NEW YORK - MESH IS FRESH

Getting dressed lately is getting easier and easier. Just stick your big and long parts in the provided holes. All the shit is getting all stretchy and elastic like Pull-Ups potty training diaper pants. When I walk by the American Apparel window, it looks like jazzercisey pop-lockity of gymnastic surgeons, asylum pajamas, NASCAR flags, baby blankets and KFC napkins. Basically as close as you can get to swaddling clothes, but with a hoodie. (Anxiety and acne look couture in a hoody, so I’m down.) This might be the best era to bring back the three stoogerific prank of de-pantsing too. It’s just too easy to swoosh elastic leggings off boozy buddies!  

Continue reading "NEW YORK - MESH IS FRESH" »

LONDON - SHIT, I'M LIVING NEXT TO A BROTHEL

I’m not entirely certain what made me suspect our new neighbors were prostitutes. My experience of the oldest profession is limited to a stroll through Amsterdam’s red light district, having a sneaky peak at the variety of gruesome wenches from the safety of the street, so it wasn’t exactly an informed guess. I suppose it was the stereotypically whorish way they dressed, the tawdry jewelry and heavy make-up, and the way they seemed to silently sneak in and out of the flat next door. I saw them very rarely and presumed they were quiet types, maybe students, but I soon began to notice a lot of nervous, ugly men of varying generations shuffle suspiciously up and down the close stairs. At first I tried to console myself by believing that the women next door were incredibly sociable and hosted parties every night of the week, but if they did they were the quietest parties I’d ever (not) heard. I desperately grasped at other unlikely possibilities–a book club maybe, a big family–but I knew it was hopeless. The flat next door was a brothel.

Continue reading "LONDON - SHIT, I'M LIVING NEXT TO A BROTHEL" »

MONTREAL - WHITE LIGHTNIN' SCREENS

Oh ho ho! Guess who's coming to dinner? White Lightin's coming to dinner! Stop us if you've heard this one before but it's about this guy named Jesco who's really good at Appalachian Mountain dancing and getting high off airplane glue. Vice's Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti wrote it together and the Fantasia Film Festival will be screening it this  Sunday July 12th at 10pm and then again on July 13 at 5pm at the A.J DeSève Cinema (1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd West). 8 bucks will get you a seat and you can see the trailer here for free. And friends? Prepare for some sweet mountain banjo.

CANADA - WASSUP YIPPEE YIP Y'ALL!

My mom's younger brother was the only person in my family that I always got along with. He gave me my first taste of whiskey when I was nine, used to let me hold his bong for him, and had me sit on his lap and steer his Camaro when I was eleven. He didn't freak out when I drove it straight into a fire hydrant either because, as he pointed out later, it was entirely his fault for not fixing the brakes before letting me drive. But lately he's been unhappy. Last year he lost his job as a customer service representative and then he divorced my aunt Becky because, as he put it, "the bitch was tying me down." He's started two failed businesses in the past year (one which involved selling "sudoku calculators"). But ever since I've been working at Vice he's been going on about how he's always wanted to try journalism...

Continue reading "CANADA - WASSUP YIPPEE YIP Y'ALL! " »

A FIST IN THE FACE OF GOD - FENRIZ PRESENTS... TRAPPED UNDER VICE VOL.I

Back when I started this weekly blog at the beginning of the year, I wanted to interview Darkthrone's Fenriz. The reasons are pretty obvious, but he declined, stating a rigorous interviewing schedule that had just finished. I was a little bummed out but we kept in contact and he would tip me off on so many bands I would never have heard of without his vast knowledge of music. Anyway, I then tried to get him to DJ to no avail. When I heard the Actual Pain mixtape I was naturally lost for words and asked him if there was any possibility he could do one for Vice. No problem, he said. He would love to. And here it is. Intro from the man himself (including all capitals) below.

Continue reading "A FIST IN THE FACE OF GOD - FENRIZ PRESENTS... TRAPPED UNDER VICE VOL.I" »

MICKI AND HIS MINIONS

I have a fearful reaction when I hear the phrases "performance art" and "experimental theater." I've spent many a conversation about my school days trying to gloss over my theater background--I don't want to be outed. Not that I even earned that despicable title of Theater Person while in high school; I spent more time backstage listening to Tool with the techies than preening for my breakthrough appearance as a maid in A Tale of Two Cities. My brief career did, unfortunately, extend beyond school property. I starred as Alice in a community theater production of Through the Looking Glass. I remember pissing off my director when I buzzed off most of my hair immediately after getting cast. But it was one of those experimental productions, so we worked it in--I got to be a post-modern angsty Alice...and I shudder when I remember how in the opening scene they made me talk to a Tamagotchi instead of a kitty. Ah, late-90s technophilia.

Continue reading "MICKI AND HIS MINIONS" »

MADRID - FAT SPIDERMAN'S AWESOME GUT

If the daily hundred-degree heat in Madrid this summer makes me crack and I decide to go on a killing spree, you can rest assured that it won't be primary school kids or heads of state that get shot up. No. The outlet of choice for my homicidal rage is those street performance artists who clog up anywhere you'll find a steady flow of tasteless morons who don't understand the value of currency that's not in notes (aka tourists).They are, quite simply, a plague. If Estonian prostitutes don't get paid just for standing on the street looking like a trolley dash in a Maybeline factory, then why should I give money to a gay cowboy painted silver with a duck whistle in his mouth? 

Continue reading "MADRID - FAT SPIDERMAN'S AWESOME GUT" »

PARIS - WHAT WILL MAKE ME WANT TO KISS MYSELF?

Emailing ticket requests from Vice for the Paris fashion week menswear shows was never going to impress the snobbier Parisian press people. However, this was actually a blessing and meant I could just go to see the designers I really like. As anyone who's ever written reports of shows will know, they mostly involve waiting around for ages, getting really hot, being bored to death, hating yourself for really wanting a better seat and wondering how someone who has spent six years at fashion college has such bad taste. Then you have to lie and write that the shows were great anyway. 

Continue reading "PARIS - WHAT WILL MAKE ME WANT TO KISS MYSELF?" »