Here and There

I love Vice.

For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a magazine published out of Montreal and New York. But that’s the simplified version.

It’s more like the new definition of irreverence and comedy. Only, it’s not new. Each month for the past 12 years, Vice has lambasted and lampooned and pillaged and squandered, plundered, pilfered, and ravaged everyone and everything. (I’d love to see what they’d do to this page.)

Standard favorites include:

Vice Mail, where the editors basically set random readers up to have new ones ripped in a public setting. I tend to think it can’t get funnier than this section, until I get to DOs and DON’Ts.

Tidbits, in which the editors comment on artifacts of pop culture, typically products with names that either lend themselves to double entendres or are just goofy.

DOs and DON’Ts, in my (and many others’) opinion, the crowning achievement of the Vice endeavor. Never predictable, always viciously crude, and the funniest shit you’ll ever read and set eyes on.

The rest of the pages are filled with the most random (but obvious and engaging) mishmash of anything and everything. For example, I just read “Stalking for Beginners” in the Immersionism Issue (Vol. 12 No. 10). I flipped the pages to see a photo timeline of a Hasidic wedding, complete with veiled bride and a Hasid rolling a joint.

Did I mention it’s free? If you find it around town (typically in music stores and places like American Apparel), pick up a copy at no charge. You can also pay $30 a year to subscribe (get over it: you get a “free” CD each month, in addition to being lazy and having a wonderful magazine delivered to you).

I’m plugging the magazine so hard because I used to subscribe, and haven’t seen it since my subscription ran out about a year ago. I miss it, and realized just how much when I read the latest issue.

I don’t wanna give too much away. Though it makes good party conversation topics, Vice is best enjoyed alone. Go get it.

PS: Vice also published a collection of DOs and DON’Ts in book form. It makes a great holiday gift…

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