes through their noses and into their stomachs to force-feed them for up to two hours at a time. Despite these efforts, some prisoners claim to weigh as little as 85 lbs.

Several attempts have been made to punish or dissuade inmates from their starvation efforts. According to Shaker Aamer (the last British resident being held in Guantanamo), prison wardens have begun inflicting sleep deprivation on inmates, as well as adopting a new practice where, instead of shackling their hands and legs and pushing them along from behind, they're now clipping cloth dog leashes to inmates' waists and dragging them around like animals.      

Aamer is one of 86 inmates who have been cleared for release but are still being held inside the facility—something that, according to Clive Stafford Smith, a lawyer representing inmates at the prison, is completely irrational. “Any prison, even in the most despotic dictatorship, should not have 86 of 166 [52 percent] prisoners cleared for release,” he told me, before adding, “Obama hasn't shown the political will to do the right thing.”

Stafford Smith provided me with testimonies from three Guantanamo hunger-strikers in order to gain a little more insight into the Cuban detention camp that President Obama promised to close within a year back in 2009.

SHAKER AAMER

Shaker Aamer is a legal permanent resident of the UK. Aamer was volunteering with an Islamic charity in Kabul in 2001 when he was wrongly arrested, tortured, and eventually deported to Guantanamo Bay. He was cleared five years ago, but remains imprisoned today. At the time of speaking to Aamer, he had lost 32 lbs.

Aamer speaks about “forcible cell extractions (FCEs)," a euphemism for sending in the Emergency Reaction Force to extract prisoners from their cells. These "procedures" are apparently almost always carried out during prayer time, which seems a little insensitive. Then again, this is Guantanamo, where guards seem to stem more from the school of brutality than sensitivity. In one instance, the force exerted on one of Aamer’s fellow inmates was enough to leave him hospitalized, unconscious for four days.

Despite full knowledge that the prisoners are starving themselves, officers carry out FCEs in order to deliver food. “They FCE’d me at 2 PM to bring lunch,” Aamer explains. “They wouldn't take the lunch away. They left it until dinner.” He has also been FCE’d for water. “For three days now, if I say I want more water, they FCE me just to give me water.” Aamer has also been denied various items that were ordered for medical reasons and went ten days without being allowed a toothbrush. Which seems kind of a pointless thing thing to deny someone who's not eating any food.

Describing his experience of force-feeding, Aamer continually refers to "the Board"—something Stafford Smith describes as “a kind of hard stretcher that officers use to transfer prisoners involuntarily from their cells to the force-feeding, or other things.” He goes on to add, “It's better to use the board than what they're doing now, which is to grab inmates by the arms and legs and to drag them.”

Aamer goes some way to explaining the psychological toll he suffers while starving himself and remaining in prison for a crime he's been cleared of: “I try to go to sleep early in the night. Then I feel as if I've just died.”

NABIL HADJARAB

Nabil Nadjarab is Algerian but spent most of his pre-Guantanamo life in France. He moved to London briefly, but found the cost of living hard and quickly moved to Afghanistan, where he had heard it would be possible to live "without papers." Following 9/11, he—like Aamer—believed that, as a foreign Arab living in the country, he would be rounded up and killed by the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban military front.

Nadjarab escaped to the mountains, but was eventually discovered and captured. In 2007, six years later (SIX years later), the Administrative Review Board found that Nabil was not an "enemy combatant," and US interrogators have apparently even told him that his was a case of mistaken identity.

By the end of March, Nadjarab had lost 44 lbs after being on hunger strike for ten weeks. He explains, “On March the 22nd, I was force-fed for the first time. Since then, I've been force-fed two times a day, every day. To be force-fed is unnatural, and it feels like my body is not real. They put you on a chair—it reminds me of an execution chair. Your legs, arms and shoulders are tied with belts. If you refuse to let them put the tube in, they force your head back… [it is very risky] because if the tube goes in the wrong way, the liquid might get into your lungs. I know some who have developed infections in the nose. They now have to keep tubes in their noses permanently.”

“The real issue here,” Stafford Smith explains, “is that the US is force-feeding people in a gratuitously painful way to try to force them off their peaceful protest. So the US intentionally changed various procedures to make it less 'convenient' to be on strike. One change was to use only larger tubes. The second was to put the tubes in and take them back out after each feeding, rather than leaving the tubes in place. This adds immensely to the pain. Then they use the force-feeding restraint chair and leave the prisoners in there for hours at a time. All of this takes a medical procedure that is, according to the World Medical Association, already unethical, and transforms it into something that is just torture.”

For Nadjarab, hunger-striking is not just an act of protest, but the only solution to an insufferable situation. “I cannot stand being in here any further,” he says. “I am done. So I am sacrificing myself.”

YOUNUS CHEKKOURI

According to reports, Moroccan national Younus Chekkouri is one of the most compliant prisoners being held at Guantanamo. After leaving his home country for Pakistan in the 90s, he moved several times due to financial reasons and eventually settled in Kabul to begin working for a Moroccan charity. After 9/11, Chekkouri fled via Jalalabad and was met at the Pakistan border by officers rounding up people of Arabic descent en masse. After being apprehended, he was sent to a Pakistani prison, then on to Guantanamo.

Over the past decade, Chekkouri has been issued only one disciplinary. He began his hunger strike after officials raided his room, stripping him of "comfort items" that had previously been cleared by authorities. He reports that a close friend of his dropped to 120 lb, his face turning from red to blue, before he almost died.

Chekkouri is currently being fed Metamucil, a bulk-producing fiber supplement. “When I eat it,” he says, “it feels like the best food in the entire world. I am addicted to the small pieces of Metamucil.” But Chekkouri's forced diet concerns health experts, who believe the high-fiber supplement can prevent the body from absorbing key minerals. Chekkouri says that he wakes up from dreams in which he imagines “he is faced with large piles of food”.

Last month he wrote a sign on the window of his block: “Dial 911—I’m starving.” And another that simply read, “SOS.”

That so many people are starving inside the facility seems to still have no impact on the political decisions surrounding its closure. “The hunger strike has already got Obama's attention,” Stafford Smith explains. “It is our job to make sure the world doesn't forget these men, who are simply making a claim for basic human rights. It is notable, and hypocritical, that the US has often praised people in Iran or Burma for going on hunger strike to courageously demand their rights.

“The world is forgetting 800 or a thousand years of experience. This is all down to the politics of fear and vilification that the US has currently turned on Muslims, and is sadly something that is being emulated around the world. I just hope that we can all work to ensure that it is a brief passing phase on the march towards human rights, rather than something permanent.” 

Follow Nathalie on Twitter: @NROlah

More from Guantanamo Bay:

Yemen Want Their Guantanamo Detainees Back

Strange Things Are Happening at Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Trial

Meet the New President, Same as the Old President  

Noel's work appears courtesy of O'Born Contemporary.

More Canadian photo sets:

Some Photographs from the All About Pets Show

Peter van Agtmael Won't Deny the Strange Allure of War

Superstorm Sandy, Six Months Later

We went to Wee Waa for the global launch of the new Daft Punk record (even though the internet had already released it). If you’ve never been to Wee Waa, it’s 7 hours from Sydney and 12 hours from Melbourne. Which roughly triangulates to the middle of nowhere. There were a mix of dressed up die-hard fans, Sydney dance music kids, Wee Waa locals and other country folk who had stumbled in for a good time. The local paper read 'Dog Jumping and Daft Punk', so you can imagine how excited people were for this event. The Wee Waa show-girl pageant unsurprisingly also drew a strong crowd.

The set-up was in the shape of an octagon with a big circular light-up glass dance floor in the middle. Kind of like what people in Los Angeles might have on top of their pools. A soccer riot-like mosh formed in the middle and letting off a flare wouldn't have been totally out of place. It was on for young and old, so much so that you could have described it as a hoedown or possibly even a hootenanny. People danced and generally lost their shit for the entire album, so it lost any of the jarring pretentiousness that a listening party can otherwise imply. The lulls in the album made sense and only made the crowd dance harder as it built up again. It was no surprise that Sydney kids were doing drugs up their noses and inadvertently spilling them all over the dance floor. The highlight of the night possibly came from a woman in boot-scooting attire, doing her best line dancing routine along to the music.

It's unclear why people were still speculating that Daft Punk were going to be there, possibly hiding in the disco ball only to be unveiled at the very end. People want something to believe in. As the policeman who pulled us over on the drive told us, 'You know Daft Punk aren't gonna be there'.

The disco ball made it a semi-spiritual experience, as if we were worshipping at the temple of disco. Huge lights from each corner beamed up into the sky pointing out that there is something more out there after all.

This guy was actually launching fireworks out of his helmet. He seemed fine with it.

So alluring.

The onesie has taken over the world, regardless of the occasion an animal suit is apparently always appropriate. It would be too obvious to say that his nose and fluffy white rabbit cheeks look like a stubby cock and balls, but they really do.

Everyone was making out when the slow lovey-dovey track came on. Everyone knows that slow burning love is better than a one-night fling. This dude’s comforting hand is showing his lady that he's not going anywhere.

The Wee Waa show president was loving it. It was the biggest turn out in its 79 year history, so he'd earned a few XXXX lagers.

Saint Laurent may be overpriced, but surely making your own isn't the answer?

He was taking a break from his “Around The World” robot dance to grab a lager. Fun fact: he'd painted his face black underneath. We're not sure why either.

And then it was over. We hung around for a bit watching drunk people flying around on carnival rides before going to bed. The next day, before hitting the road for the long drive home, we stopped to chat to some locals about their thoughts on the big event. 

Jess & Jason

What'd you think of the show last night?
Jason: It was pretty big for Wee Waa! There were so many more rides this year.

What was the best part?
Jess: Me winning! I lead cattle.

How do you judge that?
Well there's junior judging, parade and breed classes. They get judged on their attributes like their colours, their size... and this is a bit dodgy, but their testicular development and stuff like that. Parading is how the person shows off their cow.

What's the best way to show off your cow?
So you don't want to go into the ring with mud on your cow. You want it nicely brushed and washed. You blow dry them as well.

Do you own your own cow?
No, not yet! The cow that I want is probably about $60K. They're worth that because they're pure-breds.

What else is on?
There's demolition derby on later on tonight. They're pretty cool. Normally there's a rodeo but because Daft Punk were here it had to be postponed.

Would you enter the rodeo?
Yeah I'd go steer riding. You might break a few bones though.

Emma (Winner of the Wee Waa Showgirl competition)

How does it feel?
Oh it's so exciting! It still hasn't sunk in yet properly. I love it.

How was it?
It was pretty nerve-wracking! It was just before the Daft Punk show so the arena was full.

How do you become a showgirl?
You just have to have grown up around here really. You need to know a bit about the area.

How did they judge the competition?
We were asked questions about ourselves, general knowledge about the area and stuff like that. It was very easy, almost relaxing. It was fun.

Where do you buy your clothes from?
There's Robbies clothing in Wee Waa and some really good shops in Narrabri (35 km away) as well.

Do you ever go interstate?
Occasionally if we go on holiday we might go to the Gold Coast.

What'd you think of the Daft Punk show?
I thought it was great! I remember being on the dance floor and just thinking that I can't believe this is happening in Wee Waa. It's just crazy. I saw so many people from town having the time of their lives. Everyone was so happy that they chose Wee Waa.

Sarah

What's your horse's name?
Her stable name is Poppy.

How do you get her ready?
You have to make sure you get all the stuff out of her coat, you plait her mane, you make up her face and put black stuff on her hooves.

How old are you?
I'm ten.

Have you been riding for long?
Yeah. Since I was four.

Have you hurt yourself riding at all?
I had a pretty bad fall once. My horse was named Kit Kat and was a bit small. It bucked, which means that its hind legs were up and I ate dirt. My lip cracked too. But I've never broken a bone or dislocated anything.

Angus

Did you come for the show last night?
No I live here.

Are there many people in Wee Waa with long hair?
Not really. My brother has longer hair than I do.

Do you play music?
Yeah I play the bass. I'm into black metal. I'm trying to put a band together.

Gravitron controller

Do people throw up a lot in there?
They do outside yeah. They've been spun a couple of hundred times, but it only hits you once you've stopped. A guy just threw up over there [points two metres away from where we're standing].

Do you get sick controlling the ride?
It can mess with your head, even though you're not moving. Its especially bad if you're hungover.

Do you do this full-time?
Yeah I do. The whole ride's on a semi-trailer and we go all around the country.

Dodgem Car Man

Is he happy hanging out with you here?
Well I went back to my caravan for lunch and he was crying, so I decided to take him back with me. They're men's dogs, so they don't like to be around women. They only like men.

What's his name?
His name's black boy. I didn't think he'd pull through because he's so small. His mother's name was BB, so I called him black boy, so he'd have the same initials.

For more Daft Punk:

Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' Collaborators: Pharrell Williams

Daft Punk's 'Random Access Memories' Collaborators: Panda Bear

If my calculations are correct, my birthday falls on a Saturday every seven years. This year I realized that my enthusiasm for Saturday birthdays is nowhere near where it was when it last occurred on my 22nd. That birthday was the last time I blacked out from drinking. Or at least, it’s the last time I can remember being told about it. My buddies had to deal with me that night, and so they earned the right to do this to me:

Now, on my 29th, I have found that my birthday spirit is a bit more weathered. The night before, I did some conventional chilling indoors with my homeboys and didn’t say anything when the clock struck midnight. When I got home later, I stayed up until dawn just fucking around with music stuff and decided I’d spend my birthday morning smoking a perfectly crafted joint on the waterfront. That was before I’d walked up and down several blocks and realized that you can’t safely smoke a joint outdoors anywhere in New York City. As I sat back in my room smoking this momentous joint, I thought about a previous birthday I spent in this area. Most people did something phenomenal for their 18th—or at least something stupid enough to make for a great story. That was the initial plan for mine. Promises of strippers and debauchery were made, but pies and vomit were delivered.

Bhai, my older brother who appears frequently in this column, taught me just about everything I know about everything, from how to play a basic kick-snare beat to how to roll a joint. There was, however, one glaring area that he left untouched. He’d never felt comfortable talking to his little bro about sex, and so in hindsight I should have realized earlier that his promise to take me to a strip club on my 18th birthday was an empty one.

We arrived at his friend Tono’s apartment in Greenpoint, where Tono was already chowing down on a nut roll from a nearby Polish bakery. He lived with his cousin, Fred, who was addicted to some MMO game and also sold trees. Tono welcomed us and gestured toward a collection of glass pipes on his coffee table. I’d seen them before. Our boy Prik had left the collection with the crew before he moved back to Thailand. At first glance they looked like pretty nice pipes, but even a slight inspection revealed countless flaws in the craftsmanship. The least mangled one was a bubbler that was offputtingly similar to an erect penis (the balls were the water chamber). Regardless of their appearance, they worked, so we hit all of them in succession, bowl after bowl, leaving burnt gobs of Fred’s weed tapped out on the table. We’d gone through a fair pile when my brother realized he hadn’t arranged for any sort of cake. At this point I was more concerned with the strip-club plan, which was still a mystery to me. He said that we’d head out as soon as we had some cake, so off to the supermarket we went. Here, we predictably grew distracted and ended up bringing home four dessert pies.

When we got back to the place we smoked and ate for about 40 minutes before all the pie was gone. We sat for a moment, amazed at our own capacities for trash food, before I asked my brother when we were going to roll out the rest of the evening’s plan. Tono smirked and informed us that no strip club worth going to would admit an 18-year-old. It hadn’t dawned on us that even though I could gamble, vote, buy porn, and smoke cigarettes, I still had a stretch of the youth gauntlet to traverse before I’d be able to enter an establishment that serves alcohol. So unless we were willing to rent a car and drive to a place in New Jersey called (I believe) Frank’s Chicken House, the birthday plan was dead. I glared at my brother and realized he never had any intention of making a man out of me, or whatever it is that happens to an 18-year-old in a strip club. He had just thrown out the idea, balked when I went for it, and then tried to distract me with weed and pie. I had been had.

When the sun went down we stepped out to grab a beer at a local dive that didn’t card, and as soon as we hit the sidewalk I stopped, bent over, and barfed out an assortment of pies into a neat pyramid. I think it may have happened again later, after I put three too many beers into my empty teenage stomach.

It’s odd that when I’m asked to recall what I’ve done for previous birthdays I always draw a complete and utter blank. This is the only birthday story that I can remember. It was the last birthday I looked forward to because it marked the end of my heavily supervised teenage years and made me a grown-up. I’ve been allowed to do whatever I want every day since, which has made it easy to lose track and forget that this one day of the year is supposed to be a special one.

Previously - T. Kid Versus Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves

@ImYourKid

My favorite four things in this world are 1) bargains, 2) rich people's houses, 3) celebrities who have been famous for so long they're losing their grip on reality, and 4) snooping through other people's shit.

So I was overjoyed when I found out there was going to be an estate sale featuring the entire contents of one of the houses Nicolas Cage lost due to his financial troubles. Can you imagine a better celebrity house to snoop through? His whole financial mess was caused by his blowing money on stuff like dinosaur skulls and albino king cobras.

So I headed down to take a look around. 

Prior to my arrival, I'd been picturing madness. Not, like, Hoarders-level madness, but that kind of controlled, polished madness that the sort of person who buys dinosaur skulls surrounds themselves with. I was expecting, like, secret corridors, a trapeze room, and a desk that used to belong to the Unabomber or something.

But, disappointingly, every room of the house looked like this. 

A totally bland mix of Mediterranean and oriental stuff, like every other Beverly Hills mansion decorated by an interior designer circa early "noughties." (See also: the Osbournes' house, The Bachelor's house, all filming locations for reality TV shows between the years of 2000 and 2009.)

Ditto all of his possessions. Just standard, gaudy rich-people stuff. Like the kinda stuff poor people have in their houses, but purchased in shops without price tags where they give you complimentary champagne. 

There were some personal items scattered around, though. Like a couple hundred copies of a comic book that Nic wrote with his son about a reincarnated Union soldier working as a detective in post-Katrina New Orleans (or something) that I never knew existed. 

Then I got to the closet of the master bedroom. This is just the hallway of the closet, BTW—it was made up of several rooms. Its total size was, depressingly, larger than my entire apartment. 

Which is where I found a pair of Nicolas Cage's old long johns. I grabbed them to give to someone as a novelty birthday gift. 

The closet was also where I found this. Not sure if you can make it out from the picture, but it's a fireman's helmet and two whips (like, the kind of whips old people buy after reading 50 Shades of Grey, not, like, the kind you use for horse riding or tomb raiding).

Which, on the one hand, is exactly what I wanted to see in Nicolas Cage's house. It's weird and funny and indicative of something you would totally expect him to be doing in his spare time. But it also made me feel gross and voyeuristic. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was looking at stuff that he wouldn't want me to be looking at. 

Like, this is WEIRD, right? That Nicolas Cage's ex-wife's underwear was all just lying out for people to rifle through and buy for a dollar?

Which was kind of how I felt for the rest of my visit. 

Like, when I went to look around the library and found this. Which, obviously, is hilarious. 

But then looked into the box next to it and saw this. A parenting book about dealing with "children who are out of control," which was on top of a bunch of other self-help books about stuff like learning to live with Tourette's, communicating better with loved ones, and how to stop yourself from getting wrinkles.

Which was kind of a bummer. 

:(

Also, "God Wants You to be Rich"...

This was a house where Nic had gone through a divorce. Where he'd dealt with someone's mental illness. Where he'd worried about normal people stuff like wrinkles and money. And which was now being repossessed by the bank because he fucked up his finances. 

I felt like a parasite, hunting for hilarious things to buy from a ruined man's life, while people sneaked peeks behind doors marked "do not enter" around me. 

This was the breaking point. One of those cushioned toilet seats that are, without question, the absolute grossest things in the entire world. Why did a man like Nicolas Cage have this in his house? Why did he let it get all cracked and nasty? I felt like I was looking at a physical manifestation of his depression. 

The thought of Nicolas Cage sitting on this thing, with years of farts and pee seeping out into his thighs through the cracks while his marriage crumbled around him and his uncontrollable child succumbed to Tourette's and OCD was too much for me. I felt like the biggest bottom-feeding shit bag in the entire world, and had to bail. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is: If you're given the opportunity to take a glimpse into the private world of a walking joke, DON'T. It will ruin them for you. Nobody wants their LOLs to be humanized. I just tried watching the "NOT THE BEES!" clip, and I didn't even crack a smile. All I could think about was Nic's miserable old mansion full of failure. 

I didn't even feel comfortable buying his old thermal underwear as a hilarious present and had to go put them back in the closet.

I did snag this extension cord, though. I needed a new one, and at $4, it would've been irresponsible not to buy it. 

A couple of years ago, my friend moved out to Malaysia in search of a life where a winter wardrobe isn't a thing and you don't have to worry about stuff like moronic bro culture or seeing Kim K.'s face on television. What he found was a job as a bar manager in an establishment frequented by Malay punks covered in swastikas, wearing Combat 18 (a neo-Nazi terrorist organization) T-shirts, and harping on about "Malay power."

Turns out they're a group of far-right nationalists who want to rid Malaysia of any nonethnic Malays and stop immigration into the country. Which, although pretty backwards and reductive, isn't all that surprising in the current world climate. What was surprising, and kind of confusing, is that they identify themselves as neo-Nazis, are fond of sieg-heiling, and listen to Nazi bands like Skrewdriver and Angry Aryan, yet definitely aren't Aryan themselves. And adopting a worldview that specifically discriminates against your race seems a very odd thing to do.     

I was told that one of the most popular Malay power bands is an act named Boot Axe, so I got in touch with band member Mr. Slay to find out why exactly a group of Malaysians are going through this bizarre, neo-Nazi identity crisis.  

VICE: Hi, Slay. So what’s the deal with all this "Malay power" stuff then?
Slay: Malay power is important because we're concerned about keeping a pure Malay community all over the Malay Archipelago [the archipelago between Australia and Southeast Asia, believed by some to be the homeland of the Malay race]. I'm a second-generation fighter for Malay power. The first generation, who founded the Malay-power movement, have been less active recently. Malay power stems from a point in history—the 13th of May, 1969—[when] the Chinese and Malay communities fought each other. However, the punk and skinhead Malay-power movement started in Kuala Lumpur in the early 90s.   

As far as I understand it, the idea that there's a Malay race—which is supposedly indigenous to the Malay Archipelago—was proposed by German scientist Johann Blumenbach. There's a lot of contention over whether or not such a race actually exists. For a start, Blumenbach’s theory hinged around the idea that there were only five different races in the world, which is clearly pretty flawed. I take it racism features pretty heavily in your ideology?
We're extremists in regards to the Malay race, but that doesn’t mean that we're extreme racists. It’s not about racism. It’s all about being Malay.

OK. How exactly is Naziism culturally relevant to Malaysians? Malaysia isn’t a country that most people would associate with Hitler and his Third Reich buddies.
Malaysia is home to people from China, India, and foreign immigrants from Bangladesh, Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Burma. The government can't control the entry of immigrants, and we get so many of them. There are so many protests against the government about this issue, but they haven’t done anything tangible to improve the situation. Race has become a focus because of the inclusion of uncontrolled numbers of these people in our society.

How has immigration affected you? 
Malay people have been affected in socio-economic terms. Ethnic Malays also fall prey to criminals who come from abroad and sell drugs and commit murder, rape, robbery, and so on. The lesson that we can learn from Naziism is that we can take extreme racist action if the position of the Malays is affected by these factors. We won't practice overt racism if the Malay race isn't compromised, but, if threatened, we will take action.

So you aren’t openly hostile to minorities at the moment?
We don’t like minorities in Malaysia if they can’t co-exist with the Malay race. If they are good, then we are good.

What about Jews? Most Nazis aren’t too fond of them.
All Malay power punk and skinhead bands are outright anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist. Study the origins of the descendants of the Malay people from thousands of years ago and you'll see that we're connected with the Jews. According to the Jewish scriptures, a "lost tribe" of children from Israel who are divinely guided—which means they must be Muslims—will kill the Jewish Zionists in Palestine. In the beginning, Zionists thought that Native Americans were the ancestors of the lost tribe. Then an American scientist and theologist called Professor Ralph Olsen concluded that the Malay in the Malay Peninsula are the descendents of the lost tribe. This hypothesis is a half truth. The Malays are not 100 percent descendents of the lost tribe, but Ralph Olsen’s theory about the adventures of a lost race is an interesting one.

This is all news to me. It sounds as if there's an Islamic ideology mixed in with Nazism here, which is a little confusing.
Malay power is connected to Islam. It doesn’t have links to any pro-Islamic movements, though.

So you’re a neo-Nazi movement with elements of Islam and some Jewish scripture thrown in for good measure? I’ve noticed that your band appears to be quite fond of the slogan "blood and honor," which is the name of a British neo-Nazi group. Were you influenced by neo-Nazis from over here?
We weren't directly influenced by British neo-Nazis because we realize that the extremists in the UK don't like Asian people. We just took the slogan "blood and honor" to demonstrate our identity.

Do you listen to British and American Nazi bands?
Yes, I listen to English Rose, Skrewdriver, Brutal Attack, and Angry Aryan.

That’s quite a selection. Do you think Skrewdriver would be into Boot Axe?
No, I don’t think they would listen to our songs.

Do neo-Nazi groups exist in other Asian countries?
Yes, in Indonesia, Singapore, and Japan. In Singapore, there's a Nazi black-metal band called As Sahar.

Is every Malay neo-Nazi a punk? Or does Nazism extend beyond the punk and skinhead subculture?
No, all Malaysian neo-Nazis listen to punk and skinhead music.

You get anti-Nazi punks in quite a few countries—do they exist in Malaysia?
Yes, they do exist, but they dare not openly oppose us. They are afraid to speak out.

How are you regarded by the general public? Are they afraid of you as well?
Speaking honestly, maybe some people don't believe that the average, ethnic Malay citizens of Malaysia agree with us. However, we are not all that violent or extreme, as I have already told you.

How successful would you say your movement has been so far?
We make minorities afraid to commit crime in Malaysia. We always warn them not to cause trouble here. Violence isn't a solution for us because we begin with discretion, tolerance, and politeness when talking to these immigrants. If they insist on continuing or if they are stubborn people, we will do what is necessary. We also do charity work for the community and for Palestine, Syria, Somalia, and other countries that are at war. We've also tried to have discussions with the government about how to overcome the problem of having so many immigrants, but we were ignored. We're very different when compared to European and American neo-Nazis, who state openly that they want to eliminate races other than the white race. We start off with restraint and a zero-tolerance stance, but we won't keep up this position if the Malays in Malaysia are threatened.

OK. Finally, how do you square being a Nazi with not actually being white?
Most worldwide organizations say that Nazism is just for whites. And yes, we are not members of the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan race—our community is brown-skinned, brown-eyed, and dark-haired. We've just adopted the spirit associated with Naziism as a symbol for the Malay race’s response if it's threatened by racial issues.

Thanks for answering my questions. 

All images courtesy of Slay.

More stuff about the far right:

Apparently Europeans Don't Care if Pop Stars Dress Like Nazis

Nazis Suck at Making Board Games  

Triumph of the Shrill  

Surrounded by howling kids and animals, I made my way across the show floor and discovered the Royal Canin Championship & Household Cat Show nestled towards the back of the room. Each section of the convention could be described as a miniature neighborhood, and in this case, it appeared as though the dog-people and cat-people were kept separate by a divide of birds and fish (naturally). Over in cat world, a loudspeaker called out pet names while nervous pet owners prepared their felines for a few moments on the podium. On planet canine, swarms of spectators who were anxious for animal affection hung around with breeders, who discussed the peculiar particulars of their profession. It was weird, and I loved it.

See more of Nathan's work on his internet website.

For this week's Mahal, I got to catch up with Galen DeKemper about his latest skate video, MMM. Galen has been shredding New York City for the last decade. When he is off his board, he can be found reviewing stuff for Quartersnacks or lurking at the TF. Below is his video, some related photos, and our chat about the future of New York City skateboarding. 

VICE: What's the story behind MMM?
Galen Dekemper: I started filming MMM around the hurricane, after I finished filming my previous video, Free Buzz. Matthew Mooney gave me a HD Flip Cam, so I used that to film whatever caught my eye.

Last time I saw you out, you filmed Mooney getting clotheslined by a bunch of red velvet ropes surrounding a skate gap. Does that kind of stuff happen often for your camera?
That's the prime candidate for Quartersnacks' Slam of the Year. Things involving Mooney happen often with my camera, though clips of Mooney out of TF are more rare. Mooney's step-off wallie and that slam are Gonz's two favorite parts. I'm happy the poles weren't bolted in. It's mostly low impact skating. It's a release from constant deliberate challenges.

Via

There does seem to be a new generation of high impact skate kids in New York City, jumping down everything in sight. Why do you think it has come to that point?
It's within their reach. One of best parts about skating is doing a specialized, unique skill that a non-skater could never approach. For a skater to do tricks that even other skaters could never approach is impressive and heady and a chance to leave a unique mark.

Is New York City becoming more similar to California due to the new skate parks?
Dunno. I try to avoid skate parks in my life and thus in my clips. They do provide a helpful learning curve perhaps, but are no substitute for the streets which is the best part of skating and New York. Also, I used Young Scooter in the soundtrack because he shares a similar interest in speaking to the streets. 12th Street and Avenue A was a sick New York skate park that wasn't quite a skate park, RIP. And TF is so sick because it's an anti-skate park in its way.

What are your favorite street spots to film at?
Houston Bump is a favorite. With Shawn Powers, it's tight because he picks up clips on every block. We don't have to choose a spot, just choose a direction to head from Tompkins. Fresh new spots are always best. I like Gay Ledge. I like to film at spots I like to skate, but sometimes I'd rather skate too. Filming at popular spots gives a fun chance to look for new angles. I like being on top of ledges filming down. I like filming flat at places too, because it's the best way to see what angles capture the body best for certain tricks. My camera doesn't have light, but Midtown at night is a representative New York session to me.

What is your prediction for the future of New York City skateboarding?
I predict DJ Roctakon 360-flipping for at least another decade, Mooney releasing a full part before the end of the year, Shawn traveling to England and reciting poetry for the Queen, QuarterSnacks making Snackman cufflinks, and more tricks down Central Park Hubba. Also, my next clip, Yeah Man, drops around end of summer.

For more Galen, check out Dollar Stories.

Photos by Galen DeKemper and Eby Ghafarian.

Video by Galen DeKemper.

Words by Taji Ameen.

@RedAlurk

Previously - Hanging with John Joseph from the Cro-Mags

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" here.

Read all 13 installments of Combover, Brett Gelman’s novel about Hollywood, baldness, and the beauty of the Jewish tradition here.

I'm not sure if this story about Barack Obama is actually racist or just really disturbing, but we're going to run it through the This Week in Racism "Racism-o-Meter" anyway, and see what comes out. With the assistance of my friends at the @YesYoureRacist Twitter account, I’ll be ranking this and other news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “racist” being the most racist.

According to testimony given during the prostitution trial of his three former aides, Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was alleged to have dressed women up like Barack Obama and then had them perform stripteases. Now, I am not here to debate the erotic merits of President Obama, nor am I here to question the sexual preferences of Silvio Berlusconi. I am here to wonder if these women wore blackface. Also, what about those giant fucking ears he has? Fake mole? I think this is one of those "teachable moments" I've heard so much about lately. I'm giving this a 2, because I'm genuinely still totally fucking confused.

- Police in Agoura Hills, California, are looking for someone who spray-painted racist graffiti on the walls of the local high school. The message included the phrase “Ni**ers will die,” which school officials erased without telling students or parents. Two days later, students showed up to school to find a “hit list” of African American students painted on the bathroom wall. They're right though. Ni**ers will die. Unfortunately, so will everyone else one day. RACIST

- This is the logo for a food truck in Los Angeles. I don't know why this is in here other than it made me laugh. Also, I've often fantasized about slapping my own mother.

- In Great Britain, a newly elected councillor representing the UK Independence Party—which goes out of the way to say it’s “not racist”—found himself in hot water after sharing on Facebook a cartoon depicting Muslims being burned at the stake using copies of the Quran. "I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” said Eric Kitson of Stourport-on-Severn. “It's just a bit of bloody stupidity." Kitson added that he has “several Muslim friends,” which of course automatically disqualifies someone from being Islamophobic, as everyone knows. Also, I don't think bones can be racist. What would a "racist bone" even look like? A bunch of swastikas on a femur? 8

- Last week we told you about Jason Richwine, the Heritage Foundation analyst who once wrote that Hispanics are genetically predisposed to have lower IQs than “native white Americans.” Ignoring the fact that there’s no such thing as a “native white American,” Richwine’s assertion that Hispanics are genetically inferior is pretty much a textbook example of racism. Even the Heritage Foundation agreed, firing Richwine soon after the writing was made public. But Richwine still doesn’t see how his assertion could be racist, telling the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, "The idea that I am some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth extremist never even crossed my mind." Probably not, but then again, I've heard Chris Brown thought he was just "explaining things" to Rihanna's face. Richwine added, "The accusation of racism is one of the worst things that anyone can call you in public life." I can think of a few things that are worse, such as being told your entire race is inferior... but what would Richwine know about that? RACIST

Jason Richwine's best friend, Ann Coulter, receives this week’s Ann Coulter Award for Excellence in Racism for this:

We've already established that Jason Richwine is a huge racist prick who has no sense of shame. The fact that Ann Coulter feels the intense need to paint a total asshole as a victim is one of those twisted pieces of logic that makes me want to curl up into a ball and die.

@YesYoureRacist’s 10 Most Racist Retweets of the Week [all grammar sic'd]:

10. @Jay_Flo6: “I'm not racist, but I couldn't date a white girl if she has messed with a black guy. #NoRacismIntended”

9. @Cal_E_Boi: “I'm not racist but as soon as I see a black man under the age of 25 driving a BMW I immediately shout drug dealer”

8. @RodeoPrincesss: “Im not racist but black people and white people just dont make cute couples.”

7. @bmill98: “Im not racist...but jews make themselves pretty easy to hate”

6. @2_jayyyz: “I'm no racist but I hate, hate, HATE, wet backs”

5. @SashaDaniels: “I'm not racist but im actually terrified of Jews”

4. @toriiiiz: “I'm not a racist but I f*cking hate middle eastern guys.”

3. @Mattt_Lee: “I'm not racist but that group of chinks can f*ck off. Twats.”

2. @graceegregory: “I'm not racist, but I understand where Hitler was coming from.”

1. @AlifNorazmii: “I'm not racist but ni**er really stink!!!”

Last Week in Racism:

Happy Confederate Memorial Day!

@dave_schilling