Teenage hitman Gabriel Cardona's eyelid tattoos. All images courtesy of Dan Slater/Simon and Schuster

When the state of Texas sentenced Gabriel Cardona and Rosalio "Bart" Reta—aka the Wolf Boys—to what would equate to life in prison, the American teenagers were simply labeled serial killers in the vein of John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Damher. It was true they had killed at least 50 people combined while still minors. But, unlike Damher or Gacy, the Laredo, Texas-born convicts weren't killing for sport. Rather, they were teenage assassins and child soldiers employed by the Zetas, one of Mexico's most notoriously violent cartels, whose blood money they wanted in order to stock up on nice cars and fresh kicks.

Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel is a new book by reporter Dan Slater that examines cartel culture and the war on drugs from the nuanced perspective of its youngest constituents. The author spent four years researching the drug trade, during which he exchanged hundreds of letters with Cardona, learning how a bunch of American-born kids got involved with one of the most brutal crime syndicates across the border. A twisting and chaotic tale that switches perspectives between the young hitmen and the homicide detective who ultimately caught them, the true crime story details the reality that "under certain conditions, practically any child could be changed into a killer."

In the text, we get a vantage into why cartel leaders recruit underaged kids, American or not, and how they train them into becoming executioners. The more we get to know the Wolf Boys, the less they feel like deranged killers and the more complicated their situation feels on a moral level. Were they victims of intimidation, capitalism, and their destitute hometowns, and does that excuse their violent behavior? And what action, if any, can the US government take to not only prevent the recruitment of child soldiers, but also help rehabilitate them? We talked with Slater, whose book is already slated to be adapted into a full-length film, about the Wolf Boys's evolution from underprivileged kids trying to make some money to full-on assassins.

VICE: Many stories about drug dealers and cartels glamorize the kingpins at the top of these organizations, but Wolf Boys focuses on the foot soldiers at the bottom run. What interested you about child soldiers?
Dan Slater: I went to Mexico and visited a cemetery in the State of Sinaloa that was known, unofficially, as the "Cartel Cemetery." When you go to there, you see a lot of these big, gaudy mausoleums around the outside of the cemetery that were built by the families of guys who were higher up in the cartels. But in the middle of the cemetery were plain headstones for men who were extremely young when they died. I averaged out the dates on maybe 30 headstones and came up with an average age of death at about 18 or 19, though it wasn't uncommon to see headstones for people who died at 13 or 14. It was amazing for me to actually see that up-close.

I thought back to Gabriel , who I'd read about in the New York Times a few months earlier. I was finally able to put them into context, and they seemed to belong to a huge world of young men who really were the people fighting this war, the people who were dying at the greatest rate. That's when I became determined to tell their story and to see what was behind the headlines. Where did they come from, what was their neighborhood like, what were their family lives like, what sort of male role models did they have, if any? That was where the urge to humanize them originated from. I think it's important to humanize these particular kinds of boys and young men because they comprise such a huge segment of the drug wars.

What was it like visiting Cardona and Reta in prison, and what did you discuss in the hundreds of letters you exchanged?
I visited in prison and we spoke for eight hours. He told me stories and was thoughtful, inquisitive, and manipulative. We wrote each other for three months. My experience with Gabriel was different. After I visited him in prison, he told me he didn't mind sharing his story, but that some media people approached him with lies. Over two and a half years, I wrote to him and we covered every phase of his life from childhood through incarceration. We persevered through misunderstandings, spats, and reconciliations. The letters became the basis for much of the book. The final chapter, 33, describes the reporting process, including my relationship to the boys and how it developed over time.

What circumstances led these young Mexican-American teenagers into the life of crime that the cartels offered?
Laredo is a very impoverished city, and the neighborhoods within Laredo that the Wolf Boys were from are particularly poor, so economics have a lot to do with it. Often times, will be raised by single mothers, or there'll be a lot of elder men within families who set poor examples for the boys. It comes down to a lack of guidance, a lack of parenting, a lack of discipline, and a culture in which, frankly, families are immersed in the drug trade. It's not uncommon for family members to be involved with various aspects of smuggling and subsequently get their kids into it at a very young age.

Not everyone from these neighborhoods becomes a cartel member. There are many kids who go to college. But for the most part, it's very hard to get out of these places. In my research for Wolf Boys, I saw families dealing with losing a son or with having a kid get sent away for life in prison, and how normal that was there.

A photo of detective Robert Garcia (left)

The narrative alternates between the teenage assassins and Robert Garcia, the cop who was chasing them. Were you also interested in Garcia before working on the book?
I wouldn't have been writing about Robert Garcia had it not been for the Wolf Boys. They were what originally drew me to the story and it was their lives that I originally set out to investigate and explore. I stumbled on Garcia a little bit later. I knew he was a crucial part in the investigation of the boys, sort of their nemesis or their foil, but it wasn't until later in the project that I saw how the book could be structured as a thriller that alternated between the good and the bad. I realized suspense could be derived from the feeling of Oh my God, when are they going to meet and what will happen?

Do you think NAFTA and the War on Drugs have actually helped turn the cartels into major conglomerates and wide-reaching organizations?
So much of American law enforcement is employed because of this war, but one of the reasons I avoid tying the origins or causes of the drug trade and drug war to any one thing is because I really don't see the world that way. I don't think we can say it was one thing or one policy. Certainly there have been many policies that have exacerbated the fallout of the war on drugs. NAFTA was an interesting version of that because it was an economic policy that was intended to enrich a lot of people, and it did at the expense of others—and that was sort of foreseen. What was unforeseen about NAFTA was the effect it would have on the drug trade—it essentially made the drug trade a lot smoother, and smuggling easier. So in that sense, NAFTA inflated the market and probably drew more people into the underworld as a result.

The media has labeled these teenage assassins as monsters. Yes, they did terrible things, but do you think they deserve these labels?
Do they deserve the labels? Well, they did what they did. The legal system in the state of Texas, for instance, doesn't think of them as cartel assassins or members of the Zetas. The state of Texas just sees them as serial killers. I think a lot of Americans would be surprised to see that label attached to them because when we say serial murderers we think of Jeffrey Dahmer, but these kids were, for all intents and purposes, doing the same thing. They were killing a lot of people. They were just doing it for money.

I think when you reduce it to that, they deserve whatever label people want to apply to what they were doing. I think it's the nature of people for their mind to go to very dark places when they don't see the whole picture. I certainly did that. When I first learned about these kids, I only had minimal information about them and the things I did know about the world they came from were its most brutal aspects. But the closer you get to something, the more human you're likely to see it. I think that helps change the perspective, but, of course, getting to know them better doesn't change what they did. I hope and I think every reader of Wolf Boys will come away with a slightly different perspective on them and what exactly they merit in terms of labels. I think some people will be empathetic to them and some won't. It will be interesting to see.

'Wolf Boys' is out now via Simon & Schuster. Buy it here.

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The author, on her trusty gynecological bench

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

On Thursday morning, I was getting ready for a professional domination client. It was a medical play session, which meant a lot of prep: making sure my imposing NHS gynecological bench was pristine, with crisp white paper pulled over its navy faux leather, ready to receive my eager, apprehensive "patient." I checked each piece of medical equipment—the speculum to stretch the anus wide; the Wartenberg wheel, with its spikes designed to make the most sensitive skin twitch and quiver. And once all my physical kit was primed, I had to get myself ready, showering, shaving, pulling my hair into a severe bun, and getting myself into the headspace of the evil nurse—clinical, caring, and sadistic.

As I sat down with a cup of tea, waiting for my client's nervous knock at my door, I reflected on my preparation. And I realized that the ways we sex workers get ourselves ready for a booking might offer lessons to anyone asked to scrub up and give a speech to get people on-side—whether presenting at uni, at work or getting ready for The Talk with someone you're dating. Here are some of my top tips.

GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER IN ADVANCE

I'm a little anxious by nature. I was particularly nervous in my first few bookings, but over time I learned that if I had precisely everything I would need exactly where I needed it—from handcuffs to lube to the eyeliner and nail varnish I'd wear—my anxiety would decrease dramatically. Other sex workers are similarly pernickety about their pre-booking rituals.

In Chicago, Farrah* does both sex and office work, and her ordinary office bag doubles as her prep bag for full-service and kink sessions. "My bag contains a change of clothes, shoes, a non-farty snack (unless the client likes farting), tools of the trade for that given session, and always a book," she tells me. In sex work, our bodies are also tools, and for kink, personal prep can be esoteric. "If there's (literally) shit involved I have to plan my meals in advance the day before, then that morning requires lots of coffee and oatmeal with bananas. Healthy breakfast, no?"

What public speaking has in common with sex work is that it's work: a precise combination of craft and creativity. Part of that craft is having the right stuff, working and to hand. These things seem mundane, but their absence can mean a late arrival or a sleepless night undermines my confidence.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

Like any work, sex work requires skill. In my work, skills can be anything from convincing acting to safe flogging, but screening clients, marketing, and setting boundaries are equally important. I practice and improve all of these skills, which means that when a new client calls, I can assess compatibility and safety over the phone and craft a session to meet their needs if we're a fit. I'm not following a script; even if a client sends me a laundry list of fetishes and requests, I can work them into a spontaneous session. I have a client who likes heavy bondage and a severe thrashing. Over time, my skill with the canes, crops, and paddles he adores has become a sort of muscle memory, freeing up my mind to play wicked word games and throw sadistic taunts.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

Practice and planning free my mind to focus on my changeable client. A good sex worker is a chameleon, and it requires considerable emotional skill and labor to match a client's fantasy. In one hour I mock and humiliate a client wearing panties with a wicked laugh; in the next, I'm nearly silent as my blindfolded client hangs on my chains, unsure of where my whip will strike next. Even then, performances vary.

If a client comes in nervous, I might be more nurturing as I spank them over my knee; if they slide into a submissive role with confidence, I know I can be a bit more imperious. Likewise, repeat clients show up happy some days and grouchy others, and I need to notice—and remember—whether the cure for a client's bad mood is gentleness or an extra hard slap.

The same is true in speaking. If you're getting ready to break up with someone, or tell that housemate to, finally, get their tea bags out of the sink—for the last goddamn time—your voice tone, emotions, and body language all matter. You've got to be firm in the approach for the right person who's listening to you.

WATCH: Cash Slaves – Inside the Dystopian Fetish of Financial Domination:

Ms. Slide, a UK-based dominatrix, says what she bring depends on the session. If a client's into sensation play, "I'll bring clamps, hitty things, stinging things (sometimes literally if it's nettle season), thudding things, and pinching things. If the play is more of a psychological nature, or if the client has a specific fetish for certain clothing, shoes, or textures, I'll make sure they're included. If it's a session where I'm penetrating the client, I'll bring strap-ons and plugs. It's all about tailoring the session so that it's pleasurable for everyone involved."

STICK TO YOUR ACTUAL COMPETENCIES

Years of experience as a domme have taught me where my strengths and weaknesses are. I'm no expert with rope bondage, but I'm great with canes and crops. If someone wants an elaborate suspension rig or to pretend to be an adult baby in a realistic nursery, I refer them elsewhere; even if I'm eager to earn the fee, the worry of not doing a good job is more than it's worth, and clients rarely return to a nervous practitioner. If I want to learn a new skill, I study with experts, paying for their time or offering a skills exchange, before I bring that skill into my paid work.

In speaking, it's tempting to jump at opportunities to present on a new topic, but I know that unfamiliarity can lead to boring and superficial chat, even for a practiced speaker. It's better to extend your scope on a familiar topic, or apply it in a new way. Because I understand kink, I can talk about a naughty novel or a politician caught with a dominatrix; because I understand sex worker rights, I can apply their concepts to situations worldwide. Find what works for you, and when anyone asks how you pulled it off, just mumble something about your inner dominatrix. They'll probably leave it.

*Name has been changed to protect her identity.

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Greys photo by Matthew Morand

Even though the fall semester has just started, the urge to quit school and save your money can be overwhelming. If there's an upside, the increasingly shitty job prospects waiting at the end of a liberal arts degree have made starting a band seem like a not-unreasonable career choice by comparison.

Then again, finding new friends on campus to make music with outside of class is one of the keystones of the college experience —right up there with learning to survive on a diet of Jameson's and KD, and escaping your hometown's dismal dating scene. If only these life-changing lessons didn't cost tens of thousands of dollars.

With this in mind, is it better to sit in for a lecture, or strap yourself into a van to the next gig? VICE asked a handful of touring Canadian acts if going to school was worth it, and if their in-class experiences shaped them for the better, or for the worse.

Finish school? Hard pass, says Shehzaad.

Shehzaad Jiwani, guitarist/vocalist of Greys

VICE: So, was going to school worth it, do you think?
Shehzaad Jiwani: I never actually finished university, so, no. I still have half my course load to finish. I went to U of T to major in English and minor in film and sociology. The end goal was to get my teacher's degree. I wanted to be a high school teacher, for some reason. I think I saw myself as relatable to teenagers who, like me, enjoyed being educated but hated going to school. Maybe start them on a different path or something.

Is there anything you learned that's come in handy?
I think a lot of what I learned in my film classes became relevant and valuable when we started making music videos with Greys. I have co-directed all our videos, and aside from just being a movie nerd, I learned how to compose shots properly and learned things about editing that I wouldn't have picked up on my own. Also, being an English student, I find that whenever I approach writing lyrics, it always begins the same way I would make an introduction in an essay, and I structure things by beginning with a broad statement and getting more specific as it goes on. Even our records are kind of structured that way, and I can't imagine how else I would have learned how to form arguments in such a specific way than being in school.

Would you ever go back?
At this point in time, I feel like I have a clearer understanding of what I want out of my life and also more means to accomplish those goals than I did when I was 20 or 21, and that is to pursue art in its various forms—writing for magazines, making music, producing records, doing film stuff, whatever. I always treated post-secondary education as a backup plan if I failed at whatever it was I actually wanted to do, and that hasn't happened yet, so I am fine with not going back. I would rather make less money and do the things that I enjoy doing with my life than have a steady job and constantly struggle to maintain some sort of stability doing something I'm less fulfilled doing. I'm broke, but I am happy in that regard. That Refused lyric where Dennis Lyxzen says, "I'm certain that what motivates me is more important than any piece of paper could be" had a profound impact on me when I was 14 years old, and I still sort of live by that, as much as that makes me sound like a privileged liberal city kid. It's worked for this long, why stop now?

Were you a partier in college?
I kept all the crazy college-type experiences to the music side of my life and just soaked in the peace and quiet and independence you can have at a big school. I think I made maybe one friend in the entire time I went to university, and that ruled, because I didn't have to talk to anybody.

Mish (centre): 'I was young and identity politics were everything.' Photo by Rick Rodney via Facebook

Mish Way, vocalist of White Lung, VICE and Broadly writer

VICE: Hey Mish, what did you go to school for, and why?
Mish Way: Communications and gender studies. Because I was young and identity politics were everything. I should have studied criminology and gone to law school.

What of what you'd learned have you brought with you into your current career?
I like to tell myself that what I studied has helped with my career as a writer and musician. But I did not need my education to educate myself on the things that I write about. I learned more about writing and journalism from interning and my editors than in school. I was in my last years of university when I first started writing publicly. My brain is all pumped up with theories. I was excited to write. My education taught me how to think, to take things apart and analyze them through. I had one great professor named Marilyn MacDonald. Her classes were tough and dense, everyone dreaded her style of teaching, but I loved it. I took all her classes. She was an excellent teacher.

Was the time and money you put into the system worth it, overall?
Yes, but again, if I could go back I would have done my degree in criminology.

'I came out to my parents when I was in university.' Photo via Twitter

Charlotte Day Wilson

VICE: What was the best thing that came out of your time at college?
Charlotte Day Wilson: Honestly, I found my first girlfriend when I was in university. I came out to my parents when I was in university. So that was probably the most important thing. For me, it was big just to get out of Toronto and meet new people, try new things.

What did you go in for? Did you finish?
I was studying music and women's studies, because those were the two things that were the most immediate to me at the time, in terms of things that I wanted to expand my knowledge of. I did that for three years. I wasn't really cut out for the student lifestyle, just partying all that money away. The people around me, it seemed like either they were super passionate about academia or they were just kind of there because that was the natural progression of upper middle class Canadians. I didn't get along with that whole lifestyle.

When did you decide that it wasn't for you?
I definitely always thought that I had to finish my degree in order for my parents to be on my side. I came back for a visit one time, and I guess my mom could sense that I was not loving it. She was like, "You don't have to finish this if you don't want to." She asked what I'd rather do, and I said play music. "Well, then, do that, but if you're going to do that, you have to do it well!"

Jasmyn: 'Too many people have degrees now.' Photo via Facebook

Jasmyn Burke, vocalist of Weaves

VICE: What did you want to be when you were in school?
Jasmyn Burke: I went to school for journalism in Toronto, at Ryerson University. I actually thought that I would be a music journalist. I was always in bands, and figured that could actually be a possibility, so I started writing about music. I never really wanted a 9-to-5 job, so I thought that would be a good opportunity to not do that.

Are you still active with it?
No, not really. I realized while I was in university that I didn't really want to write about other people; I just wanted to write music. News stories weren't really piquing my interest, so I switched my energies into writing songs about the things that I saw.

How has what you learned applied to your current path?
I think there's a certain discipline you learn in journalism school, as far as observing people and using words in a way that depicts what you'd seen. I think I've brought that into my music writing. Going to school and doing a four-year program, it can be pretty labour intensive. Maybe working every day, that sort of self-discipline, helped me as a musician.

Considering the time, money and effort put into the program, was it worth it?
If I were to do it again, I might do a two-year program at a college rather than a four-year program at a university. I think universities have their place, but too many people have degrees now.

How many people in the band have degrees?
Zach , they both went to school for music. They did four-year programs at U of T and at York University. At least that applies to actually playing in a band.

Tom (left): 'I learned a lot more about the interpersonal culture amongst musicians.'

Tom Howie, vocalist/guitarist of Bob Moses

VICE: What was going to college like for you?
Tom Howie: I only went to Berklee College of Music for a year, and my specialty was songwriting. So I took a couple songwriting classes from some great songwriters, but I also studied the basic first year stuff: music theory, harmony etc. I took guitar lessons as it was my principal instrument and practiced a lot.

Was any of it useful to you?
I feel like musical learning is very cumulative. I learned hard work at Berklee in a big way. I had always been a hard worker, but that's when a fire really lit under my ass, so to speak. I'm sure all the stuff I learned there is used in my career in some way, it might just not be overtly obvious. I learned a lot more about the interpersonal culture amongst musicians too.

Any other life-changing skills you learned outside of class?
How to be a badass at shoveling out cars from under six feet of snow.

Adrienne (second from left): 'I often feel like an anthropologist on tour.' Photo via Facebook

Adrienne Labelle, bassist for Supermoon, Jay Arner

VICE: What was the most memorable part of going to school?
Adrienne Labelle: I in field school.

What were you studying?
I went to Simon Fraser University and majored in sociology and anthropology. Sociology, in particular, grabbed me. I'm fairly interested in global politics. At SFU, it was heavy on C. Right Mills' sociological imagination, which was teaching world events and seeing how personal lives fit into it. It was very left and critical of mainstream stuff. And then anthropology was in the same department, so I kind of, by chance, ended up in that as well.

As far as behavioural studies go, have you been able to apply anything you learned at university to your career as a musician?
I often feel like an anthropologist on tour, because you're going into new cities and different people's houses. People open up their lives with you, and share that with you for a very brief period of time. I often feel like I'm doing some weird ethnography of d.i.y. musicians in North America.

The last time I toured the U.S., it was when the government shut down. There was quite lot of talk about politics, and it was an interesting time to be touring there because people were wanting to talk to Canadians about it to get a new perspective. If we asked questions, they wanted to tell us all about what it was like. This tour with Jay Arner, we're going to be in the U.S. for the election. The sociologist part of me is very fascinated with the idea.

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This week saw yet another of those horrifying and tragic news stories in which an otherwise healthy person dies suddenly from a disease straight out of bad science fiction. Something called a "brain-eating amoeba"—technically: Naegleria fowleri—sneaks into the victim's brain, usually while they innocently swim in a natural body of warm, fresh water or an under-chlorinated swimming pool. This time it was 19-year-old Kerry Stoutenburgh who spent a few days this summer enjoying the natural streams of Maryland. Stoutenburgh was a student at Brooklyn college, before she began showing symptoms of primary amebic meningoencephalitis, the fatal disease caused by Naegleria fowleri. She was taken off life support late last month.

The intense brain eating amoeba coverage this year seems to dovetail with the trend The Verge clued me in to in 2013: Thanks to global warming, amoebas in the brains of Americans might be trending upward. Since I prefer my brain to be uneaten, and I like to know well ahead of time about potential plagues that could kill me, it seems like the perfect time to get some solid information about my risk.

Here's what I found out:

It's too soon to claim that cases are on the rise

In an interview back in 2013, Dr. Jennifer Cope, who tracks Naegleria fowleri for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cautioned against jumping to the conclusion that cases were increasing. Now that it's been three years, I asked her for an update. She said the pattern still doesn't point to an increase, per se. "If you look at our numbers, we've had as few as zero, and as many as eight cases per year, and this summer we're at five infections," she told me in an interview.

But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods by any means. "We don't get those 'zero summers' any longer," she cautioned.

They only eat brains by accident

Left to its own devices, Naegleria fowleri could be called a "bacteria-eating amoeba," Cope explained. It floats around eating pond germs, with absolutely no interest in human brains. Traversing a human nostril, attaching to the olfactory nerve, and eating its way north is just an accident of nature, not an evil plan. But after that accident, this amoeba can't find the bacteria it's used to eating, and it starts doing exactly what the headlines say: "When it finds itself up someone's nose, it switches to the brain as its food source," Cope told me.

Worth noting for your anxiety: the term "brain-eating amoeba" can—and sometimes does—refer to Naegleri fowleri's somewhat more mysterious cousin Balamuthia mandrillaris, which is acquired from soil rather than swimming.

The disease is as awful as you've read

Once it gets situated, in as little as one day, things might taste or smell different on account of the amoebas chomping away at the inner workings of your nose. Over the next one to two weeks, symptoms will start to seem more like meningitis, because, as Cope reminded me, meningoencephalitis, meningitis, and encephalitis are all terms for inflammation in and around the brain, and the symptoms are similar.That means headache, stiff neck, nausea, and fever are all signs that you could have an amoeba problem.

As with most fatal forms of meningitis, it's not so much the loss of brain cells that kills you, but pressure, as the inflamed brain presses down on the connection between the brain stem and the spinal cord, eventually leading to coma, and respiratory failure. "We would suspect that the patients themselves are not very aware of what's happening in the later stages," Cope told me.

Your actual odds of infection are almost nil... almost

Despite all the amoeba coverage in the media, there were still only five cases in 2016. That's not many, Cope conceded. "There are 3,500 fatal drownings annually in the United States, and we can compare that to just a handful of Naegleria infections that get reported each year." The number cases is similar to the number of people killed by choking on balloons. And considering most water with Naegleria in it is in the south, it bears mentioning that many of those bodies of water are infested with alligators, which, y'know, can also be deadly.

"There are obviously many things that people should consider when they're participating in water activities," Cope said. I pressed her on whether I should worry about Naegleria more than other parasites I can get by swimming in warm, fresh water, for instance, the microscopic flatworms that cause "swimmer's itch," a common, temporary rash. "It certainly happens with more frequency than Naegleria infections do," she told me, "but the major difference is that you don't die from swimmer's itch," Cope said.

Another parasite that can kill American swimmers is Cryptosporidium. It's a fairly common cause of diarrhea—accounting for $45.8 million in hospital stays per year. But that parasite is extremely rare as a cause of death. Even in large outbreaks, it only appears to be associated with fatalities when patients' immune systems are compromised by something like HIV. Still, you're much more likely to get Cryptosporidium-related diarrhea from splashing around than a brain-eating amoeba.

Caution is really easy, assuming it helps

Since these amoebas mainly show up in warm, fresh water, mostly in the South, anything that gets referred to as a "swimmin' hole" should be treated with suspicion. But if you just have to plunge into any murky water as this summer winds down, the CDC has a few recommendations: Swimmers can either keep their faces dry, or just keep the water out of their noses, "by holding their noses, or using nose clips," Cope said. And until the weather cools off, it also might be smart to skip using a neti pot to irrigate your sinuses. That is if you're one of those weirdos who like pouring warm water up their noses.

But here's a final word of warning: The CDC actually has no idea if these preventative measures work. "That's a drawback to having so few infections: there's very little scientific study we can do," Cope said. Since it's not like the CDC can shoot amoeba water up people's noses for science, she said, "none of these things we recommend are things we can formally test."

So if you're planning on playing one last game of Marco Polo in a storm drain before the weather cools down, good luck not dying.

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of the Brain-Eating Amoeba?

2/5: Taking Normal Precautions

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Photo via Flickr user Victor

He was filmed running away from the camera of self-described vigilante pedophile hunters as they broadcasted the video live on Facebook to thousands of viewers earlier this month. Now Surrey RCMP have charged Constable Dario Devic with child luring and breach of trust.

Creep Catchers and other vigilante groups have grabbed headlines across the country for their controversial approach to outing child predators. Posing online as underage girls, they bait men into meeting children and confront the alleged pedophiles in person with cameras rolling. BC sheriff Kevin Johnston was charged after a similar sting earlier this month.

The charges against Constable Devic likely wouldn't have happened if BC RCMP hadn't been tipped off by the Creep Catchers video on social media. The group claimed Devic had intended to meet a 14-year-old for sex. RCMP launched their own investigation shortly after and announced the charges Friday afternoon.

Read More: Creep Catchers Are Gaining Momentum After Busting a BC Mountie and Sheriff

Earlier this week, CTV News reported that two teen girls were removed from the officer's home. The 14-year-olds were homestay students, an unnamed source told CTV.

Devic's defence lawyer sent a statement to several media outlets yesterday saying his client was eager to have the matter heard in court. The lawyer noted the vigilante group Creep Catchers has previously misidentified an officer.

Police have routinely discouraged vigilante pedophile stings. Social media sites have also made efforts to crack down on Creep Catchers. The Surrey chapter's YouTube page, for example, was recently terminated for violating community guidelines.

Devic's next court date is set for October 19. The Surrey chapter of Creep Catchers released a video late Friday that asked supporters to meet at the courthouse on that day.

Devic is currently out on bail, on condition that he not use the internet or come into contact with children under 16.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Not Jim from Oklahoma. Photo by William Iven

Some people are really, really good at online dating. Like, they can juggle over a dozen conversations at a time, sideline gross predatory shit, and get total strangers to like them enough to meet in public. Sometimes I think this is an unnerving, near sociopathic skill, but that might just be my outsider's perspective from being in a relationship older than Tinder.

What I've never once thought, though, was that this could be an employable skill—something that you could put on your resume and get paid for. It turns out sizable companies with account managers and writers and analytics departments exist to harness this (still potentially sociopathic) talent. I know this because I recently met up with Samantha, a 21-year-old student who recently worked this job. And while she assured me you can't get rich flirting with women older than your mom, she described it as a surprisingly decent side gig.

I asked her a bunch of questions to figure out what makes this cottage industry tick.

VICE: So how did you get started on this?
Samantha: Applying was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. It was quite a long set of tests. First you had to jump into a hypothetical message back-and-forth and try to get the date. In one of them you had to look at this guy's entire excerpt from a two-hour interview, and had to build a profile based on it, say things in a cheesy "charming" kind of way. And you had to draft pickup lines that you would use on somebody in a first hypothetical Tinder message, for example.

What "there she is" one of them? Sam Biddle at Gawker memorably tested that one out.
That's not bad, actually . They would test out these messages, sending them out to so, so many women. There are people who their whole job is to send first messages to women on these sites. Some of it is really basic, conversational, others get pretty pervy, grotesque. My job would be to jump in at the moment when the woman replies.

What's the best way to get these dudes dates?
It's a numbers game, you're talking to 20 women at a time for each client. It could be more than that. It takes an average of five to eight messages to get a number. You need to build a rapport before you can say "let's take this offline." So much research had gone into it, which surprised me. They had hundreds of spreadsheets of how different responses were taken. A lot of it is almost just exploratory to see what works and what doesn't. They recommended different pickup methods depending on how old the subject is. For example, deprecating humour works on younger women, but on older women, they say classic humour or straight to-the-point compliments work better... I guess what I read in the guides is they think younger women are stupid.

Gross. Were there many other women writers?
It was just a handful of women. They mostly want men writing for men because the ideal voice is a bit dominant, you have to be a bit deprecating.

Like straight-up negging women?
Yeah. There are some lines they suggest you use, like "Even in your worst photo, you still look pretty." Something really bad. "That shirt makes you look less pale," or "you look pretty good for a brunette." You would also want to make high-value statements about yourself. Say a woman would mention liking going to the beach, and then you'd say, like "Oh, I have a cabin in Bora Bora," something like that. Or "I have property overseas," . "It's fabulous, if you like sand."

Wow. That is extremely corny.
They liked cheesy, painting-a-picture-type language. Trainers would tell us: don't just ask a question, give options. Say something like, "You're on your way to a vacation with your best friend, a free trip anywhere in the world, would you, a) go to a cabin in the Alps, ski all day and sip hot cocoa at night; b) a beach hut in Tahiti—the only thing you need to pack is your favourite pair of flip flops..." That's probably almost verbatim one of the scripts they gave us. The funniest part was pretending you were this "charming" person.

Did you have to be in contact with these men you were ghostwriting for?
No, which I think is really lucky. Account managers would deal with all the clients and take in all the interviews and photos. We would get handed these interview transcripts where they describe their entire life up until that point—where they lived, what they did in school, what they do for work, their love life, everywhere they've vacationed, everywhere they want to vacation, their kids, their hopes, their dreams. Just everything. Even their favourite spots to go in the city. You would get a snapshot of everything you would want to tell another person. Then they would usually tell them to go out and get professional photos done. One of my favourite parts of the job was actually rating the photos. They would narrow it down to 20 or so, and we would rank them.

What did they look like?
They mostly look lonely and bumbling. A lot of them have been divorced already, and they just don't know what to do with themselves. Just so desperate and awkward and tragic. There was this ex-jock looking guy, he had professional photos taken, always with a hat on. One of them he was standing in a field with a backwards hat, polo shirt and little shorts, and there was just a chair in the middle of the field, and he was standing behind the chair with his hands on the back, just leaning in.

Like, 'this could be you' chair lean?
Yeah, this really weird invitational chair in the middle of a field, it was horrible.

Do most of these guys skew upper class?
I would say so, because the packages were really expensive. I think their target market is really rich older men who just don't have time to online date. So they hire 20-something women to do for them. But you also get the occasional mall security guard who just wants to find someone who likes anime as much as he does.

Did you ever feel personally invested in dating these women?
I wouldn't say I was personally invested in the women, they were a lot older than me. There would be times I'm like Christ, she's divorced, she has kids, I don't want to say that to her. I did get attached to winning, you really want to succeed and make commission. I think some people I worked with took some joy in finding people matches, but I didn't really care much about that. I was really detached—it was just entertaining for me. I feel like calling it matchmaking it's sleazy in a way—it's shitty for that other person who thinks they're talking to a potential next boyfriend or husband who is so "charming" online, but actually it's a different person in a different city or country or gender, that's getting paid to message you. I feel like it could be a new-age rom-com.

Definite rom-com potential. Like an updated You Got Mail, where the profile manager falls in love.
Yeah, and they're trying to break through, maybe leaving some clues.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Thousands of people walked through central London on Saturday afternoon, as part of a massive protest with a simple message: refugees welcome here. Meeting in Park Lane before winding up along Piccadilly and ending in Parliament Square, the protest drew appearances from volunteers, politicians, a few actors and actresses and a small group of refugees, who led the march.

Monday will see the start of a United Nations summit for refugees and migrants, in New York, so this protest – called by the group Solidarity with Refugees – functioned as a stirring precursor. We sent photographer Chris Bethell down, to talk to people about what others can practically do to show their support of refugees in the UK. At a time when 18- to 24-year-olds report believing most in protests and rallies to enact social change, and those in their 60s have the most faith in signing petitions to do so, we figured we may as well hear from some of the people on the march about what they think can actually be done.

@CBethell_Photo

Chantal Delilkan

We can try and offer decent accommodation and jobs to help get them back on their feet. We need to do more to make them feel like they're actually at home here. We need to make them feel safe as well – it must be really alienating for them here so we need to bring them into our communities.

Liberty Folker (left) and Anne Brook

Anna: They can go away and they can write to their local councils, to their local MPs and can say 'come on, pull your fingers out – it's time to do something to make these people welcome here.'

Liberty: I think on a personal level it's important to speak out to your family, to your friends, the older generation so your grandparents and even strangers in the street if you see something that you think isn't right. Whether it's racism, Islamaphobia, just speak out calmly, rationally and kindly to try and educate people.

Lydia Burke and Jack Richards

Lydia: I think – and this is going to sound very lame – it's about being friendly towards people. Treating them like human beings. There are also a lot of organisations in cities that are doing plenty to support refugees and asylum seekers, so everyone could get involved with those.

Anold Murove and Maryem Chowdhury

Maryem: I think it's important that we treat them like they're our own. At the end of the day we are all one body. It's important that we show them love and respect, and also that we nourish them and cherish them in the way we would our own friends and family.

Alan Mitchell

I think to make people feel welcome anywhere you need to form relationships: form bonds and friendships. We have to break down the cultural barriers that divide us, and reach people on a human level.

Obviously there's not much we can do about policy decisions except pressure the government. There's warehouses full of donations that need organising, there's fundraising that needs doing, there's public awareness; the word needs to be spread. And also lobbying MPs – this needs to be done all the time. Keep that pressure on.

Barbera and Dom Gwinnett

Dom: First of all, it's important they contribute towards events like this, marches, online petitions, writing to newspapers, writing to politicians and getting in touch with their local councils. Secondly, what they can do is to support people who are being targeted. Talk to them. Don't answer back to the people being aggressive. Just go stand by that person.

Barbera: Local authorities have to provide the infrastructure and that's where voluntary groups can help as well. But the government needs to invest money so that refugees can be settled properly in local communities.

Janet Austen

First of all, call them refugees and not migrants; let's label them properly. Then the British will welcome refugees as we always have. And then I'd like to see individual families as sort of mentors for refugee families so they can learn our peculiar ways. That we all stand around in the rain and do things. We're all refugees in the end and we're all migrants in Britain.

Rodrigo Torres

We need to do what we're doing today, basically, which is to speak for them – to speak on their behalf. At the moment they don't really have a voice. We need to make sure that all their needs are expressed in a way that the world will hear. There's a banner here that the children in Calais made, for example. Any way that we can voice what they have to say is crucial. We are their voice, they don't have anyone else.

Verity Wislocki (left) and Surraya Sumner

Surraya: Change the hatred in the media, because that effects the way everyone feels about the issue.

Verity: Yes, I think that's one of the important things – to educate the population.

Surraya: We're involved in a local group called Elmbridge Can and one of the things we want to do is to start an education programme to make people understand that refugees are not the ones to blame. People often blame them for problems in healthcare or housing and this isn't the case.

Verity: I'm also producing a documentary about refugees and the media coverage of them. It's going to be called "Another News Story".

Felicity Rose

We can welcome them into the country instead of telling them they can come and then leaving kids in a refugee camp. People can help by giving donations – food, clothes – to the camps where they are running low. They can come out and volunteer. They can stand in solidarity with people.

Thom Flint, Rachel Walker and Beth Childs (left to right)

Rachel: I think the strongest thing at the moment which is making refugees feel unwelcome is the poisonous, negative narrative around the country. It's actually quite intimidating to speak positively about refugees. The bravest thing that people can actually do is walk around and be honest about how they believe refugees are welcome – to talk to other people about it. I really think that'll make a big difference.

Beth: And attending events like these is really important. When you come to something like this, you realise that anyone else can also – you don't need to be super-political to get involved.

Thom: I think there are ways you can take direct action as well. Getting involved in local volunteering groups is great, especially in major cities. There's one up in Stoke Newington, for example, that meets every Sunday afternoon at a church – it's a space for asylum seekers and refugees to come to. They offer haircuts, English language lessons and things like that.

Illustration by Joel Benjamin

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

It's late afternoon on the September 14, 2002, and Ozzy Osbourne's too drunk to make it to an award show. It only matters so much because his wife, Sharon, has been nominated for an Emmy as part of the production team behind the reality show that bears her husband's last name. That means someone from the family ought to be at that evening's Primetime Emmy Creative Arts Award telecast. Jack, a bratty and relatively friendless teenage boy and the youngest of three, doesn't want to go either. "I was like, 'Why? We're not going to win,'" he says, more than a decade later. Turns out he was wrong.

Somewhere between offering an intimate look at the so-called Prince of Darkness' pre-retirement domesticity and helping to turn MTV from a music video channel into a reality TV one, The Osbournes ended up as the first show of its kind to win a Primetime Emmy. In 2001, reality TV was still tucked into a broader "non-fiction program" category that accounted for more dramatic shows—Trauma: Life in the ER—or traditional documentary. The Osbournes, on that day when only Sharon and middle daughter Kelly bothered to turn up to the Emmys, were some of the first to pilot the kind of TV that we're so used to now: cameras following families around, shooting the banality of life in their homes and wider suburbia.

But, as any MTV obsessive from the time would already know, The Osbournes wasn't even the first time Ozzy and his family had invited an MTV camera crew into one of their skull-laden mansions. Back in 2000, when Jack was showing camera operators his revolving CD collection—"I've got System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Incubus, Slipknot"—the family were featured on an episode of Cribs. Like the perfect prequel to the four-series show that would air from 2002 to 2005, showing us everything from their Pomeranians shitting in the house to Ozzy's near-death quad bike accident, that episode of the channel's celebrity interiors show distilled so much of what would turn The Osbournes into MTV's most successful show to date, at that time.

"What kept me watching," says Michelle Kay, a PR rep from the Midlands and self-confessed fan, "was probably the same as everyone else on a surface level: the antics, the unconventional nature of their relationships. A crazy matriarch and rock and roll, slurring husband trying to parent rebellious teens. Almost every time Kelly or Jack would say something rude to their parents, I'd always think, 'I could never imagine saying that to my parents—ever.'"

And now, half of the on-screen Osbournes are back. Sunday sees the UK debut of a History Channel show centered on Ozzy and Jack taking a road trip together to tick items off their "historical bucket lists." Ozzy's obsession with World War II documentaries and memorabilia underpins the whole thing. Really, it doesn't matter what the show's about because by now Ozzy's family has become a form of visual currency. The assumption is that people will watch them. You don't have to be an original Sabbath fan or, in this case, a European history buff to care. The Osbournes are essentially the British version of the Kardashians: a famous father, a ruthless "momager," and children who grew up in front of millions before turning into tabloid fodder, then settling down.

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In most of the show's early episodes, nothing really happens. There's a point in the pilot, for example, when Kelly almost sets the family's brand-new kitchen on fire. That blunder was considered significant enough for the final edit, in an episode largely concerned with watching the family unpack. That template, of making the mundane matter, was actually set years earlier, with PBS' proto-reality show, An American Family, filmed in 1971 and broadcast in 1973. A camera crew followed around one family, the Louds, filming mother Pat buying her groceries, both parents relaxing with friends, and their children rehearsing in bands or making classmates giggle during lessons.

But what The Osbournes did was different, slick with the sheen of quick-cut edits, and closer to scripted reality than the documentary tone of An American Family or its 1974 working-class BBC spin-off, The Family. MTV made Ozzy relevant again, to a generation who'd feasibly not realized the theme tune was a crooner-style cover of his single "Crazy Train."

"I knew absolutely nothing about Ozzy before watching the show," says actress and big-time Osbournes fan Leesa Darius, from California. "I was raised by extremely conservative Christian parents, so hearing his music was off the table. I instantly became a fan of the show because their home was the antithesis of mine in the most alluring way: they swore at one another, there was drinking, there was screaming at everyone and everything—and at 13 that was super-cool."

Episode eight of season one: Jack's friend, Jason Dill, comes to stay and is basically a disgusting slob the whole time

You can see the same dynamic at play in Keeping Up with the Kardashians. It's glossier, and more wrapped up in the sexuality of the various Kardashian and Jenner women, but similarly offers insight into an "unconventional" (read: rich and loud) family. Most kids who watched the Kardashian siblings play-fight probably didn't know, or remember, that Kim et al's father was one of the lawyers who fought for OJ Simpson's innocence in the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murder trial.

In the Kardashians' case, Kim's sex tape and Kris Jenner's self-promotion savvy elevated their family name from one corner of the "trial of the century" to mass media. In Ozzy's, his reinvention as a hobbling dad—shuffling across the floor and wobbling through his stuttering sentences—cast him in a new light for children born after Black Sabbath's peak (and, especially, those whose parents hadn't introduced them to the bat-biter beforehand).

Both families turn to a matriarch to look after everything, toiling to keep her family relevant. And apparently it's worked, with this new Ozzy and Jack show arriving about a decade later than you'd have thought necessary. In the time since the Osbournes' exit from MTV, their show format has been replicated incessantly. A heavy metal singer helped lead us into the world of The Real Housewives of Orange County, Atlanta and Cheshire; of Laguna Beach: the Real Orange County and Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. Really, it's quite the legacy.

"I just liked that the show was basically about a Brummy family who've somehow ended up in this mansion in LA," says Marna, a charity worker from Manchester. "It was incongruous. There wasn't any artifice like with the Kardashians, which feels a lot more scripted." Ozzy taught us that you can make just about anyone marketable, once you place cameras in their home to humanize them. He said as much himself in a 2002 radio interview, when the host asked if what we saw onscreen was "really them."

"That's the way we are," Ozzy replied. "I was walking around Manhattan and people who wouldn't generally come up to me were going: 'It's them—it's Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.' We broadened our audience by millions." And that's the sum of it. They shrewdly turned a previously troubled and violent frontman into a lovable old dad—albeit, a dad who missed the Emmys that one time.

Follow Tshepo on Twitter and visit Joel's website for more of his illustration work.

All photos courtesy of DDA Press

You might not know his name, but if you've watched porn at some point in the last 30 years, you're probably familiar with Rocco Siffredi's ten-inch-plus schlong. Nicknamed "the Italian Stallion," the 52-year-old has appeared in over 1,500 adult movies and slept with nearly four times as many women, making him a porn icon on par with Ron Jeremy or John Holmes.

Born Rocco Tano in Abruzzo, Italy, the porn star's mother originally wanted him to be a priest. But the altar boy had the "devil between his legs," as he refers to his own penis, and a career in adult entertainment became more-or-less inevitable once he went looking for it. He's fucked through four generations of porn, from starring in 35mm feature-length movies with scripts and plots, to his constant work during the VHS, DVD, and online eras of XXX production. Now, though, Siffredi seems to have had enough of the smut game. He recently announced his retirement, a claim he's made multiple times in the past. But, as the father of two, it remains to be seen if his legendary dick will no longer be in the spotlight.

Yet these biographical facts do not interest French filmmakers Thierry Demaiziere and Alban Teurlai. Their extraordinary documentary Rocco, which recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is a portrait of the porn star that tries to make sense of his mind. It's an introspective look at Siffredi, who opens up about the death of his brother, his sexual reaction to his mother's death, his relationship with his wife and two children, and, of course, why he likes performing carnal acts on film so much. Mostly though, the film deals with the porn star's Catholic guilt. Think Boogie Nights if directed by Martin Scorsese.

The film starts in the only way possible: a close up on Siffredi's penis. We then watch as he casts porn actresses for a movie he's directing, taking his time to ensure that the actresses are prepared and ready for the sexual extremes he desires on camera, be it anal close-ups or rough play involving choking. The filmmakers then follow Rocco to Budapest, where his wife Rozsa Tano lives, and then trail him during trips to Italy and Los Angeles. Through their subject, the directors offer bigger-picture insight into the porn industry, detailing, for example, the extremes some performers are willing to go to be successful.

One of the most harrowing scenes involves a woman putting Siffredi's fingers into her mouth, mimicking a blow job, but going so deep throat that tears well up in her eyes. Siffredi is fascinating, celebratory, and depraved all at the same time. We chatted with Rocco Siffredi after the documentary's premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

VICE: Why make this documentary now?
Rocco Siffredi: I was approached a few times to make a documentary, the first by a Polish director when I was 40. At that age, I just didn't think that I had many things to say, even though I had been in the business for 20 years. Then came some Italian filmmakers, but I believed that Italian people wouldn't understand sexuality without prejudice. Then came the French . On the other side, unfortunately, it's completely ruined the business. There's free sex all over the place, so why should you pay?

You got Kelly Stafford to come out of retirement for your final film? Why was that important?
Kelly is the biggest porn star ever for me. She is the porn star. In one way, she is like me as a woman.

Is she more powerful than you because she is a woman?
One hundred percent. There is no doubt. She is very powerful. I am attracted to people who are special. I've always been attracted to special people. When they say, this person is crazy, she is absolutely crazy, that means she must be unbelievable. I don't like average people. I don't like regular people. They are really boring for me.

Do you think you will ever retire, since you keep coming back?
I've said that after this film, I will never answer this again. It means I will never say I'll retire or I'll come back. At the moment it is off, but I will never say that I won't come back.

For more information about 'Rocco' visit the project's site.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US

We might consider both Wes Anderson and Rashid Johnson artists, but, traditionally, the business dealings of a Hollywood director is handled by a melange of agents and managers, whereas the career of a fine artist like Johnson is often managed by gallerists, dealers, and collectors. Josh Roth of United Talent Agency (UTA), however, wants to offer creatives the best business insight of both Hollywood and the white cube world, and his team at UTA's relatively-fresh fine arts division might shake up any boundaries between the two.

Essentially Roth, who previously worked as an art lawyer and is an avid collector himself, has been tasked to build a team at UTA that can offer fine artists the resources and network to get involved with projects both within Hollywood and outside it. And no, this doesn't mean we should expect Kusama-branded Starbucks cups, or Beats by Koons anytime soon.

To start, UTA—known for representing Hollywood talent like Johnny Depp and Lena Dunham—has signed a handful of artists such as Rashid Johnson, Ai Wei Wei, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Judy Chicago. Roth and company can help pair them with, say, a show runner if they'd like to adapt something into a movie or TV show. Or the agency could feasibly assist with projects in the vein of Jay-Z's "Picasso Baby," a still-surreal blending of creative worlds that involved the rapper, Pace Gallery, Marina Ambramovich, and Salon 94's Jeanne Greenberg. The agency has already helped facilitate the release of Maura Axelrod's recent documentary on Maurizio Cattelan, as well as Pierre Bismuth's film about an Ed Ruscha sculpture, Where Is Rocky II? And on Saturday, September 17, UTA opened its Artists Space, a 4,500-square-foot venue in a former manufacturing plant in downtown LA to exhibit artwork by Larry Clark in the photographer/filmmaker's first California show since 2000. Clark's gallery Luhring Augustine collaborated on the exhibition.

Roth was appointed to head UTA's fine arts branch nearly two years ago, and it's given industry insiders plenty of time to foster paranoia and resentment over the talent agency's possible intrusion within the gallery system. Gallerists like Pace's Artie Glimcher and dealers like Stefan Simchowitz have echoed similar skepticism about UTA's move, and some have even asked what the hell the project is. Others have already called Roth the "Ari Gold of the art world," and claimed "the Hollywoodification of the art world has begun."

Talking to Roth makes the project sound less dramatic, though. Over the phone, he told me about UTA's goals in the art world, and how it could function as a symbiotic resource for artists, gallerists, and whoever else needs to be involved with bringing a project to fruition. If this results in more James Franco installations, so be it.

An untitled photo by Larry Clark that will be exhibited at UTA's Artist Space

VICE: Would you say part of your goal with UTA's fine arts division is to straddle both the art world and the entertainment industry seamlessly?
Josh Roth: Well, I hope it's seamless. We're trying our hardest. We've got a lot of cool stuff planned. Anytime you try to take an existing model that's been around for a really long time and make changes to it, variations to it, and introduce new elements, you get a lot of interesting, weird, good, and bad feedback. The interesting part of the challenge is navigating through that to start to bring these disparate pieces together that I think we all think, and most of the people I've talked to think, belong together.

I'm curious about how UTA's fine artist division is different from how Hollywood has worked with fine artists in the past.
Well, I think it just builds on it. I think people are having a little bit of pause because when you typically enter a gallery, there's this very classical sense that you're seeing a work of art that's been created by an individual artist in his or her studio. I think that the way that fine artists, visual artists, are telling stories now is not as static as that anymore. Of course the classical sense still exists and these artists are painting and making sculptures in traditional ways, but a lot of them are also thinking about these big social issues, and how they can tell stories that extend beyond the status quo of art.

I think if you look at of artists such as Larry Clark or Ai Wei Wei—both who we're working with—they're very similar. Ai Wei Wei's done countless museum shows and gallery shows. He's made incredibly profound objects. But he has within him this desire to tell stories that really provoke us to have these social conversations, and, for him, I think it's a very natural extension to be making a documentary about the immigration crisis that's taking place in the world today. The long story short is people like Ai Wei Wei, people like Larry Clark, they've always been making objects, but for them they branch out past that because their desire to connect with people and spark conversations and show them their points of view can't exist in just one place. We really want to help that and facilitate that .

I think there's a need for someone to help fine artists work within that gray area that doesn't quite fit commercial entertainment or the white-cube gallery world.
Totally. For example, I've been asked about why Pierre Bismuth would need an agency. We worked with him on a movie he directed called Where Is Rocky II? So, A) We can go out and help tell his story to our network of people and relationships in the entertainment business. His film is different in many ways because it deals with an art world subject—an artwork that was made my Ed Ruscha. It's important for us to know what that means, and to be able to go out and tell the story in a correct and engaging way, because as you sit down with people they're like, Well, who is Ed Ruscha? What is Rocky II? I come from a world where I know artists and I know what they do, and so for me to be able to translate their vision and put it into the context of why it should be a film or whatever context is very helpful. I think agents can do that in probably the most effective way. Where we add the value is that we sit down with the film community, the art community, these disparate communities, and we try to corral everybody together, put the right people together, so that the project can end up happening.

An installation shot of UTA's 4,500-square-foot Artist Space

Do you imagine the UTA possibly changing the conversation about how fine art and fine artists could reach a broader audience?
Yeah, but if you think about what an agent is and what the concept of agency means, it's the representation of the individual and how can you fulfill different career directions that they want to pursue. The way to even address this question is does an artist have the desire to have that conversation be changed, or furthered, or altered? You really have to have a client that's got a set of goals that then we sit down and figure out together how we further those goals. So someone who's big in the art world may not even be interested in changing that conversation. He or she may be solely interested in making films that exist within the art world.

What type of artist is the right fit then? Is it someone who, again, straddles multiple worlds?
Well, you know, it's interesting because I think you can't even profile it because you never know what ideas are within somebody and what they want to do to make that happen. I think there are two things that are really important. One is that the art world and the entertainment and media business are powered by good ideas, and I think good ideas can come from anywhere. Good ideas rule the day. But beyond that, I think it's also this commitment that the artists will make within themselves to any given project. Representation of a creative person is a two-way street. I think we view ourselves to be a collaborative agency and that is the only reason that we can be successful for these different people.

How important is star power in terms of the artists you want to collaborate with?
It helps when you do projects with famous people because it's always easy to start a conversation when you say, "Hey, Johnny Depp wants to do x, y, or z." But, you know, we represent people all across the board. Whether it's Lucien Smith, or Ai Wei Wei, or Johnny Depp, or one of our young show runners or show creators... again, when we sit down with a good idea and we think we have an idea that translates, then it's all about going out and trying to find the right buyers for that material. So yes, it helps to have a famous individual. But if you have a great idea, we can find the right people to have a conversation with and see if there's something there. One note on that point, though. I really want to stress to people that an agency being part of the art world is not an either/or proposition. I think it's really a "both" proposition. I think there are incredible galleries in the world that have nurtured careers from the very beginning until now. I mean, if you look at Barbara Gladstone or Marian Goodman—

Jeanne Greenberg's my favorite example.
Yes, Jeanne Greenberg, who we share a client with. We both work with Judy Chicago, and that's a perfect example of a "both" . Jeanne is a brilliant art dealer, she's a brilliant career manager for people in the art world, and I think we all agree between Jeanne, Judy, and UTA, that together we are much better than any one of us would be alone.

'Knoxville' by Larry Clark, which will be on view at UTA's Artist Space

For the upcoming Larry Clark exhibition, are you guys outsourcing a gallerist or bringing in a curator to work on the project?
No, we didn't. The genesis of the show is super straightforward and really personally satisfying for me. So basically how this came about was we found an incredible art space that I think was everything that we ever could have asked for in terms of a venue to present work, and have events, and create these dynamic conversations. Then, I went to Luhring Augustine, Clark's gallery in New York, and I explained exactly what I said to you and they facilitated a conversation. He had a great idea for a show, and now it's happening. But it comes from the artist's idea. I can't supplant my judgments to that of a creative person. I think we're just here to facilitate creative people executing their ideas.

And so when we think about the artist space that we have...it's really this venue to bring creative people together. There will be art on the walls. There will be sculptures in the space. But what else can we bring in for future projects? Can we bring in our playwrights to do a one-act play? Can we bring in authors that we work with to do book readings? Can we bring in our musicians to do showcases within the space? How can we curate this dynamic conversation so that people will think and experience creativity in a nuanced way?

Larry Clark's new exhibition will open at the UTA Artist Space on September 17. The venue is located at 670 South Anderson Street in Los Angeles.

Milton Guasti never planned for his free fan-made game to become the de facto next chapter in Nintendo's Metroid story. In fact, although he'd played video games since the late 1980s, a special set of circumstances forestalled Guasti from becoming a Metroid fan until years after the franchise's most popular entry had come and gone.

In 1992, when he was 12 years old, Guasti counted his pocket money and headed to the video store on the corner to peruse the owner's selection of NES games. An archaic law imposed by the Brazilian government categorizes video games as gambling, resulting in a 120 percent tax—which meant that most of the time, Guasti rented. Piracy stores that sold games at a fraction of the cost sprang up in response, smuggling rings circumvented stringent laws prohibiting imported software, and companies like Dismac created knockoff consoles that ran hacked cartridges.

Because of this limited access, Guasti's familiarity with 16-bit classics like Super Mario World and Star Fox was hit or miss. He missed out on Super Metroid, the title that later came to define a decade of his life, until emulation—a process that allows console games to be played on PCs—gained traction in the 1990s.

Even so, Super Metroid didn't land with Guasti right away. "I kind of regretted not buying a cart. I played completely out of context, starting the game at a friend's house. It was nice, but it didn't pull me in right away. It was something you needed to play by yourself, at a pace the game wants you to play. I gave the game another chance all by myself and fell in love with it."

While Mario and Zelda fans devoured new entries every few years, Metroid players often went hungry. Most Nintendo consoles hosted a single Metroid game; the Nintendo 64 didn't even get one. Following two decades of sporadic releases, 2010's Metroid: Other M (jointly developed by Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets) and this year's Metroid Prime: Federation Force, mark the most recent official installments—and both games landed flat with critics and fans. With Nintendo failing to undertake development of a new adventure through labyrinthine caverns riddled with secret paths and battles against bloodthirsty space pirates, Metroid devotees were left pining for something new.

Samus arrives on Planet Zebes in Super Metroid. Image courtesy of Nintendo.

Entering his mid-20s, Guasti's passion for games grew from merely playing to beginning to peek under the hood to figure out how the games worked. He downloaded Multimedia Fusion, a suite of creativity tools that let users create applications by dragging-and-dropping multimedia elements instead of writing code. From there, he moved on to ripping character sprites from games and pitting them against one another in M.U.G.E.N., a fighting-game engine used by amateur game makers.

Then he discovered GameMaker, a program similar to Fusion but designed explicitly for games. The retail version was too pricey for his budget, but the cracked version sold in piracy shops was unstable. A friend was kind enough to loan him his credit card to buy a license. After getting his feet wet with GameMaker's UI and logic scripting, he prepared to tackle his biggest challenge yet: a total remake of 1991's Metroid II: Return of Samus for Game Boy.

Guasti thought Metroid II an ideal project for his present circumstances. He was 26, in a stable relationship, and the co-owner of a recording studio with a friend. Life was only going to get busier; it was now or never. "I knew that eventually Nintendo would be remaking Metroid II, but in the meantime it felt like a good excuse to learn programming: to imagine Metroid II with better graphics and controls. My mindset was, whatever I do, it'll be better than an old black-and-white game."

Before writing a single line of code, he resolved to play through classic 2D Metroid titles to get a handle on how they played. He had a blast, until the time came to revisit the game he was committed to reimagining. "My interest in Metroid II started when I finished Zero Mission. I said, 'Let's see what the next chapter in the series is. How bad can it be?' Metroid II was... dated, to say it politely."

A technical marvel for its era, Metroid II is nonetheless considered the black sheep of the series. Nintendo's artists enlarged series protagonist Samus Aran to imbue her suit with fine details. The result was a more intricate design than her NES counterpart, but the tradeoff was that her larger size made Metroid II's screens feel cramped. Moreover, although the game introduced novelties like save points, every black-and-white(-and-green) tunnel looked like any other, and the absence of an in-game map exacerbated navigation.

Metroid II's large sprites offered great detail, but made it hard to play. Image courtesy of Nintendo.

Trudging through its shortcomings, Guasti slowly picked up on what made Metroid II special. He played on a Super Game Boy adapter for the Super Nintendo, sitting alone in a dark room holding a SNES controller in one hand and a printed map in the other. His small CRT television bathed the room in an eerie green light. As he pushed deeper into the caverns deep below the planet's SR388, nervousness crept in. The object of the game was to hunt down and kill Metroids—jellyfish-like alien creatures—hatching from eggs, thereby lowering the acid flooding caverns further beneath the planet's surface and revealing new regions filled with tighter warrens and tougher Metroids.

Only the sight of a cracked egg alerted players to the presence of a Metroid. Stumbling across one caused it to swoop in and attack; the soundtrack became strident, taut with panic. "I knew where the Metroids were going to be. I had a map, after all," Guasti recalled. "But with that tiny screen, and trying to interpret which room I was in—it felt like an adventure. You felt that uncertainty that a Metroid could pop up at any minute. Even though I knew what was going to be in each room, I still felt uneasy."

That uneasiness became the cornerstone of what Guasti took to calling Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R). He wanted to bottle that essence and transplant it into his take on the adventure, buttressed by contemporary trappings cherry-picked from more recent Metroid titles such as 2002's Metroid Fusion and 2004's Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance.

There was no need for Guasti to carve extra time out of his work schedule to work on AM2R. "When we were just starting out, there weren't a lot of customers, so there was a lot of dead time: Just me, watching the monitor, doing backups, and cleaning up."

GameMaker alone lacked the resources to engineer a sophisticated 2D platform. Fortunately, a programmer named Martin Piecyk had released GameMaker Platform Engine, a plug-in containing logic and physics geared toward classic 2D action games. After downloading it, one could tinker with its underpinnings and calibrate them to their needs. Guasti set about doing just that. "It was a very slow learning process, but I managed to get some sort of Metroid-y feel out of it."

Guasti made emulating Samus as exact a science as possible. Sitting at his workstation, he opened GameMaker in one window and launched an emulator running Zero Mission in another. Every movement was scrutinized, every variable in Piecyk's Platform Engine massaged just so. What he couldn't pick up on by playing, he observed by dissecting videos of speedrunners skipping huge swathes of Zero Mission by exploiting the layout of certain shafts and corridors, going through them frame by frame.

Among the first addition to AM2R was a noticeable increase to Metroid II's resolution. Game Boy displayed games at 160x144; that, combined with Samus's size, restricted visibility of on-screen terrain. For AM2R, Guasti bumped up the resolution to 320x240. That one modification triggered a domino effect. Metroid II's maps had to be expanded, which meant Samus's speed and movement needing fine tuning as well.

Left alone, AM2R's stretched-out maps would feel barren. Guasti refined, beginning with landmarks. His goal was to add on to and expand areas while retaining an air of familiarity for Metroid II fans. No landmark in any Metroid game is as recognizable as the point where Samus's ship touches down and she disembarks, ready for action therefore he needed to make sure that AM2R's starting area would feel familiar. It was the perfect place to begin dialing up that mounting sense of dread that he so desperately wanted to flow through the game. "I tried to deconstruct why I was feeling uneasy, and determine which elements were contributing to that feeling."

While Metroid II's terrain exhibited a surprising amount of variety, most backgrounds were black, largely due to technical constraints. Guasti wanted to craft a more elaborate production. One of his additions to the story entails a mission to track down a research team that went AWOL. The first time players return to the starting area after discovering one of their corpses, the sun has lowered, casting somber lighting over the scene.

"The entire tone of the game changes. It's not as upbeat and optimistic. You're ready to assume the worst for the rest of the game. It adds some maturity to the whole concept. The perception of the mission must have changed for Samus, and changes to the environment accompany that feeling."

Even with its bright colors, AM2R evokes desolation. Image courtesy of Project AM2R.

Other additions, such as a minimap, mini-bosses, and the ability to switch Samus's abilities on and off at will, fell into place over the course of several years. Early on, Guasti figured he'd be able to bang out AM2R over a few months. Then life threw the first of many curveballs. His business partner went through a divorce that sapped his finances. Soon enough, Guasti was the only one working at the recording studio, yet he was still sharing profits.

"Eventually we had to split up and close the studio. Doing so after four years of awesome stories and being a successful engineer, with plenty of satisfied customers, all the effort and investment—it was very depressing."

Over the week before Christmas 2006, Guasti and his ex-partner dismantled and tore down their office. The ordeal left him in no mood to ring in the holidays. Besides no longer owning his own business, he no longer had a job, leaving him unable to justify spending time plugging away a fan-made game that wouldn't earn him any money. Worse yet, he was on the brink of breaking up with his long-time girlfriend. On New Year's Eve, he took a quiet moment for himself, closed his eyes, and made a wish: "A better year. Just that."

Without enough money to go on vacation, he and his girlfriend spent two months scouting locations for a new studio. They settled on a derelict house near a train station. He signed a rental lease and worked tirelessly over nine months, gutting the place and equipping it for recording. Like all other goods and services in Argentina, construction cost an arm and a leg, so Guasti learned how to do everything himself: plumbing, electricity, the works.

By the end of 2007, he had a mostly-brand-new studio up and running. Dusting off AM2R after a year away, he threw himself into development. A few months later, he was satisfied with his progress, and wondered if others might agree. "I started to make some test rooms and put together a small demo."

Most demos of fan games cram power-ups and enemies into a nondescript room and let players go to town. Guasti went the extra mile by emphasizing continuity, connecting rooms and corridors, and adding ledges, corridors, items, and a boss fight.

His hope was that a few members of the Metroid community would chime in with their thoughts. What he got was an avalanche of emails and comments, and exposure on established outlets like Kotaku. "It was a nice surprise, because that wasn't the point of my project. I didn't intend to be someone who became famous or was known as the one remaking Metroid 2 instead of Nintendo. It was a personal project, and then people liked it. It was... nice."

Some fans wanted to do more than watch from the sidelines. In later demos, Guasti included code and art files—tacit encouragement for fans to experiment as he had. "I noticed that one fan had put together a suit that looked like a version of Samus from Super Metroid except it was scaled down," recalled Steve Rothlisberger, one of several artists who volunteered his free time to helping build AM2R. "It looked really good, but I thought to myself, I bet I can do better."

Guasti agreed and set up Rothlisberger with more work, mostly environmental objects and details such as spiked plants and turbines—seemingly minor flora and fauna that do wonders to accentuate verisimilitude and mood. One of his favorite pieces of work is found late in the game and, at first glance, is insignificant: a power switch. Activate it, and green lights flicker on, pulsing through the architecture.

"It ended up taking a lot of time, and it was a huge pain in the butt, but it was totally worth it because it looked so cool," Rothlisberger said. "That was one of the areas that kind of raised the bar for the ones around it."

Welcoming contributors into his fold proved a double-edged sword for Guasti. On the one hand, he was no artist. Most of the sprites he'd started with had been ripped from official Metroid games. "Having help changed the scope of the game: Now I had the power to make original assets. The Metroids became more interesting, and I changed mechanics to take advantage of the extended mobility that Samus has. Areas became bigger, things became much more detailed, and I tried out new mechanics just because I wanted to have more control of Samus."

On the other hand, more artists meant more assets to coordinate, and higher standards to live up to. "By the time we got to some of the later areas, we would look back at the first ones and realize that we could see how much better we'd gotten at what we do," Rothlisberger said.

"My new daughter pretty much didn't recognize me. I was just some guy that showed up and spent some time with her before she fell asleep, and helped with household chores. I won't do that again." -- Milton Guasti

Guasti took stock of his schedule. Every day he bounced between his studio, hammering at AM2R and between breaths, learning how to program in C#, and helping out around the house. His dedication paid off when, in 2011, a friend put in a good word for him at a software development company that landed him a job. His career change happened in the nick of time as he was due to become a father, and needed both the stability of a steady job, as well as the cash.

With that steady job, though, came a great deal of extra time spent at the office, away from his home and family. Within a few months, he was stretched to his breaking point. "My new daughter pretty much didn't recognize me. I was just some guy that showed up and spent some time with her before she fell asleep, and helped with household chores. I won't do that again. I usually work at night, but that period was very tiresome. It nearly destroyed me."

Ironically, Guasti's grueling work hours brought about relief. Prior to bringing on contributors, he had worked on AM2R alone. Every file and line of code was his jurisdiction. At his day job, however, he had to check code in and out for cohesion across the team. Observing his managers, he carried their protocols over to AM2R. Software tools were distributed, deadlines were set, and the team collaborated more often using Discord or Skype.

Looking to trim his schedule, Guasti made the difficult decision to close his audio studio and focus on his day job and AM2R."The results became much more consistent," he said. "Being organized, and being able to not waste other people's time, making sure their work was in good hands and letting them see results come alive in the game, helps motivate people who are putting their free time and their talent into something that won't make them money."

Over the next four years, production on AM2R smoothed out; he went from hammering on AM2R alone, to chipping away with his team of volunteers. By early 2016, a decade after starting, Guasti caught a glimpse of light at the end of AM2R's tunnel. Aside from a few areas missing music, sound effects, and background art, the game was nearly finished. "I'm pretty sure I wrote many times in the blog, 'The game might be finished this year,'" he recalled. "I was aiming for December at first, until I found out the date of the 30th anniversary of Metroid."

Nintendo had released Metroid on NES on August 6, 1986. As Saturday, August 6 2016 drew closer, Guasti was contacted by Ryan Barrett, an administrator at community hub Metroid Database. Barrett and his co-admins had been following AM2R for years and offered to host the game when it was ready for primetime. "We are quite used to doing this when other people release Metroid-related fan content, but I didn't expect the game to explode as much as it did," Barrett admitted.

Metroid fans grew giddy with anticipation as the final 24 hours before AM2R's release ticked away. Guasti wasn't excited, he was in a panic. A tester contacted him 30 minutes before he planned to set the file live to inform him of a game-breaking bug. Scrambling, he pulled the files, squelched the bug, recompiled his code, and re-uploaded the game.

"I think the game was ready maybe 10 minutes before the countdown hit zero. I didn't want to disappoint gamers. If they were going to wait, I wanted to be able to get it to them."

The moment AM2R went live, wave after wave of traffic pummeled hosting sites. "We had 1 terabyte of bandwidth downloaded that day and couldn't even access anything on our site or our servers due to the load that was being put on it," Barrett said.

Exhausted yet satisfied, Guasti made his rounds across streams and the AM2R sub-Reddit forum. "Seeing the game out there, seeing people have fun and just waiting for people to finish it, was very cool. Very satisfying. I was joining people on Twitch as they played for the first time, and it was nice to see how they reacted to the new changes and new areas. It was satisfying, you know?"

Planet SR388, where Metroid II and AM2R are set. Image courtesy of Project AM2R.

Their elation was short lived. A few hours later, Barrett contacted Guasti to inform him he'd received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice, claiming that AM2R infringed on Nintendo's intellectual property and requesting that the project be taken down."Our webhost, Softlayer, got the notice on Saturday," Barrett explained. "Softlayer contacted our admin. Our admin forwarded the notice to us the following day, and we took down the file. I verified the notice was real by calling the law firm using the contact information we were given."

Unfortunately, the DMCA issued to sites hosting AM2R was no joke. Admins at Metroid Database traced the notice to its source: Miller Nash, a law firm representing Nintendo.

On August 9, three days after AM2R's release and subsequent takedown, he posted a blog informing fans that he would continue development. He chose to press on as much for his team of contributors as much for himself. "They have their drama, their life stuff. Even then, they feel responsibility to jump on board on this passion project made by some dude who's nobody and lives in some other country. They believe in this project," he said.

True to his word, Guasti rolled out an update in mid-August. But a few weeks later on September 1, Nintendo answered back: Guasti, not a third-party like Metroid Database, received a DMCA in his personal email address. No longer willing to risk flying under the radar, he announced on Twitter that AM2R 1.1 would be the final update. Nintendo has not responded to our request for comment on AM2R or the DMCA takedown.

Guasti's frustration and melancholy at his decade-long effort being expunged lasted only as long as it took him to realize that nothing had really been expunged. AM2R is out there—no longer hosted by Metroid Database and his blog, but on torrent sites where fans passionate about the game can propagate it. He can't host it, but anyone interested can find it, and to Guasti, that's what matters.

"Things may not have turned exactly how I wanted, but knowing that people are enjoying a faithful Metroid experience fills me with joy. It makes every hour of dev time worth it."

Follow David Craddock on Twitter.

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A dumpster that was damaged in the bomb that hit Manhattan on Saturday night. (Photo by Justin Lane-Pool/Getty Images)

Saturday morning, a pipe bomb exploded in New Jersey during a charity marathon to benefit Marines and sailors. Then, around 8:30 PM, a volcano-like blast sent literal shockwaves through the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Police later found a pressure cooker device about four blocks away that was set to explode.

No people were injured by the New Jersey blast, and though 29 were hurt in Manhattan, no one died. Still, a large explosion in the heart of the nation's largest city—following on the heels of another bomb nearby—naturally had the country on high alert.

In Colorado, Donald Trump immediately addressed the attack in a speech at a rally. "I must tell you that just before I got off the plane, a bomb went off in New York and nobody knows exactly what's going on," he said. "But boy, we are living in a time—we better get very tough, folks." At the time, information about the explosion was extremely scarce, and Trump's critics said that there's no way he could have known it was a bomb.

At a Sunday morning press conference, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the bombing an "intentional act," but said that "there's no specific and credible threat against New York City at this time from any terror organization," adding that the bomb in New Jersey appeared for now to be unconnected. But Governor Andrew Cuomo said that "a bomb exploding in New York is obviously an act of terrorism," He deployed 1,000 officers and National Guard members to various transit hubs across the city as a precaution.

Alec Montgomery lives a block away from where the explosion took place. "It shook the entire house," the 18-year-old told VICE. "It was insane. I felt my own body shake as well." The teen assumed it was a car crash because it took people so long to react but changed his mind when ambulances streamed by.

He says that he's allowed to leave the block but needs to show his ID with his home address before being let back into the blast zone.

For now, officials seem to be taking a cautious approach—evidence is still being gathered, and no one knows who planted this bomb, or why.

"I don't think we know and I think it would not be appropriate to speculate until we do know," Hillary Clinton said in a statement. "Let's try to figure out as much as we can by having the experts, professionals, go through this try to determine what you have to in order to trace it back and then see who's behind it."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Actor Ramsey Noah in Izu Ojukwu's '76

For its 40th anniversary TIFF once again rolled into town with a wide range of films—from the most gory (Raw; think cannibalism) and the most anticipated (Magnificent Seven) to the controversy-ridden Birth of a Nation. The festival has also had several films showcasing African stories with an incredible eight films emerging from Nigeria, one of them being the long-awaited '76 from well-known Nigerian filmmaker, Izu Ojukwu. Four years in the making, '76 is inspired by the 1976 military coup that saw soldiers usurp control of the Nigerian government from then Head of State, Murtala Mohammed. Throughout the film, Ojukwu weaves the politics of power, gender, and western intervention throughout the lives of his characters and creates a piece that is as timeless as it is deeply rooted in the fabric of Nigerian political society. VICE talked to the film's director, Izu Ojukwu, to find out why he chose to tell this particular story and what message he hopes to offer the audience.

VICE: Why did you choose to make a period piece during a time when everyone is so enthralled by the present?
Izu Ojukwu: There's a popular adage in my country that says, "A man cannot know where he is going if he doesn't know where he is coming from," and I think the past is something we can always learn from. 1976 was a very decisive time for Nigeria that saw us miss out on many economic opportunities. There was a big oil boom in Nigeria during this time, but because of political strife many investors were turned away from investing in Nigeria, because of this political uncertainty. The military coup slowed down the country and negatively affected the country's policies. I feel like this was a story that needed to be told so people could see the impact it had.

It's always difficult telling a political story as they are always rooted in some kind of controversy. Did you tell the people's story or did you take your own creative liberties?
The film has fictional content, but I did tell the people's story. As time has gone by I have noticed that there has been a steady scrapping of history from the school curriculums in Nigeria. From what I have seen, young people these days do not seem that interested in history. People have little respect for history and it seems to be going into extinction. Telling this story was my way of trying to preserve that history and making sure people never forget what happened and what the country has been through. Making a film that was both informative and hopefully interesting to watch is something I wanted to do so people never forget our history.

So I know one of the reasons the film took so long to make was the difficulty in getting approval from the military, who finally acquiesced. Did their involvement limit your story in any way or did it help move it forward?
The problem was getting the military to agree to be involved because I wanted their input to add authenticity and real life experience to the story. It took two years for them to finally agree to help me. But I wanted that authenticity and I wanted the accuracy their input would offer. I even had the chance to talk to the man who was the president at that time (Major Olesgun Obasanjo), who wanted to give his side of the story. When he saw the movie he liked that it gave the war a human aspect, which was one he had never actually thought about. During that time he was not thinking about the families or the lives of those involved in the war. As the head of state his main concern was National security and he never thought about the people whose lives were lost in the process. He believes that he should not be held accountable for their lives as his first priority was the safety of the country, and he was only following procedure.

Sidenote: After the assassination of Murtala Mohammed, those involved were tried and found guilty of committing a treasonous act, a crime punishable by public execution. The soldiers were also stripped of their military ranking and their families removed from the barracks, leaving many of them financially insecure and socially isolated because of the crimes of their loved ones.

How did you go about telling the narrative of the soldiers wives?
It was very intentional for me to include their side of the story as it's something you do not hear about that often. These women had married these men and were loyal to them and to their country, and they never bargained for their husbands committing treasonous acts. The original '76 soldiers were publicly executed and their entire military legacy was erased. It was as if they were never in the military. Their families were left with nothing and it was their wives, these women, that had to struggle to keep the family together and keep going. The names of their husbands, which they had taken as their own, made it very hard for them to live in Nigeria and some of them could not even enroll their children in school because of the negative legacy left behind by their husbands. This was something that I really wanted to show and also show my respect for these women.

Your story is based in Nigeria, but do you think it has themes that can relate to other parts of the world?
Most certainly. Military coups are not just a Nigerian thing. They've happened all over the world and continue to happen. We have seen them most recently in Turkey, Sudan, Mali and Guinea. This film is based in Nigeria but it's story is something that can be taken away by people from all over the world and I hope many people will be able to relate to it, not just Nigerians.

Follow Tari Ngangura on Twitter.

I'm dead. Mountain View Cemetery photo via Flickr user mertxe iturrioz

I know, I know. You probably don't want to read another whiny article about how expensive it is to live in Vancouver. Thankfully this is not one of those. This is a whiny article about how expensive it is to die in Vancouver.

In an interview with The Province newspaper, a manager for Vancouver's only cemetery said it now costs $25,000 for a literal coffin-sized plot of ground. (That's on par with a one-year lease on an average two-bedroom apartment in the city, but could maybe be considered a deal if you think about how long you'll use it?)

Anyway, I did some math, and it turns out this might be the only price tag rising faster than the cost of housing in the city.

Over the last three decades, the cost of a single-detached home (still the standard measure for some reason) has risen from about $135,000 to nearly $2 million. That's a pretty ridiculous 1,300 percent hike since 1986.

Read More: Nine Students Own $57 Million of Property in Vancouver

A grave at Mountain View Cemetery (still one of the best places to smoke weed and take spooky photos, by the way) used to cost $110 before 1986. That means the cost of a hole where you bury dead people has gone up ~22,727 percent over the same period.

Predictably, this is causing a bit of a buying frenzy. "People are buying graves not because they are dying tomorrow, but because they know prices will go up," a cemetery field operations worker told The Province.

The cemetery raked in $2.4 million in revenues last year from the sale of just 75 graves. You can bet they'll make a killing on the last 800 spots they have left.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

Passing Clouds founder Eleanor Wilson giving a talk outside the venue (Photos by the author)

On Saturday, Londoners marched through Hackney to shout about the city's dying nightlife. The protest was organised by the staff of Passing Clouds, the Dalston venue that was recently shut down after developers bought the building in a "secret deal", evicting the ten-year-old club and putting 100 people out of work.

Saturday's demo – "The March for London's Dying Culture and Nightlife" – was a protest against the loss of this particular space, and the slow bleeding out of clubs and music venues across London. According to the Music Venues Trust, London has lost 35 percent of its grassroots venues since 2007, due mostly to increased rent princes. And, of course, Fabric – the city's most iconic club – was shut down a couple of weeks ago, ostensibly because of drug deaths in the venue, but allegedly because the hard-up local council thought it could make a bit of cash out of the process.

When marchers gathered in Hoxton Square they looked as much like a gang of people preparing for a night out as they did a gaggle of political protesters. Activists dressed in multi-coloured pinstripe shirts and unicorn horns daubed people's faces with glitter; others in heart-shaped glasses got their placards ready, writing slogans like "KEEP LONDON ALIVE" and "COMMUNITY OVER CORPORATE".

Speakers outside Passing Clouds

From Hoxton Square, hundreds of people marched towards Dalston, following samba drums, painted saxophones and a punk band dancing half naked on a truck. At what was once the colourful Passing Clouds building – and is now a repossessed shell of its former self, its doors and shutters painted gentrification-grey and spray-painted with protest slogans – the crowd was greeted by a gospel singer and a bonfire. They then headed up to Gillett Square, where speeches were given by the Night Time Industries Association, Fabric staff and a couple of Passing Clouds' regular performers.

Speakers impressed the importance of preserving London's nightlife, pointing out that venues like Passing Clouds aren't just settings for drinking and dancing, but important community spaces. MC Angel, who started the Lyrically Challenged nights at Passing Clouds, said during her speech: "Passing Clouds gave me hope when I didn't believe in my life any more. I was mentored by the community as an artist and went on to have many successes in the music industry."

Founder of the Night Time Industries Association, Alan Miller, expressed his concern about the future of London without these communities. "Britain used to be a sexist, racist society where people would fight on a Friday – we changed that," he said, about the power of clubs to bring people together. The Fabric crew reminded the crowd that 250 people had lost their jobs because of the club's closure, and said it was likely to have a "knock-on effect on all businesses around".

Disraeli making a speech in Gillett Square

The speeches also touched regularly on the over-valuation of profit and the undervaluing of culture. As poet Disraeli put it: "We are Donny Hathaway, we are Miles Davis; We are bad sleepers, good neighbours; Triumph in our small dark spaces, while you walk around like bank statements."

A similar sentiment was expressed by Dele Sosimi, who began playing music with Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti in Egypt in the 1980s. He said: "They asked me to play for 45 minutes at the Royal Albert Hall and then pause so they could sell drinks in the interval, and then play for another 45 minutes. I said no. When I play, I carry on playing. At Passing Clouds we would jam until 6 in the morning."

The speeches weren't only criticisms of capitalism, but food for thought on how one can prevent rent prices from affecting cultural communities; how big business and grassroots venues can coexist.

Eleanor Wilson, owner of Passing Clouds, explained that the venue is currently in the process of applying to be recognised as an Asset of Community Value, which would allow it to be subject to protection from development based on its services to the community. The club is also lobbying Hackney Council to enact Article 4, which would prevent landlords from changing the use of certain venues.

The speeches at Gillett Square ended with the spokesman from the Music Venues Association asking a question of the developers and councils currently decimating London's nightlife: "Can we not find a compromise?"

More on VICE:

Dalston and the Dangers of a Thriving Nightlife Scene

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(Photo: Jake Lewis)

You'll never find a situation as ripe for hook-ups as university. It's like school, except now you're not terrified of someone seeing your naked body. Plus, immaturity destroyed your first relationship, so you've come to terms with the fact that love is temporal and sex is forever.

Tinder – which was actually launched on university campuses in the US – has streamlined the university hook-up experience, cutting out the Jägerbombs and distinctly average conversations, and allowing you to sift through the chaff from your single bed instead of the sidelines of the SU. However, not all universities are created equal; it's only natural that different establishments attract different people – New Statesman readers and Tab readers, strapping sports hogs and shrinking violets – and that some of them are more conventionally attractive than others.

Tinder has collected data to find out which universities in the UK have the most right-swiped men and women, and given that data exclusively to us. We spoke to students and recent grads from these universitiess to find out why they think their college beat out the rest.

THE TOP RIGHT-SWIPED UNIS FOR MEN

1) University of London
2) University of Oxford
3) University of Brighton
4) University of Leeds
5) University of Cardiff
6) University of Sheffield
7) University of Cambridge
8) University of Manchester
9) University of Bristol
10) University of Nottingham
11) University of Edinburgh
12) University of Birmingham
13) University of Liverpool

FIRST: UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

(Photo: Jake Lewis)

ULU is a staggering beast that draws in international students in their swathes, and plenty of comfortably middle-class Brits. I say that, because how could you possibly afford to live in London as a student without considerable parental wealth to fund that Maida Vale studio apartment and the many, many £6 pints.

"University of London attracts poshos, and they usually have the money to make the most of what they've got," says Ellie*, a student atCity, University of London. "Most men aren't actually naturally that good looking, in my opinion, but they have the props;most of the time, being on Tinder in London is like being in a Mayfair club: lots of rich boys popping champagne everywhere. They're probably getting right-swiped because their profiles are better than the rest, especially around certain areas like Clapham."

SECOND: OXFORD UNIVERSITY

(Photo: Jake Lewis)

It might come as a surprise that the home of so many strawberry-blonde, chino-wearing fancy Dans piques this much interest. And yet, a lot of women find Jack Whitehall attractive, so I suppose it's best to never make assumptions about the sex lives of people who aren't you.

"Perhaps men are right-swiped here because we're all so smug that we went to Oxford that it'd be in their description of themselves, and most girls would put 'intelligent' in their list of desirable attributes," suggests recent Oriel College graduate Alice*. "Oxford is full of overachievers. They won't just be reasonably intelligent; they'll be good at sport or something else, too. We're just great, really."

Intelligence, skills and arrogance: a heady mix. For the pinnacle of this kind of guy, look out for one with "University of Oxford, not OXFORD Brookes, absolute LOL" in their bio.

THIRD: BRIGHTON

Girls probably Tindering (Photo: Jake Lewis)

As Brighton's unofficial Poet Laureate Terry Garoghan said of the city: "Everyone sleeps with everyone, but there's nowhere to park your car." Brighton's free and easy; whether you're a crust-punk or a genderqueer anarchist vegan, anything goes in London-by-Sea.

Maddie, a Brighton University student, said: "In Brighton, the blokes are mostly skateboarding weed smokers, which is probably a lot of Brighton girls' type. Maybe they're more likeable because they're a bit hippy or edgy, so their photos are taken by their photographer mates instead of being a shite club photo."

Never underestimate the repulsive force of a group Oceana photo.

Maddie goes on to comment that Brighton friend groups are highly incestuous. Maybe there's something in that sea air that makes everyone hornier, or perhaps they're just slightly more forgiving than the average heterosexual woman, considering they don't live in a polluted shithole and see every man through a film of weary city cynicism.

FOURTH: LEEDS

It's a yes from them (Photo: Jake Lewis)

Combine some of the dirtiest nightlife in the country with the dirt cheap costs of living, and it's no surprise that hook-up culture flourishes in Leeds. Yasmin, a Leeds student, says, "Everyone is so laid back about sex here. I've hooked up with people on Tinder and then become friends with them after quite a bit, whereas guys from home feel like they have to bolt after sex. Their profiles are usually pretty simple – no more than two or three lines listing their interests, and not cringe at all."

She adds that the majority of men are solid sevens. "Whether they're socialist lefty boys who wear baseball caps and sweaters, or emo boys who have taken all their photos on disposables, they're all just very nice to look at."

Sarah*, another student, thinks Leeds ranks so highly because there seems to be a natural match for everyone. Which might have something to do with the fact that there are absolutely hundreds of thousands of them there. "There are plenty of your alt, scruffy people who look ragged, and we like them," she explains. "But also you've got what we call the 'Calling Crowd' at Leeds, who'll wear smart jeans, a top and go to nice bars. There are plenty of girls – especially at Leeds Met – who'll go full-on curlers in their hair for uni every day who'd right-swipe all of them."

Maybe it's true what your mum says: there's someone out there for everyone.

FIFTH: CARDIFF

(Photo: Kieran Cudlip)

Speak to any straight or bi woman and it's universally agreed that Welsh men are beautiful specimens. Collected in one capital city, the cream of the crop has evidently gravitated towards a Russell Group university.

According to Cardiff University student Mared, Welsh women are in agreement. "I think about 99 percent of the guys here play rugby, so it helps when pretty much every other guy on Tinder's picture is an action shot of him getting down and dirty," she says. "The profiles may be generic as any other you'd find – standard Tinder bio: '6ft 1, rugby, sport student' – but the quality is there. You'd have that standard bio anywhere in the UK, but the lads would look like Quasimodo crossed with a potato, posing in a rugby kit. The lads in Cardiff are fit."

THE TOP RIGHT-SWIPED UNIS FOR WOMEN

1) University of London
2) University of Leeds
3) University of Cambridge
4) University of Cardiff
5) University of Bristol
6) University of Sheffield
7) University of Birmingham
8) University of Manchester
9) University of Oxford
10) University of Liverpool
11) University of Nottingham
12) University of Edinburgh
13) University of Brighton

FIRST: LONDON

The author, a right-swipeable London student (Photo: Jake Lewis)

London winning both the male and female right-swiping leagues is really a cheat. ULU combines every college across the capital, from Goldsmiths (your guardianship-dwelling girls with art foundations and political armpit hair) to LSE (trilingual, almost-Oxbridge darlings with Tory dad's backing and a place on the Lacrosse team).

Recent City graduate Will has a theory about why girls who went to university in London are swiped-right more than those who went anywhere else: "It's probably down to the fact that there's so many different kinds of people who move to London unis. Whatever type of person you are, you'll find someone who matches you and your personality. And being somewhere that's so culturally rich generally means you're going to be a lot cooler than the person who went to uni in Stafford or some mad market town in middle England. Also, the sheer number of people equals more fit people, just through basic probability."

SECOND: LEEDS

Photo by Flickr user Sam Chua

As we've established, the beautiful people of Leeds are on one. Self-professed "hetero as it gets" Guy says of his university: "Lot of fit lasses there, very edgy place." He also puts the number of right-swiped women down to the city's nightlife. "People are out every night and everyone knows each other through friends, so I think you'd be more likely to match people if you've heard of them before."

The profiles are also well-formed, apparently. "Girls' profiles will almost always just be pictures of them, not with friends," says Guy. " night-out clothes, selfies with snapchat filters." And what red-blooded man could resist a half-woman, half-dog?

John, another Leeds student, agrees that it's something to do with the girls' profiles. "Leeds' reputation as a cool uni leads to lots of people going there who are very image conscious, and even when people aren't, their social group pressures them into being more so," he says. "They're aware enough of how they come across to create a highly successful Tinder profile."

Solo angel-halo selfies in "night out" clothes: it's the vision of femininity every man truly wants.

THIRD: CAMBRIDGE

(Photo: Alex Hoban)

Wandering around the "city of perspiring dreams", voices redolent of the British Raj floating on the breeze, who could imagine a more pleasant university city for a budding one-night romance? But why exactly does Cambridge rank so highly? Could it be that the city is home the most stunning women imaginable? Are the men all desperately punting above their weight?

"I'd guess that the number of right-swipes has less to do with the characteristics of Cambridge's female population and more to do with its size," says recent graduate Tom. "Cambridge is so tiny that when someone pops up who you think you could half-imagine fancying, the thought is: 'Beggars can't be choosers!' I'd guess – this might be total bullshit – that it's the size-pressure making people swipe right more, fearful that there just aren't enough people to go around. Or, another theory: maybe Cambridge is so boring that people are thirsty as fuck?"

FOURTH: CARDIFF

(Photo: Jake Lewis)

Considering the apparently very fit Cardiff men are right-swiped with abandon, it's nice to know the city's women aren't left for a three-year drought. Coming in at fourth place, perhaps they're just as desirable as their sporty counterparts.

"The girls here are sound – it's that simple," says Aled, a recent Cardiff graduate, who claims to have spent the last four years "basically just right-swiping" all of them. "There are a lot of Valley girls at Cardiff, and to be honest, I prefer Welsh girls to other girls in the rest of the UK. They're legends, down for banter and absolutely stunning. I think it's a mix of that and the fact that you know most people about, whether that's from seeing them down Cardiff Bay or at clubs and bars."

FIFTH: BRISTOL

(Photo: Jake Lewis)

It's surprising that Bristol's male students find the time to Tinder between scaling the city's hills and scoffing pills like Skittles at Motion and Thekla. But West Country women have a high success rate – better than their male counterparts.

"I think the stat says more about the guys in Bristol than the girls," says kindly Jack, a Bristol University student. "But if there was a running theme in Bristol girls' profiles, I suppose a few constants are the obligatory Love Saves the Day Festival pic, one from their holiday to somewhere exotic yet generic, and some form of witty one liner about one of the clubs on the Triangle. Plus, 90 percent of Bristol is bronzed blondes from Surrey – maybe that has something to do with it."

* Names have been changed because employed people don't want chatting shit about the opposite sex to bring down their Tinder game (or future career prospects).

@hannahrosewens

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Elizabeth, New Jersey, mayor J Christian Bollwage answers questions after another suspicious package was found in New Jersey. AP Photo/Mel Evans

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Another Device Explodes in New Jersey
A suspicious device found near a New Jersey transit station exploded Monday morning as a police robot was examining it. It follows Saturday's explosion in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood that wounded 29 people, and an explosion at Seaside Park in New Jersey that caused no injuries. Authorities are now engaged in a manhunt for an Elizabeth, New Jersey, man named Ahmad Khan Rahami who they believe may be connected to the bombing in New York. —NBC News

FBI Probes Minnesota Stabbings as Potential Terrorism
The FBI is investigating the contacts and possible motivation of a Somali man who wounded nine people at a Minnesota mall after ISIS claimed credit for the knife attack. Police said Dahir A Adan, 22, mentioned Allah during the attacks at the St. Cloud mall on Saturday evening before an off-duty police officer shot him. —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Clinton Losing Support Among Millennials
The latest national polls and swing state surveys show support for Hillary Clinton sliding with voters under 35. A national Quinnipiac poll showed Clinton capturing 31 percent of the vote among 18-to-34 voters, only a five-point lead over Donald Trump. Polls in Michigan and Ohio also showed dips in support among young voters. Many young people are telling pollsters that they'll support Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Jill Stein rather than Clinton or Trump. —NBC News

NFL Chief Expresses Support for Anthem Protest
Protests continued among NFL players on Sunday, as the LA Rams's Robert Quinn raised his fist and three Miami Dolphin players kneeled during the National Anthem. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell expressed support for the "productive" protest, saying they were "trying to make things happen in communities." —USA Today

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Syrian Ceasefire Under Threat After Airstrikes
Airstrikes have hit rebel-held parts of Aleppo, threatening a fragile ceasefire deal in Syria. The attacks on Sunday night followed a US air raid in Deraa that killed ten people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The US military says it may have unintentionally hit Syrian troops while carrying out a raid against ISIS. —Al Jazeera

Putin-Backed Party Wins Russian Election
United Russia, the party backed by President Vladimir Putin, has won a clear majority in the county's parliamentary election. With 93 percent of the votes counted, the party has secured 54 percent of the vote, suggesting the party should secure 343 seats in the 450-member parliament. —CNN

India Blames Kashmir Attack on Pakistan
An attack on an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir has left 17 Indian soldiers and four suspected rebel fighters dead. India's general Ranbir Singh said Sunday's assault bore the hallmarks of Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Pakistan denies sending fighters into Kashmir. —Reuters

Angela Merkel's Party Suffers Historic Defeat in Berlin
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union of Germany Party has lost state elections in Berlin, winning 17.6 percent of the vote, its lowest-ever share. The right-wing, anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany made significant gains and will enter the state parliament for the first time. —BBC News

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'Games of Thrones' Breaks Emmys Record
HBO's Game of Thrones has broken the record for the highest number of Emmy Awards ever won by a drama series. It won three Emmys, including Best Drama, taking its total number to 38, beating the previous record of 37 held by Frasier. —TIME

'Sully' Stays at No.1 at Box Office
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Tributes Paid to Iranian Cyclist in Rio
Sunday night's closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games saw tributes to Iranian cyclist Bahman Golbarnezhad, who died after a crash in the C4-5 road race 24 hours earlier. International Paralympic Committee president Philip Craven said athletes were "united in grief."—CNN

Kanye West Joins Instagram
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VICE News Reporter Released After Arrest at Trump Event
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Developer Wants to Sue Gamers for Bad Reviews
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The invite for the Pyer Moss spring/summer 2017 show read "Bernie vs. Bernie." With the ongoing presidential election, it was clear that one of those names was Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate known for his socialistic views. And it only took a few minutes to figure out the other Bernie was referring to Bernard Madoff, the infamous stockbroker who committed the biggest Ponzi scheme in US history.

While political fashion shows have become a noticeable trend this season, Pyer Moss designer Kerby Jean-Raymond is an OG at this sort of thing. A year ago, Raymond made headlines when he opened his spring/summer 2016 show with a film featuring footage of the deaths of Eric Garner and Walter Scott. He followed that up with a fall/winter 2016 show that examined depression, particularly in the black community. Both of these shows came as fully realized brand positions that spoke to Raymond's willingness to take a stand through his creations.

His spring/summer 2017 show followed in this tradition. It took place on September 11th, the 15th anniversary of the attacks at the World Trade Center, the day when the two 110-story towers that were once seen as icons of American capitalism came tumbling down. The show was both a condemnation of the greed within the American free market—from chattel slavery to modern exploitation—and an expression of Raymond's own personal struggles—his brand is embroiled in a lawsuit with a former business partner involving fraud accusations.

The show opened with a scene of four black female sopranos wearing name tags like "No Name" and "Anonymous" while they rang cash registers. Their humming gave way to spoken word artist and playwright Cyrus Aaron, who appeared on the runway and recited his poem "More Money, More Problems," which was written specifically for the show.

"We sure are a long way from home, but they still make us pay for it," Aaron said, alluding to the struggle of modern blacks and the plight of their ancestors, who were forcibly brought to this continent in chains. "Here we go again; more money, more problems," he said before the models finally took to the runway wearing a mix of suiting, leather jackets, and sportswear. There were sweatshirts featuring photos of Bernie Madoff's arrest as well as jackets emblazoned with the word greed in varsity letters.

This complex runway show may have been a product of Raymond's creative prowess and personal struggles, but it's execution was certainly a team effort. To bring "Bernie vs. Bernie" to life, he tapped a handful of talented creatives.

From the spoken word artist who opened the show, and the DJ in charge of imbuing the event with a texture that reflected the inability for people to "call in black," to the stylist who put the looks together without a moodboard, and the shoe designer who extended Kerby's concepts to footwear—all of these people came together to make "Bernie vs. Bernie" a reality. So we called them up to get deeper insight into Raymond's process and learn a bit more about the genesis of the compelling runway show.

Cyrus Aaron, Spoken Word

Kerby came to my play Someday earlier this year and loved it. He really connected with this one scene in particular and it's entitled "To Kill a Blackbird." It's based on the Black Lives Matter activist Marshawn McCarrel, who committed suicide in February of this year. Coincidentally, Kerby paid his respects to him as well and shed light on mental illness and depression in his last show. So we instantly vibed and we talked about the weight of it all and how heavy it is to be a leader and also hold onto your sanity. It was a really good conversation so we just kept talking and he said he had to have me in the show, but didn't know what he wanted to do at first.

Probably a few months later, maybe in May, we met up again and we had a long conversation about his ideas and what he was going through personally with legal issues. We were just talking about money issues that are particularly prevalent for young black entrepreneurs. He had this rough idea of pairing the two Bernie's against each other in theory and I was like 'OK, I can see it.' That's a heavy topic when you're talking about finance and economics, especially through the black gaze, but I knew what he wanted to do. From there, I went to work and came up with three different poems for him. He ended up choosing "More Money More Problems."

There's just so much to uncover. You know, the legacy of the black dollar, not just America but globally when you factor in the colonization and imperialism. It all presents so much text and narrative to explore that I couldn't put my pen down. The ideas just kept churning and especially because I don't usually have these platforms—particularly in a place like fashion week—I wanted to feel like I was doing it justice while also having a cohesive story.

I also helped direct the segment with the sopranos. Going from the foundation of Kerby's idea—he had done the opera singers last season and I think he liked the thread of including that. We were trying to figure out a way to make that fit without having it be too much since I was already opening with a poem and no models walking. That itself was already extending the show outside of it's normal parameters. As Austin Millz got into the conversation, as he was building the sound for the show, we started hearing this idea about having so much pain about being at work when there's so much going on in the world outside. I think that represents the duality of being an everyday citizen trying to operate within your 9 to 5 knowing that in some cities in the US families aren't getting drinkable water. We were really trying to use that 30, 45 second window for the singers to convey that texture and convey that weight.

Austin Millz, Soundscape

I'm actually a DJ out of New York. So, I do a lot of underground parties and clubs. A homegirl of mine reached out to me and said Kerby was looking for a curator in terms of his new line and his new show. So we set up a meeting.

I actually went into the meeting not knowing what was going on, but I left proud and happy to be a part of the process. I ended up setting the tone musically while Cyrus Aaron was reciting the poem as well as directing the sopranos who were humming and singing behind me. I was basically designing the sound sculpture for the whole show—the models as well.

I went through two or three ideas in my head before I got to the one I really wanted. I wanted to evoke a very emotional, angry, yet overcoming vibe with the music. I felt like that really got across with the key of the drums. I wanted something passionate and with the music I created I think I got all that emotion out.

I love the fact that this show had a cause and a political message. I really did go into this situation not knowing what was going to happen and as it has happened, I've seen the message and felt its power. Being a person of color, being from inner-city Harlem, it all made sense for me. Especially since it was during fashion week.

Salehe Bembury, Shoe Designer

Kerby and I met about three years ago at a dinner at The Box. I started talking to him and his girlfriend and we started talking about shoes. With me being the shoe addict that I am, that sort of turned into a conversation about fashion. At the time, I wasn't very familiar with his brand and what he was involved with and he wasn't very familiar with what I was involved with, so it was just two like-minded individuals sparking up conversation.

This show was somewhat last minute from an execution standpoint. Kerby and I talk every week about everything from fashion to culture. So we kind of started floating this idea and I mentioned we could potentially use silicone to get the effect we wanted.

The extension of the outsole was basically supposed to act as a metaphor for anchors that bog us down in life. Obviously the subject matter of the show was more of a financial aesthetic but there's all sorts of things that can bog us down in life. We clearly couldn't mold the shoes in concrete, but I figured we could do something that had the visual of stagnant hard material but still flexes with the foot and still functions for the show. Silicone was a good way of accomplishing that.

The things that drive Kerby and my creative process are slightly different. From my perspective, for the most part, I'm acting off of nostalgia. The reason I'm a footwear designer comes from basketball and watching NBA with my dad when I was a kid. It's about 90s rap culture and that sort of stuff. I'm selfish with my design to the point that I'm always trying to make the five-year-old kid inside of myself happy. With Kerby's design, it has way more focus. He's tackling bigger issues—issues that I care about, but I'm not necessarily tackling through design. If anything it was important for me to be a part of a design initiative that just had more significance to it because that's not necessarily what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Gro Curtis, Art Direction

We met through my agent maybe two and a half years ago when he booked me because he liked my work. Strangely enough we just clicked together. We are not yes people so our relationship developed together even though we can sort of fight. It's not the typical designer-stylist relationship where there's a moodboard and you get together six days before the show to put together the looks... We are constantly texting each other. We've never had a moodboard. We just talk about what's happening. Sometimes I'm just pestering him with personal questions that I want to know. That's why each collection has an emotional, private, or intimate edge to it.

The idea for this collection was born in June. He was going through some financial problems. I mean, the brand was almost close to bankruptcy and he was not sure if he was going to be able to do a collection. I just told him if you're going out, go with a bang, use this as a theme. This is about you.

In fashion, you have 70 percent of designers who don't make money. You have stylists and editors who don't make money. You have these street style stars who borrow all of their clothes. So it's one huge paradox to work in an industry of luxury, but over half of those people don't have any money. Yes, there's people from Vogue who have trust funds and stuff like that. But a ton of editors and stylists, designers and photographers are constantly struggling with money. It's all bullshit.

As a certain symbol of financial disaster in New York of course there's Bernie Madoff. I didn't want to touch Trump and Kerby agreed because everyone is doing Trump in every possible way from artists to fashion designers. But it was fascinating how many people forgot about Madoff and Wall Street. He was like the biggest thief in history and no one is talking about it anymore.

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Photo Ankesh Shah

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

Six years ago, theater director Ben Buratta started an unusual collective called Outbox Theatre. Consisting solely of LGBTQ performers, they hold workshops with youth groups across the UK, and improvise performances based on interviews with LGBTQ people—a kind of oral history project on the stage. Their newest play is called Affection and is an examination of what it's like to live with HIV today—a prescient topic, given that rates of infection are at an all-time high.

Unlike a lot of theater and art surrounding HIV, Affection aims to eschew the traditional grand narrative of "you catch HIV, you get AIDS, you die," explains Ben. Instead, it's made up of many small, fragmented stories—snapshots of the intimacy and interactions as experienced when you're positive. This format—along with a bit of contemporary dance; a clubby, electronic soundtrack; and big, blown-up video projections of the body—makes for a very modern look at an epidemic that is sometimes, mistakenly, thought of as a thing of the past.

To find out more about Affection, we talked to Ben during its run at London gay pub The Glory, ahead of performances later this month in Birmingham. He explained why fighting HIV and its stigma is so important right now, how Outbox seeks to paint an accurate picture of living with the virus, and what he hopes Affection's eclectic set of stories can show people.

VICE: Where did the idea for Affection come from?
Ben Buratta: I'd been interviewing LGBT people for a long time, and when I spoke to gay men, stories of HIV would always come up. I was nervous about doing a play on HIV because I didn't want it to fall into clichés, do something that's been done before or be gloomy. But I heard a lot of interesting, funny, and sexy stories, and thought, 'Actually, there is something really theatrical about this.' There's also a lot in the press at the moment about HIV. With rates on the rise, now seemed like the right time to make a really contemporary piece about it. There's still a lot of stigma around the virus, so the aim of the play was to share stories and start an open conversation.

How did you begin?
I started by collecting specific interviews. Then, going into rehearsals, it was about listening to those interviews, reading out excerpts, responding to them, and building scenarios around them. A leading HIV and sexual health clinic in Soho, 56 Dean Street, came to talk to us so we had a really good understanding of what was going on, as did an HIV charity called Positive East.

Often when you see theater, you follow one character, usually a straight white man. We wanted to mess that up.

Why did you decide to tell lots of small stories, as opposed to one central narrative?
We didn't want to have one narrative for a few reasons. The first was that we wanted to explore a diverse range of people's experiences of living with HIV. If there was only one protagonist, we wouldn't get that diversity. Secondly, we wanted something with a queer form. Often when you see theater, there's a heteronormative narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, and you follow one character, usually a straight white man. We wanted to mess that up and have many stories told from different perspectives.

The play alludes to a lack of education around HIV—is that a big problem?
I think the major thing about HIV contraction is a lack of education; we don't learn about this stuff in schools. The young people I talked to didn't understand what the risks were because no one had told them. There's a danger in making a play like Affection too didactic, like a public health broadcast, so we just wanted to play with the idea that people don't know the risks they're encountering.

There's one scene where an older guy tries and fails to explain to a one-night stand that he's undetectable. It's a term not many people are familiar with...
Yes, that was something that came up a lot when we were talking to Positive East and 56 Dean Street. Someone positive is "undetectable" when their viral load is low due to medication, meaning they're at much less risk of passing the virus on. I thought it presented an interesting moral dilemma for the audience: on one hand, people would say you have a moral obligation to tell people you're sleeping with; on the other hand, if you know you're safe... I thought it was fascinating to let the audience come to their own decision.

There's a heartbreaking scene at the end, when a guy is speaking to a sort of ghost of his ex who died when AIDS first began to spread. Was that dialogue based on a specific story?
It wasn't a specific story—it was a few different people's stories, based on that time during the 1980s when so many people died. So many of the people we spoke to, their friends were just gone within a few years, and we couldn't forget that, just as they couldn't. Often, they'd talk about survivor guilt, or talk about it like a battleground, like the First World War, where people were there one minute and gone the next.

I suppose your cast was always going to be diverse if you use LGBTQ actors from across the UK, but were there any conscious decisions around casting?
It was quite difficult, because with every other play Outbox has done, I've made an effort to make sure the cast represented men, women, and non-binary people. But the stories we were looking at here centered around the gay male experience; it made sense to have more men than women this time. However, I did want to represent women, as during the AIDS crisis women were so important to the community, and we included a trans guy in the cast because it's something we don't hear about much, even though rates within the trans community are really high. And then, of course, we included people of different ages and ethnicities too.

After leaving the show, the most resounding thing about Affection was how uplifting some of it was. From your experience interviewing people, directing the play and talking to audiences, can anything good come out of a HIV diagnosis?
Absolutely. We can't pretend that it's a good thing to be diagnosed with HIV, but from speaking to people, they say their quality of relationships have improved, things become less superficial and—it sounds clichéd—but you become really grateful for your body and your life, and you look after yourself better. Generally, you have to disclose your status to partners, so if someone accepts that and is still around then you know it's for real and you can trust them. And a lot of people I spoke to found a real sense of community they may not have otherwise had. I hope that comes across—that it's not all doom and gloom; that there's a light there.

Affection runs at The Glory in London until September 24, and at Stan's Café, Birmingham from September 30 until October 1.