Big Books: Part 3

Vice Dos & Don'ts: 10 Years of Vice Magazine's Street Fashion Critiques

Warner Books, 272 pp., $17.95 (paper)

Based on the remarkably simple premise that people like to make fun of other people, especially strangers, this 10-year anthology of the eponymous magazine's infamous section is composed of candid street snapshots and captions praising or ridiculing the subjects' appearance. Reading it is like having your bluntest, most irreverent friend beside you – the one with the balls to say what you only wish you could. Sure, we can claim innocence, but even the most angelic among us are guilty of the occasional snarky aside. Sure, the humor is petty, offensive, and frequently downright stupid, but it's a brilliant brand of derision that somehow condescends while avoiding pretension. Its extremity winds up a parody of the intellectual and fashionable snobbery so many of us practice. Perhaps the book's appeal lies in its egalitarian approach to mockery. No one is safe from Vice's all-seeing eye, not even newborns. The magazine is guilty of more political incorrectness than Eminem and South Park combined, yet The New York Times called it "pure, undiluted magazine genius." If you're unsure what to make of that contrast, you'll just have to pick up a copy for yourself and all the loveable assholes on your gift list. Be warned, though: It just might make you snarf your Tecate.