Summer’s almost over but MoMA PS1 is still going strong. Last weekend, Ashley Jahncke returned to Warm Up 2012 to photograph the best looks for BULLETT. Take a look to see how Long Island City’s finest soak up the last dregs of summer sun.

Photography by Ashley Jahncke

Since playing a troubled gay teenager in the third season of In Treatment, Dane DeHaan has gone on to land roles on True Blood, the sci-fi sleeper hit Chronicle, and some of this year’s most prestigious films, including the supernatural lesbian romance Jack and Diane, the Prohibition-era drama Lawless (with Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, and Guy Pearce), and the crime saga The Place Beyond the Pines, Derek Cianfrance’s follow-up to Blue Valentine. Later this year, DeHaan will star as Lucien Carr opposite Daniel Radcliffe’s Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas’ Kill Your Darlings. We spoke to the 25-year-old Pennsylvania native about his breakout success and those pesky Leonardo DiCaprio comparisons.

What can you tell me about the character you play Kill Your Darlings?
Well, in Kill Your Darlings I play this guy, Lucien Carr. When Allen Ginsberg first went to college he ran into Lucien Carr, and they ended up having a very complicated but inspirational relationship, especially on Ginsberg’s end. Lucien Carr is really the person who introduced Ginsberg to Kerouac and to Burroughs, and he was really the person to be like, We are the new vision, we are the beat poets, and this is what we are going to do. He kind of set the movement in action. But he also had a very complicated relationship with an older man named David Kammerer, who was his cub master when Lucien was fourteen and David was twenty-five. And David would actually follow Lucien around from private school to private school and college to college as Lucien was getting kicked out for basically going out at night with David. And this relationship kind of became very overbearing, as Lucien was becoming a man, and becoming more of an adult himself. And he kind of just couldn’t take it anymore and murdered David Kammerer, then colored the murder as an “honor-slaying,” which back then meant he claimed he was being raped by a man and killed him in self-defense, which actually pretty much gets you off for murder in the 40s.

Were you surprised by Chronicle’s success?
Yeah, I guess I was surprised, because I feel like the marketing for it was almost all viral and, in terms movies these days, almost non-existent. The fact that we really made that big of a splash with the little bit of marketing that Fox gave us was surprising, and I think really speaks to the fact that we were four people that were really committed to making that movie what it should be. There was also a part of me that thinks that if it came out at a different time and there was just a little more out there, it could have been even bigger.

Has there been a marked difference in your life post-Chronicle?
I think In Treatment was really the first time that the film and television industry first started taking note of me. But I think Chronicle is my first introduction into the mainstream world, like, Here I am, I’m in movies now. My life isn’t that much different, honestly. I mean, it might just be because it’s all being put into perspective, because most of the time I’m hanging out with Daniel Radcliffe, and he’s just constantly being flocked by people and has no privacy whatsoever and goes around with body guards in SUVs. So it’s certainly not to that extreme yet, and it’s certainly not the extreme it was with Shia during Lawless.

Why do you think so many people compare you to Leonardo DiCaprio?
Why do I think they do it? Well, I think we have very similar eyes. I really like DiCaprio, the younger work especially. I think that he played a lot of very varied, but fully-embodied characters, and I would hope that’s true for my work too. I don’t think it’s just a physical thing – although I think there are undeniable physical things we have in common – I think we bring an intensity to the screen that is somewhat comparable.

How did you make the leap from local theater to doing acting professionally?
I went to college for it at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where I really kind of learned how to work on it and how to do it. And then from there, they have a showcase where you basically do two two-minute scenes and hope to get an agent out of it, and I was lucky enough to get an agent. I mean, honestly, from there I just never stopped working, and the jobs kept getting bigger, and I just kept taking them and saying, “thank you,” and moving on to the next. I honestly haven’t struggled that much, I’ve been unbelievably lucky.

David Koma
At the age of 18, the now 26-year-old womenswear designer David Koma moved from his native Georgia to the U.K., where he earned his MA from London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Koma has since won a number of awards for his architectural, body-contouring creations, which have been worn by superstars from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga.

Which of the Seven Deadly Sins best characterizes your collection?
Pride feels right.

Would your collection fit in better in heaven or hell?
It fits better on Earth, but it would be great if it could get into heaven.

What is your most extravagant desire?
To have original Caravaggio paintings in my studio.

How do you dress for a lazy day?
In a sweatshirt and old jeans.

What’s the most frustrating thing about your craft?
The speed of the industry. I just wish we could pause for a moment.

What designer are you most jealous of?
Nicolas Ghesquière. I think the man’s a genius.

Styling: Avena Gallagher; Makeup: Deanna Melluso; Hair: Wesley O’Meara at The Wall Group; Hair Color: Ricardo Santiago at Bumble & Bumble; Prop Stylist: Lisa Edsalv; Manicurist: Ana-Maria at Artists by Timothy Priano; Set Assistants: Erika Kishiku and Amy Tien; Stylist Assistant: Taryn Bensky; Location: Jessica Lichtenstein’s Studio; Model: Elisaveta Stoilova.

Photography by Plamen Petkov

Avena Gallagher

Myla Dalbesio is a Ford model who was discovered at a beauty pageant in her native Wisconsin, and quickly began hacking away at the mold for what constitutes a “normal” size. Having entered into the world of performance art with three shows in 2011—Homecoming, Homecoming: Sophomore Year, and her Young Money exhibition, a garish critique of American culture replete with booze, sex, and hip-hop—she’s quickly emerged as a multitalented force for whom even the rigid beauty standards of high fashion can’t help but bend. Here she is on the dark side of modeling, her Real Housewives addiction, and coming to New York.

You model and you’re an artist. How do you reconcile the two? Is modeling just a way to pay the bills?
Well, it started as that when I first signed. I had another job and it was just something that fell into my lap and seemed like a good way to make easy money.

It seems like that happens for most girls, right? It just falls into their laps.
I think there are a lot of girls who grow up wanting to do it, which was never really my thing because I grew up wanting to write or do art, but it just happened and I’m really grateful that it did. What started as something I didn’t care too much about became something that is really fulfilling to me. I think a lot of that comes from the people that I get to work with, and the opportunities that it has awarded me outside of just the normal stuff like, Oh, I get to travel.

Did you get discovered?
Actually, it came through the beauty pageants, which I’m sure you’re going to ask me about. I was scouted by this couple from St. Louis who had been working with the people that ran the pageant.  They originally were pushing me to do straight-sized work, which didn’t work for me because I’m not that size.

When did you start making art?
As baby. My grandfather was an artist—a printmaker—so my earliest memories are of him taking my sister and I to the shop and teaching us how to do lithographs and copper etchings. Every time he came to our house he’d bring a pound of clay, or watercolor paper. I guess it’s always been my thing.

You’ve spoken about the darkness of the modeling world.
Sure, I mean, the only think I have to say about the modeling world is that, yeah, there is a lot of dark shit that happens, but that’s like 1% of it, and that 1% I find really inspiring and interesting. That’s all anyone wants to focus on, because everybody needs a story. But the reality of it is that 99% of the time, it’s fucking amazing.

Do you watch a lot of TV to research your art?
I watch Toddlers & Tiaras and the Real Housewives franchise.  What I think is so interesting about the housewives is how it affects these women that are participating in these shows. A lot of it is involving the American public, and it seems like they start these shows and it’s expected that they have this house that’s this size, and these kinds of cars, and carry this bag, and they need to look this way and wear this dress. It seems like it eats them alive, and over the course of 3 or 4 seasons, which I guess translates into 3 or 4 years, it consumes them and they are crumbling in the public eye, but it’s us that did this to them.

I know that you’re tired of talking about your Young Money performance, but what is it like moving beyond such a career-defining moment?
I’m moving beyond it because I’m growing as an artist and that’s the natural process. But it’s definitely affected me outside of art. Just emotionally in my everyday life, it was a really powerful experience. You can’t go through something like that without having it change you a little bit.

Do you ever watch footage from it?
I have.

What do you think when you see it?
It’s really strange. When I’m doing a performance, it’s not me. I was looking at it the other day, and I can’t believe I fucking did that. It was one of those moments were I was like, Holy shit.

Are you guilty of any sins?
At this point in my life I’ve gotten over jealousy issues, which is really freeing. It’s part of the reason why for a while I felt uncomfortable working in the fashion industry, because it’s really easy to feel jealous. I’m sure there are a million girls out there who are completely supportive of everyone else, and that’s part of why I love working in the plus side of the industry, because it is very small and we are friends and we all really support each other. If I see someone on the cover of a magazine, I’m like, good for them. That’s fucking great. Way to go, girl. But when you’re not working as much, or when you’re not where you want to be, it’s easy to slip into that mindset of, why her and not me? Once I got past that and started focusing on other things like art, it was so freeing to not care about bullshit like that. I’d say my sin would be gluttony. I like to consume. I love food and drink and the pleasures of life. I love to relax and go to the beach and to enjoy myself. You know, just fucking enjoy what we’re given in the world.

You get a lot of attention because of your body. Was there a time when you weren’t comfortable with it?
Absolutely! Who in high school is ever really comfortable with what they are, or who they are, or what they look like? I wouldn’t say that I’m any different from anyone else in that respect, and it was hard for many years like, this is what I look like and this is how it’s going to be and there’s nothing to I can do to change it.

What about once you got into the modeling world, did that insecurity come with you?
Absolutely! It’s like, you can’t ever really shake it once it’s in your head, but I’m lucky enough to work with people that are really encouraging. There’s not one day where I go up to my agency where I don’t hear, you’re so beautiful, and you’re so great. They’re just so, so supportive; it’s almost insane. That really helps me get my mind right. And also finding other focuses is really important, well it was for me to just realize that the way you look is not everything.

Do you ever go back home? What do you think about where you came from—how do you see that place?
For a long time, it was really hard for me to go home. When I turned 18 and I finished my year of school, I was like, I’m out, I’m done, I want to get to New York. And for a few years after that it was just like, I never want to go back and it was really difficult to go and visit and I would get anxiety attacks. But growing older and overcoming whatever issues I had with family, it’s become so pleasurable to go home now.

You must have been exposed to an entirely new world here.
Oh, absolutely. The first summer I spent here, I didn’t know anyone. I had a cousin here but that was it, and I just figured it out on my own. That year was the hardest of my life, but it so shaped who I am now. It made me so tough. I wouldn’t go back, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You gotta be tough to live in New York and I really value what it’s given to me. Everyone here is from somewhere else, and is here for the same reason. It’s like the land of misfits. It just feels like I was waiting to come here for years and I didn’t even know it. 

The Martin Amis canon is not for the faint of heart. “I like drastic, ridiculous extremes,” says the 62-year-old British author, whose morally complex books grapple with everything from greed (Money) to Auschwitz (Time’s Arrow) to dead babies (Dead Babies). His latest novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England, set for release in August, takes a dim, satirical view of modern celebrity culture by placing its antihero, the thuggish Asbo, directly in the eye of fame’s vortex while he reaps its hollow rewards. “Fame for no reason, and punishment for some reason, are ridiculously exaggerated,” says Amis from his home in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where he resides with his wife, writer Isabel Fonseca. The book’s title character, whose last name is an acronym for Anti-Social Behaviour Order (the controversial British civil order implemented by Tony Blair to curb delinquent behavior), is, according to Amis, an “utterly ambitionless” chav who wins a £139,999,999.50 lottery while in prison for having started a brawl at a wedding, becoming, in a perverse turn of events, a tabloid darling. The product of a turbulent culture whose core values are best reflected in reality television, Asbo offers a pointed criticism of society’s status quo.

Did this novel have any communication with Occupy Wall Street, or was it already at the presses by the time that started?
I handed it in around September, and I’d been working on it for two years, so the Occupy movement hadn’t really started at that point. I’m not as prescient about it as Don DeLillo, who did seem to see it coming in a short story he wrote for Harper’s Magazine in 2010 [Hammer and Sickle]. But it’s part of the ether, this culture of huge inequalities. I’ve always felt that drastic inequality was an evil thing. There should be lots of differences and scales, but not enormous inequality. That’s very demoralizing for a society. The Occupy movement excites me, and I think its time has come. It’s a necessary response to something that’s gotten out of hand.

Did you approach the character of Lionel Asbo knowing right away that he’d be a member of the working class?
Yes, and he was always going to win the lottery, and go from criminality to billionaire-dom. It took me quite a while to realize that the form of the book resembles a fairy tale: huge rewards and huge punishments, albeit arbitrary ones and without any real moral.

I like that power doesn’t corrupt Lionel absolutely. He’s corrupt with money, and he’s corrupt without it.
Money doesn’t change him in that way. He’s just as mean as he was, even meaner. John Updike once said, “What we like in fiction has nothing to do with what we like in life.” You wouldn’t want to go near Lionel in real life, but a novel puts the monster in a cage. You can enjoy looking at it without any risk to yourself. I think he retains a kind of charm. Updike also said, “What we like in a novel is life, not virtue.”

Why is it that we like to see moral trashiness, or monstrousness, exalted like that?
I’m not sure I understand why. We just delight in vulgarity. Don’t you think it’s about self-hatred on some level?

I think we’re justifying our own lives: No matter how bad things get, at least I’m not that guy.
Humor is always an assertion of superiority. Every joke that you tell—the full, anecdotal kind of joke—is an assertion of that. You’re saying how stupid or vulgar or venal someone is, always with the assumption that you’re on a higher plane. It’s very much the way humor works. And that’s why, in a culturally egalitarian age, you feel like you have to be tremendously careful when you make a joke. Nietzsche said, “A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.” That’s a very good definition of a sick joke, but it won’t do for regular everyday humor. I met with a friend of mine the day after Princess Diana died, and he was sort of choked by it. Then a week later I saw him and he said, with that look he has when he’s about to tell a joke, “Princess Di was on the radio the other night—and on the windscreen, and on the dashboard.” And then he said, “The minute I heard that joke, I knew it was all over.” That sad feeling had died in him, and the joke was an epigram on its death.

There’s less and less space between the tragic event and the snarky aftermath, especially with the Internet.
Absolutely. It’s almost light-speed now. The interval of mourning has disappeared. It’s not us at our noblest, is it? Everyone talks about dumbing down, but there’s a parallel process that you could  call “numbing down.” I think that’s partly why people talk on their mobile phones all the time. It’s that they don’t want to be alone with their feelings. Introspection is under pressure from all of these technologies. It’s why poetry isn’t much read anymore. Poetry stops the clock and makes you examine the poet’s feelings and compare them with your own. It’s also why novels have become more narrative-driven and less essayistic. You can’t have digressions anymore in novels. I don’t think the great intellectual novels of the 1970s could find an audience now.

You won’t find people reading William Gaddis’ J R for fun.
But they should! Take [Saul] Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift. That spent months on the best-seller list when it came out, but it’s very hard to imagine more than 1,000 people who are up to it now—temperamentally as well as intellectually. I think that our faculty of concentration has been diluted. Too much pressure, too much clamoring for our attention, and the muscle of concentration gets weak and flabby. The Internet is like the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Bible and in Paradise Lost. When Eve bites into that apple before Adam, she’s getting knowledge of both good and evil, and it’s inevitable that she gains that knowledge. But there are huge benefits available through it, probably with a huge price to pay.

Photography by Francisco Garcia

Kate Lanphear, style director for Elle, has become a street-style sensation thanks to what New York magazine calls “The Lanphear Look,” her inimitable pairing of laid-back cool (leather bombers, ripped T-shirts) and avant-garde fashion (everything on this page).

bag BALENCIAGA; shoes TOM FORD; leather coat YSL; dress (right) CHRISTOPHER KANE; dress (center) GIVENCHY; dress (left) HAIDER ACKERMANN

“If somebody had been chased around this room and beaten with a bat—if there was blood over everything—how would you clean that up?” asks Doug Baruchin, co-owner of Island Trauma Services, a New York–area crime-scene cleanup company that specializes in erasing the physical evidence of suicides, homicides, and level-three hoarders. (Level-one hoarders are regular folks, while level-two hoarders are slightly more zealous pack rats, but level-three hoarders are so trapped under collections of garbage and animals that the stench and fire hazards become serious health concerns.) In 2009, even with the crime rate in the New York area at an all-time low, there were a reported 466 murders, which is where companies like Island Trauma (or Steri-Clean in Los Angeles, Aftermath in Las Vegas, and Bio-Trauma 911 in Indianapolis) come in, because even on a day like today, when the sun shines and birds sing, there will be blood.

On this particular spring afternoon, the Island Trauma office is empty. All of Baruchin’s 30 staffers have been dispatched on so-called “dirty” jobs. A “clean job” is, of course, a relative term, and often refers to less emotionally scarring tasks, such as sewage removal. When Baruchin agreed to meet me, I half-expected him to look like death—the very thing to which he’s devoted his life. Instead, following a trip from Manhattan to Ronkonkoma on the Long Island Rail Road, a chiseled and tanned smooth talker dressed in designer blue jeans greeted me with a lively smile and a firm handshake.

A native New Yorker, Baruchin quit his job as an auditor at a life insurance company 10 years ago when he and his business partner, Joe Gentile, decided to open Island Trauma under the umbrella of the latter’s preexisting fire-, smoke-, and mold-damage restoration business, PCI Services. In that time, Island Trauma has grown into a $7 million-a-year enterprise, with his employees earning annual salaries of anywhere from $35,000 to $80,000. Still, it’s not without its occupational hazards. “Have you ever seen a movie where someone gets shot in the head?” he asks. “This is the epilogue.”

The Island Trauma headquarters are surrounded by the banalities of suburban life. A nearby mini-strip mall, a gym, a yarn shop, and a row of manicured trees lend an inconspicuous air to Baruchin’s Laundromat of Loss. “We don’t want to scare the neighbors, or attract gawkers,” he says. Inside, the clinically pristine space looks like a real-estate office, but with a massive climate-controlled warehouse in its back room, which is where their equipment is stored.

Little to no experience or expertise is required of crime-scene cleaners, who are encouraged—although not required by law—to undergo a six-week training session. In many cases, it’s as simple as slapping on a pair of latex gloves, zipping up a hazmat suit—with its double-filter respirators and chemical-spill boots—and loading up on 55-gallon heavy-duty bags, ozone machines (to eliminate the “death stench”), and high-grade disinfectant spray. Baruchin admits that nearly all of his cleaners have endured and overcome some sort of trauma in their lives, which is part of the reason they’re so willing to endure—and equipped to handle—the demands of the job.

In 2008, hot on the heels of her successful turn as a fairy-tale princess in Disney’s Enchanted, Amy Adams starred alongside Emily Blunt as Rose Lorkowski, a struggling single mother who starts a cleanup business after being fired from a waitressing job, in Sunshine Cleaning. The comedy, which was a modest box-office success, had the sweet-as-candy Adams scrubbing blood, carrying soiled mattresses, and delivering lines like, “We come into people’s lives when they have experienced something profound and sad, and we help. In some small way, we help.” Baruchin scoffs at the film’s Hallmark portrayal of his field, as well as the more hardboiled—but equally glorified—depictions broadcast across the globe on television series like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. “People think it’s exciting, maybe even badass,” he says. “I was at a 7-Eleven, and the guy behind the counter looked at my Island Trauma jacket and said, ‘Wow! Your job must be sick, man!’ A lot of people think we get to interact with sexy detectives or something, but it’s about as glamorous as taking a plastic scraper and scraping someone’s brains off a wall.”

Although she’s best known for her spot-on portrayal of the arcane, acerbic cousin Maeby Fünke on Fox’s widely adored comedy series Arrested Development (which returns early next year with 10 new episodes that will stream on Netflix and, later, a feature film), Los Angeles–based actor Alia Shawkat is also a painter whose visual art is heavily inspired by the work of gonzo illustrator Ralph Steadman. Following the May opening of her second group art show at the Brachfeld Gallery in Paris, the 23-year-old costar of this summer’s Ruby Sparks (written by and featuring actor Zoe Kazan, and directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the duo behind Little Miss Sunshine) will appear in five other films, including The To-Do List, a bucket list–type sex comedy opposite Aubrey Plaza, and The Oranges, an awkward family drama with Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt. For this issue, we asked Shawkat to interview herself, which she says was “scarily easy.” Below is the complete transcript, even the part where she compares fans to anal protrusions.

So, uh, hi.
Yes, hi.

When was the last time I saw you?
I’m not sure. I don’t keep track of things like that.

Oh.
No offense. I just, you know, need my space.

If I remember correctly, I saw you last at that weird party for Pharrell’s new alcohol, Qream.
Is that a combination of queef and cream?

Kind of, but I don’t know if they meant to do that.
Who would?

In any case, it’s been a while since we talked. How have you been?
As good as I can be right now. I can’t remember the last time I slept in the same place twice. Every morning I wake up surrounded by a new environment, always with lots of blurry-faced people.

That sounds like a nightmare.
It is. I sleep to dream.

Have you been working on any cool projects lately?
Who told you to ask me that?

Well, uh, BULLETT. They asked me to interview you, so…
Wait, wait, wait. What the fuck is this for? What are you getting at?

That’s why we’re doing this, right? It’s publicity for you and your career.
Stop right there. My career is none of your business.

Okay. Well, what is my business? Has anything interesting happened to you recently?
Interesting to whom? Not long ago, I woke up in the bedroom of a Detroit busboy whose single bed’s spine was broken down the middle.

The busboy’s spine was broken?
No, the bed’s spine. Otherwise I would have called him a “handicapped busboy” or an “invertebrate busboy.” I waited out the whole night to get lucky with him. He was a beautiful African-American guy who liked Adult Swim and video games. I thought, I can keep up with this guy. So we spent the night playing video games and watching the Metalocalypse Christmas special. Then he fell asleep. I put in four hours of fake nerd talk for a dick I’d have to wait until morning to see.

Oh boy.
“Oh boy” is right. Morning came and we finally fooled around until he said he had to feed his roommate’s pet tarantula. I spent the next four hours wading through the trash in his room, which was like an actualized ball pit, only to escape with an irritated vagina and a dead arm. I had to hop in a cab and get back to my hotel in time to shower and get picked up for work.

What were you doing in Michigan?
I was making a film called Cedar Rapids. I played a blond whore, so…

I liked that movie. Miguel Arteta is a great director.
That’s what all the girls say.

So, wait—why or how do you end up in a new place every morning?
When you live life without fear, you find yourself with many new beginnings. I don’t wait around long enough to see things end. Endings are mundane. Why stick around to see them happen?

To make deeper connections? To build relationships?
Ha! Okay.

It looks like you were busy last summer making a lot of films that will be coming out later this year.
List them.

What?
List. Them.

Um, okay: The Brass Teapot, That’s What She Said…
That is what she said.

Shall I keep going?
Don’t ever stop.

Ruby Sparks, The To-Do List, The Moment, The Oranges.
Goddamn, The! The! The!

Most movie titles start with The.
You start with The.

I am The Alia Shawkat. There’s also the ever-so-talked-about Arrested Development movie along with new episodes, right?
That’s the story of my life, people asking me why I look familiar and “Have we met before?” “Did you go to Pasadena High?” Do I look like I went to Pasadena High?

A little bit. People recognize you a lot, huh?
They expect me to run through my résumé for them instead of taking a second to think that my job might be one that lingers in people’s minds as memories of moments lived.

Are you high right now?
Very.

Photography by Luke Gilford

Meet Miss Cakehead, the London-based blogger behind Evil Cakes, whose latest confectionary creation is a recipe for disaster.

1. Food equivalent of rigor mortis: Weetabix cereal. Unless you wash up within 10 seconds of finishing a bowl, it sets like cement and needs at least three days of soaking before you can remove it.

2. Frosting most evocative of inner organs: Fluffy frosting has a firm but squishy marshmallow consistency—as does the liver, I’d imagine.

3. Most sinful ingredient: Carrot cake is the most evil-tasting thing I have ever had the misfortune to sample.

4. Most adulterous ingredient: Pop Rocks. As an adult, I can’t resist indulging in them, even though they’re clearly meant for children. It’s like having something in your mouth that’s not meant for you, which always makes me feel kind of guilty.

5. Taste of evil: A semen-, mango-, and ash-flavored smoothie.

6. Most decadent ingredient: Caramel. It’s never essential but always welcome.

7. Ingredient that should be illegal: Red food coloring has driven many bakers to the dark side.

8. If Jack the Ripper were a cake, he’d have: The purest white royal icing. I don’t think he was a member of the Royal Family, as many suspect, but I do think he led a normal, respectable life when he wasn’t out murdering women. It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch! All sorts of delicious deviance can be hidden under a perfectly iced cake.

9. If Eve had been seduced by confectionary goods instead of a piece of fruit, it would have been: Chocolate-covered foam bananas.

10. Least sexual part of a cupcake: The sponge is the one ingredient you can’t lick off of, or out from, a cupcake.

11. Most slothful: Vanilla is the laziest of all cupcake flavors. Beyond blah.

12. Most delicious of inner organs: The heart. All the love and heartbreak it contains is bound to add something intriguing to the taste. I think mine would taste like cherry compote—salted, of course, due to all the heartbreak tears.

13. Most blasphemous ingredient: Using Kabbalah water in baking makes it ridiculously expensive, especially when you could use tap water—which is probably what’s inside the bottle anyway—but it offends so many people that it’s worth the money!

14. Most violent flour: Corn flour. It takes no prisoners when used for thickening.

15. Most delicious part of the human body: It depends on what you’re in the mood for…

Baking by Natasha Collins.

Photography by Nathan Pask

On the night of August 9, 1969, at 10050 Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills, an eight-months pregnant Sharon Tate, the model and actor married to cinema auteur Roman Polanski, was famously butchered along with hairstylist Jay Sebring, coffee-fortune heiress Abigail Folger, Folger’s lover Wojciech Frykowski, and Steve Parent, an 18-year-old electronics whiz-kid who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man behind the murders, a wild-haired doomsayer named Charles Manson, has since become ingrained in popular culture, with books, websites, documentary films, songs, a musical, an opera, and even a South Park episode devoted to his mass slayings.

Everyone from Guns N’ Roses to Crispin Glover has covered songs that were originally written by Manson, who spent his early life as a working songwriter and musician. Now known as Marilyn Manson, Brian Hugh Warner even changed his name in honor of the convicted murderer. Trent Reznor, the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails, not only recorded an album at the house at 10050 Cielo Drive, but also lived in it.

In late 1970, while on trial for masterminding the Tate murders, as they’ve since become known, Manson, who’s waiting out a death sentence in California’s Corcoran State Prison and was denied parole again last April, summoned actor Dennis Hopper to prison for the purpose of discussing a planned (but eventually shelved) biopic. In the weeks following their reported visit, Hopper grew his hair and beard full-on Manson style, and let a documentary camera film him at his fortified compound in Taos, New Mexico, where he spent his time in self-exile following the meteoric success of Easy Rider. When Hopper died, Charles Manson tweeted (well, at least according to the Daily Mail), “Dennis Hopper was my brother, my main man, he knew I was not a hippie guru, just an outlaw a scapegoat for the sins of americas [sic] parents.”

But there’s perhaps no bigger Manson buff than infamous East Village beatnik Ed Sanders, founder of the rock group the Fugs and the 72-year-old keeper of the Mayhem Room, one of the many freestanding barns on his property in Woodstock, New York, where he lords over the largest collection of Manson archival material in the world—even more, allegedly, than the sum of the Los Angeles Police Department’s storehouses.

I didn’t sleep well the night before my visit to the Manson Mayhem Room. Growing up, I was too scared to even crack the spine of Helter Skelter, the terrifying true-crime book about the Manson Family murders that haunted the bookshelf of my best friend, a funeral-home scion and a devout fan of the Faces of Death film series. But the morning turns out to be unseasonably sunny, and the prospect of escaping New York City to take a pleasant road trip upstate via the Taconic Parkway seems ideal, even if the destination is an altar to evil, smack-dab in the middle of the famed hippie hollow of Woodstock.

Dark, ominous clouds only start to form as I drive closer toward the Sanders compound. Miriam, Sanders’ wife of almost 50 years—sweet, exuberant, and friendly to the deer that dot the grounds of their cozy hobbit hole—greets me at the front door. Standing right behind her is Sanders, who’s wearing black slippers and has a red pencil cradled behind his ear. He carries the air of the counterculture guru well. He’s still got the unkempt, corkscrew hair he sported back in his punk-poet days, but it’s white now, like an overexposed version of his younger self on the cover of his book Tales of Beatnik Glory. He leans back on his couch and, finding the perfect groove, launches into his story, which is punctuated by the chirping of caged birds and the drizzle of rain.

Photography by Charlie Engman

Sure, Jesus might be magic, but spooning the Pope is downright enchanting. Actor and burrito abortionist Sarah Silverman, who dabbles in drama as an alcoholic mother in Sarah Polley’s new film, Take This Waltz, puts down the bottle long enough to reflect on Tebowing, sexy Egg Beaters, and other marvels of the modern world. Click through the first photo and enlarge the second to check it out. It’s complicated, we know, but totally worth it.

Illustration by Magda Antoniuk.

Rabble-rousing musician Santigold recently released her electric sophomore album, Master of My Make Believe, in support of which she’s currently on touring the country to promote. Here, she lets us in on the items she can’t live with out.

sunglasses BARTON PERREIRA; shoe NATIVE THE HOWARD; necklace PAMELA LOVE; bracelets BANGALLY; all-green juice LIQUITERIA; swimsuit MARA HOFFMAN King Tut Tank Maillot; book HARUKI MURAKAMI 1Q84; album TOO $HORT “Gettin’ It (album number ten)”

Riccardo Tisci‘s childhood fascination with mythological creatures informs his fall menswear collection, which is bullish, strong, and gladiatorial. To help introduce new designs, Liv Tyler, his friend and muse, recalls her first encounter with the Givenchy deity: ”The first time I met Riccardo, I was in one of Givenchy’s beautiful couture rooms, surrounded by so many incredible dresses, when in walked handsome, sexy Ricky wearing sneakers and a key chain around his neck. We talked and talked, and I fell in love with him, his spirit, and all of the things he and his team were creating.  He’s a hardworking boy from the south of Italy who is truly brave and not afraid to follow his great big heart. Through wearing his designs, I’ve discovered my true style. He likes me a little tough, which is nice because it makes me feel like a badass and it’s a nice contrast to my soft femininity. Wearing his designs makes me feel strong and filled with mystery and complexity. In them, I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.’  Styling by Andreas Kokkino.

Photography by Bruno Staub

Seth MacFarlane does not want to talk about sin, which is weird given that his entire career has been more or less devoted to the subject. In the wildly popular animated series he’s created (Family Guy, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show) characters casually and frequently do horrible, indefensible things to one other. Perhaps the only mainstream entertainment with more sexual assault than a Seth MacFarlane cartoon is the Old Testament. The 38-year-old writer, producer, and actor writes dirty jokes for sinners, and it’s his moral anarchy that we love. His feature film directorial debut, Ted, which hits theaters in July and stars Mila Kunis, Mark Wahlberg, and a bong-ripping, chocolate bar–fellating teddy bear, promises more of the same.

So we thought it could be fun to ask MacFarlane a series of questions loosely based on the Seven Deadly Sins. We figured that an avowed atheist who likes to irritate God-fearing bigots and push the boundaries of good taste would be up for a friendly conversation about how every creative venture he’s been involved in—from his TV shows to Comedy Central’s Roast of Charlie Sheen to Ted—should, according to pretty much every religious belief system on the planet, result in the eternal damnation of his soul to the fiery pits of hell. We figured wrong.

After making it through just four of the Seven Deadlies, the phone mysteriously cut out. A week later, his publicists tried to schedule a follow-up call, but wanted a more detailed overview of the questions we’d be asking. Could it be that MacFarlane—a man we fully intended to describe in this piece with adjectives like “fearless”—was seriously uncomfortable having a conversation about sin? That’s like Paula Deen not wanting to talk about deep-fried okra, or Ron Jeremy refusing to discuss his gigantic penis. Ultimately, given our unrelenting fascination with sin, MacFarlane’s team decided to cancel the interview, which is a shame because we were just getting to the good stuff.

SLOTH

I’ve been thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins and which one most relates to your new movie, Ted. I guess the closest is probably sloth, right? Because it’s all about nostalgia, and nostalgia is a kind of sloth, isn’t it? It’s a refusal to look forward.
Let me just make sure I understand this. I have to connect one of the Seven Deadly Sins to Ted?

No, not at all. This is just a jumping-off point for us to talk about your work. We’re not writing a college thesis or anything.
Okay. [Laughs.] You must hate your editor.

I think it’s a fun idea.
Can’t people just talk anymore? Can’t people just have a conversation?

This is still a conversation. It’s just a conversation about sin.
[Laughter, followed by a long pause.] Okay.

In general, do you consider yourself nostalgic? Are there things in your past that you can’t let go of?
Oh yeah, absolutely. That is clear to anyone who’s ever seen Family Guy. We’ve done a number of nostalgia-related gags. And I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for pop-culture brands and icons that were meaningful to me as a kid. And certainly we reference those types of things on Family Guy, perhaps more often than we should.

You’re doing a TV reboot of The Flintstones, which could be argued is a kind of creative sloth.
[Laughs.] You’ve really got me down this aggressive path, don’t you?

Was that mean? I wasn’t trying to be mean. I just meant because it’s not your own idea. You’re taking something that’s already been created, that’s a part of your pop-culture memory and nostalgia, and making an identical version of it.

I suppose so. One of the appealing things to me about doing The Flintstones is the thought of seeing something that looks the same as it did 60 years ago, but is also brand-new on prime-time television at this point in time. We don’t want to change much at all about the look of The Flintstones. I think there’s a comfort level that people are going to feel, turning on their televisions in 2013 and seeing Bedrock and the Flintstones’ house and Fred and Wilma. [Before BULLETT went to print with this issue, Fox announced that it was postponing MacFarlane’s reboot.]

Was it a hard sell to the network?
It was and it wasn’t. The franchise wasn’t really being exploited at the time. I think Viva Rock Vegas was the last time they’d done anything with the Flintstones franchise, which is probably why they haven’t done anything with it in a while. We all know how that turned out.

Prometheus star, Logan Marshall-Green channels small-town American wanderlust in this behind-the-scenes short inspired by Carl Sandburg’s The Sins of Kalamazoo.

Click here to read the full interview with the rapidly rising star.

A cursory Google search reveals the official term for the way Wu Tsang wears his hair: chonmage. Samurai in Edo-era Japan popularized the style, a glossy topknot and shaved pate that made it easier to affix a helmet to the skull. But Tsang’s work as a performance artist isn’t about intimidation or armor. He wants people to let down their guard.

When he calls from Los Angeles, where he’s lived since 2005, it’s easy to understand how Tsang has made a name for himself in the art world by planning parties. Even over the phone, he’s excitable and generous with verbal reassurances. Within minutes, it’s obvious what a welcome relief he’d be in a crowded room. He’d probably clutch your shoulder, compliment your outfit, and confess something intimate, which doesn’t mean Tsang’s work is at all frivolous. While he might be the life of the party, his exploration of identity politics is anything but safe. As a transgender-identified second-generation Chinese artist, he’s concerned—maybe even a little obsessed—with facilitating improbable interactions, ones whose friction is rife, always and inevitably, with the possibility for conflict.

For months now, Tsang has been promoting Wildness, a documentary he made while co-hosting a weekly dance party of the same name at the Silver Platter from 2008 to 2010, a storied L.A. bar that’s served as a debaucherous safehouse for the Hispanic and LGBT communities since it opened in 1963. The film, which screened earlier this year to enthusiastic acclaim at both SXSW and the Whitney Biennial after making its world premiere at the New York Museum of Modern Art’s Documentary Fortnight, is structurally conventional. Though it includes footage of performances by Wildness co-founders DJs NGuzuNGuzu and Total Freedom, along with improvised choreography by party guests, viewers are left with a familiar understanding both of the bar and its characters. The story has a definite narrative, its pacing is chronological, and its subjects are frank. First and foremost, Tsang wanted the film to be entertaining and accessible.

“The challenge was trying to find that balance between taking risks and letting people do things they don’t usually have space to do in regular life,” Tsang says. The party, which drew gay youth to a bar previously favored by an older clientele, eventually included less marginalized groups of people—artists and hipsters, many of them straight and white. The weekly party became a study in urban gentrification and, needless to say, met its fair share of dissent from some of the older patrons.

Tsang says he understands the desire to protect the privacy of a place like the Silver Platter, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with the xenophobic instincts of his critics. “I feel like the solution to that problem is never about separating,” he says. “It’s never like, ‘Oh, we need to get out of here.’ Because that’s just segregation, that’s weird reverse isolationism or something.” Wildness, says Tsang, was about “the uncomfortability of what it means to share space.”

A party, as Tsang well knows, begins long before the dancing does. Wildness was as much a social experiment as it was a performance. Tsang’s systemic question—“What goes into creating an environment?”—addressed not only the real-time happenings of the night but also the managing of the guests’ perception and anticipation of the night. Once he’s there, the issues become more loaded: Who are these spaces for? Who do they include? Who do they exclude?

Though he’s been thinking about hosting-as-art for years, Tsang is quick to admit there’s a “kind of creepy” meaning to the word “host.” Free-associating is easy: parasites, spirit-channeling. “It kind of gets to the edges of what it means to be a person,” he says, which is also the intent of so much of his work. Nowhere are those edges more blurred than on the dance floor, where music drowns out heartbeats and strobe lights spangle both friends and enemies into uniform anonymity.

Tsang has been busy since Wildness, the party, ended in 2010. This year alone he’s gained more mainstream attention than ever before. Green Room, his installation for the Whitney Biennial, purposefully obfuscates the differences between private and public spaces. Tsang created a dressing room, complete with furniture, carpeting, mirrors, and Christmas lights, that’s only open to museumgoers when fellow Biennial performers aren’t using it as an actual dressing room. He also had two videos in “The ungovernables,” the New Museum’s triennial, which this year was themed around the disintegration of Western colonialism. In Shape of the Right Statement, a five-minute loop, Tsang eerily restages a manifesto by the autism-rights activist Amanda Baggs. The analogies between trans rights and autism rights aren’t hard to parse—in both cases, Tsang says, society decides what parts of you are healthy and acceptable.

“Being a person is this really wobbly thing,” he says. “You’re only legible or recognized as such if you’re able to communicate in certain ways. And if you don’t communicate in those ways, then people think you’re crazy.” But it’s Tsang’s creative insanity that makes his art so hard to ignore. And his goal—to reveal the inner sameness of people—really couldn’t be clearer.

Photography by Lauren Ward

Sidney and Thurman Sewell are the world’s biggest oversharers. Known as the ATL Twins, the thugged-out, skateboarding brothers share their Atlanta penthouse, their Range Rover, their women, and even their bed. “People think it’s kind of gay, but it’s not,” they say. “We’re the same person in two bodies, and we always have a bitch around, anyway.” Last fall, after Vice published a highly NSFW interview that delved into their Caligulan lifestyle, many people took notice, including filmmaker Harmony Korine, who wrote them into his new film, Spring Breakers, as identical-twin drug dealers. The movie follows a group of college girls (played by Korine’s wife, Rachel, as well as teen idols Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson) who team up with a dreadlocked, chains-wearing criminal (James Franco) to fund their vacation. From their home in the ATL, they wax poetic about first love, Hollywood success, and tag-teaming hot bitches.

How did you two end up working with Harmony Korine?
After our Vice interview went viral, so many producers and directors were hitting us up, and Harmony was one of them. He lives in Nashville, and we happened to be going there with the rapper Yelawolf to do a photo shoot, so it was a good opportunity for us to meet with him and chop it up face-to-face. The whole time we talked to him, our number one agenda was to get some pussy. That night, we partied our asses off and kept telling Harmony, “Yo, we gotta get some pussy tonight!” He must have thought that was funny, because the next day we woke up to a text message from him asking if we got any pussy.

And did you?
Of course. We fucked this badass Asian chick who was super fuckin’ hot. Harmony was so stoked on that.

Who would you rather get with: Selena Gomez or Vanessa Hudgens?
No offense to Vanessa, because she’s fuckin’ bangin’, but there’s just something about Selena. How about both at the same time, and throw in Ashley Benson, too?

What was it like acting with those tween idols?
Before shooting, Harmony was in L.A. and he was prepping the girls for the movie when he called us randomly and asked us what our Instagram handle was. He said the girls wanted to see it. All of a sudden Selena Gomez got on the phone and was really short and bitchy, but once we got down there, they were all cool as fuck. No offense to them, but they’re all pretty bougy. It’s unfortunate they all have boyfriends.

Were you intimidated by their fame?
We aren’t intimidated by anyone, especially those girls. But it was the first movie we’ve ever done so, we tried to be on our best behavior.

Give us the scoop on James Franco.
Franco’s a fucking G. He was immediately cool as shit. He came on set looking like a scruffy camper. Then he went into a trailer to transform, and two hours later he had his shirt off with these fuckin’ cornrows and all these tattoos. He looked like a fuckin’ inmate. That guy does not miss a fucking beat, and between takes he’d be reading 17th-century theater books.

Did you party with him?
We were like, “Yo, man, you want to smoke a blunt?” And he was like, “Nah, man. I’m sober.”

Who was your first love?
Our first love was this cheerleader chick who was blond, gorgeous, and the most popular girl in school. We took her virginity. We really loved that girl and she loved us, but she was one of those chicks who really cared about what other people thought.

How did both of you take her virginity?
Technically, one of us went first. But as soon as one of us busted a nut, the other one hopped in.

Has one of you been with a girl when the other one wasn’t there?
Maybe for a blowjob or something. We don’t think there’s ever been a girl who we haven’t both fucked.

What advice would you give to a guy who has trouble getting laid?
Be confident and don’t be scared of rejection. If a chick doesn’t want to hook up with you, then fuck ’em. Do you know how many times we holler at girls and they tell us to go fuck ourselves? It’s hit-or-miss, but most people who aren’t getting pussy aren’t swinging the bat. It doesn’t matter what you look like, bro, just be confident. That goes not just for getting pussy, but also for life in general.

What’s a surefire way to get a stripper to come home with you?
We go to strip clubs all the time, and we’re not giving them a dime. If you’re just cool and not some cornball creep, then you’ll find the right girl who likes to hang out and drink and smoke. Girls aren’t that much different than guys—they just aren’t trying to fuck the first night.

What’s your idea of heaven and hell?
Heaven is having the freedom to do what you really want. We’re on our way, but to really achieve true bliss is impossible. Hell is being stuck in the same routine all day, every day.

If you’re not out partying, how do you spend a night?
Rarely are we not doing something. On a chill night, we’ll pop a Xanax and troll the Internet or watch a movie, but we always have to have a chick around. Whether or not we’re fuckin’ them, we need a chick to hang out with. When it’s just us, it feels like we’re alone.

Photography by Michael Muller

“M.O.D.,” or model off-duty, the aesthetic ascribed to Alexander Wang’s collections, is a look perfectly embodied by Erin Wasson, the designer’s muse and friend. But the notion of Wasson being an “off-duty” anything is kind of a joke. The 30-year-old top model, animal-rights activist, hipster goddess, stylist, and fashion designer has just added actor to her list of métiers, appearing as Vadoma, an exsanguinating ne’er-do-well, in the quasi-historical bloodbath Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which lands in theaters this Friday.

From a corner booth at the bar inside the Downtown W Hotel, the street-smart cover girl, dressed in jeans and a tattered T-shirt, sips a pisco sour and considers her transition from posing to acting. But before getting to her breakout role in what’s expected to be one of this season’s biggest films, we had more pressing concerns: sex and sin.

So, this interview will run in our Sin issue.
Are you about to ask me to remember the last time I sinned? Jesus Christ. I sin every day.

You just did it again when you used the Lord’s name in vain. But before three seconds ago, when was the last sin?
Listen, I don’t know what sin really means. If you’re a radical religious freak, then sin is everywhere. It’s everything. If you’re a realistic and open-minded person like myself, then you don’t believe in regret, therefore you don’t believe in sin.

According to someone else, when did you last sin?
Who is this someone else? Is it a woman who goes to church on Sunday and thinks I’m a sinner because I have sex before marriage? Am I a sinner because I’ve had intimate encounters with men?

Wait, why did “sex” just become an “intimate encounter”?
I’m trying to be articulate. I tend to drop a lot of F-bombs in interviews, and it’s not becoming of a lady like myself. I’m still trying to be ladylike.

You don’t believe in regret?
I don’t regret anything in my life. Be a future thinker but live in the moment—that’s what I say.

Is getting into film part of that future thinking?
It’s just part of the future, apparently. I was sitting on a beach in Australia and I got a phone call from my agent. The part of Vadoma came up, and the next thing I knew, I was asked to put myself on tape. I pulled myself away from the Hotel Bondi, which is a total grime hole, and three days later I was Skyping with Timur [Bekmambetov, the director of Abraham Lincoln] in Melbourne.

Tell me about Vadoma.
She’s a woman of few words. She’s a kick-ass-and-take-names kind of chick. The whole goal is to take down Abraham Lincoln, who has privately trained himself to be a vampire slayer. We learn about the power he’s accumulating and we want him dead. Acting is the first thing that really scared the shit out of me.

You’ve never been scared before this?
Not really. Walking onto a film set is like walking into a foreign country. I didn’t know what anyone was saying and what anything meant. Modeling is a very coddling industry. Everything is handed to you on a silver platter. When you walk on set, everyone is like, “Erin, what can we get you? Do you need anything?” This was the opposite. I was in a small trailer in the middle of New Orleans for three months. Every night I had to do my homework and make sure I was walking on set knowing what was to be expected from me. It was so humbling to be thrown down to the bottom of the totem pole, and it was a fucking gift from the universe. It was almost like I needed that spiritual bitch-slap.

Do you intend to act again?
I think so. I’ve been auditioning, which is a really arduous process. I don’t think that my looks are going to do me any favors. In fact, I think they do me a disservice at times. It really is based on skill and talent.

I wish that were the case, but it’s not. Sometimes, even though a young woman looks right and acts the part, the casting director will come back and say, “Her hair is too short,” or, “Her tits aren’t big enough.”
I’ve gotten that one before.

Photography by Andrew Yee

Styling by Melissa Rubini