Monday, April 30, 2018

This MMA Gym Trains Activists to Defend Themselves Against Fascists

Since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, there’s been a dramatic rise in far-right activity across the UK, and—just like in the US—sometimes, the demonstrations can get violent. To help activists stay safe while they're protesting, a group of MMA trainers started Left Hook in Brighton, teaching anti-fascists skills they can use to defend themselves in dangerous situations.

On this episode of FRINGES, VICE sat down with the folks behind Left Hook to hear why they started the gym, how it’s grown over the years, and who they’ve helped out along the way. Then we met up with Peter Irving, a former MMA fighter whose early childhood experiences with racism and hatred motivated him to help out at Left Hook.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2I3aRaw
via cheap web hosting

Wild Video Shows Dog Attacking Woman on Subway Train

On a recent episode of Desus & Mero, the VICELAND hosts discussed a wild video clip of a pit bull latching onto a woman's foot on an MTA train in New York City.

According to local ABC affiliate WABC 7, the canine conflict started because of a disagreement about a subway seat, and, as you can see, it all went downhill from there. Though the pit bull's owner Ruben Roncallo claimed his animal was a service dog and that the woman started the fight, he was charged with reckless endangerment and assault, and later charged on an unrelated harassment charge that also involved his pup.

The whole thing, as Mero has argued before, just goes to show why you maybe shouldn't bring a dog on the subway. Although Desus might have a point—pretty much anything goes nowadays.

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.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Peter Slattery on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2raRVgs
via cheap web hosting

This Elusive Cat Led Cops on a Weeklong Airport Search-and-Rescue Mission

Airports are a terrifying place to be an animal. They can be barred from flying right before boarding—a hangup that, for hamsters, can be fatal—and even if they manage to clear security, there's a risk that they won't make it through the flight alive. Perhaps sensing that leaving the ground on a large metal tube wasn't worth the risk, a cat traveling through New York's JFK Airport decided to bail on her trip last-minute, escaping from her crate, leaping into the rafters, and sending the cops on a week-long rescue mission to hunt her down.

According to CBS New York, Pepper the cat was about to get dragged onto a flight to China when her owner dropped her crate, and the door to her small prison popped open. The Tabby made a break for it—sprinting out into the hellscape that is JFK, jumping onto a checkout counter, and scrambling up into the rafters, far out of reach of her human pursuers below. Port Authority police scoured the airport, and Pepper's owner ditched her flight to search for the cat—but the cunning beast refused to show herself.

Eventually, Pepper's owner had to give up her hunt for the cat, and—"devastated," according to local ABC affiliate WABC—she caught a flight to China, leaving Pepper behind. Meanwhile, the Port Authority's pursuit escalated into a full blown search-and-rescue operation. Hoping to lure the cat to them, the cops put food in humane traps, scattered in strategic locations all across Terminal 4. But try as they might, even after a few close calls and sightings, the cops couldn't catch Pepper.

Officer Kameel Juman—who once rescued a German Shepard from the edge of the George Washington Bridge—was put in charge of the investigation, the New York Daily News reports, but was close to giving up hope.

"I really thought nothing was working," Juman told CBS New York. "We had one other option."

Juman tracked down Nuan Tang, a former roommate of Pepper's owner, and asked her to come down to the airport for a last-ditch rescue effort. Armed with a bowl of Pepper's favorite food and a clutch piece of tactical knowledge—the cat's Mandarin name, which roughly translates to "little dork"—Tang started calling for her, the Daily News reports. The cat finally crept out of the bowels of JFK, ate a little food, and found herself swept into Tang's arms. Within seconds, she was locked back in her crate.

"I grabbed some duct tape and sealed up the cat carrier," Juman told the Daily News."We were not losing this cat again."

After climbing all over what was presumably the Disneyland of cat towers, Pepper is now living at Tang's place until her owner can fly back from China and bring her home, CBS New York reports. Meanwhile, Gotham's finest can get back to doing some real police work, like trying to teach New Yorkers the difference between a tiger and a raccoon.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Related: NYC Cops Get Roasted



from VICE https://ift.tt/2Ftwwn5
via cheap web hosting

Antoni from 'Queer Eye' Is Writing His Own Cookbook

After dazzling viewers with his hot dog recipes and cheese-melting skills on Queer Eye, it looks like the show's food and wine expert, Antoni Porowski, is heading back into the kitchen to create his very own cookbook, Entertainment Weekly reports.

According to EW, the cookbook will be Porowski's first and feature 100 different recipes aimed at beginner chefs. In a statement, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's Rux Martin said that the cookbook will reflect Porowski's ability to "connect instantly with newbies in the kitchen," and the Queer Eye star said he "could not be more thrilled to be writing about the recipes I love and think are essential to any novice home cook, professional, and somewhere in between."

If the cookbook's recipes are anything like what Porowski's taught men to cook on the show, we already have a pretty good idea of what to expect. Perhaps he'll figure out a slightly fancier way to make a PB&J, or nail down the perfect ratio of milk to cereal. Maybe he'll keep it very simple and go over the basics of how to peel a banana. If anything, we can certainly expect a handful of different ways to incorporate avocados into our diets—even if that means peeling one, dousing it in store-bought dressing, and eating it with a spoon.

The cookbook is slated to come out next spring, likely after the show's upcoming second season debuts, where we'll probably get to see some of his new recipes in action. Maybe he'll step up his game next time around, or we could be in for some rousing tutorials on how to cook scrambled eggs, spaghetti, and peel a tangerine.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2KrqEhK
via cheap web hosting

The Colorado 'Killdozer' Rampage Is Finally Getting Its Own Movie

The bizarre 2004 "killdozer" incident that again proved real life is crazier than any movie is becoming an actual movie, Deadline reports.

If the phrase "killdozer" doesn't immediately ring a bell, here's a quick refresher: Back in 2004, a muffler shop owner named Marvin Heemeyer got so angry about a zoning dispute in his hometown of Granby, Colorado, that he decided to teach the city a lesson—by secretly building a homemade armored bulldozer in his garage and using it to obliterate the town hall and ex-mayor's house on an angry rampage.

Heemeyer's bulldozer, later nicknamed the "killdozer," demolished a total of 13 buildings in Granby until it got stuck in the basement of a department store as he tried to mow through it. He committed suicide inside the vehicle before police could arrest him—the only person to die in the rampage—but it still reportedly took cops 12 hours to break into the killdozer and retrieve his body, since Heemeyer spent the last year and a half reinforcing the thing with layers upon layers of nearly-impenetrable steel, concrete, and outfitting it with a few automatic weapons. Yes, all because the guy was pissed about the city's zoning laws.

In the subsequent decade and a half, Heemeyer's destructive drive has become the stuff of legend, with a few even heralding the guy as a folk hero who took on city hall or something, regardless of the fact that he was, as AV Club points out, a crazed, domestic terrorist. Now, it looks like we'll finally get a chance to set the record straight on Heemeyer thanks to Tread, an upcoming documentary about the man and his armored machine.

According to Deadline, the upcoming doc will be directed by Paul Solet and produced by Doug Liman, who produced that Tom Cruise movie Live Die Repeat and one of the Bourne sequels, among others. The doc will recreate some of the scenes from the rampage and also feature interviews with people who knew Heemeyer in the time leading up to the killdozer incident. Heemeyer also recorded almost three hours of audio cassettes spelling out his motives, so it's likely that'll wind up in the doc, as well.

"Marvin's story is part wish fulfillment part cautionary tale," Liman said in a statement announcing his attachment to the project. "He left behind a wake of unbelievable destruction and Paul Solet is the perfect director to bring this story to the screen."

With Tread currently in production, it's probably only a matter of time before we get a movie about that teen who stole a bulldozer and went on a cop car-smashing rampage, since the world has a seemingly insatiable appetite for stories that feel like Grand Theft Auto cutscenes come to life.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2KmyBoe
via cheap web hosting

Five 2018 Races Where Democrats Could Score Shocking Upsets

If you’re wondering if the Democrats can manage to take back the House and Senate in some of the most anticipated midterm elections in years, you should look to 2006. Back then, the Republican president’s approval rating was stuck around 40 percent, the House was seen as wallowing in corruption, and Democrats faced a similarly uphill climb in terms of the map (they needed to win 15 seats but there were only 16 Republicans in districts won by John Kerry in 2004, while this year Democrats need to win 23 seats while there are only 25 that were won by Hillary Clinton).

So when I saw Democrats touting that more than 40 of their candidates outraised incumbent challengers, I wondered, how much predictive power does raising more money than your opponent have? Let’s use 2006 as a model: That year, Democrats won 30 seats, and lost 31 more that were rated highly competitive by UVA’s Crystal Ball. After throwing out four races where either the incumbent or challenger dropped out after the first quarter (Florida’s 16th, Ohio’s 18th, Texas’s 22th, and Arizona’s First) as well as the seat where there had been a special election the week before the filing deadline (California’s 50th), you have 56 races—27 of which Democrats won. Such a small number isn’t statistically significant, but I do think it’s a helpful exercise to try and spot any patterns from such a similar political environment. So what predictive power did the first quarter fundraising reports have that year? Here’s what I found:

Outraising your opponent in the first quarter didn’t mean all that much. In 2006, 21 Democrats outraised their Republican challengers in Q1. Of those 21 races, Democrats won 13. Which means of the remaining 35 races, they won 17. Not a terribly predictive marker. Moreover, if you lower the threshold to Democrats who raised only 65 percent of their opponent the measure is similarly predictive. That’s an arbitrary cutoff but I think it speaks to the larger point around how outraising your opponent in Q1 doesn’t necessarily indicate a whole lot. It doesn’t matter if a Democrat outraises his or her opponent; all that matters is they don’t trail the Republican by an insurmountable amount. And with few touted Democrats in 2018 lagging that much behind their Republican counterparts, there aren’t too many races to be down on based on fundraising numbers.

Of course, candidates’ fundraising reports don’t just show how much they raised in the previous three months. They also show how much they have available for the rest of the campaign going forward (known to political nerds as cash on hand, or CoH). And wouldn’t you know it...

Having more cash on hand than your opponent was predictive. There were five races where Democrats had a decisive cash-on-hand advantage and three where the parties had functionally the same amount of money on hand in 2006. Democrats won the five with a decisive advantage and two of the three where the candidates were within 5 percent of each other. Using 2006 as a yardstick, it appears that cash on hand is a better predictor of success than amount raised. And if a Republican incumbent trails a challenger in cash on hand it’s a sign they may not be taking their re-election campaign seriously enough. I mean, how hard is it to stash away money when it’s your job to stick up for payday lenders, oil companies, and Nigerian princes?

Now, by my count there are 15 races where a Democrat has more cash on hand than a Republican incumbent, and 13 additional open seats where the top Democratic fundraiser has more than the top Republican. I’m not saying that Democrats will win seven-eighths of those seats, but there are some races on that list that are being overlooked by a lot of prognosticators. Of the 28, most are already being tracked closely by national parties and the media. But there are five that have fallen through the cracks and I think are underrated by House handicappers like the Crystal Ball, Inside Elections, and Cook Political. Here they are:

Virginia’s Fifth

Democrat Leslie Cockburn: $300,000 CoH
Incumbent Republican Tom Garrett: $142,000 CoH

Cockburn doesn’t even have the most cash on hand of any Democrat running here—she has less than businessman RD Hufstetler. But Cockburn is all but assured of the nomination here as the Fifth opted for an undemocratic party convention instead of a primary open to all voters, and Cockburn has enough pledged delegates to win it on May 5.

Now Cockburn will face Tom Garrett, who like a lot of recently elected Republicans has never had to win a difficult general election before. Garrett is perhaps best known for posing with the organizers of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which happens to be in this district. So while some Democrats are worried that Cockburn’s history of criticizing Israel’s influence on America’s foreign policy will come back to haunt her, I’m not persuaded: The Jewish population in the district is small and even those who live there (a demographic that once included me) aren’t likely to turn on a Democrat who criticizes Israel in favor of a Republican who pals around with white supremacists.

New York’s 11th

Democrat Max Rose: $891,000 CoH
Incumbent Republican Dan Donovan: $739,000 CoH
Republican Michael Grimm: $332,000 CoH

Neither party is quite sure who their nominee will be next year. Dan Donovan exacerbated the problems he faced with a fractious local party when it broke that he allegedly helped his partner’s son avoid criminal charges for heroin possession. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Donovan is trailing his predecessor Michael Grimm in the only primary poll released to date.

Grimm just got out of prison for tax fraud, and once threatened to break a reporter in half “like a boy.” But Republicans seem to be willing to believe that any conservative prosecuted by the federal government from 2009-2016 was actually a political prisoner, and he’s made a play at being the pro-Trump candidate in the race. So don’t count him out in the primary.

And don’t count him out in the general either. Grimm was under indictment when he beat City Council Member Domenic Recchia by 13 points in 2014. Recchia was hamstrung by a gaffe-prone campaign, a Brooklyn address, and a bad Democratic year. Rose’s campaign, on the other hand, has been disciplined to date, he’s running from Staten Island (he didn’t grow up there, but neither did Grimm), and 2018 is shaping up to be far better for Democrats than 2014. He’s running against six other candidates in the primary, but none of them have emerged as the de facto anti-establishment standard-bearer. Unless one of them breaks from the pack, it’s hard to see how Rose isn’t the nominee.

Michigan’s First

Democrat Matt Morgan: $317,000 CoH
Republican incumbent Jack Bergman: $307,000 CoH

Wisconsin’s Sixth

Democrat Dan Kohl: $842,000
Republican incumbent Glenn Grothman: $705,000

Iowa’s Fourth

Democrat J.D. Scholten: $271,000
Republican incumbent Steve King: $76,000

I’m lumping these three districts together for a few reasons:

Democrats Not Named Hillary Clinton Can Win in These Districts. In 2008, Barack Obama won Wisconsin’s Sixth and Michigan’s First while only losing Iowa’s Fourth by 2 percent. And in the past year Democrats have run well ahead of Hillary Clinton’s margins in elections in every one of these districts. They all still lean Republican in even the best of conditions but…

Their Incumbents Are Weak. Steve King has been aping talking points from The Turner Diaries for decades, but he’s gotten worse since Trump is elected. Western Iowa is socially conservative, but I suspect a majority of them voted for King out of party loyalty and at the very least tune him out when he starts going on about how great European ethno-nationalists are. Maybe, just maybe, 2018 will be the year where they’re finally embarrassed enough to send him packing now that our big wet president has brought the ugliness of the far right so neatly into focus.

Glenn Grothman isn’t a wannabe brownshirt, he’s more a AM radio drive-time bilge pump. He represents a seat that historically sent a more moderate Republican to Congress, having only made it to Congress in what were terrible years for Wisconsin Democrats. So if a blue wave comes, he may not be able to keep his head above water.

While Jack Bergman isn’t as odious as King or Grothman, he’s only a freshman. Both King and Grothman have been able to build up goodwill (and electoral skill) through decades in public office, while Bergman’s relatively new to the endeavor. Freshmen congressmen should at least be able to raise money well, but he apparently can’t even do that.

And there’s a wildcard that could really impact the Iowa and Wisconsin races:

Retaliatory Tariffs Could Hit The Upper Midwest Hard. The Chinese have made noise about retaliatory tariffs on corn and soybeans. You know which states grow a ton of corn and soybeans? Iowa and Wisconsin! And if family farms get hit hard they could revolt against Republicans—during the late 80s farm crisis those two states voted for Mike Dukakis even as California, Connecticut and Maryland were voting for George H.W. Bush.

I’m not saying that Democrats will win all five of these seats. But I am saying that handicappers are underestimating Democrats’ chances in them. And that if you’re looking to fundraising reports to gauge candidate viability, you’re doing it wrong. Obviously a candidate without enough money to pay for staff and rent is at a severe disadvantage going into November. But the ability to raise more money than a Republican opponent isn’t a sign of automatic strength. It’s easy to use fundraising as a marker of viability because you can quantify it, but it’s also lazy and potentially misleading.

However, having more money to spend than a Republican opponent, especially an incumbent, shows that the Republican is perhaps not taking the race seriously enough, or might not have experience in running in tough races. One of the biggest incumbency advantages is the ability to bank money for potential future challenges—just ask Mick Mulvaney. So when a Democrat has more cash on hand it shows that the incumbent has been caught napping. And if a blue wave comes, expect it to wash out the laziest Republicans.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Robert Wheel (a pseudonym) is an attorney who lives in New York. He tweets here , and his DMs are open.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2KouTe5
via cheap web hosting

This North Carolina Band Made the Most Moving Music Video of the Year

When Sam Melo started writing the song "Hide," he didn't intend for it to be an anthem. The lead singer and songwriter of the band Rainbow Kitten Surprise had just returned from attending his first music festival and was reeling from a confusing new discovery.

"As I dove into these sort of new feelings, I realized that maybe I, you know, was gay," Melo told VICE. "Obviously I had never thought anything of it in other people, but it’s like when you discover it in yourself, that you’ve maybe been hiding a part of yourself, it’s intense, you know?"

Out poured "Hide," a song about finding love and accepting the inevitable, written by a musician living in North Carolina who had been raised by missionaries in the Dominican Republic. Melo wrote the song in 2015, but didn’t share it with anyone for years, afraid the words and sentiment might not be right for the rest of the band.

"I thought that it might be a step too far, because there are just so few songs that talk about it, you know? Like can you say 'him' in a song? As a boy, can you do that?" Melo said. "Because especially if the song were to be a hit, then immediately we're poster children, you know?"

Ultimately, Melo came out to his bandmates, who he said were "incredibly supportive," and the song became the third single on the their first full-length album with a major label, How to: Friend, Love, and Freefall, released earlier this month. But when it came time to make the music video, Melo shifted the focus away from his own personal experience. Inspired by Paris Is Burning, he tapped director Kyle Thrash, who’s shot music videos for Modern Baseball and the Menzingers, to make a mini documentary about four drag queens living in New Orleans.

In the same way Melo struggled to come to terms with his sexuality, each queen keeps their drag persona hidden for various reasons. Some fear "harm" in their neighborhoods, and others are fearful how their families—particularly their father figures—will react. We see them getting ready in gas station bathrooms, and watch anxiously as Justin Scarbrough (a.k.a. Britnee Alexander) and Kev Davis (a.k.a. Xia Maddix) prepare to share their drag lives with their loved ones.

"[Kev] was joking because his mom was sneaking off to go see his shows without his dad. And his dad thought that she was maybe cheating on him. Like he didn't know where his wife was going, you know?" Thrash told VICE. "She was driving an hour and a half to New Orleans to go see her son's shows. And it got this point where I think everyone—Kev's partner, Kev's mom, and Kev himself, too—was kind of like, this needs happen."

The result is a six-minute emotional gut punch that captures the challenges the LGBTQ community still faces in parts of America today, even with the mainstream success of shows like Queer Eye and RuPaul’s Drag Race . It highlights real people, with very real struggles in an era of “woke” celebrity music videos from artists who aren’t really part of the communities or social movements they’re singing about.

But more than that, in "Hide," we get a privileged glimpse inside the queens’ private lives offstage, and a revealing look at how men in the rural South still view masculinity. Growing up Scarbrough was told he should never "enter or leave the house in drag," and Davis said there was an unspoken rule in his house about being too feminine, even though his dad knew he was gay.

"There was always this joke that was done, like, 'It's OK to be gay, but I don't want to catch you wearing any high heels or anything,'" Davis said over the phone. "It was something he had to work on definitely because he was raised in Mississippi and Louisiana and just thought that it was wrong."

"[My step-dad] knew I did drag, but it was more something that was to never be spoken of," Scarbrough told VICE. "It was more, 'You go live your life. Do what you want to do, but don't bring it in my house.'"

Melo might not have intended for the song to be a gay anthem, but its music video elevates it to something truly worth celebrating, both for the queens featured and anyone watching. For Scarbrough and Davis, it even served as an opportunity to come out a second time to the men in their family who had had a difficult time processing their sexuality. What comes across onscreen is a collection of beautiful moments that capture their father figures reacting to their sons in the only way they know how.

"I was fucking terrified to tell my dad I did drag because you never know how someone that you love is going to react just based on their upbringing. But they're still going to have that love for you if it's strong enough. And I feel like my dad definitely did," Davis said. He says that now their relationship is "phenomenal."

"I went over to my mom's house the other day, and [my step-dad] and I were just talking about everything that I felt like I could never talk to him about… I didn't feel like I had to hide anything with him anymore," Scarbrough said. "It's liberating. It's strange. I've never felt so free… It was an experience I will never, ever, ever forget."

The song and the video serve as a resounding refusal for anyone, queer or otherwise, to stay hidden. Melo’s own coming out story, sung by a band from a state that’s been pretty openly discriminatory toward the LGBTQ people, has already lent a voice to others growing up in marginalized communities—all because a boy from the South put the word "he" in a song.

"Like I said, I didn't think or expect or want us to be an anthem poster child band," Melo said. "But if given the opportunity to make other people the face of this, we'd rather do that. Because even my struggle is nothing compared to what some of the queens in the video go through."

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Lauren Messman on Twitter.

Related: How to Treat Drag Queens, According to Drag Queens



from VICE https://ift.tt/2rb4vLU
via cheap web hosting

Netflix's New True Crime Series 'Evil Genius' Looks Completely Bonkers

Netflix just released the trailer for the Duplass brothers' next true crime docuseries, Evil Genius, about the 2003 "pizza bomber heist," and it looks even crazier than Wild Wild Country.

Back in August of 2003, a pizza delivery man robbed a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a bomb locked around his neck. Police caught the guy only 15 minutes later, but as they arrested him, the delivery guy began frantically warning them that the bomb was going to explode. Cops called in a bomb squad, but before it could arrive, the homemade collar bomb went off, killing the pizza guy while he sat cuffed on the street.

The story just got weirder from there. Cops searched the dead man's car and discovered a letter addressed to the "Bomb Hostage" which mapped out a complicated, Saw-like scavenger hunt that the man would have to do to retrieve three keys that would eventually unlock the collar from his neck. Robbing the bank was just step one. It took investigators years to fully unravel the mystery of the bizarre, failed heist—a mystery that turned out to involve a gang of middle-aged outcasts, double-crosses, and 700 pounds of cheese.

The whole saga is so bonkers that it's almost surprising that it's taken this long for Netflix to give it the true crime treatment since the streaming service has already cranked out so many true-crime bangers. The streaming services is even developing a follow-up to one of the docs that invented the long-form true crime genre, 2003's The Staircase.

Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist will be a four-part miniseries directed by Barbara Schroeder and, like Wild Wild Country, executive produced by the Duplass brothers. The show's set to hit Netflix on May 11, so get ready to stay inside for an entire weekend and figure out how someone dreamed up that DIY collar bomb plan in the first place and why anyone would ever need that much cheese.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2HJW2Xb
via cheap web hosting

This International Food Spy Brought Us Meyer Lemons

If you walk into a grocery store today, chances are most of the produce you see is not truly American. Some of it might be shipped over from Chile or Mexico, but even the fruits and vegetables grown on US soil are not usually native. This includes the Meyer lemon—a sweet, tangy lemon that has become the favorite of chefs and bartenders. And the story behind the citrus might make you appreciate it even more.

Frank N. Meyer was a Dutch immigrant who left Holland in 1901 for the US. When he got here, the plant lover spent his days walking North America—through the US and Mexico—working at plant nurseries. Eventually, his peculiar passions led him to work at the Unites States Department of Agriculture (USDA), where he became a "food spy"—tasked with traveling across the world and finding viable new seeds to bring back and grow. In 1905, he was sent on a high stakes mission to China—a mission that turned out to be violent, fruitful, and tragic.

We talked to Daniel Stone, author of The Food Explorer, about Meyer's adventures, and the discovery of the Meyer lemon.

You can catch The VICE Guide to Right Now Podcast on Acast, Google Play, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2HGY8H9
via cheap web hosting

The One Big Problem with 'Avengers: Infinity War': Where Was Ant-Man?

This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War, including the most important spoiler: Ant-Man isn't in it.

As anticipation built for Avengers: Infinity War—the most Mavel-y Marvel movie of all time, the crescendo of a franchise that already spans 18 films (with many more to come)—fans had a lot of questions. How would the Russo brothers cram dozens of heroes into a single movie? Could the Marvel Cinematic Universe's trademark playfulness and zest carry a Titanic-length epic? Would the overstuffed plot even be comprehensible, or would it dissolve into a haze of bad one-liners and CGI-laden battle sequences? Would it all be worth it?

Well, I'm sorry to say that it wasn't. Because while Anthony and Joseph Russo gave it their all, there's a huge hole at the center of the assembly. Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man, is somehow not even in the movie.

Now, there is an in-universe reason given for all of this, which is that Ant-Man and Hawkeye have families to look after, so they aren't galavanting around with either Captain America's fugitive squad of Avengers or Tony Stark's government-aligned crew. I can accept that excuse for Hawkeye, who honestly wouldn't have been that much help in a cosmic confrontation against the most powerful being in the universe. Plus Jeremy Renner's arrow-slinger is a supporting character at best. I can't imagine many people were clamoring to see him.

Ant-Man, though? Millions of people fell in love with the lovable rogue, who as we all remember, was manipulated into being part of a scheme devised by Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) to sabotage his old company and eventually won a dramatic battle with the evil Yellowjacket (Corey Stoll). Audiences around the world were enthralled by Paul Rudd's lovable-rogue vibe and gasped in astonishment at Ant-Man's ability to become very small and communicate with ants, not to mention his additional power of getting really big that was unveiled in the most unexpected twist of Captain America: Civil War.

We were all waiting to see how Ant-Man would interact with Falcon, who he fought in one of Ant-Man's many unforgettable action sequences. Would they spar entertainingly? Maybe Falcon would make some cutting remark about Lang's past as a thief or his charming amateurishness as a hero? How would Ant-Man's abilities interact with those of Doctor Strange? Well, thanks to the geniuses (sarcasm) at Marvel, we'll never know.

Instead, we got stuck with the been-there-done-that characters that populated the previous Avengers installments. Iron Man is terrified of death. Thor is brooding. Star-Lord likes shitty 80s rock. Scarlet Witch and Vision are in a romance that no one else in the universe cares about. Captain America has a beard now. YAWN.

And it's not just Ant-Man who was missing. Couldn't Douglas's Pym and Robert Downey's Tony Stark have had some kind of rivalry as genius inventors—not to mention men who had complicated relationships with Tony's father? (I won't bother summarizing it, because I'm sure everyone is familiar with how Howard Stark betrayed Pym.) What about Luis (Michael Pena), whose comic relief would have been welcome during the more dour parts of Infinity War, such as the bit where everyone dies? Why are fans denied their chance to see if Lang and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) learn to respect one another—or, if I dare say it, become romantically involved?

That last point is the most galling. Surely a few scenes of Lilly and Rudd, who are the MCU's hottest potential couple, would have built even more buzz for the hotly anticipated Ant-Man and the Wasp, due out later this year. I thought Marvel was supposed to be about synergy. Nope, apparently they are about disrespecting their most beloved characters and shoving a bunch of bullshit in fans's faces.

Ugh, sorry, but I need to go back to the in-universe logic behind Ant-Man's absence, which DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE. You're telling me that Scott Lang, who was so enamored with Captain America to fight the other Avengers, wouldn't want to be involved in defending earth from the greatest threat it's ever known? No, sorry, I won't believe that, it's an insult to everything the character stands for—or actually I should say stood for, because obviously the MCU's writers have changed him into an unrecognizable coward.

Of course, fans will still remain loyal to Marvel, especially since the company's next film is Ant-Man and the Wasp, which I'm sure I don't need to tell you has been setting geek culture sites afire. (Did you see the new stills of Rudd riding a flying ant? Talk about Hollywood magic!) But I'm not sure why the suits in charge insist on keeping the Ant-Man characters isolated in their little MCU cul-de-sac. They should come down from their ivory tower and take a look at the Ant-Man and Wasp cosplayers at every convention, at the kids in "I am Scott Lang" shirts, at the almost cult-like devotion that Ant-Man fans have to the character. While Marvel churns out films devoted to obscure characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, the studio has failed to even give us a proper Hank Pym movie that would serve as a prequel to Ant-Man, let alone a film about Eric O'Grady, who I'm sure I don't need to tell you was the Ant-Man after Lang in the comic books. Let's hope they rectify that soon.

And let's hope Ant-Man has a big role in the Infinity War sequel. Because if he doesn't, Marvel may discover one thing that's not infinite: fans' patience.

GRADE: F

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2Km3KIq
via cheap web hosting

What Life Is Really Like at Martin Shkreli's New Prison Home

The prevailing notion seems to be that as far as prisons go, FCI Fort Dix, the new prison home of convicted fraudster and super-villain Martin Shkreli in New Jersey, is pretty sweet. After all, compared to the most hellish federal lock-ups in America's vast system, the place’s seemingly generous amenities can make it sound like a resort. NJ.com went so far as to call it a "Club Fed."

But 35-year-old Shkreli probably won’t be playing X-Box there like he joked last August—unless he gets a guard to smuggle one in. Of course, that is entirely possible at Fort Dix, given the reported pliability of the guards and the amount of contraband that has historically been on the compound.



When I first transferred to the low-security facility myself, in 1999, I found it wide-open for a prison—more like a little town of its own. Coming down from higher-security facilities I spent the bulk of my 21-year sentence in, I was surprised at the laid-back attitudes of both the staff and inmates, who seemed to operate on a different wavelength from the more ferocious federal pens. In fact, as the Bureau of Prisons handbook for the spot notes, "There are no bars, towers, or locks on rooms within the community units" at the facility.

Don’t get it twisted, though—this is still prison, and at the end of the day, prison sucks, no matter where you’re at.

Located about 80 miles south of Shkreli's stomping ground in Manhattan, Fort Dix is a sprawling facility situated on a fully operational military base. It’s divided into two sides, East and West, along with a satellite camp, where Shkreli might have done his time if a judge didn't deny him that privilege. About 4,000 prisoners occupy the main facility, with some 300 more residing at the camp.

The layout of the place is, without a doubt, its most remarkable feature.

"When I first got there, I couldn’t believe how open the compound was," Alvin Conerly, a former federal prisoner who served time for racketeering and was at the facility from 2008 to 2015, told VICE. “It reminded me of the projects. There were cell phones everywhere. Anything you wanted as far as illegal stuff like drugs, weed, and even cigarettes—there was so much stuff going on at Fort Dix and it was huge. A lot of contraband comes over the fence.”

It often felt like the prison was self run—Conerly, for one, said there was only one correctional officer in each unit who was responsible for overseeing upwards of 300 prisoners housed in the old, converted Army barracks. Twelve-man rooms occupied the second and third floors with two-man rooms on each end for prisoners with seniority, he recalled.

"They got community bathrooms," Conerly continued. “And the bathrooms could be territorial. If you didn’t live on that part of the floor, you weren’t supposed to use that bathroom. Movement on the compound is restricted. They call ten-minute moves once an hour and the compound is all gated off into sections with barbwire on the fences.”

The former inmate suspected that someone like Shkreli, who at least before his conviction had money and is well-known—if also reviled—would have few problems there. "People that have money do better at Fort Dix," he said.

When I was at Fort Dix, I paid one inmate to clean my room, another to wash my clothes, and a third to smuggle me food from the kitchen. I felt like I was living like a king for around $500 a month, so it's fair to say Shkreli will be able to buy himself a decent lifestyle, too, assuming he still has access to some cash.

Still, it won't be a cakewalk.

“Clients of mine have reported that Fort Dix was old and rundown, that staff is indifferent, the education department sucks, and the bathrooms are dirty,” Justin Paperny, a federal prison consultant with White Collar Prison Advice who served an 18-month federal sentence for violating securities laws, told VICE. "Shkreli needs to realize that serving time in federal prison comes with discomfort."

“You are told when to work, when to eat, who to share space with, and when you can visit with you loved ones," he added. "Many aspects are out of your control. Cell phones and tobacco smuggling are pervasive. He needs to avoid that and lay low. I would tell Martin to focus on what he can control."

That was the attitude that helped me survive multiple decades in the belly of the beast. I made the most deliberate choices I could about who I would associate with, what books I would read, how I would exercise, what sport teams I would play on, and what educational programs I would take. In prison, it’s all about developing a routine and sticking to it.

"Softball is huge at Fort Dix," Conerly said. "They got a double baseball field and can play two games at once. They got A-league—which is fast pitch—B- and C-leagues. There are a lot of Dominicans there, and that’s what they play. That’s a big thing on the compound."

I played soccer, basketball, football, racquetball, and lifted weights while I was at Dix. It’s hard to imagine Shkreli as much of an athletic type, but the recreation department at the prison was probably its best feature.

The food was another story.

On the West side, they had two chow halls, where you had to swipe your prison ID card for every meal. The most popular meals were burgers and fries—what prisoners referred to as “McDonalds” on Wednesdays—baked chicken on Thursdays, and fried fish on Fridays. Other than that, as Conerly recalled, the food was terrible. But then again, most prison food is shit.

"Ice creams are the most popular item at the commissary," Conerly said, adding, "Everything is in pouches—fish, rice. The prices are high for what you’re getting and they always run out of things like pizza kits and ice creams.”

Each prisoner is only allowed to spend a certain amount at commissary each month too, around $325, Conerly recalled. Big Willie prisoners have historically gotten around this by putting money on other inmates' accounts, but it's a far cry from the filet mignon, lobster, and cauliflower Shrekli was known to enjoy at midtown Manhattan's Capitol Grille.

"One thing I learned about is they don’t want to write any shots," Conerly said, using prison slang for misconduct tickets. "Their way out is giving you extra duty. If you refuse they’ll have no choice but to write you a shot. For the petty stuff, they usually don’t write you up, though. The staff isn’t bad, but you know who the bad ones [and] good ones are.

Before I was pushed out of Fort Dix after writing an article in Don Diva magazine, I found it a very serene place. I spent a lot of time in the Education Department, where I took correspondence courses, had access to a typewriter, and worked on my degrees and my writing. Shkreli can really use the time he has to do productively—if he wants to.

"He needs to focus on coming though this process and avoiding the nonsense, complaining, and bickering," Paperny, the prison consultant, told me. "Different places have different benefits, but they are basically all the same. You have to focus on the positive and not the negative. What matters is what he’s doing and how he’s preparing himself for his eventual release.”

Shkreli, whose pharmaceutical and hedge-fund trickery are the stuff of legend, will be required to get a relatively dull job. Most prison gigs are BS—the only thing they want is for you to report. Once a month they have a census count and you have to be on your job detail so you don’t get caught out of bounds and written up, which could lead to losing privileges like phone, email, visiting, and commissary.

If Shkreli keeps his nose clean, he can have an uneventful bid, because most veterans of the federal system consider Fort Dix a kiddie camp. But he will have to adapt to the prisoner mentality and learn the etiquette. As at other federal prisons, fights do jump off because of the different gangs in play, and everybody marks their territory fiercely. Violate, and it could be your ass.

In other words, Shkreli will still need to watch himself.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Seth Ferranti on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2ra2JLL
via cheap web hosting

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Being a Pundit Like Joy-Ann Reid Means Never Saying Sorry

If you ever go online to share your shitty opinions where everyone can see them, you have probably posted something at some point that didn’t go exactly the way you thought it would. In today’s world of basically three major social networks (a very bad thing, by the way), a lot of diverse people are thrown into the same forums, resulting in some pretty ugly interactions. Maybe an in-joke gets broadcast to a wider audience than it was meant for. Maybe something gets taken out of context. Maybe your worst-ever tweet is the one that goes viral. The point is, everyone is wrong on the internet at some point or another.

I myself am hardly immune to this phenomenon, but if I have learned one thing about being on the web, it’s this: When you are wrong, please please please, for the love of all that is fucking holy, don’t make it worse. Admit you did something dumb, apologize, and atone as best you can. For instance, about a year ago, I made a post on Twitter that used the word “Eskimo”—without knowing, as several people quickly pointed out to me, that that word is sometimes used as a slur. So I apologized, deleted the post, and moved on—and I certainly won’t make the same mistake again. Nobody is above errors, but anyone can learn from one.

So why are so many high-profile pundits incapable of doing this?

The latest example of someone famous refusing to say they’re sorry is Joy-Ann Reid, who has come under fire this week after Mediate reported (from a tip by an anonymous Twitter user) that her old blog had a bunch of posts that contained homophobic nastiness like, “Most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing.” Importantly, this was back in the mid-2000s, when those sorts of statements were relatively common, even in the liberal blogosphere. I myself was too young to have such opinions of my own, but I am certainly aware of their prevalence among boomers at the time.

I truly believe people can evolve and grow on these issues, and I am inclined to believe Reid when she says that she has. If we’re going to go back to the 2000s and analyze prevailing political opinions, things get pretty dicey pretty quick (see: Jon Stewart’s litany of “chicks with dicks” jokes from his tenure as host of The Daily Show).

But Reid insisted that she never wrote these words. Instead she blamed hackers and even hired a cybersecurity expert to back her up on that (the expert, incidentally, once bragged about being buddies with a neo-Nazi). Even as other experts poked holes in her story, she stood her ground firmly, even going so far as to involve the FBI. The nonprofit Internet Archive actually had to release a statement refuting claims that it had been hacked. While I cannot say with any authority declare that she was definitely lying, I was left wondering why she didn’t just apologize, admit that her views on homosexuality have changed, and let everyone move on from her. Even her on-air “apology” Friday night—which given the incident's widespread coverage and suspension of her column at the Daily Beast, felt very damage-controlly—started out with Reid saying, “I genuinely do not believe I wrote these hateful things.” (She did admit that she couldn’t prove she was hacked.)



You can probably think up a half-dozen incidents of public figures refusing to apologize while looking worse and worse. A personal favorite is Kurt Eichenwald, a journalist who these days is mostly known for getting into bizarre Twitter beefs. Last summer, Eichenwald was famously busted for having hentai open on his computer when he posted a photo of his desktop. Rather than simply cop to his own cartoon horniness, he descended into a tornado of excuses, eventually claiming he and his adult son were showing his wife some tentacle porn to prove to her that such a genre existed. What started as a relatively innocent goof of a horned-up journalist became a great moment in online history. Meghan McCain of The View even publicly dragged him for it.

The list of people refusing to back down has grown long in recent days. The New York Times’s Bari Weiss, rather than simply apologizing for apparently misidentifying an Olympic athlete of Asian descent as an “immigrant”, had a multiple-day online fued with anyone who dared question her initial comment. Conservative writer Kevin Williamson, who was hired and fired by The Atlantic in record time because of comments he had made about using hanging as a penalty for women who had abortions, has refused to apologize for anything he’s ever said—though in that case Williamson is at least savvy about monetizing his stubbornness, publishing pieces in the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post about the controversy.

I suppose some people (like Williamson) actually bask in and profit from the jeers, but if you’re like most folks, you probably don’t love getting dogpiled online for a dumb post. But there’s an easy way out. For guidance, look to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who once accidentally posted a porn link to Twitter—and rather than having a full online hissy fit, he admitted to the mistake, made some self-deprecating jokes, and the controversy was over in a day. Well, except for all the jokes about Marshall cranking it to softcore porn, but whatever. Good for you, Josh.

Another example: Chance the Rapper, who I think is a pretty stand-up guy in general, recently tweeted, “Black people don’t need to be Democrats.” The statement in and of itself is quite true—and shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that Chance was imploring people to become Republicans—but the timing was unfortunate given Kanye West’s going full red pill earlier that day. This of course prompted a quick and furious backlash from the internet, but Chance quickly issued an apology and clarification about what he meant. Now everyone is just back to being mad at Kanye, who I don’t think has apologized for anything in his life.

All of the people I’ve mentioned here presumably know how to apologize, of course. But these well-heeled and well-connected pundits clearly don’t feel the need to, and are often offended by the mere suggestion that they should. Despite what some of them say, they are at absolutely no goddamn risk of being “silenced” by “Twitter mobs.” They clearly don’t think that their high-status positions should come with any degree of accountability, and don’t feel obligated to admit they were ever wrong about anything.

But anyone can go through the same cycle of defensiveness and denial, with similar results. If you do a bad tweet, post, or whatthefuckever—please, for the love of god, just back away and stop making it worse. Or don’t, more idiots for me to tease online. Either is good.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow K.T. Nelson on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2KnCDg5
via cheap web hosting

Real Life Goldilocks Allegedly Breaks Into Home to Eat Cheetos Nude in Bathtub

Desus & Mero discus the story of Monroe, Louisiana, resident Freda Gray, who, according to a local news report, arrived home after work to find a stranger in her bathroom munching on a plate of food and some Cheetos puffs ... in the nude.

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.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2JBuLXa
via cheap web hosting

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Dashcam Video Shows New Jersey Woman Going Off On Cops

In this clip, VICELAND hosts Desus and Mero discuss a dashcam video of a woman named Caren Turner berating police in Tenafly, New Jersey. In the video, Turner claims she's a "commissioner" of the Port Authority and eventually tells a cop to "shut the fuck up" when he interrupts her. Even if you know nothing about Tenafly, you'll recognize the energy this white woman is bringing to these police officers.

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.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2je2TNN
via cheap web hosting

Friday, April 27, 2018

Bill Cosby Expected 'Something in Return' From Women in Bizarre 70s TV Skit

On Thursday in Pennsylvania, "America's dad" Bill Cosby was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault. The 80-year-old entertainer now faces up to $75,000 in fines and 30 years in prison, and his conviction is being touted as a landmark win for the #MeToo movement in America's legal system. But even before dozens of women came forward with accounts that Cosby drugged and assaulted them—and before Hannibal Buress helped call him out in 2014—the comedian peppered his work with references to sexual misconduct.

Take, for instance, "The Last Barbecue," an episode of The Cosby Show that finds Cosby's character, Dr. Cliff Huxtable, boasting about a special sauce that makes people want to have sex. "Haven't you ever noticed, after people have some of my barbecue sauce, after awhile when it kicks in, they get all huggy-buggy?" Huxtable drawls to his wife, Claire. "I got a cup of it on the night table in our bedroom."

And then there's the "Spanish Fly" bit off Cosby's 1969 comedy album It’s True! It’s True! "Boy if I had a jug of Spanish Fly, I'd light that corner up over there," Cosby joked about dosing women at a party with an aphrodisiac that would make them unable to resist. He also joked about Spanish Fly in a 1991 interview with Larry King.

Both bits are rather disturbing given that Cosby has admitted to drugging women he wanted to have sex with. (Last March, at Cosby's first trial, his defense argued that the comedian's references to the drug be dismissed as humor taken out of context.)

Given everything that's transpired, a long-forgotten video from 1971 is particularly creepy. Bill Cosby on Prejudice was a TV special made for the Los Angeles PBS station KCET. The synopsis, via Archive.org: "Black comedian Bill Cosby appearing in white make-up and green eye shadow in a special that discusses bigotry. Shows Cosby assuming the role of a super-bigot, and employing all the stereotype prejudices in his monologue."

Cosby’s 22-minute skit, which some commenters on YouTube claim they were shown in school, involves him seated on a stool while smoking a cigar and riffing on all the minority groups his stage character hates—African Americans, Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans. He also has a fair deal to say about women. "They’re not pieces of flesh, but if I want to take one out, I’ll take her out. I buy the dinner—she didn’t pay for it. I expect something in return!” His rant about women begins at 18:56 in the video above.

Although satire, the video is damning in context: what kicked off Cosby's precipitous downfall was Buress's routine about Cosby's means of chiding black people, as he does in this very video. But the later bits, about how women aren't "as strong as [men] are," and women being "put here to have babies, that’s all," are chilling.

Watch it and remember Cosby for what he's now been exposed to be. A sad, angry old man.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Harmon Leon is the author of Meet the Deplorables: Infiltrating Trump America. Follow him on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2r6CDZ1
via cheap web hosting

The 13 Best Crime Movies on Netflix Right Now

The most optimistic way to think of crime is that it exposes the most dangerous cracks in the fabric of society. To survive as a species, humans must live together; criminals, be they organized or working on their own, show us the specific, local, and structural areas where that compact is failing. How easy it is to forget that even the most heinous criminal is still human. How difficult it is to reckon with the fact that their capacity for such starkly antisocial behavior is, too, inherent in all of us. Good crime cinema shows us just how thin the line is between the criminal and the model citizen. These are the 13 best crime films currently on Netflix (US).

The Godfather

The crowning achievement of American filmmaking powerhouse Francis Ford Coppola is undoubtedly his Godfather trilogy, which tells the story of mob boss Michael Corleone’s ascent (or descent, depending on which way you look at it). In 1972, Coppola took author Mario Puzo’s 1969 Mafia novel and made of it a dynasty. The entire Godfather trilogy is currently on Netflix, so the next time you have nine hours, treat yourself to some worthwhile bingeing.

Scarface

It was Coppola’s Godfather gamble on a then-unknown Pacino that made of the upstart Italian actor a leading man, but it was Brian De Palma’s rags-to-riches-to-rubble story of a Mariel boatlift refugee who becomes a cocaine kingpin that made him a legend. In the unlikely event you’ve never met an American male, this is where they get all their catchphrases.

Goodfellas

Three mobsters, three decades: witness the rise and fall of "Jimmy the Gent" (Robert De Niro), Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), and Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) in Scorsese’s best-loved Mafia movie. Brash and brutal, though it sort of peters out at the end, Goodfellas begs the question: is there a cinematic pleasure finer than watching Robert De Niro cry?

The Crying Game

Irish writer-director Neil Jordan won an Academy Award for the Crying Game screenplay, which tells a profoundly romantic gangster story amidst the civil war that was The Troubles. Come for Stephen Rea’s Oscar-nominated starring role, stay and Forrest Whitaker’s performance will break your heart.

Seven

Look no further than this noir crime thriller to witness David Fincher at his blockbuster best. When detectives Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt) get on the trail of a serial killer who is murdering his victims in ways inspired by the seven deadly sins, it isn’t just a race against time, it’s a descent into the darkest parts of the human psyche.

Casino

The holy trinity that is Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Martin Scorsese reached its zenith in this 1995 crime epic, which tells the story of a Mafia associate (De Niro) and his Wiseguy enforcer (Pesci) who head out west to make the most of a Las Vegas casino. Ostentatious outfits and potent quotables abound, but it’s the way Casino captivates with the promises and pitfalls of the American dream that make it ‘sese’s second-best movie ( After Hours is #1, sorry).

Heat

It takes a serious director to pit heavy-hitters Al Pacino and Robert De Niro against one another, but this 1995 cat-and-mouse caper had one. It was, in fact, the first time in film history that the two ever shared a scene on-screen—and you better believe Michael Mann made the most of it.

LA Confidential

You could base an entire film history course on this neo-noir cop thriller starring Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey, and it would double as an American history course as well. Director Curtis Hanson (In Her Shoes, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle) can be hit-or-miss, but if the Best Screenplay Oscar he shared with co-writer Brian Helgeland (Mystic River) is any indication, LA Confidential is a bullseye.

Way of the Gun

You’d be hard-pressed to find cooler performances from Benicio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe than when they played lowlife drifters in this cult favorite from Christopher McQuarrie, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Usual Suspects. It’s not an uplifting movie, but it’s certainly one worth quoting.

Training Day

Denzel Washington was a famous actor before Training Day, but his Academy Award-winning turn as the sinister Detective Alonzo Harris in Antoine Fuqua’s Training Day made him an icon. When it comes to the head-on collision between social ideals and the realities of the street, you’d be hard-pressed to find a movie harder than this.

City of God

In 2002, co-directors Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund treated American moviegoers to the harsh realities of youth in a Rio de Janeiro favela with the hyper-stylish City of God. Not only is this expertly-made crime thriller a formal gut-punch, it’ll tear you up inside like heart surgery with a rusty scalpel.

Inside Man

Although you might not guess it from the trailer, this 2006 thriller is actually some of Spike Lee’s best work. Hostage negotiator Denzel Washington and Manhattan business woman Jodie Foster face off against a particularly slippery kidnapper played by Clive Owen, and the result is the kind of ride you get when your MTA conductor needs to make up for train delays.

Fracture

Where Ryan Gosling is characteristically aloof, Sir Anthony Hopkins’s sinister incisiveness shines through in this perfectly-cast legal thriller from Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear, Fallen). Hopkins (yes, this very same guy) plays the killer Ted Crawford, while Gosling’s rising-star prosecutor Willy Beachum is the man who has to put him behind bars. Game on.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2jfp6em
via cheap web hosting

That Alleged NXIVM Sex Cult Is Already Getting Its Own TV Show

Late last week, Smallville actress Allison Mack was arrested on sex trafficking charges stemming from her involvement with NXIVM, a self-help group allegedly running a sex cult that branded and blackmailed women into having sex with its founder, Keith Raniere. Now, because Hollywood doesn't sleep on shit, it looks like a TV series about the bizarre story is already in the works.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Annapurna Television optioned the 2017 New York Times exposé that uncovered the alleged dark side of NXIVM. The network plans to adapt it into a one-hour scripted series, produced by Westworld actress Shannon Woodward. And while details are still scant, we do know a good bit about what allegedly went down in NXIVM's secret sorority, or "DOS."

According to the Times exposé, high ranking female NXIVM members called "masters" would recruit "slaves" to join the secretive tier, where—as a requirement for joining—they would be asked for naked pictures of themselves, or incriminating details about their lives. From there, some were allegedly branded, blackmailed, and pressured into having sex with Raniere. The group managed to attract a number of celebrities, most notably Mack, who's been accused of serving as one of Raniere's top "masters."

Raniere was arrested in Mexico in March, and was denied bail earlier this week. Meanwhile, Mack is out on $5 million bail on sex-trafficking charges while she and Raniere ready themselves for a legal battle that could land them in prison for anywhere between 15 years to life.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Related: The Cult of Debt Forgiveness



from VICE https://ift.tt/2HvZgRK
via cheap web hosting

Cops Seized a Bag of Human Cremains Because They Thought It Was Heroin

These days, you don't have to settle for a boring-ass urn if you're looking for a spot to store the remains of some recently-deceased loved one. There are companies that can sew those ashes into a teddy bear, 3D print a terrifying bust for you to keep them in, or blast them into space so your grandfather can finally become one with the stars or whatever. Of course, those options can all get pretty costly, so if you're looking for a more budget-conscious option, you can always just cram the ashes in a Ziploc bag and call it good.

But if you're going to go down that route, be warned—the cops might end up mistaking them for something a little more illicit. At least, that's what happened to a Maine man last Saturday, after police discovered a bag of his late father's ashes in his glove compartment and assumed it was heroin. It's basically exactly what Nathan Fielder pretended happened to him on that big suit episode of Nathan for You, except these cops weren't hired to just read some lines.

According to the Kennebec Journal, Kevin Curtis lent his car to a friend last Saturday so the guy could run a few errands. Curtis apparently didn't tell his buddy that the car was also transporting about 48 grams of his dad, which he'd recently picked up from his sister and was keeping in the glove box until he got an urn.

On the way to the store, Curtis's friend reportedly lost control of the wheel and crashed the car into a telephone pole. When police responded to the accident, they discovered the baggies of what they thought was heroin, assumed the driver had overdosed, gave the guy a shot of Narcan, and arrested him, seizing the bags as evidence.

"[My] kids were really mad when they found out that [the police] took Grandpa, but I tried to make a joke of it," he told the Kennebec Journal. "I said, ‘This is the first time he’s ever been in lockup and we’ll just get him out.'"

It took days for Curtis to convince the police that the heroin in his car was actually just a baggie of his old man. He waited all weekend and into the following week, until finally, on Tuesday, cops got the results of a drug test and realized that Curtis was telling the truth. Kennebec Sheriff Ken Mason told the Journal on Tuesday that, yes, the suspected heroin was in fact "human remains," though having a couple Ziplocs full of ashes in your car is "a rather unusual manner in which to keep the remains of a loved one, for sure."

“This was the first time my father was ever in lockup right here, and it took me forever to get him out of it," Curtis said to the Journal. At least now he's got a really good anecdote in case he ever winds up on a talk show.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.

Follow VICE on Twitter.



from VICE https://ift.tt/2r6sAnG
via cheap web hosting