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Aug. 27, 2020 - Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes
01:20:29
S03E04 - VICE [2020-08-27 - S03E04 - VICE]
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Time Text
A noodle morning after leaning back on my chair in the green sea spoon cafeteria from New York with gentlemen with the table telling jokes, playing with the salt, looking out the window.
Girl brings chickplates in full English above Carl grabs the phone like oi oi oi oi.
Hold it down, boy.
Your head's getting blurred.
That was The Streets.
Don't mug yourself, put out by Vice Wreckers around early aughts.
And very proud of that song, that album, that pic, that brand, Vice.
We're going to have a special Vice episode today.
Mixing it up, board of politics.
I am the only person on earth who has all the bound issues of Vice when it was good, which is around when I left 2006.
Well, 2006, I stopped contributing to the magazine as much.
2007 was petering down.
I don't have 2007.
I had more let Jesse Pearson handle everything at that point.
So though this says, I didn't make this shirt, by the way.
Though this says 2007, we're really going to go from the beginning to 2006.
Let me give you a brief background on the magazine, the media company, if you're not familiar.
Montreal, Canada is racist towards English people.
You cannot get a job there, not only if you are English, but even if you're bilingual, but when you speak French, they can detect an accent.
The opposite is not true.
In the rest of Canada, especially Ontario, if you go to a museum and you say to some, we call them Pepsis or Peppers because Pepsi was about five cents cheaper than Coke in the 80s.
So Quibikois are poor.
And they would always have Pepsi instead of Coke, so we call them Pepsis, Peppers.
So you go to some pepper in Ottawa, Ontario, in the museum, and you say, hey, do you know where the bathroom is?
She goes, what?
The bathroom, le restoire.
I forget what.
I forget what bathroom is in French.
Sal de bain.
And she'll go, oh, salt debain.
Okay, the bathroom is over there.
That's how bad her English is.
She's got a job.
But if you're like, bon jour, comment sauvage, je me pel gavin, je je faire boucout cho, je jour douis, they'd be like, oh, no, I can smell English in that.
You're not hired.
So it sucks to live there because it's like being white today in South Africa.
Like you're on little, there's little areas where you're allowed in.
If you have a sign that says Joe's shoes and it says chosur de joe, a little smaller, they have actual language police who come in.
They have Polaroids around their necks.
They take a Polaroid, they bring it, they show it to the City Hall.
These guys don't work for City Hall.
They're freelance.
And they go and they rat you out and then you pay a fine.
So Chosur de Jo has to be big.
Joe's shoes can be there, but it has to be smaller.
Of course, brands like McDonald's have a problem when they go there because they don't have an apostrophe S in French, so it has to be de McDonald.
McDonald's fought them.
That's fucking ridiculous.
And they won.
But that's what we're up against.
So anyway, my job there, I would tree plant.
I did comic books and I was a bike messenger and made shit money because all the French bike messengers got the good gigs.
So we were making terrible money.
If it wasn't for tree planting, I would have starved to death.
I actually ended up going to Taiwan to teach English to make some money, ironically.
But French people, they could do whatever they wanted there.
It's sort of like if the radical left won America.
If you want to see what it's like, I mean, they started out calling themselves blacks.
The FLQ, the terrorist group, said, we're the niggers of Canada, was their quote.
And so they see themselves as blacks, and their reparations are coast-to-coast bilingualism, grants, we pour money into that province.
Welfare, it's a shithole, and that's why they're all losers because they've been spoiled their whole lives.
They call Canada the Kak Canada.
So that's where we're starting.
Now, we've got to hustle.
If you're an English Montrealer, you've got to be hustling.
You got to have 10 things.
It's like blacks in Harlem.
There's always like 10 projects going on and a thing.
And we're having a show here.
We're promoting this thing.
And Dove Charney, the man behind American Apparel, perfect example.
Hustler, mover, Shmada Jew, takes over the world with his company.
Of course, he got fucked later on with Me Too and lies and manipulation.
But we started around the same time.
Him a little later than us.
So part of this culture of just funneling cash into Ontario, into Quebec, is there's bullshit grants like there's a diversity grant, tons of diversity money.
So there's not a lot of diversity in Quebec.
They have a thing called pure lang, pure wool, and you have to be French or you don't exist.
But Haitians are French.
So the only blacks in Montreal or Quebec are Haitians.
And if you're rich enough to leave a disgusting shithole like Haiti and come to Quebec, you're an aristocrat.
You've got literally an ascot.
You wear a scarf with your blazer.
Hello, how are you, darling?
Bon journey, comment.
And so the money ends up getting funneled to a lot of these blacks.
There's this grant called the Métu de Costa grant that's just like for Haitians.
So these Haitians go, yeah, we'll take your money.
And they set up a thing where they have a diversity calendar they sell.
And it tells you, like, there's the Puerto Rican Day parade.
There's the Dominican parade.
They don't have either of those, but you get the idea.
All these different cultures, dates.
And then they get another grant.
Hey, let's do this.
Let's have a newspaper, right?
You get it every month, and it tells you what the multicultural parades and various cultural events are going to be that month.
So June 1st, you get this dropped off.
And it arrives at your door and you see, oh, I'm Polish.
On June 4th, there's going to be the Polish parade, tons of money comes in.
They don't want to deal with that.
I think they don't care about any of this stuff, but they want the money.
So God knows how much they're getting.
Let's say half a million a year.
And then they go, but we can't afford to pay them.
Okay, don't worry.
The government will pay.
We'll find people on welfare and then we'll pay them out of our welfare money.
Yeah, okay.
Such a fucking scam.
What was his name?
Alex Laurent, I think was the guy behind it all.
Anyway, allegedly.
Anyway, so Sarush Alvi had just kicked heroin.
He died many times and he discovered Allah.
Let's say he discovered God.
I mean, everyone calls him a Muslim and everything, but, you know, he didn't, I never saw him pray once.
So I see him more as like me, a deist.
He just believes in God.
I'm a Catholic, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, he's about as Muslim as I am Catholic.
We tend to, we're not exactly very thorough.
But we believe in God.
So he is reborn and he wants to start his life now.
He's so happy he's alive.
And again, this guy would OD so many times that the EMTs would beat the shit out of him in the ambulance because they were so mad about having to bring him back again.
So he's starting a new life.
And he hears about this gig.
I can't remember how he got in there.
Maybe they agreed to pay him because I don't think he was on welfare.
And they explained to him what I just explained to you.
And he goes, okay, sounds good.
And in his head, he's like, I'm not fucking doing that.
I'll just make it like a skate hardcore.
And when I say hardcore, I'm talking about the music.
Like a skate punk mag.
And if they have to put a parade, a Polish parade in the corner, I'll do that.
Pretty cool, right?
And then he put together a mock-up of this, which I guess, and they didn't even look at it.
They don't give a shit.
They get the money.
It could have been all kiddie porn.
And they would have went, good work, Sarushla.
Okay, let's get that going.
So I give him the credit.
This is really what started the whole thing is he made a mock-up with fake ads and everything.
And then he went door to door saying, this is what my magazine is going to be like.
Can I get ads from you?
And he did.
He put out the first issue by himself.
That would have been 1994.
Now, maybe I was involved in the first issue.
Let me see.
And then, sorry, let me just finish the story.
So then about two years in, we go, we got to start making money.
Sarush and I aren't good at selling ads.
We fucking hate it.
And then I go, I grew up with this kid, Shane Smith.
He was always a hustler.
We called him bullshitter Shane.
He could sell swampland in Florida.
So he comes on and he starts hustling.
And that's great because Sarush, really, he just wanted to focus on the music.
He's got a gifted ear.
He discovered the streets that opened this whole show.
I had nothing to do with that.
In fact, I had very little to do with music for the majority of my time there because it's like a full-time job finding out the hot new band.
But I did.
I basically handled all the content for everything else.
I was female writers.
I was black writers.
We wanted a diverse group and it was too hard to find them.
So I was just them.
And I kind of regret that in hindsight.
Because if I'd used my actual name, you'd see how much I wrote of this magazine, which I guess no one else has these.
So it would be my kids and I can just tell them.
So who cares?
But when Shane showed up, we're focused on the creative stuff.
And he comes into our office and he goes, guys, something's not right here.
And I go, what do you mean?
And he goes, this is a scam.
They're not letting me, like, obviously to get ads, you have to put the, it was a newspaper back then, put the newspaper in an envelope and mail it to someone and go, here's our thing.
Would you like to advertise?
I mean, I can't fly around the province.
We were only in Montreal at that time.
And he goes, they won't give me stamps.
They won't pay for stamps.
And then we start realizing that they don't want us to grow.
This has to stay at this size.
This is fake.
Oh, I skipped a part.
So I talked to Suerush and he's like, I want you to edit the magazine.
And I say, no, I'm a cartoonist.
I do comic books, graphic novels.
So I'm not interested.
I could do your comic book editing and show you who, what cartoonists to get.
He's like, okay, that's not really helping.
I need something more than that.
So I said, sorry, dude, peace.
He hires some homo to edit the magazine.
And then I'm on my roof with my friend Eric DeGras.
We're smoking a joint.
And I go, do you ever want to like really conquer something?
Like really make your mark?
And he goes, not really.
And I go, I think I do.
Like, I'm sick of this.
I was selling pot at the time.
Like, what are we doing?
I want to make my mark.
And then I went, why the fuck did I say no to Sarouche?
That could have been huge.
That could have been my future.
And I said, no.
So I called him frantically and said, I need that job back.
And he goes, yeah, I already gave it away.
I go, you got to fire him.
And he goes, dude, it's, you know how complicated this whole thing is?
You've got to be on welfare and then you get on a make work program.
No problem.
I'll get on welfare.
Okay, well, call me back when you're on welfare.
I go to the welfare office, cross-eyed, and I fill out all the forms with my left hand.
They assume I'm retarded.
I am in and out of there in a heartbeat.
In fact, I think they gave me $100 cash.
Here's some money, dude.
I'm on welfare.
Like, the dumbest thing you can do is say, look, I'm sort of down on my luck right now, but I'm not a welfare kind of guy.
But no, no, no.
Be retarded.
I told Shane to do the same thing.
He did the exact same thing.
That's how we got on.
So we're sitting there on this weird government program, which people say, oh, so the government started vice.
No, dude.
We started vice despite the government.
Think of Soviet Russia.
You have no choice.
You're like a flower buried under cement.
You got to break through the cracks to grow.
That's what we did.
The cement didn't help us.
It hindered us.
So, yeah, Shane realizes it's a scam and we go, we got to leave.
And Alex finds this out and says he's going to sue us.
So we change the name to Voice of Montreal from Voice of Montreal to Vice.
And then we need a story to explain this.
So we lie to the media because we hate the media because they kept attacking us constantly, saying we're fucking losers.
We'll never go anywhere.
And so we said, yeah, Village Voice sued us.
And we had to change the name.
Canadians love an underdog story.
They love it.
So they didn't research it.
And we were coast to coast news, million articles about us.
And that helped us grow.
And here's another story, by the way, speaking of coast to coast.
So we were only in Montreal, and we wanted to go across Canada.
This Japanese guy at Cargo Records, Kevin Hajamoto or something, he said, hey, I got a great idea, guys.
I'll put your newspapers in my CD boxes when I mail record store CDs and then they can put them up there and now you're international.
Now you're national.
And we go, fuck, that's amazing.
Yes, thank you.
And so we call all these ads.
Shane does.
Shane was the ad guy.
Shane calls all these advertisers coast to coast.
He says, hey, we're in Vancouver now.
We're in Winnipeg.
We're in Halifax.
Let's get ads.
And we're no longer voice of Montreal.
Now we're voice.
Or I can't remember when.
Yeah, voice.
And then, like three days before, Japanese man says there's something wrong with that.
And he says, oh, it adds weight to the boxes.
So I can't do it.
Like doubles my shipping prices.
Yeah, we figured you had already looked into that when you made this offer, fuck nuts.
So we panic.
We step.
This is the key to being an entrepreneur.
This is the key to making money.
This part right here, because you're going to get obstacles.
You're going to get no's.
You're going to get, sorry, it's not happening.
You can't accept that.
You have to say, no, this is happening.
If you have to walk from A to B and they drop a million piles of snow on you, you guys got to burrow through the snow.
You're getting from A to B. So we call all these stores and within 24 hours, we set up a thing where I'm going to ship you a pile of newspapers.
And then next issue, you're going to distribute them everywhere.
And next issue, you're going to get a free ad.
And so maybe not with the first pile they get, but with the second pile, they have an incentive to get it everywhere because their ad is in it.
And that's how we went national.
This is all in this book, by the way.
And in my book, Death of the Cool.
Told this story many, many times, as you can imagine.
And yeah, we became a national magazine by exchanging ads for labor.
And that concept of going national happened in 24 hours, thanks to an emergency.
In fact, that adversity, Kevin kind of gifted us because we wouldn't have had the balls to call up all these stores across the country and set that up.
Now, how did we go international?
Well, we always lied to the press.
We hated journalists.
I still do.
And we do the interviews.
We get bored.
One time, Shane and I in Le De Voie, which is like the New York Times or Quebec, we said we were gay lovers.
We had been friends for a while, but we started tickling each other once as a joke.
And then the next thing you know, we're just facing each other and we just started kissing.
And in the article, we're embracing each other, staring into each other's eyes.
And that was a huge, you know, full-page story in the press.
This gay friends falling in love.
So another time he was doing an interview, and I had never heard of this dude, I think, Richard Sawinski.
And apparently he got, I don't know, in trouble with pyramid schemes and stuff.
But the story with Richard is he saw a CGI company in Australia, New Zealand.
I think they're called Animal Logic.
And he went, these guys are going places.
I'm going to buy them.
Immediately after, they did Jurassic Park and became the biggest thing in the world.
And he became a zillionaire.
So Shane said, yeah, Richard Sawinski is going to buy us and that's going to be cool.
And then Richard found out about it.
Why are you looking at pictures and not showing any of them?
You're just sitting here enjoying the show?
Like, you've looked at maybe 500 things that I've been talking about and not showing them to the viewers.
You're just like listening to a podcast?
Okay.
Thank you.
All right.
That's around the time this went down.
That's Shane on the cover in the wrestling mask.
Richard Swinsky heard about it.
He appreciated the hubris.
He invited us into his office and did something I still live by these days.
I call it the crayon contract.
When you get into business with someone, yes, there's lawyers who can write this much on what the cases will be.
But write a one-pager to each other about where you think this is going, what you think your company's worth, how much you want.
So we sold, I think we sold 25% for 250 grand to him.
We took the money, divided it by three, right?
80, whatever each.
And he owned 25% of the company.
That's how I remember it.
And soon after, he said, I want to move you to New York.
He had bought a bunch of, there was another digital company called Shift that he bought.
And he said, I want to move to New York.
And we go, why?
And he goes, because if you're big in Montreal, you're big in Canada.
You're big in New York, you're big in the world.
And we all went, done, I'm in.
But a lot of his other investments said, no.
No, I'll miss my girlfriend.
We're all like in our early 20s.
You get an opportunity to move to New York City, all expenses paid.
And you go, no, thank you.
What the fuck?
Dude, at that age, I would have moved to Hong Kong.
It's an adventure, right?
By the way, I've made a movie of all this that 20th Century Foxes shelved.
And Vice worked hard to have it shelved, I believe.
Anywho, so then we moved to New York.
It was on.
We were hemorrhaging cash.
That's us planning the move.
I wasn't excited about it.
I didn't feel good hemorrhaging cash.
It wasn't, because we'd always been cheap and we never spent more than we, if we made enough to print 40,000 copies, we printed 40,000 copies.
We had no debt ever.
Although we had to pay, I think $50,000 to the Haitians for the, I don't know why, because we were kids and he intimidated us and he said, my wife's a lawyer, I'll ruin you.
We went, okay, here's, let's pay you $50,000 over two years or something like that.
And then the money just stopped.
Con Ed came.
Our rent was $27,000 a month.
This is in 1999.
So it was a city block.
It was like Glenn Beck's New York studio, literally the same.
His rent is $100,000 a month.
That studio has been shut down.
And yeah, we were flat fucking broke, but it was worse than broke because he'd been spending money.
He got a global trademark for this logo, which, by the way, is just the NWA font traced again and again and again and fattened up in Adobe Illustrator.
We had paid for this to be a global trademark.
That's like 300 grand.
That's just one bill.
And that's global trademark lawyers you owe.
So we were way beyond, this was like the end of the Civil War for America.
We were probably, I'd say a million dollars in debt.
And Shane and Sarouche dealt with it.
I didn't deal with it.
I'm the content guy.
Sorry.
I don't do that.
And I think they always resented me for that.
But I was partying while they were dealing with this fucking nightmare.
Because I had to put out the magazine by myself.
That's how I saved money.
I kept everything going.
I learned graphic design, fired our graphics guy.
So I was writing the magazine, laying it out, basically handling 100% of what you see, you know, around 2002, which is really when it was at its best, right?
2004 was the peak, I'd say, 10-year anniversary.
Oh, and another thing, people always say, well, you lost all this money by leaving Vice.
It was not an amicable departure.
It wasn't like, sorry, guys, I'm out.
It became this horrible divorce.
And I made sure we were always at a certain height.
Like, you know, when Hoos Gerdu started shining to a mainstream label, Bob Stinson was pissed because he wanted to keep the music rocking.
And he didn't like that they were doing pop.
That's where I was at.
And I had, my goal was always, editorial and advertising have to be enemies.
They can't like each other.
They don't even hang out.
And they did this in Animal House.
The director of Animal House, Doug Kenney, said, or no, sorry, the writer, they said, let's get Animal House actors here 10 days early and they can party.
And then the evil fraternity will invite there, like Kevin Bacon, we'll invite them there day of, and then they'll hate each other's guts.
And that'll help the movie.
That was my goal.
I think good content is the opposite of an advertorial.
Eventually, you bend that enough and it's going to break.
When you cost like some poor bastard, some sales guy, you cost him $100,000 because you did a photo shoot, a fashion shoot where all the models were fucking.
You lose Yamaha.
Eventually the sales guys are going to get pissed off and say, fuck this.
So that's why I became...
And then when I left, Chain and the advertisers took over the content.
And I believe, my opinion is, or many opinions are, I have to be careful here.
I've signed a lot of documentation, that it became more of an advertorial thing, more of a appealing to whatever the hot advertising trend of the day was.
Like, I'm sure right now it's all about woke capitalism and Black Lives Matter and stuff.
But the interesting thing about Richard Sawinski is he brought in this concept of a multi-channel brand, he called it.
Now, we had a record label in Montreal, but it's just a joke, and it was on cassette, and it was for our friends.
We put out like 10 cassettes, and it wasn't real.
But he was like, now you need retail, you need a record label, you need a movie company, TV company.
And we kind of stuck with that even after he abandoned us and we had to rebuild from scratch.
And by the way, anyone who says we don't deserve what we got because the government started, well, what about when we rebuilt when we were a million dollars in debt and we had to move to Williamsburg, which is fucking scary back then?
This is like 2001.
And we were in Triple Five Soul storage space in their back with like boxes of coats next to us.
What about that?
So we kept the multi-channel brand.
We kept the label going.
And then when we finally built it back up, we still had all those things.
And that was ultimately why they became successful.
But as far as me leaving goes, after I left, it's a different company.
Totally different company.
So to say, oh, you should have stayed there, you'd be rich.
First of all, I did get quite a bit of money.
But secondly, that's like telling David Lee Roth, oh, he should have stuck with Van Halen.
They had a big hit with right now.
And no, that's not my Van Halen.
I'm David Lee Ross.
If they get Sammy Hager later, that's a different company now.
I wouldn't have ever got that Sammy Hager money.
You understand?
I wouldn't have survived there.
I would have got fired, got in trouble, be brave, and never stop fighting.
So that was around 2008 was when I left.
And by the way, this is a little sidebar that pisses me off.
So we started, we did the Vice Guide to Travel in like 2002 or something.
And then we started getting into doing more newsy stuff.
And I think there was a merger with CNN around 2005.
So that was when Vice News began, 2005.
I don't know why Tim Poole keeps saying that he started Vice News.
He was there for a year in like 2013 when Vice News had been around for almost a decade.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I mean, I respect Tim Poole and he does some great work, but that's just a lie.
It's just not true.
He's also clearly bald.
Guys with hats on in the summer.
Do you think we're dumb?
It's just a wool toupee.
All right.
So did I cover everything?
Yeah.
So that's Vice from 1994 to now.
So let's go through some of these old issues, shall we?
What do you say?
Let's do it.
This is the first issue of Vice ever.
Let me see how much I had to do this.
I can't remember if I came on.
Comic artists, Gavin McInnis, editor Sarouche Alvey, Alex Laurent, and Dominique Olivier.
They were the ones getting the money.
So yeah, I definitely contributed to this, and helped with the design.
But this was the first...
Oh, look, I did these comics.
God, I wasn't a very good cartoonist, was I?
Good things about Montreal.
There's good artists here.
There's babes everywhere.
There's always fun things happening.
Bad things about Montreal.
No one has any money.
Heroin is popular.
Cops are scary.
That's not funny.
I can use this.
What happens with this?
Here we go.
You just learned this technology now.
I'm impressed.
Oh, cool.
That's for zoom-ins and, you know.
So, this was 1994.
October of 94.
Way too much pointalism.
Look at that.
Very first thing, an interview with Johnny Rotten.
That's impressive.
So this was all Sarouche.
And this was...
This was, let's go back to the...
Oh, this was the diversity thing.
Here's a black barbershop.
Ebony et y voir.
Ebon et y voir.
Ebony and ivory.
And then, of course, we've got some calendars.
So this first issue is when I realized, what the fuck am I doing?
I got to get on board.
And we weren't doing the graphic design then.
Some Haitian dude was.
And you can see how bad it was.
Look at the font.
Voice.
Hip-hop.
Women in hip-hop.
Girls rock too.
I remember.
So that first one was sort of like a pilot.
This is a real one.
Oh, you know what?
This was my first, the first thing I ever wrote in my life is in the first issue.
And it's a review of our band Furnace Face.
Fluid Waffle kicked out Steve D'Anunzio because he was a crappy AM radio guy.
Five years later, they have Honest Engines, Marty Jones, his sampler, sold-out shows in every province except Quebec, and the name Furnace Face.
This is their third CD.
They seem to replace their white guy college funk with a much heavier sound that will make you happy.
Shit, even if you don't like it, there's plenty of little esoteric fillers you can play for your friends or put out on your answering machine.
And that sort of ended up defining vice after a while was that mode of not writing seriously and writing how you talk.
I invented that.
I invented writing how you talk.
And so for these old issues, you can sort of see these young guys struggling, trying to figure it out as they go.
Doing, look at this.
Holy shit, look how shitty this is.
Art and war.
Look at this picture.
This is like some, one of the writers, we couldn't pay for writers, right?
So you just, anyone who was willing to write, look how shitty this art and design is.
I think I'm the only person in the world with these issues.
Oh, I drew this.
The myth of the sea monkey.
And then, so now we're up to December.
We're starting to get better and getting good at it, if you will.
The design is still fucking disgusting.
There's an interview with a prostitute.
So if we're going to get through this in any sort of time, I'm going to have to speed it up here.
So we move along.
This is now, we're into 1995.
Oh, here's the most embarrassing thing we ever did.
And I'm completely responsible for it.
And every time I think of these old issues, I think of this article.
It's called Babes Invade Montreal.
And it's sort of the precursor to the do's and don'ts.
And I walked around taking pictures of really beautiful people because Montreal does have a lot of attractive women.
But I kind of got a buzz.
And so everyone was pretty to me.
And it's just the shittiest fucking collection of terrible photos.
Babes invade Montreal.
And there's nothing we can do to stop them.
As you may have noticed, walking around this fair city, Montreal is infested with more babes than Paris and New York combined.
Fine, fine babes.
And what a variety in all caps.
I wrote this.
Oh yeah.
And all photos by Derek Backles.
Look at these shitty, useless things.
Like, what is the point of this?
This is probably the worst thing we ever did.
Like, what's this point?
Why is this here?
Why is he here?
Here's a guy in a Quebec shirt.
Here's some homos hanging out.
That was definitely a low point.
So this is when we started getting good.
The one-year anniversary, Crispin Glover on the cover.
Oh, then this is when we started do's and don'ts.
It was like vice boy, vice girl of the month.
Oh, the GoPros out.
Oh, you know what's a fun tip?
This chick, Jen, she introduced me.
I ate her out and did an exquisite job.
And I call that leaving a business card in a vagina.
And she ended up talking to this chick, Emily, who I met at a party.
And I ended up going home with Emily.
And now she's my wife and we have three kids.
So eating this chick out got me a family.
And then partying with this guy, Charles, was really fun.
And then he started doing heroin.
And now he's dead.
Wow.
He OD'd.
Which was not uncommon back then.
This is where we start getting good.
We hired this designer, secret meaning of woo.
You can see a sense of design happening now, but it's still pretty corny stuff.
Check out Lowriders.
I started doing the covers.
This was our friend Rupert drew this.
And now we're making some traction here.
And getting real ads and getting good at it, if you will.
Stalking the gay scene by Susie Who.
People scared to use their names.
And this, now it's getting fun.
And I really believe in learning as you go.
Like, we could have just sat at home and practiced and practiced until we were this good.
And this was, what, 1996?
So two years it took to get this kind of vibe.
Euthanasia, get it.
But I don't like that.
I'd rather just, you know, figure it out as you go.
You could read about snowboarding, or you could just get on the top of the hill, tie a pillow to your ass, and wait until you figured it out through trial and error.
Same with bands.
So now we've got two years in, we've got our thing.
We've got the tidbits at the beginning.
That was always fun to do.
I interviewed Curtis Mayfield.
This was a fucking...
At one point I said, so why in a wheelchair?
Did we include that?
Oh yeah, This also makes me cringe when I remember it.
So, a lighting fixture fell on Curtis Mayfield's head.
You know, Curtis Mayfield, right?
Superfly.
Yeah.
And he's paralyzed.
And I thought, I got to get him to talk about that.
So I pretended I didn't know.
And he's like, Yeah, it's very important whether it be black or white to own as much of themselves as possible.
This guy started the whole concept of indie labels.
The music business has always been one-sided, where the producer and the writer have never had a stake in the publishing rights and production points that make the big money in the long run.
I'm happy to see young people get wise to that.
What about all those Curtis Mayfield tribute albums with monsters like Michael Bolton?
Don't you think they're blasphemous?
What a dumb.
Why am I talking to him like he's a bro?
How can it be blasphemy?
I've been in this business 35 years and the love and respect I've received since my accident has given me longevity.
Then I did this shit move that I still think about.
What, fucking 25 years later?
What accident?
Oof.
Oh, that was over six years ago.
I'm sure you know by now.
Yeah, you were hit by a lighting fixture or something?
I was going on stage in New York in front of about 10,000 people.
It was an outdoor affair.
I can't really say what happened because all I know is I was walking towards the front of the stage with my music playing.
And when I came to, I found myself to be paralyzed.
An eloquent way to put that.
And so we go for the first couple years.
I don't know how the fuck are we going to get through 15 years.
Let's just move faster.
How's that?
These books, by the way, these are the same book, Greatest Hits.
This, I was trying to do a sticky fingers thing.
This is when I was doing all the design.
There's my gorgeous balls.
So we won't go through those.
The Do's and Don'ts book.
I don't know.
I saw this in a store recently and it was low-res.
A lot of the pictures.
You think when you go with a book like Warner Books, they're going to know what they're doing, but no.
And this was really, this was the beginning of the end.
Did you ever have bootlegging?
People bootlegging your stuff?
Nope.
It's too expensive to print something.
This is when I noticed Shane and Sarouche were getting involved in editorial.
And I thought, why do you guys care all of a sudden?
What year was this?
And my thing with the photo books, we had a photo issue once a year.
And my thing was always, look, you want to just do a full page or even a double page spread for everything.
But so, but you don't want, that's only like a few photographers.
So let's have some pages that are unbelievably busy and then some pages that are stark.
That's how I did all the photo issues.
I like the way it looked.
And then those guys were going, no.
And this is really like, look at this.
It's the photo issue.
Shane and Sarusha have had almost nothing to do with content.
And here we go.
Shane Smith is writing the intro to the photo issue.
Like I used to beg those guys to contribute.
And then they have Sarush is next.
And then I'm back last talking about all the different issues we've had.
This is actually a good...
I haven't looked at this book because it pisses me off.
But this is a good look at all our issues.
So you just saw that one, this one.
We're about to get to these.
I would just go to National Geographic and take photos and steal them.
Would you recolor them or something?
Just a little bit.
I mean, that's just a picture from National Geographic.
So is that.
So is that.
I just stole it.
That's hilarious.
Yeah.
Well, that's the original Google image everybody's ripping.
Yeah, I guess.
Before that.
And this is when we became, we started going national.
You know who that is?
That guy ended up being King Khan, who's got a great music career now in Germany.
He's married to some German Playboy model.
This chick was hot.
I'd often, this is seen as sexist, but I'd often seduce girls by getting them in the magazine.
And that's not quid pro quo.
It's you'd be talking to them and you'd get to know them at the photo shoot, etc.
And the next thing you know, you're going on a date.
It's not like bang me and you can be in a magazine.
Although that's how some dits at the New York Times portrayed it.
It was actually pretty feminist back then.
I mean, the roots were punk rock.
And now we're in New York City here, 2000, right?
We've moved to New York City with this issue.
Always punk stuff.
There's Dash Snow doing Coke.
He also OD'd on heroin.
We've had 12 people that we used to work with OD on heroin over the years.
That's meeting Terry Richardson, which I thank Jesse Pearson for that.
He became an integral part of the brand.
This issue looks stupid.
It's a bunch of New York doors.
Don't be cluttered.
And also, a thing I always thought was important, and they stopped doing this after I left.
Put what's in it on the front.
And they go, no, it clutters it up.
Yeah, but if you're an avid fan, then you go through your issues and you're like, which one is the Curtis Mayfield one or the Black Alicious one?
And then you can see it on the cover.
It makes it easier to sort and find.
That's why we do write-ups on censored.tv because I want you to go, wait, what was that one where they were making fun of geckos?
And you can find it.
Min Kim.
That girl was a fucking smokeshow.
There's Terry.
See, you can't, this is why Terry was pilloried.
Because he was fun and he was sexual.
And it was like the 80s with him, like Burt Reynolds and Lonnie Anderson, girls having their tits out and stuff.
That's who I am.
And that's not acceptable anymore.
Men can't be proudly sexual.
Well, I grew up with like Burt Reynolds as a centerfold in Playgirl.
Sex was like fun when I grew up.
And now it's just like it means rape.
That's a funny sloth.
We had a really cool printer back then.
He was really happy to get us.
So they were pulling out all the stops with extra things like, look at this.
It was a, well, this is a scan of it, but this was, and this will be in there.
It was like a mirrored cover you could do Coke on.
And then we started getting really ambitious, like covers that would fold out.
This chick, during this shoot, And this became a poster in one of our stores that was like 15 feet by 10 feet.
I go, Holy shit, you look so fucking hot.
As Terry was photographing her, I was saying that to her.
And then she just got possessed with lust.
And she went from a model posing to like a horny person.
And it was like a switch had been flicked.
And she went, I got the sweetest fucking pussy you ever had in your life, Fawn.
I got a sweet, sweet fucking pussy.
You want to put that guy?
And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
It was like the exorcist.
Like you did an incantation.
Yeah.
This is Ed Templeton on the cover.
We had four different covers that we put out.
And you only had this big cover if you collected all four.
That'd be a fun thing to frame.
I might do that.
There's some Terry tits.
This one was cool.
You could scratch off the gold to see the cross underneath.
This guy.
I'll see if I can zoom in.
This guy showed up at Terry Richardson's bachelor party for his first marriage.
Those are all Terry's Slayer shirts.
Or maybe it's his Slayer shirts.
Terry and him collected them.
He's Iranian.
He doesn't do any drugs.
And he showed up to the bachelor party.
That was Terry's assistant there.
Do you know him?
Do I?
Yeah.
No.
Oh, I thought you guys knew each other.
He shows up to Terry's bachelor party, and it's all he had got a bunch of strippers and prostitutes and stuff.
And he also got a bundle of heroin.
Yes.
So the guys break out the smack.
They're snorting it, shooting it.
There's naked chicks everywhere.
It's awesome.
And then within about 20 minutes, every dude is asleep.
So this guy shows up, and there's just these bored naked chicks snorting Coke, talking to each other in like what looks like part of the Holocaust.
Just like not literally dead bodies, but possibly about to be.
So he just parties with them.
He doesn't do drugs or drink, but he fucks them like crazy.
He's tits in his face, and he's like sitting on guys.
Like, I don't mean sitting on their dicks.
I mean they're just furniture.
So he's like, he's like falling on top of some dude who's not even waking up.
His elbows in the guy's chest as he's like having sex with a woman.
So he basically had sex in a war scene.
There's Dash Snow again.
He was a real integral part of the brand.
He really defined it, Ryan McGinley.
And I got to be honest, this is 2002 when we were building ourselves back up again and we didn't have a billionaire funding us.
And that really was, I was having the time of my fucking life.
We didn't have that many advertisers.
We had no one looking over us.
We could do whatever we want.
And I really thrived in New York.
It might have been because I'm documenting all these artists and funsters.
And so they want to kiss my ass or they want me invited to things so it's documented.
Shane and Sarouche didn't really seem to amalgamate with New York.
They didn't seem to get, like, I never saw them out.
They never really assimilated.
But yeah, that's when hipsters were created.
I created hipsters because we kept doing the do's and don'ts, right?
And that's like a do and a don't a day.
Here's the do's and don'ts issue.
You don't need to see me on these.
Kill me.
Hello?
What are you doing?
No, it was better before.
I can't kill you like that.
You can't kill me?
Because the rotation.
The rotation.
That's Ryan McGinley.
Let me see here.
This inspired The Vice Guy to Travel.
That was what?
2004.
Which then inspired Vice TV.
This issue really started all that shit.
Wait, where am I going with all this?
Oh, yeah, The Do's and Don'ts was saying a do and a don't of what to wear back and forth.
And it was very egalitarian.
Like, it wasn't like handsome jocks, Giselle Bunchen, and what's his name, the football guy, as do's, and then an ugly fat chick as a don't.
It was the opposite of that.
It was, you know, bigging up weirdos and mocking normies.
And I think that defined, it ended up defining a subculture.
And the next thing you know, you had hipsters.
And Williamsburg became gentrified because all the artists wanted to move down to be where all the vice stuff is.
Look at this.
You couldn't do that today.
The hate issue, starring Terry Richardson's manager, Seth Goldfarb, as El Duce.
This is the horror issue.
I drew that font.
I think it looks pretty good.
Here's a weird one.
My mother was furious about this.
She said it promotes pedophilia, and you can tell that's meant to be a blowjob.
I go, mom, this is saying more about you than this.
That never occurred to me when I saw this.
This guy does hair and makeup, and he's one of the most alpha tough dudes I ever met in my life.
That's a great way to fuck models is just to get in the industry.
Jerry Sue, we start doing the photo issues in 2005.
Look how gifted Ryan McGinley is.
I beat the shit out of him, though.
This is one of my favorite issues.
And people always say, like, when did you get conservative?
Well, 9-11 really changed me and made me more politically active and very dubious of Islam.
But we've always been like this.
You know, I wrote for the American conservative in the early aughts, saying it's hip to be square, talking about conservative culture and how we're pro-stuff.
Uh-oh.
So that's the Wheel of Cops issue in 2006.
What else do we got here?
Gangs versus Cults.
This is when I thought I was going to be doing more Vice TV stuff, so I started getting Jesse Pearson involved more.
Oh, God.
So I started getting Jesse Pearson involved in taking over the issue.
And that's when he started doing stuff I don't like.
So this is 2006.
I'm starting to, I want to hand over the company, but I want him to do it my way.
And this kind of thing pissed me off.
Gangs versus cults.
Because there's no write-up there.
Can you see that?
Are we doing it right?
I've got to flip it.
Like, where's the write-up?
And this is when we started doing themed issues, which I think was a big part of Jesse's idea.
And I really liked it.
The election issue.
This was for the photo issue, just 45 hot chicks.
The Iraq issue.
I'm having less and less to do with it.
I kind of see this as my last issue, really.
The We Love Cops issue.
It was cool.
We have it here.
One of my favorite parts of that issue is we had a double page spread, and it showed a cop standing there with little arrows showing all of his shit.
Let's write this down, actually.
This was volume 13, number 6.
And it showed like his belt, his fucking walkie-talkie, all the crap these guys are forced to carry is amazing.
And around now, I'm basically gone.
Like, this is getting a little too gay for me.
Photo issue.
Now I'm gone.
The animals issue.
Jesse was really into cats.
In fact, he left, after he left Vice, he started doing a magazine called Cat Holic, and it's spelled like Catholic, which I'm not a fan of.
Not a fan.
Now I don't recognize this magazine anymore.
And yeah, this is...
Oh, this is a great...
This is Ryan at his peak.
Well, not his peak.
This is when he was just starting.
Got dashed snow.
Next to the Williamsburg Bridge, you could die so easily there.
There's nothing but water below him.
Sam Sigalnik, this is him riding his bike to the World Trade Center on September 11th.
Sam started the whole white jeans thing.
Sam is kind of responsible for skinny jeans.
Because in the late 90s, early aughts, he was buying white jeans at this place, Dave's on 6th Avenue, but they're too big.
So he would have them taken in and they would always overdo it.
And the next thing you know, you had all these kids wearing skinny white jeans.
So that's all Ryan.
There's Terry Richardson.
I should probably say warning, boobies.
This is a funny thing, too, about him being a sexual predator.
Like, he did as much gay stuff as he did straight stuff.
Roe Etheridge, very hoity-toity.
Once he made fun of me for having a foreskin, which I thought was odd.
Jerry Sue is just awesome.
I've stolen some of his stuff.
Pat O'Dell did my wedding.
Jamie James Medina.
This was one of the most iconic vice photographs.
My mother did a watercolor of it once.
Pete Best.
Oh, this was a really cool photo that we had in the magazine.
This fat chick, Jamie Warren, really talented.
Doesn't that look awesome?
Although that was kind of Ryan, Ryan McGinley, with his taking pictures of himself while he barfed.
Oh, this was a cool issue.
We gave people different drugs and then photographed them and then interviewed them when they're on the drugs.
Look at this guy on ketamine.
This was a very important issue to me, was the special issue where we got seriously handicapped people to hang out with Terry and they each got to write their own article and direct it.
This cover folded out to one, two, three, four, five different things.
They did a show together called How's Your News.
And there's Susan.
We were good friends until she was a bitch to me.
We broke up.
She got too big for her britches.
And one thing that was interesting is, see this guy in the chair?
He's like, and I, for a photo caption, this issue, I think it was actually this photo, because he looked like a badass, I said, whatever his name was, would have been a total badass if it wasn't for cerebral palsy.
And that pissed off the guy who sort of facilitated this whole thing.
And he goes, he is a fucking badass to us.
And I was like, I think his name was Andrew.
I go, Andrew, you're awesome.
These people are great people, but he's not a badass.
He can't move.
Like, if you took him out of his chair, he'd fall flat on his face.
If someone heard he was going to beat them up, they wouldn't be scared.
So I'm sorry I didn't call him a badass, but let's be remotely honest.
It was fun hanging out with those dudes.
No, this is the badass picture.
Yeah.
Oh.
I wonder if this is still available.
You can see, too, it's getting more newsy.
This is when I started to lose interest.
But I'm very proud of this photo shoot.
So back in the old days, we had to do fashion to make money.
And that was Shane's big thing.
He's like, you need to do more fashion.
I go, it's boring.
Look at these fashion shoots in magazines.
And they're so pretentious.
They mean nothing.
It's a waste of editorial space.
And he goes, well, figure it out, dude, because I need fashion to sell ads.
And then I figured it out.
Let's give it context.
Let's come up with a theme and then it'll be art and the clothes will be ancillary.
So that's actually how we started do's and don'ts.
Because I'd have the do's and it would be our sponsor's clothes.
And then I would juxtapose that with don'ts and we'd go to the Salvation Army and buy dumb outfits and make fun of people's clothes.
And then we started finding people on the streets and that became the do's and the don'ts.
But I also kept this concept of fashion editorials that say something.
So we came up with this dumb concept, goth jocks, which don't exist.
And we dressed up a bunch of models as goths and then put them in gyms and jock clothes.
This is, I think, my favorite photo shoot.
Although we did another one called Eat Shit and a Winter, and it was all fat chicks, but not fat like today.
It was fat like we like them.
Normal plump.
It's Terry Richardson at a nude motel.
Eric Lavoisi was sort of like Ryan.
We used to pick on him all the time.
In fact, I called him and another intern the faggots for, I think, five years.
He ended up being the head of sales and paying all our rent.
But we did an issue dedicated to him called the Eric Lavois issue, where he was in the, we just wrote articles about him.
I took one article about Mona Lisa's smile and I did edit replace Mona Lisa Eric Lavoie and it's all about Eric Lavoie's smile, his mysterious smile, and how it lures people in.
I think that was the only issue ever that didn't have 100% pickup.
Oh, that's the photo shoot I was telling you about before that lost his 100 grand.
Lost his, what was it, Yamaha or something?
So this is going back over many years.
Yeah, and you can see.
Oh, you know who this is?
This is Joanna Newsome.
That's who Adam Samberg, what's his name?
In Hot Rod?
Andy Samberg?
Andy Samberg.
That's who he's boning.
What a catch.
She always wears high heels.
All right.
I remember this.
Look at this.
A pregnant cow dies.
It starts decomposing, and the calf is shot out like a cannon as the body decomposes.
Oh, this one was very disturbing.
If you think your girlfriend's feet are gross, remember there's always this.
I'll show you with the Zoom.
Pretty, pretty bad.
I don't think...
Could you get over that?
She's an attractive lady, right?
Sure, sure.
Okay, you're pretty.
Oh, nice tits.
Okay, let's hang out.
Oh, you want to go to bed?
Yeah.
Okay, take your shoes off.
No, I should probably not.
Take them off.
Come on, let's relax.
Oh, my fucking God.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Oh, boy.
Maybe put your shoes back on.
Your boots, I guess.
She can't wear shoes.
I feel like this is a better time for photography.
By the way, Terry Richardson invented the whole, or I should say he punkified and popularized the whole point and shoot thing.
He used to secretly call Ryan McGinley Ryan McCoppy.
There's some crusties in the hospital.
This is back when crusty Antifa punks were on the outskirts of society.
Now they're mainstream.
Okay, I think we're done that, right?
Maybe I shouldn't have done the photo issue so soon.
Because I'm not sure what to do with this.
That's a dead woman.
Check that out.
Oh, sheesh.
This picture was taken on Avenida Chaputelepec and Cale de Monterre in Colonia, Roma.
She was a very famous journalist who wrote some really good books.
That day, she had a book release party and was on her way there.
She was all made up and going to pick up her sister to go to the event.
Crossing the street, two cars crashed and then ran her over.
This picture is great because she has all her makeup on and she doesn't look dead, even though she is.
I never seen...
I barely, yeah, I have a faint memory of that.
Oh, that was my buddy Gavin Newsom.
Guess where all these guys are?
Dead.
See, back in the 80s, if you had a facial tattoo, you were considered mentally ill, unemployable.
I think it's called, there's an acronym for it, like ABSCAR, antisocial, something.
And so these skinheads would get facial tattoos so they could get welfare for the rest of their lives.
And they all ended up dead.
There's another Gavin Newsom?
Oh, sorry, Gavin.
Oh, that's Derek Ridgers.
But Gavin, what's his name?
Gavin Watson knew all these guys.
All right.
How are we doing for time?
We're at 55 minutes.
Okay, we're going to have to just speed through these, folks.
So that was the early years.
Now we're at 1996.
So this is when now we're feeling good.
We're free and we're doing things by ourselves.
You rented a big loft in Montreal and we all live at the office.
So it's just one big open room.
Shane and I built two rooms for ourselves.
I said I didn't want to live with Sarouche because he's sober and sober people make me nervous when I'm fucking getting wasted every day.
And now we could really be ourselves.
And we started making money too, even though we're paying off debts.
And now I'm designing the magazine.
I'm figuring out how we go.
And we could really, like, we're not, you could tell before we were pandering and we're doing, hey, art and Poland.
And that's my girlfriend Susan dressed up as a Latin king, by the way.
And now we have, we're not beholden to anyone.
And we can do a whole page on Jesus Lizard.
And we can do a whole page on the gurus of lo-fi.
And the comics can be super weird.
Istoire mouette by Stéphane Blanquet.
Look at this.
This guy is so fucking talented.
This is why, when I say I'm a cartoonist, people don't get how it was in Montreal.
It was like a real art form.
This guy chops off his hand, he nails it to a board, and then he grabs the board and uses it to scratch his back.
Each one of these could be an awesome painting.
Mark Bell, another really talented cartoonist.
This was going to be my job.
Oh, look, here's a thing I did about Vice.
What does it say?
Hey, the new Vice is out.
Wow, what a great comic page.
And then I pause for a sec.
I don't get any of these.
Classic Gav.
That's another alias I had, Gabbo, Daddy's Little Slut.
That was a woman, Debbie Dreschler, who did a whole graphic novel about how her father raped her and got into intimate detail.
There's a sex pistols reunion, Basquiat.
You're starting to see the brand now, the stuff we're in.
It's punk, rock, skateboarding, hip-hop.
Oh, this is when we were so broke we would just use ourselves as models.
So this was an article about smuggling Pakistanis.
So it's me carrying Sharoosh from the water.
Look at that.
Michelle Yal on the cover.
We discovered her.
What year was this?
This would be 1997.
Now she's, you know, that's 10 years before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Kung Fu.
Tricky was big, trip hop.
And we'd make these horrible mistakes, like with the Tricky interview, it came out, and thanks to Quark Express, the picture was hiding a column.
Oh, okay, not in this one.
That was so fucking stressful, man.
Yeah, were there any huge mistakes like that that were just too late to fix?
Oh, yeah, plenty.
Spelling Farrakhan wrong and all kinds of shit.
And one time we did the do's and don'ts.
This is even in New York days.
And it said do's, do's, do's, do.
They were all do's.
Oh, no.
And I would get this like heat that went up my back when that happened, and I would get dizzy.
Like we had these refurbished computers, and this is the lowest point of my life.
I mean, obviously, like when my son had to have an operation after when he was a baby, there was bigger shit than that.
But as far as like sheer crippling panic that I didn't think I could handle.
So the issue's due tomorrow.
And we bought these refurbished computers from, I think it was Shane's dad.
And refurbished computers are haunted.
They have ghosts in them.
Don't buy them.
So I noticed the software just kept getting buggier and buggier.
And at one point, my files, and these issues would take me like 25 hours to lay out in a row.
Because everyone's last minute, right?
It's not like you can start laying out the issue on day one.
So I'd work 24 hours straight right up to the deadline.
And I noticed it keeps crashing.
What the fuck?
So then there's a thing you can do.
It's like command I on a file.
Back then it was Apple I. Pum I. And it would show you the size of it.
It's 13 megabytes.
This would be, back then this would be like 50 megabytes.
It wasn't big.
It was black in my photos.
And then I'd go, what the fuck?
And then I'd open it again.
It would say 14 megabytes.
It was eating itself.
And my work was in there.
And we can't miss the deadline.
So I'm like, I take off my shirt.
I lie down on the wood like, what the fuck's happening here?
And what I would do is I would have a blank quark doc.
I hope this isn't boring.
The dying file.
I'd open it, select all, paste, and then it would crash.
So I'd be open slack paste!
Open slack paste!
Open slack paste!
All night.
Damn.
I got most of it back.
And this happened all the time back then.
Like if it took you 10 hours to lay out a page, then after it crashed, it would take you three hours to rebuild.
And the good news about that time, though, after I fixed it all and I was lying there, look at this.
I interviewed a piece of pasta.
How long have you been a piece of pasta?
I know I'm pronouncing that in a Canadian way.
That's annoying.
I was originally formed at a plant here in Rexdale that makes and distributes various shapes of pasta for an Italian company called Santa Maria, who in turn sells it to Mastro and some other people.
I'm going to be bagged this week and probably will be in stores before the spring.
I had a bowl of pasta the other night and I dropped one of the cooked pieces on my way to the table.
How does that make pasta feel?
That's about as bad as it gets.
Being eaten and enjoyed is the prime objective and when something stands in the way of that, that being a normal pasta meal that gets eaten by a healthy human enjoys its food, we feel we failed.
I interviewed a potato.
I interviewed the devil.
I interviewed God.
Lots of affirmative action, too.
Wow, look, I'm getting good at drawing here.
You know, you're getting old when you lose touch with what's cool and your friends become square.
Are there ever not enough girls in the pit, eh?
What's a pit?
And then your tolerance level plummets and you wear bad shoes.
Hey, dude, this party rocks.
Unhand me, you retard!
Comfortable shoes.
Fun stuff.
So it continues like that, right up until...
Oh, that was a fun cover.
I just stole that image.
This is when I was really learning Adobe Illustrator.
It continued like this, stealing covers and stuff into New York days.
I don't think there's anything particularly interesting.
You know, one of the keys to any show and movie, anything you do, is you want to wow them in the third act.
And with that, that was 96, 97.
So we're about to go to New York.
You know what?
Let's just focus on the last issue I really cared about.
Volume 13.
Volume 13, number 6.
And then I have a way to make this fun.
Ready?
Volume 13, number 6.
Here it is.
We love cops.
Look at the quality of ads now.
This was, I guess, 97, 96?
We got a lot of ads to get through before it begins.
Here was this me.
2006.
This is me saying goodbye.
Cops there.
Fucking cops.
You can't get cops to talk.
The key is you get them when they're still interested in the job within the first year of retirement.
They still have their badge.
They're still excited about stories and shit.
I am a cop.
Oh, this is what I was talking about.
So we broke down his entire uniform and everything about it, the eight-point hat, the hat device, grooming, turtleneck, collarbrass, patches, pockets, shirts.
See, this is how you make pop culture.
You care about it.
You're involved in it.
That's why I was so good advice because I really wanted to know and I wanted to impart wisdom.
And it wasn't like, I didn't, I wasn't checking in and out of a job.
I was like part of the culture and helping other people find out about what's going on.
Like one issue we never got to do was I wanted to take a picture of a building that was like, say, six stories high and then have people in their windows and then go interview everyone in the window.
So the table of contents would be that picture and it would just be like apartment 2A, apartment 2B, apartment 2C, and break down the whole, the whole, you know, you couldn't do too many buildings, but like, you know, say a 15-apartment building.
And that's, you'd be surprised how much of these pop culture people in your life are fans, are nerds.
For example, I've talked about this before, but Chuck D used to be a show promoter, and then he started Public Enemy.
Ludacris was a radio DJ, and then he went on his own.
Fugging Morrissey, he wanted to write for Emmy, and then he ended up becoming his own pop star.
He was going to shows.
Iggy Pop was obsessed with the Ann Arbor scene and the Detroit scene, and he handpicked all these different guys from his favorite band and said, let's start a supergroup.
The Stooges is actually a super group created by a fan.
The Gun Club.
That guy was the head of the Blondie fan club.
Rookie time, the first five years.
Oh, yeah, we broke it down with this.
See this chart here?
See this chart?
It's upside down.
And as the magazine goes on, the different guy is highlighted.
So you can see where you are in your cop career with these icons.
Bring on the burnout, five years through.
Now here we are.
Mid-career stories.
I'd love to just reprint this issue and give it to a bunch of cops.
And then retirees stories.
I wonder if I could find the PDF.
This was the do's and don'ts.
You see, like, it's funny that the New York Times did this expose on how vice has always been sexist.
These are who we considered cool chicks back then.
You know?
Like, she's hot in her silly little fucking long underwear.
This Deadbeat Dad look or this everything about Elad dude.
Or this guy in the tracksuit.
Like, is she a dumb slut with huge tits?
This guy was our cool guy.
Oh, no, these are don'ts.
Sorry.
These girls are don'ts.
This fat kid.
This is what I said when I'm, just when you thought nobody gets laid less than you, Mr. Nanopenis waddles past reading a comic book about chefs that compete in outer space.
This kid is growing to grow up with so little sex, his penis is eventually going to become asshole-shaped.
That's mean.
See, look at our do's.
Some retro broads, some old guy, some feminist lesbian, some people wrestling, some Jew broad.
These are our don'ts.
Okay, we're done.
We're out of time.
No letters.
No get fired.
But I am going to play a game with you, Ryan.
Yeah.
Before we go.
Look at that.
Pro guns.
Oh, this is what I was talking about before.
I mentioned this at the beginning.
Oh, I think I mentioned this in another show, though.
It's like, Jesse, if you're doing something in police brutality, you don't have a picture of the woman behind the defense on the stairs.
I want to see someone getting their face smashed in with a fucking billy club.
I want sensationalism.
All right.
Okay, here's the game we're going to do, right?
I'm going to ask you a question.
This is from the movie Gold Career Girls by Mike Lee.
I'm going to ask you a question.
We've got too much to go through here, and I think you get the idea.
The photo issue really gave you a good idea of what different things we did.
And we're going to let the volumes choose the answer.
Oh, cool.
Okay.
So your career is in question.
Sure, sure.
I've fired you about six times.
It's also possible, by the way, that when you leave me, you'll be a pariah because you'll be the guy who worked for that white supremacist.
I'm not leaving.
So this whole resume you're building might be all for naught, right?
So let's see where your career is headed.
Maybe you'll work for me for the next 40 years.
Who knows?
I like the sound of that.
It's a country song.
Okay?
Yes.
So shall we do your career first?
Sure, and then we'll...
The volumes will answer.
So, dear volumes, what is the future of the president of the fag zone's career?
Ready?
I'm going to count to 10.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Okay, this book holds the answer.
Now, whether this is an ad or editorial, we will know what your business future is.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Okay, I'm just going to rub some pages and you say stop.
Stop.
Hmm.
What is that?
Not great.
What is that?
Me laying down?
On the beach?
So this is an ad for we activist Gino Ianucci doing the crayfish at the crayfish party.
Oh, I thought he was getting arrested.
Yeah, me too.
On the beach.
And the crayfish party is a ritual held every August meant to compensate the Swedish people for once again being abandoned by summer.
Abandoned.
In the name of a backward walking creature, exquisitely tasting of salt.
The Swedes let each other behave in ways not accepted otherwise.
Dressing silly, singing out loud.
This is great news.
I thought he was getting arrested.
That's pretty cool.
Dressing silly, singing out loud, and making out with inappropriate persons is all very well this night.
The natives' thirst for summer sun is successfully quenched with schnapps.
I'm all saluting the next drink with a ridiculous song.
The Swedes shine a greasy smile.
Looking forward to six months or more of liquid light therapy.
I like it.
So I'm drinking a lot of alcohol, but I'm dancing, making out with people.
Yep.
And wearing stupid clothes, which is our mirror.
partying, sort of like what you did at the boat thing.
Cool.
It looks like you're going to be doing stuff like that for a while.
However, you have Mars Rising.
You know how just like when they do your astrology readings, they talk about like some other thing that's rising?
Of course.
On the previous page, we have, it appears to be some ex-cons.
Oh.
Free music, jamming out in jail.
So I remember this story vividly.
And it's about bands in prison.
Really?
So I guess what the magic volumes are saying about your career is stay the fuck out of trouble.
Don't get arrested again.
And you've been arrested quite a few times since I met you.
Two.
Well, three.
Wait, wait.
It's a lot.
Is it four?
No, it's three.
Okay, so that's a fair amount.
And we've had the police over here, was it yesterday?
Two days ago.
So it's saying, keep your nose clean, don't get arrested, and you will have a lucrative, fun career.
Oh, wait, by the time this releases, it was like a week ago.
Okay.
You'll have a lucrative, fun career that involves having a great time.
So just like the boat party episode, that movie you made.
It's pretty badass.
Is there another one?
Look at this picture.
Gov Charney would print ads.
He's having sex with her in these photographs.
What?
See, things were so much like the drugs issue.
You couldn't do any of this anymore.
I single-handedly beat back political correctness from 2000, from 1995 till around 2005.
I held the beast at bay.
And then I, and I got shoved aside and it went just like a dam breaking.
All right.
There's probably vice magazines in my apartment while I was growing up because my stepdad was into cool shit.
Sex pistols, punk.
He had a lot of magazines, a lot of his hair.
But I meant to ask you the drug thing.
What were the different drugs that people did when you took the pictures of them?
There's ketamine.
Oh, yeah.
There's everything.
Acid, ketamine, heroin, pot, mushrooms.
Damn.
Qualudes, amphetamines, uppers, downers, everything.
Damn.
We did that a lot.
We got people draw on different drugs and stuff.
Write articles wasted, which is really hard.
Try writing an article stoned.
I did it, I think, at Tacky Mag once.
And I forgot what I was typing like 500 times.
Okay, the show's over, but we have to do one last thing before we go.
And that is Ryan's love life.
What?
So exact same rigmarole.
Oh, okay.
All right, ready?
Yes.
We're going to ask the volumes of vice what Ryan's love life, sex not really.
Like, will he get married?
What's going to happen here?
Will he be single forever?
Let's see.
What are you doing with your fucking hair, you faggot?
This is like a brain thing.
All right.
I'm going to count to 13.
Okay.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
2005.
Coming to the end of my time there, but still having a gay old time.
Proud of all of these.
Proud of your these.
Proud of everything up to the cops, including the cops.
All right, so now you're going to say stop.
Stop.
Right in the middle.
Are you ready, Ryan?
I'm ready.
This is the only time we're ever going to be covering vice.
This is the be-all and end-all of our vice coverage.
I hope I gave you a good, big picture of it.
I hope you're inspired by vice in that you realize you can start your own business.
You've got to keep plowing forward.
Never accept no for an answer.
Oh, I'm glad I remembered to mention this.
Remember I told you about the file that was eating itself and I was so stressed out and I was lying on the floor with my shirt off and I managed to save the day.
I remember thinking, you know what?
Good.
Because I just crossed an obstacle.
And imagine there's like 10 of you in some sort of like tough mudder course.
And that's what entrepreneurialship is.
And then when you crawl like through the mud, the barbed wire ahead of you and then you go over this big wall.
Behind you, there's a bunch of people who couldn't make it over the wall.
So there's other people because you're all going to run into these problems, these obstacles.
Every one of you.
Nothing is smooth, especially the first two years of running a business.
You're going to go through this shit, but there's two types of entrepreneurs.
And I would argue the first one isn't really an entrepreneur who goes, oh, well, the files are eating themselves.
So we can't do this.
We'll have to fix the computers and then we'll miss the deadline.
So I guess call me back when you fix the...
No, that's one kind.
And that guy's behind the wall.
The other kind is the guy who goes, okay, we'll open the files and paste them.
And then after we get this issue printed and sent to the printer, then we can start working on this horrible piece of shit refurbished computer that's cursed.
And so I now had less competition.
All right.
This is the end of the show.
This is Ryan's Love Life.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
What if it's gays?
I don't care.
And you're going to be.
I will start my journey today.
I will find myself a nice man.
What if it's an article about a guy who cut his dick off?
Oh.
What if it's an article about a celibate priest?
That's not bad.
What if it's a burn victim who's never had a date in his life and doesn't know what tits feel like?
Well, it'd be too late for that one.
Ready?
Yep.
Ryan's love life starting now.
Oh, that looks...
I don't...
I can't tell what that is.
Oh.
You're going to have an ethnic girlfriend.
That is bizarrely on topic.
Yeah.
Wow.
So you're Asian, so I guess he looks slightly Hispanic.
So I'll be with a Hispanic.
So wait, that's me.
I'm Hispanic and Asian.
Oh, my God.
What that is.
Does that mean you're going to love yourself?
You'll only love yourself?
Oh, shit.
It might mean that you'll only ever love yourself.
It might mean that you're going to be in a relationship.
Geez, my nails are pretty dirty.
But I think in both scenarios, you're content.
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
So you're either just going to love yourself.
Like, these people are smiling.
Yeah, they're having a good time.
Yeah, yeah.
So whether this is all about your own megalomania, which I think is sad, but apparently you don't, or you're going to be the Hispanic, you're going to be the Asian, and they're both going to be mixed because it says melting pot.
Right.
So your girl is going to be ethnically ambiguous.
You're more on the Asian side, I find.
So she's going to be more on the Hispanic side.
Wow.
What a definitive answer for this game.
Well, that's another thing.
That's bizarre.
The fact that this is so definitive means that they're positive.
Uh-huh.
I gotcha.
They're not fucking around.
Right, folks.
That's it.
So nobody gets to play that game again.
Like, people are going to have questions about this episode.
No more revisiting?
I'll consider it.
That would be cool.
But then that's like...
Because you're going to be thinking of stuff to be like, oh, yeah.
Then I'm like, that's like Jell-O Biafra having a Dead Kennedys game he plays every show.
And I moved on.
One thing I was really worried about after I left was, is this the end?
Am I going to be the Vice guy forever?
I wanted to be like Johnny Rotten, who had the Sex Pistols, but then he had Pill.
And no one thinks of Johnny Rotten as just the Sex Pistols guy.
He's thought of his legacy as the Sex Pistols and Pill and his books and other stuff.
Now I'm not, a lot of people don't even know I'm at Vice or I was at Vice or I created hipsters or I'd created Williamsburg.
And I did.
Get fired, get in trouble, be brave, and never stop fighting.
I mean, I'm fucking.
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