A few years ago I started doing this thing where, if I invited a guy back to my place to hang out (usually after partying), I would give him this disclaimer: “I’m not going to have sex with you.”

It may seem like a strange or presumptuous thing to do, but I had gotten into so many uncomfortable situations where I ended up feeling pressured to hook up with a guy or have sex with him because it was easier than resisting, and inevitably I felt like shit after. I thought that by laying out the ground rules before we even got to my place, I could avoid another awkward encounter. A few months ago, I invited a dude over and I didn’t bother with my disclaimer because I didn’t think there were any vibes between us. He seemed like a nice guy—a fellow journalist with whom I had mutual friends. After we had chilled for a while, he tried to kiss me. I told him “no” and he tried again several more times while holding my head in place. He accused me of being a tease. Then he left, telling me on his way out the door that he would be down to “do this again sometime” but I had to give him advance notice because he has a girlfriend. Later I found out he’s married with kids.

I was reminded of this story and many others like it when I heard about Aziz Ansari’s bad date. When I first read the story, I thought “this doesn’t seem that bad.” Ansari’s behaviour was gross, sure, but he also just sounded like a horny guy who has no game.

Although I’m sure you’ve come across the details by now, a 23-year-old photographer who went out with Ansari in September published her account on Babe in an article titled “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life.” The woman, referred to as Grace (a pseudonym) in the story, said she had dinner and wine with Ansari after they met at an Emmy after-party a week earlier. She said Ansari rushed them through dinner and they went back to his Tribeca apartment. In a statement, Ansari did not contest her version of events but said their sexual activities were “completely consensual.”

Grace said within moments of getting back to his apartment he was all over her and wanted to have sex. He was aggressive, she said, doing things like putting his fingers in her throat and performing oral sex on her, which she also did to him.

Grace said Ansari repeatedly asked her “Where do you want me to fuck you?” She didn’t want to, so she said “next time.”

After she excused herself for a bathroom break and came back out, she told him “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you.”

Even after this, she said Ansari asked her to give him head and then took her over to a mirror, bent her over, and again asked her where she wanted him to fuck her while ramming his penis against her ass.

Grace said she told him “no, I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this.” But he again did a fingers-down-throat move she named "the claw.”

She left his place after telling him “You guys are all the same, you guys are all the fucking same.”

The next day she said he texted her and she told him “I just want to take this moment to make you aware of [your] behavior and how uneasy it made me.” He replied, “Clearly, I misread things in the moment and I’m truly sorry.”

Even reading about the ordeal, the way he consistently badgered her, is exhausting. And yet my first instinct was a little defensive of Ansari. I found some issues with the reporting (the detail about how she didn’t get to choose what type of wine they drank that night seemed unnecessary and dramatic). I wondered if I would have reported on this had the woman come to me, and I don’t think I would have because, in my view, it’s just not severe enough. Also, it has to be said, I’ve been rooting for Ansari. He’s the kind of goofy, endearing, woke dude a lot of us could see ourselves being friends with. I mean, who doesn't love/strongly relate to Master of None? And he’s brown, one of the few who has made it big in Hollywood. As a fellow brown person, one who grew up with internalized racism, I felt a kinship with him. It’s hard to admit that maybe he’s not the standup guy we all thought.

Only after processing it for a few hours, and reading countless experiences of women who’ve been in similar situations, did I realize that my own reflexive dismissal is part of the problem. Women are used to being treated like Ansari treated his date. We’re used to guys taking “no” or non-verbal clues such as freezing or putting physical distance between them and ourselves as a reason to chase us harder.

While lots of women have been sexually assaulted, even more of us have been pressured into having sex when we didn’t really want to. That’s why this story struck a nerve and that’s why, despite the fact that Ansari didn’t commit a crime per se, this story is an important one to talk about.

There’s been a lot of backlash towards Grace—people think the story is hurting the #MeToo movement because it wouldn’t legally be considered sexual assault, she could have left his apartment, Ansari didn’t have any power over her career. I can see why those points are compelling. But I’d argue that the #MeToo movement needs to be about more than just offences in the criminal code or workplace misconduct where there are clear power dynamics involved. The point of #MeToo should be to change our culture around sex and to hold people to a standard of decency beyond just what the law or a human resources department requires.

Grace’s experience is one so many women have gone through, probably many times over. It’s so common that even someone like myself read it and at first thought “how is this newsworthy?” And I’m sure there are a lot of men who also don’t see what’s wrong with Ansari’s behaviour.

While some people may feel Grace could have been more direct, I don’t agree. In her version of events, which, again, Ansari has not contested, she repeatedly gave him clear signs that she was not interested in having sex. Yes, she tried to be polite about it, because that is what girls are conditioned to do, but she was clear nonetheless.

The two moments that stuck out to me in particular were when, according to Grace, Ansari asked her for a blowjob despite her saying, “I don’t want to feel forced because then I’ll hate you, and I’d rather not hate you” and when he continued to pressure her after she said, “I don’t think I’m ready to do this, I really don’t think I’m going to do this.” It suggests that he didn’t really give a shit whether she was having a good time or not. He was laser focused on getting laid. In terms of getting affirmative (enthusiastic) consent, he completely failed.

I don’t necessarily think this makes Ansari a terrible person because I think it’s behaviour a lot of men probably don’t realize is awful. But his non-apology public statement, in which he said that he believed everything that happened between Grace and himself was consensual, rang hollow.

“When I heard that it was not the case for her, I was surprised and concerned. I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said,” the statement said. “I continue to support the movement that is happening in our culture. It is necessary and long overdue.”

Ansari is not at risk for being charged with a crime here, so there’s frankly no excuse for him to not have issued a more fulsome apology. One that suggested he had spent some time reflecting on how his actions made his date feel—in short, on how he fucked up. (Here’s a shining example from Community writer Dan Harmon.) But Ansari didn’t do that. Maybe there are enough people rushing to his defence that he thinks after issuing this statement people will forget about this and move on. But in order for #MeToo to be a success, we need to re-examine all of our behaviours around sex, especially the ones that at first glance seem shitty, but completely ordinary.

Sex isn’t always a high-octane thrill ride, but do it frequently enough and you're likely to come away with a wild story or two. Even if your sexual history is mostly a snore, chances are you have a few thrilling dalliances in unusual places under your belt. That in mind, we asked folks about the zaniest place they’ve knocked boots. Here’s what they said.

“Santa's chair at the local mall.” - Julie, 27

“In the woods. He was homeless.” - Cassie, 28

“The Museum of Science and Industry.” - Ell, 34

“The middle of a crop circle.” - Margot, 36

“In tube slide at a playground.” - Katie, 23

“An elevator; lots of going down.” - Alisson, 33

“Locked grain shed behind a brewpub.” - Beth, 32

“University of Kentucky's Willy T Library.” - Annie, 26

“A men’s bathroom at Disney World.” - Johnny, 33

“In the basement of a convent.” - Ben, 45

“By the bathrooms in music venue.” - Allie, 25

“In a crab-apple blossom tree.” - Lex, 37

“Ice machine room at Ritz Carlton.” - JD, 39

“After hours church alter, then aisle.” - Olivia, 39

“The bleachers of Amelia Earhart Park.” - Gabriel, 26

“Straddling the driver, New Jersey Turnpike.” - Monica, 37

"In the woods. Mosquitos covered everything." - Carol, 24

“The candy stockroom at Blockbuster Video.” - Jess, 39

“Against a dumpster in an alley.” - Jaimie, 52

“Onboard moving Amtrak train in bathroom.” - Michelle, 52

“My parents' bed. Left a stain.” - Steph, 27

“Stairwell of a UConn college dorm.” - Annie, 27

“The rooftop of my apartment building.” - Kate, 37

“In a cemetery on Halloween night.” - Jeremy, 34

“Once fucked in a stretch limo.” - Laura, 33

“On front lawn of college library.” - Ohmeed, 36

“In a police station parking lot. - Mike, 35

“On picnic table at national park.” - Lindsay, 32

“Inside the family restroom at Macy’s.” - Jill, 25

“Lazy river at crowded water park.” - Robert, 36

“Had a threesome in Paris catacombs.” - Steve, 32

“Trampoline sex is tricky but awesome.” - Andres, 38

“The hallway of a fancy hotel.” - Brittany, 33

“Against rocks on Thailand snorkeling trip.” - Jenna, 29

“A hastily constructed Mayan love hammock.” - Rebecca, 33

“In outdoor gazebo by a forest.” - Zoe, 32

“Busy restaurant, empty Boston Market bathroom.” - Jen, 34

“His car while parents were inside.” - Michelle, 25

Follow Anna Goldfarb on Twitter.

Flying is a nightmare. When you book a trip now, you have to accept the fact that you might have to face delays, loud music, bathroom disasters, or being physically pulled off your flight trying to get where you're going. But of the many air travel horrors passengers face, there's one that's as frustrating as it is common: the threat of having to pay extra for your overweight bag.

This common travel annoyance is one that British Airways passenger Ryan Carney Williams, a designer who goes by the name Ryan Hawaii, found himself up against on Wednesday. When he wasn't able to pay the extra bag fee, he decided to go a more creative route. According to the Daily Mail, the Brit put on the ten shirts and eight pairs of pants weighing his luggage down, planning to just stroll onto his flight. Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy, and he was denied a boarding pass and turned away at Iceland's Keflavik airport.

Williams tweeted about the whole thing last week and said he was "arrested and maced" after trying to board the plane wearing the massive layers of clothing. According to the Iceland Monitor, airport security was called because Williams was being disruptive.

The following day, Williams booked a different flight back to London on easyJet, the Mail reports. This time he was able to get a boarding pass and through security, but when he got up to the gate, an attendant reportedly told him that he wouldn't be able to board based on the incident that happened the day before. Williams said he was then stranded at the Iceland airport, without any money, as his bags flew to the London airport without him.

According to the Monitor, Williams finally managed to make it to London Sunday on a Norwegian airline's flight. After explaining his situation on Twitter to a British Airways and easyJet rep, he was first told that there was nothing the airlines could do to refund his two tickets, but the Mail reports he was ultimately compensated for both of the missed flights.

As to why he was turned away the first time around, a British Airways spokesperson told the Telegraph, "The decision to deny boarding was absolutely not based on race. We do not tolerate threatening or abusive behavior from any customer, and will always take the appropriate action."

For his part, Williams says that he wasn't trying to avoid the fee, but rather didn't have enough money to pay for the extra luggage. In any case, wearing all your clothes onto a flight may not be the best way to dodge those exceedingly high baggage fees the next time you travel.

The current iteration of Hollywood Boulevard is not a place particularly known for its subtlety. Bong emporiums, stripper shoe retailers and Americanized “cantinas” peddling plates of congealed nachos now riddle the legendary Walk of Fame. It is not unsurprising, then, that the latest entertainment option on the boulevard is the Hologram USA theater, a place where one can eat CBD oil-infused concessions in an overstuffed leather recliner while watching a three-dimensional projection of a woman pretending to be Billie Holiday lip sync “Strange Fruit” as a man pantomimes whipping a dancing woman behind her. The technology is not an actual hologram, just the projection of an image through a proprietary foil that makes 2D images appear 3D, a modernized version of a 150-year old illusion called Pepper’s Ghost.

Hologram USA, which finally opened in November of last year after over a year of delays, currently features two shows that play at alternating 30 minute intervals: the aforementioned Billie Holiday: Alive in Hollywood, and Ray J and Kato’s Sexy Hollywood Freakshow, a mercifully brief yet interminably long-feeling combination of sideshow performance and burlesque hosted by a man best known for fucking Kim Kardashian and a man best known for staying in O.J. Simpson's house one time. The adult admission price is $29.95; the kid’s price, $19.95. If you bring your child to Hollywood Boulevard on holiday, you are an unfit parent. If you bring your child to Ray J and Kato’s Sexy Hollywood Freakshow, you should legally be obligated to pay their therapy bills for the rest of their lives.

When I visit Hologram USA, it is 6 PM on a Saturday and, despite a pile of buy one get one free flyers sitting outside the theater (the more children you bring to Ray J and Kato’s Sexy Hollywood Freakshow, the more money you save!), zero tickets have been sold. The woman behind the counter seems surprised by my presence, removing her headphones before pecking away at an iPad to set up the show.

Innards from a Swisher Sweet fill the cup holder of the seat I take in the middle of the empty room, making me feel as though I am patronizing a porno theater without the porno. Were I to find myself walking down Hollywood Boulevard ineffably horny between the hours of noon and 10 PM, I feel as though I could get away with exchanging handjobs with a partner in the vacant theater, so long as we were comfortable doing so to the strains of “Strange Fruit.”

The lights go down and, after a series of ads for coming attractions like a concert featuring long-deceased singer Jackie Wilson, and a talk show featuring long-irrelevant comedian Jon Lovitz, the show begins. Were I in the market for a true Billie Holiday concert experience, I would be disappointed—the drummer has an earring, a dancer does the robot during “Ain't Misbehavin’,” a bearded man wearing Adidas sneakers brings Lady Day her mic stand—the fact that I am on Hollywood Boulevard, however, means my standards have lowered to nonexistence.

Holiday’s corpse thoroughly flayed, the “Sexy Hollywood Freakshow” begins. Holograms of Ray J and Kato Kaelin (why Ray J and Kaelin, two men who would appear at a bar mitzvah for less than the cost of a ticket to Hologram USA, are not physically at every showing is beyond me, but I digress) shuffle out and exchange awkward, confusing banter about engaging in “Rock, Paper, Knives” instead of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” (“I don’t wanna talk about no knives with you!” Ray J laughs. “Two people died,” I say aloud) as way of introducing the “freakshow.”

And oh, what a freak show it is! A magician pulls streamers out of a live chicken’s asshole as a woman in lingerie rubs her pussy. A tattooed little person with no arms balances a pail from his bottom lip while a man who appears to have been picked up outside a Greyhound station apathetically swallows swords. A stacked burlesque dancer in a suit holds a peeled banana against her crotch; Kaelin hesitates and takes a bite. When the show ends, ten minutes earlier than advertised, the lights don’t even immediately go back up, presumably out of complete and utter apathy.

The theater’s Yelp page is riddled with five-star reviews that I assume must either be fake or written under duress. They say things like “Hologram USA is one of the most amazing experiences and seeing talent [sic] that is no longer available for us to see and hear” and describe the bizarre, cutting edge-yet antiquated seeming technology as “a fully immersive one of a kind experience that is changing the world.” There are more believable reviews that give the experience one star: “During the show, a man with several bags walked into the EMPTY theater and sat right next to us and fell asleep,” one reads. “This is somehow beneath Kato Kaelin and Ray J,” declares another.

You wonder how the whole operation makes any money; after a quick Google search, however, you realize it probably doesn’t have to. One in a lifelong series of gauchely self-indulgent pet projects of Alki David, the Greek heir to a Coca-Cola bottling fortune (net worth: approximately $2 billion), Hologram USA can, presumably, operate at a complete financial loss. Since acquiring it in 2004, David has already spent tens of millions of dollars on Hologram USA’s patented holographic technology, $12 million alone on securing the rights to the images of miscellaneous deceased stars of stage and screen.

And besides, David is used to hemorrhaging money on salacious stunts, among them offering $1 million for someone to streak in front of then-President Obama with the name of one of his websites written on their stomach, attempting to fool the press by live streaming a fake assisted suicide, and crucifying a man dressed as Jesus on Easter Sunday while Joey Buttafuoco looked on. The cost of digitally reanimating Billie Holiday is mere chicken feed to the guy who wrote, directed and self-financed a film called Farticus starring Abe Vigoda as Zeus that reportedly cost $1.2 million.

The fact that a technology that can literally bring the dead back to life, owned by a morally questionable billionaire, is currently being squandered on projecting Kato Kaelin into an empty room is appropriately, delightfully, dystopian—a further blurring of the line between reality and an episode of Black Mirror. As I leave the theater, I notice a life-sized cardboard cut out of Donald Trump standing in the door frame, idiotically grinning at passerby, and remember that he is the President of the United States. Hemorrhaging money on projecting Kato Kaelin's haggard visage into an empty room may not make sense. But nothing does anymore.

Follow Megan Koester on Twitter.

Teenagers might not be partying like they used to, but they'll do just about anything for social media fame. Now, after the cinnamon challenge, the mannequin challenge, and the one chip challenge, teens are daring one another to bite into Tide pods, letting the potentially deadly laundry chemicals run down their mouths, and posting the videos online.

The new craze has parents, experts, and even the NFL's Rob Gronkowski pretty worried, so Desus and Mero felt the need to weigh in. On Tuesday's show, the VICELAND hosts watched some of the bizarre videos and wondered how far teens will go (in this case, burning their tongues) for the likes.

You can watch the latest episode of Desus & Mero for free online now, and be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM on VICELAND.

Everything you need to know about the world this morning, curated by VICE.

US News

Intelligence Committee Subpoenas Bannon for Refusing to Speak Up
The former White House strategist reportedly refused to answer questions about his time in the Trump administration while testifying to the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday, claiming the White House told him not to cooperate. The panel was said to issue a subpoena then and there to force him to testify during the 11-hour session, but he continued to push back. Rep. Adam Schiff went on to say the “gag rule” the White House seemed to be imposing on Bannon “obviously can’t stand.” Separately, Special Counsel Robert Mueller slapped Bannon with his own subpoena.—NBC News

Ex-CIA Officer Charged Over Betrayed Informants
Former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a 53-year-old US citizen, was arrested at JFK airport Monday and charged with unlawful possession of classified information. Lee was said to be suspected of helping China detect CIA informants, many of whom were later imprisoned or killed in the country. VICE News / New York Times

Democrats Snatch Wisconsin State Senate Seat
Democrat Patty Schachtner beat Republican Adam Jarchow in a race for a Wisconsin State Senate seat the GOP had held since 2000. The Democrats have now turned a red seat blue 34 times so far in the ongoing midterm election cycle.—The Washington Post

US National Park Advisers Resign in Protest
Nine of the 12 members of the National Parks System Advisory Board have quit over Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s refusal to heed their advice on climate change and environmental protections. Tony Knowles, who served as head of the board, said Zinke “appears to have no interest in continuing the agenda of science, the effect of climate change, pursuing the protection of the ecosystem.”—The New York Times

International News

Pope Meets with Victims Abused by Priests in Chile
Pope Francis reached out to Chileans sexually abused by Catholic priests and later expressed his “pain and shame at the irreparable damage” the victims suffered. A spokesman for the pontiff said he “prayed and cried with them.” Two Catholic churches were burned after the Pope arrived Monday, and police tussled with Chileans protesting the Papal Mass in Santiago Tuesday.—Reuters

Saudis to Give Yemen $2 Billion to Stop Currency Collapse
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman sanctioned the massive bailout after Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghir warned that his country’s currency was close to “complete collapse.” The value of the Yemeni rial has declined 50 percent since internal conflict with Houthi rebels broke out in 2015, leaving the government struggling to provide services.—AP

NGO Attacks Cuts to Funding for Palestinian Refugees
Human rights groups condemned a US government decision to slash America's contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said the Trump administration’s move to withhold $65 million from the UNRWA was “vindictive."—VICE News

Hong Kong Student Leader Sentenced to Prison
The 21-year-old activist Joshua Wong was given a three-month sentence for his role in 2014's pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Found guilty of contempt of court, it is Wong’s second sentence in relation to the Umbrella Movement protests. “They can lock up our bodies but they can’t lock up our minds,” Wong said.—BBC News

Everything Else

Trump's Physical Spawns #Girther Movement
Twitter users began using the #Girther hashtag Tuesday after the president’s doctor said he weighed 239 pounds. James Gunn, director of Guardians of the Galaxy, said he would give $100,000 to charity if Trump steps on “an accurate scale with an impartial medical professional.”—The Hollywood Reporter

Matt Damon Vows to Keep Quiet About #MeToo
The actor said he regretted his previous comments about the “spectrum” of sexual abuse and harassment. “I really wish I’d listened a lot more before I weighed in on this,” he told NBC’s Today show. Damon said he would “close my mouth for a while.”—CNN

Meteorite Spotted Shooting over Michigan
The National Weather Service said a ball of light seen shooting across southeast Michigan Tuesday night was a meteor. The United States Geological Survey said it caused a magnitude 2.0 earthquake near New Haven.—ABC News

Grimes Reveals Her Favorite Music
The artist shared five Spotify playlists she listens to for “at home vibes.” Her “depression” playlist features Nine Inch Nails and Taylor Swift, while her “Musiq 4 Drawing” selections include Lana Del Rey and Aphex Twin.—i-D

22 States to Sue the FCC for Repealing Net Neutrality
A collective of state attorneys general filed a joint legal petition in a bid to uphold net neutrality. New York AG Eric Schneiderman said the FCC’s decision to repeal the policy would allow ISPs to “put profits over consumers while controlling what we see.”—Motherboard

Top Russian Pollster Shuts Down for Election
Levada Center, the country’s leading independent pollster, will close for a few months ahead of March’s presidential election. After being designated a “foreign agent” in 2016, the firm's leaders are worried about legal problems.—VICE News

Make sure to check out the latest episode of VICE's daily podcast. Today we’re discussing a video game about abortion access in America.

I’m lying face down in a hotel bathroom in St. Petersburg, Russia. The cheap vinyl of the bathroom sticks to my forehead and every part of my body aches worse than it has ever ached before. Out of the corner of my eye I can see a puddle of my own piss, cartoon yellow, slowly creeping towards my chin. I try and get up but my legs give out from under me. I fall into the bathtub and throw up. An attempt to shower is cut short when I discover that water on my skin feels like needles being stuck underneath my fingernails. Today I am going to stink and that’s fine. I pick the cleanest dirty shirt from my luggage then start to venture towards the hotel lobby, hoping to find some hair of the dog or—at the very least—some carbohydrates to soak up the shame. I leave my room and the fluorescent light of the hallway hits my eyes. My headache instantly intensifies, an arrhythmic drum solo on the inside of my skull. The pain is so bad that when I first see the body I don’t know if it’s real or not.

Spread out on the hallway floor is the largest human being I have ever seen in real life. The man is easily four hundred pounds. He’s lying on his back, limbs askew, oversized belly sneaking out of his shirt. The man is unconscious and letting out these little half breaths between thunderous snores. I’m about to check on humongous, maybe poke his gut to make sure he’s not a hallucination, when towards the elevator I see another body even bigger than buddy at my feet. This man is flailing in an awkward sleep. He rolls to his side to reveal two (slightly) smaller dudes draped out beside him, like a supersized variation on the Russian doll. Head pounding I piece together what’s going on.

The four men on the floor are Sumo wrestlers. The day before was the last day of a Sumo competition at the World Combat Games. At the after-party many of the Sumos drank heroic amounts of liquor. The guys in front of me must have passed out trying to get to their rooms. No one was strong enough to move their dead weight.

Somebody in the hallway lets out a fart. While trying to escape the smell I start to remember the night before. I attempted to out drink men literally twice my size, I ate more food than I thought I was physically capable of, and I attacked parked cars like a post-modern Don Quixote. When I get to the end of the hall my headache intensifies—again—and I spew. I had partied with Sumo wrestlers and it almost killed me.

My adventure with Sumo wrestlers actually started as a trip for work. I had been hired through a cable company I worked for to commentate the World Combat Games. It was one of my first paid gigs as a martial arts analyst and I was determined to prove my worth. For the months leading up to the event my life was consumed with studying the beauty of competitive conflict. I spent hours learning the proper pronunciation of athletes names. There were days glued to the computer watching hundreds of technique videos. I read books debating the arcane origins of belt wrestling, tried out high kick strategies in my living room, and bored my wife half to death geeking out on jiu jitsu statistics. Still there was nothing that could have prepared me for the sheer spectacle of Sumo.

On a conceptual level I knew that Sumo wrestlers were big. But until you’ve seen a Rikishi in person you have no idea just how gigantic, and how strong, these athletes actually are. Underneath the layers of fat each competitor has built their body for power and speed. When a match begins Sumos burst forth like bullets from a gun. Their intense grappling would be enough to crush a normal human, but the behemoths go at each other with precision and strategy in the most violent of dances. The aura for the Sumo matches was electric. The arena was buzzing with excitement, shifting from anticipatory silence to deafening cheers as the competition got underway. The Sumos were treated like rock stars and no one was a bigger star than Byamba.

Byamba was a two-time world Sumo champion. He was featured in Oceans 13. He appeared on America’s Got Talent. VICE profiled him in the documentary 10,000 Calories a Day. In fact if you’ve seen a Sumo on television in the last decade it was probably Byamba. That day the champion was dominant in his performance. His bouts were over in seconds, opponents thrown from the ring with ease. Watching on commentary I sounded like a little kid, giddy with excitement witnessing this master perform his aggressive art. By the time he was awarded his medal every person in attendance was on their feet. That evening the afterparty was held at our hotel. My plan was simple: I was going to shake Byamba’s hand, congratulate him on a job well done, and leave the man alone for a well-deserved celebration. Byamba had other plans.

I should preface what I’m about to tell you by saying I was very, very, drunk that night. Possibly more messed up than I have ever been before, which is a lot considering I spent over a decade playing in a glam rock band and once got high with Nikki Sixx for three days. While I’m not sure the facts would hold up in a court of law, and things have grown or shrunk depending on when I’m recounting the event, I know in my heart the general tone of what I’m about to say is true. We’ll call it drunken non-fiction. The blockbuster movie version of what went down.

When I got to the bar Byamba was holding a link of sausages in one hand. In the other was a bottle of Russian Standard vodka. I approached the champ. The big man pointed in my direction. Another Sumo grabbed a reserved sign off the table (Russian reserved signs are shaped like dunce caps) and tore off the top to create a makeshift funnel. The next thing I know the funnel is in my mouth. Byamba laughs and pours a half litre of vodka directly down my throat. It was the beginning of the festivities and I was already a wreck.

After that, as a group, we stumble into another part of the bar. Laid out before me is an enormous spread: pork knuckle, sauerkraut, hot pot soup, mountains of sausages and bread. Byamba piled up his plate then motioned for me to do the same. Everyone took a seat. At the head of the table—on the night he won a medal—Byamba took the time to put over everyone else in the room. The champ was humble and funny. Instantly loveable. His message was that with the right team and the right training we could all achieved greatness. When I asked the big guy to elaborate on that idea he insisted I drink more vodka and finish my food. I mowed down a dozen sausages and had at least another half litre of drink. I ate sauerkraut until my pores were leaking vinegar. With the sheer volume of consumption I started to believe that I could be a Sumo wrestler, too. We decided to test that theory in the parking lot.

Now I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life. But I can safely say that squaring off to compete Sumo in the parking lot of a Russian hotel is among the stupidest. Byamba officiated the event. He explained that the man I’d be competing against was a mere 250 pounds. Two-fifty. That’s—what—100 pounds heavier than I am? I got this. What Byamba didn’t tell me was that my competition also happened to be the middleweight Sumo Champion of the world. Fueled by adrenaline and alcohol I squared off against my opponent, onlookers on every side. We put our hands of the ground to signify the beginning of the match, Byamba yelled something, then I sprinted forward as fast as I could. Hitting the Sumo’s body was like hitting a boulder. I pushed. I grappled. I tried to sweep a leg. Nothing I did had any effect. After maybe 15 seconds of competing the middleweight Sumo champion threw me to the ground with a jovial laugh. I hit the concrete hard and felt a sharp crack against my rib. To numb the pain someone handed me more vodka.

Bayamba told me that for a first timer I had done pretty well. He asked if I wanted to see what Sumos could really do. Worried that I was signing myself up for another round I shook my head, but by that point no one was paying attention. The Sumos had slammed their drinks and were proceeding to push around the cars in the parking lot like a standard person pushes a shopping cart. I tried to take on a midsize sedan but my ribs hurt too much. To compensate I looked for more booze but I was out. We were all out. Which is why the Sumos decided to ransack a nearby restaurant.

At the best of times 30 people showing up to a restaurant unannounced is chaos. But when you take into account that the majority of the 30 people showing up to this restaurant were actual Sumo wrestlers it turns into complete pandemonium. Food appeared out of nowhere and was consumed just as fast. We all started an impromptu grappling competition and fell into tables. When drinks couldn’t come fast enough one of the Sumos walked behind the bar, picked up a keg, and walked out the front door. The last thing I remember before I blacked out was Byamba taking photos with the staff.

***

My hangover from that night lasted for about two weeks, it followed me all the way from Russia back to Canada, and if I cough too hard my ribs still hurt. To this day the smell of Russian Standard simultaneously makes me want to smile and throw up. While the memory of the evening is burned into the back of my skull, all evidence of the event was lost, along with my cellphone, somewhere on a St. Petersburg side street. But what I can tell you with certainty is this: after that night whenever I hear someone use the term party like rockstar I laugh in their face. Partying like a rock star is nothing. Partying like a Sumo wrestler is more than you could ever imagine.

Robin Black talks about MMA for a living. @robinblackmma .
Details on Black’s upcoming storytelling dates can be found here .

Graham Isador gets drunk off half a glass of chardonnay: @presgang

There are few things more pure in this world than the joy of seeing the cops fooled.

It’s the type of joy that resonates strongly from a simple photo that went around the internet the other day. This photo, much like the joy that it brings, is simple. It’s just a cop in northern Montreal all out on his lonesome staring suspiciously at a pile of snow on a street where you’re not supposed to park. He’s staring, well, cause that pile of snow looks just like a goddamn car—a DeLorean DMC-12 (the Back to the Future car) to be specific.

Simon Laprise is the mastermind behind the car. The 33-year-old machinist and cabinet maker told VICE that he tends to do creative things in his free time—typically under the name Laprise Simon Designs—and when he got his hands on a giant pile in front of his place, he got to work.

Laprise in front of the car. Photo via Facebook.

“It was a beautiful day,” Laprise told VICE. “So I decided to do something out of the mountain of snow, to do a little joke to the snow guys, and have fun sculpting a car. It’s not my first one, just the first I do in the street on snow removal day.”

“To me snow is a great free material to sculpt anything out of.”

The car is a masterwork in snow sculpture but perhaps the most ingenious thing in the entire picture is something you might have missed if you don’t have a keen eye.

SIRI ENHANCE!!!!

Thank you for enhancing that, Siri.

You see that on the fake windshield right there, yeah, that’s a real windshield wiper. Just like something you would see in a typical car that is covered in snow. It’s a detail diabolical in its simplicity. Laprise told VICE that the windshield wiper was a “stroke of luck” as he simply found it across the street when making the car.

No wonder the cops were fooled.

Now, we don’t know exactly what happened next but we do know that the cop was soon joined by a fellow police car. This means that either A) they thought it was funny and called a fellow copper in to see or B) were so fooled that they needed yet another officer to figure out that this was, indeed, snow—I choose to believe the latter. Now, Laprise told VICE that he sadly didn’t see the cops in person and saw the photos when they went viral but he did see a ticket from the cops left that read, “You made our night.”

“We’re going to need backup here.” Photos via Facebook user Maxime Tot.

“I though the tickets was hilarious,” said Laprise. “But when I saw the cops pictures on internet the next day, it was even better.”

Since the photos went viral, Laprise said that he’s been slammed with messages and that hundreds of people stopped to take photos with the car but, that’s sadly all over. Like the confused po-po, Laprise also missed the destruction of his car when Montreal’s snow patrol returned.

The snow plow giveth and the snow plow taketh away.

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In a recent interview, a journalist perhaps unfamiliar with Hugh Grant’s bullshit-proof brand of wit attempted to compliment the actor on the “variety” of roles he’s played, only to be promptly corrected by the actor himself: “We all know that I’ve only really played one.”

It’s a savage career assessment, and for good reason: the affable, sometimes caddish English twit is more or less the only part Grant’s played over the last thirty years. When he tired of being a romantic interest in period dramas like Sense and Sensibility, he moved on to being the romantic interest in romantic comedies like Notting Hill, swapping pantaloons for trousers.

But every romantic lead has an expiration date, and Grant—who’s still been booking rom-com gigs as late as 2015, even as the genre’s fallen out of mainstream favor—rode the gravy train about as far as he could. Known for his casual disregard for acting, Grant often talks of the profession as if it was something he regrettably fell into. One might suspect Grant’s lack of shits given both adds to his appeal and is the reason why he’s been uninterested in stretching the practice of his craft.

But now he’s 57—ancient, by Hollywood’s standards—and Grant has, whether through late-career boredom or necessity, been quietly branching out. In the 2012 Aardman animation The Pirates! Band of Misfits, he voiced an inept, self-aggrandizing swashbuckler; in Guy Ritchie’s swingin’ 60s spy thriller The Man from U.N.C.L.E. from 2015, he played a stuffy MI6 honcho; and in last year’s biopic-cum-farce Florence Foster Jenkins, Grant was the adoring, hammy husband to Meryl Streep’s warbling socialite.

But no recent film has gotten more from Grant’s talent than Paddington 2. A film so uncomplicatedly joyful that we must wonder whether we even deserve it at all, Paddington 2 is a cinematic balm for our pre-apocalyptic times, and it also represents a serious moment for Grant’s career. For all its tot-friendly frivolousness, Paddington 2 gently kills Hugh Grant—or the Grant we think we know—and resurrects him anew.

Apparently written with Grant in mind, Paddington 2’s big baddie and faded actor Phoenix Buchanan is initially presented as the kind of awkward-yet-charming posho Grant has almost always played. But this breezy shtick of Buchanan’s, which appeals to dwindling crowds, is soon revealed to be just for show: behind the scenes, Buchanan is a self-loathing narcissist with contempt for his audience and a love-hate relationship with acting—a character, Grant himself has admitted, that is not hugely dissimilar to the real Grant, representing a simultaneous savaging of Grant’s screen and public personas. All this, tucked away inside a family movie about a talking bear.

You could almost say that Paddington 2 is Grant’s The Wrestler moment: a tailor-made role that reckons with the actor’s life and career up to that point. As it trashes our idea of Grant, Paddington 2 opens up new avenues for the actor. He’s portraying the outright villain and has no romantic foil, because Buchanan’s far too in love with himself. The part encourages Grant to play to his comedic strengths—only with a different kind of comedy, broader and more absurd. No longer do we laugh with Grant, the bumbling Englishman, as his self-deprecatingly vain and desperate turn in Paddington 2 encourages us to laugh at him.

Paul King’s film also knowingly addresses the lingering notion that Grant is a one-trick pony, and gives Grant the room to dispel it. This despite the fact that Cloud Atlas showcased Grant’s surprising range six years ago: playing six characters across six different timelines, including an odious counterculture-era CEO and a post-apocalyptic cannibal, Grant alternates between playing funny, weird, and legitimately scary in the Wachowskis’s batshit epic.

Paddington 2 again emphasizes Grant’s range: as Buchanan, the “master of disguise” has an evil plan that involves adopting numerous identities, allowing Grant to play a wider variety of characters than he’s done through most of his career. A scene where Buchanan, alone in his dressing room, schemes with Gollum-like multifariousness as himself, a cockney beggar, and Hamlet, could be Grant’s showreel for the next stage of his career.

In leaving his comfort zone—abandoning the type that brought him fame and fortune in the first place—Grant’s currently receiving more attention than he has in years. Critics are praising Paddington 2, and Grant just received a surprise BAFTA nomination for his work in it. Like Matthew McConaughey, that other erstwhile perennial romantic lead who at last broke out of his rom-com hell at the beginning of the decade, Grant might be heading for a late-career creative renaissance. We can’t yet know what the next phase of Grant’s career will look like—beyond A Very English Scandal, the Stephen Frears miniseries that represents Grant’s return to serialized television for the first time in over 20 years, he has nothing lined up—but it’s undeniable that Paddington 2 draws a line under the career he previously had.

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For months now, rumours have swirled around NDP leader Jagmeet Singh’s relationship status.

When VICE interviewed him last fall, we asked if he was on Tinder to which he replied—on the record at least—that he could neither confirm nor deny that. Then in December, photos and videos of Singh and Gurkiran Kaur Sidhu at a celebration emerged on Instagram, with captions that included words like “engagement” and “next chapter in life.” In Kardashian-like fashion, Singh’s camp denied the engagement and only said he was in a serious relationship.

Yesterday the suspense was lifted when Singh announced his engagement to Sidhu on social media, posting photo of himself on bended knee, sliding a ring on Sidhu’s finger with the captions: “She said yes!!” and “Elle a dit oui!!” (Gotta make those Quebecers happy.)

The photos were taken in what looked like a fancy photo booth, complete with a sheer white curtain, rose petals on the ground, and candles galore.

According to media reports, it actually went down at the vegetarian restaurant where the two of them first went on a date. Speaking of media, yes, they were invited to document the happy affair.

Asked why he wanted journalists there, Singh reportedly said “I'm super excited to take this step forward — to have a life and future together with my partner.”

If you think it’s a little extra for a third party leader who doesn’t currently have a seat in parliament to invite the press to his “spontaneous” engagement, well, you’ll find no argument here. It’s probably enough to make even our shirtless photo-bombing prime minister a little nervous. Then again, maybe that was the point.

I suppose it could be worse.

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Last week, word broke that President Trump's lawyer reportedly paid a former porn star $130,000 to stay silent about an affair she allegedly had with Trump in 2006, while he was married to Melania Trump. But according to CNN, the story could've gone public ahead of the election—had FOX News not killed it.

In October of 2016, FOX News reporter Diana Falzone filed a story about an alleged affair between Trump and Stephanie Clifford, who performed under the name "Stormy Daniels," CNN reports. Sources say Falzone even had an on-the-record statement from Clifford's manager confirming the tryst went down, and had seen emails arranging Clifford's settlement, which was allegedly made a month before the election.

But the story was never published. In a statement to CNN, FOX digital's editor-in-chief and vice president Noah Kotch confirmed that the outlet had been working on a story about the alleged affair and settlement, but decided not to run it.

"In doing our due diligence, we were unable to verify all of the facts and publish a story," Kotch told CNN.

Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen—who allegedly negotiated Clifford's settlement—hasn't denied the payment happened, but told the Daily Beast, "President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels." Cohen has also pointed to a letter he claims Clifford wrote and signed last week explicitly denying she and Trump were more than acquaintances.

According to CNN, Slate and the Daily Beast were also working on stories about the alleged tryst and Clifford's settlement back in 2016, but failed to report them thoroughly enough to print. On Wednesday, InTouch magazine published excerpts from an interview it claims to have conducted with Clifford in 2011, in which she details the sexual encounter. According to the magazine, it corroborated her story with a friend and had the former porn star take a polygraph test at the time of the interview. The tabloid is planning to release the full 5,500-word account later this week.

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Daniel Craig’s the most screen-accurate Bond to date, and he’s been considered one of the best actors to play the role. So why have most of his films seemed so unmemorable? Despite a successful reboot of what had become a stale franchise, maybe audiences underestimated how much they would miss the over-the-top villains, the odd henchmen, the whimsical gadgets, and world-ending plots. All that cheese lended itself to a fantasy world of espionage that made the character so iconic. Basically, everything that made Bond…well, Bond.

As the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace was one of the most anticipated films of 2008. Fresh off the success of Casino Royale two years prior, Eon Productions greenlit production on the James Bond film with an all-star team attached: seasoned British screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had wrote the previous three Bond films; Million Dollar Baby and Crash screenwriter Paul Haggis to give the script some polish; and director Marc Forster, known for his award-winning work on Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland.

At the film’s core was Daniel Craig, whose performance in Casino Royale silenced critics who claimed he was too bland, blonde, and ugly to play the role. For the first time since Connery (and even perhaps more so), Bond was finally portrayed as the brutal and cold “anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department” originally envisioned by British author Ian Fleming in 1953. Directed by Martin Campbell—who previously reinvented Bond once before with 1995’s GoldenEye— Casino Royale was the refreshing reboot that the Bond franchise needed, more grounded and believable than many of the ridiculous films that preceded it.

Quantum of Solace was a direct sequel to its predecessor—a first for the franchise that allowed audiences to actually see Bond face the consequences of his actions from one story to the next. But the film was a letdown: although it made back nearly three times its budget at the box office, the story was a mess, with too much fast-cutting action scenes that caused many critics to compare it unfavorably to the Jason Bourne franchise. “Don’t ever let this happen again to James Bond,” Roger Ebert wrote in his review. “This is a swampy old world. The deeper we sink in, the more we need James Bond to stand above it.”

There are basically two types of Bond film plots: he’s either preventing villains from developing a superweapon, or preventing villainous business magnates from eliminating their competitors to create a monopoly, and Quantum of Solace delivered the latter, with an environmentalist entrepreneur attempting to control South America’s water supply. But with the exception of having James Bond as the main character, there was nothing about it that felt like a Bond film—no gadgets, no glib one-liners, no appearance of John Barry’s theme song until the end credits. In one scene, Bond even trades in his famous Vesper martini for a Heineken.

These hallmarks of the series were also missing from Casino Royale, but whereas that film felt like a deliberate gearshift. Quantum of Solace felt like stalling. Forster later revealed the film’s behind-the-scenes struggles in a 2016 interview with Collider, describing how the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike had forced the film into production without a finished script: “Ultimately I felt like, ‘Okay worst case scenario the strike goes on, I’ll just make it sort of like a 70s revenge movie; very action driven, lots of cuts to hide that there’s a lot of action and a little less story.’” Facing immense pressure to deliver a successful follow-up to Casino Royale, Forster at one point considered dropping out of directing the film altogether.

So the problems with Quantum are somewhat explainable—but they don’t account for Skyfall and Spectre, two subsequent films that mimicked the film’s tone and chaotic structure. Granted, 2012’s Skyfall was a vast improvement on its predecessor; with a staggering $1.1 billion dollar take at the box office, it’s the highest-grossing film in the series and the highest-grossing movie worldwide for both Sony Pictures and MGM. It has all the ingredients of a great Bond film: an emotionally and physically scarred supervillain (a Javier Bardem performance that resulted in one of the all-time best Bond characters), explosive fight scenes across beautiful locales, and even the return of the Aston Martin DB5 first seen in 1964’s Goldfinger (complete with the original license plate, BMT 216A).

Too bad the film’s plot doesn’t make any sense. Bond resents M for ordering Moneypenny to shoot a mercenary he was fighting atop a train—a bullet that hit Bond instead and led to the release of a stolen hard drive containing the identities of undercover agents around the world. Instead of trying to prevent the inevitable fallout from the drive’s info getting out, Bond retires on a beach, only returning to London after an MI6 bombing. The biggest lead in finding the mastermind behind the attack comes in the form of bullet shrapnel from the aforementioned mercenary, which Bond has buried in his shoulder—evidence that could’ve been useful weeks ago had he not chosen to play dead.

He fails all the necessary physical and psych tests to continue serving as an agent, but M approves his return to the field anyway. (She’s also under scrutiny from her higher-ups due to Bond’s radical behaviour in Casino Royale and Quantum.) A hitman in Shanghai leads Bond to a poker chip, which leads to a casino in Macau, which leads to Bond seducing a former sex slave, which leads to meeting cyberterrorist mastermind Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), who was also betrayed by M years ago and is captured by Bond as a ploy to kill her.

But for all his cyberterrorism knowledge, Silva’s big plan is to simply shoot at M in Parliament. Bond helps repel the attack and takes M to Skyfall Lodge, his family estate in the Scottish Highlands, where Bond and the groundskeeper (Albert Finney) prep Home Alone-style booby traps for Silva and his approaching army.

The plan ultimately fails and M is killed, which begs a few questions: Why is a remote mansion, perfect for an ambush and with no available backup, where Bond decides to hide M? Why aren’t a hundred Royal Marines waiting to stop him at Skyfall? Couldn’t Bond have let M out of the car at any town along the way to have her lay low for a few days? And since when did James Bond suddenly have seemingly deep-seated issues that compelled him to return to his childhood home?

For 2015’s Spectre, Eon Productions seemed to realize that audiences were getting tired of the grim cheerlessness of the recent Bond films, and these movies—essentially sequels to Casino Royale—had to lead somewhere. So they paid tribute to the character’s legacy by throwing in tropes, like a relentless muscleman henchman similar to Oddjob or Jaws (Mr. Hinx, played by Dave Bautista), a visit to Q’s lab for new gadgets (and see the ones he’s not allowed to touch), an Aston Martin chase through the streets of Rome, and plenty of visual gags and one-liners.

Christoph Waltz played Bond’s most infamous nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, “the architect of all [Bond’s] pain”; he’s the head of Spectre, the iconic shadowy international organization that every villain from each of the previous Craig films is revealed to have been agents of, forcing Bond to prevent a plot that would see a Skynet-like surveillance and intelligence program taking over. Spectre intended to wrap everything up and create a similar universe to Marvel and the Fast and the Furious franchise, but the film’s fan service felt gimmicky. Waltz, although captivating while playing the villain in other films, doesn’t exude the same fearsome quality when pitted against Craig’s taller, stronger, and more physically menacing Bond.

Spectre’s big twist is that Bond and Blofeld are essentially brothers, raised by a man who Blofeld killed before creating an empire meant to make Bond’s life miserable. With a backstory casting Bond as a wealthy orphan who becomes a crime-fighting detective that goes up against outlandish villains, Daniel Craig’s Bond films at best mirror Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy; at worst, Spectre’s reveal is ripped straight out of Goldmember.

Over the decades, the James Bond movies have gotten wrong, from a troubling legacy of racism, sexism, misogyny, stereotypes, and xenophobia to the fact that when women aren’t having sex with Bond, they’re getting tortured and killed. These are the sorts of plot devices that deserve to die a slow death and be left in the past, but at the franchise’s core—and what separates the Bond franchise from countless other mindless action spectacles—is a sense of adventure, danger, elegance, and fun. It’s about the high-tech gadgets and sports cars, the beautiful locations and exciting action sequences, the martinis and witty quips, the unhinged maniacal supervillains and whatever strange method they’re planning on using to take over the world. It’s about hearing James Bond tell people his name and seeing him blow up enemies and escape secret lairs—all while wearing a perfectly pressed tuxedo.

That’s what we want in our Bond films—because as much as Daniel Craig has brought to the character, his movies have left many of the cool parts at the door. Hopefully, the powers that be will remember going forward that that a sense of fun is what makes these films memorable. After all, the man we’ve paid for tickets to see isn’t Jason Bourne or John McClane—the name’s Bond. James Bond.

Follow James Charisma on Twitter.

Translated from VICE Quebec.

As sex workers and human rights advocates continue to fight to change the laws governing the sex industry, a group of Quebecers have developed an app they believe will increase safety within the industry.

Gfendr is a made-in-Quebec platform that seeks to “provides a safe and discreet space for sex workers to advertise their services, search for clients, and chat with them.” Its beta version, which has been online since December with little to no publicity, has already attracted more than 200 users from across the country.

This, says co-founder Mélissa Desrochers, is proof that there is a need for such a product. "I don’t think this app will change everything and solve all the problems, but we hope that it will put in place steps to protect sex workers."

So far, the initiative has generated mixed reviews from sex workers and related organizations who hope its mere existence will demonstrate the need for changes in sex work legislation.

After the 2013 the Bedford decision, the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s sex work laws on the basis that they were unconstitutional. The then-Conservative government was forced to create new legislation, which advocates say has made the industry more dangerous for its practitioners. The law now criminalizes most aspects of sex work, including the purchase or advertising of sexual services and living off the profits of sex work.

This, activists say, pushes workers further underground where they have less access to resources and support.

Desrochers believes that the Gfendr platform addresses some of the most problematic issues by allowing sex workers to centralize the different conversations necessary for their transactions and allowing them to have more information about their clients.

The ideal, she says, is still the decriminalization of sex work. "The exchange of sex for money between consenting adults should not be criminalized," she says. “There are a lot of negative consequences for sex workers, it brings repression and so they tend to hide more, they can not protect themselves. "

Gfendr was developed over the course of four year by a team consisting of Desrochers—then a Phd student in the social sciences—and two colleagues. Desrochers explains a former sex worker—now a social worker—was brought on as a consultant. "We contacted about 30 researchers and roughly 20 organizations across Canada," she says. “People told us that it really filled a need, that there aren’t many things out there to help sex workers. "

According to Gfendr’s press release the app would help sex workers “clearly define the services they are willing to provide, [...] search for and chat with potential clients and negotiate terms before meeting.” The app also allows workers to rate their meetups and add comments. "It's really something that can help you get more info on the clients, which allows you to better evaluate whether it's a good client or not," she says.

Yet some of the app’s features are a concern for Sandra Wesley, the director of Montreal-based sex-worker support organisation STELLA.

"It's illegal on many levels," she says. “It's illegal to advertise someone else's sexual services, so an app or site that hosts those ads is committing a crime. To facilitate or encourage the work of sex workers is considered pimping, and so that’s a charge this company is exposing itself to.”

Kerry Porth, the chairwoman of Vancouver’s Pivot Legal Society and a former sex worker, shared this reaction. “They’re going to run afoul of 286.4,” she said, quoting the Criminal Code. “Anyone who advertises in any way the work of another person is committing an offense.”

Yet Desrochers says the team has done their homework. "According to the Bedford judgment, we fall within the exceptions of the law, we are not pimps to the extent that we do not tell women what they should do," she explains. “We offer technology that helps workers better screen their clients. It's the sex workers who create their own content, we don’t take their pictures, we don’t create their profiles. "

She admits that Gfendr is operating in a grey zone. "We are aware of that, but that's also why there aren’t many resources like this out there." Most of the sex workers consulted by VICE said that while they found the concept of the app interesting, they had several questions.

Toronto-based provider Olivia Grace told VICE that while would probably use the platform, she would continue to request external referrals and do her own client screening. "There isn't an app for what your gut tells you" she says.

Author and former sex worker Mélodie Nelson says that although the idea is good, she wonders about the reality of the proposed safe space. "Clients willing to go through a demanding screening process are rather rare and are already respectful and discreet, and these men are perfectly fine using the traditional ways of meeting a sex worker."

Jelena Vermillion, a trans-sex worker living in Ontario, says that although she has some concerns about the confidentiality of the service, the concept looks promising. "When you hear something new there is always a bit of skepticism," she says. “But they seem to very much care about the health safety and wellbeing of sex workers and their ability to make decisions for themselves. "

At STELLA, Wesley also worries about police’s use of the app, as officers sometimes tend to use such platforms to trap clients by pretending to be escorts. "Police will also pretend to be clients to make appointments with sex workers, to go and question them, lecture them or even deport them if they are migrant workers.”

Yet Melissa Desrochers says she wants to establish a relationship of trust with the police: if authorities know the app is responsible and safe, she believes repression won’t be an issue. "We want to work with authorities to integrate a function where sex workers can anonymously report inappropriate behavior, violent clients, fraud, false profiles, minors or cases related to human trafficking" she says.

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On Tuesday, White House physician Ronny Jackson revealed the results of Trump's first physical exam since taking office. The exam focused on Trump's physical health, which Jackson said was "excellent," though he could stand to lose some weight—which isn't surprising since Trump eats so much garbage that he's basically the human equivalent of Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future 2.

But along with the physical examination, Trump insisted that he also take a mental test, to apparently show he truly is "like, really smart." According to Jackson, Trump aced the cognitive exam, getting a perfect 30 out of 30—but that doesn't quite prove the president's gift of high intellect. It just means he can successfully recognize a rhinoceros.

Of the 30 points on the test, Trump got three for successfully naming animals and another three for drawing a clock. He got another point for doodling a 3D cube, just like kids used to draw on their trappers along with that S-thing.

The exam Jackson administered was the widely used Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which tests for "mild cognitive dysfunction," according to test documents. The test doesn't say anything about Trump's actual smarts, but it can help catch early signs of dementia, which Trump did not exhibit.

"There’s no indication whatsoever that he has any cognitive issues," Ronny Jackson said. "He’s very sharp. He’s very articulate when he speaks to me."

While the MoCA test results may be surprising for those questioning Trump's mental health, it doesn't disprove Fire and Fury 's claims that the guy is "dumb as shit." For that, we have to wait for a real intelligence test—so we can finally see once and for all if Trump really does have "one of the highest" IQs in the world.

While we wait for that, grab a friend and try the MoCA exam yourself to see if you're a "stable genius," too, via the Los Angeles Times.

Funerals are not supposed to be described as a “horror story.”

Yet, that’s the exact term a family is using after a privately run funeral home in Nova Scotia accidentally cremated their family member’s body. On top of that, the CBC reports that not only did the funeral home burn the wrong corpse but they also showed the deceased woman’s family two bodies—one wearing their family member’s clothing—before finally admitting their mistake.

Sandra Bennett died in late December to what the CBC describes as a “longtime illness.” Upon her passing, the Bennett family brought the 65-year-old’s body to Serenity Funeral Home in Berwick where they scheduled a viewing for the next week. They couldn’t have ever known that when they showed up for the viewing they would encounter such a comedy of upsetting errors.

Bennett’s husband was the first to find out the body wasn’t of his late wife but one of a different woman he had never seen before. This happened just shortly before the open-casket visitation began and, thankfully, the funeral parlor acknowledged their screw up to the Bennett family. So, they then wheeled out the stranger’s body and brought in a new one to where the visitation was to take place, but the thing is, while this body was wearing their family members clothes, it still wasn’t Bennett.

The CBC reports that this is when the attendant had to inform the family that they accidentally cremated Bennett’s body. One of the family members, who requested anonymity, described the entire situation as a “horror story.” The CBC spoke to the son of one of the women shown the Bennet’s family and told them that while his mother wanted to be cremated, they accidentally embalmed her.

On the funeral home’s website, first found by the CBC, they state that their cremation procedures make it “next to impossible” to pull off what they did to Sandra Bennett.

“All reputable cremation providers use rigorous sets of operation procedures and policies to maximize their level of service, which minimizes the risk of human errors,” reads the FAQ section of their website. “It is illegal to perform more than one cremation at a time; so many crematories will only cremate one body at a time. Even if there is more than one retort, there are labels that are used to make sure it is next to impossible to receive the incorrect remains.

The lawyers for Serenity Funeral Home have said they’re giving no comment at the moment. An investigation by the Nova Scotia Board of Registration of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is underway.

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Vinyl album sales hit another modern high last year, due in part to 72,000 people in the US buying yet another copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Beatles 1967 album was given a lavish 50th anniversary reissue, pushing it to the top of the vinyl charts. Clearly, nostalgia still sells—only three of the top ten were released in the 2010s (Ed Sheeran, and the soundtracks to Guardians of the Galaxy and La La Land). Which means that the incessant backwards gaze of pop-culture writing will no doubt continue to create a thriving market for retrospectives—some of it being more worthwhile than others.

And even if, as a former colleague point out recently, that 15th-anniversary retrospectives are killing the 20th-anniversary retrospective industry, get ready for another 12 months of friends sharing throwback thinkpieces on an almost daily basis. Here’s a primer of what to expect.

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JANUARY

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend (2008)

If you read ‘Meet Me in the Bathroom’ you’d know that this album represented a massive turning point for music in NYC in 2008, the only city in the world with music.

Dawson’s Creek debuts (1998)

Some outlets are already on it! What does Pacey’s affair with his teacher look like in 2018? Did they really need to kill Jen off? Was it even really Dawson’s creek? Can’t wait for these pressing questions to be answered.

Breaking Bad debuts (2008)

Yes, it’s already one of the most-written about shows in the modern era, but doesn’t Walter White—an entitled prick with a shitty health-care plan—seem even more topical in 2008? Hell, if someone wants to do an oral history of every single time Aaron Paul yells “something something, bitch!” someone would read it.

FEBRUARY

Winter Olympics (1988)

Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards sucks at ski jumping and becomes a meme before memes really existed. Meanwhile the Jamaican bobsled team makes international debut at the Winter Olympics (which goes on to inspire the film Cool Runnings five years later).

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

Is it the most indie album that ever indie albumed? Find out on Stereogum next month.

MARCH

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Who could have predicted at the time that this idiosyncratic Cohen Bros film about a philosophical slacker would generate one of the most dedicated cult followings of the past couple decades—with its own religion. Also, possibly the easiest Halloween costume to pull off last minute.

Starcraft (1998)

A real-time strategy game featuring alien races going at other alien races (Protoss all day), would convince players everywhere that one could actually make a living doing this thing.

MAY

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

The film that launched a hundred thousand wannabe journalists/drug tourists, and effectively rekindled the career of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson remains a weird thing to watch. Director Terry Gilliam did a masterful job capturing the look and feel of a bad drug trip while also managing to romanticize the writerly act of staring at a blank page until the words start to flow. Johnny Depp and, especially, Benicio Del Toro give seriously committed fanboy performances, but, in all honesty, it’s way more fun and satisfying to just read the damn book.

Seinfeld “The Finale” airs (1998)

When the creators made the contentious choice to put the four main characters on trial for their behaviour throughout the show’s run, Seinfeld’s massive audience was forced to realize they’d been obsessively tuning into the lives of four total assholes for the past nine years. Cue an entire generation of comedy writers creating shows around unlikeable characters.

Johnny Cash - Live at Folsom Prison (1968)

It’s been 50 years since the release of this legendary intersection of pop culture and prison life, where the Man in Black sounds perfectly at ease shooting the shit with the inmate audience (“Do you serve everything in tin cups?”) and ripping through songs about killing a man just to watch him die, enduring a death penalty sentence after sleeping with your best friend’s wife, and doing cocaine with loaded weapons around.

JUNE

Windows 98 is released (1998)

Startup music just wasn't as good as Brian Eno’s Windows 95 jam.

The Truman Show (1998)

Wild how Jim Carrey invented Black Mirror 20 years ago.

JULY

Armageddon (1998)

Personally, I do prefer Deep Impact, but Armageddon feels like the perfect movie for a ‘Does it Suck?’ with a ‘so bad it’s good’ thesis. (“Don’t wanna close my eyezzzz / Don’t wanna fall asleep….”)

Die Hard (1988)

Did you know Die Hard, a Christmas Movie, came out 30 years ago? It’s the only Christmas Movie ever. Only REAL basasses know Die Hard is a Christmas Movie. Yippee ki-yay!

The Dark Knight (2008)

This one will be a bit of a twofer, as it’s also the 10-year anniversary of Heath Ledger’s death (he died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January of 2008). It’s been said a lot, but his Oscar-winning portrayal of the Joker in Dark Knight towers so far above every other superhero movie performance it’s scary. As for The Dark Knight itself, there is some value into looking at the film in 2018. First off, DC’s continued attempts to replicate it’s “dark” themes via Zack Snyder and co. have been not-insignificant failures and have threatened its ability to compete with the cheery (and better produced) Marvelverse. On the other hand, no Marvel film (or any other superhero film) have quite matched The Dark Knight in terms of its visuals and standout scenes. (But the less said about some its plotting and its third act, the better.)

AUGUST

That ‘70s Show debuts (1998)

Ugh.

Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Could Beyonce’s Lemonade exist with this album? (Probably, but the parallels are too delicious for a critic not to indulge.)

iMac G3 (1998)

The candy-coloured desktop computer goes on sale, marking the return of Steve Jobs and the start of Apple ubiquity.

Google Inc. (1998)

With the help of a significant investment, the search engine becomes an incorporated company and the World Wide Web is forever changed.

SEPTEMBER

“Too big to fail” (2008)

Investment bank Lehman Brothers collapses, signalling a new peak in the financial crisis.

The Hunger Games book comes out (2008)

Once again, YA fiction tops the bestseller lists.

Sex and the City debuts (1998)

White feminism in stilettos!

Sarah Palin’s Distasterious Interviews With Katie Couric (2008)

Remember the good ole’ days of 2008 when being hilariously unqualified for office usually meant you were not elected to said office?

Barenaked Ladies release “One Week”

The single from Stunt allowed them to finally crack that elusive US market and propel them beyond being just a quirky Canadian phenomenon to a legit pop stardom, complete with a Jason Priestley-directed documentary.

Britney’s ...Baby One More Time is released (1998)

Featuring the timeless love anthem “E-mail My Heart.”

OCTOBER

American History X (1998)

Two words: curb smile.

(Also, this terrifyingly realistic depiction of young people being seduced by racial hatred and neo-Nazi iconography is even more terrifyingly relevant in 2018. Seems like the moral of this story wasn’t brutally blunt enough for an entire new generation of shitheads to understand.)

NOVEMBER

They Live (1988)

Here is a list of things that John Carpenter predicted with this 30-year-old film:

Capitalism is a scam.
Global warming is man-made.
Branding is everything.
Plaid shirts and dark sunglasses are timeless.
Rowdy Roddy Piper was totally underrated.
Aliens are (probably) real and (probably) in charge of everything.
Democracies can quickly become dictatorships.

Half-Life (1998)

As we still wait for Half-Life 3, seems as good a time as any to write 5000 words on arguably the most influential game of the last 20 years.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

Is it the greatest Nintendo game of all-time? Find out this November.

Obama wins! (2008)

What a time to be alive! But also, sighhhhhh.

Twilight the movie comes out (2008)

Tweens discover goth. Kristen Stewart discovers aloofness.

Beyoncé releases “Single Ladies” (2008)

The single from her I Am… Sasha Fierce album enshrined Bey’s place as the soundtrack to every bouquet toss at every wedding reception for the rest of eternity.

808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Kanye releases his Auto-Tune heavy masterpiece, pissing off a vast number of his fans and redefining pop music at the same time.

Chinese Democracy finally comes out (2008)

It feels like only 10 years ago that we only waited 17 years for a new Guns N’ Roses album. Spoiler alert: It didn’t age well.

DECEMBER

Psycho (1998)

While not great in any measure, Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot update of the Hitchcock classic created excessive hand-wringing about the very nature of remakes—a concern that seems rather quaint now with so many singular films/shows/books spawning copious reimagined versions, both fanfic and official. (Shout out to Bates Motel.)

Baldur’s Gate (1998)

This role-playing classic basically turned a little-known Edmonton developer Bioware into an international powerhouse….that eventually got bought by Electronic Arts and made the ending of Mass Effect 3.

We're four months away from the release of Solo, Disney's upcoming Han Solo origin film, and things aren't exactly looking promising.

First, the movie's original directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, were unceremoniously fired and replaced with Ron Howard while the film was well into production. Then there was the film's limp title, the rumors about Alden Ehrenreich needing acting lessons, and a report that Disney is gearing up for the movie to tank. Finally, there's the complete lack of publicity—it's pretty bizarre that we don't have a trailer or an official poster or promo photos or any real information about it this close to the release date outside of Ron Howard's Instagram feed.

Finally on Tuesday, Disney released a plot synopsis for Solo, giving us our first official details about the upcoming Star Wars movie. Unfortunately, it likely won't do much to ease anyone's Solo concerns.

"Board the Millennium Falcon and journey to a galaxy far, far away in Solo: A Star Wars Story, an all-new adventure with the most beloved scoundrel in the galaxy," the synopsis reads. "Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future copilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga's most unlikely heroes."

Since we already knew that both the Falcon and Lando would be making appearances in Solo, neither of their mentions are particularly revelatory—it was pretty easy to guess that we'd wind up seeing that fateful sabacc game in the movie. Same goes for the way Han met Chewie. Both of those iconic Star Wars moments will be fun to finally see or whatever, but they're still just moments—and nothing in the synopsis offers us anything like a compelling narrative spine that could hold these "daring escapades" and bits of fan service together.

Still, rumours and a lackluster synopsis probably aren't enough to completely give up on Solo yet, especially since Disney has a pretty solid track record with Star Wars films thus far, all things considered. Let's just wait for the trailer to drop before we completely panic. Until then, everyone can go back to arguing about The Last Jedi.

Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff's book about Trump's first year in office, has only been out for a few weeks, but the thing has already become a massive hit. Since its early release on January 5, the book shot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list and inadvertently helped a Canadian professor make some extra cash along the way.

It also seems to have royally pissed Trump off, who immediately called the book "phony" and "full of lies"—though it's not clear if the president has actually read the whole thing, given his general disdain for reading. Now, thankfully, it looks like Trump won't have to worry about cracking the book open or sitting through all 12 hours of the audiobook because Fire and Fury is heading to Trump's favourite medium: TV.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Endeavor Content has purchased the film and TV rights to Fire and Fury and plans to develop a TV series based on the book, with Wolff onboard to executive produce. It's not clear exactly how much Endeavor paid for the book rights, but the Reporter says that the price tag was in the millions.

The project is still in its infancy and doesn't yet have a network attached—Endeavor reportedly plans to begin shopping it right away—but it seems like demand would be high for a Fire and Fury adaptation since the closest thing we've got to it right now is The President Show.

Plus, all questions about the book's factual accuracy aside, the gossipy tell-all is made for TV. Wolff paints Trump's election and subsequent time in office like a Coen Brothers–style farce, with Bannon, Kushner, and Priebus tripping over one another for Trump's ear, and a petulant president locking himself in a White House bedroom and accidentally leaking his own secrets to friends and acquaintances while he's curled up on the phone.

The adaptation is still in its early stages and we're a long way from getting anything like a cast list, but it's still fun to imagine who might wind up playing Trump and his cronies in the Fire and Fury show. Will Ray Liotta don the double collars to play Bannon? Will Jennifer Lawrence wind up as Ivanka? What actor out there could possibly do justice to a role as insane as Donald Trump?

All guesses aside, there's at least one casting choice that shouldn't even be up for debate—Mike Myers has to play Wolff since the guy is a dead-ringer for Dr. Evil.

Hawaii's Emergency Management Agency (HEMA) is taking some heat after an employee accidentally sent out a warning that a ballistic missile was barreling toward the state on Saturday, scaring the shit out of islanders and giving at least one poor guy a literal heart attack. But a closer look at the people tasked with responding to impending disasters shows that they treat their password protection the same way your forgetful parent might.

As Business Insider points out, a few press photos from the HEMA headquarters reveal that the agency has been keeping some of its passwords scrawled out on Post-it notes, pasted to various computer monitors. Some savvy Twitter users were even able to zoom in on one photo enough to make out the word: "warningpoint2."

A HEMA spokesperson said that "warningpoint2" wouldn't get anyone access to the warnings that are sent out to people's phones, but was used for some kind of "internal application." Regardless, people have speculated that Saturday's false alarm was the result of a hack, and not a HEMA employee's honest mistake. On Tuesday, Japan sent out a similar false alarm to people's phones, just days after Hawaii did, but it was deemed a "switching error."

You'd sort of hope the agency tasked with keeping Hawaiians safe in the event of a nuclear holocaust would be a little more careful about keeping its passwords a secret, as innocuous as the slipup may be. At least the guys at HEMA weren't using the old go-to "password."

Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.

Within hours of North Korea doing something like, say, launching an ICBM that could strike anywhere in the US mainland, Bruce Francisco’s email invariably blows up. The 59-year-old Connecticut resident isn’t NatSec, and he’s not a nuclear war expert who's good for a few theoretical armageddon quotes, either. Francisco’s a comedy hypnotist, hypnotherapist, meditation guru, motivational speaker, author, and skin-care expert.

He’s also a custom home builder and remodeler who, for the right price, can construct for you a super swanky, highly functional bomb shelter to survive underground for several years after the nukes rain down. Put together, he can show you how to calm your mind, develop positive habits, and keep your skin glowing (in a totally nonradioactive way) while you’re living out the rest of your days beneath ground in comfort and style. Even if the rest of the planet is an incinerated, cannibalistic and otherwise highly stressful hellscape.

That sort of holistic approach to the apocalypse makes Francisco arguably the only one of a small-but-colourful community of decommissioned American missile base rehabbers who can give you comprehensive peace of mind at the end of the world, the promise of which is unfortunately taking up space in the minds of anyone currently paying even moderate attention to the news.

“'Good morning, what’s the average price of an anti-apocalypse shelter and the resources needed to live for six months to three years?'" Francisco says, reading aloud one of the many emails he's gotten in the wake of Kim Jung-un's latest missile test. "That’s a common one. Or, here you go: ‘Hello, my name is Donna, please tell me if I can make a purchase of a fully stocked home for 100 people to keep us alive for a year. It needs to be done in one week. Money is not an issue.’”

Francisco laughs wryly. But sometimes the missives are heartbreaking.

“‘I don’t know what to do,’” he reads. “‘I’ve got a family and kids. We don’t have much money, but we can be handy. We can be helpful.’”

Such emails appear regularly in Francisco's inbox thanks to a self-described “antiquated but very well-optimized” website that shows off the luxurious "Silohome" he built out of the ruins of a Cold War–era Atlas-F missile base in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. The site was once assigned to the US Air Force’s defunct 556th Strategic Missile Squadron.

Originally built during the Eisenhower Administration’s second term for roughly $16 million, it and the other 71 Atlas-F silos in six states (New York, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and New Mexico) were rendered obsolete by rapidly improving missile technology almost as soon as they were finished. All were decommissioned by the mid 60s, sealed up (and sometimes flooded), and left to rot.

During that ensuing period of structural disintegration, Francisco—who these days, tanned and fit, looks like he could be magician David Copperfield’s more handsome cousin—grew up in Armonk, New York, where he learned to fix up things from his father, who ran a company that leased used aircraft.

In 1992, Francisco’s then-business partner bought the Adirondack Atlas-F base for about $55,000, and enlisted Francisco, who at the time was mainly remodeling kitchens and basements. The only thing he saw when he got to the base was a small concrete wedge sticking out of the ground.

“I didn’t know what a missile base was,” he recalls. “I opened the hatch and went down a couple steps, and the first thing I saw was just water. Neither of us really had any money at the time, so we bought a water pump for 50 bucks and slowly pumped it out, and it was just sludge and junk.”

The pair brought in the Army Corps of Engineers to check the area for any contamination, and after getting the all-clear, Francisco began working on-and-off on a years-long project to transform the property.

Atlas-F bases are all configured alike. A set of stairs leads down to steel blast doors, behind which is a two-story, 50-foot-diameter, 2,300-square-foot Launch Control Center (LCC) that connects via a tunnel to the 52-foot-wide, 185-foot-deep launch tube where an 82-foot Atlas-F missile once sat on a hydraulic elevator, ready for takeoff.

Francisco renovated the LCC, building a posh entertainment, kitchen, and dining area on the first subterranean floor, installing a spiral staircase leading down to fancy bedroom suites and marble-tiled bathrooms with Jacuzzis on the lower floor. The ventilation and septic systems are tip-top, and the whole LCC is ensconced in three-foot-thick concrete and steel walls made to withstand one hell of a detonation.

“I’d sleep down there sometimes (during the construction),” Francisco says, “and it’s a kind of quiet I can’t even really explain."

Along the way, Francisco bought out his partner and put nearly $1 million into the project. It involved building a contemporary 1,800-square-foot “surface house" over the refurbished LCC. There’s a keypad entry inside the house that takes you down to that “secret” tricked-out underground lair. Francisco, who's also a pilot, built an airstrip from an old access road that runs next to the silo.

The stylish surface house is key. Francisco envisioned his Silohome differently than other missile base rehabbers like Larry Hall, who in recent years converted his Kansas silo into what he calls a "Survival Condo" complex—lavish just-in-case subterranean apartments for the uber-wealthy, with amenities like a shooting range, rock-climbing wall and armed guards watching over the place 24/7. More HGTV than Doomsday Preppers, Francisco likes the option of living above ground in fairly upscale fashion—instead of underground like some mole-person—until the shit actually hits the fan, and then you can scurry downstairs to your chic hideaway.

What further sets Francisco apart from the Larry Halls of the world, though, is that he's also able to provide for you the tools to achieve inner peace as well as outer comfort. Even if you can't afford a bunker, the self-hypnosis recordings he sells through his Free Mind Center website can help you quit smoking, lose weight, and sleep better. What's more, through his techniques, he claims, people are better able to "eliminate... negative feelings and behaviors," which seems like it could be a handy tool in the face of nuclear armageddon.

“People are really stressed out right now, but my techniques can help them navigate their life experiences more effectively and more happily,” Francisco says, slipping casually into infomercial mode.

Currently his Silohome's 185-foot-launch tube remains unfinished, owing to the many additional millions of dollars Francisco estimates it would take to convert it into a multi-level structure that he likens to "a skyscraper in a bottle." But that fact didn't deter an investor, who Francisco declines to name, from recently buying into the project and moving into the Silohome full time while Francisco still manages the property.

Earlier this year, Francisco bought another Atlas-F base in Roswell, New Mexico, for $95,000, and says he intends to purchase even more old missile bases to rehab. “It’s totally dry down there,” he enthuses of his newest property. "And it’s pretty close to civilization, unlike some of the other ones in the middle of nowhere. There’s a Home Depot and an Applebee’s and stuff right near there.”

Not a bad place to spend the last days before the potential bomb drops. Until then, breathe easy. Francisco can show you the way.

Follow Michael Goldberg on Twitter.