VICE QUEEN Beauty in the (black) eye of the beholder

Vbs.tv, the Web-based video venture from hipster magazine and lifestyle conglomerate Vice, only launched last week, but it is already getting attention from youth-hungry mainstream media outlets. The online network, helmed by Adaptation director Spike Jonze, aims to "exploit every utopian vision the Internet has thus far failed to live up to." Such diverse outlets as the Discovery Channel, MTV, and, strangest of all, straight-laced CBS news program 60 Minutes have sniffed around Vice's gonzo travel idea.

"The Discovery Channel offered up a travel series, but we didn't end up taking it because they wouldn't give us Internet rights," says Vice co-founder Shane Smith. "MTV is interested in having us compile stuff for a 'best of' for them. And a producer from 60 Minutes called because they were looking into following up on our Bulgaria story" (in which a Vice correspondent talks with a dirty-bomb dealer who had once taken a meeting with Osama bin Laden).

While the MTV connection makes sense (Jones has been a producer and writer on the network's Jackass show), it's surprising that both the Discovery Channel and 60 Minutes have reached out to Vice, given its propensity for photographing and featuring nude or somehow damaged people—often covered in their own vomit. "These guys are all just desperate to tap into the youth demographic," explains Smith. "They're all fucked." A rep from 60 Minutes had no comment.