For those unfamiliar with bleeding-edge hipsterism, Vice magazine is the movement's vanguard property. From its filthy perch in Brooklyn, Vice publishes disturbing and uproarious monthly essays about drugs, underground music, and the seediest sides of life, accompanied with photography and graphics to confront readers with the painful realities they crave.

So it's no surprise that Vice's latest brand extension, The Vice Guide to Travel DVD, eschews the Vegas penthouses and European beaches of cable TV travel shows, and instead creeps into some of the world's most disturbing places. Set to an indie rock soundtrack, Vice's intrepid tourists survey the tragic remains of Chernobyl, seek Mengele's descendents in Paraguay, dance at a drug lord's street party in Rio's slums, buy guns in the Pakistan tribal region, and hunt for dinosaurs in the Congo's pygmy territories.

Like the magazine, Guide's humor is darker than a North Korean midnight, occasionally veering into the terrifying. You want an atomic detonator? Go to the Bulgarian coast and ask for an amoral entrepreneur. He'll hook you up.

But this Guide is hardly as awesome as it thinks it is. The segments are each about as long as two music videos, so they're disappointingly superficial given the difficulty of getting to the locations. Also, most of the shorts are desperately missing punchlines. Of course we don't expect the drum-bangin' b-boy to find a dinosaur in the Congo, but did it have to end with him just quitting before the credits roll?

Don't miss the bonus DVD material, however, which includes David Cross chowing on dogmeat and cheering the Super Bowl in Shanghai. "Awesome! Once again, America is football champion of the world! USA! USA!"