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This is a carrot shrine in the home of Jeff Chiplis, an artist in Cleveland, Ohio, who became obsessed with the graphics on bags of carrots and has collected more than 700 varieties of carrot bags over the past 25 years. He has a room in his house filled with carrot stuff. Photo by Carly Rabalais. MUSIC INSPIRES ART VOLUME 8 NUMBER 5 Cover drawing by Jim Krewson PROGRAMME.
HELL ON EARTH SPRING BREAK 2010, WOOOO! Yemen is Crippled by Terrorism, Drought and Civil War . . . 34 I Went to Cancun to Party With Douchebags German Precision at 4% but Ended Up Weeping With Tigers ...... 78 THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER SHULGIN Discover more free thinking from celebrated Which, Technically, Was Not an Interview at All ...... 38 young artists inspired by their favourite POWER COUPLES music at facebook.com/becksvier BRET EASTON ELLIS ...... 48 Photos by Richard Kern ...... 100 THE CORPSE Home Cryonics in the Smirk Age ...... 64 GLENN DANZIG ...... 126
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EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH ELLEN ROGERS RHYS JAMES Ellen Rogers is a 26-year-old photographer from Norfolk who From his first day as an intern last year, Rhys has been the spent much of her childhood sleeping in fields. She retains a most positive, eager and enthusiastic human that we’ve ever great affinity for the East Anglian countryside, which she encountered. Nothing we could do seemed to break him. Long describes as “bleak” and “solemn”. Pretty dramatic stuff, and hours and menial tasks were all taken in his smiling stride and equally applicable to New Cross, where Ellen went on to live only served to make us feel bad about being bitter, twisted old and shoot photos while studying for an MA in photography at people. He also pretty much went from having zero experience Goldsmiths. She likes religion, the occult, unsolved mysteries in television to helping co-ordinate and organise almost every and collecting weird, old picture-taking devices, so much so aspect of our election coverage on VBS. That included staying that she recently got a client to pay her in vintage cameras. up for 40 hours straight on the big night itself, only to be met See MODREN PRIMITIVES, page 111 with a result that was essentially a huge damp squib of indeci- sion. Now we have him working full time in the basement on other VBS stuff for you to watch. See ELECTIONS on VBS.TV CHRIS O’NEILL BRIAN O’NEILL Chris used to work in a very serious financial recruitment Brian O’Neill is a freelance writer based in Chicago. He spe- company around the corner from our London office but cialises in the Middle East and counter-terrorism, but his would always come and hang out with us in the pub at the end favourite thing to write about is Yemen, which combines those of the day. After a few years, he jacked it all in and went trav- two things in spades. His writing on Yemen has been published elling in America. Now he is back and works mornings in the in places such as Jane’s, so it’s safe to say he knows his stuff. He world of suited financiers, then changes into jeans, jogs currently blogs about Yemen, the Middle East, terrorism and around the corner, and works with us researching films about American cultural and political stuff at the Always Judged gangs and politics for VBS. He’s sort of like the Clark Kent of Guilty blog. He told us he’s a little embarrassed about appro- the online TV world, only without the tight bodysuit (we priating Orwell for the blog name, but admits to being terribly think) and super-powers. indecisive when it comes to titles. He was kind enough to tell See ELECTIONS on VBS.TV us about the multitude of problems set to turn Yemen into the worst place in the world very, very soon. See HELL ON EARTH, page 34 26 | VICE VICE MAIL NO-JOKE-GETTIN’ MCGEE relating to the civil war in the 80s and the recent political transition Dear Vice, the country underwent, which is dripping wet with fresh stories of I noticed the global trend report was missing from this year’s corruption, bribes, and sabotage. Fashion Issue. THANK YOU. THAT SHIT SUCKED. The writing Anyway, I just thought I’d ask and maybe plant the seed to see if was good, but the whole concept was retarded. There’s nothing this topic might interest you. On the other hand, I was wondering more culturally emasculating than reducing everything dynamic into what one can do to become part of the Vice team or to, at least, be such simple terms. I mean, it’s really cheap to come out and say, exposed to journalism and life as a curious 22-year-old dude who “Hey, guys, this is it. This is the thing here and this is the thing wants to fill the void of everyday college life. there.” It’s like top-ten lists. It’s just so mild to define things for peo- Thanks in advance. I hope to hear from you soon. And keep up the ple like that, to lay it out for them in the most accessible way. I find good work. everything illustrated in the pictures in this year’s issue much more PAT MURRAY radiant and subversive than selectively acknowledging a few hot via email people for how successfully they manage to dress themselves. The We hear that the ruthless Mexican Los Zetas drug gang has set up girl in the casket with the gold vintage necklace, looking hot as shit shop in San Salvador. Your first assignment is to infiltrate the even though she’s supposed to be dead? Bears vs. Vikings? GREAT! Salvadoran chapter of the Zetas, deal hard narcotics for a couple I think we all get a little more out of a magazine we have to sift months, execute a few enemies to prove you’re not a narc, etc., and through to find the gems. then write an exposé for us. This year’s issue seemed a little more interested in fashion and less worried about how to look cool. Let those with an ear to the wind SINCERE MCGEE figure this shit out and blog about it on their own. Don’t dumb it all Dear Vice, down by reducing it to rules and guidelines. It just makes looking in Why do you give this magazine away in the streets? I tried to pay on things such a virtual experience. the guy for the magazine but he wouldn’t take my cash. I can under- Thanks, Vice. stand if you want it to get it into the hands of people who have no Love, legal tender or employment, uplifting them from whatever they hap- RICHARD pen to be doing with themselves these days. Personally, before I found Miami Beach, Florida, US Vice, I was doing maths. I’d be happy to pay money for this maga- Thanks, we guess? But just for the record, the global trend reports zine, seeing as the quality of the articles has increased significantly were always kind of totally a joke. over the past years. I sincerely hope to see your quality periodical continue to succeed. LAZY GYPSY MCGEE Good luck. Dear Mr. Vice Guy! Sincere regards, My name is Tora Skirken Grunditz and I’m a 21-year-old fuck-up. MICHAEL B. Because I’m nice like that, I would like to introduce myself. I’m a girl, via email a Gypsy (I’m not a good one though, due to my small hands. I’m very What are you, reverse-Jewish? It’s free because the amount of money bad at stealing, very good at getting caught), and indeed very broke. we’d make off newsstand sales is a grain of mouse dandruff com- I’m also a good photographer and I think I should be in your maga- pared with ad sales. The only reason other mags do it is to give zine, not only for the good publicity but also for the charity part. themselves a sense of “prestige”. Go spend your money on someone Maybe someone could give me money. who needs it, like musicians. But if the money comes in, good use is a matter of definition. I’m sure as shit that I’m gonna buy cigarettes, weed, and pizza. Maybe LIL’ SKATER MCGEE some t-shirts. I dunno. Dearest Chris, If you want to check out my work you should add me on Hello and good day. I am a longtime fan or subscriber or, no, Facebook. I don’t have a portfolio, which is fucking dumb ’cause no maybe reader. Yeah, longtime reader. Anyway, I was flipping through one takes me seriously, but thou shalt not whine, as Jesus said. an old Big Brother mag when I remembered that I had heard some I hope you’ll contact me, or else I’m gonna contact you again. scuttlebutt that Tremaine is gonna start publishing BB again?! Can Terror-style. you confirm or deny this? Well, write me back or email me if you get Sincerely not yours yet, a tick. I figured that maybe you could drop Jeff a line or maybe TORA SKIRKEN GRUNDITZ you’ve heard yourself. via email Thanks! Keep up the good work. Holy shit, do you realise you’re named after a troll? PS: You should Peace, really make yourself a proper portfolio, young lady. And get that hair DENTON out of your face. Port Jervis, New York, US Chris Nieratko, ex-managing editor of Big Brother, replies: I don’t SALVADORAN MCGEE believe your name is really Denton. Parents don’t name their kids Hey, what’s up? Denton, hack comic-book writers make up names like that. And Port I just thought I’d take some time off from my afternoon and finally Jervis? Really? Come on. Another comic-book or soap-opera name come around and write to you guys praising you for the work you do. for a town. Since this letter, its author, and its town of origin are all )LIW\3RSWRQDO I’ve become somewhat of an addict to VBS.TV and the articles in Vice. fakes, I’ll give you a fake response: Yeah, bro. Big Brother is totally $SSDUHO&RUH%DVLF7HH I’m a 22-year-old Salvadoran attending Stonehill College, and I’ve coming back and it’s gonna be epic. Go grab a twelver, it’s almost always been fascinated with travel, history, curious about the “real time for breakfast! world” (the one CNN and everybody that isn’t you guys seems to ignore), and hungry to learn more about shit most people would probably think will get me nowhere in life. I was wondering if you’ve Send correspondence to [email protected] ever thought about El Salvador as a subject for either a documentary or to VICE at 77 Leonard Street, London, EC2A 4QS or a story or just for fun… considering the vast historical context Letters are edited for length. QHZHUDFDSFRP 28 | VICE Got a passion for film, music, fashion or photography? Want to find out about the best new talent the UK has to offer? Well, the Kopparberg Klash is going to bring it to you. Kopparberg and Vice have created the Kopparberg Klash to help you discover the new wave of young talent before they hit the mainstream. On the other hand, if you think you’ve got the skills we’re looking for, then submit your work via FindKopparberg.com, and the panel of judges at Vice will shortlist their favourites. The finalists will have their work showcased at one of four events at different locations in east London, and the winners will be celebrated at one final Kopparberg Klash. This is a great opportunity for the best new bands, stylists, photographers and filmmakers to show off their skills. The winners from each category will each receive £1,000 and get the chance to have their work published in Vice. The maker of the best film will be offered an internship at VBS.TV. The best band or musician will play at The Old Blue Last. The provider of the winning fashion entry will style a shoot on Vicestyle.com. The winning photos will be shown at an exhibition alongside other runners-up, and the photographer will be invited to contribute to Viceland.com. All winners’ work will be showcased at a final Kopparberg Klash Winners Event party at The Old Blue Last. Vice: How did you become so interested in Yemen? It’s not exactly a encouraged them to tap into the underground water tables. This country that often features on A Place in the Sun. quickly became a matter of whoever was richest digging the deepest Brian O’Neill: I have always been interested in the Middle East. I stud- and draining water for their own use. The inherent corruption in ied in Cairo, and even in the Arab world and the world of Arab scholars, Yemen, combined with the good but ultimately misplaced intentions Yemen was always this exotic backwater, a strange land. As a younger of improving water collection by the UN, has drained the water person, that appealed to my sense of exotic adventurism. As I studied it tables much faster than anyone could have imagined. more and looked at its political, demographic and economic trends and Aside from a potential complete lack of water, what are the other its history, I began to realise that this country was going to become real- major issues being overlooked by the media? ly important really soon. Its systems were falling apart, its institutions The rebellion in the south, for a start. Obviously the Christmas didn’t really hold and there was a growing threat of al-Qaeda. It seemed bomber got everyone focused on al-Qaeda, and they are extremely clear that this country was not going to stay anonymous for long. important globally, but they are not massively important in terms of The coverage of Yemen in mainstream media seems quick to condemn Yemen itself. There are two domestic rebellions going on: one in the the place as going to hell in a handcart. Can it really be that bad? north and one in the south. The one in the north got more attention In some ways, and this might be because I am a contrary bastard, I tend initially because when the world started looking at Yemen in the to think people are underplaying the story. Almost every economic, cli- wake of the bombing attempt, there was still open fighting going on, matic and demographic problem that a country can face, Yemen is which is exciting for the media. In that war, the president, Ali facing. Fifty percent of the population are under the age of 15, so there Abdullah Saleh, dubbed his last battle “Operation Scorched Earth”, will be a generation of young men growing up without jobs or oppor- which was exactly what it sounded like. There was carpet bombing, tunities. I think the story that is most important, however, and one that villages being razed and hundreds of thousands of refugees. the media is not concentrating on, is the impending water shortage. By 2020, the capital could well be out of water and within the next decade we could have millions of people without water. How did this water crisis come about? We’re guessing it wasn’t a case “The president dubbed his last of too many people leaving the sprinkler on. There are a lot of natural factors, but the main cause is that in the battle ‘Operation Scorched Earth’. 60s and 70s the UN got involved in the way that Yemen collected its water. Those methods mainly consisted of collecting rainwater and There was carpet bombing, razed storing it. The UN said, “Don’t do that, it’s not going to work”— even though it had worked for thousands of years—and instead villages, and many refugees.” October 16, 2009. Overlooking the central highlands of Yemen. The densely populated mountains of Yemen’s Sarawat range reach over 3,000 metres. Hell on Earth Yemen is Crippled by Terrorism, Drought and Civil War WORDS BY BRUNO BAYLEY, PHOTOS BY PAUL STEPHENS emen is not the most peaceful corner of the Arab world. of wanting to establish a separatist, extremist Islamic state in south- Situated at the southernmost tip of the Middle East, just ern Yemen. Since allied clampdowns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, it Y across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, it is the region’s poor- has long been suspected that southern Yemen is a key training centre est country. Yemen is also one of the more heavily armed Arab for Islamic militants. nations: it is estimated that there are more than 60 million guns in a That belief was confirmed on Christmas Day last year when it was country with a population of 25 million. That’s two and a bit guns revealed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian per person, in case you can’t do the maths. who attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 The country’s only constant is civil war. Despite supposed unifica- over Detroit, received both his weapon and training from al-Qaeda tion in 1990, Yemen remains divided between the traditionalist north cells operating in Yemen. and the separatist south. But even by its own warring standards, Publicly claiming responsibility for the attack, AQAP (al-Qaeda in the things have been going bananas since 2004. Arab Peninsula) asserted that it had been prompted by US air attacks on Yemen’s local squabbles, both separatist and sectarian, have, in supposed militant targets in the region. This led to an escalation of fact, got so bad that they are threatening to destabilise the entire Western-masterminded attacks and AQAP retaliation, which culminat- region. Everyone from Saudi Arabia to Iran, Egypt and Jordan have ed in the suicide attack on the British ambassador to Yemen in late April. got involved and started lining up to back sides. While the world’s media continues to train its sights on An ongoing conflict in the north of the country between Sunni Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has silently opened up a third theatre in Yemeni forces and Shiite Houthi insurgents has been bolstered by an a war on terror that looks about as likely to end as their old independence movement in the south, led by rebel Yemen army mili- favourite, the war on drugs. We spoke to the Yemen analyst and jour- tias disillusioned by the northern-based government. Among the nalist Brian O’Neill to find out what’s up in a country overrun with leaders of the southern separatists is one Tariq al-Fadhli. guns, no natural resources, and escalating wars, both civil and inter- A veteran of the anti-Soviet jihad who fought alongside Osama bin national. Brian is the former editor of the Yemen Observer, so it’s safe Laden in Afghanistan, al-Fadhli and his supporters have been accused to say he knows more about the place than most. December 14, 2009. Yemeni soldiers chew qat, a mildly narcotic leaf, while on patrol in Wadi Doan in eastern Yemen. 34 | VICE VICE | 35 That doesn’t sound good. How about in the south? How deep has al-Qaeda sunk its tentacles into Yemen? The southern issue was more political than anything. Yemen used to be They are very involved in everyday Yemeni life, but certainly not in two separate countries until 1990: North Yemen and South Yemen. The the central government and mainstream of Yemeni politics. In fact, north had been a democratic state and the south a Marxist state. The they have pretty much declared open war on the central government. two unified in 1990 because they were both broke. There was a lot of They have focused their efforts on infiltrating the tribal system on a tension, and there was a civil war between the north and south in 1994, local level by marrying into tribes and gaining local bases of support. which the south lost. President Saleh used a lot of jihadis in that war Their numbers belie their strength. There are only 200 to 300 al- who had just returned from fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and Qaeda in Yemen, but they are smart and patient and have been after they won he let the jihadis sort of take over and rule the south. getting stronger over the past few years. It is interesting to contrast So it became a little jihadi colony? al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Well, the people of the south were very much colonised and oppressed al-Zarqawi’s group. Their goal was carnage, so it was inevitable that by their own countrymen. In 2007 there was a movement for more people in Iraq would turn against them, but al-Qaeda in the Arabian rights, but since then Saleh has cracked down again and it’s an open call Peninsula has not really made any attacks in Yemen or on the Yemeni for secession. It looks like they are lurching back towards civil war and people. So, though people might not actively support them or agree that is the issue more than al-Qaeda. By focusing on al-Qaeda we ignore with everything they say, at least they aren’t killing anyone. Unlike the broader and more dangerous issues in Yemen. Our overriding inter- the government, who are. est has to be to keep Yemen from falling apart. By focusing on al-Qaeda What sort of poverty levels are we talking about in Yemen? we could actually accelerate Yemen’s breaking up, and if the country It’s Sub-Saharan-esque. In almost every poverty and developmental breaks up it will become an incredible safe haven for al-Qaeda. standard it is usually in the bottom five or ten countries in the world. There are not a lot of jobs. The economy is mostly based on oil, and that is running out. Everywhere seems to be running out of oil. Is Yemen’s case more “There are not a lot of jobs. pressing? It’s more dire than most. They never had that much oil to begin with The economy is mostly based on as they are stuck at the shit end of the peninsula. Most of the oil is concentrated in the south, so the political situation there makes it oil, and that is running out. They much harder for the central government to get any money from the oil. In Yemen, every issue ties into at least two or three other prob- never had much to begin with.” lems that make it harder to solve. October 9, 2009. A boy waits in line for food at the Mazraq refugee camp in Hajjah province, Yemen. The displaced persons at Mazraq camp have fled fighting between rebels, known as Houthis, and the government in the Sa’ada province of northern Yemen. There are also problems with piracy, right? Yes, and it’s getting worse. For a while it was concentrated off Yemen’s western coast, close to Somalia, but now we are seeing a lot more piracy around the south, near the port of Aden. I think what is interesting is that Yemen is so much closer to Somalia than it is to the Arab heartland. We tend to see things too simply. We connect Yemen with the Middle East, but culturally it is far closer to Somalia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia. When you see similar paterns of pira- cy in Somalia and Yemen, it makes sense. Crime often follows the same links as culture. What form of piracy is this? Is it the kidnapping and ransom type you hear a lot about in Somalia? It’s mostly for ransom. But then you have a lot of smuggling routes that follow the same lines as the piracy routes. I think the smuggling of arms and drugs is more of a threat than actual ransom piracy. January 16, 2010. A member of Yemen’s counterterrorism police force directs an exer- Yemen is a hub for international crime. It is geographically ideally cise in the mountains outside the capital Sana’a. The special unit is trained by US and suited to smuggling arms into war zones in the Horn of Africa and British Special Forces. drugs up through Saudi Arabia. Plus it’s a major route for arms sup- ply to terrorist groups. Would a total collapse make the country an even better base for al- Is there any meaningful effort being made by the West or interna- Qaeda operations? tional organisations to try to avert any of these impending The huge fear is that the autonomous tribes now have connections disasters? with al-Qaeda and they can use their safe havens, without any gov- There have been a lot of conferences and there is the Facebook ernment interference, to strike abroad. Al-Qaeda in the Arab group-sounding “Friends of Yemen” who have meetings and talk Peninsula needs space, but also some structure, and Yemen’s tribal about helping. We will see if that actually comes to anything but his- havens can provide both. They have already shown themselves able torically these talks don’t tend to. to strike at the heart of Saudi Arabia, and the fear is that a Yemen If things were to continue as they currently are, how long do you give that can no longer harass them would be a country where the Saudis, Yemen before it becomes a totally failed state? or even worse, the West, feels they need to intervene militarily. That I would say it could very easily happen within a year. would make Afghanistan look like a cakewalk. October 16, 2009. Villagers involved in a tribal dispute with a neighbouring village in Yemen’s central highlands show off their weapons. 36 | VICE VICE | 37 most important psychedelic chemist who Free from Dow, Shulgin set up a personal “OK,” Shulgin said, satisfied. “We’ve solved has ever lived. Those who do know of him laboratory in his backyard and began that problem. But now, for example, do you are usually only familiar with his role in the researching drugs with complete indepen- know what a lowena is?” rediscovery and popularisation of MDMA. dence and with the realisation that the “No, what’s that?” I asked credulously. But MDMA is just one of 100-plus unique chemicals he created had the potential to find “It’s the opposite of a highena.” chemicals that compose Shulgin’s pharma- their way into the heads of at least 1 million “Aha!” I urinated a microlitre in my pants copoeia, which extends so far into the people. He tested each new compound per- and changed the subject. “I brought you a unknown that he often has to invent new sonally and, if he deemed it worthy, on his peach pie. Would you like a slice?” terms to describe the effects (“eye romp” is wife and friends, with a special emphasis on He answered the question with another one of my favourites). The drugs are selec- the sex-enhancing properties of psychedelics question: “How many numbers are to the tive auditory and tactile hallucinogens, (or as he calls it, “the erotic”). Over the right of the decimal point in ?” psychedelics that dilate time or send the course of 50 years, he completed the most “Just one.” I had nervously confused right user into a state of amnesiac confusion, exhaustive examination of psychedelic struc- and left, but Shulgin immediately adjusted antidepressants, aphrodisiacs, stimulants, tures ever accomplished and manufactured his line of questioning. empathogens, entactogens, neurotoxins, an array of drugs that rivals the output of “OK, so what is the value of ? and at least one very profitable insecticide. many large pharmaceutical companies. All 3.14159265… But how many numbers can They are also some of the most valuable the while he has maintained his sanity and appear in front of the decimal point in or medicines known to man, and although gentlemanly composure by playing the viola, in any rational number?” only a fraction of them have been formally teaching university classes, and attending “Potentially an infinite amount of num- studied, they are the best tools we have for elite soirees at Bohemian Grove.1 bers.” understanding the chemical composition of When I arrived at Shulgin’s home in “Right, and how large is this infinity?” the human mind. Lafayette, California, he was peacefully sit- “Excuse me?” Shulgin’s career started at the Dow ting at the kitchen table. I walked through the “How large is this infinity?” Chemical Company, where he made a name sliding glass door, greeted him, and then “That’s a difficult question to answer,” I for himself synthesising Zectran, the first embraced him, which produced a euphoria replied. biodegradable insecticide. After this success far greater than that of MDMA and a time “I’ll give you another question and let you he was given freedom to work on chemicals dilation more profound than the effects of do a comparison: How many numbers are of his choosing. He chose psychedelics and 2C-T-4. We disengaged and, without pause, there to the right of the decimal point? One? went on to create an amphetamine called he began to riddle me: “Can you name the An infinite number? Not only an infinite num- DOM, which at the time was second only to two words in the English language that ber but an infinitely larger infinite number.” LSD in potency. A single large dose could last begin with two consecutive a’s?” “How can? OK, wait…” a solid 48 hours. In 1967, Brooklynite I thought for a moment before answering, From there on our conversation wound chemist Nick Sand realised the drug’s market “Aardvark is one…” through similar territory. We spoke mostly potential. He built an industrial laboratory in “Yes, good, and the other?” in riddles, including but not limited to Alexander Shulgin and the author. San Francisco where he cooked DOM in a “I don’t know, I can’t think of another.” numerical palindromes, hyphenated palin- 150-gallon soup vessel and sold it by the kilo He bent down his head and said in a low dromes (or the lack thereof), SI units of mass to the Hells Angels, who rode across America whisper, “Aardwolf.” with an emphasis on the femtogram, words unleashing tens of thousands of excessively “Aardwolf?” I asked, and with that he had that begin with the letter x and words that potent 20-mg DOM tablets on the public. already risen from his chair and shuffled into begin with the sound x, the ambiguities of The Last Interview The influx caused hordes of hippies to freak the hallway to retrieve a giant yellow dictio- cactus identification, the correct pluralisa- out at the Golden Gate Park Human Be-In. nary, which he dropped onto the kitchen tion of the word “fungus” (of which there Meanwhile, less than a block from table and pushed toward me. Sure enough, are three variations and four pronuncia- Tompkins Square Park, the NYPD busted it’s there, and on his prompt I read the defin- tions2), and an analysis of the peach pie I With Alexander Shulgin ition aloud: down the door of a psychedelic chapel called brought as a hypothetical new psychedelic the Church of the Mystifying Elation in an drug (5-MeO-PEACHPIE). I was asked to Which, Technically, Was Not an Interview at All early-morning raid. Police seized $8 million calculate an appropriate portion for my first worth of psychedelics, including 1,500 doses taste. After extrapolating data from its clos- BY HAMILTON MORRIS of DOM, two marijuana plants, and “numer- est analogue (5-MeO-APPLEPIE), we PHOTOS BY ASH SMITH ous mattresses”. Stories of emergency-room decided on a one-femtogram slice (for safety DOM freak-outs abounded in the press; one reasons). Then he put his sandals on over his user in Manhattan ingested a dose and black socks, picked up his silver cane, and ritualistically performed seppuku, disem- asked, “Should we go to the lab?” love Alexander Shulgin. I’ve loved him than he is a real person. But he does exist, as We had a conversation; she called me boweling himself with a samurai sword on Before we left, Ann brought out a large, from the first moment I read about I am about to attest. “honey”, which I enjoyed tremendously, and Mother’s Day. At this point the drug was still frosty pitcher of strawberry lemonade. I had him. He is my idol, my hero, my sun, After years of preparation I called the unexpectedly had a New Zealand accent. I · · largely unidentified and was alternately aard· wolf \-wulf\ n, pl aard· wolves \-lvz\ to remind myself that this was Ann my O . I love each of the 978 pages of his Shulgin residence, ostensibly for an inter- Ann told me that Sasha (Shulgin’s friends call ' 2 reported in the New York Times to be a rela- [Affric, fr. aard earth + wolf; akin to OE wolf Shulgin—the woman who pioneered the phenethylamine magnum opus, PiHKAL view. It was the sort of call that you prepare him this) no longer grants interviews—he’s tive of a secret military nerve gas or as the wolf–more at WOLF] 1: a hyenalike quadruped practice of MDMA psychotherapy—who in (Phenethylamines I Have Known and for by jotting down an index card’s worth of conserving his limited energy to finish his last “caviar of psychedelic drugs”. Eventually it of South Africa having a striped coat, five-toed this very house, perhaps in this room, used Loved), and every milligram of his 1.13-kilo- dialogue. The type of event that requires book and work in the lab. After hearing this, was realised that DOM was the product of forefeet, and a distinct mane, feeds chiefly on MDMA and 2C-B to treat everything from gram tryptamine treatise, TiHKAL careful pre-call meditative deep breathing, I carefully explained that I did not specifically carrion and insects (as termites), and is usu. legitimate pharmaceutical research conducted nitrous-oxide addiction to demonic posses- (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved). positive affirmation, autohypnotic closed-eye require an interview. I just wanted a meet- placed in the Hyaenidae though formerly by a then-unnamed chemist at Dow. sion (or, technically, postexorcism demonic Above my bed I’ve pinned a large picture of success visualisations, and as many as five ing, an informal conversation. Eventually it separated in another family (Protelidae). 2: an Unsurprisingly, this made Dow very unhappy. harassment), often with patients finding Shulgin cuddling with his wife, Ann. I often throat clears. I somehow managed to dial the was decided that I could visit for a few (extremely) unexpected nonpsychedelic-related Once the source was identified, Shulgin’s ties themselves cured in ways that years of con- sleep with a copy of PiHKAL not under my number and, while I listened to the ring-back hours before an electrocardiogram appoint- thing, which confuses me [see more at I’M to the company were severed. NOT PREPARED FOR THIS]. ventional talk therapy could have only begun pillow, but as a pillow. He is the grandfather chirp two-second bursts of perfectly overlap- ment. She reminded me that he really does of Ecstasy, the molecular magician, the atomic ping sinusoidal waves followed by not give interviews anymore and if my meet- conquistador. Over the span of 50 years he four-second stretches of exophthalmic silence ing with him were to turn into one, it would 1 A place where, I have a feeling, he has “tasted” many a psychedelic with various captains of industry. According to one friend, he was spotted offering to teach the head of Boeing “a new way to fly”. has created more new psychedelic drugs than and yet another sinusoidal ring-back tone, be his last. I was elated. 2 “Fungi”, “fungus”, and “funguses”, with special attention paid to the variant pronunciations of “fungi”—“fun-gee” and “fun-guy.” It should be noted these questions come from a man the Amazon jungle ever has. He is more of a my nose actually began to bleed with antici- Although Alexander Shulgin is not exactly who published a two-page editorial in the Journal of Clinical Toxicology dedicated to how irksome it is when people incorrectly pluralise the word “amphetamine”. The implication being mythological creature, a chemical centaur, pation. The call was answered by Ann. a household name, he is unquestionably the that this grammatical error is the most heinous amphetamine abuse of all. So please, in the future remember Adderall contains amphetamine, not amphetamines. 38 | VICE VICE | 39 a patchwork cottage of corrugated metal and plastic that emanated the sharp, musty scent of DMT. As he opened the door, he exclaimed, “Ho-ho-ho!” The lab was a Pyrex jungle, a barrage of borosilicate, a bevy of beakers, a bouquet of burettes, all manner of vulcanised rubber bung. Desiccation bells, pinned butterflies, and mason jars crammed with a slurry of what I could only guess were pickled mushrooms. Pressed behind a sheet of glass were three blades of ryegrass infected with deep purple fingers of Claviceps purpurea, the fungal pre- cursor to LSD and the mould responsible for the medieval scourge of Saint Anthony’s Fire. On his blackboard was a diagram of a yet-to- be-synthesized molecule, which I recognised as 3,4-MD-4-methylaminorex—a derivative of the highly euphoric psychostimulant 4-methy- laminorex that, in the mid-80s, attained cult-drug status under the name U4E-uh. Beneath the molecular diagram was the simple caption “MAKE ME!” There was a collection of round-bottomed A collage entitled Psychedelic Cuddle by Shulgin enthusiast William Rafti. Rafti also designs tattoos and blotter art. flasks on the table, each containing a small scab of impure tryptamine crust. One flask was labelled 5-MeO-MALT, another 5-MeO- NALT. Shulgin began to explain, “DALT is The lab was a Pyrex jungle, a barrage of the first one—it’s the diallyl—and the methylallyl is MALT. Then EALT and then,” borosilicate, a bevy of beakers, a bouquet of he puckered his lips and pushed out a plo- sive, “PALT and iso-PALT and so forth. burettes, all manner of vulcanised rubber bung. 5-MeO-DALT was an active compound, so I’m pursuing that line further. Usually they wait about four years after I get something to remedy. I sipped some of her lemonade, shining through the leaves, casting shadows out that becomes popular, and then they gazed past their Huichol yarn paintings on his gargantuan collection of psychedelic make it illegal. But I sent the synthesis for through a window that perfectly framed the cacti, including an enviable Trichocereus 5-MeO-DALT to a friend. He put it on the two-humped Mount Diablo, and sighed. “I bridgesii forma monstrose (a spineless phalli- internet, and one month later it was synthe- hope you don’t mind my using my bare formic mescaline cactus, also known as the sised in China and sent via Europe to this hands,” Ann said as she dropped additional penis plant). We passed a coiled garden hose, country. Now it’s available on the street!” ice cubes into my glass. “Not at all,” I said. I which Shulgin once notionally unravelled A bit of background on that statement: On wouldn’t have minded if the ice cubes were while testing the effects of ALEPH-1, and May 24, 2004, Shulgin sent an email to a dropped into my cup with her bare feet. crossed over a small metal bridge as the lab psychonaut named Murple regarding the After sipping and savouring some lemon- became visible. Overgrown with vines, it was synthesis and effects of 5-MeO-DALT. He ade, I took a nystagmic walk down the hall and entered the bathroom. The wallpaper’s lattice of black diamonds is the very same pattern that reached out and shook Shulgin’s hand during the first trials of TMA-6.3 As I stood over the powder-blue toilet attempting to pee, I pondered the contents of his septic tank—a pharmacokinetic treasure trove, which undoubtedly contains the world’s most diverse collection of psychedelic urinary "THKC@SD@L/VMSGDBNLODSHSHNM and faecal metabolites! Even Shulgin’s modestly sized burgundy terrycloth hand towels and wintergreen mouth rinse demanded my attention. I could hardly pee. %!'!-%3#/5+3+!4% I left the bathroom to find Shulgin waiting SG in the backyard. We walked down the glitter- )MRSNQDR-@X ing stone path to his laboratory. The sun was 3 Shulgin’s first chemical modification to the mescaline molecule was the addition of a single carbon atom to the ethylamine side chain, which produced an amphetamine called TMA. From there he developed TMA-2 through TMA-6. They became moderately popular psychedelics in Japan and the US, and TMA-6 remains an unscheduled substance. Shulgin enjoyed TMA-6, although he felt © 2010 Electronic Arts Inc. EA, the EA logo, SKATE and the SKATE logo are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. All sponsored products and company names, brand names, logos and trademarks “toasting the toast in the toaster was difficult”. A friendly reminder to the DEA should they try to harass Shulgin. are the property of their respective owners. “PlayStation” and “ ” are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. The PlayStation Network Logo is a service mark of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies and are used under license from Microsoft. 40 | VICE Inside the Pyrex jungle. formatted the description in the style of a Shulgin firmly believes that his research for decades and began assisting him in the TiHKAL entry and said that it would be must remain openly available for educational lab last year. I asked Paul whether he had included in his forthcoming book. That same purposes—whether it’s DEA officers or tried any of the new tryptamines they were day, Murple posted the 5-MeO-DALT syn- DXM addicts. But there is one instance currently working on, and he shook his thesis on his personal website. On June 25, it where Shulgin deemed his chemical revela- head, “No, Sasha is always the first to taste became openly available from a grey-market tions too enlightening for public new materials.” The reason Shulgin is laboratory for $200 per gram. On September consumption. While testing an amphetamine always the first to experience his creations is 25, 2004, three months after the chemical hit he christened ALEPH-1, he wrote in his completely altruistic. Should a chemical the market, the first-recorded 5-MeO-DALT notebook, “Tell NO ONE about this drug so have an unexpected toxic effect, such as overdose occurred when a Floridian user that it can never be identified and there can inducing a seizure, he wants to protect his accidentally ingested 225 mg (more than 11 be no moves made to destroy it… Persisting family and friends. Although I suspect there times the maximum dose Shulgin tested) in in scientific publication in all peripheral is another reason Shulgin likes to have the the midst of Hurricane Jeanne. He survived areas as subterfuge, diversion. Keep all pro- first taste: the sensation of synthesising a the experience and shared numinous insights gressive work in my appendices. Code them completely unknown drug and ingesting it, such as “Ozzy and the like do not mix well at ‘SH’—too informative.” It was “too infor- a sensation that can only happen one time, all with this substance”. mative” because Shulgin believes ALEPH-1 is clearly druglike in and of itself. It’s the If Shulgin whispers even a word of praise is the “essence of power”4 and if the DEA breaking of a transdimensional, neurochem- about a new drug, it is almost guaranteed to discovered it they would attempt to destroy ical hymen. In a sense, it’s the one drug he traverse international borders within a few it. When I asked him whether he has ever felt keeps coming back to. Ask Shulgin what his months. If someone dies after taking one of that way since, he quickly said, “No, you favourite psychedelic is and he will say “2C- these substances, there will be irresponsible must publish.” But part of me wonders B”5 without hesitation. Ask him how many media coverage, public outrage, and hurried whether there is in fact a special notebook times he has taken it and he’ll say “a few”. scheduling by various drug-enforcement labelled “SH” stashed away somewhere on a This is a guy who has had approximately agencies. The UK went so far as to ban the cobwebbed shelf. 10,000 psychedelic experiences. No drug, entire roster of drugs presented in PiHKAL Later in the day, Paul D., Shulgin’s col- not even his cherished 2C-B, tastes better in a single act. Despite his detractors, laborator, joined us. He has known Shulgin than the untasted. 4 Shulgin created a series of sulphur-containing psychedelic amphetamines named after the Hebrew letter . ALEPH-1 was the first. True to his method of vigilant titration, his first dose was 250 nanograms. Over the course of 18 trials he worked up to a single milligram. It detonated an intellectual hydrogen bomb in his prefrontal cortex. 5 2C-B is the archetypal Shulgin psychedelic. It possesses all the qualities he searched for throughout his career. 2C-B is potent, warm, corporeal, associative, shows no signs of physical toxicity, and has a short duration, ideal for psychotherapy. It is also extremely “erotic”. Shulgin said, “If there is anything ever found to be an effective aphrodisiac, it will probably be pat- terned after 2C-B in structure.” It was, unfortunately, made illegal after a brief stint as a legal sex enhancer and widespread distribution under the name Ubulawu Nomathotholo by South African shamans (an incredible story for another time). 42 | VICE Eventually Paul brought in dozens of green cardboard boxes full of chemicals. I am the fire, I am the flame. I am the one who stands strong. My fabric is tough, They contained a physical history of my heart is brave. My soul is also proudly made by each of you who wears me Shulgin’s entire pharmacopoeia. A life’s now and screams it loud, work corked up in three-dram vials. The collection was supremely tantalising and borderline pornographic. My heart rate increased and my brow began to perspire, as I tried my hardest to avoid undignified Tex Avery-type behaviours like panting, making an aroogah sound, or letting my eyeballs fall out of my head. He removed the lid, revealing 100 alphanumerically indexed cells that housed glass vials, with conspicu- ous lacunae once occupied by Schedule I drugs. Each vial’s gummed label was hand- inscribed with a small molecular diagram. Many of these substances don’t exist any- where else in the known universe. Shulgin is not only a chemist, he is a collector. Early in his career he ambitiously sought to accumu- late every psychoactive drug in the world but eventually realised he couldn’t keep up. A shelf of reagents, solvents, and a large jar of piperonal—one precursor for MDA. According to the index card, the (partial) contents of the single box Paul opened included trichocereine, crude curare, Outside the lab, Paul was sorting through VapoRub and sent a horrific pulse of nausea isomescaline, amphetamine, R-DOM, another box of boxes, which contained at least through my body, which was accompanied by MDMA, DET, DiPT, scopolamine, benz- 1,000 additional vials. “These are mostly an instantaneous pounding headache. Still, I’m phetamine, d-methamphetamine, aspirin, chemical intermediates—a trimethoxyben- glad to have allowed a few femtograms of berberine, physostigmine, papaverine, zaldehyde oil,” he said as he uncorked one and chemical from Shulgin’s collection into my pipradol, aconite, thebane, pilocarpine, held a sample of black goo to his nose for a bloodstream. Paul continued, “This is 2- oxycodone, oxymorphone, several forensic sniff. “It has an interesting smell,” he remarked ethoxy-benzaldehyde.” He took another sniff samples of PCP dated and labelled “illicit as he passed it to me. I closed one nostril and and passed the vial to me as if we were assess- PCP 1975”, and my dear old friend Ritalin. took a hard whiff. It smelled like Vicks ing the bouquet of a fine wine. “More The author touching a specimen of Trichocereus bridgesii forma monstrose, aka the penis cactus. It was very “erotic”. 44 | VICE It’s never easy to say goodbye. intermediates in the production of ampheta- mines and phenethylamines…” He pulled out a I wanted to offer him 1,000 screaming vial full of canary-yellow crystals and began deciphering the molecular structure on the genuflections of gratitude for everything that label. “This is a diphenyl…” I craned my neck over the vial, totally hypnotised until Shulgin has happened to me on substances he has exclaimed, “Let’s go and have some lunch!” Paul stayed behind while we walked back to created and championed. the house and I enjoyed a piping-hot pizza with Ann, while Shulgin opted for an egg-salad-on- has happened to me on substances he has cre- collection bears—but there is no way to white-bread sandwich. It was a very casual, ated and championed. My bed collapsing retract a molecule. The fact that he has created nervous, and astonishing midsummer lunch CRYSTAL CASTLES while I was on 2C-B. Being cradled like a child these chemicals and published their syntheses with the greatest psychedelic chemist in the by a computer programmer as I lay dying on ensures their survival. It’s no wonder he is still world. Suddenly Paul burst into the room, DOC. Biting a crisp Red Delicious in the sem- tripping at 84. In fact, he said that his newest CRYSTAL CASTLES short of breath: “A team of scientists in Japan inary on 2C-E. Finding a nippy jug of milk on creation, 5-MeO-MALT, is showing activity at just discovered a 12-step total synthesis of a stoop and being attacked by a dog on DiPT. 1.8 mg, which suggests it may be quite potent. Salvinorin A!” Everybody began to murmur; THE NEW ALBUM The Central Park portrait artist who drew me But he also said that, as he has grown older, Shulgin was impressed. “Oh my, that’s a diffi- as if I were Enrique Iglesias on 4-HO-MiPT. the dose required to produce an effect has cult one,” he said. “A real treasure of decreased significantly. “Threshold effects?” I DOWNLOAD NOW symmetry. You know, Salvinorin has 128 possi- Memorising the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram on 2C-D. Burying my face in a sopping-wet asked. He pauses for a moment. “Oh, ‘effects’. WWW.ITUNES.COM/CRYSTALCASTLES ble isomers.” I wished the day would never end. I thought you said ‘sex’!” I sat looking at (and possibly ogling) Shulgin wig I found on the floor of a taxi on 4-HO- MET. These were all holy and wonderful If, indeed, this non-interview was Shulgin’s chewing his egg-salad sandwich and thought last interview, it left me partially unfulfilled. I things that I wanted to tell him. I would not be CD & 180gsm 12” DOUBLE VINYL about the superhuman influence his work still have so many questions. But my visit with capable of giving him enough thanks. INSTORE 24/05/10 endued on the world. The hundreds of deaths, the Shulgins made me realise that maybe it’s Near the end of our meeting, I asked millions of freak-outs, tens of billions of dollars time to answer my own questions. Which is whether I could look through the lab once exchanged of which he has not received a dime, fair and good, a gift even. He has, after all, TOXIC BEATS THAT ARE AS more while the Shulgins finished their meal. I cumulative millennia of prison sentences, tril- answered more than enough. Regardless, it SEDUCTIVE AS THEY ARE SAVAGE – NME was granted permission and went back to lions of transformative experiences, decalitres was difficult for me to leave his lab. I wanted touch and smell and examine things in silence. of joy tears, decibels of laughter, and so forth. to hide in the trash can or climb a tree; I really #1 MOST BLOGGED ARTIST – HYPE MACHINE I wanted to tell him how much he has changed There may be empty slots in the green boxes didn’t want this story to end. my life; I wanted to offer him 1,000 screaming where the 5-MeO-DiPT, 2C-B, DOB, and Gaze upon VBS.TV this month to see more of Hamilton’s WWW.CRYSTALCASTLES.COM genuflections of gratitude for everything that DOM once stood—they are the scars that his chemical rendezvous with the Shulgins. It’s an eye romp. 46 | VICE Bret Easton Ellis INTERVIEW BY JESSE PEARSON PHOTOS BY JERRY HSU ver the course of six novels and one book of short stories, to life, ghosts, and a possessed, bloodthirsty children’s toy. Did I men- Bret Easton Ellis has put together one of the most enter- tion it’s great? O taining, fascinating, and fucked-up bodies of work in Next month, Ellis’s new novel, Imperial Bedrooms, will be contemporary literature. released. It is, as you may have heard, a sequel of sorts to Less Than The release of Less Than Zero (1985) saw Ellis painted by the Zero. Its narrator is Clay, and most of the main characters from the media—with varying degrees of admiration and disgust—as both an original book (Julian, Blair, Rip, Trent) reappear. But Imperial enfant terrible and the voice of his generation. Written in a stark, Bedrooms is no mere sequel. It’s more a culmination of all of Ellis’s minimalist style that calmly and blandly relays a story of disaffection work up to now. Does it continue the story of the passive, clueless and degradation in Los Angeles, the book seems to me to be the ulti- Clay in scary, shimmery Los Angeles? Yes. But it also detours into the mate statement on privileged 80s teenhood. scatological violence of American Psycho and the otherworldly terror The Rules of Attraction (1987) abandoned Less Than Zero’s spare of Lunar Park. As a follow-up to Less Than Zero, Imperial writing, replacing it with dense, stream-of-consciousness prose in a Bedrooms is more of a nauseated reaction than a loving continua- novel of shifting narration. The disaffectedness was still fully intact, tion. And boy, does Ellis deliver here. Imperial Bedrooms is darker but here it was richer and headier. This book is also the perfect lam- than Less Than Zero and more full of dread and horror. I’ve read it poon of the pretension and partying and ridiculousness that happens three times through now, and though I know I love it, I still can’t fig- at liberal-arts colleges. ure out exactly what I think of it. But I’m certain that it’s important Then came American Psycho (1991). This hyperdetailed and occa- and I’m certain that you should read it. sionally incredibly violent and pornographic novel of amped-up Vice recently spoke with Ellis via telephone. Here’s most of that yuppie masculinity was maybe the most controversial piece of fiction conversation. There’s an Imperial Bedrooms spoiler in here, but seri- of the later 20th century. But as satire, it’s up there with Jonathan ously, the thing we spoil happens on like page 9 of the book so it’s Swift. And while it’s easy to fall into the trap of seeing American really not that big of a deal. Relax. Psycho as an offensive, gleeful misogynistic fantasy, it’s really not Vice: So what were you doing today before we started talking? that at all. It’s an indictment of the attitudes of its main character, and Bret Easton Ellis: I was at Runyon Canyon. the fact that Ellis chose to write it in the first person, free of omni- I don’t really know what that means since I’m so unfamiliar with LA. scient editorialising, was a brave and rewarding risk. Runyon Canyon is this canyon in Hollywood that people walk. It’s a Glamorama (1998) is Ellis’s longest and most complex novel. It’s couple of blocks up from Sunset Boulevard, and then it goes all the about, in part, supermodels becoming terrorists. It’s enough about that, way up to Mulholland, and it’s kind of like a hike, I guess. in fact, that Ellis settled out of court for an undisclosed sum with the makers of the models-as-terrorists Ben Stiller comedy Zoolander. Oh, I’ve been taken there. I know what you’re talking about now. Lunar Park (2005) is Ellis’s strangest novel and also one of his You want to go when there are not a lot of people. On a weekday at best. The main character is named Bret Easton Ellis. This character like 2:30 or 3:00 is really good. has written books with titles like Less Than Zero and American I suppose it’s the place to go for some nature in Los Angeles, but I Psycho. But rather than a roman à clef, which the first little bit of the had the feeling there that I have in most of LA—this kind of menace book leads a reader to expect, Lunar Park is really a horror novel and impending-murder thing. I kept waiting for the monster from that’s on par with anything by Stephen King. The book features mys- behind the dumpster in Mulholland Drive to jump out at me. terious emails from dead people, fictional characters (American Completely. You totally get that here. And the trail was kind of empty Psycho’s Patrick Bateman and, perhaps, Less Than Zero’s Clay) come today and it was, you know, the wind and the palm trees... Menacing. 48 | VICE VICE | 49 What is it about LA? I imagine from your work that you feel this Oh no, of course not. Yet it seems like people will never get tired of with processes like making them their money back. But did I ever feel Once the little guy inside your head says you’re doing it, there’s no same sense of dread and madness in that city that I feel? probing you about how much of your fiction is autobiographical. exploited by all of that? No. I felt like I was totally going along with going back. Right? Well, hey, I feel it everywhere. I wonder why? No other authors, when I read about them, get asked everything, and I felt that it was a good idea. I think I handled it pretty There really isn’t. Once that question popped into my head— “Where is Clay now?”—the decision was pretty much made. But OK. this. Michael Chabon doesn’t get asked this. Jonathan Franzen doesn’t well, but after the initial year, year and a half, then it got kind of get asked this. Jonathan Lethem doesn’t get asked this. I get asked then I just had to go through the process where I made sure that I’d It’s not just LA. And you know, there’s a lot of stuff that I like about scary. I thought, “Oh, this is not good.” this. Maybe because I’m just not as good a writer as they are. want to spend so much time on it and that it was going to be fun, and LA. I mean, I live here. I didn’t move here because I disliked the city. I could see it being difficult not to play into it a little bit when you’ve it was going to be worth it, and I was going to like doing it. I’m kind of allergic to New York right now, so this seems like the best No. You’re as good or better than all of them. But I don’t know, I been handed a role and it’s working so well. place to be. don’t want to get off topic too much. Never mind. Hey, when you’re 21 years old... But it’s weird because I grew up Yeah, I’ve read elsewhere that if it’s not fun for you, you’re not going I want you to just briefly get off topic. You can say anything you around famous people. And me and my “cooler friends” thought it to be doing it. Yeah, New York is weird too. want to me. I really don’t know any of them. I mean, I know them was kind of a joke. It was like we were above it. We’d be at people’s Why would you? All my friends moved to Brooklyn. The only people I know in kind of, but I’m not friends with any of them. parents’ parties and there’d be very famous actors hanging out by the Manhattan are rich, and it just seems like, you know, the party was Have you ever abandoned a work because it ended up not being fun? pool or whatever, and we always thought: “Lame. Really lame.” And fun, but it’s kind of over for me. LA seemed to be the place to land. I like Chabon, but I get this weird sense that I wouldn’t like him as a No. Never. person. Not that that matters, of course. so the idea of becoming a sort of celebrity… it was this weird thing But still, do you have any thoughts on what makes LA feel so creepy? That’s great. So you really make sure before you get down to the No, it doesn’t matter. Always look at the art, not the artist. that just kind of happened. Like I watched it unfold and didn’t really There is a really easy answer to that question. The geography. It’s a participate in the building of it. meat of it. beautiful city, but it’s very isolating. But it’s difficult for me sometimes. I think there’s something kind of Totally. Completely. I don’t understand how you can do it any too cute about Lethem, or at least something too cute about his last Did you lose friends when you got famous? other way. Yeah. novel, Chronic City. No, I made so many friends! Hundreds, thousands of them. There’s a lot of space for something to lurk, I guess. It’s also a weird A lot of writers talk about their process like it’s akin to being water- I really like The Fortress of Solitude. That’s the only book of his I’ve And some of them lasted for more than 24 hours, too. city because it doesn’t change. There are no seasons. There’s not a boarded. liked. And the only book of Michael Chabon’s that I really liked was In a way it does open some doors, and you do meet a lot of people that fall. There’s not a winter. It’s a strange city to live in. Ridiculous, huh? I don’t understand how writers complain about Kavalier & Clay. you might not normally have met. And that’s both good and bad. But writing. Aren’t they pretentious? My current conception of LA started in some ways with your novel That was great. did I lose some friends? Yeah, I totally lost friends because of it. My Less Than Zero and then also from seeing old movies like Sunset Yeah, I think so. It leads to negative stereotypes about writers! And I really don’t like anything by Jonathan Franzen but The close friendships with male writers became more like rivalries. Suddenly, Boulevard. I think that maybe part of what makes LA so weird is that Maybe writing some long, nonfiction thing where a lot of research is Corrections, which I think is a great American novel. I became a problem. The book getting published in the first place there’s a palpable sense of desperation in the air. A lot of young peo- freaked some of my peers out, and then when it became successful, all involved could be difficult, I guess. But even that should be fun. ple who want to make it. Those are kind of their inarguable books I guess, those three. bets were off. I sensed a shift, but then it was confirmed eight or nine Oh, totally. Yeah, but everything else by those three is just, you know, I go, years later when we were all drunk and we were talking about it. I said, “Grrrrrr.” You know, I went to school with Jonathan Lethem. That showed up a lot in your new novel, Imperial Bedrooms. “I thought you guys were so excited for my success. You all thought I “I’d been reading a lot of Big time. Oh, really? was so great and you loved me so much.” And they were like, “Bret We were in the same class at Bennington. Easton What? We hated you! We fucking hated you! We totally resented Raymond Chandler, and you There’s the character of Rain, obviously, who is willing to do any- that whole situation. We thought it was completely unfair, that you were I didn’t know that. What was he like in school? thing to get a role in a film, but also there’s a part where Clay watches not more talented than us.” I got that talk and I was like, “Whoa.” know what? The plots really a video of the young actor who lived in his apartment before him, Nice. He was a nice guy. I had no idea that he wanted to be a writer. and he sees “the fake smile, the pleading eyes, the mirage of it all”. He wasn’t in any of the main workshops. Like Donna Tartt would be Were these people who had ended up having any degree of success for don’t matter. The solutions to Do you encounter that kind of person in real life? in there, and Jill Eisenstadt. You know, the people who really wanted themselves? Success in different ways. Everyone’s life landed in a different way than All the time. to write were the people who always managed to get into the major workshop that term. And Jonathan never got into any of them. And they expected. But no, certainly not in terms of literary success. But you mysteries don’t matter.” And do they ask you for things? then I got a galley in the mail a long time after we graduated, and it know, people got married, had families. They were fairly content. Yeah. It’s Vegas here. It’s a gambler’s town. You come here and the was for a novel by Jonathan Lethem about talking animals or some- OK, so I don’t have a fancy way to ask this next question… odds are overwhelmingly against you, but you do it anyway. And you There’s no reason to do it if it’s not fun. Was Imperial Bedrooms easy thing. And I was like, “What the hell is this?” Oh, ask it. Ask it. know what? I really think that—and I’ve said this before—but I to plot once you started to outline it? think that LA forces you to become the person you really are. I don’t Let’s get back on track here. I guess that people probe you about the Well, why write a sequel? I’d been reading a lot of Raymond Chandler, and that was my big think LA is a place where you’re allowed to reinvent yourself. It autobiographical stuff so much because, when Less Than Zero came Yeah, why. Why write a sequel? influence. out, you were not just seen as a novelist. It was this voice-of-a-gen- absolutely isn’t. There’s an isolating quality to a life lived out here. I eration thing, and people lazily thought, “Well, he must be just like It’s a big one and a small one. I was going to ask you about pulp novels, actually. don’t care how many friends you have. I don’t care if you have a rela- the people in the book because he’s their age and he shares some And it’s so easy to answer. It’s such an easy answer. Yeah, I was very influenced by Raymond Chandler and that kind of tionship. Whatever. It’s just an isolating city. You’re alone a lot. And background details with them.” So you were marketed as a novelist OK. pulpy noir fiction. I think it really summed up where Clay had landed. I think it forces you to become the person you really are. It doesn’t but also as something more than a novelist. In a way, it was a book Because I wanted to. That style just worked for me. I thought it was right for this narra- allow you to hide. I think New York is a much easier place to kind marketer’s dream. Is that what you meant when you talked earlier tor’s voice. of reinvent yourself. In LA, over time, the real person you are ulti- Yeah. about being exploited? And what did this pulp stuff have to do with plotting out Imperial mately comes out, or else people can’t deal with that and they flee I mean, basically it was just rereading my previous books when I was Well, you know, it was fun at first. It was very fun. It seemed like a Bedrooms? before it happens. But we were talking about meeting people who outlining Lunar Park. And the only thing that I really took out of that good idea to be interviewed for magazines and have your picture Well, so I’d been reading a lot of Raymond Chandler, and you know come out here to make it… experience of sitting down with my books and reading them was, “Oh, taken and be on television and stuff. But then it stops. After about a where’s Clay? What’s he doing now?” And it began to haunt me. I was what? The plots really don’t matter. The solutions to mysteries don’t Yeah. year, it’s not a good idea anymore. Because what you realise has hap- thinking, “Do I go there? Do I really want to go there?” But ultimately, matter. Sometimes they’re not solved at all. It’s just the mood that’s Certainly, if you’re writing for television or the movies, you run into pened is that your identity—your real identity—is being consumed you don’t make the decision. Emotionally, you become invested in this so enthralling. And it’s kind of universal, this idea of a man search- people who want to be a part of it. by this new narrative, this collective narrative, that’s taking place idea, and you start to make notes, and then you’re questioning whether ing for something or moving through this moral landscape and trying And is there a transaction that’s presented to you in the clear-cut but with the public as well as the press. The real you is dying and this this is going to work or if it’s going to be something you want to spend to protect himself from it, and yet he’s still forced to investigate it. unspoken way that Rain does it with Clay? Is it really like that some- thing that’s created is now going to be representative of you. And a couple of years with. Then it makes its decision for you. And I never The plot comes into play during the outline stage, where the story times, with a wannabe actor propositioning a writer or a producer? every time you meet someone, you know that they’re going to have thought of this as a sequel. I thought of it as exploring where this char- tells itself. That was especially true with a novel like this one, which Listen, I’m sure it can be. I mean, yeah, all the time. What I was this entire set of associations, mostly fake, about who you are, and acter is 20 years later. That was the one driving point. I didn’t want to is narrated by a screenwriter and which has a movie-ish feel to it. And thinking about when I was working on the novel was: What is the that is a difficult thing to process. I’ve got to tell you, it’s a very dif- write a sequel and I don’t think it is. Well, I mean, it is and it isn’t. It’s I was thinking about Hollywood novels, too, and how do you write central narrative myth of Hollywood? And it revolves around ficult thing to kind of dismantle and work with. narrated by him, sure. But I guess I could maybe have switched the a Hollywood novel without satire. That was the other thing. Every exploitation. People exploiting each other. I’m sure. names around and it could stand alone. Hollywood novel seems to be like a satirical take on something. OK. You’ve got to become friends with it. That’s the only way you can But I love the idea of a novel like Less Than Zero having a sequel. Did you have The Day of the Locust in mind? That’s basically what it comes down to, and I was very interested in make it work. You can’t fight it. But it makes things difficult. It When I heard awhile back that your next book was a follow-up to Yeah, or Bruce Wagner’s novels. I’m a fan of some of them, but after that idea because I guess I’d seen a lot of it. I’d been exploited myself makes relationships difficult. It makes forming friendships difficult. Less Than Zero I thought it was really perverse and hilarious. I working here, I just don’t feel like there’s anything to make fun of. and I think that people thought that I might have exploited them or It’s an added layer of alienation that, you know, is a bummer. thought it was great. Like, Entourage drives me crazy. whatever, so as the novel was coming together in my head and then Yeah. One of the hurdles that I had to get over was I had to convince myself Oh, my God. Entourage makes me want to puke. in outline, that became the thing that was interesting to me. And at It’s mostly been a series of hassles. But you kind of just deal with it. that it really wasn’t a terrible idea. The more I thought about it, the I remember liking Entourage five, six years ago. But after actually some varying levels, yeah, I’ve experienced it. But I have to reiterate You write books, and you’re writing books for a publishing house— less terrible it seemed. And then I thought, hey, regardless of whether being around those sorts of people? It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting what I said when the first book came out: I’m really not Clay. this entity that is paying the bills, in a way. And you’re going to help it’s a terrible or a good idea, I want to do it. what’s being celebrated. 50 | VICE VICE | 51 Yeah. want to read, like, “I want to read that book. I don’t just want to But I don’t know. How did I get onto a rant about Entourage? I guess write it.” So I can’t be conscious of an audience. I am the audience. it connects. I guess it makes sense. “What about me?” [laughs] And that’s the other thing that I thought Sure, it makes sense. But you were talking about Clay, and about Imperial Bedrooms was about. I think Clay is an outrageous narcis- Raymond Chandler being an inspiration for that character in the new sist, and that was a big note when I was working on the book. There’s book. That’s interesting because Clay is so full of fear, but then he a lot of “me, me, me” stuff going on. He thinks it’s all about him. turns into such a monster toward the end. He thinks everybody’s stalking him, and he thinks everybody’s got I know. Because maybe the fear turned him into a monster. It’s hard ulterior motives, and he thinks everybody’s out to get him. And being to talk about that, but let’s try. afraid of everything is definitely a weird form of narcissism. Well, sometimes when you pull back the curtain, it ruins things. Yeah, it is. I mean, so I’ve been told by people. There’s not really much behind the curtain, so… [laughs] By shrinks and friends? I guess what I’m thinking about now is that your work often reads, By my life coach. in part, like horror fiction. Do you think that Imperial Bedrooms is Part of the reason that I asked about reception is because we were a horrific thing? Because I felt tension and horror when I was read- talking earlier about how when your books come out, they’re some- ing it. times treated by critics with an extra level where they talk about you Yeah. I guess I do. as a person as much as they talk about the book. Right? And Lunar Park was so great. Once I realised that you were going Hostile, very hostile. Yeah, why is that? for a full-blown horror thing, I was excited to see what you would do I could imagine it being difficult for you to not think at some with it. point, even for a second, “Well, this one’s going to make this critic A lot of people didn’t like that part of the book. think this.” Not like it’s going to make you write differently or They’re stupid. change what you’re doing, but I wonder if the thought even crosses They don’t like the Stephen King part. They like the Philip Roth part your mind. in the first half. Well, like, which critic? Janet Maslin, let’s say. I like Janet Maslin. “I don’t really think that you’re And she likes you, as I recall. Right? Yeah. Well, she did. She hated the horror part of Lunar Park. writing for an audience. I think Oh, so she’s one of them? you’re writing the book for Yeah. But she was nice up to a point. I like reading her reviews. What do you think of Michiko Kakutani? yourself.” A little too rigid. Her taste is very confined and very conventional. It seems like she’s more conscious of the power she might wield than other critics are. It’s too bad that they weren’t willing to take the ride because I think Which makes her interesting to read. it totally made sense. This horror thing goes back to something you Yeah, because there’s ego behind it. were saying earlier, when I said that I feel dread and menace in Los Yeah, and she’s very declarative. She’s always disliked me. She thinks Angeles, and you told me that you feel it everywhere. I’m horrible. Yeah, pretty much so. But I’m a worried person. I worry a lot. There’s a positive blurb from her on my copy of Less Than Zero. What worries you? That’s the only one of my books she thought was OK. It disturbed Just about everything. It’s from being raised in a fear-based house- her. I disturbed Michiko Kakutani. hold. So I’m fearful of things. Not a lot of people can say that. Did you read the recent New Yorker Do you worry about things like getting murdered or being the victim review of this new biography of Muriel Spark? of a home invasion? No. I haven’t read that. Oh, yeah. Sure. Pretty much everything. But it’s not debilitating. It’s They were talking about how she had a real sense of playing God just my outlook on things. But also, these are books we’re talking when she wrote—this disdainful feeling for her characters. It made about, and they demand a certain level of tension, and if you’ve plot- me wonder how you feel about your characters. ted it out and you’re creating this world, that’s part of what that That’s interesting. I don’t really look at it that way. I look at it as a world should be like. I mean, within the covers of the book. book, and the character’s a part of the book, and you have a plan, But you must be able to access the horror inside yourself to be able and you want to execute the plan. I’m not dismayed by my charac- to do it so effectively, don’t you think? ters’ fates because they’re not real. Yeah. I guess it’s worth it. Of course. I mean, I’m basically Psychology 101’ing you right now so maybe I It’s a made-up situation and they’re made-up people. should back off. But is there an emotional satisfaction sometimes? Do you ever feel You’re totally fine. excitement when you’re writing or is it all very technical? I just really like the sense of fear and where the fear comes from in No, it’s both. It’s technical and it’s emotional. I would say it’s much this book. Like these mysterious text messages that Clay keeps get- more emotional during the outline days of the process. The outline, ting. They reminded me of the weird emails in Lunar Park. You just in my case, is usually longer than the finished book. Tons of notes, a mentioned that some people didn’t like the horror aspects of that lot of ideas, a lot of them discarded. And then once that outline is book. Do you think about the possible reception of a novel when pretty much completed, then it does become a technical process you’re working on it? where you’re following the outline and you’re trying to organise it in No. I don’t really think that you’re writing for an audience. I think a way that is pleasing to you in novel form. And so yeah, it is emo- you’re writing the book for yourself. You’re writing a book that you tionally satisfying. 52 | VICE VICE | 53 Of course. Julian’s corpse, and late in the book his actual murder, are described The closest I’ve come to my actual voice was probably in Lunar Park, in really grisly detail. When you do something like an intense flash- where I was really freely writing how I probably do write in terms of forward like that, do you know why you chose to do it, or is it just emails and how I talk to friends. an instinct? Imperial Bedrooms is a return to a more stripped-down prose style It’s all instinct. Or, I mean, I don’t know what else it is. Emotionally, for you. it feels right. And it feels rhythmically right. It plays for me. And I I liked the idea of going back to minimalism, which I haven’t done in just think, “Oh, yeah, that’s the way to do it, and I like it that way, a long time. Trying to achieve that kind of tension with so few words goddamn it.” was enjoyable to do. You know, Less Than Zero was not initially cre- I read, on some level, a kind of glee in killing off this character so ated as a minimalist novel. The first draft of it was really long and early and in such a nasty fashion. This is a character of yours that is overly emotional. It was a disaster. well known, and a character that was, in my opinion, bastardised in Was it your editor who helped you pare it down? the movie. And you kind of just have him destroyed and bashed to It was my teacher at Bennington. He just said, “I get it. I get what pieces right away as this sequel is beginning. you’re trying to do. But this isn’t working at all.” And I said, “What What happens to the writer looking back on his work? Does he do I do?” He said, “I want you to do a trick. I want you to do an become a destroying artist at a certain point in his career? You know? experiment.” I’d written it in the third-person past tense. And he I think there was another impetus behind Imperial Bedrooms and it said, “Put it in the first person and see what happens.” I said, was one that I was surprised to see emerge and that I kind of wres- tled with. And that’s the idea of… I don’t know how to put this. “Really? First person?” Because Less Than Zero was my first real There’s a sentimental view of Less Than Zero. It’s something that has attempt at a novel. I’d written three novels previously to it. taken shape around that book. It’s kind of “beloved”. And I think it’s And each of those early novels were very much roman à clef, right? also heavily misread by about half of its readers. I’ve met many peo- Yeah, they were basically journals. Less Than Zero was my first ple in the last three or four years since I’ve moved back to LA who attempt at a real novel. And so I thought, “Well, I’m going to do it tell me, “Oh man, I moved to LA after reading Less Than Zero.” in the classic way. I’m going to do it in past tense, third person.” But on my professor’s advice, I started to move it to first person. And then as I was going through it, all of the fat started dropping away, “I think there was a feeling of and it became this completely different thing. It needed to be rewrit- ten. Now, I wrote that terrible first draft in eight weeks and people wanting to fuck with [Less Than think that’s what was published. But I worked on that book for like two years to get it to the place where I wanted it to be. Zero] a little bit when I was There are two traps that seem easy to fall into when you’re writing in the third person. One of them is overexplaining and overdescrib- working on Imperial Bedrooms.” ing, because you’re this omniscient God guy. And then also—especially when some of the topics are extreme situations like Jesus Christ. what you’ve written about—the third person might feel like it’s tak- And it definitely seems to be almost like an artefact of the rah-rah Bret Easton Ellis with two attractive young friends of photographer Jerry Hsu. ing a moral stand one way or another. 80s. It is up there with John Hughes movies and Ray-Bans and Fast Judgments. You want to avoid explicit judgment. It’s a tricky, Times at Ridgemont High. As dark as I felt the book was when I was tricky thing. writing it, as serious as I was about it when I was a student working on it, it was very surprising to see it be read in a certain way and to It must be. The final passages in both Imperial Bedrooms and Lunar Victor Ward in Glamorama. I went back and forth initially in terms And all of this goes back to why people thought that Clay was you take on this reputation. So I think there was a feeling of wanting to Park pack a lot of emotional impact. They’re moving. Especially the of how I thought the narration of Imperial Bedrooms was going to when Less Than Zero came out. It was first-person present tense. fuck with it a little bit when I was working on Imperial Bedrooms. end of Imperial Bedrooms, where Clay is talking about how he never be. And then I realised, well, Clay is a screenwriter now. And he’s a Yeah, and also they thought that I came from that background, Now, I don’t like that, really, but if I had to be totally honest with liked anyone and how he’s afraid of people. And then there are these narcissist. It’s almost as if he’s writing a movie that he’s starring in. which I really didn’t. My family wasn’t rich. All of my classmates myself, it was there. It was floating around. things that are embedded, like he talks about “moving the game as Then everything started falling into place in terms of how the novel were. I keep repeating the story like, “Oh, poor me. We lived in the you play,” which is a callback to the quote from the band X that sounds and moves. The narrator dictates the style. Valley.” All my friends lived in Beverly Hills or Bel Air. If it’s an instinct that you had, why like it or not like it? Because it’s kind of a negative one, in a way. I mean, it is sort of opens Less Than Zero, so there’s this full-circle thing happening too. I like that you’re so into the narrator because if there’s ever been an It’s like the Dust Bowl down in the Valley in comparison. acknowledging the audience’s reaction toward a book of yours. That Right. It’s planned, you know. I mean, you kind of know the ending unreliable narrator in fiction, it’s almost every one of yours. My friends really were the influence for Less Than Zero. After being seemed unlike me. Though I guess I was also exploring that in Lunar before you begin actually writing the book. Usually I know the last Pretty much. Yeah. folded into that world when I was in fifth or sixth grade, when my par- Park. I think it began there. And it’s interesting to me that that’s line of the book before I begin that technical process of going through ents moved me from a public school into a private school, I began to see But I almost feel like every narrator is going to be unreliable in where you can end up—almost rewriting the books. the outline. this world that I really hadn’t seen before. I’d had a pretty middle-to- some way. upper-class upbringing in the San Fernando Valley, until my father Yeah. That’s interesting. I don’t know that a lot of writers agree with that. I’m always amazed Anyway, there’s no way that Imperial Bedrooms can have the kind of Yeah, I usually know the first line and the last line of the book before when I read fiction narrated by characters who sound like, you know, started to make more money. But he never made money on the level of impact that Less Than Zero had. I begin it. college professors—but who are not. I’m reading the Lorrie Moore my classmates. Their parents were mostly in the film industry, and that Do you really belabour what to lose and what to keep as you’re going novel A Gate at the Stairs right now. It’s very clever. I mean, she’s a really became an influence for Less Than Zero too. But that was a perfect-storm situation. It was like the whole culture from the outline to the novel? very clever writer, and there are really great details, and she’s super- When you were writing the first few pages of Imperial Bedrooms, was primed for it. Well, some people would say I throw in everything. [laughs] Some smart about how to construct a sentence and pull off a paragraph and it’s Clay talking about this guy that he’d known who had writ- You can’t repeat that, and there’s no sense in wringing your hands, people complain, “Why is Glamorama 700 pages long?” But one of with a punch. But there’s no way you’re going to tell me that this 20- ten this book about him and his friends, and it was made into a pacing around feeling worried about it. You just have to do what you the things that I’m really interested in is the narrator. I’m interested year-old girl character is really this narrator. I mean, there’s such a movie about them, were you thinking of him as describing you in want to do. in the function of the narrator, the person telling the story. I’ve never disconnect there that the book becomes distracting. I see this in a lot some way? I know that this is dangerously close to an annoying auto- Like kill off Julian. written a novel in the third person. My work is just a series of nar- of Updike books too, for example. biography question. But even so, it was still an instinct. Just an instinct. It wasn’t a plan. rators, and I kind of give the books over to them. Some of them, yeah. But not the Rabbit books. It’s all just a book of fiction, so I wasn’t thinking about that. I could Like, “Oh, I have to kill off Julian.” It just felt right. make up an answer, but it would be fake. They decide how long or short the book will be. And that’s why the Rabbit books work so well, because there’s a sim- Do you have a problem with me saying that Julian’s death is foretold They decide how the book is going to be written, essentially, and ple American realism to them that lends itself really well to that I like the simple answer. Now, I’m going to get into a spoiler here. I on page 9 of my review copy of Imperial Bedrooms? Because I won’t what kind of language is going to be used. character and to his life. I think that an immersive experience and an really like how, so early in the book, you tell us about how the char- if you don’t want me to. How does that process work, though? How do you let a character honest one requires that the writer make sure that the narrator has a acter Julian Wells dies. No, you can do whatever you want. speak to you? voice that he or she probably would have. Right. Cool. And, I mean, you’re going to get to it within a few minutes of The Bret Easton Ellis character in Lunar Park is going to talk very Right. That threw me until I realised it was a foretelling, because on the next reading the book anyway. So… Clay is pretty vacant and passive in differently from Clay in Less Than Zero, or the college students in And if I rewrote any of my books in the third person, they’d be a page, you know, Clay’s having a drink with him or something. Less Than Zero. The Rules of Attraction, or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, or lot different. Right. Yeah. Totally. It’s about that. 54 | VICE VICE | 55 Right. But in this book, you know, he’s kind of fearful and he’s kind got to change the grammar on pages 58 and 87.” And I said, “If I do But maybe there was this regime change and these people with kids 23, you want to have fun. And I feel the same way now. I can’t put of vacant and passive, but then toward the end it changes. I mean that, can I keep a couple more of these details?” And it finally got took over, and they weren’t going to look kindly upon, say, a scene up that pose of pretending to care about “literature” and publishing there’s this mini-American Psycho sequence with him late in the down to: “OK.” where a 12-year-old is getting raped. and awards and reviews. book, where he’s got those two little hookers at a house out in the It’s not like he was unprepared for this stuff, having edited American Right, right. But you still care about books. I mean, just based on a very simple desert. That felt very unlike the Clay that I’ve known before. What Psycho. And, also, it was simply the era of teen movies. You know what I source, your Twitter, where you write about reading the new books was it like to take that character there? Well, he did a second pass on American Psycho. I thought that book mean? And it had a great marketing angle whether it followed the that come out and get talked about. Exciting. It was so exciting. was finished when I turned it in to Simon & Schuster, before they book to the letter or not. It’s like, “This is the dark 80s teen movie.” I enjoy reading books. I still do. I do find that my patience for Was it? rejected it. Done. I didn’t want it touched. But it got to Gary, and he Right. And I don’t know how dark it was. It was kind of like an after- them has, in the last five years, somehow been altered, and I won- Realising that this was where it was going to go was really exciting. touched it a little bit. I was kind of in a daze, and the editing was really school special in a lot of ways. It was lightly R rated. It’s so weird der why… That’s cool. hurried. He flew to LA and we sat in a hotel room, and basically he how movies change over time. I’ll catch part of Less Than Zero Altered for the better or the worse? I liked it. would edit and turn the pages over and I was just like, “Stet, stet, stet.” whenever I come across it, and you know, it’s just shocking that that For the worse. It just seems so much more difficult to focus now on fic- And it grew heated. I don’t think he understood the book, or he did but was a big studio release. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. tion than it once was. Though that’s not totally true. What was I he didn’t like it, and the editing process was really dismaying. There’s I’m serious. God, if I had a nickel for every time someone said that Yeah. reading that blew me away? Oh, it was Jhumpa Lahiri’s last collection, still stuff in there that he did that I can’t read. Like little clarifications. to me. [laughs] You know, in November or whatever. Like a big Friday opening. It’s Unaccustomed Earth. I was reading the stories in increments. They are I don’t know. Why am I going on about Gary Fisketjon? just unfathomable now. fairly long—they run to 40 pages. I found myself reading the first cou- Have you ever watched The Kids in the Hall? You’re like that char- It all started when I asked about the scene where Clay tortures the ple, like, six pages here, six pages there. Then I’d get to one that was acter that Dave Foley played, the sarcastic-sounding guy who wasn’t Yeah, it feels more like an art-house kind of thing now. two teen prostitutes in the desert. I love that there’s a copy of Less so engulfing and so sweeping that I put everything aside and raced really sarcastic. But you’re serious? It was exciting when you realised A total art-house movie. But it’s really beautiful. It just really is beau- Than Zero in the house where that scene takes place, too. And then through it in an hour, and it was so satisfying. You cannot get that kind that Clay was getting dark? tiful with Ed Lachman’s cinematography. it’s also interesting that this is the scene over which you’ve had your of experience from any other medium. Yeah. I remember the moment when I was working on the outline most serious battle with your editor. I think it’s pretty much essential And now Imperial Bedrooms already has an IMDb page. and I saw that this was where it was going. I remember where I was Oh, for sure. at that point in the book. Yeah, I don’t know why. sitting. I remember doing an outline of that sequence—and it ended It’s the ultimate virtual-reality thing. It was exciting to go there, and it was scary to go there, and it was Did the film rights sell at the same time as the book deal? up being a sequence that my editor had a lot of problems with. I really Now, speaking of Twitter, what’s going on there? It repulses and fas- kind of liberating to go there. All of these things just felt really good No. The film rights revert to Twentieth Century Fox because I’m have a hands-off thing going on at Knopf. They’ve been cool about cinates me. It’s like the distillation of everything I hate about the about it. using characters that they own. letting me publish what I want to publish, more or less. But we internet, but I’m still drawn to reading people’s Twitters. fought over that scene. Before we finish talking about characters, I want to ask about Rip. I Really? Wow. It is what it is. I use it as something else. I don’t know what I do, but don’t really have a question here, but I just love him in both Less It’s like, if I write a sequel to American Psycho, Lion’s Gate owns I’m not into updating like, “Oh, just had a good coffee at Starbucks,” Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms. He’s kind of comic relief, but he’s Patrick Bateman. That’s kind of the deal with the devil that you make or, “Uh-oh, it’s Friday the 13th, I’m scared!” with a scary emoticon face. “It was basically me saying [to my also terrifying at the same time. Is there a real-life inspiration for Rip? if you sell film rights to your books. It’s either a place for thinking out loud or for doing stand-up for an If there is, I’m sure he’s amplified in fiction. Was it seeing your films turned into movies that led you to screen- audience that’s not there. editor]: ‘You let me keep this, and Or maybe taken down a little bit. Maybe there’s someone even scarier writing? I do it every week or so, every two weeks. I don’t even think about it. out there. No. I remember writing scripts in high school with my friends. My Well, you’ve written my favourite Twitter that anybody’s ever written. I will change the grammar on Oh, great. close friends in high school all wanted to be screenwriters, and they What? And I’m afraid of him and so I make him less scary, but it’s still really all are now. I always thought that screenwriting was probably going page 47.’” scary. [laughs] But no, there really wasn’t a real-life inspiration. to be down the road for me somewhere, but I was also interested in The Salinger one. On the day he died, you posted: “Yeah!! Thank God he’s finally dead. I’ve been waiting for this day for-fucking-ever. He’s like the supervillain of these two books. novels, which none of my friends really were. I never really took Party tonight!!!” Is Gary Fisketjon still your editor? Yeah. And Clay just doesn’t get it, and we don’t really know the screenwriting seriously until a couple of scripts of mine got me some Some people didn’t get it. Yeah. He’s very much a trees editor with me, and not a forest editor. specifics about Rip because the narrator, Clay, doesn’t really want to work, and it was like, “Oh, yeah, I get it. I can do this as well.” So He’s a real stickler for grammar. We kind of tussle over grammar know, which makes it kind of scarier. Like, what is going on? What I’ve always kind of been writing screenplays, but not as full-time as I I thought it was the greatest thing I’d read in a long time. and syntax. really is happening? am now. And what a mistake. What a total tragic mistake… No, no. Good. That’s good. That’s what I was hoping for. I’m kidding. And that scene with Clay and the prostitutes in the desert… Totally true. There are a lot of moments in both books where Clay is Did you get grief from friends over that? It was more gruesome in my final draft. There were some details in on the cusp, where he could just clarify things, and he’s too passive But the majority of the film industry does seem to me like kind of the [laughs] I did. But it was how I felt. I can’t help it. I felt that way. I it that Gary wanted completely omitted, and I’d think, “Really?” or afraid to do it. Now, I want to talk about screenwriting a little bit most disgusting pit of snakes in the world. was dreading the onslaught of the sentimentalising of Salinger—who Before, we’d never had any problems, but over this sequence we since you’ve been doing a lot more of that in the last few years. I’m [makes a long, slow, guttural sound] hated all of us, by the way. Cranky old bastard. It was a much more really did. sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s like a dream of mine to see Less Man, how do I transcribe that sound? complicated tweet than it might appear. There was much more thought behind it than what you might think. Did he also edit American Psycho? Than Zero remade as a film that’s far more true to the book. “A low moan of agreement escaped Ellis’s mouth.” Well, what happened with American Psycho is that, you know— Every week there seems to be someone trying to do that. I’ve heard There you go. A low moan of agreement. So did you deliberate it much before you posted it? that everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Gregg Araki has been try- Actually, you know what? I posted it and then I thought: “Too soon, Its first publishing house rejected it, and then it came to the house But you know what? Yes and no. There are also a lot of really tal- ing to get through to Fox to let them remake it. But of course now it too soon, too soon!” And I deleted it. But a couple of people had seen where Gary Fisketjon works. ented and interesting people in the film industry, and a lot of fun wouldn’t be Fox. It would be Fox Searchlight because it wouldn’t be it and someone was outraged and then someone else was writing That’s when Gary became my editor. He’d been my friend for like six people, too. a big studio film. But I wouldn’t be interested enough to participate “LMAO, LMAO.” And I thought, “Oh, interesting. OK. Put it years prior to inheriting American Psycho. We knew each other really in it, so I just keep hearing constant rumours about how so-and-so is I guess I’m thinking mostly of the business side, not the creative side. back.” The whole thing happened in a space of about 90 seconds. well socially. We would hang out a lot. So you know, having that trying to get the rights to Less Than Zero. The business side of it has no logic and is very difficult to navigate. And then within like an hour I had 10,000— relationship, and also having a social relationship with Sonny Mehta That can be horrific. But if you’re asking me would I rather be hang- who was then head of Knopf, kind of made going there a no-brainer. And I don’t know if it could ever be really made the way that it is in ing out with hot actors and actresses and fun directors and producers Responses, retweets, the whole range I’m sure. But I don’t think Gary was a fan of that book. the book. The book gets very, very dark. who give me some money to, like, write a shark movie; or having din- Yeah. There was a time when it could have. Initially I think it was Barry ner with Richard Ford and Toni Morrison... Look, I’m at a different I also liked your tweet about how The Last House on the Left remake American Psycho? Diller and Scott Rudin who bought the rights, and Scott Rudin cer- point in my life now. is a better movie than Precious. Yeah. I don’t think he was a really a fan of mine at all, but he was a tainly had a vision that was very close to the book. The first script Oh, it is. good friend, and that’s totally fine. That happens all the time. I don’t was kind of hardcore. But then there was a regime change at the stu- You’re kind of removed from the literary world. think he’s liked any of my books except for Lunar Park. But he’s a dio, and I think it was Leonard Goldberg who became head of Totally. I never felt like I was a part of it. I have friends who are writ- I didn’t even see Precious because I get it. You know? I saw the com- great editor. He’s amazing from the moment the manuscript gets to production and, you know, he had kids. ers and things like that, but the whole business of dealing with the mercial and I don’t need to see the movie. him until it’s out in paperback. He really follows everything and is so publishing industry and going to publishing functions, and every- Right. Right. hands-on. But I was kind of disappointed in Gary’s reaction about Right. thing being about, you know, the PEN dinner... To me, it looked kind of like a PC or a guilt-free way to have a this scene in Imperial Bedrooms. I was disappointed in the fact that He had kids, and this thing was… whatever. It got watered down. It’s kind of sad. freak show. we had to haggle over two or three sentences. I’m not trying to dismiss the movie. And I always got trashed by people because I liked to go to night- The trailer was really effective. I found myself choking up whenever Can you give me an idea of what was cut from the scene? Who can? clubs. When I was in my 20s, it always was so weird to me that the trailer was being shown at the theatre. I thought, “That movie’s It was basically me saying: “You let me keep this, and I will change It was a milestone in a lot of ways. everyone was being so mean because I liked to go to clubs. Should I going to be devastating.” And then of course, you see it and it’s not the grammar on page 47.” And he said, “That’s not enough. You’ve Right. have been sitting in a garret with a plume pen and a candle? You’re really… whatever. I don’t want to trash it. 56 | VICE VICE | 57 “Why did I miss miss I did “Why Why didn’t I go see it?” see go I didn’t Why tic qualitytoit. There’s somethingveryenigmatic aboutthisthing, I mean,it’s a sadmovie,butit’s notdark. There’s adoomedroman- No? But it’s notadarkandsadmovie. It’s suchdarkandsadmaterial. incredibly sympathetictothestory itself. New York totally cool.Letmeoptionthearticle.” Now, Ihadproblems withthe to dothisasamovie.”Andhereaditandsaid,“Ithinkthat’s other scriptsthatweren’t made. Isaid,“Take alookatthis.Iwant talked toaproducerwhoI’veworkedwithbeforeoncoupleof happens ifyoudon’t? Whathappens ifyoujustfollowthem?SoI eventually backaway. You go,“Oh,Igetit!itnow.” Butwhat person. Usuallyyourealiseyou’rewithsomeonewho’s crazyandyou thought backonallthisstupidshitthatIdidwhenwaswith their mind,butyoulovethemandworldbecomesyours. I of whathappenswhenyou’rehookedupwithsomeonewho’s losing Theresa Duncanandtheirsuicides,itresonatedwithmeinterms And soIreadtheDavidAmsdenarticleaboutJeremyBlakeand Right. been involvedwith.Iwasjustamessabouthowitturnedout. the script,andthenitwasmosthorribleworkthingthatI’veever of thescript,andwegotatonmoneytomakemoviebecause Yeah, ithadagreatscriptandtheygotalltheseactorsonboardbecause The filmversionofyourbookshortstories. frustrated bythedisasterthatwas problems. Iwasinvolvedwithsomeonecrazy, andIwasalsovery I hadmovedtoLAandwashavingsomereallybadrelationship through somethingatthetimethatmadeitreallyresonatewithme. 58 I readthe How didyouendupwritingthismovie? attached todirectit. He’s beencircling.He’s definitelyproducingit.He’s notformally Gus Van Santismakingit,right? Yeah. the artistsJeremyBlakeandTheresaDuncan. called die. Anyway, I’mcuriousaboutthefactthatyou’rewritingascript snuff filmwhereyou’rewatchingthisdoggetbuiltuponlysoitcan warming dramedywithalifelessonattheend,butit’s reallyjusta Well, that’s aninterestingmoviebecauseit’s supposedtobeaheart- Why didImissMarley&Me?didn’t Igoseeit? cry atPrecious. I wasguttedbytheendof tionally crushed.ButIwasnot.It’s notthere. done. It’s reallynotsopainful.Iwaspreparingmyselftobeemo- [laughs] Yeah. “Theend.”Itsurprisedmebecauseit’s soartlessly Pain? oh, Idon’t knowwhat… though, thatiskindofendemictoourcurrentsociety’s fixationon, Well, youknow, Precious Oh yeah,that’s right.IwasshockedthatRogerEbertgotonboard. Anthony Lanedidn’t getonboardinhisNewYorker Precious. You know? many otherpublicfiguresthatdidn’t getonboardwithfucking I justthinkyourcommentwasrefreshing,becausecan’t thinkof | VICE The GoldenSuicides,whichisaboutthelivesanddeathsof New York piece. Therewasalotofitthat I don’t like.ButIwas magazine pieceaboutthem,andIwasgoing is notallbad.There’s somethingaboutit, Marley &Me,butIdon’t thinkIwould Marley &Me The Informers. review. ? of lowself-esteem. 5,000 times,andit’s likeIcan’t feelanythingnowexcepta littlebit and Ifeellikeallthemysterieshave beensolved.I’vereaditlike know, whenit’s abouttobebroughtout.Ifeellike Iknowittoowell, kicked around,Iguess.I’malways reallydownonmywork,you I do.definitelyreadreviews.always assumethatI’mgoingtobe You doreadyourreviews. Or maybeIdobothofthosethings.don’t know. You reallydon’t? No. and everything,doyouworryorlaughaboutwhatthecriticsmightsay? Now thatyou’redoingpressforthebook,andit’s goingtocomeout don’t know. Ireallycan’t imagineitasamovie. for There’s alreadyascriptfor point wherescriptsarebeingwritten,yougoingtowritethem? My God.So,ifLunarPark Yeah. This wastwoproducerstalkingtoeachother? And hesaid,“Really?Well, where’s thepicturesofthem?Ah.Yeah.” Oh, fuck. were hot.” kill themselves?”Andthentheotherproducersaid,“Well, they financing forit.“Whowantstoseeamovieabouttwopeoplewho Literally, thisishowitsoldwithoneoftheproducers,toget They werehot.Yeah. And theywerehot. put youinaplacewheretheBlake-Duncanstorywouldhithard. having, andyourexperiencewithTheInformers.Thatcouldreally You explaineditprettywell. Itwastherelationshipthatyou’dbeen don’t knowwhyitresonatedwithmesomuch. to whyshewasn’t successfulinthefilmindustry. I’m hauntedbyit.I The Scientologists.Andthenshebegantobuildthishugenarrativeas into it. That’s wherehertheoriesaboutaScientologistplotagainstcome she hadtobuildthisnarrative. made. Itdrovehercrazy, andshecouldn’t acceptthat defeatandso big moviemaker, andshe didn’t realisethatmoviesjustaren’t getting think shecameouthereandeveryoneexpectedhertobeastar, this Hollywood. She’dmadeitbefore,inthevideo-gameworld,butI She neededanexplanationastowhyshewasn’t makingitin There wastheparanoia.AndImean,thinksheneededanarrative. mutual feedingofeachother’s paranoia? Having notknownthem,Icouldonlyguess.Maybetherewasa think shebroughtsomethingoutinhim.Whatdoyouthink? her? Imean,somanythingswouldhavehappenedforhim,but It’s reallyjusttragic.Whatwouldhavehappenedifhe’dnevermet I’m justcurioustoseeit. I neverhadthatnegativeinstinctaboutthethoughtofyoudoingit. love story. satire orstand-up,theyarecompletelywrong.It’s averyheartfelt I’m doingsomekindof,like,“BretEastonEllis”takeonit,likeit’s a interested in.Butthisisaheartfeltscript.Ifanyonethinkingthat cious attimes,anditconcentratesonthingsthatI’mnot original magazinepieceisthatit’s kindofgossipyandalittlesala- portrait ofhim,andIthinkher, too.Partoftheproblemwith of view. It’s notfromherpointofview. Itisanincrediblysympathetic work, andIkindoffellinlovewithhim.Themovieisfromhispoint even knowsTheresaDuncan.IreallyrelatedtoJeremy, andIlovehis in. ThemovieisreallyJeremyBlake’s journey. We meethimbeforehe and it’s basedondelusionsandthemazesyoufindyourselftrapped Imperial Bedrooms Imperial Bedrooms,Imightbe.wouldbeinterestedinit.But will be on sale July 2nd from Picador. from 2nd July sale on be will Lunar Park,andI’mnotinvolvedinit.As and Imperial Bedrooms do gettothe 7+(6.<723,,,1:+,7(78)6835$)227:($5&20 MARK OF CHAMPIONS Umbro has teamed up with seven creatives from around the world to re-imagine their national team crests and to create a series of bespoke shirts representing the seven teams that have won the World Cup since TANINO LIBERATORE – ITALY I try to get great visual impact as well. You can read it on so many levels. 1930. Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Italy and England are all represented by a diverse group Did much of your famed social commentary inform the final design? An author, comic books writer and illustrator, Tanino started his career illus- I'm convinced that every work is contaminated by a social, political and cul- of artists, designers, illustrators, tattooists and graffiti writers. trating record covers for RCA, with his first comic work appearing in 1978. tural background, and I think that’s great. And yes, sometimes these He is the creator of RanXerox, whose comics have been translated into influences might surface more than at other times, but they do come out Each of the collaborators was asked to draw upon their home nation's culture, its sporting history and their numerous languages and marketed around the world. eventually. We all have roots. own skills to conjure up a brand new national team crest. The motifs were then applied to the Umbro Your work is very detailed and precise. Did that make it harder to design a Talk us through the design you settled on. England home kit silhouette, the most tailored football shirt in the world. logo for a football shirt? With the logo I designed for Umbro, I tried to sum up all the symbols of what Tanino Liberatore: Not really! No matter what I'm working on, you could say Italy still manages to be, at least regarding sports events: tenacious, strong For information on stockists of the Umbro World Champions Collection please visit www.umbro.com that I'm a perfectionist. So, yes, my work is very precise, often detailed, but and stoic! BEN EINE – ENGLAND are done well and they work. I had an idea of what I wanted the finished MARTIN ALBORNOZ – URUGUAY handmade things and the imperfections are all part of Uruguay. I think this crest to look like, but I needed to try some very different versions first. is the best way to define us. Can you explain all the motifs in your final badge design? Ben Eine is one of England’s most prominent street artists. His work is cele- Your logo is far removed from your more famous work in terms of the style Working across photography, sculpture, painting and graphics, Martin is an The 1950 World Cup was the most important achievement in the history of brated internationally and his paintings have appeared in London, you have used. emerging talent from Montevideo. He is a member of the global creative group ® Uruguayan soccer. The final match against Brazil was called ¨El Maracanazo¨. Stockholm, Copenhagen and Paris. He is most notable for his alphabet let- I wanted to do something very traditional, something regal from the days of ROJO , and his work is being exhibited in eight countries this year. We were down a goal and we ended up winning 2-1, our best sporting mem- tering on shop shutters in London's Shoreditch, Brick Lane and Broadway shining knights and Tudor roses. I wanted to show England as a strong, solid Market areas. You work in various mediums. Do you have any particular favourites, or ory. The crest is surrounded by elements that define the essence of that and brave team. did one particularly prepare you for this design job? moment. Some are part of the concept and some of my style. Obdulio Varela Was it a challenge designing a crest? Are you a big follower of football? Martin Albornoz: I like the mixture between analogue and digital. For the was the captain of the Uruguayan team, he was called “El Negro Jefe” (“The Ben Eine: Crests are something that have been drawn and designed over I’m not really a massive football fan. I don’t have a team that I follow, but crest, I chose to use freehand drawing because I wanted to convey the sen- Black Chief”). The black splashes and dripping represent the blood, sweat and over again for hundreds of years. They have got to a point where they like most of my friends, we all become armchair fanatics every four years. sation of reality. For me, the human, the mixture of shapes and sizes, the and tears of our captain. WWW.UMBRO.COM MAROK – GERMANY wanted to create a magazine in the first place. FERNANDO CHAMARELLI – BRAZIL Which of the many art forms you work in do you enjoy the most? Tattooing, Are art and design two separate disciplines for you? graffiti or illustration? They are all very different art forms, with different values, techniques and Marok started the magazine LoDown in 1995. It is now one of the most They have something in common, which is to create a certain aesthetic. But Fernando is an illustrator, designer, and tattoo artist. His work is famous for influential design, skate and pop culture publications in the world. As well art’s aim is to transcend in whatever way, while design is just the vehicle. drawing on the myriad cultural and visual influences that Brazil has to offer. difficulties. I like the three forms. Graffiti is cool, because of the feeling of as running the mag, he produces his own art, which has been published Can you talk us through your final design for the German crest? freedom and the contact with people. Tattooing is like a ritual, its history is and exhibited internationally. I was looking for something that could reflect my country in a positive How does traditional Brazilian culture and art feature in your work? amazing. But I think I prefer illustration. It is and always will be my passion. way. I want my country to invest more in renewable energy and shut down Fernando Chamarelli: Well, Brazil is very large, there are so many different Do you think Brazil are going to win the World Cup? Since setting up LoDown, have you continued to do as much design work? the reactors. They already started doing this but it’ s a very slow process. people and cultures in one place. Each region of the country has its own Or are you too busy these days? The dredger is a symbol for the imminent will to construct and destruct. characteristics, therefore Brazil is culturally rich. Our culture is a mixture of This is a difficult question. Obviously I'm rooting for Brazil, but some impor- Marok: I am constantly working on designs, whether for clients or my per- The stars refer to the German World Cup wins, and the sausage needs no different peoples, dances, religions, foods, and songs all working in harmo- tant players are not in a good state. If Brazil are not the champions, I believe sonal projects. It’s part of my profession and actually it’s the reason I further explanation. ny. This influences my work heavily. it could be Argentina, England or Spain. worse, they know where to find me! knew their styles and who would work well with what release. We teamed ANDRÉ – FRANCE ZZK RECORDS – ARGENTINA people up. Freshcore, who made the Umbro design, has always been a big Was it hard to leave your signature characters out of the final design? player in our label. He is a kid who always thinks into the future. Well-known as a graffiti artist, André is now a Parisian fashion authority, For me it was a nice break. It was an exercise quite far removed from my ZZK is a record label based in Buenos Aires that combines eclectic music Are you looking forward to Argentina vs. England this year? club owner and international DJ – not bad for someone who started out normal works, but it was a real pleasure to work on a football crest. with a famously recognisable design identity. The label also runs the best For sure. We're big fans of football, but like with our music and design, we drawing on walls. He is renowned in Paris for painting distinctive stick-fig- club nights in Argentina. ure characters which usually have a top hat and an X in place of one of the Are you a big football fan? Your logo looks a bit like the Paris Saint- like to think without geographical borders. So good luck to both teams – eyes. Germain badge. How important is it to you that you retain control of the visual aspects of may the best team win. I am not really a big fan of soccer on a day-to-day level. I am more inter- the music you release? What are the birds on your final logo all about? Is it hard to continue doing graffiti when you are so famous? ested in the passionate football supporters than the game. As for the PSG Grant C. Dull of ZZK Records: Our designs and aesthetics play a big role in One is a pigeon and one is a sparrow. Each one represents the two World André: Yes. It is a bit difficult nowadays because anywhere I put up any question, yes, there is a link. I love Paris so I guess I could not help being our label. From the beginning we've always tried to push the envelope with Cup championships Argentina has won. They are also common birds found graffiti it is recognised immediately. The police know who I am, and even a little inspired by the classic PSG logo. our designs. When we started the label we had our favourite artists and we in the streets in Argentina. WWW.UMBRO.COM The Corpse In 1990, I wrote to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and requested The following February, liver failure claimed a Chicago man named some literature. I needed details on the world of cryonics for a piece Al Campbell (not to be confused with the Al Campbell who was Home Cryonics in the Smirk Age of fiction I was working on, and Alcor was—and remains—the notoriously crushed to death by a performing elephant in Hawaii largest and most visible cryonics company in the world. Weeks later, later that same year). Established cryonics facilities generally shunned WORDS AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAM MCPHEETERS I received a fat envelope stuffed with more than a hundred pages of last-minute suspensions, so Trans Time referred Campbell’s lifelong outlandish photocopies, closer to amateur fanzines than actual press companion to Trygve. They signed a half-year contract to keep Al in materials. There was MISADVENTURE AS A CAUSE OF DEATH the box with Bredo, with the intention that this would be a pit stop IN IMMORTAL POPULATIONS and THE DEATH OF DEATH IN on the road to a more established facility. With this second client, CRYONICS. The endearingly slapdash nature of the presentation Trygve had momentum, and he planned on purchasing a Dewar—as form a T, as if to signal that Bredo wanted his grandson to take care starkly contrasted with the dense jargon—medical and technical—of the upright cryonic-storage units are known—and upgrading from of his earthly remains. its own subject. dry ice to on-site production of liquid nitrogen, powered entirely by The Alcorians also showed an odd faith in human progress. “When wind or solar. Trygve had been living in Colorado for nearly ten years. He’d come the age problem itself has been solved,” one article told me, “the age Instead, Trygve was deported. INS agents nabbed him in May, and to the US on a temporary visa in 1980, and over the course of the dependent diseases headed by cancer and circulatory diseases will he was forcibly carried onto an airplane and shipped to Oslo. He’d decade had made a name for himself in Boulder County as a lov- automatically fall in line.” More than once I read, “Indefinite youth been in the US for nearly 14 years without a visa or a passport. able, long-bearded eccentric. Boulder’s New Year’s Polar Bear and good health are the birthright of everyone.” Aging was compared Although he’d qualified for amnesty under Reagan’s 1986 Plunge—now hundreds strong annually—started with Trygve’s to nuclear war as a risk to human productivity. In the fashion of any Immigration Reform and Control Act, he’d refused to apply on prin- lone leaps into frigid waters. In 1986, he was arrested at Denver’s grandiose underground movement, political or otherwise, cryonicists ciple. He saw immigration as an issue deeply entwined with cryonic Stapleton International Airport after making a hijacking joke, then, frequently compared themselves to abolitionists. preservation and felt that human rejuvenation and preservation after the police stepped in, complaining loudly about his First This literature included an impressive array of cryptic clip art: would best occur in a country with free borders for all. “Life exten- Amendment rights. heads, computers, snowflakes, Tron-style grids. Discussions of sion and longevity go hand in hand with Jeffersonian liberty,” Trygve Trygve’s politics defy pat classification. From his website, one can mankind’s wondrous horizons featured Patrick Nagel-style illus- told me during one of our long conversations. trations of flawless future preppies. One page displayed the Grim learn that his “focus is on life-extension, objectivism, entrepreneurial Aud was distraught. During an interview with the Nederland Reaper inside the Ghostbusters logo and read ALCOR DEATH- liberty & livable survival of nuclear war & lesser dangers. He is spe- Mountain-Ear later that week, she said she didn’t know “what would BUSTERS!!! Other pages matched highly technical accounts of cializing in nuclear war-proof life-extension centers & is also known happen to the bodies”. Within hours, police discovered the shed, and pre-cryonic body prep with grainy, graphic photos of cadaver for organizing health building sessions, icebathing & cryonic suspen- within days the media discovered Nederland. The authorities verified parts. An article titled 24TH CENTURY MEDICINE presented a sions, & for holding the icebathing world record: (1 hour, 5 minutes that the bodies weren’t the handiwork of a serial killer, and Boulder full-page drawing of a man with one arm biomechanically sub- & 51 seconds in 2 degree water).” County health officials quickly determined that the shed posed no merged in a thicket of pulsating tubules. It didn’t exactly inspire His interests reflect a dense mix of libertarianism, survivalism, health risk. But two days later, the town issued a cease-and-desist me to sign up, but I was fascinated by Alcor’s utter obliviousness and Ayn Randism. In one of many recent phone and email order. From Europe, Trygve claimed that the ordinance was uncon- exchanges between Trygve and myself, he launched into a diatribe to its own PR needs. stitutionally vague and would even “prohibit storing broccoli in against Obama’s health-care reforms, telling me, “In liberty it is up people’s freezers”. to the individual to generate wealth and how to use its own values” Once his grandfather (or grandfather’s body, depending on your per- The town threatened to take possession of the bodies if Aud didn’t (he later told me he blamed Norway’s universal health care for his spective) was safely stowed at Trans Time, Trygve put his mind to sign an agreement to move both in a timely fashion. At a town-board grandfather’s death). Several times in our conversations he expressed establishing his own cryonics centre in his adopted hometown of meeting she exploded, loudly comparing the mayor and the council f the many rumours surrounding Bredo Morstoel, here is admiration for Ronald Reagan. Nederland, Colorado. He’d once considered setting up shop on a cruise ship, far from government control, but the logistics necessitated to Stalin. The board passed a law prohibiting the storage of dead the most endearing: he arranged his deathbed pillows into Trygve saw his grandfather’s freezing as a pilot case, one that he start on a smaller scale. In 1992, he approached Nederland’s plan- bodies on private property. Several residents offered to take the O a secret signal for his grandson. As with most myths sur- could allow his mother and, eventually, himself to be frozen under ning commission about constructing a legal cryonics facility. The rounding Bredo, the truth lies far beyond the possibility of more ideal circumstances. When I spoke with him, I noticed that town turned him down, and he commenced building. For $8,000, he verification. And as with most celebrities, myths are slowly submerg- Trygve used the word “died”, not “deanimated” (“deanimation” bought one in a series of steep, long, problematically subdivided lots ing facts in his biography. Not being alive, Bredo has far less recourse is the cryonics industry’s preferred wording, reflecting the belief that frozen brains are merely clinically dead, awaiting resuscita- that just happened to have spectacular views. He used money from against mythology than any other celebrity on earth. tion by currently unavailable technology). Then again, there the sale of his grandfather’s summer cabin in Norway to break Morstoel was born in 1900, in a small town near one of western wasn’t much about Bredo’s suspension that any professional cry- ground on a combined residence and cryonics facility that was to Norway’s ice fjords. He settled in Bærum, a coastal suburb of Oslo, onicist would have approved. Trygve had had to convince his eventually include multiple underground storage pods. married in 1928, and had a daughter, Aud, in 1930. Bredo eventually mum, and then the hospital, of his plans. Although he arranged by Survivability was key to Trygve’s plans. He used steel-reinforced ran Bærum’s parks-and-recreation department, where his duties phone to have the body quickly moved to a refrigerated morgue, it concrete to create a main structure that would endure quakes and included the design of churchyards and picnic areas. His was, by all remained there for three or four days in a room chilled only to mudslides. He included fireproof insulation and shotcrete on the accounts, a staggeringly uninteresting life. Even when the Nazis occu- zero Fahrenheit. Established cryonics facilities list -321° F as the facades. There was to be no wood or combustible material of any pied Norway from 1940 to 1945, and later, when his wife died in ideal end temperature for deanimated patients (either bodies or kind in this building. If he’d forsaken windows, the house would 1978, Bredo remained in Bærum, an outdoorsman, skier, and painter heads, the hope being that future doctors can clone new parts), have been safe from a nuclear attack, allegedly “800 yards from well into his golden years. although it requires a complicated interim period to safely reach ground zero of a one megaton blast” (a borderline-plausible sce- In 1975, Bredo suffered a heart attack during a six-mile ski trip in -321°. Human meat spoils much slower at zero than at room tem- nario with the Barker Meadow Dam on the other side of town). It deep, fresh snow. He almost died, but Aud was able to massage his perature, but zero is still far too warm when dealing with fragile may not have been impenetrable, but for all practical purposes, the chest and revive him. He recovered, and after making dietary brain cells. house was undemolishable. changes, he was able to alleviate some of his angina pain. But his Years before his grandfather’s death, Trygve had heard of Bay In September 1993 the main structure was complete, and Trygve heart was still weak, and in his late 80s he suffered several smaller Area cryonics company Trans Time, and this was the name he had felt it was time to bring his grandfather on-site. He had Bredo’s attacks. Denied a chance at a new heart by his doctors, he settled into on hand in 1989. Though he had his own plans for a cryonics cen- frozen body air-shipped from Trans Time to Stapleton Airport. The a more sedentary lifestyle and hoped his luck would last. ter—pastoral utopian designs of domes and hillocks—they were Nederland property was nowhere close to the full-fledged, state-of- On the first Monday in November of 1989, Aud phoned her 31- nothing more than plans. So Bredo was packed in dry ice and the-art cryonics facility Trygve envisioned, but he reasoned he had to year-old son, Trygve Bauge, and told him that Bredo had just died shipped to San Francisco. There his body was submerged in liquid start somewhere. Bredo’s casket was placed, on copious amounts of during a brief nap. Trygve quickly reached a bold conclusion: he was nitrogen to wait for the day when advanced technology could repair dry ice, in a shed behind the house. If Morstoel wasn’t the first recip- going to freeze his grandfather. It was only years later that Trygve his age, heart, cellular damage, and chronic mortality. It was going ient of amateur cryonic care, his was certainly the lowest-tech heard that the pillows on his grandfather’s bed had been arranged to to be a long wait. suspension in human history. It was a secret milestone. 64 | VICE VICE | 65 bodies onto their own properties, and a group of locals formed the to continue having a carbon footprint even after death, nestled deep shopped, and engaged in all manner of tenuously cryonics-themed Freeze Tax Waste Committee to fight the ordinance. Mayor Bryan in chunks of CO2; quite literally surrounded by greenhouse gases. festivities. Visitors got a look at Bredo’s shed. Small-town weirdos Brown declared that he would not allow the matter to “turn into a The world’s population had nearly quadrupled since Bredo was born, dressed crazy with impunity. Combining elements of Burning Man, dog-and-pony show”. Another board member complained, “This has and although he was dead, his death carried an asterisk: perhaps eter- Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest, and Philadelphia’s Mummers Parade, the turned into a circus of a media event.” nal, perhaps only clinical. FDGD fest instantly converted Nederland’s biggest liability into its Municipal court finally found Aud guilty of violating several zon- biggest asset. Although the Colorado statehouse narrowly rejected ing codes, and—banned from her home—she moved to an apartment Alcor had also covered a lot of ground in the 1990s. In 1994, con- naming March 9 Frozen Dead Guy Day (“I thought that was Al in Boulder before finally returning to Oslo the next year. But Trygve cerned about fires, floods, earthquakes, and urban riots, the company Gore’s birthday resolution,” grumbled the Republican house speaker), still owned the property, and Nederland reluctantly concluded that relocated from Southern California to suburban Phoenix. There were Nederland had deftly executed a dramatic conversion on the subject Bredo had been “grandfathered in” before the ordinance (a delightful also quieter concerns about Left Coast animal rights activism. Alcor of home cryonics. bit of wordplay that has been recycled several thousand times). Al openly tested its techniques and chemicals on domesticated animals, Campbell’s companion, perhaps spooked by the media glare, shipped and the early 1990s were—at least to most animal experimenters—a Outside Colorado, world opinion on cryonics was about to undergo the body back to Chicago, where the family had it cremated. time of lab-smashing, ski-masked antivivisectionist berserkers. Then a dramatic shift as well. Red Sox Hall of Famer (and two-war The town settled into a quiet truce with its most famous resident. there was Alcor’s relationship with the cops. In 1987, several company hero) Ted Williams died of cardiac arrest that July. Williams’s will After exploring all his options for long-distance grandfather preser- officials had been briefly arrested on suspicion of euthanising the requested cremation, but after two of his three children produced vation, Trygve discovered Bo Shaffer online. Bo is a Boulder County mother of a board member. Police bungling imploded the case, hand- signed documents with Alcor, his body was transported to libertarian, futurist, and “planetary ecologist” who owns and oper- ing a PR boon to Alcor—which won two subsequent lawsuits against Phoenix, decapitated, and placed on ice (allegations later surfaced ates his own environmental-consulting company. Shaffer realised he the county—but the incident left an aftertaste of mistrust. that Alcor mistakenly beheaded Williams and then froze his body was one of the few locals who could actually do this job, and the two The 1990s also saw a seismic shift in public opinion toward cry- and head separately). reached a financial agreement for Bo to become Bredo’s caretaker. onics. Dolly the Scottish sheep was cloned in 1996, and the Human William’s son John Henry bore the brunt of withering public During the 1995 holiday season, winds as high as 80 MPH blasted Genome Project completed its working draft of a human DNA map attacks, including a lawsuit brought by an older daughter. It was a Nederland. Bredo’s shed, held together with plywood and screws, five years later. Cellular manipulation and nanotech, once the stuff of complicated story, with several facets too nuanced for the average barely survived. That February, a Denver radio station answered pulpy fantasy gazettes, quickly gained a respectable sheen. Alcorians citizen to grasp. That the Alcor contracts were of dubious authen- Bo’s online pleas for assistance and teamed up with the Tuff Shed had long insisted that their organisation was on the vanguard of ticity had more to say about the family—and, by some accounts, company to donate a new, tougher shed for Bredo. This new shed human biotechnology. By the turn of the century, this posturing had Alcor—than the actual practice of cryonics. Accusations that the was painted with THE FOX and CLASSIC ROCK and KRFX the aroma of possibility. son wanted to sell his father’s DNA were generally lumped in, by a 103.5 FM. The next April, Bo brought a battery of psychics to the In April 2002, still researching cryonics, I scheduled a tour of glib media, with the unrelated issue of the freezing itself. And of shed to see whether Bredo had any reaction to his new digs (results Alcor’s facilities in the greater Phoenix area. My appointment some- course there was the case of the missing motive—Williams’s sus- His body was transported to were inconclusive). how got lost in the front-office computer, so when I arrived at the pension, coming last minute, necessitated an up-front payment. Why In 1998, three aspiring filmmakers produced Grandpa’s in the Tuff nondescript industrial-park facility, I had to do some fast talking just would any scheming heir do anything to take a six-figure chunk out Phoenix, decapitated, and placed Shed, a short film detailing the entire implausible saga. It’s a quirky, to get into the lobby. The receptionist was putting the finishing of his own inheritance? lo-fi watch, seemingly made by and for locals. But the film allowed touches on a new website. From over her shoulder, I noticed that the on ice. nearly every notable Nederlander to speak their piece, and for many company had changed its logo, ditching the campy sci-fi rising- In 2004, Alan Kunzman published Mothermelters: The Inside Story the mood seemed to be nothing worse than bemused resignation. phoenix emblem (an unintentional mirror of the City of Phoenix logo of Cryonics and the Dora Kent Homicide. Kunzman had been senior In late 1999, Bo stocked up on dry ice to prepare the shed for Y2K. gracing every street corner) for an abstract triangle insignia that deputy coroner investigator with the County Coroner’s Office in good reason, he dwells on Alcor’s patient caretaker Mike Perry’s self- Born in the 19th century, Bredo entered the 21st under the watchful could easily belong to any large European insurance consortium. Riverside, California, and it was on his watch that Alcor members castration and later declares it “unsavoury” that Alcor targets sci-fi eye of a libertarian guardian angel. He’d travelled farther, as a corpse, I eventually talked my way into the inner sanctum. I noted the had been arrested, briefly, in 1987. The investigation into the possi- fans). But in his capacity as an informed insider, Johnson compiled a than many people do in a lifetime. When Bredo died, “carbon foot- cleanliness of the space, and the lack of eye contact on the part of my ble drug-induced death and decapitation of an elderly Alzheimer’s mother lode of evidence of corporate negligence and abuse. print” wasn’t yet a popular term. Now he was one of the few humans host, Dr. Lemmler, who actually wore a calculator wristwatch. patient quickly dissolved after departmental and interoffice incompe- Just as both men document Alcor’s misdoings with some plausibil- Stepping briskly through the perfusion and cooldown rooms— tence. Kunzman’s tale is a badly written rehash of a battle won by ity, both also shatter this plausibility late in the game (Kunzman by Stations of the Cross for the freshly deanimated—we passed a flyer Alcor 17 years earlier, both legally and in the public eye (“They won attempting to sell the story to Hollywood, Johnson by setting up a for something called a Longevity Boot Camp and wall-mounted just because we outdumbed them”). The book’s demographic is prob- website selling graphic, private photos of Alcor clients). Where DNA-saver kits. Security cameras were everywhere. I met Aido, the ably limited to people who, like me, have followed the company for Mothermelters was a non-event, however, Frozen was a direct hit, a apparently testing-exempt Alcor cat, and then I was ushered into the the past two decades. nuclear assault on the foundations of Alcor’s public trust. Unable to room that contained the tanks of bodies. The space looked like a As an exposé, Mothermelters does a much better job of raising old ignore Johnson’s charges, Alcor has refuted many (although not all) microbrewery. In the background, I could just hear a faint, glacial suspicions of bias among the Riverside police. “What the hell would of his allegations on its website. It’s anyone’s guess whether the scan- hum. Alcor held 48 clients—some bodies, some heads—on that day. they be doing with an incubator?” Kunzman asks after inspecting the dal has affected enrollment. But it is fair to say that Frozen’s account facility. “It was only speculation, but as I learned more about these of gross physical abuse against Ted Williams’ defenceless skull— That same year, 2002, the Nederland Chamber of Commerce strug- people I wondered if they might have been experimenting on babies. thawings and wrench beatings, among other charges—lent more gled to concoct a theme for the planned spring festival. Every March, Had no proof of it, but it crossed my mind.” Later, he rails against credibility to cryonics sceptics in one fell swoop than decades of bad merchants in mountain towns hit the doldrums. Launching a “March something called “moral anaemia”. Jay Leno jokes had. Madness” festival didn’t appeal to many locals and seemed unlikely The year after my visit to Phoenix, Alcor hired a former paramedic It’s telling that Amazon.com pairs Frozen, via the Frequently Bought to compel hordes of shoppers to make the snowy drive from Boulder. named Larry Johnson as its new clinical director. In his seven months Together link, with Glenn Beck’s Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop What did Nederland have that other towns didn’t? at the company, Johnson rose to chief operating officer. He also Small Minds and Big Government. The “Common Sense” strain of The husband of a local merchant mentioned Mike the Headless turned whistleblower, copying documents on the sly and wiretapping current populist conservatism—an entire political philosophy neatly Chicken at a chamber meeting. Four hours down I-70, the town of coworkers with a microphone taped to his gut. That autumn, he summed up by Beck’s exasperated smirk—is really just a retooled form Fruita was planning its fourth annual Mike the Headless Chicken turned his intelligence over to a Sports Illustrated writer and subse- of old-fashioned anti-intellectualism. In Mothermelters, Kunzman Day, a boisterous small-town festival celebrating a chicken that had quently went into hiding, allegedly fearing for his life from menacing returns again and again to the central theme that the staff at Alcor was managed to live for 18 months after decapitation (the ax missed the cryonics supporters. a bunch of snobbish intellectual elitists. Right from the opening pages, bird’s brain stem; its owner fed Mike’s stump with an eyedropper). In Johnson remained in exile until the 2009 publication of Frozen: My the coroner lashes out at Alcor reps who, he felt, made a point of sheer morbid novelty, Bredo beat Mike hands down. Why not flip the Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception, and Death. In this demonstrating their mental superiority over him. He logs every smug story to Nederland’s advantage? book, Johnson accuses Alcorians of nepotism, abysmal hygiene, chron- look, every laugh at his expense, every gesture of “arrogance” and The Frozen Dead Guy Days festival kicked off the first weekend ic infighting, and group hypochondria, and later of Mob links, drug “self-importance” and “self-congratulations”. After seizing Perry’s that March. By every measure, it was a smash hit, bringing local mer- smuggling, and possible human vivisection. At one point, he compares diary, he reads it, pronounces Perry a “smartass”, and proceeds to chants and the chamber of commerce $50,000. Tourists drank, Alcor top brass to the Nazis. His exposé is often scattershot (for no divulge the contents to his readers. 66 | VICE VICE | 67 Ferrell, voice warbling with rage, said, “My dad’s in a metal tube, on his head, so frozen that if I touched him it would crack him because of the warmth from my fingertips. It makes me so sick.” Post-Frozen news stories frequently mention that Alcor stores its bodies and heads upside down (in the event of catastrophic failure or leak, the brains would be the last to thaw). On a contentious July 2002 CNN Crossfire debate about cryonics, Paul Begala shouted down the Alcor representative, then made a weird point that Williams would have wanted his money to go toward cancer research instead. There’s a strange double standard to detractors’ arguments: the Presents idea that people should have the dignity of autonomy in their last wishes, but only if they choose an end that conforms to existing tem- plates. Of many celebrity funerary deviations—Lord Avebury’s 1987 request to be fed to dogs, Hunter S. Thompson having his ashes shot from a cannon in 2005—none has stirred national outrage like the Williams freezing. There is also a suggestion of coercion. This is the idea that Alcor, having a vested financial interest in an individual’s death, is somehow more suspicious than a funeral home. But cryonics is a comparatively cheap way to go. The infamously steep suspension costs—$80,000 to $150,000—can be handled by a simple life-insurance policy. After a $200 application fee and monthly life-insurance premiums, Alcor costs $600 a year. $450 of that fee is tax deductible, so it would take more than 30 years to match the expense of an average American funeral ($6,000, according to the Federal Trade Commission). Around LA County, garish billboards for cemetery franchise Forest Lawn plead DON’T HAVE SOMEONE ELSE’S FUNERAL. This ad There’s a strange double standard campaign seems far more manipulative and icky than the creepiest of 1990 Alcor literature. to detractors’ arguments: the idea Then there’s the feasibility angle. Johnson returned several times to the “strawberries” argument—a Glenn Beckish, Common Sense that people should have the dignity point that frozen strawberries, when defrosted, turn to pulpy glop. Penn and Teller deliver the ultimate smirky Common Sense smack- of autonomy in their last wishes, down against cryonics in an episode of their Showtime series, Bullshit! At one point, the editor in chief of something called the but only if they choose an end that Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine says, “They’re banking on someone in the distant future solving the problem of”—here he gives conforms to existing templates. a little exasperated chuckle and a smirk—“thawing. All you have on thawing is mush.” A YouTube comment below this episode reads, “The damage created when we are frozen is caused from the ice crys- tals. The crystals slice right through the cell walls and therefore it is Before Ted Williams, cryonics skated the outer rim of public BS science.” consciousness through occasional snarky human-interest stories. This point, too, has been addressed to death by Alcor and every After Williams, the subject lent itself to sinister exposes. In a July other cryonics organisation, being the cornerstone of the industry. 2002 CNN interview with Johnson, a flustered Connie Chung The basic idea is that nanotechnology will eventually reach a point blurted, “This is macabre!” In the Sports Illustrated piece, the where cells can be repaired on an individual basis. Ice crystals, the nitty-gritty of Williams’s abuse included the scandalous details that thinking goes, will be no match for the millions or billions of tiny, his head had “accidentally cracked” and rested in something that cilia-propelled nanobots that will chug through ripped cells, mending “resembled” a lobster pot. cracks and repairing damage. It’s a fantastical idea, but no more so Although “cracking” is a nonissue in the cryonics world—long than the heart-lung machine would have been in 1910. since addressed by the company as a ho-hum byproduct of freez- Some perspective: When I was born, in 1969, the guidance com- ing—it plays well with the Common Sense dignity argument. When puter on the Apollo 11 Lunar Module could store 50 kilobytes of Larry Johnson spoke with Howard Stern last year, the radio host data and weighed 50 pounds. My iPhone stores 16 gigabytes and zeroed in on allegations that Alcor used tuna cans as pedestals for weighs 4.8 ounces, a 150-fold weight reduction and a 320,000-fold Coming Soon To frozen heads, a detail fetishistically repeated by most media outlets. increase in capacity. By this calculation, in 2049—my own statisti- “That would be mistreatment right off the bat,” cohost Robin cal endpoint—5.1 petabytes will fit inside something weighing 0.21 Quivers added with the self-definitional force of Glenn Beckian milligrams. That’s 100 million filing cabinets packed into some- Common Sense. thing less than a quarter the weight of a honeybee’s brain. Barring Frozen takes pains not to disparage the practice of cryonics itself, catastrophe (or limits on Moore’s law), such advances are and yet Johnson waffles on this point in interviews. On CBS last inevitable. To deny this on Common Sense grounds seems, some- year, he gravely intoned about “the decapitation of corpses”. Six how, anti-American. nikestadiums.com | vbs.tv/playmakers years earlier, on ABC, he used the word “desecrated” to describe the Williams freezing. Not far past Nederland’s town border and its large vinyl banner The desecration angle is a potent weapon for cryonics detractors. announcing the ninth annual FROZEN DEAD GUY DAYS, I In one TV interview, Ted Williams’s estranged daughter Bobby-Jo approached St. Rita’s Catholic Church and its more staid announcement 68 | VICE for MASS 9:30 SUNDAY. I realised it was 9:30 and it was Sunday, Over the afternoon, the town swelled with merrymakers, and so I pulled into the church’s lot. Rita is the patron saint of lost or blues rock echoed down normally silent residential side streets. It was impossible causes, and I thought the service might somehow tie the another unseasonably warm day, the gutters glistening with channels namesake’s link to the weekend’s goings-on. After some hymns and of melted snow and mud. There was no shortage of bros, or beards, pleasantries, a man who identified himself as Deacon David delivered or bearded bros calling out for their unleashed dogs, all of whose the homily. He spoke nicely of the Pharisees and the parable of the names started with the letter z. fruitless fig tree, but there was no mention of Lazarus, or the After checking out the Brain Freezer beer tent—an utterly typi- Resurrection, or eternal life, or any of the other half-dozen topics he cal collegiate beer garden—I walked over to the Sunday Family could have woven from Bredo’s predicament. Funday at the Reanimation Tent. One patch of grass had been Later, I asked the deacon whether he had intentionally ignored any reserved for kids’ events, and although I’d read of kiddie coffin themes related to the festival. He told me he had and almost launched races, the activities on this day stuck to face painting and glitter into a rant on Catholic policy on the dignity and care of the deceased crafts. I overheard someone say, “There’s supposed to be, like, a before he carefully stopped himself. The subject matter of any given frozen dead guy.” All around Nederland, I repeatedly overhead service is “not a matter of church policy, it’s the choice of homilist,” people explaining and mangling the concept to one another, like a he finally said, testily. Avoiding disagreeable topics in church services town-wide game of Telephone. didn’t quite make sense to me—clerics of all faiths have never really On First Street, next to a crystal shop that looked like a parody of shied away from subjects with which they disagreed. But I didn’t a crystal shop, I stepped into a hemp store and found a collection of want to push it. “The novelty has worn out,” he added in a weary, festival t-shirts: NEDSTERDAM, GRANDPA HAS A POSSE, and, displeased voice. “Even for the people in Nederland.” most meta of all, GRANDPA’S IN THE PUFF SHED. The shirts incorporated the official FDGD festival graphic, an iconic grandpa— As I headed into town, I wondered whether this could actually be not Bredo—with spooky recessed eyes and a long Rasputin beard. It true. Even at midmorning, the streets were vacant. Spray-painted was more Trygve than Trygve’s grandfather. plywood signs for EVENT PARKING led me to a deserted parking Trygve’s relationship with the festival has wavered over the years. lot. I worried I’d come on the wrong day and then, since I knew this In 2005, his mother was invited to serve as grand marshal of the wasn’t true, that some sort of Twilight Zone scenario might be going Dead Guy parade. Trygve lobbied two Colorado congressmen and down. I parked and walked toward the collection of shops in the the king and queen of Norway, and Aud was granted a three-month heart of downtown. visa. But once in Nederland, she grew upset over the festival’s success Eventually I found a young woman at the otherwise vacant and the lack of profit-sharing with her family. After one or more con- Frozen Dead Guy HQ. She told me Saturday’s gorgeous weather frontations with local merchant Teresa Warren (the not entirely had brought as many as 10,000 visitors—a record—and that the reliable Boulder Daily Camera reported that Aud drunkenly hit tiny town had been transformed into “a parking lot”. Saturday Warren and claimed Warren “owed her $60,000 for a shirt”), Aud was “a doozy” and people were “still recovering”. Over the course was arrested and charged with harassment. of the day I would hear this refrain echoed many times by groan- From 4,600 miles away, Trygve declared the festival “dead” ing merchants. and, enforcing his only leverage, forbade any further shed tours. Nederland is only 17 miles southwest of Boulder, but it is 3,000 He and his mother had learned to live with that year’s festival feet higher and has the mood of someplace far more remote. The poster, featuring his grandfather (meaning the fake graphic version town’s name means “nether lands,” or “low lands”—a nickname left of his grandfather) as a menacing zombie. Why, Trygve asked by 19th-century miners working in the yet higher elevations of nearby reporters, couldn’t the town show the same forbearance toward Caribou—and is pronounced with a soft “e”, making the town his mum? “Ned” to Boulder County locals. After a century of silver- and tungsten- mining booms and busts, Ned evolved into a mountainous refuge for hippies and libertarians and people too weird for Boulder. At the 1910 carousel in the heart of downtown, a sign told me the site was being renovated by Positive Energy Electrical. Not far away, locals can shop at the Mountain People Co-op, Grateful Meds, or Nedicate (Nederland is probably the only American town of 1,300 with four medicinal-pot dispensaries and an “indoor gardening sup- plies” store). I saw many NEDITATE bumper stickers on otherwise solidly middle-American pickup trucks. Past Frozen Dead Guy Days festivals have featured ice swimming, coffin races, frozen-t-shirt contests, frozen-turkey bowling, interpre- tive death dances, and Frozen Dead Guy look-alike contests. I’d Murder, mystery & mayhem missed Saturday’s parade of hearses, some modified like Road Warrior vehicles, and a raucous parade that apparently included an H1N1-themed team in pig costumes who weren’t above rolling in the a weekend in the country you won’t forget mud for laughs. Favoured drinks—and Ned drinks a lot every FDGD festival— include Oregon’s Dead Guy Ale microbrew, the vodka-based Grandpa’s Spirit, and, of course, Old Grand-Dad on ice. Buffalo Bill’s Coffee & A three-day party i Iconic artists and breakthrough acts i dress up to kill Confections sold Crispy Grandpa Treats, blocks of Rice Krispie and marshmallow dyed blue or green, each embedded with a little gummy 16th century manor house setting i Sponsor free i just 40 mins from London soldier man. Somehow, Nederland has managed to distill the worst alle- gations against Alcor (disrespect for human remains) and the worst allegations against Larry Johnson (sensationalism and profiteering) and merge both into a thriving, family-friendly weekend festival. 70 | VICE The festival went on. Relations have since healed and shed tours Besides the New York Times, I have yet to read any news source that have resumed. But when I asked Trygve over the phone about the consistently gets it right. The Boulder Daily Camera has called the dust-up, he still seemed wary. He voiced no objections to the com- process “cryogenesis”, and a Denver Channel 4 newsman once called mercialisation of his grandfather (on his own website, he lists 51 it “cry-ro-genics”. Even Nederland’s own FDGD poster has got the trademarks, including “Boulder Polar Bear Club”™, “Rocky word wrong, as has Bo Shaffer’s own website (despite a page address- Mountain Cryonic’s [sic] Facility”™, “Frozen Grandpas”™, and ing this distinction). This would be a pet peeve, if it didn’t neatly every possible variation on his and his grandfather’s names). And he expose a bias: most reporters don’t even respect the subject enough didn’t seem to mind that he sees only one-third of the shed-tour pro- to get its name right. Cryonics is the Rodney Dangerfield of specula- ceeds, this year allegedly only $600, or less than the cost of one tive medical procedures. month of dry ice. Trygve’s lingering beef was with the original town ordinance banning further freezing of human remains. Its repeal had At three that afternoon, I waited in front of Buffalo Bill’s for the $25 been hinted at by the town government, but somehow no one ever shed tour. About a dozen of us were divided among three different got around to actually repealing it. cars and driven up steep, narrow mountain streets. The driver of my I drove up to the Sundance Lodge to watch the Frozen Salmon car sported a sparkly rainbow top hat and was still wearing frozen Toss. The lodge is a mile out of town, with a spectacular view facing cadaver make-up, like a Rocky Horror Picture Show groupie. Two away from Boulder, down onto the Continental Divide, where distant women in the seat behind me announced they had driven the hour ski runs seemed to spell out massive letters. People indeed tossed and a half from Fort Collins. When I told them I had come from frozen salmon on the lodge’s lawn, having paid $5 each for a shot at California, one said, “Not everyone from Colorado is as weird as the $100 gift certificate for farthest toss. I watched 15-pound thaw- this!” with an eruption of girly giggles. ing fish hurtled over and over again into the dirty scrub in front of Trygve’s abandoned house loomed up from the road. It is the the lodge’s long porch. After each fish struck the ground—eyes gap- ugliest private residence I’ve ever seen. A series of grey concrete ing, meat flying—a festival official would measure the distance and slabs formed a boxy fort, and crenulated pseudo-battlements lined then another official would retrieve the fish in a filthy rainbow-col- the roof, making the place look like a monstrous fish-tank decora- ored toboggan. tion. Trygve later assured me that these notches were built to It occurred to me that this ritual could just as easily be a local cus- support future I-beam loads—and were not, as reported, to provide tom with no relation to cryonics (though there seemed to be some cover in a hypothetical gun battle with authorities. But it still sort of analogy regarding Deacon David’s respect-for the-dead argu- looked like a compound. ment). Two little boys stood next to me, slack-faced at yet another A chipper, moustachioed gentleman greeted our group, introduced incomprehensible adult ritual that will one day resurface as a baf- himself as Bo Shaffer, and led us around the site. He told us that fling memory. Trygve’s bank has shown great flexibility with the mortgage pay- Perhaps taking in the sci-fi aspect of the day by osmosis, the ments, in no way wanting to foreclose on an undemolishable larger boy turned to the smaller boy and said, in a robot voice, property with a legally stored dead body. “I’m-sorry-sir-but-my-sensors-indicate-that-you-are-a-weenie.” Earlier, watching the Tuff Shed documentary at the video store, I’d Nearby, a fish hit the ground wrong and exploded in a spray of noticed other tourists smirking and guffawing and glancing over at meat. Someone yelled, “Come on, Tony! Show it who’s boss!” one another to make sure everyone agreed how funny it all was. It was an odd echo of the Crossfire audience’s incredulous laughter, The word “cryonics” is a secret password. “Cryogenics” is the sci- overblown and seemingly defensive in nature. Here at the house, I ence of low temperatures. “Cryonics” is the science of freezing people noticed this same tendency for the crowd to overstate the mirth, as if and animals. Nearly all reportage on cryonics uses the wrong word. everyone felt the need to laugh extra-loud to assert a collective dis- missal. Sometimes it was hard to tell which subject drew the yuks. Was it Trygve’s life? Bredo’s death? Cryonics itself? When Bo showed us the concrete wall that marked the unbuilt tunnel to the unbuilt underground pods, the group erupted in sniggers and smirks, almost like a reflex. Apparently it was a hilarious wall. Our tour continued into the basement where Aud once lived. Pictures had shown me the space as a minimally comfortable living area with throw rugs, lawn chairs, and a working wood stove. Now it looked like an abandoned stoner fort. A stepladder had been set up for Trygve’s use only, Shaffer noted, Aud having been in no condition to access the upper floors of the house. There were no plumbing or kitchen facilities, the only amenity being Trygve’s copy machine in one corner, dusty under piles of books and papers. A hole in the ceiling offered a peek into the second floor. Looking straight up, I was able to see more stacks of papers and bankers’ boxes, at least two industrial shelves’ worth. Papers spilled over the edge of the hole. Bo joked about the effects of a pack rat, and it took a beat to understand he meant an actual pack rat had settled into the boxes. Shaffer showed us several of the thousands upon thousands of architectural drawings, plans, and petitions Trygve had left behind. He also showed us several relevant books on cryonics, and offered aluminium strips of the original shed for $15, and politely requested donations for Bredo’s “un-slushfund”. We stepped back outside and Bo led us to the shed. The KRFX ad had been painted over after the zoning board complained that the advertising constituted signage on private property. A small 72 | VICE LIBERTARIAN sign hung under the roof, although it wasn’t clear 16Bit Goldie Ramadanman 2 Bears Greenmoney Reggae Roast whether this was Bo’s or Trygve’s. The door opened with an Alix Perez Hessle Audio Renaissance Man ominous creak (after one door got oiled, Bo made sure the other Club Autonomic High Contrast Riton door stayed nice and loud). Azari & Iii Icicle Rockwell Ben UFO Instra:mental Rusko Most of the shed was occupied by a plywood box roughly the size Benga Jackmaster S.P.Y. of a hot tub. Bo removed the box’s heavy covering and flipped open Blawan Jokers Of The Scene Sabre the top to reveal an insulated pit lined with 12 inches of Styrofoam Bloc Presents.. Karizma Sandman and filled with ten-pound slabs of smouldering dry ice. An alumini- Breakage Kill Em All Sbtrkt Bukem In Session Kryptic Minds Shy FX um casket rested below, wrapped in an old-timey horror-movie Bullion Kuedo (Jamie Vex’d) Sigha chain (to facilitate its eventual removal). After fresh dry ice is Caspa Lazer Sword (Live) Skream loaded, Bo explained, the insulation is carefully repacked, with the Critical Sound Ltj Bukem & Solo goal of forming as tight a seal as possible. Several discarded KRFX D-Bridge MC Conrad Space Dimension Dj Marky Lubdub Controller banners are used as liners between layers of insulation. On top of the Dj Zinc LV Starsmith dry ice, Bo had left a pint each of butter pecan and vanilla ice cream, DMX Krew (Live) Marcus Intalex Sticky as well as a Tupperware container holding the remains of Bredo’s The Doctors Orders Matty G Stray 107th-birthday cake. Grandpa had been afforded more dignity than Doorly Mistajam Tectonic Drop The Lime Mixhell The Others Mike the Headless Chicken or Anonymous the Frozen Salmon, but Dub Police Numbers Toddla T less than most funerals and wakes I’ve attended. Eat Your Own Ears Oris Jay Wookie (Exclusive Bo has never seen Bredo, and he’s never met Trygve face to face. Emalkay Pangaea UKG Set) Trygve’s monthly payments cover dry ice, two helpers, and a vehicle Exel & Moodie Pinch Youngsta Fabio Poirier Ft. Mc Face-T Zane Lowe capable of ferrying 1,600 pounds up steep, slick mountain roads in Filthy Dukes Pursuit Grooves Zero T treacherous conditions. There’s not much profit left over. Some win- Four Tet (Live) ters the drifts reach seven feet, high enough that Bo can only park COMING SOON beyond the driveway, labouriously hauling blocks of dry ice across Open 10pm – 6am. £14 entry (£11 Students) £6 after 3am, unless stated otherwise. the snow with a toboggan. On those days, the job can take six hours. fabric operates a 24 hour license, bars open late. Information line: 020 7336 8898 Tickets available from Ticket web: 0870 0600 100 and from our website. 77a Charterhouse It’s a lot of work for not so much money. He does the job, he told me Street London EC1. www.fabriclondon.com A selection of recordings from these events later, because it gives him a good story. It occurred to me that what will be available to hear again at fabriclondon.com/fabricfirst. Forthcoming in the series: Surgeon, Drop The Lime, Damian Lazarus, David Rodigan Alcor wants is an army of Bo Shaffers, tireless labourers dedicated to Every living thing eventually the cause (or maybe not: Frozen was one of the books he discussed with our tour group). According to Bo, Mike Perry—the Alcor CEO dies, no matter how many who allegedly castrated himself—has attended more than one FDGD festival in a ZZ Top spy disguise. extensions it gets. This dedication highlighted the precariousness of all cryonics. Who will someday replace Bo? Who will pay whoever someday replaces Bo? Like nuclear physics, cryonics is one of those rare fields Robert Ettinger, set this tone in 1962, with his preposterously titled that must plan for deep duration. The financial collapse of 2008 The Prospect of Immortality. But even the most die-hard cryophiles raised the spectre of global depression, an existential threat to every can’t mean these words literally. Someday the sun will explode. FREE SUBSCRIBE cryonics client far more pressing, in the long run, than the quakes and Eventually the universe will collapse or scatter. Every living thing VOLUME 8 NUMBER 5 riots that squeezed Alcor from Riverside. In 350 pages of accusa- eventually dies, no matter how many extensions it gets. Even people tions, the most potent charge Larry Johnson can level against Alcor who have figured out how to live hundreds or thousands or millions TO VICE is that it has mismanaged its own finances. of years will eventually die. In a best-case scenario, cryonics will still Trygve, 52, told me he felt he has “many more years” to resolve only defer the inevitable, no matter how long and incredible that For years we told people not to subscribe to Vice because it doesn’t really the financing issue. He may someday transport his grandfather back deferral might be. make us any money and, unlike most other publications (which are corrupt to Norway or to another existing facility. He expressed hope that For most people, for most of their lives, the vastness of the organs of lies and filth), we don’t use our subscriber numbers to try and Nederland would eventually repeal the 1994 town ordinance and human life span renders death a blurry abstraction. I won’t be the squeeze an extra quid out of advertisers. Plus, the whole managing the list allow more cryonic storage on his land. Perhaps Nederland will even- same person I am now in 40 years, any more than I was the same and mailing thing is a huge pain in the arse to deal with. tually pick up the tab for its frozen golden goose. Perhaps it won’t. person 40 years ago. To contemplate yourself in the distant future New Hampshire, after all, continues to honour its Old Man in the is to ponder someone else, the person who will eventually inherit This is all still the case, but after untold years of emails and letters from Mountain granite cliff landmark even now, seven years after its col- your consciousness. It’s always possible to hope that this person people whining about how they can’t get their hands on an actual physical lapse. It’s an odd irony of Frozen Dead Guy Days: Nederland doesn’t will be too accomplished, or satisfied, or at least exhausted, to fear copy of the magazine because some idiot keeps grabbing 20 copies at a necessarily need Bredo to celebrate Bredo. their own cessation. time and then selling them on eBay, we are throwing our hands up and For all his dedication, Bo seemed agnostic on cryonic viability. This According to Trygve, his grandfather wanted to stay, regardless of saying, “FINE!” would still make him one of the most cryonics-optimistic people I met how accomplished or exhausted he was. I thought of him up here, So if you want to get Vice in the mail every month, it’s £35 for 1 year that day. In the Tuff Shed documentary, Boulder reporter Clay Evans night after night, alone. Whether Bredo was in the Nether World or including the behemoth Photo Issue in June. Send cheque or money order says Bredo’s brain is mush and impersonates Peter Boyle’s moans in still here in the Nether Lands, it seemed unbearably lonely, even with (payable to VICE UK Ltd) to: Young Frankenstein. It’s unclear whether he means this because Bredo’s the annual visits by guffawing strangers. If some entity not yet born postmortem handling wasn’t up to code or because he feels cryonics or built actually revives him, his circumstances could easily be lone- VICE Subscriptions itself is a sham. Perhaps he believes, as some do, that even a brain lier still. 77 Leonard Street rebuilt cell by cell wouldn’t retain its memory. On this point, skepticism Bo made motions to usher us from the shed. I suddenly felt London of the skepticism seems warranted: no one knows exactly what would spooked. Hopefully, this was the only casket I will ever see outside a EC2A 4QS happen to the consciousness of a mind thawed and rebuilt. Brains have funeral home. Viable or not, Bredo was at that moment very much a Or subscribe online at: www.viceland.com survived horrific injuries, even loss of entire lobes, with an uncanny corpse, and in that respect there was nothing even remotely unique knack for self-repair. about his situation. Someday all of us will be dead. Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery of your first issue. Members of the cryonics community have tossed around the I peered down into the big plywood vault one last time. What will terms “immortal” and “forever”. The father of cryonics, author it be like? 74 | VICE Spring Break 2010, Woooo! I Went to Cancun to Party With Douchebags but Ended Up Weeping With Tigers WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JAMIE LEE CURTIS TAETE his past March, I was sent by Vice to starving to death in mountains of their own shit. cover spring break in Cancun. Every There’s also a really depressing video that shows T year 25,000 American college students severely injured tigers dragging their lame back go there. The combination of lowered inhibitions, legs along behind them. A voice-over from a big- keg stands, board shorts, tribal tats, and hair cat expert talks about how the animals are being extensions should have made for HILARIOUS mistreated and need to be rescued ASAP. Further photos, but unfortunately everything that could digging around revealed that an animal sanctuary have gone wrong went wrong: my four-hour New in Colorado (that had a personal endorsement York layover turned into a 50-hour layover from Jessica Biel on their website, by the way) because of a big storm, my bank card stopped had raised enough money to charter a plane to working, there were two days of shitty weather Cancun to save the animals, but the Mexican that made all of the spring breakers stay inside government had stepped in at the last second to their hotels, and I lost one of my shoes for almost stop them. two hours. (I found it outside my hotel room, by I called up Pepe and made plans to see him and the pool. I have no idea how it got there.) his tigers the next morning. Unsurprisingly, he By day four of my six-day trip, I’d seen demanded $50 for the privilege. The next day, I approximately one hour of spring-break action. woke up feeling supermotivated, ready to do Somehow, during that hour, I managed to hear “I some tiger saving. I had fantasies of writing a Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas eight times. heart-rending story about how the poor, helpless One morning, while I was out walking in the animals were being mistreated, which would greyness and freaking out about not having shot snowball into global media coverage and eventu- enough pictures, I noticed a restaurant called ally result in me flying with the tigers to Pepe’s Tigers that offered the chance to dine with Colorado, stroking their heads, and whispering, real tigers and jaguars. I had images of drunken “Shhh, it’s going to be OK.” bros harassing dangerous animals and thought it I cannot even begin to describe how terrified I might make for good photos. I made a mental was going into Pepe’s. The videos I’d watched note to look it up and go back there. gave the impression that hungry tigers were Then it started to rain AGAIN, so I headed being kept in shittily constructed cages that were back to my hotel. After watching about three on the verge of crumbling. And to intensify that hours of Rachael Ray (for some reason, the only fear, right before I went I had spent an hour English-language TV channel I could get at my watching videos of tiger attacks online. Have hotel played nothing but CBS News, Dr. Phil, you seen the one where the guy is riding an ele- and Rachael Ray), I remembered Pepe’s Tigers phant and a Bengal tiger jumps up and slashes and googled it. The first thing that came up was his fingers off? HOOOOLY SHIIIT. a site called Save the Cancun Tigers. It explained Predictably, the weather finally got amazing how Pepe’s closed down in 2005 after Hurricane on the day I went to see Pepe. Every once in a Wilma destroyed it beyond repair and that for the while, when the wind was right, traces of T-Pain past five years Pepe’s tigers have been slowly and Jägermeister would make their way across Sea view—nicer than my apartment. 78 | VICE VICE | 79 Pepe with one of his signs. I’m not sure why he’s wearing karate gear on it. Preparing dinner. To add to the post-apocalyptic vibe, there were two tigers, a black panther, and a jaguar in cages around the building. the lagoon. While I was outside waiting for Pepe that the crazy signs on the outside of his building to come and get me (his property is surrounded aren’t actually that crazy after all. In fact, it started by a giant fence and there’s no visible door), I to seem like the whole Save the Cancun Tigers noticed a bunch of signs and banners he’d stuck thing was complete and total bullshit. up saying things like “Save the Cancun Tigers is I’m no expert on tiger care, so I might be a fraud!” After some eye-rolling, I made a men- wrong, but it seemed to me like Pepe was look- tal note to ask him to explain how an ing after his tigers just fine. He gives them fresh international aid campaign to save his animals water, feeds them daily with a combination of was all just a sham. pork and chicken livers, and cleans out their Once inside, I went on a quick tour of what cages too. Pepe said that he even takes them out used to be Pepe’s restaurant. The inside of the for walks, and when he had a boat he would building was totally fucked. It looked like the take them swimming, but his boat was set of a movie about a bunch of apocalypse sur- destroyed by the hurricane and he can’t afford a vivors hiding out in a hastily abandoned new one. The only thing I could see wrong with restaurant. Tables were flipped, paper was scat- the whole operation was that some of the cages tered, food wrappers were everywhere. To add were small and depressing: the two tigers were to the post-apocalyptic vibe, there were two being kept in a cage that would be big enough to tigers, a black panther, and a jaguar in cages park about eight cars in; the jaguar was tem- around the building. porarily being kept in a really small cage, while After asking Pepe a million intrusive (and pos- his regular cage, about the same size as the sibly rude) questions, it slowly dawned on me tigers’ cage, was being fixed; and the black panther Eating dinner. 80 | VICE VICE | 81 Mid-visit, I remembered the incident at the San Francisco Zoo a few years ago where a tiger leaped out of its enclosure and mauled someone to death. I asked Pepe about this. After thinking about it for a minute, he told me, “If they wanted to get out, they’d have gotten out by now. They’re happy here.” OK, Pepe. Pepe’s dream is to sell the restaurant and build a zoo that the poor people of Cancun can visit. was being kept in a two-car-size cage that was to move, you have to move or you will lose your just an empty concrete square. job. The beaches are not for us!” When I asked him about the state of the cages, He went on to tell me that there is literally he explained to me that he saw it as a temporary nothing to do in Cancun unless you’re a tourist, situation. He’d been in the process of building a and anything that’s meant for tourists is way too zoo with bigger and better cages, but Save the expensive for locals to use. Some locals spend Cancun Tigers was ruining him financially their Sundays at Wal-Mart because it’s the only because of all of the legal costs he kept having to place that’s affordable and air-conditioned. pay to save his animals from being saved (good Pepe’s dream is to sell the restaurant and build one, do-gooders). a zoo that the poor people of Cancun can visit. According to Pepe, Cancun is a shitty place to He told me that the animals I saw in his restau- live if you’re Mexican. You can’t even go to the rant are only a small part of his larger collection. beach. He explained, “The government is paying His other five big cats are kept on some land he a lot of money to rebuild the beaches because it’s owns on the outskirts of Cancun where he wants for the hotels. You cannot get from the road to to build the zoo. After Pepe finished showing me the beach without going through a hotel. But if around the restaurant, he drove me out to the site you are Mexican and you try to go through a of his future zoo. We had to switch cars to one hotel to the beach, the security will not let you. that didn’t have doors or seatbelts because the Even if you manage to get onto the beach, they terrain was too harsh for his normal car. Our first will come along and move you. And everybody stop was Pepe’s sick tiger—the one that is made here is employed by the hotels. So if they tell you to look like multiple sick tigers in the Save the Pepe’s sick tiger. Poor girl. 82 | VICE VICE | 83 I can safely say this is the most scared I’ve ever been. The lead is just a formality, really—if this panther had wanted to eat my face off, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing Pepe could have done about it. “Would you send away your sons? They are my sons. I will die with them.” Cancun Tigers video. She seemed in a bad way. From what I saw, Pepe seems to love his tigers, When I looked up, vultures were literally circling. and his tigers seem to love him. And by “love I didn’t realise that was a thing that actually hap- him” I mean “didn’t maul him to death when he pened; I thought it was just in Wile E. Coyote got inside their cages”. To save money, he even cartoons. Pepe explained that the tiger’s back had eats the same meat that the tigers do. “Would been broken after her brother attempted to have you send away your sons? They are my sons. I sex with her. “She didn’t want it,” said Pepe, “so will die with them,” said Pepe the Drama Queen. they got into a fight and she lost and now there is “I spend all of my time and money on them something wrong with her back. I think maybe because I love them. I have to beg people for it’s broken. Some people say I should kill her or help, I have to ask them for money or leftover sacrifice her because she cannot walk. But I can’t food. A guy calls me with a horse that they do that. A specialist vet would need to come and couldn’t eat. I’m that broke. And then they say I see her and maybe put her on wheels or some- do not feed them. Later, if I have ten chickens, I thing, but that would be too expensive for me. I will give one each to the tigers and then have one just do not have the money. I think she only has for myself to last two days. You’ve been with me a few days left.” today—did you see me eat breakfast? No, I have Pepe says that if the Colorado sanctuary had a coffee today, and that is it. If you can help, offered to take her and get medical treatment for help me here. Don’t take my children.” her, he’d let them. “And you can tell them that,” I’m not trying to say that Pepe’s perfect or that his he said, “because there is nothing I can do for her, animals are being kept as well as they would be in a and I am very scared.” fancy sanctuary. It’s a bad situation. Pepe obviously This was the only enclosure Pepe had completed at his zoo. He hopes they’ll all be this awesome soon. 84 | VICE VICE | 85 SCENES FROM SPRING BREAK This is two of the tigers doing it. Pepe got all excited by this and started yelling things like, “Hey man, you gotta buy her a martini first!” With the exception of a couple of lizards and some mosquitoes, this was the only other animal I saw while I was in Cancun. He was outside one of the hotels being forced to pose for pictures with tourists. I also just saw a picture online of this very same chimp with Tila Tequila. Poor guy. I think that, really, the animal charity should stop trying to make him look bad on the internet and just help him out a little by giving him some money... cares about his cats, but he can’t afford to take care into about 30 fights. And the music was a song of them, and he’s not receiving any help. He refuses that had been so extensively remixed its sole lyric to give his tigers to the American charity, which was the word “shots”. Also, I’ve always thought might be a shitty move on his part, but he won’t give of myself as looking fairly inoffensive. I wear them up because a) he thinks of them as family and jeans and a plain t-shirt almost every day. But for b) he has his big dream of opening a zoo for the some reason, to this crowd, I was hilarious. poor people of Cancun. I think that, really, the ani- Particularly my hair. I think it might have been mal charity should stop trying to make him look the first time some of these ladies had seen hair bad on the internet and just help him out a little by without product in it. giving him some money to be able to take better I wish I could end this story with some way of care of the animals. helping out, like a site where you can donate I bid Pepe farewell and on my way back to the money for the tigers or something. Unfortunately, hotel I remembered that it was St. Patrick’s Day. Pepe isn’t web-savvy enough to set something like Even though I was completely exhausted, I fig- that up, though he does have a janky website ured St. Paddy’s in Cancun during spring break with some cute tiger pictures on it. I guess you would be the best thing to photograph ever. So I could try emailing him and offering to send him swung by Cancun’s only Irish bar, Pat O’Brien’s. a cheque (www.pepetigrecancun.com). Or better After paying a fucking infuriating $42, I was able yet, you could email the Colorado Wild Animal to enter the worst place I have ever, ever, ever Sanctuary (www.wildanimalsanctuary.org) and been. In the 20 minutes it took for me to make ask them to give some of the money they’ve col- my way from the entrance to the bar, I nearly got lected for his tigers to his tigers. I’m not usually one to namedrop, but this is too major not to share. This picture was taken while I was playing beer pong against Derek from The Real World: Cancun (he’s the one with foil on his head). SHOWBIZ! 86 | VICE VICE | 87 88 | VICE VICE | 89 PRESENTS 5th - 8th August 2010 EASTNOR CASTLE DEER PARK, MALVERN HILLS, HEREFORDSHIRE Tickets available from: Ticketline on 0844 888 4411 or BIGCHILL.NET KRUDER & DORFMEISTER, KELIS, ROOTS MANUVA, TINIE TEMPAH, BEBEL GILBERTO, PLAN B, ROY AYERS, MATTHEW HERBERT’S ONE CLUB, MR SCRUFF, LAYO & BUSHWACKA!, GILLES PETERSON, NORMAN JAY, TERRY CALLIER, ANDY WEATHERALL, THEO PARRISH, ASHLEY BEEDLE & DARREN MORRIS PRESENT MAVIS (LIVE), ZERO 7 (DJ SET), ALICE RUSSELL, GIGGS, HENRIK SCHWARZ , THE BUG, MAGNETIC MAN, CRAZY P SOUNDSYSTEM (DJ SET), TODDLA T & MC SEROCEE, THE CRAIG CHARLES FANTASY FUNK BAND, EASY STAR ALL-STARS, THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND, MAD PROFESSOR, GREG WILSON, NICOLA CONTE JAZZ COMBO, DJ DEREK, THE BLACK SEEDS, MARTYN, JOKER, THE SHOES, 2020SOUNDSYSTEM, DÅM FUNK, LITTLE DRAGON, DANIEL WANG, APPLEBLIM, EL DIABLO’S SOCIAL CLUB, FOREIGN BEGGARS, TENSNAKE, BREAKAGE, SETH TROXLER & JAMIE JONES, FUTUREBOOGIE, REDLIGHT, PBR STREETGANG, N-TYPE, STARSMITH, THE HEATWAVE, SMOOVE & TURRELL, TAYLOR McFERRIN, ANDREYA TRIANA HOSPITAL RECORDS PRESENTS… HIGH CONTRAST, LONDON ELEKTRICITY, DANNY BYRD, NETSKY ART TRAIL LAZYLAND SPENCER TUNICK, GAGGLE, THE KEYBOARD CHOIR, THE WORLD FAMOUS’S BIG BURN, THE LEISURE SOCIETY, JOSÉ PADILLA, ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF CHRIS BIANCHI, CHRISBIANCHI.CO.UK COURTESY ILLUSTRATIONS BOMPAS & PARR: ‘ZIGGURAT OF FLAVOUR’ PORT ISAAC'S FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS WORDS IN MOTION PETER HOOK & HOWARD MARKS, JOHN HARRIS’ HAIL HAIL ROCK QUIZ, TATE BRITAIN’S RUDE BRITTANIA WEEKEND OF ACTIVITIES, JOHN HEGLEY, CRINGE, SPEAKERS’ CORNER QUARTET, HARRY SHEARER, MISCHIEF MAKERS’ PROTEST CAMP LOOPS JOURNAL TALKS WITH OWEN HATHERLEY & MATT THORNE THE LAKES FIELD DERELICTION DRIVE-IN IN ASSOCIATION WITH BFI & WARP FILMS, DJ COCKTAIL BARS, CINEMA TENT, THE FANCY DRESS TENT, BOATS, THE IGLOO: LOW LIFE’S 3D DISCO, SOLID STEEL’S AV SPECIAL, QUIET VOICES ENCHANTED GARDEN BODY & SOUL, THE BUSKERS’ STAGE , SHOOT EXPERIENCE, VIDEOPIA, SELVEDGE & TATTY DEVINE CRAFT WORKSHOPS, SWAP MEET, DISCO SHED KIDS’ ZONE TEEN TENT AERIAL PERFORMANCES PLUS MUCH MORE TO COME! CHECK OUT BIGCHILL.NET FOR THE LATEST LINE-UP ANNOUNCEMENTS 90 | VICE DOs ROCK ON, GOLD DUST WOMAN. THE 42-20. Don’t tell me hip-hop is dead when there are still slack- Like date rape and lesbian stand-up, piano-print necktie When you’re on the floor of your parents’ basement with jawed, breakdancing emo boys in Taiwan. scarves have been commonly accepted as not-funny for their furniture strewn about and you’re covered in your decades. Kudos to this sweaty, middle-aged guy for raging own vomit, it might not be the worst time to tell them against the machine. you’re gay. You know, distract them a little. Waking up in a bar with a black man’s dick in your face Look at this little neon Beastie Boi. Did he not get the You might think that the best accessory for the young, is only a good look if you passed out with it in your Jay-Z memo about “all-black everything”? This is attention-seeking homosexual would be a bag or shoes or mouth. Otherwise it’s a little too frat house. exactly the type of kid who gets taken from the bus perhaps a scarf. But you’d be wrong. It’s a Filipino midget. station by a creep pretending to look for his “muse”. nixonnow.com 92 | VICE DON’Ts Shovelling snow off the steps of your parents’ house is about as metal as two dolphins jumping over a rainbow and This is the type of photo that your dad sees of you when tongue kissing. he’s medium drunk and mutters, “I can’t believe you came out of my balls.” Just because the hormone treatment is working and your Fuck me? No, actually, fuck you. You bought an entire That thing on her head isn’t just some goofy hat for a clitoris is now the size of a thumb doesn’t mean you dorm room at Urban Outfitters. meth-smoking Pilates instructor to wear to a Rusted ELEMENT X MARK WARREN JAQUES should go around grabbing at it just ’cause it’s there. Root show. It’s what Bolivian peasants use to decorate AVAILABLE NOW Remember, that’s the type of behaviour that made you their donkeys. CHECK OUT THE ENTIRE COLLECTION a lesbian to begin with. AT WWW.ELEMENTEUROPE.COM WWW.MARKWARRENJACQUES.COM GSM EUROPE: +33 5 58 700 700 94 | VICE DOs I’d like to think that there’s a country in Eastern Europe where everyone has a unibrow and that this guy is the biggest Getting on the microphone at a Williamsburg loft party rap star there and his stage name translates into English as “MC Partyfun”. In reality he’s probably a comedian who and attempting to start a fascist rally is a ballsy move, shoots “viral” internet videos and makes Russell Howard seem like the climaxing orgasm of comedy. especially when you’re the only neo-Nazi there. See the guy in the background? He’s been following this The best thing for a girl to wear to brunch is whatever This guy’s great because nobody in his LARPing slutty-looking, google-eyed Latvian since she stumbled off you were wearing the night before. community has any idea how enormous his the roller coaster at Busch Gardens this afternoon. Not an uncircumcised penis is, and once they find out the amazing outfit, but you have to applaud his diligence. source of his dark wizardry he’ll have already butt- fucked half the water pixies and chaotically aligned bards in Middle-earth. Sean Malto, pro skateboarder. etnies footwear 96 | VICE facebook.com/etnies.europe DON’Ts Ninety percent of the time a white guy with dreads will look like an asshole 100 percent of the time, and 60 percent of the I was sad because I had no shoes, then I saw a guy who time redheads act creepy 99 percent of the time, which makes this guy a total and complete nightmare numbers-wise. had folded two pot-leaf-emblazoned pieces of attic insulation over his feet and tied them with Scotch tape and I was like, “Wait, what the fuck is going on with that guy?” This picture seems like a DO slam dunk until you take I know we’ve always stressed the context of outfits and This girl can only be screaming either “THIS IS ONE OF into account the v-neck-to-tuxedo-vest-to-champagne how you can’t be a stoic Matrix assassin in line at Costa THE BEST NIGHTS OF MY LIFE!” or “THIS GUY I JUST MET combo move and also the part where you realise his Coffee, but come on, guy, even waiting on a snowy bullet- WHO I’M FRIENDS WITH ON FACEBOOK IS ABOUT TO name is Garrett, he shaves his pubes, and he refers to train platform for the Keymaker or whoever, you still look MOLEST ME!” sex with a woman as “tackling a slampig”. like somebody who’s only been blown by a computer. 98 | VICE Slava Mogutin, artist and writer Brian Kenny, artist and musician Together for six years. Power Couples PHOTOS BY RICHARD KERN Shoot coordinator: Annette Lamothe-Ramos Hair: Shane Tison Make-up: Erin Green Kathryn Garcia, artist Sarvia Jasso, curator Together for three years. 100 | VICE VICE | 101 AA Bronson, artist Cass Bird, photographer, director, Mark Jan Krayenhoff and stay-at-home dad van de Leur, architect Ali Bird, director of The Wall Group Together for 13 years. (with Leo Black Bird, two years old, and Mae Black Bird, three months old) Together for six years. 102 | VICE VICE | 103 Susi Kenna, Simon Doonan, creative communications consultant director of Barneys New York Jenny Shimizu, model, Jonathan Adler, actress, and mechanic potter and designer Together for one year and six months. Together for 15 years. 104 | VICE VICE | 105 Jonathan Horowitz, artist Marlene McCarty, artist Rob Pruitt, artist Christine Vachon, film producer Together for 16 years. Together for 16 years. 106 | VICE VICE | 107 Steven Cox & iO Tillett Wright, artist Daniel Silver, Kate Atherton, performer designers, Duckie Together for two years. Brown Together for 17 years. 108 | VICE VICE | 109 Modern Primitives PHOTOS BY ELLEN ROGERS STYLIST: SAM VOULTERS HAIR AND HEADPIECES: TOMIHIRO KONO @ Balcony Jump using Kiehl’s MAKE-UP: MARTINA LUISETTI using MAC Stylist’s assistants: Emmanuel Balogun, Derek Martin. Photo assistant: Hayley Brown Hair assistants: Chiaki Azuma, Tomoko Ueda. Make-up assistant: Dave Waterman Models: David Gant, Betty at Models1, Abena Afari, Alex Voulters, Alice Goddard, Eleonore Desnos, Kenny Kenciang Aquascutum cardigan, Bernard Willhelm leggings, Random Bangle from Machine-A necklace, J.W. Anderson bangles VICE | 111 Uniqlo leggings, Maria Francesca Pepe for Amanda Wakeley necklaces; Diesel jeans, Marni necklace 112 | VICE VICE | 113 Twenty8Twelve top, KTZ skull Aquascutum cardigan, Bernard Willhelm leggings, Random Bangle from Machine-A necklace, J.W. Anderson bangles; Gabriella Gonzales knit, KTZ leggings, Pebble necklace 114 | VICE VICE | 115 Pebble headpiece, VV Rouleaux neck- Petar Petrov cardigan worn as piece; Henry Holland dress, Pebble dress, Pebble necklace, David headdress, Florian neckpiece Koma armpiece, Random Bangle from Machine-A scarf worn as belt 116 | VICE VICE | 117 (L-R) David: Pringle top, Firetrap trousers, Pebble headpiece, VV Rouleaux neckpiece, Derek Martin staff; Betty: Henry Holland dress, J.W. Anderson skirt, Pebble headdress, Florian neckpiece, Derek Martin bangle; Alex: Anglomania by Vivienne Westwood knit, KTZ jeans, Pebble mask and seed necklace, Florian leather necklace; Kenny: Marios Schwab skirt, David Koma neckpiece; Abena: Vivienne Westwood Red Label dress, Marni necklaces; Alice: Freddy the Club cardigan, Katie Eary top, Topshop Unique jeans, Pebble necklace; Eleonore: Missoni cardigan, Horace trousers, Pebble necklace, Trussardi belt 118 | VICE Wet ’n’ Wild PHOTOGRAPHER: DAVID TITLOW STYLIST: TEDDY GEORGE-POKU Stylist’s assistant: Grace Jones Model: Roxane at Viva T-shirt by Vivienne Westwood by Vivienne T-shirt at Shop Bluebird and hat by Bernstock Speirs by Comme des Garçons PLAY Top 120 | VICE Swimsuit by American Apparel Dress by American Apparel and scarf Hermès Swimsuit by Illionaire Martens Hat by Bernstock Speirs, top Ashish, jeans Chronicles of Never and boots Dr. Glenn Danzig INTERVIEW BY SAM McPHEETERS PHOTOS BY JEANEEN LUND ost performers have to span a gap between their public It seems like that would deny you any lasting chemistry with your image and their private life, but Glenn Danzig has to bandmates. There are basically term limits on your musicians. M jump between two distinct public versions of himself. No, you just work with a lot of different people. You get to experi- Think of the disconnect between the cheesy camp of his “Mother” ence lots of different stuff and do a lot of different things. I like that video and the lurid power of the song itself. Occult Glenn earns pub- freedom a lot better. It’s like, “Maybe I can work with this guy.” I still lic ridicule to almost the same degree that Songwriter Glenn earns like that kind of rebellious punk thing where you change it up all the praise, like an actor who wins a Razzie and an Oscar in the same time. If you get bored, change it. When it’s stale, fix it. week. When I mentioned this interview in an email to a friend, the I guess I’m curious about this because it kind of puts you in the posi- friend wrote, “You don’t really think of Danzig as someone you get tion of being the employer. How do practices work if you’re like the to ask actual questions of.” boss of the band? Because I’d been scheduled for an interview, and not a jam ses- I don’t like to look at it like that. sion, I’d steeled myself for all variety of Occult Danzig worst-case scenarios. This was needless worry. Glenn met me at his Los I’m not saying you are the boss, like you have laminated posters with Angeles office with a friendly nod and a handshake. No hooded Employee Rights and Grievance Number Hotlines on the wall of the Metalocalypse minions guarded the periphery. In person, that leg- practice space, but... endary voice was a shade smokier than I’d expected, still marked At the end of the day you have to make sure you do pay attention to with traces of a Jersey accent, like an off-duty James Gandolfini. He the business end. But it should still be that everyone’s having a good led me into his dimly lit inner sanctum, turned down Fox News on time. If you’re not having a good time, there’s the door. If you come in a TV in the corner, and motioned for me to take a chair. Only at and you’re like [makes whining noise]—goodbye. I don’t have time for that moment did it occur to me that I’d just stepped into a dark that fucking shit. There’s not a lot of money in music these days; I do room with Glenn Danzig. it because I enjoy it. I could get a lot more money doing other shit. Am I going to tour forever? Probably not. But I enjoy doing it still, and any- Vice: Thanks for doing this interview in person. It gives me a strong one who puts a damper on that, I don’t need you. You really should be incentive to not be a smartarse. doing music because you love playing music. And if you’re going out Glenn Danzig: Yeah, my day’s slammed, but I got here early to try on the road, you’ve got to enjoy playing live. If you don’t like playing and accommodate. live, you shouldn’t be on the road, because people are paying to see you I’ve always been curious how a band like Danzig works. You’re the and they don’t want you up there all bored. That’s bullshit. figurehead, the front man, the namesake, and the songwriter... So how do practices work when you’re the primary songwriter? That started after Samhain, when I hooked up with Rick [Rubin], I’m the only songwriter. because we were courting lots of major labels at the time. It was his idea to change the name to Danzig. I said, “Well, I was gonna Do you show up with pre-written parts? Do you say, “Hey, Tommy, do that after the Misfits. I just thought it sounded too much like here’s the new part”? Billy Idol or something.” But by the time Samhain had run its This is the same question you would ask Bowie or somebody. course and was becoming Danzig, people knew what to expect Yeah, but I’m never going to get to meet Bowie. You’re it. from me, from Danzig. The original idea was to have a different You’ve never been able to ask this question before? line-up every record. I’ve never spoken with anybody who’s reached this point in their career. What changed that? Oh, OK. Well, basically I write the songs, I bring them down, show We got into touring mode. But it should have been done sooner. everybody their part, and then we play it until it sounds good. 126 | VICE VICE | 127 So if at any point one of your musicians says, “I’ve got a way this That implies that you had decades of not doing that, of being on tour could sound better”, does that constitute employee insubordination? and dealing with the constraints of Tour Time. I’ve known so many If it’s just a way to play the riff or the chord pattern, no. But if touring musicians who surrendered to the downtime, who would let you’re trying to change the actual make-up of the song, yeah, that their natural rhythms go to hell and sleep until three, not exercise, won’t fly. not read, not do any of the things they’d do at home... For most musicians, that’s an alien concept. Every band I’ve ever I try to work out, but a lot of hotels don’t have gyms anymore, so known has operated on a level far below this, hashing out competing I always try to find a local gym where there’s not a ton of musical visions in cramped practice spaces. What’s your process for ’roid-heads, ’cause I can’t stand them. It’s tough. I read a lot, so writing songs? that helps. Sometimes I get the guitar lines, sometimes I write on the piano, Are you able to read on tour? Meaning, can you concentrate even sometimes I’ll write the lyrics first and then figure out the chord with other people’s noise? patterns on guitar, and sometimes I write the drum pattern first. It’s I get my own back area where people stay away from me. [laughs] all different. I’m always reading or going to bookstores. When everyone else is Is it all up here [points to head] or do you keep stuff on a tape farting around in the daytime, I’m at bookstores. recorder? But you must have had years before that where you were staying at When I first started working with Rick, he made me buy not one people’s houses, in the early days. In the 80s, you weren’t staying at but a couple of microcassette recorders, because I would come to hotels and you didn’t have a bus. rehearsal and I would go, “Man, I had this great song on the way We would sleep in the van sometimes. here.” I wrote a lot of songs when I was banging on my steering wheel, driving and screaming “Fuck you!” to really bad drivers, but Everybody? I would forget the songs by the time I got to rehearsal. Rick was Yeah. like, “You gotta get a microcassette recorder! That could have been Dude, I’ve tried that. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. a hit song!” In Samhain, I carpeted everything but I built a thing so the amps would never hit you, and it was also a bunk. So it had doors on the top, and when you opened them you could get to the amps or you “I wrote a lot of songs when I was could climb up to the top bunk. The top bunk could have two peo- ple sleeping up there. It was all plush carpet. You could fit another banging on my steering wheel, four people below there, plus three people in the front. Feasible, but not posh. driving and screaming ‘Fuck you!’ It was comfortable. It was better than the Misfits, I’ll tell you that. In those days you could still have the cab connected to the back of the to really bad drivers, but I would truck, so you didn’t have to get out of the truck to change drivers. I would be like, “Here, switch off”, and while I was driving, I would forget the songs by the time I got jump out of the seat and hold the wheel until another person jumped to rehearsal.” in and grabbed it. Real touring, motherfucker! I’ve always assumed “Mother ’93” was kind of the dividing line when you started to get a lot more public recognition. Is that correct? MTV didn’t want to play the “Mother” video, but it was being I would think that after the first time that happened you’d be bang- ing your head on the dashboard. played five times an hour on the Music Box. The original was I don’t stress on that shit. But now, unless I’m at my pad or whatever banned when it came out. MTV told Rick they needed the censored and a song comes to me and I just pick up my guitar and write it version. He thought he sent them censored version, but he sent and lay it down on something, then yeah, I usually hum it into a them the uncensored one. They played it, and they got all these reli- gious people—who can go fuck themselves anyway [holds up microcassette recorder and then I transpose it when I get home and What I mean is, have people freaked out on you? Has anyone come I’m 40. I don’t do any of those things. I eat salad for lunch. And I middle finger to empty space]—freaking out, and MTV banned us work it out on guitar or piano. up to you in public and acted unhinged at the sight of you in person? wake up almost every day feeling like a wet bag of sand. almost forever. I’ve read that you’re going to slow down on touring some because I don’t know about that. I think people are just like, “Wow”, and are Salad is terrible if you put creamy crap on it. Am I right in thinking that when you go out now, to the supermar- you don’t want to deal with the downtime that comes on the road. really happy that they saw me. “Oh, will you sign something for me It’s low-fat creamy crap! ket or wherever, you get a certain amount of gawkers? After the 2005 Blackest of the Black tour, I stopped touring. Then or take a picture for me?” Most of my fans are pretty cool. There’s no such thing. I said, “Well, I’ll do local shows, because I don’t have to sit on a Yeah. I have to sign autographs wherever I go. I’m talking about 1 percent of 1 percent. The person who comes up So you have nothing to share, nothing to impart to those of us bus for fucking three days between shows, doing nothing.” I’m a Here’s a question I’ve always had. Have you heard of Jerusalem to you and says, “I sacrificed my dog in the name of Kramdar. Here’s who are rapidly turning into jiggly piles of goo? It seems like it workaholic, and so I’ve always got to be doing stuff. When you’re syndrome? That’s the thing where normal tourists go to the Holy the body, Lord Danzig.” happens quick. on the bus, you can’t do shit. You’re not at home, you don’t have Land, freak out, and convince themselves they’re John the Baptist No. Uh, do you work out at all? all your shit. or Jesus. I saw John Carpenter speak in 2002. He was 54 then, but he looked But I guess you then got tired of not touring… I’ve never heard of that. Not every day. ten years older, and he talked for a while about his sagging energy You don’t need to do it every day. Diet is really important and I think I love playing live, so I started out again with a couple local shows. It’s a recognised psychological phenomenon. levels. You’re the same age now, right? vitamins are really important also. Maybe you want to go to a nutri- Then we put together a West Coast run and I flew home after every I’ve never heard of it. Give or take. two or three shows. And then we tried this thing where we flew out tionist and find out what your body is lacking and what it’s not I guess it’s not that well known. I didn’t make it up, though. to the East Coast, did four shows, I flew home, and then we started Well, you look my age and it’s kind of weirding me out. Do you ever lacking. And I don’t mean a fucking quack, chemo, murdering doc- All right. ’Cause I read a lot. a West Coast run that went out to Denver for two and a half weeks, have problems with your energy levels? tor. I mean a nutritionist, who evaluates your blood and tells you and every two or three days I flew home. It worked out OK, so in Well, I’m wondering if there is a Danzig syndrome? Do you have a No. what you’re deficient in and what you’re not deficient in. 2008 we did a Blackest run where I flew home every few days. That thing where your persona or physical presence inspires people to What’s your secret? Those are all good things to know, but they’re no surprise. You don’t didn’t bug me, so we’ll try a full tour this time. I’m going to try the flip out? I don’t know. I don’t eat shit food. I don’t do drugs. I don’t know have any one thing that… flying-home thing and see how it works. I don’t know, you’d have to ask them. what else to tell you. If I can help it, I don’t go to modern doctors. 128 | VICE VICE | 129 .2qe ql.5qe Griv Ebke^j M^oh) Prcclih OBELISK ARENA Bjmfob lc qeb Prk Pmb`f^i Drbpqp Olaofdl v D^_ofbi^ PMB@F>I I^ro^ J^oifkd ' Pmllk Qeb J^``^_bbp ' DRBPQP7 G^jbp Qeb Qbjmbo Qo^m ' Jfai^hb El`hbv ' Qeb Rkqe^khp Co^kh Qrokbo ' @lofkkb ?^fibv O^b Afoqv Molgb`qlop ' Jrjcloa # Plkp Ebob Tb Dl J^df` H^ppfav Glek Do^kq ' O^`b Elopbp Ptbbq ?fiiv Mfidofj ' Qeb Pqo^kdb ?lvp ' THE WORD ARENA Of`e^oa E^tibv Tfia ?b^pqp Qeb Eloolop Kl^e >ka Qeb Te^ib Gkpf Qeb @lo^i PMB@F>I ' ' ' DRBPQP7 Qeb Cbbifkd >kdrp # Grif^ Pqlkb Vb^p^vbo ' Cofdeqbkba O^__fq @e^oilqqb D^fkp_lrod ' Hofpqfk Ebope ' ALSO APPEARING ACROSS THE MUSIC ARENAS >`qfsb @efia ' >o`efb ?olkplk Lrqcfq ' Qeb ?fd Mfkh ' ?i^`h Jlrkq^fk ' @efbc ' A^otfk Abbw ' Abiq^ J^fa ' Bdvmqf^k Efm Elm ' Cfopq >fa Hfq ' Dfoip Gbp`^ Ellm ' Glb Tloof`hbo ' Glk^qe^k Gbobjf^e ' Qeb Hfpp^t^v Qo^fi ' Hroo^k >ka Qeb Tlicklqbp ' Qeb If_boqv Sbppbip ' Ifppfb ' Irmbk @ollh J^qqebt M ' Qeb Jfaaib B^pq ' K^afkb Pe^e ' Olu ' P`elli lc Pbsbk ?biip ' Qebpb Kbt Mrofq^kp ' Qlhvl Mlif`b @ir_ ' Sfii^dbop COMEDY ARENA CABARET ARENA Bjl Mefifmp >oa^i LÏE^kilk Of`e E^ii Qljjv Qfbok^k Ar`hfb tfqe >jv I^j) Fa^ ?^oo) ' ' ' Ropri^ J^oqfkbw) AGp Ob^aboÏp Tfcbp # cofbkap Qeb B^oiv Bafqflk tfqe J^o`rp ?ofdpql`hb) >kaob Sfk`bkq # Drbpqp ' Mefii Grmfqrp Fjmols Pelt Qeb O^wwib mobpbkqba _v @eofpqlmebo Dobbk Orcrp Elrka ' Of`e^oa Eboofkd ' J^oh T^qplk ' Orppbii H^kb ' A^sfa LÏAleboqv ' Gfjblfk Qeb @o^`h tfqe Jfpp ?be^sb) Mefi H^v) M^ri Wbklk) Eliiv T^ipe ' Pb^kk T^ipe ' Glpfb Ilkd ' Hbsfk ?ofadbp ' P^o^ M^p`lb ' >kdbilp Bmfqebjflr ' Qboov >iaboqlk H^ihf Eri^ Dfoi) Glk Ef`hp) Qlj Ci^k^d^k) M^ri Jlol``l Jf`hv Ci^k^d^k ' @o^fd @^jm_bii ' @e^oifb ?^hbo ' Al` ?oltk ' J^oh Lisbo ' Glb ?lo ' >kaf Lpel ' J^oilk A^sfp ' >_^kalj^k Of`e Cri`ebo ' I^ro^ Plilk ' Faflqp lc >kqp ' Glkkv Ptbbq LITERARY ARENA Qeb >i Mfq`ebo Mf`qrob Pelt ' @lifk Elriq ' @^oafk^i ?rokp Dliabk Ifw^oa Qlj ?^pabk Cofphv # J^kkfpe Qeb P`elli Lc Ifcb ' TloaQeb^qob ' 2 u .2 ' Pb_^pqf^k C^rihp ' ?obq B^pqlk Biifp ' E^kfc Hrobfpef Ab_lo^e Co^k`bp*Tefqb ' Molp Colj Alsbo' Ol_fk Fk`bÏp ?llh @ir_ tfqe Hbsfk Bialk) Gl Kb^ov) Ol_vk Efq`e`l`h) Glpfb Ilkd # D^sfk Lp_lok ' Of`e^oa Abaljbkf`f ' Crkkv Tljbk >t^oap Pelt`^pb Qeb J^oh Qelj^p @ljjrkfqv Mr_ Nrfw ' Grifb ?ro`efii # D^oov Jrielii^ka ' Gbobjv E^oav ' Mbqbo Ellh ' Glk Olkplk Peltpqlmmbo Qeb Fjmolsfpba Jrpf`^i Hofpqfk Ebope ' >a^j Clriap ' Glk J`Dobdlo ' >oqero Pjfqe ' K^q^pe^ T^iqbo ' P^j^kqe^ E^osbv ' Mefifmm^ Mboov Gfjjv J`Defb @eofp O^jpbv Mbqbo Ltbk*Glkbp Liiv Ef`hp G^kb ?rppj^kk Gfj ?l_ >kqelkv @^oqtofdeq Ilrfpb Pqbok M^mmvÏp Tofqb Ql Mi^v ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' Plrkap C^jfif^o Jrpf` Nrfw Jrpf`^i ?fkdl THE WATERFRONT STAGE THE FARAWAY FOREST DJs' “Salad is terrible if you put creamy I think what I was looking for here was something that would help me to not look like Elmer Fudd every time I look in the mirror. But mobpbkqp Drfiqv Mib^probp ' Pj^pe # Do^_ ' Pt^m*>*O^j^ you’re not going to give it up, and I respect that. ?^iibq ?lvw Qeb Q^ibkq) J^qqebt ?lrokbÏp Pt^k I^hb >`q FF) Wll Vlrqe) C^rk _v Pfaf I^o_f @eboh^lrf Qeb Af^ildrb Molgb`q IN THE WOODS crap on it.” A^kfbi Hfqplk # D^sfk Lp_lok7 Pqlofbp Clo Qeb Pq^oifq Phv Dliafbol`hp @ir_ ab Colj^db Well, you gotta work out. Do you work out? You said no. [laughs] POETRY ARENA Abobsl E^fo qeb Jrpf`^i %bu`bomq& ?bbc T^obelrpb '@lpjf` Rkabodolrka AGp I said no in italics. There’s some wiggle room there. I go to the gym ' ' Tbkav @lmb ' Glek @llmbo @i^ohb ' ?i^hb Jloofplk How come? once or twice a week. [laughs unconvincingly] Here’s something else: Irhb Tofdeq G^`l_ Mliibv Glek Pq^jjbop Pmlhbk Tloa >ii Pq^op A^sfa Plri >j_bo Q^j_ivk Baafb >odlp A^igfq K^do^ They’re full of shit. this morning there were reports—false ones—that the guy from the ' ' ' ' ' ' ' I^ro^ Al`hofii >ka Qeb Tloa Lo`ebpqo^ Qeb Mbqb_lu >kdov P^j ?ofdfqqb >meolafqb ?volk Sfk`bkq @eofp Ef`hp @i^ob Mlii^oa Ab^k M^ohfk E^kk^e T^ihbo Ebibk Jloq Across the board? All of Western medicine? Twilight movies was set to play Kurt Cobain in a biopic. At some Fkr^ Bii^jp G^v ?bok^oa 'Glb Arkqelokb ' Glek Lp_lokb ' H^qb Qbjmbpq 'Of`e^oa Qvolkb Glkbp ' Hofpp Clpqbo ' J^oqfk Cfdro^ ' Jliiv K^vilo ' Jrp^ Lhtlkd^' point, someone’s going to play you in a movie, whether it’s about ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' Pretty much. If you had cancer would you get chemo? You’d be dead Kf^ii LÏPriifs^k M^ri Iv^iip Qeb Ab^a Mlbqp Bi @ofpfp Glbi Pqf`hibv Glpe Fabebk J^qq E^osbv Olpp Prqeboi^ka Pqbsb I^ohfk Qfj @i^ob Qfj Qrok_rii in a week. stuff that you’ve done, or at least peripheral to stuff you’ve done. ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' I’ve never even thought about that. [laughs] FILM & MUSIC ARENA I wouldn’t be dead in a week! J^oh I^j^oo mobpbkqp DlaÏp Grhb_lu tfqe Dbkl T^pefkdqlk) Qeb Gfj Glkbp Obsrb) Ph^qolkfhp) Klbi J`Hlv # Qeb Jrjjbop Bet you. [laughs] It’s inevitable. Who plays you? That will never happen. ?>CQ> N#> tfqe M^ri Dobbkdo^pp Ofw J@ * JF@olp`lmb G^jbp Oelabp >jffk^ mobpbkq >kfj^df`^ >a^j ?ruqlk7 ?RD What would you bet me? Let’s make this interesting. ' ' ' ' I wouldn’t bet you anything, because in a week, even if you live, Here’s where the bet comes in. There’s gotta be some money in this >iab_rode Jrpf`Ïp C^pqbo Qe^k Plrka tfqe Jfo^ @^ifu) Ilkalk @lkqbjmlo^ov Lo`ebpqo^) J^o^ @^oivib) Bjfiv E^ii) Ql_v Ifqq # I^oov Dlsbp you’re not going to live that much longer! Chemo radiation will for me. Q^nt^`lob7 Qeb ?foqe Lc Mrkh Fpi^j # Qeb Hljfk^p Mlm`lok @ljbav Jlabok Qlpp O^fka^k`b Cfij Cbpqfs^i Tlohpelmp Plri_lv %cfij& First off, that’s never gonna happen. And I couldn’t even tell you who I ' ' ' ' kill you, and it’s not the way to heal your body from cancer. You THEATRE ARENA need to make your body stronger. Your body has natural things think should play me because by the time a movie like that is ever done, & that fight off diseases. Cancer is just cells deteriorating more rapid- whoever I would pick now would be too old. [laughs] And also, you ' know Hollywood doesn’t ever pick the right people to play those parts. ' ' ' ly than your body can heal and fight it. So you have to find out Ibp Bkc^kqp Qboof_ibp Qeb^qob 2-0 what that imbalance is. Doctors are too busy writing scrips that That’s kind of what I’m getting at here. Plel Qeb^qob K^_lhls Jlrqe ql Jlrqe Qeb C^`qlov ' Oba Pefcq @^oqllk Ab P^isl Pe^qqbo_lu ' Clobpq Cofkdb 'Q^kdiba Cbbq ?^a Mevpf`p they get kickbacks on and charging you hundreds of thousands of Hopefully I’ll be dead and I won’t have to know about it. ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' dollars for chemo. Danzig’s new album, Deth Red Sabaoth, will be released June 21st on AFM Records. LATITUDEFESTIVAL.CO.UK ' 0871 231 0846 ' SEETICKETS.COM 130 | VICE SKINEMA Chris’s interview with Kimberly Kane can be seen on VBS.TV any day now. JERSEY SHORE XXX: referring to lubed-up, subhuman Italian guidos from Staten Island. A PORN PARODY Their sole intention for the summer is to collect STDs and get in fights. Tarynitupentertainment.com / On one of my first dates with my wife we went down the shore to Adameve.com see some reggae band. It might have been Bob Marley. Or that other Dir: Jim Enright guy. I could care less; I was just trying to get in her pants. “Oh, you Rating: 9 like reggae? I LOVE REGGAE MUSIC!” Anyway, the metered park- ing spot near the club was jacked. I put a quarter in, twisted the I hope they don’t kick me out of Jersey knob, and it jammed “VIOLATION”. I decided to fix the meter with for saying this, but I’ve always hated my vast knowledge of mechanics and engineering. I went in the trunk the Jersey Shore. As a child my family of my car, grabbed my skateboard, and swung my truck at the meter, would go down to Cape May for hoping to knock it into gear. After the second swing I heard, “Ay yo! vacation. While everyone was on the What the fuck? You got a fucking problem?” I ignored it because a) beach swimming in the sea, I read I didn’t have a problem and b) why would anyone be talking to me? comic books and played arcade On the third hit the meter knocked into an ON position and locked games. I wasn’t about to go into the up. I had unlimited time for the rest of the night. I felt like an ocean after seeing the documentary Jaws, which detailed the Jersey Olympic gold medallist. I could see my future wife’s pants loosening. shark attacks of 1916. Then I heard the voice again, only closer, “You want to beat When I was 12, I went to Seaside Heights with a friend’s family. something up, why don’t you try and beat me up?” I looked up and Our second night there, we heard a sonic boom from across the street. there was a muscle-bound guido, with his guidette whore, pushing a We waited until the ambulances and cop cars arrived before going to baby stroller toward me to fight. He didn’t have a shirt on; I don’t see what the hubbub was. A young Polish kid had found warped M- believe they sell shirts in Staten Island. Or perhaps they are not per- 80s on the beach, brought them home, and tried to light one. The fuse mitted by law. “You got a problem?” he asked. I laughed and said, burned down in a blink of an eye, barely giving the M-80 a chance to “Are you a fucking Cro-Mag? I was fixing a meter. Go home and leave the boy’s hand. It exploded inches away, taking his three middle beat your girlfriend.” This made his girlfriend laugh, most likely fingers with it, leaving him with a permanent shaka. Blood and bone because he did beat her. fragments covered the yard; you wouldn’t believe the amount of blood That bullshit MTV show has glorified these animals and now New three fingers can produce. I asked my friend’s family to take me home. Jersey has an even worse connotation to Americans. The only good As a teenager I returned to the boardwalk with friends to get high thing about it is that anal slut Taryn Thomas made a porn parody of and play video games. The stoner beach-bum skate scene down the the show. Sadly, she didn’t take it in the butt because as she said on shore made me embarrassed that I smoked weed. It was like everyone Howard Stern, her ass and intestines were “torn open” during an saw Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and said, “That’s what anal scene a few years ago. Her doctor cleared her to have anal sex I want to be when I grow up.” I gave up pot soon after. again but she didn’t tell her doctor she planned on taking two dicks There is a certain type of trash and vermin that’s floated up on the in her ass and she thought it best to wait. Jersey Shore every summer for as long as I can remember, and I’m not CHRIS NIERATKO talking about hypodermic needles and other medical waste. I am For more of Chris go to chrisnieratko.com or njskateshop.com. 132 | VICE VIDEO GAMES KILLED THE RADIO STAR By Jon Blyth Vans and VBS present an inside look at Europe’s best up-and-coming skaters and the previous generation that made it possible for them ALAN WAKE Stephen King, with a denser concentration of It’s not a long game, but that’s fine Publisher: Remedy similes (one sentence even manages two simi- because it means the story doesn’t get a Platform: Xbox 360 les, which is impressive), but it never lets you chance to dip, and your Noo-Yoik Italian Alan. It’s one of the English language’s most know for sure. And that’s a good thing, buddy Barry doesn’t get a chance to become innately funny names. You can’t say Alan with- because Wake builds the tension in other murderously annoying. Alan Wake takes out being struck by the absurdity of ways: namely, a combat system that requires itself seriously enough—and throws humanity—that for all our toys and fashion, you to kill enemies with a combination of light enough references, homages, and outright we still have Alans walking among us. and bullet. The presentation style mimics a TV clichés like Barry into everything it does— Combine that with a weak Awake pun, and we mini-series, with some brilliant cliffhangers. that you’d have to be a pretty wilful should have the feel-good hit of the summer. And Alan’s narration may well be a gruff curmudgeon not to be won over. After so SKATE SPAIN Well, no. You can take Alan Wake as a par- cliché (as well as a rip-off of Remedy’s previ- many years in development, Alan Wake is ody, if you like. The writing is in the style of ous game, Max Payne), but it suits the mood. an imperfect triumph. NOW AIRING 134 | VICE VIDEO GAMES KILLED THE RADIO STAR By Jon Blyth SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION Publisher: Ubisoft Platform: PS3, Xbox 360, PC SHOT Sam Fisher is a devoted father. When his daughter is scared of the dark, Sam calms her with a heartbreakingly cute story about how darkness actually helps you to kill monsters, not the other way round. So he’s naturally gutted when she gets killed. It’s definitely stylish. Scenes projected onto the walls work Sam’s past into the action with- out breaking the game for a cutscene. It’s also banked get multiplied. PLAIN SIGHT pretty brutal, with interrogation scenes seeing Publisher: Beatnik Games Gravity confuses the issue, with your flight you decorate a public toilet with the teeth and Platform: PC path dictated by Super Mario Galaxy-esque skull of your victim. It’s hard to have sympa- plainsightgame.com asteroids, and it’s often disorientating having BY thy for your quarry, though, because they Some people don’t like multiplayer shooters. to keep track of the trailers of your enemies shout the most bewildering array of shit, like I’m one of them. A combination of feeling and fend off their attacks. But once you’ve they’re in an uncomfortable relationship with cheated, actually being cheated, and simply not stopped wondering where down is, you’ll be you and just want to fill the silence. Fill it with being good enough makes me slam my mouse ready to leave the decent tutorial AI and start anything that stops them having to face up to on the desk in the modern equivalent of throw- fighting other humans. the fact it might be over. ing the Monopoly dice at the Alsatian. It’s not the deepest game you’ll play, but Other than a feeble Iraq flashback, it’s However, Plain Sight works. It’s built on five modes mix up the action. And even if the good old Clancy stalk-and-execute action. the simple idea of robot ninjas (stifle that online servers probably won’t be too busy in Towards the end, the levels stop being cre- angry whimsy reflex) who have to earn ener- a year’s time, the short bursts of intense ative deathzones and devolve into corridors gy by killing each other, and bank that action deliver a blend of skill and chaotic with plenty of cover points, but the multi- energy by committing nuclear seppuku. If luck that keeps you interested for much player aspect adds a thorough heap of co-op KERN you kill anyone with that blast, your points longer than lots of the big-budget shooters. and competitive fun to the game. SLEEP IS DEATH player, it’s a matter of responding to those Shot by Kern Europe Exhibition runs from 21 May – 26 June. decisions in a curiously intelligent way, writ- Publisher: Jason Rohrer Kenny Schachter Rove, 33-34 Hoxton Square, Hackney, London N1 6NN. Platform: PC ing the game on the fly. Think of it as a pen sleepisdeath.net and paper role-playing game, with one play- If Plain Sight is still a bit too fighty for you, er exploring and the other building the world Watch Shot by Kern: Europe as they do so. but you’re still determined to play some kind from 25 May on of multiplayer game, Sleep is Death offers Obviously, you have to find someone else something genuinely unique. And not unique who’ll take it as seriously as you do. You can in the press-release meaning of the word, ruin the mood by testing the limits with which is like claiming humans are unique just impossible actions, but the right two people because they’re shit in slightly different ways. one player, it’s an adventure game with infi- can develop bizarre and magical stories. Sleep is Death is unique because you nite options and curiously intelligent Generously, every purchase gets you two vbs.tv/shotbykern haven’t played anything like it before. For responses to unlikely decisions. For the other copies, so you won’t have to play alone. facebook.com/vbstv twitter.com/VBS_UK 136 | VICE REVIEWS BEST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: INTEGRITY embracing mediocrity like it’s a lifestyle V/A choice. Sometimes it’s like these crappy More G.D.M. X mash-up DJs are hell-bent on making every Tigersushi sound wave on the planet supremely boring. FELLATIO KEYES JAMMER Jahmanji Joakim “Joakim” Bouaziz’s Tigersushi Big Dada 6 label has officially survived for ten years, and so to celebrate a decade of releasing some pretty interesting electronic disco and The main problem I have with Jammer is synth-rock, the Parisian producer reactivates FRANK his More G.D.M. series to round-up tracks 6 his nasally voice—he sounds like a Rastafarian version of me. You can attempt (JUST FRANK) by the likes of Krikor, Principles Of to bury his high-pitched whines within the The Brutal Wave Geometry, Poni Hoax and Panico. I know, murky confines of a grime song but he will Wierd try to contain your excitement. Way more always sound like a blue bottle with trapped thrilling are nuttier moments from Freddie Mas and Nakion, as well as a barbecued sun- wind. Also, why has he given up the funny Nouveau cold-wave sounds from this shine jam called “Kiss You on the Other lyrics and stupid persona? Who does he think London /Paris duo who call their album 8 Cheek” by Desmond & The Tutus. Good to he is? Ad Rock? The Brutal Wave because they grew up lis- know that Paris is still kind of on it. TINEE SQUEALA tening to really evil black metal from rural LES PANINI SAGE FRANCIS France and never quite shook the habit. Li(f)e What this means is deeply melancholy post- ALEXANDER punk with intricate guitars and synths you ROBOTNICK & Anti could drown yourself in, twinned to lyrics LUDUS PINSKY about suicide and murder (one chorus just The Analog Session goes “Kill, kill, kill” over and over again). This is Music Why is it that the dumbest people are the MICHAEL ANGELO 4 ones who try to make rap smart? They’re Italo grandad Maurizio Dami tinkers like, “I’m about to drop science... and that VILLA NAH 6 around in his garage with his mate for a science is that the government and police are Origin few months and emerges with an album of corrupt.” Maybe the corrupt government Keys of Life pumping analogue disco that’s a good deal built a retard-o-ray that they zap at smart more enjoyable than the glossy tech-pop he’s rappers to dumb them up. been dishing out on the DJ circuit ever since the Italo revival gave his Robotnick persona STRUMINUM Villa Nah are two guys from Helsinki a second life. This is primitive, pounding whose stunning debut album Origin— MAX TANNONE 9 warehouse gear splashed from time to time Mos Dub one of the year’s best—is the sort of record that slips into your dreams and sound- with melancholy melody, and while it lacks Mixtape tracks your every waking moment. the sketchy sensitivity of his finest work, it Self-released Romantic, timeless, but also kind of hope- will, for now, do just fine. lessly lost, this is exquisite synth-pop for PAUL CRAZY You know what the world doesn’t really anyone who’s ever been moved by things ACTRESS 3 need? A bunch of songs that mash up the like Boards Of Canada, Talk Talk, Splazsh black guy from Be Kind Rewind with dub. Manhunter, snowy landscapes and autumn Honest Jon’s Max Tannone’s the one-man gimmick evenings. Amazingly, this went top ten in machine behind the supremely lame and Finland, but if you play “Running On” or tame Jaydiohead remixes. With this new “Envelope” or “Remains of Love” just release, he vanquishes all doubt and proves once, you can see why it did. For some reason, listening to Splazsh his disdain for awesome, interesting music by THEYDON BOIS 7 reminds me of finding a mouldy collec- 138 | VICE v8n5 132-146 (final).qxp 5/17/10 8:10 AM Page 140 REVIEWS The O2 For full listings for all other nights, travel Peninsula Square info & student discounts visit our website. London Design: Village Green. SE10 ODY Club Visuals: Inside Us All WORST ALBUM OF THE MONTH: coming soon 65DAYSOFSTATIC 16 Bit MJ Cole Andy C NAPT Chicken Lips Newham Generals Cooly G Noisia Culture Shock Onur Özer David Rodigan Phil Kieran (live) Deekline Popof (live) tion of 90s techno and dub in a charity shop, DELOREAN player on Sub Pop. Yep, you read that right: and then hearing them wheeze back to life Subiza Sub Pop. If you aren’t familiar with the DJ Hell Pretty Lights (live) on the turntable, crackly and warm and True Panther London three-piece’s kinetic Wipers-played- Dorain Paic Ralph Lawson muffled. I don’t think Darren Cunningham’s at-45-instead-of-33 rpm punk then you’ve latest is as clever or important as it’s being probably been sleeping under a boulder Format B (live) Sébastien Léger made out to be—it’s too weird, surely—but since 2008. Here’s a handy single disc to get Shlomi Aber he has a lovely touch and manages to do We’ve all heard about the Spanish econo- you familiar. Infected Mushroom (live) things with his hardware that are illegal in 5 my being on its knees but I didn’t realise TOMMY SLAMMER Kill The Noise Sub Focus some US states. how bad things are until Subiza turned up. SUBURBAN DWIGHT Not only are Delorean Spain’s leading THEE OH SEES London Elektricity The Matthew Herbert Big Band Animal Collective tribute act, but they also Warm Slime Meat Zero T & Ulterior Motive HOLY FUCK double as Friendly Fires impersonators. In the Red Latin Times are clearly tough, and Barcelona’s neo- Young Turks Balearic minstrels have to earn a crust whichever way they can. They should make Yet another near-perfect, frazzled, frayed, their own record one day. battered and blown-out nugget of psych- JENNIFER JUPITER 8 Wait a second. Did you hear that? A gui- garage brilliance from one-man garage-rock 7 tar! Yes, everyone’s favourite capering jukebox John Dwyer. The title track goes on Canadian purveyors of euphoric, ramshackle for a mind-warping 14-odd minutes, but else- electronic prog are back, and to their heady where it’s rip-snortin’, boot-stampin’ business mix they have added a Strat they probably as usual. found backstage at one of the 475 shows JIMMY JAMJAR they play a year. This bombshell aside, it’s DEAD MEADOW MELVINS business as usual in the main as looped, The Three Kings chirping keyboards build walls of melody The Bride IKONIKA Xemu and textured sound to the point you think Screamed EGYPTIAN HIPHOP (live) your head might implode. More, please. Murder FREEDA KHALO Ipecac DELS (live) This release is the soundtrack part of a Aha, back to business for the Melvins. After UFFIE 6 DVD for a film that looks like it was def- 6throwing us the curveball of their career by ONEMAN Sex Dreams and initely conceived under the influence of too releasing two consistently great albums in a Denim Jeans much marijuana and late-night YouTube row—something of a first for rock’s idiot ALEX EGAN (astronomer) Ed Banger /Because searches for Alejandro Jodorowsky clips. savants—we finally get the follow-up we Trying to explain what goes on in said film is deserve: parade-ground call-and-responses, a OI YOU! LATIN pretty pointless because I genuinely have no Uffie was all the rage a few years ago and severely monged cover of “My Generation” idea, but if you like Dead Meadow, smoking GHOST POET (live) then she took time out to get married, and all sorts of riff and wibble in between. It’s 7 marijuana, or the films of Jodorowsky, then have a baby, and get divorced. Now she’s great to have ’em back. djs you will probably dig these songs. A MOUNTAIN OF ONE back with an album that should probably TONY MOLESTER PERRY NUTKINS The New Album OuT NOw have come out when Ed Banger fever gripped HARVEY MILK COCA DISCO the planet, but better late than never, right? MALE BONDING A Small Turn of She’s still kind of bratty-sounding on tracks Nothing Hurts Human Kindness JUNE & BEYOND like “ADD SUV”, but Sex Dreams and PM AM Sub Pop Hydra Head 8 –4 /FRIDAYS/FREE ENTRY Denim Jeans has a lot of audacious new pro- drinks deals before 10pm www.hOlYFuCKmuSIC.COm duction from Oizo and Mirwais, who handles her cover of “Hong Kong Garden” As rock bands that don’t really rock go, by Siouxsie and the Banshees, who wrote it After what could well be 211 7-inches 8 Harvey Milk are one of the best. I mean, Colourr Fridays at The City Arts & Music Project thecamplondon.com The CAMP, Shoreditch 70Ð74, City Road, Old Street tinyurl.com/colourrmebadd about a Chinese takeaway in Chislehurst. 8 and 12-inch EPs and splits, Male they do rock—in that heavy, sludgy way that London EC1Y 2BJ Nearest tube: Old St. (exit 5) NED BUNGER Bonding finally release their debut long- suggests they subsist on a staple diet of Earth, 140 | VICE v8n5 132-146 (final).qxp 5/17/10 8:10 AM Page 142 REVIEWS BEST COVER OF THE MONTH: VILLA NAH """"""""""""""""" Melvins and lots of other bands that riff out with every listen. Riffs on “I Am the Working LAIR OF THE like they get paid by the hour and the boss is Class”, “Stylized Corpse” and the austere MINOTAUR """"""""""""""""""" away. But they also sound like they drink far, “Bränn Inte Slottet” illustrate Darkthrone’s Evil Power """""""""""""""""""" far too much, and know it. So, A Small ever-present hunger for pushing their bound- The Grind House / Turn… slopes along like a drunk at 4 AM, aries in delivering real metal to the Southern Lord """"""""""""""""""""""" soiling its underpants and occasionally stop- underground. The posers will shake their """"""""""""""""" ping to let loose a guttural roar or pull a pose heads in disbelief, their corpse paint flaking This is a record called Evil Power. It’s by a of sloppy triumph. onto their Dimmu Borgir shirts, much to the 8band called Lair Of The Minotaur. It fea- """""""""""""""""""" GIDEON SUITS satisfaction of drummer-cum-singer-cum-riff tures guest vocals by a guy named General machine Fenriz. In his own words, “I hate, Diabolical Slaughter, and tracks called “Let’s """""""""""""""" 65DAYSOFSTATIC therefore I am!” Kill These Motherfuckers” and “Riders of """"""""""""""""""""" We Were ROCKWELL Skullhammer”. In other words, it wouldn’t be """""""""" """"""""""""""""""" Exploding Anyway all that hard to laugh at this album if it wasn’t """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Hassle INTEGRITY so uncompromisingly raw and utterly great. """""" """""""""""""""""""" The Blackest THORSTON GWAR """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Curse """"""""""""""""""""""""""""" Post-rock seemed like an interesting idea SLOATH """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Deathwish back when it was made by ex-hardcore S/T """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" 1 """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" kids or depressed, technophobic anarchists Riot Season """""" """ """""" """"""""" """""""""""" Half a decade in the making, Dwid living in tumbledown factories in French- """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Canada. Now it’s basically just miserable 10 Van Hellion emerges from behind the """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" shoegaze songs that go on too long, much shrouded myths to lay down a whole album’s How is it that no doom band ever in the """"""""""""""""""""""""""""" beloved of couples who met seven years ago worth of pure Holy Terror. If last year’s """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" whole history of playing Sabbath riffs at ATP and still hold each other’s hands and “Walpurgisnacht” EP got you excited, then 6 """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" slower than Sabbath has thought to call squeeze hard at the loud bits. Or worse the first chords of opener “Process of """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" themselves Sloath before? I mean, Sloth was """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" still, it’s 65daysofstatic—loosely speaking, Illumination” will have you hooked. From good, but Sloath? It’s perfect! I even double- """""""""""""""""""" """"""" Mogwai for people that go to sci-fi conven- there on in it’s a sheer masterclass from an checked on metal-archives.com and these tions, and basically the sort of thing that unparalleled outfit that defy just about any- chaps from the south coast really are the only makes you beckon in the real apocalypse thing you’ve got. Rumour has it they may or ones. Congratulations on the name, guys. may not be playing a certain pub at some with open arms. These three epic dirges on the CD you sent point in the very near future, so watch out CANARY DWARF me aren’t too bad either. for that. BEEZER GUTTLER DARKTHRONE JIMSON ISOLATION Circle the Wagons BLACK Peaceville HELICOPTER Don’t Fuck With the Apocalypse Norwegian black-metallers Darkthrone Ecstatic Peace PERFUME 9 return with their fifteenth album, and with it they leave behind almost any trace of We were bananas for this one before we GENIUS blackness prominent on their early releases. 8 even got past the Pettibon-illustrated Learning This is not to the taste of all Darkthrone fans, sleeve, but once we actually got this thing in Turnstile but while they were all waiting for another the CD player all manner of spiralling riffs Transilvanian Hunger (zzz), I was starving spilled out, and then we were even happier It’s amazing that anyone can hear this for another Dark Thrones and Black Flags, than when we saw the cover. Definitely a 7guy’s frail but engrossing vocal- and and Circle the Wagons does not disappoint. better signing than the guy who pretended piano-led laments of pain and suffering above In fact, some of the riffs are so perfect that to be Kurt Cobain in that Gus Van Sant the furious tapping of fingers hitting key- this sounds like it could’ve been recorded 20 movie, Thurston. boards to blog about the tough years which or 30 years ago, and it keeps getting better COSMOPOLITAN GIRL bore these ten tracks. But really, who gives a 142 | VICE v8n5 132-146 (final).qxp 5/14/10 12:29 PM Page 144 VICEUK_v8n5_OBL_Listings_Rev4:v7n8 18/05/2010 01:20 Page 2 REVIEWS WORST COVER OF THE MONTH: RANGDA crap about another teen-years sob story when he’s ditched the band and upped the spiritu- LAND OF KUSH the tunes are this good? Just saying. al quotient in the last few years, seemingly Monogamy 38 Great Eastern Street, London, EC2A 3ES PETER SHILTON channelling some automatic muse taking the Constellation form of banjo ragas and impassioned hym- BORN nals. Say God finds him stretching the form SATURDAY 15 MAY MONDAY 24 MAY SATURDAY 29 MAY SATURDAY 5 JUNE RUFFIANS to almost breaking point, intoning dadaist NO PAIN IN POP OLD BLUE LAST PRESENTS HOLY TERROR DANCE MAGIC DANCE Say It fire and brimstone over minimal harmoni- Constellation’s true gems lie in the outer Night Control Live Avi Buffalo Live Rot in Hell Live Trash Kit Live Warp um drone, only briefly lightening the mood 9reaches of its catalogue, and this is no C Powers Dj Yuck Live Tangled Hair Live Entry: £12 Adv The Rayographs Live with short melodic interludes. As heavy as exception. Immense polyrhythms, wild free- Entry: Free Entry: £6 Adv Blue on Blue Live jazz cacophonies and serpentine east African The band who everyone found lots of primal slurry. SUNDAY 30 MAY Entry: Free melody make for a truly surprising record nice things to say about first time FRED WREST TUESDAY 18 MAY TUESDAY 25 MAY $OLD OUT 5 that’s just perfect for those of you who’ve worn around and whose song was in all those OLD BLUE LAST PRESENTS COOL FOR CATS Holloys Live MONDAY 7 JUNE GAYNGS out your Ethiopiques and Impulse vinyls. Orange ads are back, and guess what? Turbo Fruits Live Antlered Man Live Entry: Free ALCOPOP RECORDS SYLVESTER THE CAT They’re still about as interesting as having a Relayted Flashguns Live Damien Live Elephants Live MONDAY 31 MAY conversation with a pot of crème fraîche. Jagjaguwar Blighters Live One Fathom Down Live If Live Ute Live ONEOHTRIX Entry: Free GOD DON'T LIKE IT Attika State Live There’s absolutely nothing wrong here, and Entry: Free POINT NEVER The Notes Live Doctor Pop Live that’s the problem. Returnal THURSDAY 20 MAY NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL Entry: Free Entry: Free BUSTER BLOODVESSEL A bunch of Bon Iver’s chums from Editions Mego VICE ISSUE LAUNCH MUSIC VOLUME 666 Minneapolis steam up the windows with THE DRUMS 7 Yeti Lane Live Peggy (Pains of Being TUESDAY 1 JUNE TUESDAY 8 JUNE some loverman soul—insert fist in mouth, Hind Ear Live Pure At Heart) Dj NIKA CLUB:LITTLE DEATH SPC LIVE S /T commence gnawing, right? But as icky as it If you’re the sort of person who wishes Moshi Moshi Iori's Eyes Live Connor (The Drums) Dj SINGLE LAUNCH PARTY I am Arrows Live sounds, there’s something perversely appeal- 8 they could live on a space station, you’ll Entry: Free Dance Magic Dance Dj Little Death Live Entry: £8 Adv ing about these low-tempo jams, with their already love the twinkling electronic Entry: Free Wet Paint Live Sunbirds Live Bontempi grooves, wilted saxophone and krautrock of Daniel Lopatin, whose string of FRIDAY 21 MAY £5 Adv £6 door FRIDAY 11 JUNE Indie-rock update! The new thing is to be Ariel Pink-does-the-Bee Gees vocals. Be 2009 releases offered enough lush arpeggiat- STAG & DAGGER THURSDAY 27 MAY ISA GT PRESENTS: MUSICALIA 7 four male models from Brooklyn who warned, though, that if it makes you want to ed synthesiser music to keep you in orbit all Sky Larkin Live SKILL WIZARD THURSDAY 3 JUNE In Flagranti Dj sound a bit like one of the tuneful bands touch yourself there is probably something year. Just to be awkward, Returnal kicks off Frankie & The Enforcer Live Cauldron Live WHAT EVER HAPPENED Isa GT Dj signed to Factory Records back in the 80s wrong with you. as a right fucking racket, but before long set- Heartstrings Live Invasion Live TO NU-METAL? Michel Dupont Dj might have done if they went surfing once DEAN FUNK tles into a gentle, tidal ambience of gliding Cold Pumas Live Terrorizer Dj Entry: Free Entry: Free and had an OK time. This replaces the previ- synths and soft digital chatter. If he keeps this Dam Mantle Live Entry: £5 ous new thing, which was to be four up, we’ll all be rocking hemp kaftans and Entry: Wristband FRIDAY 4 JUNE SATURDAY 12 JUNE self-satisfied young men from Brooklyn who energy crystals by Christmas. FRIDAY 28 MAY KEEP IT ON THE DL WEAR THAT SHIRT apparently listen to lots and lots of African FLORENCE RIDA SATURDAY 22 MAY FREE TING: MURKAGE CARTEL Gold Teeth Live Boy Mandeville Live SKILL WIZARD SINGLE LAUNCH music but somehow end up sounding like The Kiara Elles Live Club.the.Mammoth Dj Pavement scoring a Lilt advert. RANGDA Decrepit Live Murkage Cartel Dj Green Gables Live Daytona Lights Dj Live Smith & Dsemba Dj Entry: Free Russ Tannen Dj SYRUP DAVIES V/A False Flag Salute I Remember the Drag City Serpent Venom Live Entry: Free Entry: Free DANIEL HIGGS First Time I Entry: Free THE WOODS PRESENT SATURDAY 29 MAY BLUE WAFFLE SUNDAY 13 JUNE Say God Heard Your Voice Thrill Jockey SUNDAY 23 MAY OLD BLUE LAST PRESENTS Voldelpark Dj J Walk Vs. Joel Dj BSM PRESENTS Dirty Luminaries of modern psych-improv—ex- CHEW THE FAT! Eugen Robinson Live Luke Brennen Dj Tall Ships Live Parisian selectors Guillaume Sorge and 6Sun City Girl Richard Bishop, Ben Chasny Borgore Live Oxbow Duo Live Tuvshin Bolor Dj Men Live 8 Clovis Goux present an enchanting and drum cyclone Chris Corsano—form a Entry: £5 Adv Entry: Free Entry: Free Entry: Free Daniel Higgs, the Interdimensional Song homage to the spooked mood conjured by supergroup named after the queen of the 8 Seamstress, the Mystic Dancer of the 70s psychodramas such as The Parallax View witches in ancient mythology. You know Golden Crags, has long been Baltimore’s and Klute. Paranoid, impressionistic and where this is going—bit of ethno-twang, gusty own poet laureate. Bellowing and deeply haunting, you won’t hear a finer com- guitar, the occasional drums spazz-out—but Free Jukebox & Wi-Fi philosophising at the helm of the mighty pilation all year. hey, I’m hardly going to tell them to stop. Lungfish for the best part of two decades, THANDIE NEUTRON CHARLES HANSON For full listings visit www.theoldbluelast.com 144 | VICE JOHNNY RYAN 146 | VICE