Vice Mail

NOW I HEAR THE LAUGHTER
Dear Vice,
I had a revelation about Vice magazine and all pop culture the other day. The way I see it, pop culture in America (and Canada and the UK) is divided into two groups: Catholic and Protestant. Now, the people involved may not be practicing the religion but the roots of their beliefs go back to one or the other. Entertainment Weekly worships celebrities and treats them like they’re special. That is Catholic because it’s about worshiping deities. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are the new priests, popes, and saints.

Vice would be protestant because it sees that kind of stuff as “worshiping false idols.” You see celebrity culture as the new blasphemy. That’s why you make fun of them. It’s two different ways of seeing the world that go back hundreds of years and can eventually be linked to religion. You either believe some people are blessed and are above the rest or you believe everyone’s equal.

That’s not to say Protestants can’t see some people as great or worthy of a higher salary. Protestants are not Maoists. You guys say a lot of people are great. But you never say they are “special,” and that’s a big difference.

Sincerely,
Kara Giraldi
Washington, DC

We only say people are special if they’re retarded like you.


COSTUME CHANGE
Vice,
While I appreciate their craftsmanship and tenacity, I think those dudes Josh and Blake need to lay down the bong and stop thinking so hard. Siamese twins dressed up as Cheech and Chong? Come on, dudes. It’s just too concept-heavy. It’s nerdy. The yeti thing was a true engineering feat but of course could never be worn out for Halloween. So yeah, I never thought I would say this to a couple of total hosers, but stop thinking so much!

GRAHAM CULP
Toronto, ON

You cannot be fucking serious. The Siamese Schappell sisters dressed up as Cheech and Chong is the product of divine inspiration. God on high pointed down at Blake and Josh and told them to make that masterpiece of a Halloween costume. And speaking of the big guy…

Click to enlarge

JESUS REALLY LOVES ME
Dearest Vice,
I’m 15 and a sophomore at an all-female Catholic high school in LA.

My parents hate me. I am not a lesbian. As freshmen in religion class, we all received this letter from “Jesus,” i.e., the nun who teaches the class (she also closely resembles Alvin, of the Chipmunks). It’s a riot, but I lost my original copy. I found this shockingly similar letter addressed to ‘Colleen’ in the hallway. I give it to you now. I figure you can do something with it.

Warmest Wishes,
JULENE PAUL
Los Angeles, CA

PS: God bless you all! Oh, and by the way, wasn’t Jesus scary enough before he told us that he “saw [me] fall asleep last night and [he] wanted to touch [my] brow?”

Wait till your libido starts up. Having a male model hippie that looks like John Frusciante lie in your bed and pay attention to your needs is about to become your favorite thing.


ANARCHY, FOR REAL!
Vice,
You don’t want anarchy; you want a beer. I surely would love to see total anarchy. I would love to bash in some skulls, slit some throats, and rape and pillage and loot, right along with everyone else. In a civilized society you can’t do that, and societies were basically formed by “the weak” to protect themselves from the strong. I despise it, but the “current” society is what’s best for most people and I like electricity and indoor plumbing and having a few dollars in my pocket. I “tolerate” it all. The people in power definitely don’t want things to change, and they benefit “the most” from it. That’s why they say it’s so great and continually try to “brainwash” people into believing it. God bless America —-> (Fuck that shit).

BRYAN BAILEY
Long Beach, CA

Mental note: anarchy doesn’t work. Thanks for the tip.


BOOMER BALLYHOO
Oh Vice,
You oversimplify the boomers’ turd of a legacy. First, to call the civil-rights advances indicated by Steve Gillon “matter[s] of time” is unsupportable. What progress did occur had been given more than enough time. The boomers didn’t accomplish the civil rights movement but, encouraged by their demographic advantage, they at least applauded it before touching themselves in the mirror and writing top 100 best albums lists. Of course they utterly wiped out whatever good they did by abandoning the cities, ruining education, and, yes, canoeing.

Next, their fiscal/economic policy is truly a piece of shit, but it’s the logical outcome of what their parents left them. The postwar hegemony the U.S. enjoyed was a result of Europe being shit-stamped and our monopoly on knowledge-heavy and exportable goods. Now the same system of trade gives us a gape of a deficit. People used to need us and our stuff, but now they can make it themselves and sell it to us. The fact is that we were never all that competitive—we were just the only ones playing. Now, however, our lifestyles are too extravagant to allow for a competitive advantage unless we as a country compensate by learning some math and inventing some very useful shit. Hovercars? If that’s what it takes.

KEITH LITTLE
Via email

How about we just make our own stuff and do our own jobs? How’s that for a notion? As far as we can see, the only people willing to discuss this are the folks at economyincrisis.org.


EXCEPTIONS PROVE RULES
Dear Vice,
Fuck. Vice changed my whole shit up with the We Hate Your Parents Too Issue. I feel so lame admitting that if that issue didn’t come out, I would never truly know who my father is. Now it’s simple. The dude hates boomers. He was born in 43 during the war to a Norwegian immigrant, listened to Creedence, worked to pay for his Super Sport only to get fuckin’ ripped one day and crash it, joined the Navy, got fucked during the recession in the 70s and had to work the fam off food stamps, then got a gig at a refinery in Jersey, where now—after 35 years—just got fucked outta two thirds of his pension three years before retiring. Fuck is he ever a great dad. He brought me up shooting shotguns and saying shit like, “hippie-dippie horseshit” and he always hated the New York Times. One time we were watching TV during some Woodstock documentary and he stated, “You know, this is a bunch of horseshit. That was only a small group of people back then. The rest of us were out busting our asses.” If I knew what I know now I’d have been keeping him knee-deep in Genesee Cream Ale since I was five.

MICHAEL EIDE
Brooklyn, NY

There are exceptions. We call them grandpa boomers even though a lot of them are barely over 40.


THE KIDS KNOW WHERE IT’S AT
Dear Vice,
Just when I was beginning to fear this month’s dose of the emotional torture I so enjoy bestowing upon my parents would go unjustified, I was reminded of how I’m 24 and can barely afford to wipe my own ass because of those capitalist pigs and all their lame hipper-than-thou friends.

Even better, if I do fart out a kid before my ovaries shit the bed when I’m 35 it’ll probably look like the Elephant Man because the boomers spent more time talking about environmentally sound practices than actually practicing them. Mommy won’t be able to afford to stay home with poor little Quasi either so he’ll end up more fucked-up than I was.

The idea that I have to try and dig a future out of this heaping pile of shit makes me want to throw in the towel and do a fucking jack-knife off the roof of some McMansion in suburbia hell. My only comfort is found in thinking of the majority of those zeroes from my parents’ generation rotting in nursing homes where they’ll be lucky if they plummet to their death when Nurse Ratched kicks them down the stairs.

Thanks!
EVS
Cambridge, MA

Wait, don’t give up hope. They are only a few years away from holding out their hands and asking us to pay for their pills and pensions. Guess what the answer will be.


CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR
Hey Vice,
Fuck you. Fuck you for taking a really good fucking idea and beating it to a pulp and turning it into a pile of shit. That’s what your We Hate Your Parents Too Issue is, a fucking piece of toilet tissue that I pick the hanging shit off my skinny white ass with. Normally you motherfuckers are really with it. Normally you guys know enough about a topic to do pretty much a whole magazine that is pertinent and smart. But this one sucked, man. You guys need to stay away from being historians. It started off great. I was like, shit yeah, these guys are hitting it right on the head why I fucking hate my parents. My parents rant about Bush and I tell them, “You want Bush to stop fighting oil wars? Guess what, then you need to stop using oil. Turn off your nifty home appliances and stop eating those prepared meals that so much plastic went into creating. Go fucking do something about it, you fucks, if you care about Iraqi children.”

But then you tried to tell us shit like feminism was stupid. You’re fucking stupid, Vice. You almost had a real gem, the type of shit you could have put in a metal canister a hundred feet below the earth to leave to the fucking aliens so they could learn about our cultural history when they conquer us in the year 3128. But fuck, you turned it into a goofy piece of shit.

Fuck you sincerely,
MLS
Via email

Sorry, but women were way better off in the 50s.


INSPIRATION STATION
Dear Vice,
I just finished reading the We Hate Your Parents Too Issue cover to cover. I thought the past few issues were pretty bad, to be honest, and was worried my favorite magazine had fallen off, but WOW. You guys said exactly what I have been saying my whole life. Even my parents hate the baby boomers. In fact, a few years ago my mom jokingly emailed me a list of reasons to hate the baby boomers and I meant to send it to you guys. What I wouldn’t do to have that long lost list now.

Anyway, you nailed it. Especially the part about no future. I have been in the same dead-end job for five years now, and I’m lucky to have it. When our parents got out of school they were happily whisked away to the workforce. My mother had a degree in English and got a job editing interoffice memos just like that. She’s still doing the same kind of thing and making pretty good money. I have two degrees: political science and history. That’s why I do data entry for about the same wages as a short-order cook. The reason I say I’m lucky to have it is, unlike our parents, when we graduated there was nothing. You could teach English in Japan (or if you were a girl be a “hostess”), work on a farm, wash dishes (baby boomers’ dishes) or deal drugs. I did all of them. I even almost tried the hostess thing at a Japanese gay bar. For five years after I graduated I cursed the baby boomers under my breath and you guys went and listed every reason why they deserve such hate.

The one mistake you made was, ironically, media. Namely, journalism. They are the worst journalists in the history of journalism. All they do is sit at their desk and answer the phone when a PR person calls. They write down what the PR person says, get a photo from the PR person, and that’s it. Even the war journalists just sit in the nearest bar and ask the little orphan kids what happened that day. I accidentally passed through the Balkans right when the war broke out and met these guys. They would just drink all day and bitch about their coworkers and then the local kids would come in at the end of the day and hold out their dirty hands for some coins. The journalists would interrogate them about what happened that day, pay the kid, and then stumble back to their hotel rooms to email it back to HQ before they forgot. Pathetic. Talking about this reminds me of that article you did on Leo Regan where you talked about “immersionism” (where I grew up, that word was used to describe the proper way to baptize a baby). Regan didn’t pay little kids to tell him about skinheads. He lived with them for years. And his friend (forget his name) immersed himself so deeply in the heroin-addict scene for his photos (or was it a movie?) that he actually became one. That’s what separates us from the baby boomers. We aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty. You know why? Because after we graduated we had nothing. We were forced to travel all over the world and dive into whatever life brought us.

In that sense I’m kind of happy our parents ruined everything. It prevented us from being soft like them. Sorry about the rant, but I’m a pretty good typer and when I get going I find it hard to stop.

Kevin Keanes
Ross-shire, Scotland

Dear Kevin,
Your letter inspired this entire issue.
Thanks,
Vice


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