The VICE Guide to Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

By Suroosh Alvi, Gavin McInnes and Shane Smith
Warner Books, $17


“If I hadn’t been a heroin addict, VICE wouldn’t exist,” says cofounder Suroosh Alvi. Started in 1994, VICE magazine is the foulmouthed Entertainment Weekly of pill-eating hipsters who deemed trucker caps passé when Justin was still wearing Mickey ears.

In 10 years, it has grown from a workfare project for Alvi and two other out-of-work pals from Montreal into a multimillion-dollar global empire of retail stores, a record label, films and corporate consultancies.

This best-of anthology puts a downtown spin on shock-lit. There are the dead-on fashion DOs and DONTs columns, which viciously caption pedestrian snapshots: “This fuckface weightlifter meathead is standing there like he’s Benicio del Toro about to get picked up,” one entry reads. “No, dude. You are an ugly little rapist wearing a maroon dress, pajamas and a hat that makes you look like a 13-year-old with cancer.”

Elsewhere, Andrew W.K. contributes a rant on partying, calling for “ten punk bands, ten hip-hop DJs and ten auctioneers [to] all do their shit ALL AT ONCE!!!”

Slurs like nigger and fag are tossed around wholesale. It’s intended to make you squirm, but a disturbing neoconservatism seeps through, too (“Telling fags how to have anal sex is like telling Puerto Ricans how to have babies”). At their worst, the post-P.C. jabs are hackneyed, glib and poorly reasoned, but at their best, they’re lively, sharp and carry more than a whiff of self-satire.
—Jonah Weiner