Cover photo by Roe Ethridge. Food styling by Matthew Vohr.
 VICE MAILYou know what? No letters page this month. You know why? Because we aren't receiving enough real letters. We mainly get emails now, and people don't think when they write emails. They just pump them out, which makes them hard to reply to. We sat here and looked at like 50 emails we've gotten in the ... | |
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 GLAS-NOT!Soviet Times Sucked. Want to See for Yourself?So these nuts in Lithuania have opened up a new theme park called 1984: Isvgyvenimo Drama. The basic premise is that you, dear customer, are a freshly caught Russian political dissident and now you are going to be locked up in hell and then interrogated by monstrous communists. Six Flags? Who needs ... | |
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 TRAPPED FOREVER IN SEX SLAVERY, EH?Canada Is the World's Latest Portal of Human TrafficFrom the Chinese head tax in the days of the British Columbian gold rush (look it up, it's fucked) right down to the Filipino chap who holds an architecture degree from back home but now flips your cheeseburger for minimum wage in Montreal, Canada has a long... | |
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 MEETING BABY KEVIN RUDD& Hermaphrodite Goats in Papua New GuineaIn March this year, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an official visit to a small village in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea where he was mobbed, showered with gifts, and generally treated like a rock star. That was strange enough but when I heard that to prove the extent of their... | |
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 ASS INVADERSThe Vice Guide to Milking Your ProstateHey, guess what? If you are an American man you are more likely to have cancer in your prostate than any other part of you. It's also more likely to kill you than any other form of cancer. Oh, and there is also the extra bonus of a 35 percent higher chance of your prostate going sour than your girlf... | |
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 DARK FRUITThe Seedy Underworld of Nature's CandyHow far would you go for a banana? Probably not farther than the grocery store. But that's because you've never tasted a blue ice-cream banana, or an orange-fleshed Haa Haa, or even a Popoulou (its bubblegum-pink interior has a distinct apple flavor). There are tens of thousands of fruits that never... | |
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 SKINEMAYou want to know what the best part about a dead baby is? No dirty diapers. No diapers at all really. No money spent on formula. No painting bedrooms pink or blue. None of that shit. Dead babies are rad-they don't cry and they don't make any demands whatsoever. I put a dead baby in my wife's uterus ... | |
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 SHEPPARD'S VIDEO-GAME PIEBy Stephen Lea SheppardNINJA GAIDEN II
I have concerns about Ninja Gaiden II, but my overall impression is positive. The concerns stem from comparing it to its predecessor. Ninja Gaiden was one of the best games of that console generation-I would call it a triumph of design. It presented a combat... | |
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 A-TOWN REP-RAZENT!When Bradford Met Soulja Boy (Briefly)Sorry, jaded white guy who professes to like rap music but can't remember the other guy's name out of Mobb Deep, but we love Soulja Boy. Since when did rap music being fun and goofy again become a bad thing? Ah yes, since out-of-touch old men like Ice-T and GZA started getting all grumpy about their... | |
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 HAARP BIZARRESecret military death ray or weather research outpost?Up in the wastelands of Gokona, Alaska, there is a forest of high frequency radio antennae. The US government claims it is conducting research into the uppermost reaches of the atmosphere, but Dr Nick Begich, a well-respected local education official, suspects there are darker motives afoot. He, lik... | |
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 GROSS!Collecting Hair and Then Collecting Stories About the Hair That Was CollectedThis guy named Louis B. has been amassing a hair collection for six years. He claims to have upward of 400 bags of the stuff. He started when he was working in a salon and he hasn't stopped since because… actually we have no fucking idea why he does this. But even during his three-month stay in a Fr... | |
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 WOOL OF THE DOGPhotos by Erwan FichouDoumé Jalat-Dehen makes wool out of dog hair and then her customers make sweaters from the dog wool. Photographer Erwan Fichou went to visit her in Brittany, where Doumé gave him the names and addresses of some of her clients. Erwan then set off across France and Belgium to meet them and take their ... | |
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 THRIFT STORE GIRLSBrian Ulrich has been traveling America, taking photos at thrift stores for a few years now.
We chose a few of them but mostly focused on girls because we like them and we also like that Screeching Weasel song.... | |
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 TAKING ON THE ITALIAN MAFIAA Conversation With Roberto SavianoRoberto Saviano is the 29-year-old author of Gomorrah, the international best seller that, through a mixture of narrative and investigative journalism, exposes the workings of the most powerful, and least known, of the Italian Mafias: the Camorra of Naples.
Over the last 30 years, the C... | |
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 TO LIVE AND DIE IN NAPLES15 Years of Pictures from Italy's Crime CapitalMario Spada is a photographer from Naples. In 1986, he started to work in his hometown as a photographer's assistant for an agency that organized wedding pictures. From 1993 onward he documented various parts of life in Naples, from kids in the projects of the Quartieri Spagnoli to microcriminality ... | |
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 RECORDSTHE FIERY FURNACES
Remember
Whoa, is this really what this band sounds like? I'd just assumed it was your garden-variety, Pitchfork-approved yogurt music for young-adult t-shirt wearers. But I'm not sure who'd enjoy eating yogurt to a mentally ill woman being strung along by a guy w... | |
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 THE EPICLY LATER'D PAGEWords & Photos by Patrick O'DellWhen I first started the Epicly Later'd skate show, Ali Boulala was one of the first people I wanted to do an episode with. In fact, before the show even existed I had dreamed of one day making a documentary about him. He is one of the most charismatic and quotable people of all time. After s... | |
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 OH SHIT!Who's Number One at Holding Number Two?So I guess some guy apparently went 102 days without taking a dump. But a) he was critically constipated, and b) Uncle John's Bathroom Book of Extraordinary Facts and Bizarre Information is not exactly reliable reference material. Still, it got us thinking about shitting, about not shitting, ... | |
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 VIRGINIANSPhotos by Hannah ModighSwedish photographer Hannah Modigh recently spent two months living in a motel in St. Charles, Virginia. She fell in with a group of kids there, started shooting them, and ended up making one of the best-looking documentary series we've seen in years. But why are the photos so pretty, even though sh... | |
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 GO TIGERS!Tamil Girls Are the Toughest Girls in the WorldTwo years ago, Norwegian photographer Thomas Haugersveen went to Sri Lanka to cover the civil war that's been ravaging the country for the past 20 years. After making initial diplomatic contacts in Norway he managed to enter the area known as Tamil Eelam. It's a guerrilla-controlled state-within-a-s... | |
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 NEW BEGINNINGSLarry Jon Wilson is the Heartworn Highways GuyLarry Jon Wilson is the first person you see when you watch Heartworn Highways, the definitive documentary of the outlaw country movement of the mid-70s led by heroes like Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle.
I met him last month after an incredibly beautiful show at the 12 Bar where he'd b... | |
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 LEPERS, MESSIAHS*Can You Believe This Disease Still Exists?*Now, we used the word "leper" here because we wanted to reference an old Metallica song. But you should know that people with leprosy consider that word really offensive. It carries a stigma that they've been trying to beat for years, and it's outdated and ignorant. So next time you meet someone wi... | |
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 RAW CHINAWu Deshun lives next to a warehouse off Guanghua Lu in what can best be described as a hovel, a cinder block, one-story, falling-apart edifice in the shadow of the almost-completed CCTV headquarters. It's a surprisingly desolate area in the middle of Beijing's breakneck construction zone know as the... | |
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 BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DOCapricorns on a Temporary Semi-Permanent HiatusWhat happened to Capricorns? Out of that slew of metallic instrumental groups of the last five years they were easily the most interesting, probably by virtue of the fact they played songs that had more than one riff and tempo and didn't have to have 50 different new shirt designs on the merch stall... | |
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 FOUR NEW GRIME KIDSGrime is going through a bit of a make-or-break period right now. Most of the better MCs have long given up trying to be grimey and are now doing pop songs with 80s revivalists and covering the Ting Tings (Dizzee) or taking their shirts off in videos and wearing chains and diamonds so fake they look... | |
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 ABORIGINAL HEADBANGINGThe Most Metal Town in the Whole Wide World Is WadeyeAt the beginning of 2008, the Australian national news reported on a small, isolated Aboriginal community deep in the Northern Territory, aka the middle of nowhere, aka Satan's Asshole, aka East Bumblefuck.
Violent riots had erupted between two of the town's largest gangs and for a moment it lo... | |
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 OUCHY!A Riot Over Beef Hurt My FaceHello. This is me in the In Jae University Hospital in South Korea.
There is a puncture wound on my cheek, seven stitches on the inside of my mouth, and another seven on the outside. I also have a dislocated shoulder with ligament damage and a concussion. I got these injuries when I was blindsi... | |
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 NOTHING TO SEE HEREGeographer takes photos of things really really really really really far awayTrevor Paglen is an experimental geographer working at the University of California. He's reponsible for one of the coolest books on confidential military activities, I Could Tell You But You Would Have To Be Destroyed By Me, a collection of the arcane shoulder patches worn by soldiers operat... | |
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 HOLY SHITBury Bores Thee VicarsAnyone still waiting for the revolution in sound and vision promised by the Horrors a couple of years ago can probably go home now. Southend's finest have left their mark, though, because today a whole bunch of bands are happily thriving below the radar, breaking things and getting in people's faces... | |
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 STRASSEKAMPFERThe Illegal German Fighting Scene Is Where It’s AtMMA may seem like the "real deal" in the US, but in terms of pure, totally unrestricted fighting it's got nothing on the illegal matches that have been going on in Germany since the Cold War. Two networks of fighters and organizers developed independently of each other in East and West Germany. When... | |
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 LITERARYCRIME-A SERIES OF EXTRAORDINARY INTERVIEWS EXPOSING THE WORLD OF CRIME-REAL AND IMAGINED
As you'd expect of a book designed by the guys who made those Russian Criminal Tattoo books, this weighty opus looks amazing. Its screen-printed cover, blood-red page edges, and creepy photos ... | |
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 GET TO THE POINTPens Bring Back the Spirit of Girl Punk Groups Sounding Retarded AgainAwhile ago we started doing monthly issue launch parties at the Old Blue Last. The whole concept should have been pretty elementary: have a party, a bunch of people drink and the bands covered in the magazine that month come down and play. No big deal, right? Well, it shouldn't have been. Then we re... | |
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