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Ron Siwicki was arrested on December 17. Photo via Ron Siwicki's personal Facebook page

Winnipeg guitar player Ron Siwicki was granted bail on Monday after being charged with criminal negligence causing death and failure to provide the necessities of life after he cared for his mother on the floor of their house for several days instead of seeking proper medical attention.

His mother, 89-year-old Betty Siwicki, was immobilized after falling out of bed in late November. According to Ron Siwicki's lawyer, Mike Cook, Betty Siwicki categorically refused any form of medical care and his client was only respecting his mother's wishes when he left her on the kitchen floor, gave her a blanket and fed her Boost meal supplements until she died at some point in mid-December. Only then did he call 911.

Dozens of the guitarist's supporters attended the bail hearing at Manitoba Provincial Court, and they even managed to pool their money to pay the $5,000 required to secure his release. "Why the Crown was trying to keep this man incarcerated made no sense to any of us," said supporter Glenn MacRae.

Members of Winnipeg's music community have also agreed to take turns supervising the distraught guitarist, who cried numerous times in court and is reportedly still in a state of shock. Additional bail conditions include grief counselling, a psychiatric evaluation, and being confined to the home where the alleged offence took place.

A publication ban was imposed by Manitoba Provincial Court Judge Lynn Stannard, who presided over the bail hearing. As a result, media cannot report any of the evidence revealed in court, but what has emerged in the weeks following Siwicki's arrest are numerous accounts of a caring, dutiful son.

"Ron is a lovely man. His whole life has been his music and his support of his mother," said Siwicki's friend Michael Gillespie. "He was often the first who would have to leave a group or a gathering, perhaps after a gig at [popular restaurant and bar] the Pony, and he would order extra food and leave early because he had to take it home to his mom. He took his responsibilities with her extremely seriously."

While refusing life-saving medical care is a basic right in Canada, the Crown is of the opinion that Ron Siwicki was reckless and that as his mother's caretaker, he was legally obligated to do more than leave her on the kitchen floor to wither away. Even assisted death advocates have suggested that he could have resorted to a more humane course of treatment than leaving her on the floor, like putting her in bed with a morphine drip to alleviate pain.

According to Dying With Dignity CEO Wanda Morris, "It seems like it must have been a misunderstanding. Did she really want to lie there in pain for five days, or was it a fear that if you called someone, they would force her to be resuscitated or have care?"

Cook told reporters outside the courtroom that his client has already suffered enough.

"To lose a parent is a horrendous thing at any point in your life," said Cook. "Then to be accused of being at fault for the passing of your parent—and then to be detained in the remand centre—is just the most horrendous thing that could happen to an individual."

I went through a Nick Drake phase, like some folks do, but now whenever I listen to his minky blanket voice I want to write nonsensical love poems and gently cry myself to sleep, which is something I mostly try to avoid. Some people still jones for that weepy, Nick Drake catharsis, though, and bands have been covering his songs for decades. Not usually prog metal bands—at least not until now.

New Jersey prog band East of the Wall just covered "River Man," a song from Drake's 1969 album Five Leaves Left. The track has been previously reimagined by folk and jazz musicians, but surprisingly no math-y bands stepped up to the challenge before. When I first put on East of the Wall's Nick Drake cover, I was afraid I'd be transformed back to the sniveling man I once was, squirting tears all over my copy of John Berryman's Dream Songs. Luckily, this cover makes me feel like I'm in a movie mashup of Heavy Metal and The Hobbit ,slaying centaurs with Geddy Lee. Way better.

Preorder East of the Wall's new split with Cryptodira here.

Following trials of great public interest, we're all but guaranteed that some of the juicy details from the jury room will make their way into the public sphere. Book deals are inked, interviews are scheduled, and rationales for finding someone guilty (or not) are explained.

Not so for the Ferguson grand jury that decided the fate of Officer Darren Wilson, who in November was cleared in the shooting death of Michael Brown. But an ACLU lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of one of the jurors—which leans heavily on a 1990 Supreme Court decision—could change that.

"Most of the arguments that support grand jury secrecy rules don't really apply here," said Ben Trachtenberg, a professor of law at the University of Missouri.

Trachtenberg noted that much of the evidence in the case has already been released by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, including a glut of witness interviews conducted by both prosecutors and law enforcement. (That hasn't been the case for the Eric Garner grand jury in New York, where Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan is now under pressure to release information related to the decision not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for Garner's chokehold death.)

"If you were going to have a grand juror challenge those rules [of secrecy], this would be the case to do it," Trachtenberg said of the Ferguson grand juror who's suing McCulloch for the right to go public.

In its filing, the ACLU argues that "the implication that all grand jurors believed that there was no support for any charges" against Wilson is "not entirely accurate." Furthermore, the lawsuit states on behalf of "Grand Juror Doe" that "the presentation of evidence to the grand jury investigating Wilson differed markedly and in significant ways from how evidence was presented in the hundreds of matters presented to the grand jury earlier in its term."

That's not surprising. Many have argued that McCulloch's handling of the grand jury's investigation into Wilson diverged from other cases. Grand Juror Doe wants to talk about this—and other stuff, too, presumably—but there is a criminal punishment at the ready if he or she does so.

"Plaintiff is chilled from expressing individual views or experiences," the lawsuit states, because speaking out would violate Missouri law and the oath grand jurors and witnesses were required to take. If Grand Juror Doe were to speak publicly without first getting legal clearance, he or she would face a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The ACLU's chance for victory hinges on whether a juror's right to speak publicly about the case outweighs the risks of doing so, which is currently under examination in the Garner case as well.

"As we look across the country, the shootings of unarmed African American men is an important topic of debate," said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU's Missouri branch. "What we're looking for is to engage the public and advise the press, but that's not the case right now. Instead, what you have is the government providing the government's viewpoint, and that's it."

McCulloch's office hasn't responded publicly to the lawsuit, and a spokesman told VICE on Wednesday, "We haven't seen [the lawsuit] yet, so we have no comment." And perhaps for good reason: Not only did the prosecutor's ties to law enforcement damage his credibility in the eyes of many, but he has publicly said that some witnesses lied in their testimony to the grand jury.

"I think there's a decent argument for saying that when the grand jury is completely finished, maybe the secrecy has to yield to the public interest," Trachtenberg said.

That's exactly what the Supreme Court decided in 1990, when Chief Justice William Rehnquist led the way in ruling that grand jury secrecy laws shouldn't apply to witnesses. That case— Butterworth v. Smith—is the linchpin of the suit.

Back then, the country's highest court told Florida and 15 other states—including Missouri—that witnesses can't be prevented from speaking publicly about their testimony to grand juries. Those secrecy laws, similar to the oath grand jurors took in the Wilson case to remain quiet, violated the First Amendment, the court ruled.

We have Michael Smith, a former reporter for the Charlotte Herald-Tribune, to thank for that. The story Smith was working on that led to his grand jury testimony—in eerily similar circumstances—involved an alleged cover-up by cops of an 18-year-old's death.

"[Smith] had written a series of articles on what he said was corruption in public office," the New York Times reported in 1990. "One article alleged that law enforcement officials of a neighboring county had conspired ten years earlier to cover up the killing of an 18-year-old youth by making the death appear to be a suicide."

Whether the ACLU lawsuit filed Monday will go as far as the Supreme Court remains to be seen. But there are other possibilities, which include McCulloch deciding to lift the gag order for grand jurors in the Wilson case, or a state court deciding the same.

"It may be that the attorneys for prosecutor McCulloch decide that it is in the public's interest for this grand juror to be able to speak," Mittman, the ACLU rep, told me.

If that de facto settlement isn't reached, and the case goes to a higher court, a ruling similar to the one reached in 1990 could have a chilling effect on future grand juries, according to Trachtenberg. Witnesses, already worried about their testimony helping to indict someone, might be even more hesitant if they know a grand juror can talk following their time served.

"The grand juror could tell us everybody's name, if he remembers. They could say, 'Here's what we talked about, here's how we made our decisions,'" Trachtenberg explained. "These are some potential negative consequences, but you have to balance that against the general First Amendment argument that it's usually a good thing that we know what the government's up to, and that people should be able to speak about what they've been up to in their lives."

In this case, that would be the months of deliberations that took place behind closed doors as the country waited for a resolution to what became the biggest news story of the year. No grand jury witnesses have come forward in the press as of yet, even though they were granted that right nearly 25 years ago, thanks to efforts of Smith, the small-town Florida newspaper reporter. It's unclear whether anyone other than Grand Juror Doe wants to name themselves as being responsible for the decision to clear Wilson.

"Whenever somebody testifies in front of the grand jury, he might be nervous that something they say could get them the side-eye from their friends or neighbors," Trachtenberg said. "So one of the things that gets people to be more open is the promise of secrecy."

In the beginning, as Ferguson reeled in rumor, misinformation and anger following Brown's death, facts were hard to come by. With its lawsuit, the ACLU hopes to pull the veil from the proceedings we were all so engrossed in this summer and autumn. And if the group is victorious, the promise of secrecy might be an empty one in the future, prompting a scenario that changes how police-involved deaths are investigated and ultimately ruled upon.

Then again, if McCulloch wants someone to blame for breaking rank with the secret grand jury process, he has only to look in the mirror.

"We presented to this grand jury ... all the evidence there could possibly be, all of which will be available ... so everyone will be able to examine that same evidence and come to their own conclusion," McCulloch announced when he told the world of the grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson. Of course, he added that night that only the jurors know the whole truth. "They are the only people, the only people, who have heard and examined every witness and every piece of evidence."

Follow Justin Glawe on Twitter.

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Photo courtesy of Vincent Harris

It's hard to deny that 2014 was a very good year for the Republican Party. Two years after its 2012 train wreck, the GOP returns to Washington this week with an eight-seat majority in the Senate and a deep bench of contenders who want to take on Hillary Clinton in the next election. And while the party hasn't quite managed to shake its reputation as a political nursing home for jowly white dudes, Republicans managed to creep out of the tech Stone Age this fall, and finally started making dents in the Democrats' digital campaign juggernaut.

Vincent Harris isn't impressed. The 26-year-old Republican strategist, best known for putting Ted Cruz on the internet, has relentlessly criticized his party for their technological backwardness, telling any reporter who calls that the GOP's digital operations are second-rate and that the party's claims of progress are "a lot of talk." Begrudgingly, other Republicans have started to listen, bringing Harris on to translate the 21st century for high-profile conservative campaigns.

This fall, Harris announced that he is ditching Cruz to join Rand Paul's political team, as both Senators gear up for likely presidential runs in 2016. We caught up with him recently to talk about the new gig, and how he thinks the GOP can step up its digital game this year.

VICE: Tell me about the new job. What exactly are you going to be doing for Senator Paul?
Vincent Harris: I've always been a big fan of Senator Paul, since he first came on to the scene in 2010. I'm a big admirer of him as a thought leader in the party, and nationally on everything from issues of security and privacy to expanding the party across age groups, across demographics. I'm also just a big fan of where he puts the Constitution and the powers of the federal government.

So how it really came about: I mean, I've known some of his staff. You know, I had a conversation with them and they offered me a big seat at the table and I really believe that digital is going to play a very important role in Senator Paul's organization. And I believe that Senator Paul wants to continue to innovate and reach people through different, new means and to run a campaign that is unlike any organization that's been run previously. Really integrating a proper digital operation throughout the entire organization—and leading with digital and with data.

Obviously the Obama campaign in 2012 was very successful in bringing in people from Google and other major tech companies to run their digital operations. Is that something you're trying to do?
Look, these are great questions, and I want to answer them as much as I can without showing all my cards. But I will say this: I know that this organization is going to not just look to existing political technology. It's going to look to the market—to what the best technology is independent of the partisan affiliation associated with that technology.

And this organization is going to have input— big input at a big level, from people that want to help, in Austin, in Silicon Valley. We're going to throw the book out on how a tech [campaign] operation has been run previously.I don't want to just run the same operation that, say, President Obama's campaign ran. I want to run a more unique 2016-level operation. Something that was run four years ago is obsolete now.

Republicans have really struggled to keep up with Democrats digitally in the past few presidential elections. How can you close that gap?
I think what has happened on the Republican side is that Republicans are just looking to what President Obama's campaign has done, on every level, and they're just trying to mimic that. And if they can mimic that, then they feel like they can pat themselves on the back. Well, I'm not gonna be complacent, just copying what President Obama did.

They have digital suppressed under the communication shops and digital gets crumbs of what's left over from the television buying [funds] and digital is an afterthought. I think that's very concerning. They just say that they use digital and they're just trying to impress reporters and impress donors. So I really don't think that Republicans are at the place that they need to be.

So what exactly does your 2016 digital operation look like?
I think something that I'm willing to discuss now is that I want this organization—I'm just going to say organization for the time being—I want this organization to be not just simply Rand Paul talking at his supporters, I want this to be a crowdsourced campaign. A crowdsourced organization. I think that is one way you're going to see things going differently. It is my vision to build a platform, and to build an organization, that can be manipulated by the developer community.

All of this is going to be rolled out over the next few months, so I don't wanna get ahead of myself. But I can tell you, there is not anything that we are going to be pitched that we are going to turn away. There is not any idea from our supporters, or from the tech community in Austin or Silicon Valley, that isn't going to be listened to.

Look, I don't know everything, right? Not any one person in our organization knows everything. And that's not how you innovate—thinking you know everything and just running a closed-circle operation. That's not what this is going to be. I want to hear from the tech community and we're going to build an infrastructure where, if we're doing something wrong, our supporters in the community are going to be helping us and giving input.

I think this is a mistake that large presidential campaigns in the past have made. First off, they've only looked to the insular, political tech community. And then, as the organizations have grown, they haven't listened. They haven't listened to what's new in the Space Race and that has led to a stifling of how campaigns and how political operations have been run. One thing that I'm making certain of is that I don't wanna talk to the same three people that have pitched and worked in the political space. I wanna talk to new people and different people. To people that are helping Target, and are helping Home Depot, and that are helping McDonald's. The people that have helped Old Spice online. That's who I wanna talk to.

A lot has been made of Rand Paul's efforts to reach out to groups that aren't necessarily part of the traditional Republican base. How will you and the internet play a role in that?
Every study that comes out shows that young people are the most active online. Certainly, it's the older person that is more reliable, historically, as a voter, and a more historically reliable giver of donations online. For, Sen. Cruz, our average online donor was 55 [years old]. Our most active person for Sen. Cruz was the Tea Party grandma— women 65 and older. So, certainly older people can be active, but I see Sen. Paul as even being able to do more.

Its just numbers. Young people, I believe, are very in tune with Senator Paul's message—they are all online. This new generation coming to vote, those people are using the internet as their number one source of information. Certainly, I think Sen. Paul has a message that is going to resonate even more to the online community—folks that are concerned about their privacy, folks that are concerned about security, and just naturally, people that are younger and that want the government out of their lives.

Follow Grace on Twitter.

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Stephane Charbonnier, a.k.a. Charb, the editor of 'Charlie Hebdo' who was killed in today's attack, talks to reporters after the newspaper's officers were firebombed in 2011. Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Coyau

This morning, in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a trio of gunmen attacked the headquarters of the left-wing satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The masked men, who were armed with assault rifles and a rocket launcher, killed 12 people (including two policemen) and injured a dozen more; they then fled the scene and are still at large. According to reports, they shouted, "Allahu Akbar" and "The Prophet is now avenged." It's the fourth terrorist attack of that sort that the country has suffered in three weeks.

Charlie Hebdo has had a history of publishing controversial material, and has long been a target of hatred for radical Muslims, who have accused it of Islamophobia and racism for publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which is forbidden under Islam. The publication has repeatedly been threatened and subjected to attacks.

Charlie Hebdo first made international headlines in February 2006, when it reprinted a series of cartoons—one of which showed Muhammed wearing a bomb as a headdress—that had appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, leading to deadly protests in the Middle East. The French president at the time, Jacques Chirac, called the newspaper's actions an "overt provocation," and several French Muslim groups sued the paper and editor Philippe Val for "public insults against a group of people because of their religious affiliation." (The charges were eventually dismissed.)

However, Islamist groups held a grudge against the paper—and other satirical publications who ran the cartoons—from that point on, with a 2008 audio message allegedly from Osama bin Laden calling the drawings part of a "new Crusade."

In November 2011 Charlie Hebdo ran another drawing of Muhammed on its cover along with a joke that it had named him editor-in-chief. The next day, the paper's offices were burned down; the police concluded the fire was the result of an arson attack. The Charlie Hebdo website was also taken down by hackers and replaced with a message that said, "You keep abusing Islam's almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech." A Turkish hacking group called Akincilar claimed responsibility for the cyberattack, and in an interview with a French newspaper one of its members said that it was a "protest against an insult to our values and beliefs" while denying the group had anything to do with the firebombing.

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Charlie Hebdo's offices after the 2011 attack. Photo via Wikimedia Commons user Pierre-Yves Beaudouin

In September 2012 the newspaper again published cartoons of Muhammed (this time in the nude), and the French government shut down embassies and schools across the Middle East for fear of reprisals. A man was subsequently arrested by French authorities for allegedly calling for the beheading of editor Stephane Charbonnier, a.k.a. Charb. Charbonier was also the subject of a threat in March 2013, when al Qaeda's magazine Inspire put him on a "most wanted" list that included several other editors and cartoonists who had put drawings of Muhammed out into the world.

In the last few years, with tensions between Muslims and the rest of the French populace rising, Charlie Hebdo has continued pushing the envelope—one 2013 issue, titled "Life of Muhammed," reportedly led to a bookseller being threatened by young Muslim men when he displayed it in his window.

None of these controversies and sparks of violence, however, can compare to the attack today. As of this writing, the gunmen are still at large.

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Every once in a while you have one of those nights that exceeds every expectation you had and takes you on a bit of an adventure. The kind of adventure that while it's happening, you're either pinching yourself to check if it's still real or holding your side because it aches from all the laughter. This is the story of one such night back on February 5, 2008, when my friend and I ended up taking the British rock 'n' roll band Oasis out for a night on the town in Los Angeles.

I've been to the savage little island known as Great Britain enough on tour to understand how they all feel about Oasis, especially those belonging to the punk rock sect. Oasis got so massive in the UK that you started to see non-music fans singing along to the songs on the jukebox at local pubs. That's enough to ruin any band for me, too. Once something gets that big it can take on new meaning, I get it. In fact, if I were British I probably wouldn't be into Oasis either. Then again, I'd probably also have super fucked-up teeth and be way more into baked potatoes, so who the fuck knows, right? My point is that here, in the land of the free known as 'Merica, most people only know the second album's singles at best.

But for me, in 1994, when all the smoke cleared after Kurt Cobain ended his own life with a monster shot of heroin followed by a shotgun blast to the face, Oasis seemed to rise out of the ashes of Nirvana for an angst-ridden teen like myself. That first album sounded like a lovechild of the Beatles and Sex Pistols, and its message was refreshing! They were completely British but yet what they were saying translated perfectly to me.

These dudes weren't singing, "I hate myself and I wanna die." No, these normal, working-class lads from Manchester (unlike the posh, dance-oriented Blur, who didn't convert me until their self-titled album) were on some inspirational tip singing, "You and I are gonna live forever!"; "Toniiiiiight / I'm a rock 'n' roll star"; and "Is it worth the aggravation / to find yourself a job when there's nothing worth working for?"These guys came from shit, didn't have shit, yet life was great? I was intrigued! Their attitude was refreshing and it sucked me into their world where every song seemed designed to make you feel good. Oasis to me, has always been about living life to the fullest. The following story is about a night that I lived life to the fullest with a little help from my friends in Oasis.

§

[Open curtains]

The sun was kissing the ocean and slowly disappearing over the horizon as I pushed my cherry 1973 Mercedes west down Sunset Boulevard to see our Canadian friends in Black Mountain play the Troubadour. Even though I hate West Hollywood, I do love seeing shows at the Troub—there's not a bad seat in the house, they treat bands well, and the sound rules. Plus there's so much rich rock 'n' roll history there. It's where John Lennon spent his Lost Weekend, Keith Moon got kicked out in his Nazi uniform, Guns N' Roses played their first show... need I go on? So, I made me way to the show to meet my friend and fellow long-hair, Sam James Velde. After waiting in the will-call line for our tickets (because my homie and Black Mountain frontman Stephen McBean hooked us up), we got our wrists stamped and made a B-line for the stairs by the stage. As we tromped towards the upstairs bar, I surveyed the room only to realize it was just us, the bartender, and every member of Oasis.

At first, I tried to play it cool, looking beyond them to the bartender as we approached to order a couple beers. But as I turned round to face the members of Oasis, I just couldn't hold back anymore—so I stepped toward Liam and said, "Hey man, I hate to be a nerd, but I gotta say I'm a big fan of your band."

Liam leaned in real close to me. He's what they call "a close talker." Sometimes you get some spit sprayback happening but usually it's accompanied with a really good one-liner, so it's almost worth it. He leaned in, uncomfortably close. Took his index finger and tapped it against my chest lightly with every syllable of, "You're not a fucking nerd, mate! You've got GREAT taste in music!"

Which is a pretty fucking awesome reply and totally what I wanted him to say, just better. "Didn't we share a van in Switzerland?" said Noel, stepping forward. I'd shared a van with him when I was on tour with Nine Inch Nails, but I couldn't believe he could remember the occasion because we didn't even speak. On top of that, it didn't last more than two or three minutes. I'd got in a van at a festival because it was raining, and once inside I realized who we were riding with. But for him to remember... Dude must have a steel trap mind,' I thought.

And with that, Noel racked up Jameson whiskey shots for everyone: himself, Liam, Andy Bell, Gem, and Zak Starkey, along with Sam and myself. We all sucked back our Irish apple juice and started bullshitting. Everyone was super cool and in a great mood. Liam and Noel were polar opposites; Noel is the grounded one who's full of wisdom and who you wish was your actual older brother, while Liam's the good-looking younger brother who can just as easily come off like an asshole as he can charm the shit out of you. We were all just drinking and rapping about everything from rock 'n' roll, to clothing stores, to... cheeseburgers.

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Image by Jason Barr

"Eh, so where's the best hamburger in Los Angeles?" asked Liam.

"In-N-Out," Sam answered, adding when pressed that the chain's "Animal-Style" cheeseburger was the pick of the bunch. Then Liam said: "What band is it?" Sam was confused by this.

"If it was a band, which one would it be?" Liam repeated.

"The Stones, bro..."

"Holy shit!" screamed Liam, "It's the fuckin' Stones! Noel! He says it's the bloody Stones!"

Noel looked over briefly as if to say, I don't care about whatever you're saying, Liam, and continued talking to the bartender.

Liam paused, gathered his thoughts, cocked his head, and fired back at Sam again. "What album would In-N-Out's Animal-Style cheeseburger be?"

"Well, it's messy—you know, just kinda sloppy?" said Sam. "And there's lots going on but somehow it's still the best—so I guess it'd have to be Exile on Main Street."

And that's where Liam lost it, throwing what I can only describe as a toddler happy-fit into what I think was a semi-Ian Brown dance followed by a few, "Wooohoos!" All of which got Andy and Gem to come over to see what was going on. Then Liam stopped smiling, he got real serious and asked: "Alright... what about Fat Burger? What do you get at Fat Burger?"

"Oh, there's so many options there," said Sam. "But I always like the one that comes with a fried egg on top and all those toppings..."

"Right... and what band would it be?"

"Funkadelic!"

Liam responded in approval with the kind of sound that people make when they've just been punched him in the gut, as he, Andy and Gem all buckled into laughter and indistinguishable English chatter. As Liam recovered, he spit out, "Yeah, Funkadelic—but what record?"

"Maggot Brain!"

And with that Liam, Gem and Andy fell on each other in a pile. It was really hard to tell if Liam was the dumbest person on earth or simply a genius. I found it hard to tell where his act began and where the real person finished. He would come off like a complete dick one second, but then come right back and charm the pants off you the next. I could see where his act would wear thin if you had to be around him all the time, but in small doses he was certainly entertaining.

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A press shot of Oasis in 2008

Noel on the other hand, was the most down to earth and grounded millionaire rock star I've ever met. Although I did look at him sideways when he told us he didn't like AC/DC, aside from their first record. Dude's tripping on that subject. But there wasn't a question we couldn't throw at him that he didn't seem to enjoy meeting with a humorous reply. He's a true music fan. While Liam seemed to leap for attention constantly, Noel was much more laid back and secure with himself. Complete yin and yang. We polished off a few more drinks while we watched as Matt from Black Mountain drunkenly tried to explain to Oasis why Blur were better than them, which was priceless. Soon after that, Noel asked me if I had a car.

"Yep," I said.

"Will you drive us to [LA bar and bistro] La Poubelle?"

"Sure, but it's gonna be last call as soon as we get there—just warning you."

At the time I had a 1973 Mercedes 220D, which had less than 30,000 miles on it and still somehow maintained its new car smell. I loved that fucking car! It only had one sticker on it. Slapped across the bottom of the back window was the block Oasis logo, which every member of Oasis made sure to comment on as they piled in. It was an extremely embarrassing but funny moment. We drove east down Fountain and cut up to Franklin, passing long corridors of palm trees which Andy Bell said looked "magnificent." I had to agree. We parked and walked in to La Poubelle. As if on cue, "last call" was yelled out as soon as we entered the restaurant.

"Told you..."

Just when we thought the night had hit a dead end, we stumbled into this guy Mickey, the bass player from Maroon 5. I barely knew him but convinced him he should invite us and Oasis over to his house so that we could take over his stereo and drink all his booze. I mean who's gonna say no to: "Hey man, I'm with Oasis and they wanna go somewhere and party—but everything is closing... can we all come to your place?"

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Mickey Madden, the bass player from Maroon 5

And party we did. Mickey turned out to be an extremely gracious host, inviting us into his super nice pad up the hill from Franklin, offering us beer and hard liquor. While we were drinking, Noel explained to me that he quit doing cocaine after Be Here Now, suffered massive panic attacks while he was coming off it (which is what he said "Gas Panic" is about), and didn't feel like he was really able to write good songs for about two more records.

Then Chris Robinson from the Black Crowes showed up with what appeared to be a handler. Chris was killer though, he was passing joints around all night like it was his job. And yes: Chris Robinson's weed is as strong as you'd expect it to be. We all got "taller," total face paralysis. Although I think we did offend him when Sam and I took over the stereo, removing Gram Parsons mid-song so that we could drop "I Am the Resurrection," which was met with cheers and Ian Brown dances by Oasis. The celebration had nominated both of us "DJs for the rest of the night," so we dug out all of Mickey's good LPs and dug in for a night near the turntable.

For some reason, Alex Greenwald, the singer from Phantom Planet and the bully in Donnie Darko, was walking around the party with an acoustic guitar strapped to himself. I happened to overhear him and Mickey telling Noel that Definitely Maybe inspired both of them to start bands. To which Noel yelled over to Liam: "Fookin' hell, Liam! Get this, they heard Definitely Maybe and got fookin' Maroon 5 and Phantom Planet!"

As the night continued, so did the drinking, laughing, and quotable sayings from the two brothers. The more we all drank, the harder it was to understand Liam; I'm pretty sure he finally caught on that I was just nodding and saying "yeah" to whatever he said when I couldn't understand him. Noel, on the other hand, remained steady throughout the night and told me a bunch of interesting stories, like the time he met Neil Young and how he came to own two 1969 Gibson 335 guitars that were made on the exact same day. The party, the stories, the drinks, and the tunes continued until the sun started to peak its fiery head over the hills of Los Angeles. We all silently acknowledged that our night had finally come to a close, said our goodbyes, and went our separate ways. As I slumped down in the back of the taxi home, I had to pinch myself with my left hand because my right hand was already holding my aching side.

[Close curtains]

Travis Keller is a writer and co-founder of Buddyhead Records and Buddyhead.com. Follow him on Twitter.

[body_image width='819' height='614' path='images/content-images/2015/01/07/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/01/07/' filename='dildo-boil-house-fire-539-body-image-1420645571.jpg' id='16115']Weirdly there are no pictures of boiled dildos online, so have some sausages and use your imagination. Photo via Flickr user She Paused 4 Thought

The Year of our Lord 2015, and some dude nearly just burned his house down by boiling up a steaming vat of dildos.

Why was some dude boiling multiple dildos in a pot? Ostensibly, to clean them of their various juices. But how did that go so wrong an apartment nearly burned down? I guess at this point we should hand over to Reddit user thegrandplatypus to tell us:

My wife and I had a minor argument last night, so I figured I'd start the day on a positive note. Get some cleaning done, tidy up around the house, make everything extra nice while she relaxes. Among other things that needed cleaning, we had several sex toys (silicone dildos) that we'd neglected to attend to. Wanting to be thorough, I brought these downstairs, set them in a small pot of water to boil (element on MAX setting), and headed upstairs for a moment to call my dad and wish him well. Quick convo with my dad turns into an involved talk with mom and dad, and about 15-20 minutes later, suddenly my smoke alarm is loudly going off. Having completely forgotten about the dildo boil, I casually get up and prepare to disarm the "false alarm" taking place in my house... until a huge waft of black, inky smoke winds its way around the bedroom door.
I immediately think "WHAT IN THE EVER LIVING HELL IS BURNING" and at the same time hear my wife scream " WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!". I rush downstairs into a kitchen billowing disgusting, black smoke, and see a massive pillar of flame exploding upwards out of the tiny pot, which by now has been boiling dry for probably a few minutes.

On one hand, I once boiled an egg for so long that the water boiled away and the eggshell charred black and then, with the heat of the pan directly upon it, it began to bounce around the kitchen as if possessed and while emitting a sort of hot screeching sound. I had to open a window to rid the room of the smell, and that was just one egg. So imagine a whole pot of dildos. On the other hand, why boil dildos when soft chamois cloths and soaps exist?

Wife is panicky, trying to activate the (luckily right at hand) fire extinguisher, failing with it, hands it to me and I finally manage to blast the noxious dildo blaze with the entire contents of the extinguisher.
Set the scene for you... Entire house is blanketed in a disgusting, probably highly toxic smog of burnt silicone, with tiny pieces of chemical ash over everything in the kitchen... I put on two surgical masks and run upstairs to open the windows — dumb move in retrospect, could've passed out up there and totally died — but at least this averts everything in our upstairs being ruined by dildo smog.

All I can think of when I think about a pot full of dildos boiling gently in their stock is Carl Weathers solemnly holding up a meaty rib on Arrested Development and saying, "Add some broth, add a potato, baby: You've got a stew going." Also: What does the various gels of two people's junk—dried on to a silicon dildo and then boiled to a steam in some water—smell like? How much Febreze have those two had to pump into their soft furnishings after the disastrous dildo boil vapor-stanked their house? This story just begs a lot of harrowing, harrowing questions.

Anyway, in the wake of this, a lot of people are like, "Well how the heck do I wash this big ol' box of silicon dildos, then, if not by boiling them all like lobsters in their shells?" And the answer, according to the internet, is just use some fragrance-free plant-based soap like Diva Wash and give them a decent rinse. Now you know how you're going to spend your Wednesday night. You're welcome.

Follow Joel Golby on Twitter.

This week, two children were stung by Irukandji jellyfish, marking the start of the season for these deadly psychotropic Cnidaria. Luckily both survived, thanks to speedy medical intervention, but don't let the administration of analgesics comfort you: The last 12 months have been peppered with worrying news about the species in Australia.

The Irukandji, native to northern waters of Australia, is one of the ocean's deadliest critters. Measuring just one cubic centimeter, their sting contains a neurotoxin that induces an overwhelming feeling of impending doom. As marine biologist and jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin explains, "It's not that you're afraid, it's that you absolutely believe you're going to die and you just want to get it over with. Some people describe it as being afraid they're not going to die."

A medical superintendent by the name of Jack Barnes was the first person to discover the connection between the symptoms and the jellyfish in 1961 when he stung himself, his nine-year-old son, and a local lifesaver on purpose to observe the symptoms. He described the psychological effects as "dreadful anxiety and wretchedness."

But it's not just the worst trip ever. Irukandji stings bring on a huge rush of adrenaline that pushes blood pressure to dangerous levels. They cause sweating, vomiting, and excruciating back and kidney pain. Dennis Hayles was stung at Low Isles in Queensland, and once described the physical symptoms that set in after only ten minutes: "I was convulsing... It felt like I had all these electric hairs in my throat and every time I time I tried to breathe in, I just choked and was vomiting up this foamy stuff."

Hayles survived, but other victims haven't been so lucky. Over the years, Irukandji have claimed at least 70 lives—although the exact number is hard to know given the weird way in which they kill. The initial sting feels more like a mosquito bite, not worthy of reporting at all, with death coming later in the form of a heart attack or stroke.

Don't stress too much though, you'll never see the little guys coming. "The jellyfish bodies and tentacles are invisible in water. It's like a diamond dropped into a glass of water; you just can't see them," notes Lisa-Ann.

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Image via Wikipedia

Given that their smallness prevents them from being seen, the discovery of a huge one off the coast of Western Australia could be seen as good news. Then again, it is a massive, deadly, doom-inducing jellyfish, so probably not. Measuring in at a foot, the creature is thought to be part of a newly-discovered larger Irukandji species that can be as large as 50 centimeters, not including tentacles.

Until now, Irukandji blooms have stayed away from more populated regions, with South East Queensland and New South Wales considered to be stinger free. "It's very clear that that is no longer true," says Lisa-Ann. "There have been nine events of highly dangerous jellyfish in southern waters."

So is climate change bringing these psychedelic stingers to beaches all over Australia? It would take time as their whole habitat would need to make the shift. However, as Macquarie University Professor, Rob Harcourt, told the Daily Telegraph last year, as winters get warmer, "animals being swept down in the EAC (East Australian Current) are more likely to survive.''

A more immediate threat from the changing climate is an observed increase in jellyfish numbers and toxicity brought on by warmer water. So while Irukandji may not arrive at Bondi Beach this week, when they do finally get there they'll be larger in number and even more deadly than usual.

Follow Wendy on Twitter.

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Indians protesting after a gang rape in New Delhi in 2012. Photo via Flickr user Ramesh Lalwani

Earlier this week, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh sent a memo to the chief ministers of the country's 29 states proposing the creation of a nationwide network of Investigative Units on Crimes Against Women (IUCAW). 150 individual forces (totaling 2,250 officers) would be tasked with probing all manner of violence against women, from acid attacks to human trafficking to rapes. They would also monitor the implementation of anti–gender violence laws, spread public awareness and participation in women's safety, and ensure that victims can navigate and receive justice from India's complex and clogged justice system. The memo also floated the creation of special state-level fast-track courts for gender crimes.

The proposal comes just over two years after the brutal December 2012 gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi touched off an ongoing national conversation about women's rights and safety in the country. Despite efforts to create new laws cracking down on gender-based violence, crimes against women still appear to be on the rise. Already this year, international news outlets have picked up on two cases of gang rape—one against a teenage girl perpetrated in a government office and another against a Japanese tourist held captive for a month—in the state of Bihar alone.

Much of this failure stems from the lack of staff, funding, and willpower in the predominately male and notoriously insensitive Indian justice system.

If implemented, the investigative units will attempt to address these issues by focusing their forces in the most crime-prone districts of each state and endowing them with a $13.25 million annual budget (half of which will provided by the central government). The units, staffed by reallocating existing police or creating new posts, will also require that one-third of officers be women, helping to address the biasing gender disparity in India's police force— as of 2013, only 5.33 percent of police officers nationwide were women and the best gender ratio was just 14.89 percent in Maharashtra state.

Similar forces have been successful in other countries, like Mexico, where the state of Morelos launched the Policewomen's Criminal Investigation Model Unit in November 2013. The idea behind that 26-member, all-woman team—which is given special training in gender affairs, victim assistance, and psychological help—is that their focus and gender balance can go a long way in helping women report crimes with confidence that their cases will be respected and adjudicated.

But it's easy for special sex crime units to become overwhelmed and bungle cases, as has previously been the case in India—and plenty of cities in the United States. And although this move represents a noteworthy step by the young government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it's unclear whether bold proclamations like this will see much follow-up or support.

To get a read on how local women's rights advocates feel about the possibility of new investigative units—is it a bold step and sign of hope or a PR gambit?—VICE reached out to Dr. Ranjana Kumari, a prominent women's rights activist and director of the New Delhi-based Center for Social Research, a grassroots gender-based activism and political lobbying organization.

VICE: Is the proposal a welcome and potentially effective step towards addressing concerns on women's safety in India?
Dr. Ranjana Kumari: The IUCAW is a very good idea. It will strengthen the implementation mechanism at the local level. It should have been done long back but now that the government has announced it, we welcome it.

Also, I believe forensic tests and other technologies need to be introduced. Most importantly, what we are still missing is the setting up of Crisis Intervention Units in every district. This is very import because it's a one stop crisis center where all services can be brought together. That's what we are missing in this whole idea of investigation units.

Do you believe the IUCAW proposal is a serious attempt by the Modi regime to address women's rights and safety, or might it just be words?
The electoral announcements made during [Modi and his government's] speeches... are encouraging. However, it's been seven months of the government and we haven't seen much progress in terms of implementation. The intent is not missing but the implementation is missing and that's where we feel the government needs to work harder and show some results.

Do you think the states will adopt this proposal? What barriers would it face? The proposal has come from the government, which has the absolute majority in the parliament. We are looking forward for this proposal to go through.

What other measures should the Modi regime take to better address gender issues?
We would want more and more non-stop Crisis Intervention Centers [CIC], as promised, in each district. In fact, we want them at the block-level, because for a woman from a village to reach a district—especially women in crisis—is a big challenge.

We have an example [of this ideal in the] Anti–Human Trafficking Units at the state level. They're connected through a net-based technology collecting data of any lost and found person. For example, the information of a parent reporting a girl missing in Gumla [a town and district in India's Jharkhand state] gets fed into the system. The data comes to the central database to feed police stations, so that they're also informed about how many girls have been trafficked, taken away, lost, or sold.

I think a similar system can be coordinated at horizontal level for reporting crime and violence against women.

CICs should also be linked with police stations, legal aid, health services, and also with the whole idea of counseling and training. You can see how many services can be put together to create one unit.

There should [also] be coordination between states and the central government. Politically, some states don't have the same ruling parties [as those] governing the country, and that raises conflicts. There has to be a national consensus on safety and security of women.

Follow Mark Hay on Twitter.

Earlier today, the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were attacked by three gunmen who killed 12 people and left another five seriously injured. In the wake of the massacre, we asked our international offices to gather the thoughts of leading satirists from across Europe.

ITALY – linus magazine

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A cover of Alterlinus, a supplement of linus, from 1974. You can see the name of cartoonist Georges Wolinski, who was killed in today's attack, among the contributors list

linus was founded in 1965. Today it is mainly focused on comics, but it still features the work of satirists. Its presentation and its contents inspired the French magazine Charlie Monthly, which in turn gave its name to Charlie Hebdo.

Stefania Rumor, Director:
"Back in the 60s, we were close friends with Hara-Kiri's editors. When some of them founded Charlie Hebdo, we took the Charlie Brown quote in the name as an homage. We have been publishing [Georges] Wolinski for years and I knew him personally. Their satire was really intense and they weren't worried about anything or anyone, but in the end they also felt a strong journalistic responsibility. Maybe they knew that something could have happened, but no one could have imagined this. People think this is a risk you take when you choose to do satire, but really it's not. I'm shocked, and I'm also very concerned about the consequences, especially for young people. The idea that someone could die for a cartoon is something that can make even the bravest cartoonist change his mind. I find what happened today totally incomprehensible."

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SPAIN – El Mundo Today

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Today's homepage of El Mundo Today. The headline and subhead read: "Allah Is a Penis—Don't shoot" or "Allah Is Supercool—Don't shoot" depending on how you choose to interpret it

Xavi Puig, Co-Founder:
"To paraphrase Walter Benjamin: 'I don't understand the expression: "It seems impossible, we are in the 20th century." History is not a straight line to a better future. Shit from the past returns from time to time to fuck our lives again.' Today, France seems like the Middle Ages. I hate that these morons justify Benjamin's quote because this guy is so boring... But this is the world we live in."

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SPAIN – Orgullo y Satisfacción

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Manuel Bartual, Editor and Cartoonist:
"I don't know what to say. It is just terrible. I am shocked and I don't really want to think about this right now. This is a huge tragedy."

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NORTHERN IRELAND – The Vacuum

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The Vacuum is NI's leading satirical free newspaper. Above is the cover of their "God Issue." Illustration by Duncan Ross

Richard West, Vacuum Co-Founder:
"It's horrific. Completely senseless. In Northern Ireland, being physically threatened for religious comment is pretty difficult to imagine. I think people are liable to say there shouldn't be a chilling effect, but it's likely there will be. People are likely to think twice about what they publish. People also say we should publish things in solidarity, but every publication has its own motives and reasons for publishing the way they do.

"That also should be preserved. I think that we can stand and show our respect for these people who have been senselessly murdered without necessarily wanting to say we endorse everything they've ever published. But nothing can justify murdering someone in cold blood."

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UNITED KINGDOM – Will Self

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Photo via Wikicommons

Will Self, writer:
"Well, when the issue came up of the Danish cartoons [of Muhammad] I observed that the test I apply to something to see whether it truly is satire derives from HL Mencken's definition of good journalism: It should 'afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.' The trouble with a lot of so-called 'satire' directed against religiously-motivated extremists is that it's not clear who it's afflicting, or who it's comforting. This is in no way to condone the shooting of the journalists, which is evil, pure and simple, but our society makes a fetish of 'the right to free speech' without ever questioning what sort of responsibilities are implied by this right."
– as told to Oscar Rickett

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SERBIA – Njuz.net

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Njuz is Serbia's leading satirical website

Marko Drazic, Editor:
"This is the saddest day for all of us in this line of work, but also a warning to keep up with our work as we have done so far. The Paris tragedy just confirms the amount of evil and injustice in the world we live in, and it is our duty to continue fighting against them the best way we know how—with satire."

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THE NETHERLANDS – De Speld

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The homepage of De Speld today. Headline reads: "No Deaths in Satirical Attack"

This morning, De Speld posted a response on Facebook that goes something like: "No one died or was injured during a satirical attack by* the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. This incident brings the total number of victims of satirical attacks since the beginning of time to zero."

We asked the editor-in-chief, Jochem van den Berg, about it and this is what he said: "Our Facebook post is a more powerful statement than anything we can seriously say about this, so we want to leave it at that."

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GREECE – Andreas Petroulakis

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Cartoon satirizing the Golden Dawn by Andreas Petroulakis.

Andreas Petroulakis, acclaimed cartoonist and satirist currently working for Greek newspaper Kathimerini:
"I am shocked by the attack, all the chaos has completely stunned me. I have no words. This is a real tragedy. While we in Europe struggle for freedom of speech, while we fight for democracy, while we attempt to bridge whatever cultural differences we may have, on the other side of the world, the leaders of Islam are preaching blind hatred and dogmatism. Satire will prevail in the end, and you know why? Because it cannot be coerced. Without satire a society wouldn't dare look at its reflection in the mirror, it would lose its way."

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AUSTRIA – Die Tagespresse
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Fritz Jergitsch, Founder:
"If I made fun of Islam in one of my articles, I'm pretty sure that 99 percent of Austrian Muslims would just laugh about it. But there is no doubt that it's a problem, that there is a very small, yet radical group of people who take such extreme measures. I think that 300 years ago I would have gone to prison for my articles about the Catholic Church. But times have changed and luckily society has changed, too, so it's no problem any more. Sure, there are deficits in some Muslim countries, but even there it's more a problem of some individuals and not with Islam itself."

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BELGIUM – Humo

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Humo, October 2014. The main feature is an interview with Dyad Abou Jahjah—a Belgian political activist with Lebanese roots. The cover reads: " Humo talks with Dyab Abou JahJah: If immigrants and locals can't find each other now, we'll all be in deep shit later"

Danny Ilegems, Editor-in-Chief:
"We are speechless. If you take a look on our website, you will see a big black square and nothing else. So you can take that speechlessness very literally."

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GERMANY – Eulenspiegel

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Dr. Mathias Wedel, Editor-in-Chief:
"We are horribly shocked and this is very distressing for us. We are discussing it in our editorial office, but are trying to save the situation with humor. Of course it poses the question: How will we react as a publication? As bitter as it sounds, we will first have to make a joke. Because unfortunately—or fortunately—that is our job. Just as we have to confront terrorism in general or the war.

"I don't see any threat to our own editorial office, even if we deal with Islam humorously—only its political side of course; we're not interested in matters of faith. The question of whether we will continue to publish Mohammed caricatures doesn't present itself, because we generally don't do that. My colleagues and I would always defend the freedom to be able to say, draw, and write anything we want to. But we don't need to exhaust every freedom or demand to use it. Doing so would not be provoking our readers, but only Islamists. And there are more effective ways of fighting Islamism than with a caricature in a satire magazine."

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SWEDEN – Galago

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Johannes Klenell, Editor:
"When I heard, shivers went through my body. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. Many of us working with satire have experienced threats. Satire and heckling of power and oppression stir up emotions, as it's a very effective tool. In Sweden, we mostly see the anonymous hatred of the extreme right. But you never think that anything will happen. Anonymous haters don't exist other than like some sort of ghosts. Now, they suddenly exist.

"I don't think this will have any effect on satire—I hope. Usually satirists are made of such wood that they bow to pressure; we will stand until we're broken. However, I worry about what forces will use what's happened for their own purposes. How will the extreme right shape the debate following this? I worry that they will try to steal our art and our expression for their own purposes."

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POLAND – Janek Koza

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Cartoon by Janek Koza

Janek Koza, acclaimed cartoonist/satirist:
"It's hard for me to think of anything sensible in this terrible situation, except that I'm happy that our weapons are satirical drawings and texts, and I hope that thanks to them we will win."

*UPDATE 1/7: Due to a translation error, an earlier version of this article garbled the joke that De Speld made on Facebook—the joke was that satirists don't kill anybody, not that no satirists were killed.

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Sissako pics: Moscow Film Festival

On July 31, 2012, an unmarried couple were stoned to death in the center of Aguelhok, a town in northern Mali. More than 300 people watched as a man and woman were placed in holes four feet deep at around 5 AM. Their protruding heads were pelted with stones. Both died within 15 minutes.

The perpetrators were Islamic fundamentalists who had taken over most of northern Mali, an area bigger than France. The oppressors,who had suspected ties to al Qaeda, wanted to impose a totalitarian form of sharia law upon the region. Music was banned. Women were forced to cover up their entire bodies. Playing football was forbidden.

Abderrahmane Sissako—a Mauritania-born, Mali- and Moscow-educated, Paris-residing filmmaker—found out about this incident from a small article in a French newspaper. Disgusted, he decided to make a film. Timbuktu premiered in competition at Cannes last May, where it reportedly received a ten-minute standing ovation and uniformly effusive reviews. Mauritania has submitted the film for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, making this the first time the country has been represented in the category.

Regardless of its award-season prospects, Timbuktu is a gem: a moving portrait of tough lives lived in even tougher conditions under occupation, and one that cements Sissako as a titan of humanist cinema. We asked Sissako about his filmmaking methods and the cultural implications of Timbuktu.

VICE: What did you want to achieve in making a film that responds to a real-life tragedy?
Abderrahmane Sissako: With all my films, I don't want to provoke any activities. Each person makes a film the way he wants, but there should not necessarily be a goal to it. Timbuktu is not a political campaign to convince someone of something. It was not made to force people to do something.

One of the film's most memorable scenes depicts a few boys in the village playing soccer despite not having an actual ball. What gave you the idea for that?
The film talks about forbidden things. During the events shown in the film, an Islamic state had come to power in the region, so life became much stricter. I wanted to tackle this, but not through a simple narrative. I wanted to depict the innate existence of some things, like music. You can "forbid" it, but you can't forbid someone singing in their mind. Soccer, or play, is the same. That scene shows human power and the capability of staying optimistic. A fight is not just about arms. It's also about spirit and believing in oneself with patience.

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Still from Timbuktu

If you had made Timbuktu as a documentary, what would the result have resembled?
It would have been very different, more classical. Maybe it would have even been less interesting. The problem is that you can't make a documentary in a place like Timbuktu. The people are not free to talk or express themselves.

For me, the issue was not even about the consequences of making a documentary. I just preferred fiction. With Timbuktu's production, we were working with certain facts, like the stoning of the couple. These were real incidents—they happened—but I didn't just want to "depict" them. I wanted to make a story out of them. I wanted the liberty to express myself or make some changes. Fiction allowed me those liberties.

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Still from Timbuktu

You spent your childhood in Mali, and Timbuktu is also set there. How do you plan for this film to reach people in the region?
In Mali, cinema is not well developed. There are few halls for screenings and people don't have opportunities to see films. However, whenever I make a film, I make sure I show it there. I make it an open-air screening, so that as many people as possible see the film.

Timbuktu will be shown in Mali and will be released there. We want to make a symbolic plan of screening it in the place where the events on screen unfolded.

What is it like to work without a script? How exactly are your films improvised on set?
I wouldn't say that one can or should make a film without a script entirely. Making a film without a script puts you in an uncomfortable situation with lots of pressure. As a rule, I don't completely adhere to scripts. Cinema is about relations with the people near you and when you take part in conversations, you are able to find out what is going on around you.

You frequently collaborate with non-professional actors. What special measures do you have to take while working with them?
I treat each person as an exceptional personality. Before shooting, I talk to my actors about the film. I visit them as a guest or have tea with them. You must develop trust—not necessarily friendship, but trust is essential. This is like any couple in a relationship. If there is trust, the relationship flourishes. The "actors" also give their best at that moment.

Managing non-professional actors and an ever-changing script—what dynamic does that lead to on sets?
I'll give you an example. In Life on Earth, there is a beautiful woman who is silent. But I didn't invent her for this film or write her in the script. I just saw her on the streets in a village. She cycled past the camera and I asked my assistant to catch up with her and find out who she was. Turned out that the girl was not from this village.

In that moment, I decided there should be a character who comes to this village to discover it. That became the turning point for me. I realized she was a stranger here. There was a sadness to her. I asked her to take part in a scene with a phone and call someone, and that's what you see in the film.

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Still from Timbuktu

Your films often deal with a sense of displacement and loss of identity. What other themes do you seek in your work?
I live in France, but film mainly in Africa. I prefer talking about what I know or want to learn about. And very often that is something I have lost. Because if you leave your country when you're 19, then, when you are 50, now having lived most of your life abroad, you turn into a different person. Even now, I'm back in Moscow after 20 years and in that time you can forget a lot—except your emotions.

How exactly do the origins of a filmmaker play a part in her work?
I'm from a country that lacks filmmakers. If I think of just making a romance with two people in an apartment, it doesn't appeal to me as a director. That's why I, personally, have to make a choice that will be interesting for the viewers of my country. When I make films, I want people to find out about my country.

Cinema is a universal language. It's the language of images. Each image can be traced to a specific place, and that makes the territory of an artist an important issue. Like all languages, we speak "cinema" with our own intonation. For example, I speak French—not like the French, but I'm still understood. Cinema is the same. As a filmmaker, you bring your own accent to it—your aspirations, doubts and passions.

Following from that, what determined your "accent"?
The entrance exam to the All-Union State University of Cinematography in Moscow. I was 19, from a country where there was no cinema. The admissions committee asked me to name my favorite director. But I didn't know the name of any. They were surprised that I wanted to do film but did not know any directors' names.

They tried to help me, citing Truffaut and Godard. The names sounded like chocolate brands to me, because I had never heard of them. Extraordinarily, they accepted me. My lesson from that was: You may not know something, but you should have the desire to know it.

What films had a transformative impact on you?
My answer may seem pretentious, but I don't watch films often. I go to the cinema maybe once a year. When I do see a good film, I am overwhelmed. Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) did that to me when I was young. After I saw it in Dom Kino [the House of Cinema, an iconic venue in Moscow], I decided to walk home. I didn't want to take the metro. I asked myself, "Am I able to make a film too?" It was that strong an experience for me. It's not even a question of the film being good or not. I was just struck by this capacity of an artist to overwhelm me so much and leave me somewhere else.

Which filmmakers do you consider masters of their art?
Only Tarkovsky, I would say. There are other masters such as Georgy Rerberg, who helped Tarkovsky on Mirror (1975). He helped me a lot, too. He agreed to become the Director of Photography on October (1993). He entertained me with his cuisine. We talked about images, and a lot about Mirror. His cinema planted roots within me. Because this cinema, it is not aesthetic.

Those who love Tarkovsky try to imitate him but fail, because their main goal is aestheticism. But Tarkovsky's main talent was to turn literary poetry into cinema. His films touch you the way poetry does.

Timbuktu is released in US cinemas on January 28 and in UK cinemas in May.

On March 14 of last year, VICE correspondent Ben Anderson headed to Rio to find out how the notoriously violent city was preparing to deal with an influx of rabid soccer fans from around the world. The answer was a pacification program led by a special police unit (BOPE) intent on curbing the rampant gang activity and drug trafficking in the favelas closest to the city's tourist areas. The officers, clad in fatigues and carrying heavy-duty weaponry, resembled troops during a military occupation more than they did a local police force.

Over the coming weeks we will be serializing season two of VICE on HBO, beginning with episode one, which features Ben's report from Rio along with VICE founder Shane Smith's look at America's astonishingly wasteful spending on reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. This week we checked back in with Ben to get his thoughts on his story now that the World Cup is over and the country's next global hosting gig, the 2016 Summer Olympics, is just around the corner.

VICE: When you spoke to Marcelo Freixo, a Rio state representative and an outspoken critic of the pacification program, he said that there are 50,000 homicides in Brazil per year. Why are journalists borderline obsessed with gritty tales of cities like Chicago, when places like Rio exist?
Ben Anderson: I went there because, knowing those numbers while seeing this massive glossy advertising campaign, it just seemed insane that such a big, shiny international event [like the World Cup] could be in one of the most violent cities in the world.

What was the energy like walking around the favelas? The statistics make it seem more dangerous than a war zone.
I've been to lots of war zones and it was scary there, because it felt like we were completely vulnerable and were in the hands of the traffickers. It was us, a fixer, and our cameraman, and that's it. We were literally surrounded by concentric circles of armed, sometimes high—often high—teenagers with the latest assault rifles. One night when we were watching them cut coke from a fresh batch, which they said was from Colombia, guys with assault rifles over their shoulders were snorting it while they were mixing it with baking soda. And two of them were having an argument that got really heated. It felt like any second one of them would just lift up the gun and shoot. And that felt completely out of control. Not good.

What's the drug culture like in Brazil as compared to other drug-producing countries, like Colombia?
In Colombia and Venezuela, you don't see as much usage. But on the beaches and in the favelas of Rio, it feels like there is usage. You feel a kind of nervous, tense energy everywhere where things could get violent. I'd been to Rio three times before this trip, and I think I'd seen one fight the entire time I was there. This time, even when I wasn't working, I saw two or three fights and a dead body about a block away from Copacabana Beach. It just felt like the atmosphere—I don't know if you've been at clubs or parties where people have done too much coke—but it just felt like it could provoke a real explosion of violence. It felt like that to me everywhere in Rio, and it hadn't felt like that before. Maybe what I had seen influenced what I was thinking, but it did feel like the coke was really being used there.

In a lot of drug-producing countries like Afghanistan, which is the one I've spent the most time in, it feels like a product they're able to grow and sell fairly easily. It doesn't feel like the usage is an issue. It just happens to be the thing they sell. It could be fruits or vegetables. It just happens to be opium in Afghanistan, whereas in Rio, it wasn't just the fact that they were criminals who had to violently protect their part of the trade, it felt like the drug was being used a lot as well.

How much progress did Rio eventually make with the pacification trade, and will they ever occupy 100 percent of the favelas?
The pacification plan is kind of a euphemism because it isn't necessarily aimed at pacifying the most violent favelas or the favelas controlled by the drug traffickers. It's pacifying the favelas that are closest to the prime real estate, or are themselves the prime real estate. From that point of view, it's going really well, and the routes from the World Cup stadium are protected. But if you go three or four miles down the road to the poor areas where the tourists never go, they're not being pacified at all. And they're not going to be. So it's really control and development of the nicest real estate in Rio rather than the areas most under threat.

Who gained something from the plan, besides the government? Who was eager to get that World Cup economic influx?
The incredible thing is that originally half of the budget was funded by real estate developer Eike Batista. He started building a five-star hotel on the site of one of the best-placed favelas. He built a cable car up and down the favela as well.

That's the incredible thing about Rio. This paradise and the beach with all the beautiful women and the cliches exist next to so much violence. If you're on Ipanema Beach, you can often hear gunshots or screams coming from the hillside favelas.

And how do the people living in the favelas feel about the occupation? Is life better for them under the drug traffickers or without them there?
It's kind of mixed. We talked to some of the locals who said life is better under the traffickers, because the areas that are run by police militias are just as violent and corrupt, only they don't allow trafficking. The police, they say, are only interested in drug traffickers, and don't give a shit about things like domestic violence or rape, for example, whereas the traffickers don't allow that.

So domestic violence and rape and burglary would go up in those areas that had been pacified. In some of the trafficker-controlled areas, people would say, yeah, no one dares rob or rape beat their wife or girlfriend here, because the traffickers will kill them. Some people said life was better since pacification, but there were plenty of people who said they felt like they were under military occupation.

So, ultimately, based on what we saw during the World Cup, is the Brazilian government effectively keeping tourists from getting shot?
Rio had the Pope visit as well, and I think that was a bigger event than either the Olympics or the World Cup, and the tourists were protected there. I think that it goes from the airport to the beaches and the beaches to the stadium, but they've built a separate road that has walls on either side of it at certain points so you can't even see the favela. So they've done a very good job of not getting rid of the problem but making a safe passage for tourists to skirt around it.

"Ttongsul" is a Korean rice wine mixed with the fermented turd of a human child. It has an alcoholic content of around 9 percent. Little is known about the origins of what is surely one of the world's most bizarre and gag-inducing medicines. A quick "Ttongsul" Google search will provide you with little more than internet-land hearsay and a flimsy Wikipedia page.

Intrigued, we set out to discover if the rumors were true and to our astonishment found a traditional Korean medicine doctor who claims to be one of the last people who knows how to make "feces wine." Dr. Lee Chang Soo's face was tinged with sadness when he told us of his regret that feces is no longer widely utilized in Eastern medicine. The use of human and animal feces for medicinal purposes can be traced back centuries in Korea. Ancient Korean medicine books claim that it heals bad bruising, cuts, broken bones, and is even an effective remedy for epilepsy.

It's worth pointing out that the average person in modern-day South Korea would have have no clue what Ttongsul is. The drink is believed to have pretty much disappeared by the 1960s as South Korea began its long journey towards First World modernity and Western medicines became more popular.

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Geng Le in the Blued offices

With its open-plan layout and large paintings of very naked men, the office of the gay dating app Blued feels like it would be much more at home in Silicon Valley than downtown Beijing. It's barely been one generation—17 years, if you want to be pedantic—since homosexuality was legalized in China, and only a few years ago it would have been unthinkable here that such an app could reach a point where it boasts 15 million users and positive ties with the government.

Geng Le, who launched Blued in 2012, is not your average web entrepreneur. His previous career was as a policeman. Having hidden his sexuality from family and colleagues for years, in the 1990s he turned to Western gay websites to access the information (and porn) that was otherwise unavailable to him, living as he did in a country where being gay was generally considered a disorder. "I felt like I was the only gay guy in the world," he says.

After leaving the force, Geng started a website documenting his experiences as a gay man in China. His writing prompted other gay people in the country to come forward with their own stories. Inspired by the support, in 2000 Geng started up Danian, one of China's first gay websites, followed by the gay dating site Bf99 in 2006.

Blued, his gay dating app, was released in 2012 and now has 15 million users, including around 12 million in China (Grindr has a total of five million users). Geng has used the brand to set up HIV testing stations for gay men, strengthening his relationship with the government, which has struggled to connect with much of the gay community and has recently placed an increased focus on treating and preventing the spread of the disease.

With Geng recently announcing that his company has raised nearly $30 million from a venture capital firm, the amount of Blued dates taking place across China and beyond is set to increase even further. I caught up with him to chat about the rise of the app and where things go from here.

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VICE: Hi, Geng. When did you realize you were gay?
Geng Le: I started to realize when I was around 17 or 18, when I was at police training school. Most of my friends had girlfriends and I had nothing. I was attracted to men, not women, and at that time Chinese people didn't have much information about the LGBT community, so I didn't have a clear sense of what "gay" was. I had a very close friend—a straight guy—and we shared feelings and opinions with each other. It was like a first love for me. We did masturbation together.

You were at police school from 1992 to 1996, when homosexuality was still illegal in China. How did it feel being a closeted gay sexual "criminal" working for the police?
My gay life wasn't connected to my work, because in that environment they didn't discuss those kind of topics. Being gay was just my private life.

Was it hard to keep your secret?
I was good at studying, so people thought I had a high level [of standards and was waiting] to pick a girlfriend [who had the same high work standards]. Also, most people didn't have a sense of what was gay or not. People said you were gay if you acted girlishly. But I wasn't like that, so no one was ever suspicious.

Outside of your own situation, what was the public's general attitude to homosexuality during that time?
People didn't talk about being gay. They thought "gay" was a disease or abnormal. People usually thought gay people were people who learned to be bad—learned to be gay.

How did that make you feel?
It was my own secret and I didn't want to share it with others. I used to think I was the only gay guy in the world, but since we've had the internet my mind has been changed a lot.

What were your first experiences discovering more about homosexuality online?
I didn't have a computer in my house, but internet bars were everywhere. I read a novel called Beijing Story [which was published anonymously in 1998]. It was a great novel about gay love, and is still famous in China and was adapted as a movie. I felt moved and cried while reading. I began to realize that there were lots of people living like me, so I began to search more.

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A cork board in the Blued office

What did you find?
Every time I looked at a Chinese website it told me that being gay was abnormal or a disease, and that being gay could be cured by treatments such as aversion therapy or electroshock therapy. I was suspicious of myself—I wanted to get my disease cured. But when I looked at foreign websites the information given was pornographic, which affected me a lot. I also discovered that being gay is normal, not a disease. I got the idea that I should launch a website for gay people in China to tell the new generation, the public, and the media that being gay is normal.

I read that you were outed as gay in 2012, when you discussed your sexuality in a video interview on the website Sohu. Why didn't you tell your family before the video went online?
Sohu made a documentary about my website, Danian—that's when my colleagues and parents found out. I had no courage to tell my parents what I was at that time. Before it went out I had no idea about the potential consequences of the film. I submitted my resignation letter.

Were your colleagues supportive?
They just discussed my sexual orientation behind my back—most of them didn't understand. Or they mocked me.

What kind of stuff was on Danian?
I wrote stories about my own life. Then other users contributed their own articles and pictures, and wanted to share their stories. That's why I started to expand my business.

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And then you launched Blued. Why?
At the time, some gay people in China used an application called Jack'd, which was originally from the US, so it's all in English. Lots of my friends asked me to launch a Chinese version.

Most people use apps like this to get laid. Are you worried you've simply made a sex app rather than a dating one?
It's a problem for me, but it's the users' decision—they're adults and we won't judge. But for us, the people who operate Blued, we want users to share true love and feelings, not just sex.

You've got around 15 million users now—have you ever had trouble from the government, considering its dim view toward homosexuality previously?
Sexual orientation is no longer a topic for government authorities; they won't shut down websites or applications like they used to. Also, they're unable to bridge this gap [between the government and the gay community] to help AIDS prevention, so we love to cooperate with the government. We just give healthy reminders to users to protect themselves from AIDS.

I heard you'd set up HIV testing stations?
Yes, we use gay staff and volunteers to do the tests. We're also using our app and website to inform people that it's very important to check the AIDS situation.

But as well as raising awareness, your app is encouraging millions of men to hook-up for one-night stands and potentially engage in risky sexual behavior.
I don't think the two topics are against each other. If there was no Blued, people could always find ways to have sex with each other. They could use Wechat or Baidu or, like previous times, go to public toilets and parks. We're operating a business, but one with public benefits. It's like a social responsibility.

Finally, what's next for Blued?
I think great changes will be taken in China in the next four years. Maybe it'll get more diversified and inclusive. I trust our government and leaders' wisdom. They are hoping that society can getting better, including for gay people.

Thanks, Geng.

Follow Jamie on Twitter.

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Last fall, I started a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for a new book, Dinner with Igor, where I collected photos of my friends eating (many of whom happen to be porn stars, actors, and musicians). The campaign was a big success and I ended up raising way more than I expected. I decided to use the extra money on a second food-related project: Food Tattoos. I've been photographing friends' (and strangers') food tattoos for years, and they're all delicious, weird, and sometimes terrible.

On Thursday, I'm throwing a release party for Dinner with Igor in Brooklyn. I'm also going to drop Food Tattoos at the party, so I wanted to give you guys a sneak peek at some of the food tat photos before then.

The release party is January 8 at the Woods in Williamsburg. Two tattoo artists, Chris Johnson of Venus Body Arts and Rukus of Black Square Tattoo, will be giving $40 food tattoos from 10 PM until 1 AM. If you get a good one, you might end up in the next zine.

Buy both books here.

There's always something lurking beneath the surface in Miami-filmmaker Julian Yuri Rodriguez's work. In his second short, Lake Mahar, which premiered at the Borscht Film Festival, it's a sense of invasion. "Everything goes completely wrong for this white guy," explains Rodriguez. African land snails take over his garden and his Cuban gardener is clearly fucking his wife. With horror movie tropes and tripped-out editing, Rodriguez gets at the anxieties of white America with a hyper-accelerated rhythm and an insane sense of humor.

Last year, when I saw Rodriquez's first short film, C#ckfight, I stood around after the screening and awkwardly waited to talk to him. His violent and darkly comic imagining of an underground Miami fight club was the best thing I'd seen at Sundance and Slamdance, the scrappy step-sister festival that happens at the same time down the street. I told him I wanted to interview him for a magazine. Instead we ended up sneaking into an industry party, impersonating a C-list director-muse pair, and trashing a hotel room. Almost a year later, while I was in Miami for the Borscht Film Festival, I finally made good on my promise to interview him.

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VICE: In both Lake Mahar and C#ckfight, I feel you're interrogating masculinity. What makes you interested in that?
Julian Yuri Rodriguez: I'm working on a trilogy. I want my first three films to focus on different aspects of masculinity. It's definitely an ongoing theme. I wasn't that masculine growing up. I didn't play sports. I wasn't in Boy Scouts. I was a video game kid. But I grew up in Cuban culture and was surrounded by these real macho machismos.

What was that like?
"How many girlfriends you have?" is a question I guarantee you every Cuban will say they get asked multiple times a year by grandmothers, uncles, cousins. It's just a standard thing. They want every guy to be an alpha male. But these stereotypes are hard to resist. I think that's why I'm interested in making movies about them, because I'm completely aware of how stupid and dumb it is and, at times, I just can't resist my man-brain urges.

How does that play into Lake Mahar?
Lake Mahar isn't really about the machismo, but in a way it's about something similar. It's about a man being completely emasculated. In every house, there's a man who thinks he's a King Arthur and that he's a king of his little kingdom. They just feel godly. Males feel like they have this protection over their [wives and daughters] and it's crazy and insane to me. That's why I wanted to make a movie about this white guy losing it all to these dirtbag Cubans—or "South Americans," as they see us.

In your description of the movie, you said it's "a nightmare of Caucasian emasculation on Flagler street." What's the context of Flagler street in Miami?
Flagler is this neighborhood that is completely overrun by Cubans. My neighbors are basically the last American family living there and they inspired the film's sense of invasion. The white man already invaded this country, and now, they are feeling like they are being invaded. Every family on my street is Cuban except for this one. And the lake that I live on is being invaded by this Spanish Tilapia, which is ruining the entire ecosystem. And there are these trees in the film that I focus on, they're Australian pines, an invasive species that is taking over Florida. And there are these giant African land snails that get transferred over here during shipping and they've gotten into people's gardens. They will eat the stucco off of houses. And if you touch one, you can get meningitis. They are fucking ten inches long. My girlfriend's house got invaded by them. And I would see 20 of these giant snails at a time, just invading.

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Your real neighbor plays the neighbor in the film, right? Are a lot of the cast made up of friends and people you know?
Basically everyone is a friend of mine except the main actor who plays the father. I finally found him through an acting company in Miami. The gardener, Carlos Mucha, he was in C#ckfight too. He made a quick cameo as a guy who was just tripping out in the crowd. I wanted to make it all one universe, like this guy who maybe goes to fight clubs at night is a gardener for this weird family in the day. And then the guy who plays the daughters' friend, that's Ahol Sniffs Glue, the artist. [Ahol's real name is David Anasagasti. He recently won a big settlement after suing American Eagle Outfitters for copyright infringement because they hijacked his trademark motif for a campaign.] He's been a mentor to me. I've been friends with him since I was 16 years old. I just wanted to put him in a movie. He hates acting. I don't think he would have acted for any other director other than me, so I'm pretty lucky. He acts like a fucking pig in this movie. He's down to do the weirdest roles because he respects and has faith in what I do.

Tell me about the community you started making things in.
I'm 26 years old now. When I was 16, Ahol Sniffs Glue and I were in the same graffiti crew. It's called SSK, which stands for South Side Kings. We were the fucking coolest Miami crew in the city. So I grew up in a graffiti crew and I met Ahol and he took me under his wing. Back then, Ahol was sneaking me into these 21-and-over spots. I was having art shows and collaborating on installations. The installations started including video. They were cool to make but they weren't fun and I always thought movies were fun. My favorite movie ever is Fast and the Furious. I just love fun movies and entertainment.

I had this miniDv camera by mother gave me. And I started doing little comedy skits online and I was doing a lot of crazy rap music videos. I did this video for this guy Money Mogly and Rene Rodriguez [the Miami Herald's film critic] said I was like the Gaspar Noé of rap music videos. That's what pretty much set off Lucas Leyva [one of the founders of the Borscht film collective] to say, I'm going to fuck with Julian hard. He gave me the opportunity to make C#ckfight and now this Borscht thing is like family. It's cool to see how Borscht was willing to just reach out to dudes who grew up on the street and give us an opportunity to make films.

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Is Miami changing a lot? There seems to be a lot of interest in funding the arts to promote gentrification in the city.
When I was 16 and I was going to these art galleries, you felt like you were walking through a deserted land and you were going to get stabbed at any moment. Now there are Louis Vuitton stores. It's another thing related to Lake Mahar. It's another invasive species that Florida can't get away from.

Follow Whitney on Twitter.

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NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, right, marching in Oklahoma last month. Photo via Flickr user KOMUnews

Following the most divisive year in recent memory for race relations in America, the first week of 2015 was met with an act of violence possibly targeting the premier black activist organization in the country. At 10:45 AM local time Tuesday morning, volunteers working at the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP heard a loud explosion outside the building that they said was powerful enough to knock items off the wall.

"We do not know if this was a hate crime, or if the NAACP was specifically targeted," says Amy Sanders, Media Coordinator for the FBI in Denver, which is probing the case. "There was a salon next door that may have been targeted, or maybe there was a personal motive from a volunteer at the NAACP. This is still an ongoing investigation."

Whether the alleged bomber was targeting the NAACP or not, his or her skills with an incendiary device were pretty rudimentary, and if the intention was to cause harm to any persons or property, the attack failed miserably. Despite occurring in the middle of a workday morning while many people were inside the building, no one was harmed in the explosion. According to Sanders, the building containing the NAACP and Mr. G's Hair Design Studios "was slightly charred, as was the sidewalk, but all of the damage was external."

While the improvised explosive device (IED) was detonated successfully, a gas can that was placed next to the bomb (presumably to increase the size of the explosion and cause the building to catch fire) was not ignited in the blast and caused no damage.

Still, locals were a bit shook up, to stay the least.

"It was a horrendous blast," says Gene Southerland, owner of Mr. G's Hair Design Studio, which has been in the building since 1967. "A corrections officer that was in my chair at the time described it as sounding like a shotgun blast."

Southerland says that in addition to the NAACP offices and his establishment—where the clients are predominantly African American—the building also played host to a campaign office for Barack Obama during his first run for president in 2008.

The bombing occurred just days before Colorado Springs residents are set to line up for the local premier of Selma, a film chronicling the signature voting rights marches led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965. The film takes place in the same year that NAACP leader George Metcalfe was injured in a car bombing. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the NAACP has been the target of seven additional bombings in the years that followed, three of which occurred in 1993. But the organization has not been the victim of any such attack since that year.

"Colorado has had a very strong radical right going back decades," says Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the SPLC. "It has a very substantial liberal, progressive element, but outside of the cities, it has a very conservative population. Colorado Springs in particular is an extremely conservative town. It's home to almost all of the major Christian right organizations in the United States.

"There was a lot of activity from militia groups in Colorado in the 1990s," Potok continues. "In 1997, anti-government radicals set fire to the IRS office in Colorado Springs. That arson caused $2.5 million in damage."

According the SPLC website, Colorado is home to 17 active hate groups—defined as having "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics."

Sanders says that there is a "possible person of interest" in the explosion, described as a white, balding male driving a white pickup truck. Sanders is adamant that "at the FBI, we take any allegation of a hate crime very seriously, and we will investigate that possibility. However, there are many possibilities in this case at the moment."

Southerland, meanwhile, is already back to his routine at Mr. G's Hair Design Studios.

"Business goes on," he says. "I slept good last night, and that symbolizes the comfort and faith that I have in God. I don't have any haters. I feel blessed that nobody was hurt last night, and we just have to pray and be mindful and move on."

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