The Toronto/New York indie culture magazine Vice has teamed up with Spike Jonze, one of the most celebrated directors of music videos, to create a website stocked with (non-music) videos on a variety of surprising subjects.

Many of the short clips are mini-travel documentaries. One dude tours toxic plants in Toronto. Another scours the Caribbean for unusual sexual practices. In general, the Vice mag folks go where most travelers fear to tread.

The travel clips are generally short and silly. There's one exception--a particularly well-made video of a trip to Chernobyl, which is nine-minutes long and rather depressing. It's bizarrely compelling to watch as a handheld radiation-counter goes beserk, and it's poignant when the camera zooms in on the fading posters that hung in school buildings in the nearby town.

You can catch these quick flicks at VBS.tv.

Related: Chernobyl, of course, was one of the destinations on BudgetTravel.com's 2007 "Not List," celebrating the places you don't want to visit.

Elsewhere: Despite urban legends to the contrary, Chernobyl has not become an animal paradise because of the lack of interference by humans, says the New York Times.

Photo by icanteachyouhowtodoit via Flickr.