TOP 10 INTERVIEWS OF 2007

While other publications seek out interviews with the who's who of politics, economics and whatever the hell else people care about these days (can you interview the environment?), we prefer to chat about the more pressing issues of the day, like facial hair, piss-pots, stupid tattoos, taxidermy and straight-to-DVD action movies. Here are our top ten other interviews from 2007...

#10 - VERY OLD SOUTH KOREAN LADY We rent from a very old South Korean lady who is very wealthy, but still uses a piss-pot, which she empties into the tree in front of our door every morning. We'd never talked much with our landlady, but sure, we'd go up and ask her about her piss pot and her dead husband. Why not?

#9 - BEST BEARD IN THE WORLD Last weekend we went to the World Beard & Moustache Championships on Brighton beach. This annual competition draws men from all over the world and aims to encourage standards of excellence in the growth, design and presentation of facial hair. To get the scoop on the pogonophilic circuit we spoke to Jack Passion, a 23-year-old American who was just crowned natural beard champion of the world.

#8 - WHY THE FUCK DID YOU DECIDE TO GET A TATTOO OF THE DALAI LAMA ON YOUR CALF? It's shorts weather! Now is the happy time of the year when we begin to discover exciting things about people's bodies, like what old people's toes look like (thanks) or, oh I don't know, that our coworker has a tattoo of the Dalai Lama on his calf. So we took a minute from our busy work day to ask him WTF. Read away.

#7 - CHICKS WITH DICKS To raise awareness about the billions of male baby chicks which are gassed every year by the commercial poultry industry a Dutch artist is going to throw some through a shredder...

#6 - THE BEST BOOKSHOP EVER George Whitman is the proprietor of the Shakespeare & Co bookshop in Paris. He's famous for trimming his hair by setting it on fire, buddying up with all the Beat poets, and allowing young writers to sleep in his bookshop so long as they help out a bit and read a book a day. He's 93 and doesn’t like giving interviews, but we snatched one anyway...

#5 - A CASTE OF MILLIONS It goes like this: The first man in the world was dismembered into four parts. Brahmins, the priest caste, came from his mouth. The Kshatriya, or warriors, came from his arms. The Vaisya, or merchants, came from his loins, and the Shudra, or laboring caste, came from his feet. This is how it is in India. And then there are the Untouchables, who are apparently real dickhead losers. Seriously, this shit is still going on. No offense, India, but isn’t it about time you got that whole foundation-of-your-civilization thing sorted? No? OK. So tell us all about it. One caste at a time.

#4 - TALK TO MY ASS - STEVEN SEAGAL While you’ve been watching YouTube videos of newsroom bloopers and pictures of Lindsay Lohan’s cha-cha, Steven Seagal’s been keeping busy. Google his name and you’ll learn that he’s been recognized as the reincarnation of the Treasure Revealer Chungdrag Dorje, put out his own line of energy drinks (Steven Seagal’s Lightning Bolt), toured with his blues machine Thunderbox, written poetry, and taken up the study of herbology. He’s also a plantation owner, aikido master, father of six, and most recently spokesman for the Bulgarian skincare line L'Acrima.

#3 - PEREZ HILTON Meet our new intern Dragan Sasic. He's Serbian, so in Croatian it sounds like his name is Dragon Sausage. His family moved from Croatia over a decade ago because they got tired of living in a war zone and like a lot of European kids, he learned English from watching MTV. Now he’s an intern at Vice’s Toronto office. We heard celebrity gossip guy Perez Hilton was in town doing some promo and that he was supposed to show up at some club, so we told Dragan to go and ask him a few questions. Oh, and we asked him to dress up like girl because, well, because we could. This is what happened...

#2 - JESUS FUCKING CHRIST Michael Travesser used to be a normal, schlubby guy named Wayne Bent until he was inexplicably infused with the spirit of the archangel Michael, aka the true Son of God. This spiritual integration (or as we like to call it “God rape”) just kind of happened one day, and disappointingly, was nothing like the Zuul scene from Ghostbusters. He just woke up the next morning feeling noticeably more God-y. It bears mention though that, according to Travesser, the last time this kind of thing occurred was when it happened to a little beardy guy you may have heard of named Jesus H. Christ.

#1 - INTERVIEW WITH A TAXIDERMIST Remember the vicious wolf on the cover of the Photo Issue? If you didn’t know already, we’re sad to tell you that it’s been dead and stuffed for many, many years. We decided to go and see the guy who made him look so real. Going to the museum, we expected to interview a shy, sciencey kind of guy. But we found this nutty taxidermist who chain-smoked as he dug out old photos and told funny stories about his craft.