Saturday, March 31, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
People Are Saying This Christian Surfing Movie Is the Next 'The Room'
A few weeks ago, I attended a screening of Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear at the Laemmle in Beverly Hills, the same chain of independent movie theaters where The Room first screened 15 years ago. It wouldn’t shock me to see Surfer find a similarly enthusiastic audience.
As with Tommy Wiseau’s midnight movie favorite, Surfer is a self-funded indie filled with non-sequiturs, passionate performances, unexplained diversions, and bizarre dream logic. And like The Room, describing Surfer doesn’t do the movie justice; it’s a film that needs to be seen to be understood.
Douglas Burke, Surfer’s auteur, has crafted a fascinatingly absurd drama about a boy who must rediscover the courage to surf again with the help of the ghost of his father. His real-life son Sage plays the titular “Surfer.” Burke plays his father, “Father of Surfer.” The movies has overt Christian themes, including multiple oral tellings of Bible stories. It also has a dead whale, some truly incredible green screen, and one of the most uncomfortable portrayals of a mentally incapacitated person ever committed to film.
Burke served as the movies star, writer, director, producer, financer, and composer. In his 50s with a square jaw and long dark hair, Burke looks a little like Wiseau and a lot like comedian Richard Lewis on Curb Your Enthusiasm. When he’s performing at his most heightened, he reminded me of Robin Williams doing a Billy Graham evangelical voice.
Around the midpoint of the movie, Burke delivers a full-throated monologue, moaning and shouting, “God put me together with squid and electricity! We don’t have a lot of time... I’m gonna melt back into the ocean. I wasn’t supposed to FEEL!!” He pauses, then vomits black liquid as his son watches in silent horror.
The monologue lasts a full ten minutes before his scene partner, his son, speaks. This is within a 12 minute single take, with no cuts or camera movement. Later, Burke told me it’s the longest single-take movie monologue ever. It feels like it.
Surfer only played for a week in Los Angeles (to satisfy the requirements for Academy Award considerations), but the movie attracted attention in a similar way to The Room in the pre-YouTube era of 2003—comedians discovered it, then told their friends.
“I saw the trailer before Nic Cage's new movie and I could barely concentrate on it because I couldn’t stop thinking about Surfer,” comedian Brandie Posey told me.
“So bad it’s good” is the label for these types of films, but that description seems inaccurate. Hollywood studios release bad movies every month like clockwork, but nobody’s doing midnight screenings of, say, Monster Trucks. On the other hand, movies like Surfer and other “so bad it’s good” indies like The Room, Birdemic, and Ben and Arthur are bizarre, opaque, and surreal. A “bad” studio film is a chore, but a “bad” indie movie can be an unintentionally revealing look into another person’s soul.
A few days after the screening, I met with Surfer's star/director/writer/etc for an interview. We met at his office at USC, where Dr. Burke is a professor of physics. As an obviously smart guy, I wondered if he was maybe attempting to emulate Wiseau’s success, but besides being vaguely aware of The Disaster Artist, Burke said he wasn’t familiar.
I explained that The Room is a movie that but most audiences find to be funny, but was originally envisioned as a drama. I pointed out that, at the Surfer screening I attended (which Burke spent sitting directly behind me), the audience was laughing throughout the movie.
Burke suggested that the audience might have been laughing because they were in awe of his performance. “I think people at some point have to laugh if the actor is doing a good job,” Burke reasoned. “It’s going to make the viewer feel a little bit insane, and start to laugh a little bit. But there’s also a lot of deep, deep tragedy.” Burke explained that his inspirations were more classical than modern, citing Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. “I love to write poetry and perform it as though I’m on the middle of some Shakespearean stage,” he said. “No other producer would ever let me do that.”
Surfer is Burke’s first film, so seeing his work on the big screen was important. “For me, movies go to theaters, then they go to TV, then they go to home video. This movie could run on ESPN films. It could run on NBC. It could run on Trinity Broadcast Network. Each of those is a separate deal.”
It’s true that the faith-based circuit has become increasingly profitable for independent films. In the past five years, the amount of Christian-themed movies released theatrically have more than doubled. “I don’t know that you can make The Bible cool to people, but maybe [ Surfer] makes it cool, in a way,” he said. “I don’t know that there’s been a movie that can appeal to the faith audience, to the teen audience, and also has a cool factor [like Surfer].”
One scene features Burke shouting another monologue to his son in front of a dead whale. “That’s a real whale,” he told me.
Burke read online that a whale carcass would be washing to shore near them, so he quickly pulled together a shoot for the same day. “It stunk. It smelled. Imagine the worst sour milk you’ve ever smelled. That’s what it smelled like.”
“To me, it was a gift from God,” he added.
Burke said the discomfort seen on Sage’s face in the scene is real. “If you watch his face, you can see it in his face, this foreboding feeling,” he said. “I don’t think he’d been around a big dead whale before.”
Now 16, Sage appears to be a talented surfer, but I wondered how interested he was in acting. “He hasn’t done any other acting,” Burke said. “It shows his innocence. He’s not older than 14 through the whole movie. He’s only six in the first scene where he’s speaking.” I was curious if Sage knew what he was signing up for, being in his dad’s movie.
“He enjoyed it,” Burke insisted. He explained why he felt defensive about questions regarding Sage, who was unavailable for interview. Burke recounted reading a review that described Sage as “mortally embarrassed.” Burke recounts all of this to tell me that Sage’s reaction to the review was, “How does this guy know I’m embarrassed?”
I reminded him the review was a positive appraisal that ends with a recommendation to see the film. This led to a broader discussion about the film’s perception.
“What some adults don’t understand, as a film critic, they might not like it, but the film’s not for them,” he explained. “It’s for teenagers, and teenagers love it. It’s a father teaching his son. If the boys in the audience don’t like it, then you’ve failed, because the message is for them.”
“I’m sure there are people who don’t want to teach their son the Bible. That’s okay. They would not like the movie, I guess,” he added.
It felt like Burke thought criticism of Surfer meant the audience was either attacking his son, failing to understand the Christian themes, or have a bigoted view of Christians.
"Is there a fear that audiences might get it and not like it?" I asked.
“I don’t know. That’s tough,” Burke said after a long pause. “You know, if the critics stick all their knives in it, okay. Then they’re sacrificing a lamb, and you know what happens after that.”
After we parted ways, I tried to sort through his lamb metaphor on the drive home. Was he suggesting that criticizing Surfer is necessary for the common good? Did he mean it in reference to the “Lamb of God,” as if to say, criticizing Surfer is similar to killing Jesus Christ? Would that mean the movie starts over again for the critic after three days but with a 20-minute single-take monologue? Like everything else about Surfer, I’m not entirely sure it added up to anything more than well-intentioned eccentricity. In cinema, that’s a virtue.
Surfer is screening April 6th—12th at Regency Lido Theatre in Newport Beach. Future screenings will be announced on the film’s website . No date yet for digital release, though Burke told me it would happen “eventually.” I recommend a viewing when you have the opportunity.
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What Being a Sex Worker Taught Me About Men
Like most women, I’ve been sexualized more times than I can count, both with and without my permission. I’ve been told by bosses to wear a skirt next time—the shorter the better. Like nearly every woman I know, I’ve sat down in a coffee shop with a book only to find myself held hostage by some man, striking up what could pass as innocent conversation. Not wanting to be rude or assaulted, neither physically nor verbally, women engage with our harassers just as long as we have to. I’ve had hot coffee thrown at me for not smiling back at a cat caller. I’ve had male friends, classmates and coworkers stun me silent with an out-of-nowhere comment about the shape of my ass or size of my breasts.
When I became a sex worker, I had a sort of ah ha moment: putting up with men was work, I realized—and I didn’t have to do it for free. Whether I was working as a table dancer in London, a gown club in New York City, or some hole in the wall off a freeway in the midwest, the men were the same. More than dances, they wanted me to sit silently and listen while they complained about their jobs or talked shit about an ex. I was therapist, marriage counselor, career advisor, priest. The emotional labor men feel entitled to that women are expected to perform for free, I got paid for. And—unlike other service jobs or the real world—if a dude was particularly awful, security would step in while I walked away.
Some years later, when I went back into sex work as a call girl on craigslist, it was similar: much of the job was emotional, rather than physical labor. The sex itself was not very different than encounters I’d had as a civilian. Sometimes pleasurable, it was, so much more often, unmemorable. Men’s needs took priority, whether I was engaging with them for free or for pay. By the time I started having sex for money, like many women, I'd had a lifetime’s worth of fucking that had left me feeling fucked. At least, as a prostitute, I was getting paid.
To believe all sex workers are inherently victimized by their profession invalidates the experiences of those who have been. Sex workers, though at greater risk for victimization due to the criminalized and stigmatized nature of their work—are, on an average day, no more or less harassed or put upon than any other woman living in this sexist world. That said, to believe the sex industry doesn't have an effect on the private lives and identities of its workers—as some pro-industry advocates argue anecdotally—is equally obtuse.
I’ve spent the years since transitioning out of the industry coming to terms with the complicated sexual experiences I’ve had in my lifetime. Now, it seems women who haven’t traded sex for cash have begun to engage in a similar reckoning: from the #metoo movement and Harvey Weinstein to the New Yorker short story, Cat Person, and the much-read (and debated) story about a bad night out with comedian Aziz Ansari, we’re talking as a culture about sexual harassment and the meaning of “bad sex” in broader terms. We’re talking about consensual experiences that have left us feeling unsatisfied and taken advantage of. Consent, we’re collectively realizing, is sometimes not enough.
The #metoo movement has gone a step further, and complicated our understanding of ethical sex. Ethical sex isn’t just consensual—it’s non-exploitative, it’s protected, it’s honest, it’s pleasurable. Something can be consensual and still really fucked up—exploitative, dishonest, unsafe, not pleasurable. We’ve finally gotten to a place where we’re talking about more than just “rape” or “not rape.” I got to this place myself when I left the sex industry. I reconciled myself to the fact that the sex I’d had for money, though consensual, was unethical in other ways. It was exploitative. It was joyless. I had nothing in common with my clients. Sometimes I hated them.
When I transitioned out of sex work, I began seeking everything my intimate life was missing: I wanted sex that was pleasurable and non-exploitative. I wanted a romantic partner I could be honest with, and who shared my values. I wanted someone who treated me with concern and respect. To be sure, some sex workers are capable of finding this while working in the business—and some privileged sex workers may even find this with their clientele—but most sex workers, I’d imagine (like most women) are used to far less.
So accustomed to abuse, I fell into a codependent relationship with a man who took advantage of me financially while using my sex work past against me. After I left that relationship and started meeting men online, I often rushed too quickly into bed. Sex too soon meant I fell hard for men I felt sexually compatible with, but with whom I had nothing else in common. I had to put aside all the shame-based reasons women are encouraged to delay having sex in order to break my bad dating habits.
Eventually, I learned to weed out what I’d call the “client” types—men so engrossed in themselves that my presence barely registered. Men who'd choose a bar as our first or second date, even though I’m sober. Men who talked on and on about their novels, never asking what I did for work. I stopped giving time to just anyone and held out for men I actually found interesting. I began demanding men give me as much space as they took up.
I learned to factor sex into an emotionally fulfilling relationship. Casual sex with strangers had been easy, whereas sex in the context of a relationship presented certain challenges. I didn’t know how to act—or, more accurately, I didn’t know how to “not act,” I had grown so used to performing. Although I’d been a professional at providing pleasure, like many women, I felt ambivalent about expecting it in return. After literally hundreds of partners, I couldn’t have told you what turned me on.
From the beginning, the man I eventually married was an attentive partner. As far as emotional labor, he does his fair share. One of the first major differences between sex with my husband and sex with a client is that the former checks in. In the beginning, if he thought I wasn’t enjoying myself or sensed that I didn’t want to continue, he’d stop. We communicated, constantly, verbally or otherwise —before, after, and sometimes during the act. At first, to be honest, this kind of attention was off-putting. I learned that if I wanted intimacy I would have to tolerate being seen.
These days, I’m still cornered into doing emotional labor. The other day, after a man helped me carry the stroller up the front steps of my building, I listened politely as he gave me childrearing advice. When he offered to return with a box of gently used baby clothes, I politely refused. Sometimes, I’ll be polite. He’s only being nice, I’ll tell myself. He knows where I live. Last night, when some guy at the gym insisted I remove my headphones so that he could compliment my routine, I asked to be left alone. Men will be men, and in my experience, most are after the same thing: they want a little attention, they want some company, they want an ego boost, they may want to fuck. Sorry, gentlemen, that’s no longer my job.
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The Venezuelan Ceremony Where Spirits Take Over the Living
Every October in Venezuela, hundreds of people make a pilgrimage to Mount Sorte for Baile en Candela, a celebration of the goddess María Lionza. Armed with drums, razorblades, liquor, and fire, mediums perform age-old rituals aimed at channeling the spirits of Lionza’s closest disciples—letting the mystic figures take over their bodies to speak directly to the living.
On this episode of VICE INTL, VICE Colombia trekked to the summit to see exactly what goes down on Mount Sorte each year. They spoke to Lionza's followers to hear why they made the pilgrimage, met up with a well-known spiritual guide, and looked on as a few brave souls had themselves possessed by the dead.
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This Viral Twitter Story About a Stolen Office Lunch Is a Teaching Moment
A long time ago, the complied wisdom and morality of a society would be passed down through an oral tradition that would teach the next generation through stories, songs, and ceremonies. With written language came the ability to inscribe these stories onto stone or papyrus, and it gradually became easier and easier for these sacred texts to spread widely. But fewer and fewer people look to old stories for real enlightenment these days, and for many, questions of right and wrong can seem old-fashioned. But that's not to say there isn't a hunger for a discourse that can teach us what behavior is praiseworthy. Now, we look to Twitter. More specifically, we look to this Twitter story about a stolen lunch that contains a surprising amount about workplace etiquette and ethics:
This comes from Zak Toscani, a comedian, and though it is unverified (like all the old legends) we can still draw lessons from it. According to Toscani, his coworker bought a thing of shrimp fried rice at 11:30 AM and put it in the fridge so it would cool off by the time he took his break at noon. (I don't know why you would do this, but let's not fixate on that.) In that narrow half-hour window, the shrimp fried rice vanished. The perpetrator was captured on camera, however, and the wronged coworker saw the tape:
This is the most important part of the story, the element that transforms it from a gossip-y office tale to a genuine moral lesson. The question here is not whether stealing a lunch from the office fridge is wrong—it obviously is. The question is, what do you do with a fridge thief? What kind of punishment is appropriate?
The most libertarian among us might argue that it is not the place of office authorities to police the fridge. They might ask, "Well, was your lunch labeled?" They might tell you that the proper course is to write an angry note on the office messageboard (if such a thing exists), or tape a NO STEALING sign to the fridge. Why involve HR at all? Was the fried rice really that good?
The more law-and-order perspective posits that the perpetrator should be disciplined in some way—if not fired, then given an official warning. Or at least have to compensate the wronged party for his lunch. You can imagine an office (or a society) where there is a set punishment for a stolen lunch. The thief not only committed a crime against the fried rice–haver, she broke the covenant of the office fridge, the fundamental idea that if you put food in it and it is either clearly labeled or obviously your food and not a communal item, then you can rest knowing the food is secure. An office community that cannot trust the rules of the fridge is a broken office community—so that community should have the right to punish violators.
On the other hand, a society may also way to pay attention to the victims of crime and factor that into the resulting penalty. Here, the victim demonstrates not a desire for vengeance, but a loyalty to his fellow office workers as a group—he knows that a firing would upend the perpetrators life, and would not want that disproportionate penalty to be handed down. Instead, he just wants his curiosity satisfied.
In the United States, the idea that victims should have an expanded role in criminal court proceedings—often referred to as "victims' rights"—is controversial, with some arguing that it can put defendants at an unfair disadvantage. You can imagine a scenario where a more vindictive would-be rice luncher demands that the thief be fired, or where a prior relationship with the thief colors the punishment process unfairly. But the victim here has opted for a more informal punishment process:
So while the perpetrator hasn't been officially sanctioned, clearly everyone in the office knows that she stole a lunch. This is clearly a form of punishment, as the office as a whole knows that she is untrustworthy.
So here we have a second violation of the office code. No one expects a thief to admit their crime in public, but here we might have expected a half-admission: Oh was that your lunch? I'm sorry I thought it was garbage and threw it out. Or else a confession with a exculpatory factor: I am deathly allergic to shrimp. I needed to get rid of it. I will buy you a new lunch. The lack of shame is what has the office "about to start screaming."
Further, she hides behind the "no snitching" code of conduct, which posits that victims of and witnesses to crimes shouldn't involve the authorities. In fact, the victim here follows a version of this principle—he could have demanded punishment, but he didn't. The offender, not knowing this, continues to make herself look foolish.
Indeed.
So here we come to the end of the story, and it's final lesson, which is that sometimes punishment does not even involve letting the punished know it is punishment. Here, the penalty for her crime is almost symbolic—she has to eat the exact sort of food she threw out. More importantly, she is seen eating the food and likely being mocked, not just in this office, but in offices across the world, thanks to this viral thread. That is, if she even exists. The whole thing might just be fake.
But fake or not, the viral story affirms the values that so many office workers hold dear, and codifies them: The office fridge thief is the lowest of the low. It's wrong to wish someone else be fired for a petty offense. And informal, community-driven punishment can be more effective than judgments handed down from on high.
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A Teenager Used AI to Generate Bizarre, Surreal Nude Portraits
For Robbie Barrat, beauty is in the AI of the beholder. OK, beauty might be a stretch, but these neural network nudes are definitely strangely fascinating.
Barrat, a recent high school graduate in West Virginia, made the images by feeding thousands of classical nude paintings scraped from WikiArt into a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). The GAN, uses a system of two neural networks called a “generator” and a “discriminator,” to create convincing versions of the works using data from the paintings and machine learning.
When he previously tested this technique with landscape oil paintings, Barrat (who you might remember from his viral Kanye West neural network project) says the GAN was able to produce fairly convincing compositions with some surreal accents. In the nude portrait experiment, however, the neural network refused to move past its Dalí period.
“The GAN didn't successfully learn how to make realistic nude portraits,” the 18-year-old Barrat told me via email. “The discriminator part of the GAN isn't really able to tell the difference between blobs of flesh and humans, and once the generator realized it could keep feeding the discriminator blobs of flesh, and fool it this way, both networks just stopped learning how to paint more realistically.”
Though people might immediately recoil at these doughy beasts, Barrat hopes that people see the potential in art made with the assistance of AI. He said, “I believe that one of the next great art movements will be AI-created art. Just like how when the camera was introduced, art shifted from being focused on realism and accurate depictions of events to being more abstract and impressionistic.”
Barrat lives in San Francisco and has been working on AI projects with tech company Nvidia since he graduated from high school. He says he’ll soon be moving to work in a research lab at Stanford University, but he also hopes to one day attend art school.
You can see more of Barrat's AI generated nude portrait project at his Github profile, and follow him on Twitter here.
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The Office That Vets Trump Appointees Is Full of Bros Icing Each Other
For those of you who need reminding: Smirnoff Ice is a bottled malt beverage. It is cloyingly sweet, looks like murky winter sludge, and tastes like something a pharmaceutical company might concoct to conceal a chemical flavor. It also gets you drunk. But Smirnoff Ice's primary popularity seems to come not from actually drinking the vile stuff, but instead forcing others to guzzle it down, frequently on one knee, while you bask in their misery.
This, dear readers, is called "Icing." And while it is a game played primarily by drunken man-boys slogging through business undergrads, it turns out that Icing is popular somewhere else, too: in some corners of the Trump White House.
According to a new report from the Washington Post, the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO)—the office that vets and hires Trump's appointees to the administration—spends its time in-between filling staffing gaps from the highest turnover in recent presidential history by, well, forcing each other into drinking Smirnoff Ice.
The section in question starts like this:
PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine, and snacks for dozens of PPO employees and White House liaisons who work in federal agencies, White House officials confirmed.
So far, pretty normal. A lot of workplaces have work parties and happy hours and whatever, right? But then comes this particular tidbit:
In January, they played a drinking game in the office called “Icing” to celebrate the deputy director’s 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.
The White House confirmed that PPO officials played the Icing game but said it and the happy hours are not unique to the PPO and are a way to network and let off steam.
Let's pause for a second here and unpack what this scene might have looked like, shall we?
It starts with the deputy director, the birthday boy, stumbling across a murky white bottle of Smirnoff Ice in a cupboard or desk drawer or something. He laughs, then, knowing what he must do, and the other PPO employees stream in, surrounding him, filling the cramped kitchen as he takes a knee. His Adam's apple bobs, ferrying the citrus malt down, gulp after gulp, as the huddled throng of his employees closes in tighter around him—everyone desperate to see their boss on his knees with the bottle in his mouth and finger-lengths of liquid draining with each successive gulp. The room is almost humming and the crowd roils in unison until the Ice is gone and the birthday boy, no, man, finally rises to his feet once again. The entire room lets out a unified sigh, none realizing they had been collectively holding their breath until that very moment, and...
OK, maybe we're embellishing things a bit here, but still. The guy got iced. An adult male working in the Trump administration. This is a thing that happens, everybody.
But wait! They also vape!
Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said.
And then, between the Icing and the smoking of electronic cigarettes known as vaping, they get around to selecting the people who will run our country.
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53 Reasons Life Sucks for Millennials
Friends, we are living in dark times. College is really expensive, student loan debt is crushing many of us, wages have been stagnant for years, and we'll never buy houses. Meanwhile, pension plans have been replaced by 401(k)s, which run out, and the average millennial has a grand total of $0 in savings accounts. That means we’ll all probably die on the floor of an Amazon warehouse in the middle of a shift—with the exception of those who can figure out how to get famous from vaping on YouTube. Those are pretty much the only two options.
That said, millennials who aren't able to inhale for very long out of a USB stick shouldn't obsess over the dark times awaiting them. After all, life expectancy is, like, 120 or something? Worrying for that long will only make you more miserable and you're going to have to put up with a lot before the day a robodog finally carries your lifeless corpse to an enormous burial plot owned by Jeff Bezos. Trust us, it might come as a relief. In addition to the commonly known horrors millennials have to deal with, here are 53 more.
- There's a nonzero chance robots will kill us all.
- If we don't die from the terrifying substances people put in cocaine first.
- Don't forget the opioid crisis is killing people at a horrendous clip.
- But in the meantime, it's way harder to find LSD than it used to be.
- There are too many things to watch.
- Not to mention way too many fucking podcasts.
- We have to listen to bad opinions about how much better music used to be.
- We have to listen to bad opinions about college students.
- We have to listen to bad opinions about Star Wars every year now??
- Every movie now ends with actors yelling into a wind machine while a CGI blob destroys a city.
- All the information in the world is available to everyone. Everyone is an expert, and nobody has agreed on anything for 20 years.
- Thanks to WebMD and the nationwide rise in anxiety, it's possible to convince yourself that every ache or twinge is leukemia or ebola or spinocerebellar ataxia type 6.
- We know exactly how awful all of our childhood idols were as people.
- The world is more connected than ever before, meaning everyone is able to read the story of Garlic Cock Man or see a photo of the “cumbox.”
- It's hard to avoid people because everyone has cellphones.
- We can’t hide from government surveillance.
- Our personal data is being used constantly by faceless corporations for purposes we don’t understand.
- Most of our experience is now mediated through a screen.
- Social media makes us all anxious.
- Our dumbass actions and opinions from when we were 18 will live forever on the internet.
- We could accidentally become memes.
- The price of making a bad joke on Twitter is basically death.
- That thing where you try to explain a meme or Twitter-based joke to someone in real life and realize halfway through that you are being intolerable.
- Nazis have Twitter.
- Everything about Facebook.
- We can’t quit Facebook because you need it for work/staying in touch with people.
- Does anyone else have a hard time remembering so many passwords?
- Everything to do with vlogging.
- Everything about gender reveal videos.
- Liberal democracy might be failing in the West.
- Like, Donald Trump is president.
- Everything to do with cable news.
- Dating apps can give us too many choices, paralyzing us.
- Everyone has STDs.
- Antibiotic-resistant bacteria in general.
- There are too many novelty foods.
- Any food that’s not carcinogenic is too expensive to eat regularly.
- Services like Amazon and Uber depend on low-wage workers, but we can’t afford to be ethical consumers.
- We have to decide between watching our most popular national sport and supporting people getting brain damage.
- At some point it will be revealed that everyone who makes any enjoyable cultural product is a horrible person.
- It's possible to download and print a gun :(
- We never do anything cool like send someone to the Moon just to show we can.
- Those coffee places where they have like four different ways to make a cup of coffee and none cost less than $5.
- Climate change may ruin coffee.
- The ocean is filling slowly with garbage.
- And rising sea levels are now a genuine danger in places like Florida.
- Extreme weather events are becoming more and more common.
- Parts of the world will soon be so hot they’ll be unlivable.
- Animals are dying off at an alarming rate.
- Baby boomers are still in power, and still ruining the world.
- Articles about millennials are almost always reductive and targeted at stoking outrage.
- Journalism has been replaced by dumb listicles.
- Listicle writing is very difficult.
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The Trump Administration's Constant, Glaring Typos Are a Big Deal
Unpresidented. Consensual presidency. Covfefe. President Donald Trump makes so many glaring typos on Twitter that it’s part of his political brand. People compile lists, pick favorites, and and roll their eyes—Trump’s keyboard errors, like George W. Bush’s malapropisms, are low-stakes enough that, even as we obsess over them, we can just laugh them off. But these sorts of mistakes aren’t limited to just Trump. His White House and wider administration make an unprecedented (unpresidented?) number of typos, grammos, and other errors, ranging from misspelling the names of officials and foreign dignitaries to repeatedly using the term "attaker."
Both Trump’s personal errors and the administration’s bloopers are subject to similar types and levels of glee or derision by critics. But while we can safely shrug at Trump’s thumb slip-ups, the other errors have the potential to be far more troubling.
As the English language and spelling historian Simon Horobin pointed out to me, although they have long been used as proxies for intellect, personal spelling and grammar errors almost never truly matter. They rarely affect our ability to discern meaning. English spelling especially, Horobin noted, is utterly illogical. So using it “correctly” is more a sign of memorization skills than anything else. Especially in the digital era, where so much of communication is rapid and informal, such errors are rarely taken to be meaningful. So when Trump boffs something on Twitter, that may amuse some observers, but it can’t tell us, in isolation, anything about the him. “In general, my view is that we should not take spelling mistakes too seriously,” stressed Horobin.
“Our reactions tell us more about the reader than the writer who produced the error,” added Julie Boland, who studies how people process language, especially others’ linguistic snafus.
However institutional errors cannot be dismissed as easily. Rightly or wrongly, Horobin notes, spelling and grammar errors are often associated with fraudulent or fly-by-night operations. As such, most institutions make it a point to stay on top of the language in their official texts, often putting multiple sets of eyes on them. When those oversight systems begin to fail, for whatever reason, the resultant errors potentially carry more weight or significance.
Individuals with experience in White House communications or document drafting operations in recent administrations point out that the federal government has developed strong systems and norms for vetting everything it produces. That doesn’t mean the system has ever been perfect—no matter how many rounds of fact- and copy-checking may exist, errors always slip through from time to time. The Obama administration misspelled “Feburary” and Ronald Reagan’s name in a few official documents, for example. But in the past these systems have ensured that far fewer errors show up in official documents than we’ve seen in the Trump era. “It is surprising,” admitted Horobin, “that more care isn’t taken to ensure a higher standard of accuracy in formal documents coming out of the White House.”
No one I’ve spoken to knows exactly why or how the conventions checks in this administration seem to fail so often. Horobin notes that most of the errors “suggest too much reliance upon spellcheck,” which only recognizes non-words and turns them into real words. This would explain statements about the Trump administration pursuing “the possibility of peach” in the Middle East, or common misspellings of individuals’ names. Spellcheck reliance could stem from several root causes—relaxed vetting policies, for example—that may lead to “unprofessional” results, but not point to serious concerns about the administration overall.
However, many official texts also include errors that even spellcheck should catch. Sometimes officials appear to be “spelling words as they sound,” said Horobin, like “honered, rediculous, or unpresidented.” Other times, it seems like someone was just typing carelessly, like when president became “predisent” or energy became “enety.” The same applies to instances when the administration uses the wrong title for someone, usually a head of state. Some documents make both types of errors—with alarming frequency. When the administration tried to issue a list of terrorist attacks it believed had received little media attention, for example, it used the term “attaker” almost two dozen times, as well as spellings such as “San Bernadino” and “Denmakr.”
This too could come down to staffing issues or looser vetting policies. But it could also, as Boland pointed out, suggest these documents were produced in a rush, so much so that they bypassed vetting systems or were subjected to cursory and inexperienced vetting at best.
Boland believes that even errors made in haste by the administration are still often overblown. The final results are still almost always legible and unambiguous. But this rush and sloppiness does have an effect on how seriously elements of the public takes this administration, which officials seem to realize—they do often catch errors after the fact and correct them quietly. And it raises legitimate questions about how carefully official statements, or even executive orders and presidential memoranda, were thought through before being released into the world.
“The number and nature of the errors found in the White House documents suggests a lack of due diligence and concern that undermines the credibility of the message and the office from which it originates,” said Horobin. “If you are unsure about the spelling of a word, or the name of a head of state, all you have to do is look it up. Getting it wrong suggests a poor grasp of detail, and a worrying unwillingness to invest in insuring details are accurate.”
“A lack of concern for detail,” he added, “often points to a poor grasp of the larger picture.”
In rare instances, this inattention to detail can have serious, practical implications. Boland and Horobin both note that linguistic ambiguities or grammatical goofs can, when parsed by legalistic minds, complicate the implementation of an order, or open opportunities to use it in a way the authors may not have intended. Errors can also cause friction with individuals, groups, or even other nations as well. We’ve seen examples of this, whether in boneheaded references to the “President of Palestine” (rather than the “President of the Palestinian Authority” that America actually recognizes) or in the tortured efforts to implement some of Trump’s confusing, clearly rushed early executive orders, especially those concerning immigration systems.
All of which is to say that when Trump writes a stupid tweet, well, who really cares? But when the wider administration puts out documents that make boneheaded errors, we should be placing them in a separate category and calling them out clearly and often. They may not matter often in a practical sense, but they are legitimately worrying.
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The Man Who Murdered Six Muslims in a Mosque Says He’s Not Islamophobic
This article originally appeared on VICE CA.
The man who murdered six Muslim men when he shot up a Quebec City mosque last January says he’s not Islamophobic.
Alexandre Bissonnette, 28, walked into the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec during evening prayers on January 29, 2017 and killed six men: Azzeddine Soufiane, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Abdelkrim Hassane, Mamadou Tanou Barry, and Ibrahima Barry. He critically wounded five victims, including Aymen Derbali, who was paralyzed after Bissonnette shot him seven times.
Bissonnette, a University of Laval student, pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder Wednesday, after initially pleading not guilty. In a statement to the court, he said he doesn’t know why he committed the heinous crimes.
“I don’t know why I did something so foolish,” he said, according to the Montreal Gazette. “I’m not a terrorist, nor an Islamophobe. I was taken over by fear, by negative thinking, by desperation.”
He also asked for forgiveness.
"I'd like to ask for your forgiveness for all the harm I caused you, even though I know what I did is unforgivable.”
Bissonnette said he pleaded guilty to save his victims and their families “from going through a trial and reliving the tragedy.”
After Bissonnette was arrested, a picture emerged of him as a right-wing troll who admired French nationalist Marine Le Pen, who has been vocally Islamophobic.
According to friends and acquaintances, Bissonette is also a vocal supporter of Donald Trump, and trolled a Facebook group for refugees.
Despite the fact that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other politicians referred to the shooting as a “terrorist attack,” Bissonnette was never charged with any terrorism-related crimes.
Mohamed Labidi, the former president of Quebec City's Islamic Cultural Centre, told the CBC Bissonnette words don’t explain why he did what he did.
"A lot of victims, a lot of suffering, at the end, for nothing," Labidi said.
Psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher told the court Bissonnette’s mental state has improved in recent months, and that he’s been medicated for depression and suicidal thoughts.
If made to serve consecutive sentences, Bissonnette could face a minimum of 150 years in prison.
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The Implications of Trump's Latest Trans Military Ban
Last year, the White House announced a blanket ban on transgender service members in the military. The policy was quickly found to be unconstitutional by multiple courts, but the Trump administration promised that it would return in six months. And last week, it did.
On March 23, the White House issued a memorandum reinstating the ban. Under the guidance of Defense Secretary General James Mattis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, Trump stated that "transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria—individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery—are disqualified from military service."
Broadly's Diana Tourjée, who has been following the Trump administration's attack on the trans community, discusses the impact of the latest memo, and what could happen with the policy on this week's episode.
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Jim Carrey's Presidential Portrait of Trump Belongs in the Smithsonian
Jim Carrey, actor and aspiring political cartoonist, just added another piece to his collection. It’s arguably his best work yet, a semi-nude study of President Trump enjoying what appears to be two scoops of chocolate ice cream. "You Scream. I Scream. Will We Ever Stop Screaming?" (2018) is a marvel of form, honest expression, and craftsmanship, a priceless piece of modern art. In short, it belongs in the goddamn Smithsonian.
And that's exactly the home the artiste envisioned for it, petitioning the National Portrait Gallery to make the masterwork Trump's official presidential portrait. And rightfully so: Just looking at the texture of Trump's fuzzy blue robe, the tension in his jaw, the wormlike squiggles of his chest hair, it's only natural to envisage the piece hanging next to Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama, or Amy Sherald's of Michelle. Factor in how gingerly Trump's pointer finger fondles his inexplicably oblong, shrimp-colored nipple—the pièce de résistance—and Carrey's work is basically a shoe-in.
Some might argue that Carrey's career is too short-lived for him to deserve the honor of crafting the president's official portrait, a fair criticism. But to that I say: Look how he's evolved! He's come so far from his humble, amateur beginnings, when you couldn't even recognize who the hell he was drawing.
Or even if you could, they looked like neanderthals.
So, too, has he grown more subtle—instead of flat-out depicting the president boning a starlet, or portraying Trump's adult sons being gored by an elephant, he's toned his lewdness down, opting for a simple, unadorned nip in lieu of something much more lascivious.
Gaze once more at Trump's blue eyes, half-closed and watery with pleasure, the weight of his mysterious hair helmet, the unorthodox, vivid pallet with which Carrey rendered him. Take in the bold strokes of what looks like hot pink and orange highlighter, the warm red slug of the tongue, the attention to detail in the shadow cast by the ice cream bowl.
It's glorious. It's innovative. It's perfect. It is, in a word, art. If that thing doesn't belong in the Smithsonian, I don't know what does.
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Drew Schwartz moonlights as VICE's art critic. Follow him on Twitter.
Related: Jim Carrey Flames Fashion Week
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Virginia Tech Athletes in Hot Water After Singing the N-Word on Camera
In this clip from Desus & Mero, the VICELAND hosts discuss a video that emerged of the Virginia Tech women's lacrosse team yelling the N-word while singing along to Chris Brown's verse on Lil Dicky's song "Freaky Friday." The video caused some serious backlash, leading to an apology from the team's coach. But for Desus and Mero, perhaps the most concerning part was why anyone was listening to Lil Dicky in the first place.
You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.
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Thursday, March 29, 2018
From Skater to Stunt Double
Ever since he was a kid, William Spencer has been pushing the boundaries of what a skateboarding trick can look like—using discarded barrels, rusty ladders, and lengths of chain to pull off one-of-a-kind tricks. Now, he’s turned his hobby into a career, going from an amateur skateboarder to a professional stunt double.
VICE met up with Will in Los Angeles to hear what inspired him to become a stuntman full-time, and to find out how he made it from the streets of LA to the glossy sets of Hollywood.
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Adnan Syed from 'Serial' Is Getting a New Trial
Back in 2016, a Maryland judge granted Adnan Syed—the man at the heart of Serial's first season—a new trial after the podcast threw his murder conviction into question. Prosecutors appealed the decision, hoping to get it thrown out—but now it looks like Syed is officially going back into the courtroom.
On Thursday, an appeals court upheld the lower court's decision, finding that Syed had ineffective representation at his original murder trial in 2000, CBS News reports. The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that his attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, had failed to call up a critical alibi witness: Asia McClain, who claims she was with Syed at the time prosecutors said his high school sweetheart, Hae Min Lee, was murdered, BuzzFeed News reports.
"Trial counsel's deficient performance prejudiced Syed’s defense, because, but for trial counsel’s failure to investigate, there is a reasonable probability that McClain’s alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed’s involvement Hae's murder,” the opinion reads.
Syed's murder conviction has now been vacated. His case is headed back to a lower Maryland court, where he'll be tried by jury on his original charges of murder, robbery, kidnapping, and false imprisonment.
Someone cue the Serial theme song.
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Alton Sterling and the Hollow Theater of Letting Killer Cops Go Free
It remains incredibly hard to watch the footage of Alton Sterling's death. The gruesome images captured by bystanders outside the Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 5, 2016, show how the father of five was already pinned to the ground, his hands apparently empty, outnumbered two to one by the cops as his brown body recovered from being stun-gunned, when he was shot at point-blank range. The shooter: a white officer who reportedly intimated to Sterling, only seconds before pulling the trigger, that he was going to kill him.
The playback of the officer’s gunshots is still jarring—clapping against your eardrums never quite when expected, like the loads of firecrackers that splinter the humid evening air every Fourth of July in Louisiana.
Nearly two years later, state Attorney General Jeff Landry's press conference Tuesday announcing the decision not to indict either of the officers involved was almost equally hard to watch and just as difficult to hear. Landry—a 47-year-old former police officer who was briefly a US Congressman as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave—stood before the podium in a navy suit and gold tie, and, reading from his prepared statement, declared with performed sobriety that “both officers acted in a reasonable and justified manner in the shooting death of Mr. Sterling.”
His full remarks, dressed in southern drawl and legalistic mendacity, were the insidious part-two of an increasingly familiar process that gaslights communities of color when their loved ones are unduly killed at the hands of police. Post-factum statements meant to rationalize police violence are an old dance, of course. But the practice has taken on a new edge under the specter of a White House that came to power by picking at the old, undried scab of “law and order” politics.
Donald Trump wasn’t subtle in his racism on the campaign trail when he—among other things—angrily pined for “the old days” when protestors “would be carried out on a stretcher.” Yet even Trump called Sterling’s killing back in 2016 “terrible, disgusting.” When he was questioned about Sterling’s death and the killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota officer (who since then has been acquitted by a jury) in the immediate wake of those back-to-back incidents, the then-candidate went as far as telling Bill O'Reilly, “I mean, the one man who was being stepped on and then shot, in particular, I looked at that and I said ‘wow, that's bad. That's bad.’"
This week, though, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders deflected questions on Sterling, calling the case “a local matter.” And the current Justice Department, led by Jeff Sessions—an Alabamian who was blocked from becoming a federal judge in the 80s due, in part, to concerns about his views on race—halted reform efforts credited with reducing police shootings by 29 percent. Last year, the Sessions's Justice Department cleared both officers involved in Sterling’s death of federal civil rights charges—admittedly a higher legal bar.
For his part, Landry looked to cast his inaction as grounded in stubborn realities, concluding near the end of his 20-minute statement, "These are the facts.” That declaration was preceded by an attempt to paint a picture of by-the-book cops pained to the core as they dutifully tried to get Sterling to comply, only to be forced to take lethal action. It was a play-by-play commentary contradicted by video evidence and the public statements of Triple S’ owner, Abdullah Muhlafi, who was reportedly not re-interviewed as a witness for the state attorney general’s report—even though the incident occured steps from his shop and despite Muhlafi’s own claims that while Sterling was armed (a loaded .38-caliber handgun was found in his right pocket), he never appeared to try and actually use the weapon.
Anticipating these criticisms, Landry said Tuesday, “This decision was not taken lightly; we came to this conclusion after countless hours of reviewing the evidence.”
Americans are told, again and again, of the quasi-religious need to value and trust in the work of law enforcement, particularly by the Trump administration. And yet, how can people respect a system that utilizes the sophisticated tools of legalese, the purported due diligence of formal reports, and the officialdom of drawn-out investigations to impugn common sense justice? These evermore rote non-indictment statements, in essence, mock the families victimized by police brutality with the old tragicomic line: "Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
“They get away with it by putting it right in your face and calling it an official report,” as the Sterling family’s lawyer, Chris Stewart, put it.
These press conferences are, in practice, a confidence game meant to make the state look stoic and rational so that commentary or public protests overtly questioning the state's rationale come across as immoderate, or even unhinged. If the prosecutor declares that he feels downright awful about what happened, but is simply being reasonable, according to the letter of the law, then the press, in turn, is pressured to also be impassive, no matter the outrageousness of a death we can all see on video.
But let's be brutally honest about what happened here: The decision to not even allow for a court case to decide if these Baton Rouge cops acted wrongfully is not just an insult to the Sterling family, and to the spirit of justice; it is also an insult to our intelligence.
As Wesley Lowery reported at the Washington Post, after meeting with investigators, "Stewart, the lead attorney for the Sterling family, told reporters that evidence shows that at the beginning of the interaction with Sterling, Officer Blane Salamoni put his gun to Sterling’s head, and said, 'I’ll kill you, bitch.'”
Are we really to believe that Officer Salamoni preemptively yelling that he will kill Sterling wasn't enough for at least a trial? Or that the Louisiana Attorney General's office, in light of the recklessness on display in the video, couldn't have admitted that the rash actions taken by the officers were "unreasonable"—the characterization necessary to indict? And are we, as writers, observers, and citizens, willing to pull the wool over our eyes and not admit that Sterling was likely to receive different treatment from the officers if he were white?
A few years ago, the famous gun-toting Bundy family and dozens of other white militia-minded supporters faced off with federal law enforcement officers who had moved to repossess Bundy's cattle due to his noncompliance with federal law. And not only did Bundy live to tell the story, but the federal case against him was declared a mistrial due to government misconduct.
What are the odds that the family of the young California black man Stephon Clark will get justice for the reckless actions (also captured on video) that ended his life just weeks ago when he was shot at over 20 times by officers of the Sacramento Police Department in his grandmother's backyard for holding a cell phone cops suggested they thought was a gun?
At this juncture, after years of damning evidence produced by academics and data journalists, it’s clear that the process for adjudicating police brutality—whether resulting in death or injury—is a systemic sham. The American state has, in essence, constructed a process riddled with what legal experts have called "ubiquitous" conflicts of interests between prosecutors and their law enforcement partners that, in the end, tend to sanction the disproportionate violence perpetrated by white officers against blacks by granting accused officers the most generous interpretation of plausible deniability that the law allows.
It is still not clear that either of the Baton Rouge police officers involved in Sterling’s death, who are currently on paid leave, will even be fired. Sterling’s community is hoping that, in the least, Officer Salamoni—who fired the fatal shots—will be dismissed after an administrative review. John McLindon, the attorney representing Salamoni, said he believes a decision is imminent. “I think they've already made up their mind. They're going to terminate him,” he said in an interview, vowing to launch an appeal.
But even if the shooter does lose his job, the Sterling family now belongs to a long line of loved ones who have lent their politeness and patience to the official process, investing money, energy, and precious time into garnering justice, only to be told that—after very careful consideration and a thorough investigation—nothing significant will be done. “The system failed us,” Alton Sterling’s aunt, Sandra, said during a news conference.
“He was murdered by two white, racist police officers!” cried another distraught aunt to Sterling, Veda Washington. “He was murdered like an animal. And they said they don't see nothing wrong?"
One of the many reporters prying for a soundbite, nipping at Washington's heels as she walked to her car after the family was told of the non-indictment, asked what she had to tell Landry's office in response. She whipped around one last time towards the camera, clearly having had enough: "I told them to ‘kiss my ass!’”
In light of law enforcement's disingenuous respect for the rule of law when it applies to them, who can blame her? Who, if they saw themselves in her pain, wouldn’t have felt the urge to say the same?
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If Your Town Has a Goofy Sex Name, You're Getting Free Pornhub Premium
Pornhub has always looked out for its porn-loving fans. Over the past few years, the streaming site has made sex education sites to teach folks about their junk, sex exercise routines to help people fuck their way to fitness, and released a series of audio porn for the visually impaired. They even have a college scholarship to help students go balls deep into higher education, if they so desire.
Now, Pornhub has launched an all-new initiative aimed at helping out another subset of their fans: the people who unfortunately live in towns with sexual-sounding names.
The project, called Pornhub Premium Places, will give residents in towns like Fort Dick, California; Cumbum, India; and Fucking, Austria a reason to finally be proud of their addresses—by supplying them with free access to Pornhub Premium.
"It's no secret that many people all over the world enjoy watching porn and are familiar with its vocabulary," Pornhub writes on its site to announce the Premium Places initiative. "So why all the fuss over places with names like Fucking, Rectum, or Dildo? To make up for years of mockery, Pornhub has decided to name these special parts of the world as #PremiumPlaces and give them the best thing we have to offer: free access to our amazing Pornhub Premium content."
The offer is good worldwide, from the Canadian town of Climax to Blowhard, Australia, but there are ten cities in the US that qualify:
- Fort Dick, California
- Hooker, Oklahoma
- Bohners Lake, Wisconsin
- Climax, Michigan
- French Lick, Indiana
- Big Bone, Kentucky
- Horneytown, North Carolina
- Cumming, Georgia
- Big Beaver, Pennsylvania
- Threeway, Virginia
If you currently live in Big Bone and want to take advantage of the new deal, just head over to the Pornhub website and claim your free premium account. If you live in a city that sounds like the nickname for a dick or whatever but don't see it on the list yet, worry not—just share it online with the hashtag #PremiumPlaces for consideration.
Sure, the whole thing is a pretty blatant PR scheme, but at least it's one that will benefit all the fine citizens of Condom, France, who want to get their nuts, free of charge. So there's that.
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