Outside the Bombing Suspects’ Home in Boston

I Stayed Up All Night Watching the Boston Bomber Manhunt

I changed the channel during 9/11.

Now, in my defense, I was 14. Also, the moment I switched channels, bleached out tit parade Jillian Barberie and the rest of her gang of early-morning yell-boxes on FOX 11’s Good Day LA had assumed that it was just some prop plane that had accidentally crashed into one of the towers. Tony Hawk was on ESPN2, and that was the type of rad shit 260-pound pubescent me was dying to relate to cool people about. My cereal had barely gotten soggy by the time I flipped back to see that a second plane had already hit, and practically every channel had switched over to live coverage of the attacks. I headed to school, unsure exactly of what the hell was happening on the other side of the country. I think I was still too young to comprehend it, but I remember laying on our football field with some friends, looking up at the planeless, cloudless sky in awe. Since that day, no matter how many times I saw the footage of the planes, no matter how loudly the logical side of my brain screamed, It doesn’t matter. Stop being so self-centered, I’ve always felt like I missed out on something, like I did something wrong. I changed the channel during 9/11.

I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

At 10 PM, I was filming an incredibly silly comedy sketch in Silver Lake, LA, with a few friends. During a break from the dumbness, I checked my Twitter feed to see preliminary reports of more explosions in Boston. I have a soft spot in my heart for that city even though I’ve never set foot in it—despite living in LA my whole life, I have more friends from Boston than I do from my hometown. Part of that is because of the transient nature of LA, but a lot of that is because of the TV production/comedy factory that is Emerson College. My high school ex lives somewhere in Boston too, I think. I don’t remember if she lives in Worcester or Watertown or where either of those cities are or if they’re even cities or just neighborhoods of Boston. 

As soon as I got home, I opened a bottle of wine and Twitter. I did not turn on my TV. If we take the senseless loss of human life out of the equation, the biggest loser in this whole catastrophe is cable news, who got nearly every fact about the bombing and the suspects wrong at one time or another. There is, of course, an argument that the New York Post is the most gaping asshole of all the media outlets, but there’s always an argument for that. 

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Trying to Report on the Sandy Hook Shooting When No One Has Anything to Say

What do you say about a dead six-year-old?

I went to Newtown, Connecticut on Monday with that question foremost in my mind. Almost every resident I spoke to there reported some kind of connection with the massacre. Caitlyn Hydeck, who sat next to me in a restaurant, said Olivia Engel and Charlotte Bacon, both six, had been students in the local theater program where she works as a dance instructor. “They were just happy little girls,” Hydeck recalled, at a loss to offer any further description. And really, what else could she say? I felt bad for even asking. Olivia was so tiny, andadorable.

When I arrived, TV crews had packed the town center, recording segments with the Honan Funeral Home in the background. One cameraperson wept. Inside, a viewing for Jack Pinto, also six, was underway. Men surrounded his small casket, wailing in grief; as I approached, I realized it was open. I hadn’t been ready for the sight of Jack’s lifeless face, which is now seared in my mind, presumably for life. On the radio that morning, I’d heard he liked swimming and the New York Giants—a woefully inadequate obituary, it would seem. But what more is there to say?

When Barack Obama read aloud the victims’ names on Sunday night at Newtown High School, his utterance of “Olivia” unexpectedly did me in. I worked as a camp counselor for a summer, and there were so many little girls named Olivia. If one had been killed, I wouldn’t have known what to say either, other than that they were happy little girls. As Obama read the names, I was struck by how distinctly American they sounded. This somehow compounded the sorrow: Catherine Hubbard, James Mattioli, Madeline Hsu, Noah Pozner, Ana Marquez-Greene…

At the restaurant, I asked Caitlyn if she had considered the fact that her hometown will henceforth be associated with mass murder of children, in the same way that Littleton, Colorado, is associated with Columbine. She said she’d thought about it some, but didn’t really know what to say. “We’re definitely going to be known for this forever,” she told me, trailing off.

Life of Heems

I’m a little preoccupied with race. The first time someone suggested I read Life of Pi, the novel by Yann Martel about an Indian boy and his journey across the ocean with a Bengal tiger, I took a look at the author’s name, and my race wheels started turning. I thought, What does this guy know about India? I tried to read it, I swear. I read the first 30 pages or so and put it down. It bored me. When a friend asked to borrow the book, I gave it away and have never seen it since. 

Two months ago I saw an advertisement for the film version of Life of Pi featuring an image of a shirtless Indian male with a turban-like scarf wrapped around his head. That image reminded me of Mowgli and Sabu, those first representations of South Asians to the West, and I wondered if the South Asians were about to be set back. In recent years, South Asians have been all over American screens. And we’re no longer limited to roles as turbaned savages or man-servants or Kwik-E-Mart owners or taxi drivers or even just doctors and engineers. Actors like Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling are playing roles that aren’t quite as reductive. Stripped away of some of the stereotypes and clichés about South Asians, the roles these actors have taken, or in Mindy’s case written for herself, are turning more than half a century of otheredness on its head. Life of Pi troubled me. 

Visibility of South Asians in Western film, American particularly, has a long but limited history. It started with Sabu Dastagir, who at the age of 13 was given the role of an elephant driver in the 1937 film Elephant Boy, based on a story by Rudyard Kipling. In 1942, he played Mowgli in a film adaptation of The Jungle Book, also by Rudyard Kipling. In the 1940s and 1950s, a man who went by Korla Pandit became America’s “Godfather of Exotica,” except he was born John Roland Redd, an African-American. In the 1960s, a young man by the name of Sajid Khan starred alongside Jay North in a film called Maya. It was subsequently spun off into a series on NBC of the same name from September 1967 to February 1968. Around this time the mystique of South Asians in the West peaked when the hippies discovered Ravi Shankar.

In the 1980s, all we had was Fisher Stevens, who said he went to India and learned yoga to be “method” about his role as Ben Jahrvi in the Short Circuit movies. In the 1990s there was a guy in the Sprint commercial who counted “one minute, two minute, three minute.” That actor also lost his arm when a train suddenly stopped in a Rice Krispies Treats ad. I think he’s on Glee now as a principal. With the 2000s we finally saw a somewhat humanized depiction of South Asians with actors like Mindy Kaling, Kal Penn, Aziz Ansari, Danny Pudi, and Maulik Pancholi on TV and in films. All this is to say, we’re relatively new at being portrayed on television and in film despite our history here since the mid-1960s. I’m a little protective of how we’re put out there.  

I got a chance to see Life of Pi at the 50th New York International Film Festival back in October, but I missed the press screening and had to attend the official premiere. Everyone was in a suit. The women wore fancy dresses. The only people of color I saw in this colossal room were myself, Suraj Sharma, the lead actor in the film, and Ang Lee, the director. I looked for Irrfan Khan, an old-school Indian film actor who was also inSlumdog Millionaire, but he was nowhere to be found. Ang Lee spoke about his film and about storytelling, and I got excited.

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On Monday, the 16th of July 2012, we published an article entitled: “The Eight Dumbest Things About The Daily Mail’s Laughing Gas Article”.

In the article, we erroneously implied that The Daily Mail’s use of the term “hippy crack” was both lame and inaccurate:

“There are few things in this world more horrifying than when a Daily Mail journalist attempts to use slang. Over the course of the article, the term ‘hippy crack’ is used three times, and ‘sweet air’ once. Which is more times than either of them have ever been used by an actual genuine young person, ever.”

Many of you have since been in touch to let us know that this is simply not the case:

In light of this feedback, VICE Media regretfully acknowledge that our claims were false.

Unfortunately, all members of our global slang fact-checking department were away on the day the article was made live (through a combination of illness and pre-booked annual leave), so the article was unable to be scrutinized to our usual standards.

We at VICE strive to substantiate any and all claims made by our editorial staff on our website and in print, but sometimes mistakes do happen. And for this, we apologize.

In lieu of this oversight, we decided to head out onto the streets to apologize.

The 8 Dumbest Things About the Daily Mail’s Laughing Gas Article

If you’re reading this, you have presumably inhaled laughing gas recreationally before. So you probably know that it makes you feel kinda funny for about 30 seconds and then wears off. And that’s pretty much it.

The UK’s Daily Mail disagree, and have decided to make laughing gas the new thing they’re outraged about. They ran an AMAZING article on it today, called: “The deadly rise of ‘hippy crack’: For celebrities, it’s the party drug du jour. Now inhaling laughing gas - is spreading to middle-class living rooms.” Snappy headline, huh? Try saying that mouthful after a coupla ‘lloons of hippy crack.

You can read the whole, hilarious thing here, but laughing at stupid Daily Mail articles is a full-time job, and I know you’re busy, so I’ve distilled it down to its most awful parts:

8. USE OF SLANG THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY EXIST

There are few things in this world more horrifying than when a Daily Mail journalist attempts to use slang. Over the course of the article, the term “hippy crack” is used three times, and “sweet air” once. Which is more times than either of them have ever been used by an actual genuine young person, ever.

7. FREQUENT USE OF THE WORD “DEADLY”

I know this is going to shock you, but it appears The Mail have distorted some facts to support their story. From the article:

“An overdose can be fatal…

The International Centre For Drug Policy charts deaths in the UK from volatile substance misuse, including the gas. 

Their most recent report, from 2010, notes that ‘in 2008 there were two deaths (three in 2007) associated with the inhalation of nitrous oxide, which had been obtained for non-medical purposes’.”

If they’d stuck with the report (which can be read here) for another sentence or two, they would’ve seen this:

“[the deaths] were the result of asphyxiation where the nitrous oxide had been inhaled using a plastic bag over the head.”

Though I’m not a pathologist, I would say that the cause of death in both of those cases is “being an idiot,” not “hippy crack.”

6. THE DESPERATE STRUGGLE TO FIND ANY DANGERS INVOLVED WITH INHALING LAUGHING GAS

I know this is going to shock you again, but it appears The Daily Mail have totally made up some facts to support their story.

According to the article, “hippy crack” is capable of causing “strokes, hallucinations, seizures, blackouts, incontinence, stress on the heart, chronic depression and even—in cases of prolonged use—depleted bone marrow.” Hallucinations, blackouts, and incontinence (ie laughing until you pee) are, obviously, what you want to happen when you inhale laughing gas. They’re kinda the point.

According to a Google search I just did, there’s nothing to link laughing gas to either strokes, or “stress on the heart.” And if there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that three seconds of scan-read Google searching is always more correct than a fact printed in The Daily Mail.

The bone marrow thing is technically true, but it’s based on a study on dentists in the 1980s who were constantly exposed to nitrous oxide while working. So I guess as long as you avoid using it five days a week for eight hours a day, you should be fine catching the odd 30-second high at Reading Festival every year.

Essays on Sucking: Why I'm Not Occupying Wall Street →

essaysonsucking:

Hey, have you heard about the Occupy Wall Street thingy? Probably you have, despite the “mainstream media blackout.” (As noted by people, including me, the media have been covering the shit out of the protest.) Basically, a bunch of people are sitting/sleeping/”consensus building” in a piece…

VICE’s Harry Cheadle wrote a great, really well-reasoned critic of #OccupyWallStreet.

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