If you're looking for old Hollywood glamour, my advice would be to stay the hell out of Hollywood. The Hollywood Boulevard of today is a garish nightmare, riddled with overpriced clubs and stripper accessory stores and gift shops that still, I shit you not, sell Charlie Sheen "#WINNING" shirts. It is, to thousands, a perfectly perverse place to drunkenly celebrate the passing of another year.

Tourists wander around, dazed children in tow, as women's asses pop out of bandage dresses like dough from a tube. If you bring your child to Hollywood on vacation, the state should legally have the right to remove that child from your care.

A man dressed as Christ, thorns and all, plays "Low Rider" outside the Hard Rock Cafe as the clock strikes midnight. "If you take a picture or video," his sign says, "Don't forget to tip." Everyone takes a picture or video. No one tips. Fireworks pop in the distance.

The pungent stench of weed emanates through the halls of the mall at Hollywood and Highland, in spite of the fact that there are cops at every corner; a man flagrantly chugs from a bottle of Ciroc within eyesight of law enforcement. Someone driving an Infiniti almost plows into a crosswalk of people. Once he realizes his mistake he slams on the breaks, ruefully putting his head in his hands. "Hit me," a kid crossing the street says. "I have to pay the rest of this tuition."

L. Ron Hubbard's Winter Wonderland—which, if you didn't already guess, is Scientology's "holiday village" featuring a clown handing out balloons that have not been turned into animals, just cylindrical tubes of plastic—beckons. A WC Fields-level lush posing as Santa pushes literature on you after an obligatory photo. "It's actually written by L. Ron Hubbard," he'll tell you. "It's simple, but really profound."

A man in his 20s, splayed out over one of the boulevard's stars, stares catatonically into the distance. "Just give me your hand," his female companion implores him. He'll refuse, muttering, "Just just go on with the rest of your life without me." It is 12:16 AM.

"You get me in that picture?" a woman will ask you. Terrified, you meekly reply that you may have. She'll ask to see the picture in question because she wants to know if her "ass is hanging out." Now, you've never been in a situation wherein you were unsure whether or not your ass was hanging out, but you are not her. You are an observer, not a participant. Upon examination of the picture, you'll both determine that her ass is, indeed, hanging out. "I ain't a prostitute," she'll tell you. "Even though I look like one."

Follow Meagan on Twitter.

Illustration by Dessie Jackson

Being a musician in prison isn't as romantic as it sounds. Sure, Gucci Mane has arguably released some of his best work from inside the pen, but for normal convicts it's pretty difficult to make music, especially when you're in a band.

To start, the equipment isn't good—not that you'd expect prison to have a legit music center where dudes with 25-to-life can hang out and noodle along to "Stairway in Heaven." Generally, the amps and PAs suck—but that only matters when you can find capable musicians who are down to write music together or jam, which as you can imagine is not easy. Plus, even if there is a practice space, good luck seriously shredding without pissing off the COs who don't want to hear your feedback-filled Sabbath covers.

Even if prison seems in theory like an inspiring place to create anti-authority art, forming a band that outlives the members' sentences is a rare feat. In the late aughts, I was locked up in FCI Loretto, a federal prison in Pennsylvania, where I met three musicians who managed to become an exception to the rule.

Singer/guitarist Jason Scott, drummer Pete Markovina, and bassist Johnny Dunlop are a rock trio called The Institution. They met when they were all locked up for various drug charges and ended up forming a band that's lasted beyond the prison gates. Self-described as "melodic, progressive rock" in the vein of the Deftones or Soundgarden, the Institution recorded dozens of songs in the belly of the beast, using a VHS recorder to lay down demos.

In the five years since the three members were released from Loretto, the band has played over 300 live shows, self-released a full-length album featuring material primarily written in prison, and are currently finishing an acoustic EP and sophomore LP in a real studio.

I caught up with lead man Jason Scott and drummer Pete Markovina via Skype to talk about forming a band behind bars, how prison affected the group's creative process, and what it's been like to keep the project going on the outside.

VICE: When you first formed the band, did you imagine it could be something after you were all let out of prison?
Jason Scott: I went home at the end of 2008 and we were three years into the band at that point. We started talking about taking the band to the street in 2006. That was always the plan: We're going to get out and do this for real. We were just setting the plan into motion and executing it. Pete got home in 2010 and John got home in 2011. He came right out to San Francisco where I was living. Pete was already here. The real world kind of hit John, our bassist, with overwhelming force, and he got lost for a couple years. But he came back around.

Pete Markovina: At first, there was no getting around the fact that the whole mini-world we created in this horrible prison situation was over when Jason was let free while we were still in there. But it's been almost five years since we've all been home and still going.

What did being in a band change about your prison experience? How did it make incarceration better or worse?
Jason: Working on original stuff was what kept us focused in there while everyone else was playing dominos, gambling, and doing things of that nature, which really amounts to nothing. The music kept us focused. It was almost like we were free.

Pete: That's the result of making use of your time while in prison instead of watching TV, having a weekend orderly job, or just wasting your time. That was a big part of how we were able to do it. We all loved what we do and we put in the time and effort to practice. Jason became a master at guitar because he has like 10,000 hours in. He knows all the chords, all the structure, and all the theory. That's what jail can do for you; it gives you uninterrupted time to practice.

Hegemony, your first full-length release, contains all songs that you wrote and honed in prison, right?
Jason: All except one. They were all written while we were locked up at Loretto. Pete worked in the library and he had access to a VHS recorder. He would sneak that thing down to the prison's band room during the day and we would record demos. Pete transferred those VHS recordings to DVDs on the libraries equipment, and we mailed them out and put them up on MySpace. Our music, which was illegally recorded in the institution, was then out in the ether.

Pete: We walked out of Loretto with like 42 songs complete. We call those "the Loretto Sessions" informally. That was a hell of a caper. We had no way to record audio except on VHS tape. It's all crackling and shit. We dubbed it to the DVDs just to hear it. It was pretty nuts, but it worked out good.

Were you ever censored or punished for being in the band in prison?
Jason: We were never really censored. The only time we got in trouble was when we were playing Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name," and I was singing the part that goes, "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me," and this recreation cop came down to the band room and threatened to shut us down, screaming and yelling.

How is it writing music now compared to when you were locked up?
Jason: It's harder to write out here because we're trying to get on our feet. There are 60 billion things to do and 60 billion more the next day.

Pete: The big difference is that when we were in there, we had those set days. I had my own practice times and they had their own practice times and then we had the band slots. The writing was a lot more abundant and fluent in prison because Jason had tapped into a really strong and creative streak and he was able to consistently come up with these riffs and ideas that he really had uninterrupted time and focus to work through. Him and John were really able to work through that stuff and we could put it together more efficiently.

The Institution's touring lineup

Are there other bands like you guys who met in prison?
Jason Scott: One thing that makes our situation different is that we're a band that only played with each other. Most of the time in prison, it's groups of people that occasionally play together—not bands so much. I haven't heard of anyone that's exactly like us. When we first got out, the last thing we wanted anybody to know about was where we came from. We didn't want to be known as the jail band and have that stigma no matter what we're playing. But now we are with it because it has a lot to do with who we are. Time has allowed us to embrace our history in a way that we couldn't before, since we got our feet on the ground and we're rolling.

To listen or purchase the Institution's first LP, Hegemony, visit their website or stream the record on Spotify.

Follow Seth on Twitter.

All images courtesy of Pacifico Silano

Pacifico Silano is a photographer of photographs. In many ways, he is a historian. The Brooklyn-based artist's new exhibition, Tear Sheets, currently at The Camera Club of New York, pushes conversations that, as he puts it, "are my history."

The images in the show are cultivated appropriations of historic queer ephemera, such as psychiatric literature and porn mags from the 70s and 80s like Blueboy, Torso, and Honcho. Within the context of Tear Sheets, these discarded objects and boy-blasted come rags rise above forgotten cultural detritus and reveal themselves to be platforms of activism, nightlife, awareness, and gay rights, as well as relics of queer socialization and identity in pre-digital times.

Silano's subtle manipulations of his materials allow seemingly conflicting topics to fuse seamlessly, such as references to gay smut and weightier things like HIV/AIDS, political oppression, and cultural marginalization. For example, the artist uses negative space in his works where he incorporates huge fields of white, sometimes black. The edge of the appropriated images cast shadows on to the voided space, emphasizing the feeling that something has been lost or forgotten, such as underground cultural spaces, sites of identity like defunct porn publications, or time periods and memories that came before the artist was even around to embrace them.

But he also builds on top of appropriate images, as well as overlaps and tucks source material behind other objects, figuratively molding history or creating something new through use of archival items. Reinterpretation blossoms from Silano's metamorphoses and his appropriations become highly suggestive and pensive.

Anyone can search for a sense of culture that seemed important at a certain time. But Silano thrives as an artist in his ability to interpret hazy memories and allow them to become what they weren't before. From this inquest of space and history there is discovery and invention. The world spins forward, and we look back in commemoration—to learn and reflect, to see new.

Pacifico Silano's 'Tear Sheets' is on view at BAXTER ST. CCNY through January 16. Efrem Zelony-Mindell is a photography and writer based in NYC.

You could be this happy watching this documentary. Still from The Cash Crop

Sunday nights are perfect for sitting on the couch: you've finally recovered from a weekend of overindulgence, and the sheer terror of the week ahead hasn't yet set in. What better time to fill your head with groundbreaking and provocative documentaries about drugs, sex, politics, and Canadian culture?

Starting tonight, City will be airing some of our Canadian docs and news reports under the banner Best of VICE Canada, beginning with "The New Era of Canadian Sex Work" and "Canadian Cannabis: The Cash Crop."

For "The New Era of Canadian Sex Work," we sent Lowell, a pop singer and former stripper, to meet with policy makers and police to discuss the controversial C-36, which criminalizes johns who patronize sex workers. Lowell also went down to Nevada to see how a regulated, legal sex industry functions, and met with a john to get his perspective.

In "The Cash Crop," Canadian Cannabis host and medical marijuana user (not to mention Fucked Up frontman) Damian Abraham headed to Vancouver and Denver to compare the grey market of dispensaries in British Columbia to Denver's regulated legal weed economy—an investigation that offers insight into the possible outcomes of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise of legalization.

Tune in tonight and every Sunday at 10 PM for more.

Sam Knee—author of the indie style history A Scene in Between—has just released a new book documenting and stratifying the many music-led fashion subsets of Britain's youth, from 1960 to 1990. The Bag I'm In's imagery is largely sourced from personal photo collections, with reams of previously unseen images covering everything from CND beatniks to art school boho and baggie.

We reviewed the book in VICE magazine's monthly literary round-up, but given the opportunity for a quick chat with Sam, alongside the offer of some exclusive photos, we thought we would expand on our earlier adulation.

VICE: How did the book come to be? Is it an area you have a longstanding interest in?
Sam Knee: Well yeah, I've spent my entire life immersed in vintage clothing, old records, and a deep fascination with UK youth-scene history. I grew up through a lot of these scenes, from post punk and '79 mod onwards, and what scene you were in or where you were at, clothes you wore, and what you listened to was all that mattered. Everything else was boring bullshit.

Through the 80s I worked in second-hand record shops and spent my spare time scouring charity shops for 60s clothes and records. In the evenings I'd go and see indie or neo-mod garage bands. I was a 24/7 indie kid scenester. In 1990, I moved to San-Francisco for four years, where I worked in vintage stores during the boom years, and since then I've worked in vintage clothing and design. So I guess I'm pretty one-dimensional, but an ideal candidate for taking on a book like The Bag I'm In. Also, I figured it would be cool to share some of the sartorial tidbits I've gathered over the last 30 or so years for the next generation of "yoof culture" historians, and before my brain evaporates into jelly.

Napalm Death, 1986 (Photo by Nicholas Royales)

How long have you been working on it?
I'd been thinking about Bag for a few years, but had to get A Scene in Between out of my system first. Scene had a terrific reaction from people, so I figured the time was now, not later.

And what were your sources in terms of research? You must have talked to a lot of interesting people covering all these scenes.
I reached out to lots of folk I've encountered over the years and began bugging them for old photos and their friends' photos and so on, basically full scale bombardment. Once the word was out, the material started rolling in, and within a year or so I had amassed over 2,000 pictures, all previously unpublished. Warts and all youth scene snaps from within the scenes, not pro-photographer, slick, posed slush. The book had to convey reality.

I met up with all kinds of youth scene veterans, some of whom are now in their mid seventies and all hugely generous and forthcoming with archive material. Once they met me, it was quite apparent that I'm genuinely into all this stuff, and they opened up, lending me their crumpled old snaps to scan, and, in a couple of cases, their entire photo albums.

(Photo by Ming DeNasty, 1981)

Were you in any way slightly awed by people's tendencies to be extremely picky and fussy about the sorts of "classifications" and stratifications that a book like this requires? Did you have people moaning about your "start dates" for a scene, for example? And how did you overcome those issues?
Extreme fussiness, minuscule obsessional detailing, and strict timeframes were paramount in creating an authenticity, so I welcomed any opinions on fashion codes—the more militantly microscopic, the better. Obviously they varied regionally, but as a historian, you draw parallels, creating a uniform truth.

There have been plenty of books about past tribes, trends, and the cross over of music and fashion, but yours seems more all-encompassing. Did you feel there was a gap that you wanted to fill?
Yes. There have been some fantastic books on individual scenes over the years—for example, Richard Barnes' Mods! from '79, Rockers by Johnny Stuart, Teds by Perkins and Smith, and so on... But nothing collating the multifarious entangled youth scenery, in particular focusing on micro sub-indie scenes like the transitional and short lived "hard mod" or the "southern soulboy," first wave shoegaze, CND beatniks, etc. Until now, that is.

The illustrations .

Into music? I'm sure you are. Good news: we have two whole websites dedicated to the stuff – Thump and Noisey – that you can look at right now.

How did you select the cut-off dates for the trends covered? Is 1960-90 just the period that interests you most? Or do you think things changed after 1990 in a way that maybe made it sensible to stop there?
1960-90 is tight and action-packed. Before 1960 is fairly embryonic and slower-paced. 1990 onwards, I felt the UK youth scenery loses all focused intensity and was the beginning of the decline, a slippery slope to mediocrity.

Were there any looks or scenes that you had to let slide?
Yes, there's a few sub-scenes that, due to a strict page-count, had to be put on ice until next time, perhaps! For example, the proto-industrial scene look of 1979-80; southern gothic, i.e. The Cramps; Birthday Party kids from 1981-83; Scruffs, acid-mod from 1988-90; NWBHM kids from 1978-82 and so on... It never ends.

The Bag I'm in: Underground Music and Fashion in Britain 1960-1990 is available to buy here.

See more photos from the book below:

The Stone Roses, 1989 (Photo by Wendy Stone)

(Photo by Theresa Beauchamp, 1981)

Southend, 1962 (Photo by Yvonne Otzen)

(Photo by Johnny Belam, 1969)

The crowd at the 100 Club, 1982 (Photo by Tina Caruso)

Carnaby Street, 1967 (Photo by Martin Hewitt)

George R. R. Martin: "There's a lot written. But there's also a lot still left to write." Photo by Nick Briggs/courtesy of HBO

This past Saturday, George R. R. Martin took to his blog to make an important announcement: He's nowhere near finishing the penultimate book of A Song of Ice and Fire—The Winds of Winter.

That means two things. First, when the sixth season of HBO's Game of Thrones launches in April, no one outside of those who are involved with the show will have any clue what's going to happen. Second, nobody knew this would be the case when the show filmed last fall.

Martin's blog post confirmed what all of us assumed. The team behind Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire planned to release the book in March 2016, with the show to drop a month later. To make the deadline, Martin would have had to turn in a completed manuscript around Halloween. That didn't happen. "There's a lot written," Martin claimed in the post, "hundreds of pages. Dozens of chapters... But there's also a lot still left to write. I am months away still... and that's if the writing goes well. (Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't.) Chapters still to write, of course... but also rewriting. I always do a lot of rewriting, sometimes just polishing, sometimes pretty major restructures."

Like winter, we knew this was coming – just not so soon. I wrote about the dangerous depletion of the "world's reserves of Game of Thrones" last spring, arguing that by season seven, we'd have the unprecedented situation of a major story starting in books but finishing on the screen. It's as if the last three Harry Potter movies came out before Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. But whereas Rowling managed to keep churning out books at a rapid pace, Martin's (arguably more adult and much more involved) epics have officially stalled, and it's happened a season early.

This puts those of us who read the books and watch the show in a new position. For years, people like me have eagerly waited to see how the show would handle known scenarios and characters, rather than wondering what would happen. When the show veered off the path charted by the book by adding elements and cutting others, we cheered or jeered. Now it's all going to be new.

I'm pretty excited, in no small part because the most recent trailer suggested that the show was ready to take on its new level of ownership to the story. I assume that Jon Snow is coming back, and always have, since I read the book. But I have no idea how he'll return. Will he be reanimated? Did he just survive the stabbing? Will magic, dark or light, be involved? Instead of finding out this spring by flipping rapidly through the pages of The Winds of Winter, I, and the others like me, will be forced to wait until the show creators want me to know. The same goes for the fate of the wars in the North, the Bolton usurpers, Daenerys's encounter with the new Dothraki force, and more. I will see, rather than read, the story.

But let's not complain that the show will spoil the books. For all Martin's done setting the story into motion, the books have no built-in right to be first. Martin knew, when he sold the project and told Weiss and Benioff the ending, that the TV show might finish before he got to it. The TV show is, in many ways, already becoming canon. After all, the show is, in Martin's own words, "the most popular television series in the world right now." Benioff and Weiss have found ways to make the world of Westeros seem real. Now it's their responsibility to carry the story from its nitty-gritty, politicking origins to its epic high-fantasy finale.

And someday the books will come out. And then we can go back to arguing about all the details.

Follow David on Twitter.

Francis Morland in his garden

Smuggling large quantities of drugs usually requires organizational skills and a reputation for being someone not to mess with. Coordinating the transportation of boatloads of contraband in the midst of both a war on drugs and a war on terrorism is no easy feat. I would imagine that avoiding being relieved of those boatloads by other criminals is also relatively difficult, given the dog-eat-dog nature of drug trafficking. In the UK in the 60s and 70s, however, there were some of the key players who were "gentleman smugglers." These guys were members of high society who risked it all for a bit of excitement and some adventures on the high seas. They weren't particularly well-organized, and didn't fit the mould of the typical violent criminal. Francis Morland was one such smuggler.

Being the heir to an industrial fortune, Francis's younger years were a far cry from those of a typical drug trafficker. His mother was a renowned modern artist, his dad was an eminent physician, and his family would attend house parties with Princess Margaret and other dignitaries. Moreland followed in his mother's footsteps, becoming a leading member of the "new generation" sculpture movement. He then got into transporting huge quantities of dope across the world, and was the UK's first recognizable drug baron. I caught up with him to find out what made him become such a prolific criminal.

VICE: How did you first become involved in smuggling?
Francis Morland: I started off buying dope for friends. A friend of mine then came back from Morocco with some stuff hidden in a Citroen, and I wanted to do something similar. One thing led to another, and it just grew from that. There wasn't a drug scene before then, really, and there was a great excitement and enthusiasm surrounding it. I've always been a bit of a risk taker, so it appealed to me.

Was the money a motivating factor?
Part of the excitement came from the fact you could make a large amount of money from smuggling. When I first started, there was a return of 30 to one, so however much you fucked up, you could still make a lot. I was worried about the risks involved, but heedless of the risk at the same time.

What were the main methods you used?
I used a number of different methods, including putting the dope in accordions to go to America, putting it in sculptures to go to America, putting it in Citroen cars to go around Europe, and also using yachts to transport it.

You ended up serving a sentence in America. How did that come about?
We got involved with an American who said that we should get the stuff to the American Virgin Islands and hide it there. He told us they were an American territory, so he could send couriers from New York to St Thomas to transport it and they wouldn't be searched on the way back. When we got to the islands, we found out they were a duty free zone, which means you are searched. It's like coming back from the Channel Islands. That meant we couldn't use that route. The American then stole 20 kilos and sent it to be transported, hidden in a Land Rover with a completely stoned junkie. Surprise, surprise, he got busted and told the police and customs what I was doing.

They were looking for us by the time we got to New York, so I only had about five days there. I was mending a window on my boat in the 79th Street Boat Basin when customs came down to see me. I hadn't had time to unload everything. The crew had all jumped ship because I made the mistake of paying them before they finished unloading, so I had to unload everything on my own, put it on a trolley, and then take it to a car and drive it to a flat I'd rented. Then I had to take it to the people I was selling it to downtown. It was a logistical problem.

Did anyone in the art world know what you were up to before that point, or did it come as a total shock?
I think some of them had an idea.

I can't imagine, coming from that world, that you had a lot in common with the other inmates.
You've got to understand the American criminal system. They've got federal and state prisons over there. Murder isn't a federal crime, so there were people who had done murders in there, but not people who had been convicted of murder. So you'd have organized criminals—for example, the mafia—and you'd have bank robbers, because bank robbery's a federal crime, and people in for kidnapping, bootlegging, cannibalism, shooting an American eagle... those are all federal crimes. I struck a happy medium because I wasn't part of any group. I wasn't Italian American, I wasn't Polish American, I wasn't black from Detroit or New York, so I could sit with anyone I wanted to.

READ ON MOTHERBOARD: Drug Smuggling Is Getting a High Tech Makeover

How did the English prison system compare to the American one?
The first British prison I was in was semi-open. It was awful. It was regimented and run by ex-army NCOs. Brixton, Wandsworth, and Pentonville were overcrowded and totally depersonalized, like human dustbins. Some of the open prisons had pretty good conditions.

So the American prisons were actually better than the British ones back then?
Yeah, but they're not now. I saw a documentary about Lewisburg prison—the prison I was in—20 years later, and there were two or three murders a year and people doing life sentences with no parole. You can get a life sentence for exporting over a kilo of hash in America nowadays. It's all gone insane. But it's now gone so far in that direction that they're realizing they've made an error.

How did the smuggling world back then differ to how it is now?
It was chaotic, amateurish, and disorganized. Drugs today are so complex, and there are so many of them. When I was smuggling, there was only cannabis and heroin, and heroin was something we didn't know much about.

WATCH: Wolf of the West End, our documentary about the infamous socialite and fraudster Edward Davenport.

I've heard you've still got a load of hash buried on a Caribbean island. Is that true?
It's in Fallen Jerusalem . It must have been there around 45 years now and is probably absolutely useless, if there's anything left of it at all.

How did it come to be buried there in the first place?
I unloaded a ton and buried it in the sand. When I left, I also buried 40 kilos separately at the top of the beach, so that if everything went wrong, I knew I had it there.

A little nest egg.
Yes, I suppose.

Francis in his pottery studio

What have you been doing since packing in the smuggling?
I've become more and more involved in pottery, going back to my roots.

Your sculpting style is quite unconventional. Do you think your lifestyle influenced the way you work at all?
Yes, my sculptures involved taking aesthetic risks. They weren't exactly what you would call "safe." Smuggling also gave me the opportunity to be free of financial considerations and meant that if I wanted to make a sculpture, I could always make it or have it made.

How do you feel about your smuggling days now that you can look back on them with the gift of hindsight?
Obviously, if I'd known what was going to happen, I wouldn't have done it. You're a product of your experience, though, and I can't imagine what I would be like if I'd have taken a different route, because it's so hypothetical.

Thanks, Francis.

You can read more about Francis' smuggling adventures in his new book The Art of Smuggling.

Follow Nick on Twitter.

Over the past few years, a New Year's Eve tradition has been emerging in London. While most were attempting a final power nap, lining their stomachs, or getting started on their first drinks of the night, radical activists congregate around prisons in the early evening and scream, shout, and generally make as much noise as possible—the idea being that they can be heard by inmates, breaking the sense of isolation as they stew inside on what is supposed to be the most fun night of the year.

This year, noise protests took place outside Pentonville, Holloway, and Brixton prisons. VICE sent photographer Chris Bethell down to the Brixton protest to see what happened.

Around 60 people gathered outside the prison, undeterred by the heavy rain earlier in the day. After a few speeches about police brutality, people wandered around to the side of the prison, which is flanked by a large metal fence. A sound system started playing, and people hit drums, screamed, and banged pots and pans. A couple of people were masked up and in black-bloc clothes. They fumbled with a bag, which looked a bit ominous until they started handing out mince pies.

A small group of police hovered about as nervously as you would as a cop in a crowd that would occasionally shout "fuck the police!" Fortunately they didn't get out the pepper spray, as activists say happened last year. After a while, people surged forward to kick the metal fence and create even more of a racket. This continued on and off for an hour or so before everyone left.

Follow Chris on Twitter.

On Monday morning, Donald Trump's campaign released its first official TV ad, and it hits all the xenophobic bullet-points Trump's become known for: ban Muslims from entering the US "until we can figure out what's going on," build that border wall, and "cut the head off of ISIS and take their oil." The ad crams all those promises into 30 seconds while displaying bleak, black-and-white B-roll of explosions and immigrants flooding the border.

All of that stuff is to be expected from the unlikely Republican frontrunner, but what does he mean by "take their oil"? Probably exactly what it sounds like—the US should go into the parts of Syria controlled by ISIS and suck the oil from the ground. Trump's never been shy about his opinion that the US should have taken oil out of Iraq, and during a speech in Michigan last December, the pseudo-fascist said, "to the victor belongs the spoils. You take the oil—you don't just leave it." Who exactly would be extracting the oil from the ground and transporting it was left unclear.

The campaign ad will begin airing on Tuesday in the early primary states of New Hampshire and Iowa, NBC reports, with millions of dollars a week going into making sure voters know exactly what Trump would do to stamp out "radical Islamic terrorism."

"I am very proud of this ad," the candidate said in a statement. "I don't know if I need it, but I don't want to take any chances because if I win we are going to Make America Great Again."

The Saxon sound system crew, 1983. Photo courtesy of the Maxi Priest collection

"One of my earliest memories is of the bass coming through the walls when I was a young girl in Huddersfield," laughs Mandeep Samra, curator of the "Sound System Culture: London" exhibition, which opens on January 5 at The Tabernacle, Notting Hill. "The next door neighbor used to have these blues parties. I guess that probably had some kind of subliminal effect."

Sound system culture in the UK has played a vital part in global reggae history. From the moment that young Caribbean immigrant "Duke" Vincent Forbes set up his rudimentary system in 1954 London and started to blast ska and calypso selections at chest-shaking volumes, British systems have remained at the forefront of the movement, influencing pretty much every subset of UK dance music since.

Exploring the social history of the culture in cities like Huddersfield, Bristol, Birmingham—and, now, London—the touring "Sound System Culture" exhibition offers an opportunity to explore a scene that remains just as vital now as it's ever been.

"The tour grew organically from the original Huddersfield exhibition," says Samra. "Although it's not been as well documented as cities like London or Bristol, for many years Huddersfield had a thriving scene, out of proportion to the actual size of the town. The exhibition documented the lives and experiences of those who were involved, in particular people who laid the foundations for the scene at venues such as the Arawak Club and Venn Street. From there we explored Bristol and Birmingham, and now London."

From private "blues" parties—all-night sessions in crumbling West London terraces with a massive system and illegal bar—in the 1950s, to powerful 60s sounds like Count Shelley, through heavyweight 70s roots systems such as Jah Shaka and Fatman and 80s titans Saxon, the systems often provided a social focus for West Indian communities throughout London and made an indelible imprint on bass culture in England.

"These systems initially came out of a need for a community focus," explains Samra. "First and second generation Caribbean immigrants were often excluded from pubs and clubs. These dances were often held in community centers and suchlike. For the London exhibition we had links to various systems and we also worked very closely with reggae writer/historian John Masouri , who really pulled the narrative together. London was a tricky one because there have been such a huge number of sounds that have come out of the city. It would have been impossible to document everything, but we're really happy with what we can present."

Ahead of the exhibition opening I caught up with John Masouri to talk London sound system culture and a life in reggae.

Jah Shaka at the Albany Empire, Deptford, London, 1984. Photo © Stephen Mosco

VICE: What are your earliest memories of reggae?
John Masouri: In 1968—I was 15—I went to my first blues party. This was in a very run-down area of Nottingham. There were already a fair amount of Caribbean people there; I guess I was the first generation to go to school with Jamaican kids. I had a girlfriend, and her uncle used to run this blues party, so I used to go there. It was very intimidating, very exciting—another world. I was fascinated. I moved to London in 1973 or '74, when the first big systems were beginning to appear at Carnival—Fatman, Coxsone, etc. It was wonderful being in London during that time; you didn't have to go to blues parties any more, the sounds would be playing in halls and proper clubs and community centers, and I was old enough to get in. But one thing I did notice was that things were more racially charged in London. It was certainly more unwelcoming than it had been in the Midlands. I think partly that is just being in London, though: London was much more competitive between the various systems, and they were the first to get into the consciousness-raising stuff that was going on at the time.

The police harassment was coming on strong at that time as well. You'd often be in places and the police would raid them and search everybody and close off the system, close off the club... but you kind of got used to that—it became part of the experience. Wherever young people gather to have a good time there's always someone that wants to spoil it, y'know?

I'm interested in the culture of volume. Anybody who has experienced a system like Jah Shaka at full pelt knows there's arguably no better way to hear roots reggae or dub. Do you think of the dance as the primary means of experiencing the music?
I think that it is certainly a primary way of experiencing roots reggae. But it goes back much further—even the early sound guys, like in the early 1950s, he was making the building shake, making plaster come down from the ceiling at the blues parties he was playing; it has always been a big part of the music. Those early sound guys were always very competitive in every area, whether that was sourcing the best and most exclusive records; getting the best MCs on the mic; having the best clarity of sound; being the loudest without distorting. They showed prowess in designing the sound and getting everything built to the proper specifications.

The volume was certainly part of it, but I think it perhaps became over-prominent toward the end of the 70s. The early blues parties used to be places that people would meet; not just dance and enjoy themselves and have a good time, but also share news from whatever part of the Caribbean they came from. They weren't necessarily leaning massively toward the volume because people would want to socialize as well. But by the time the mid-70s came around you had sounds like Jah Shabba and Fatman who were absolutely killing you with volume. That was a real experience—you feel it in a bodily sense.

Austin "Spiderman" Palmer, founder of the Mighty Jah Observer sound system, at Sottotetto Sound Club, Bologne, Italy, October 2011. Photo © Rita Verde

The chest plate rattle.
It's almost as if the sound inhabits your whole body. You become an extension of the very speakers, in a sense. And I must admit—because I can that tell you love it as well, Harry—there is nothing like that feeling of being taken over. It's like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers .

Can you tell me a bit about what happened with sound system culture in England during the 80s?
The 1980s were the best decade ever for reggae in this country; it was this huge explosion of talent, not just in London but all over the country. There was this explosion of roots bands all over the place. When sound tapes—cassettes from Jamaica—became very popular you suddenly had a situation where English-born singers—singers who had gone to English schools—took elements of the Jamaican sound. You had real storytellers emerge. Dub-plates became less important; the performance of the DJs and the singers took over. That was such a talented generation with the MCs and the singers on systems like Saxon.

In 1984 Papa Levi had a number one hit in Jamaica with "Me God Me King." That had never been done before—in fact, it has never been done since—but it was just amazing. A young guy from South London, from Lewisham, who learned his craft in local youth clubs, and suddenly he's got a number one hit in Jamaica—the home of reggae sound systems, the home of reggae culture. To actually witness Jamaican DJs and MCs being forced onto the back foot and then taking on styles that had originated in the UK was a real point of pride if you were around at that point.

The Saxon sound system crew, 1983. Photo courtesy of the Maxi Priest collection

Why do you think England cultivated such a strong movement?
Firstly, we had a larger concentration of West Indian immigrants. Secondly, they brought that culture with them. It wasn't an insular community, and although of course there was racism—everyday racism and institutionalized racism—and I would never deny that, in my personal experience . There were so many elements that we could share as friends; it was an easy fit and there were also a lot of interracial relationships happening. And then working class communities in England have always had this great love for American soul music and American rock 'n' roll. There has always been this appreciation of music—it's always been one of our great strengths as a nation.

Wherever Caribbean people settled, from the 50s onward, a music scene would develop. It was perhaps easier in the 70s because there were lots more facilities. Unlike today, you had a surplus of council housing; a lot of parties took place in community centers; there were lots of youth clubs—even church halls... there were many places where music could flourish and take root. There were lots of bands starting up, so it was able to spread. I'm not saying it was always easy, but the facilities were there in a way that they are perhaps not today.

Lloyd Coxsone, founder of the Sir Coxsone Outernational sound system, 1978. Photo © Dave Hendley

Yeah, London has changed a huge amount since then; it seems increasingly tough for venues in the current climate. How has this affected the sound system scene?
I'll give you an example: it's now hugely expensive for a system to set up at Carnival. The complaints from residents in recent years mean that each system has to provide a level of security off their own backs, which is expensive. Take Sir Coxsone, for example. Nobody pays them to perform at Notting Hill, but they have to hire a van to take the system down; they have to pay for a tech crew—which could be six or seven people—they have to pay for security; they have to be responsible for rubbish clearance, all this stuff. It costs a huge amount of money.

There was a period in the 80s when we had the GLC under Ken Livingstone, and he was very much pro-Caribbean community, pro-Caribbean arts. The GLC would host a lot of shows in the parks and the town halls. It was a very progressive time—a very interesting time in that respect. But when Thatcher got in we had that same kind of repressive right-wing thinking we have now. And that is never a good fit for music.

Related: Watch 'Noisey Jamaica—Popcaan'

Tell me about putting the London exhibition together—was it difficult to track people down who had been involved with the older systems?
Initially we had to cast our net around London, see who actually had photographs, that was the main thing. We didn't want to just use images from recognized photographers; we wanted to source the photographs that had been taken around the systems themselves, but hadn't been shared publicly. Those shots give you a different type of insight, and we're lucky enough to have a great exhibition. But what we soon discovered is that a lot of the older sound guys didn't take photographs back in the day, or that they're not computer literate, or they might not be around any more—scenarios like that.

There were some earlier systems that I really wanted to be represented, but there were absolutely no photographs. Sometimes people would say to me, "Why didn't you take any photographs at dances yourself back then?" As a white man? In a blues party? People thought I was a policeman already, let alone if I had a bloody camera around my neck . In the early-70s there was no way you were going to be running around sticking a camera in people's faces. And the other thing was that, in those days in London, not many people had a decent camera of their own. Photography was something that you didn't really do, in the modern sense.

But I think it's amazing that people like Mandeep—who are from a younger generation—are taking a huge interest in this culture and are prepared to take the risks and put on exhibitions like this. I see it as a very positive thing. I'd like to see more books, more films, more exhibitions to really impress upon people how special this culture was and how impressive it continues to be. The influence of sound system culture worldwide is huge now. We're seeing systems in Latin America, Africa, the Far East—all over. We could never have imagined that these things would be happening, even 20 years ago.

"Sound System Culture: London" opens on January 5 at The Tabernacle, Notting Hill.

Follow Harry on Twitter.

A homeless person on the streets of New York City in December. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

For tens of thousands of homeless New Yorkers, the unusually warm start to this winter has been a seasonal stroke of luck, especially compared to last year, when storm after storm rocked the East Coast, forcing throngs of homeless to take desperate measures. Back then, some slept on subways; others stayed in "cardboard condos," hidden away under scaffolds and near major transit terminals—whatever it took to stay warm.

But with temperatures set to plunge in January, it's that time of year again for America's richest city to grapple with how to protect its lowliest citizens from below-freezing temperatures. And thanks to an executive order issued from Albany, the state capital, that task is looking thornier than ever.

On Sunday night, with a major cold front approaching his state, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an order mandating local municipalities take homeless individuals off the street when the temperature drops below the freezing mark.

The order goes into effect Tuesday, when New York City is slated to have a low of 25 degrees. But local homeless shelters—and the city's Department of Homeless Services (DHS)—have been working at "crisis mode," or way over-capacity, for years now. As of the Coalition for the Homeless's last count in October, over 59,500 men, women, and children sleep each night in NYC homeless shelters; that tally doesn't include the estimated thousands more on the streets. Homelessness in New York City is at its highest point in 80 years—and 80 years ago, the city was in the throes of the Great Depression.

The homeless problem remains one of the greatest issues facing the city right now. But just how the Governor's statewide remedy will affect it is hard to figure.

Watch: Searching for Refugee Housing in Berlin

First off, an emergency provision like Cuomo's already exists, in some capacity, for New York City's homeless. When the temperature falls below 32 degrees, the DHS declares what is known as a "Code Blue." When this happens, emergency drop-off shelters must take anyone that enters, and an enormous outreach effort is undertaken by both DHS and the New York City Police Department to see if those still on the streets want to spend the night at a hospital or shelter. The measure was expanded in 2014 to ban shelters from denying families (the policy previously applied only applied to individuals.)

In an interview Monday morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to unpack this confusing entanglement of state and local law. "That's something NYPD does," he told WCBS, a local radio affiliate, when asked about the legality of the Governor's order. "That's something our outreach workers do through our Homeless Services department. So we have that capacity right now under state law—and we have done that for years and we will continue to do it."

On top of that, his office recently announced an initiative called HOME-STAT, a new program that aims to get the homeless off the streets, or at least provide the services they need. It's similar to the NYPD's CompStat effort, in that it uses data to target areas with high rates of homelessness (as CompStat does for crime), in order to more effectively deploy outreach. The program is controversial, with some advocates arguing that more police involvement will result in more unnecessary harm. But it's clear that there is help out there, with or without the state government's decree.

"During freezing temperatures, all families and individuals in need are provided immediate access to shelter," Karen Hinton, a press secretary for the mayor, said in a statement. "No one in need is turned away. Our shelters are required to remain open and accessible to residents all day, regardless of temperature. We also already move individuals facing imminent danger from the streets to hospitals for a mental health evaluation.

"This Executive Order adds no legal or financial resources to New York City's programs to assist the homeless," she continued, "and merely requires all New York State localities follow many of the same requirements as New York City to shelter families and individuals in need in freezing temperatures."

Hinton's language hints at an ongoing public dispute between the mayor and governor over how to handle the homelessness crisis, one that sometimes seems to be more so about who the true progressive is rather than the homeless themselves.

After the order's announcement, a Cuomo official suggested to the New York Times that it was, indeed, the New York City crisis that sparked the move. "There are more than 4,000 homeless individuals living on the streets, with the majority in New York City," Alphonso B. David, Cuomo's chief counsel, said. "State law mandates that safe and clean shelters are provided to both families and individuals."

In the past, the governor's office has lambasted the de Blasio administration for its perceived ineffectiveness, as numbers continue to rise under the mayor's watch—a significant concern to raise, no doubt, even if tabloids have overdosed on painting the whole "New York is burning" theme. But Cuomo, who has extensive experience working with the homeless, has also been called upon by advocacy groups to do much more.

Yet if his order is any indication, Cuomo's proposed solutions aren't a whole lot different from those of de Blasio. And neither politician has done much to address the deeper economic questions of affordability here (as in, why are there are so many homeless people in New York City?). While it may be helpful for other municipalities to adopt these policies, just how the governor's order would help New York City is a question worth asking.

"I'm not going to argue an individual's right to freeze to death," Cuomo said in a Sunday radio interview. "I want to argue an individual's human right to housing and services and shelter. The days when we're going to argue civil rights for people to sleep on the street, we learned that lesson the hard way, and let's not go backward. Let's go forward."

(The Governor's office has been reached for comment for this story, but VICE has yet to hear back.)

One of the more striking concerns over the Governor's order relates to what exactly the state intends to do with individuals with mental disabilities once they're approached by local officials. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, a large majority of homeless folks on the street "are people living with mental illness or other severe health problems."

As it stands, the order reads that "the state can take appropriate steps, including involuntary placement," to take a person off the street. Following that logic, the forcible removal of homeless individuals across New York has just been signed off on by state government—even though the state's Mental Hygiene Law restricts state or local officials from doing that without conducting individual assessments to see if the person is actually capable of making reasonable decisions for themselves. Policies like this one have been deemed illegal: When former Mayor Ed Koch tried to implement a similar plan in 1980, a court struck it down.

"We support the Executive Order, but to forcibly remove all homeless individuals in freezing weather, as the Governor initially ordered, will require him to pass state law," Hinton added.

When asked about this discrepancy—in that an order presented as being humane employs arguably inhumane measures—David told the Times that "obviously, the order does not mandate involuntary commitment for competent individuals." (According to the Daily News, Cuomo's aides have made clear that the mentally ill will be brought to safety, and given assessments as well. This suggests that the semantics of the order are fairly confusing.)

On the ground, the problems of homelessness are too complex to be solved by simple, sweeping policies. The numerous homeless men and women I've interviewed over the years all say they sleep on the streets for a reason. The shelters, they say, are worse than a jail cell—not only decrepit, but dangerous: You sleep with one eye open to protect yourself against someone swiping your things or an overnight warrant raid by the NYPD. I've met with lines of homeless men who sleep directly across the street from shelters. Even on the night of a major blizzard, it's all too common to find men and women who simply refuse to go inside.

"Putting people in shelter is like putting them in a cage," said Sheila Turner, a homeless member of the advocacy group Picture the Homeless who has slept on the streets for 30 years. "You can't imagine the things that have happened to people in there. How they've been hurt... You want to take people, snatch them up, put them somewhere they don't want to be, like an animal? Just because we can't afford to pay rent? We're not animals. We're human beings.

"This executive order will just put more cops in our face, give them new ways to mess with us, and that won't help the situation," she continued. "If you really want to help, get them somewhere they can be safe. The Mayor and the Governor keep pushing us, but we've been pushed too far. And we'll fight back. Peacefully, but there's a lot of us, and they don't want us sleeping outside Gracie Mansion or the Governor's office."

Let's just hope it's not a long winter.

Follow John Surico on Twitter.

Booze, booze, and more booze. Photo via Flickr user Andrew Russeth

Normally, we associate the word "coaching" with things like soccer, football, or pick-up artistry, but what's often overlooked is that, in the world of addiction, coaches who stand between addicts and relapse are a real thing.

Sobriety coaches, or sober coaches as they're sometimes called, are basically the last line of defence in serious cases of substance abuse. Far past the realm of AA groups and therapy sessions, there are self-appointed gurus keeping people clean by spending dozens of hours a week with paying clients to prevent them from making harmful choices.

In Canada, arguably the most well-known sobriety coach is Bob Marier, the man who helped former Toronto mayor Rob Ford kick his myriad of drug and alcohol habits that fuelled a year-and-a-half long series of escapades and outbursts that made international headlines.In a new VICE documentary about Marier, he told the filmmakers that when Ford came to him, he was not only in horrible shape but that he was incredibly reluctant to work with Marier.

"When someone's leaving post-acute care, and they want to be reintegrated back into society...a sobriety coach can make that a lot easier," Marier said. " is unsure of themselves. It will not work for that reason."

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Bobolink? More like Dodolink if the government doesn't step in. Photo via Flickr user Kelly Colgan Azar

In the spring of 2010, the bobolink—an adorable little bird that was once widespread in many parts of Canada— was found to be threatened, and the committee in charge of evaluating the status of Canadian wildlife flagged the issue to government.

But by the end of their mandate, years after the dwindling creature's plight was first brought to their attention, the former Conservative government had yet to react.

This inaction was part of a bigger trend for the Harper Tories: during the party's majority rule, the protection of dozens of at-risk organisms—various plants, marine life, insects and mammals—was put on hold.

According to information compiled by University of Ottawa researchers and obtained by VICE, between May 2011 and November 2015, less than seven per cent of potentially at risk species received government protection.

In contrast, between 2003 and May 2011 (so before Harper and during his minority years) an average of 88 per cent of species deemed at-risk were properly evaluated and added to the endangered species list. That's a 81 percentage point drop.

So what happened?

Eric Taylor is the current chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), the arms-length expert organization mandated with assessing which species are at risk of disappearing

COSEWIC has been around since 1977, and Taylor, a professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, has been involved since 2001. A decade later, he says the group's work suddenly became much more difficult. "The perception was that once Harper gained a majority, his somewhat tepid enthusiasm for species at risk cooled off even more so, because of course he had the parliamentary power to do that."

Here's how the process is supposed to work, according to the government's Species At Risk Act (SARA): first, COSEWIC prepares a list of species it judges to require some form of protection, which is then sent to the federal environment minister. From there, the minister has three months to agree or disagree with the assessment. If they think the species or the context require more analysis, the case is sent for further examination. Otherwise, they send the whole file for consultations after which a recommendation on whether or not to list is sent to the Governor in Council (GIC, a cabinet committee) which has nine months to make a final decision.

Legally, if the government doesn't respect those deadlines, the species are (supposed to be) automatically added to the endangered species list. Sadly, there's a loophole, and the Tories found it.

"There is a bit of a glitch in government's decisions. "There may be very very compelling socio-economic reasons as to why a species perhaps should not be listed," he said. "The problem with the reasons that the government uses to say whether a species should be listed or not is that those are very often not open to public scrutiny, they're not open to peer review like all our COSEWIC assessments."

These adorable prairie chickens are thought to no longer exists in Canada. Photo via Flickr user USFWmtnprairie

But why protect these species?

Findlay calls it our "fiduciary stewardship responsibility."

"We do have all sorts of examples of species that were lost from ecosystems and communities where the loss has had a big impact, but we also have examples of species that were lost and as far as we can tell there hasn't been much impact, or maybe we just don't know about it, it's difficult to tell."

"I think the most important issue is that we have this library of life on this planet and I think we're kind of obliged to keep as many of the books as we can and not burn them up by letting them go extinct," he says.

Taylor says he's hopeful the new government will bring about change. "I think vibes coming out of Ottawa and the new Minister of Environment and Climate Change are quite positive, and I think things are going to get better in terms of commitment to species at risk issues."

In his mandate letter to the Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, PM Justin Trudeau listed this as one of the priorities. "Enhance protection of Canada's endangered species by responding quickly to the advice of scientists and completing robust species-at-risk recovery plans in a timely way," he wrote.

Yet the new administration will need time to deal with the species backlog, Taylor warns.

"This is a legacy of the Harper government that unfortunately the Trudeau government is going to have to clean up, and we're going to have to be patient," he says. "I can't imagine how busy Catherine McKenna must be right now, quite justifiably."

Follow Brigitte Noël on Twitter.

Mohammed Abad. Screen shot via YouTube

Due to the magic of modern medical science, Mohammed Abad—a 43-year-old who lost the manhood he was born with when he was run over at age six—is now ready to finally lose his virginity. Abad's new dick, which features internal tubes he can pump up via a button on his testicle, was originally attached during surgery in 2012, but has only just become functional.

The lucky lady who will usher him into the world of love-making is 35-year-old Charlotte Rose, a high-end dominatrix, 2013 British Sex Worker of the Year, and an independent candidate in the Rochester and Strood by-election.

Rose said: "I am so honored that he chose me to take his virginity. We plan to have a dinner date so we can get to know each other and then two hours of private time. I'm not charging him."

As for Abad's thoughts on the matter? Our plucky protagonist had this to say: "I have waited long enough for this—it'll be a great start to the new-year."

Photo via Air Canada Twitter

A Markham, Ontario father called out Air Canada on Twitter last week when he found out his child was on a no-fly list when trying to board a flight from Toronto to Boston to watch a New Year's Eve hockey game. Now Air Canada is being tight-lipped about why.

Six-year-old Adam Ahmed and his family were trying to fly out of Toronto's Pearson International Airport when they were alerted by attendants at the boarding gate that the boy, who had been stopped on numerous occasions for the same reason, was on a list for people "deemed high profile" (DHP).

According to a 2014 human rights complaint filed against Air Canada over a similar scenario, the DHP draws on upon existing no fly lists and cross-references them before alerting an airline agent with a prompt to consider the passenger a higher risk.

"When a passenger's name is a close match to any name on the U.S. or Canadian No-Fly List or Selectee List, an automatic prompt will appear on the agent's screen stating that the passenger is 'Deemed High Profile' (DHP)," the airline told The National Post.

According to Ahmed's family, they have been aware of the DHP alert on their son since an Air Canada agent told them about it back when he first flew as a toddler. The family only brought it to the attention of the airline recently because it has become a concern as he grown older.

"We try to keep him protected from all this stuff, because we don't want him to feel singled out and stigmatized," Ahmed's mother told CBC News.

"Every agent has been really sympathetic to our situation," she said. "There are always eye rolls, they're always in disbelief. A lot of times they think it's my husband so they look at him, but he always says to them, 'No, it's the little guy down there."

After last week's incident, Ahmed's father tweeted at Air Canada with a picture of what appeared on the screen of an airline agent and asked why his son was considered a flight risk. In response, Air Canada has said they will look into it with the help of Minister of Public Safety Ralph Goodale.

Photo via Flickr user Sean McGrath

Three years ago, I was living out my dream. Working as the editor of a Manhattan-based magazine, living in Brooklyn, dating, going out, and feeling like a fucking star. But underneath my sparkling exterior, the anxiety I had experienced my whole life was beginning to take its toll on my health—both physical and emotional. No one knew, not even myself, that I was about to fall apart.

I began to stare at the tracks while I waited for the subway, contemplating what would happen if I jumped. Bridges had a similar effect. I started experiencing strange fits in the middle of the night. I would wake up at an ungodly hour, unable to breathe or control my movements, my body contorting into painful positions before I would eventually pass out with only a vague memory of the experience. Sometimes I'd wake up with vomit on the floor next to my bed or on my pillow, unable to remember how it got there.

Eventually, I was forced to move back home to Toronto. The medical costs of identifying my sickness while abroad were becoming insurmountable, and my emotional state was deteriorating rapidly. I had returned to my high school habit of cutting, was feeling suicidal, and the unidentified fits were becoming more frequent.

My path to diagnosis was a long and winding one. A revolving door of psychologists and counselors took turns offering me a vast array of diagnoses for my deep bouts of depression. Meanwhile, a team of neurologists were poking and prodding me on a bi-weekly basis to decipher the nature of my violent fits. CT scans, EEGs, sleep deprivation tests, blood tests, vision tests. It was endless.

The consensus? I "suffer" from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), coupled with Epilepsy. A personal war on two fronts that I am still fighting to come to terms with two years later. Along with BPD tends to come an extreme sense of apathy towards the self. I've eschewed therapy, been dicey with taking my medication, participated in "destructive behaviours" and have inserted myself into relationships with warning signs so bright they belong on the Las Vegas strip (sociopathic ex-boyfriends who cheated on me and stole from my roommates and I, for example, came as no surprise to close friends). It's been years of a vicious cycle of self-inflicted turmoil. When I received my diagnosis and began the dive into the rabbit hole of information about it online, I was horrified and yet somewhat relieved to find that so many of the symptoms listed seemed to apply to the habits I had formed over the years. I felt like I was reading my unwritten memoir. Promiscuity, impulse control, an ungodly fear of abandonment, trouble with relationships, both romantic and otherwise, and severe body dysmorphia.

According to the American Psychiatric Association's' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a personality disorder can "affect the way you understand yourself, the way you react to the world around you, the way you cope with emotions, and the way you navigate relationships." Borderline Personality Disorder specifically, is defined as a mental illness that affects the way you relate to others and the way you relate to yourself. Those feelings of detachment, worthlessness, insecurity that I described earlier are shining examples of just that. Unstable behaviour, unstable emotions, unstable relationships, and an unstable sense of identity. Let's just call it what it is: I'm unstable. Or... I was.

Though I've been back in Toronto for over three years, I am just now beginning to embrace the idea that one day, I might feel OK. It's hard to visualize for me, to really wrap my head around what that might mean. When I do picture it, I see myself waking up on a sunny day, seeing the light stream in through the window, and instead of groaning under my covers, dreading the moment my feet touch the cold wooden floor, I simply... wake up with a smile on my face, and a drive to see what the day has to offer.

The only hope I have of achieving that picture-perfect morning is, in the words of my parents, my friends, and most importantly, my doctors, is to truly "commit to my recovery." A term I have quickly come to resent for its implication that I am somehow un-committed to feeling better.

Being diagnosed with both BPD and epilepsy within weeks of each other was overwhelming, to say the least. I admit, I go through phases of complete apathy. Despite my neurologist's warnings to cut out alcohol and recreational drugs, there are moments when I just want to feel "normal" and will push myself well past my limits of intoxication. There are almost too many reasons to count as to why this is a bad idea for me. Number one being that according to my neurologist, Dr. Peter Carlen, an epilepsy specialist at Toronto Western Hospital, a hangover leads your brain to lower its natural threshold for neural activity, making way for an increased frequency and intensity of seizures. I could go six months without an episode, and after a week of heavy drinking, find myself right back at square one, heaving in my bed and waking up with what I equate to a "seizure hangover," which leaves me exhausted, foggy, and confused for up to a week. Setbacks like this don't have a therapeutic effect for me – they don't motivate me to better myself and stick to routine, and ensure that I "respect my epilepsy" (a favourite phrase of Dr. Carlen's). Instead, they leave me feeling frustrated and helpless. That picturesque image of normality seems even farther away.

At the end of the day, my road to "recovery" is far from over. I'm told that BPD is something that will get better, but never really goes away. Self-maintenance, self-regulation, and self-awareness are key for people like me to be able to live through the disorder. Rates of suicide are incredibly high amongst those suffering from BPD. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 10 percent of BPD patients will successfully commit suicide–a number that doesn't even factor in those with failed attempts. This is perhaps the scariest statistic that I'm aware of. Though I have often experienced suicidal tendencies, It's mainly consisted of my contemplating the many ways that I might be able to end things. I never considered myself someone who would actually follow through with any plans. Doctors often ask me if I am a danger to myself, and I never hesitate to say that I'm safe. And I truly believe that. But what scares me about that 10 percent is that I can't help but believe that some of those victims felt the same. And if that is the case, then perhaps one day I won't be able to stop myself. That I'll follow through with it, an action with irreparable consequences.

The journey to diagnosis is a nebulous and difficult one, which reiterates itself in a lack of general awareness of the condition. Simply put, some people hear BPD and call bullshit. What I've learned over the past few years is that, in fact, it's not bullshit at all. And as much as I cringe every time my mum utters that "commit to yourself" mantra, or Dr. Carlen reminds me to "respect my epilepsy," the fact is, this is really scary. It's overwhelming, like one of those looping dreams where you're drowning over and over again. And the only way to get past that suffocating feeling is to push forward. A task much easier said than done.

There's a sense of normalcy that to some extent we all aspire to attain. In the same way that a child looks to their parents to garner some sense of acceptable behaviour and "adultness," I look for a semblance of what "normal" might look or feel like to those who appear to have their heads firmly planted on their shoulders, and seemingly breeze through their days unaffected by neuroses, anxiety, insecurity. That base level of contentment is foreign to me. That's not to say I haven't experienced true happiness, elation, moments of serenity. But my natural state is more like a roller-coaster, inching me toward a peak, then releasing me into a sudden drop or nauseating loop.

At this point in my life, I'm ready to say goodbye to the crippling anxiety, constant state of exhaustion, and general misanthropy. It's time for me to realize that finding a solution to my problems can't consume my every waking minute. Better to take a breath and smile once in awhile just because it's sunny outside.

Last month, Netflix released their new true crime miniseries Making a Murderer, just in time for the world to rage against America's broken criminal justice over the holidays. Now righteously enraged viewers have launched campaigns on Change.org and WhiteHouse.gov to beg President Obama to pardon the subject of Making, Steven Avery. (Minor spoilers from Making a Murderer ahead, if you care about that sort of thing.)

The ten-part documentary picks apart the allegations that Avery and his 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey were responsible for the murder of Teresa Halbach, a crime for which they were found guilty in 2007. Avery is currently serving a life sentence; his supporters believe that the evidence against him was manufactured by law enforcement officers out to put him in prison after an earlier conviction against him for rape was overturned.

One of the prosecutors who put Avery away, Ken Kratz, has spoken out against the Netflix filmmakers, claiming that they cherry-picked evidence from the case to make Avery appear innocent. The documentarians have shrugged off his accusations, and the 200,000 angry true crime fans who signed the two petitions aren't swayed by Kratz's argument either.

Unfortunately for the online petitioners, Obama can't pardon Avery, since his was not a federal conviction.

The 'Super Mario 64' title screen

I remember going to my local shopping center in 1997. There was a stall hosted by a popular soft drink brand that featured a circle of televisions, all of which were displaying Mario's first proper 3D outing on the Nintendo 64, the gaming giant's new powerhouse machine. They offered passers-by a shot at the new adventure from the plump plumber. Players could hit a button on the pop-up wall whenever they found a Power Star within the game's labyrinthine castle hub, for which they would be rewarded with a cup of said beverage. Looking back, it might have secretly been a horrific Pavlovian conditioning experiment examining the influence of electronic stimulation and positive reinforcement on the mindsets of modern youth, but most likely it was a celebration of Super Mario 64, one of the most revolutionary games of all time.

Of course, Mario wasn't an overnight success story. His releases on the Nintendo Entertainment System and its Super follow-up version had already defined a genre and a generation, and his launch title for the new console was the talk of my town when it hit the shelves. Japan, as usual, had seen it launch a year before we got it in the West, meaning the game celebrates its 20th anniversary in June 2016. Feeling old yet?

North American box art for 'Super Mario 64' (which is much like the art seen around the world)

Super Mario 64 wasn't simply a case of giving a new visual sheen to the series and rehashing ideas, an exhausting rut into which the likes of the New Super Mario Bros titles have fallen. It also offered greater dominance of the gaming medium and, in turn, a more genuine sense of progression and permanence. You were able to more freely manipulate and change Mario's world to suit your own needs and desires, as opposed to the linear one-shot of the 2D platformers, whether it was ground-pounding columns in the castle's basement in order to permanently drain the moat or pissing off a penguin parent by invariably dropping its offspring from a cliff on each visit to Cool, Cool Mountain. This was a feeling of control and freedom that arguably wouldn't truly be felt again until 2015's build-your-own-levels Super Mario Maker.

A particularly spellbinding aspect was the introduction of the Wing Cap; not only could Mario now run around in all directions, but he could wing to the sky in a cathartic Y axis, taking in the new worlds from a perspective a million miles away from Super Mario World's cape. It's unsurprising that these evocative, mysterious lands led to popular gaming myths ("L" wasn't real until the DS remake, despite what a fountain engraving might possibly have said) and some heart-stopping, hyper-parkour speedruns, the current record for which is under seven minutes including mandatory cutscenes. It's a game that has been lovingly torn apart—there's currently a $1,000 bounty up for grabs for anyone who can recreate a bizarre glitch in Tick Tock Clock.

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Of course, now that Mario could move in 360 around the Mushroom Kingdom, so too could his enemies, from lowly Goombas to haunted, hungry pianos. Gone were the days of trying to kick Iggy Koopa off a flat, rocking boat—boss battles were now more spatially immersive. Instead of a three-bops-on-the-head-job-done scenario, you now had to grab Bowser's reptilian tail, swing him in a circle by spinning the control stick, and try to pinpoint the trajectory of your throw to land the fire-breathing, princess-snatching bastard on a conveniently placed bomb. It was at times a frustrating task, but one that forced you to embrace the three-dimensional world as much as possible. While he looked infinitely more menacing, thankfully he only required one hit in two of the three run-ins, and you could tell he was still a bit dim when it came to dungeon design, forgoing his suicidal axe placement of old for an encompassing wall of explosives.

Mario gets to grips with Bowser in 'Super Mario 64'

The floating obstacle courses leading to these encounters with the King of Koopas helped create the irreverent platforming locales from which the game's immediate descendants Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy would draw their best moments. Sunshine's bonus stages saw your gimmicky FLUDD device taken away, leaving Mario to navigate a more traditional landscape. It was a welcome break from the rest of the game, which mainly involved cleaning up piles of sludge. It turned out having Mario actually do his job as a plumber wasn't entirely fun, and the tropical-themed romp subsequently proved divisive in the annals of Nintendo history.

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The Wii's Galaxy, on the other hand, was a far more worthy sequel; if Mario 64 made premonitions about the future of platforming, like a nerdy Nostradamus, then Galaxy was its vision fully realized and actualized, elevating 64's planes of movement and charm into the heavens. Unsurprisingly, memory treats it with greater reverence, and it often wrestles with the subject of this article for the accolade of Nintendo's best game ever. Galaxy might top it in certain areas, but it's the originality, cultural significance and associated lore of Super Mario 64 that earns it the crown.

However, that's a topic that will be debated for years to come, and while its ambitious polygons might not have aged as well as its home console competitors like Banjo-Kazooie and The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, its importance and emotiveness make it a game I consider myself fortunate to have played and thankful to have had in my life. As we gear up for hopefully another 20 years of 3D Nintendo gaming with more NX details to come this year, we can only hope the palpable passion and eternal quality of Super Mario 64 is still a source of inspiration and aspiration for developers. Here we go.

Follow Andy on Twitter.

All photos by Nathaniel Janowitz

The Arellano Félix organization was a family affair, and was at one time among the most powerful cartels in Mexico. During their heydey, the family of seven brothers and four sisters controlled much of the trafficking of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, and meth into the United States. They also owned a large house on the corner of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla street and Teófilo Noris in Culiacan, Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico. And now you—yes, you—can rent a commercial space in that newly refurbished mansion.

"This house was abandoned for many years," said the rental agent, who asked to remain anonymous. After the government seized the property from the Arellano Félix family, it was bought, renovated, and put back on the market. The owners had originally attempted to convert the 11,000 square foot space into a school, but the Secretary of Public Education rejected the proposal because of the history, according to the rental agent.

"After the attempt to create the school, the property was passed to another realtor, named Cesar Tamayo, and after the owner gave the house to us."

Although the cartel is now based in Tijuana, all the founders were Sinaloans who grew up alongside El Chapo and worked together previously as members of the Guadalajara cartel. After the organization's leader, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, was arrested in the late 80s, the Guadalajara cartel splintered. El Chapo and some of his buddies went on to form the Sinaloa cartel, and the Arellano Felixes created their own. This falling out lead to bloody battles throughout the streets of Culiacan, and possibly even the death of a Cardinal in 1993.

When El Chapo escaped from prison the first time in 2001, the beef intensified and the Arellano Felix organization claimed the government was exerting more pressure on them than other cartels, at the behest of El Chapo. During the 2000s, three of the most prominent brothers in the organization—Benjamin, Francisco Javier, and Eduardo—would be imprisoned; another, Ramon, died in a shootout with police.

If that sounds like too bloody a history for a nice boutique space, don't worry—the family had already moved out of the house by the time things started to get ugly, so there are no lasting bullet holes in the property.

Instead, the building includes a wide variety of spacious and well-lit rooms at varying prices. For only 100 pesos per square meter (or about $0.60 per square foot) you can rent one of two commercial spaces, about 2,700 square feet each, located on the prime first floor area, where perhaps the Arellano Felix family entertained their friends and business partners in the past. For the discounted fee of 85 pesos per square meter (or about $0.50 per square foot), there's another available space on the second floor, next to a spiral staircase and overlooking balcony where security guards with automatic weapons may have once stood watch stoically.

If you were hoping to turn this dreamy space into your own Tony Montana crash pad, you're out of luck—commercial businesses only. It's not clear if drug-running qualifies as an eligible business.

All this is yours for the taking in the heart of downtown Culiacan, a city famed for it's billionaire drug traffickers and money laundering. And although the deal seems pretty sweet, none of the spaces have been rented yet, a little more than one month after being put back on the market. Do you want to be the first?

Follow Nathaniel Janowitz and José Luis Martínez on Twitter.

Thousands of new video games are released every year. 2016 will be no different. You can't hope to play them all. Nobody can. I struggle to get all the way through, like, a dozen games a year, and this is my job. I start tons of them though, and to help you decide which games to begin and which to toss before you've even considered installing them, here's a guide to some of the new titles expected across the coming 12 months. If a game you're looking forward to isn't here, go read about it somewhere else, I guess.

The Games That Will Probably Be Quite Good, Perhaps Even Excellent

Let's begin with a trio of the big guns for 2016. Horizon Zero Dawn (release date TBD) is the does-it-or-does-it-not-have-a-colon PlayStation 4 exclusive by Killzone studio Guerrilla Games that attracted more hype at 2015's E3 than an unattended chocolate cake does toddler fingers at a family Christmas, and with good reason—it looks absolutely tremendous. Pitched as an action role-player, it features enormous robot dinosaurs roaming a post-apocalyptic world that's been reclaimed by nature alongside these AI-driven metallic beasts. You are the hunter Aloy, who must destroy the monsters that constantly threaten what humans remain in this future world, by any and all means available, in order to retrieve survival-essential materials from their remains.

Two further action RPGs stand out as being likely to impress when they're released. FromSoftware's new-gen-only Dark Souls III (released in March or April, depending on where you are in the world) is a game I've had my hands on twice already, and it feels like a fairly effortless bridging of the methodical combat that characterized the original Dark Souls and the faster, more aggressive gameplay of the same studio's 2015 hit, Bloodborne. I'm utterly useless at it, but even in multiple deaths I could tell this is shaping up to be a special game. And then there's the Wii U Zelda game that may or may not also be heading to Nintendo's next console, provisionally called the NX. The previous Nintendo Direct, of mid-November, promised a 2016 release date, but I'm not going to hold my breath just yet.

A rather smaller-looking, but most likely testing RPG, is Heart Machine's multi-format Hyper Light Drifter, which matches gorgeous pixel art and eerie electronic sounds to top-down hack-and-slashing action. It looks like something that could have existed on the SNES, albeit only in your early 1990s wildest dreams. Its most recent trailer, which you can watch above, claims a "spring 2016" release date—but that dates from August 2015, and this is a game that's been plagued by setbacks. It'll be ready when it's ready, basically. Eitr, by the two-man team of Eneme Entertainment, is also looking incredibly promising. The isometric adventure draws on Norse mythology for its storyline influences, and looks to the Souls series for its level of difficulty. It'll be playable on PC and PS4 as soon as publisher Devolver declares it done.

If all this darkness and dread is giving you the willies, Giant Squid's Abzû might be the perfect tonic for your terror. With art direction from Journey's Matt Nava, and music by that same game's composer, Austin Wintory, this new studio's debut game, ostensibly a diving adventure, promises underwater immersion and utmost relaxation. If the deep blue does nothing for you, but the blackness of space certainly does, an alternative meditative distraction is Three One Zero's ADR1FT, a violence-eschewing first-person experience where the greatest threat is your dwindling supply of oxygen. Relax, sure—but remember to breathe.

If you need firmer-defined objectives and more linear play in your colorful escapes, original members of the team behind the Banjo-Kazooie games have reformed as Playtonic for Yooka-Laylee. (We spoke to them in 2015.) This Team17-published 3D platformer might well stir memories of classic N64 escapades when it's released, hopefully in October. Strategy fans will get their kicks when XCOM 2 rolls out for PC and Mac on February 5—my advice is not to get too attached to any of your squad members, as once they're dead, they're dead. Firaxis' sequel proper to 2012's series reboot, Enemy Unknown, promises faster play than its predecessor, as well as more objectives per mission.

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The rhythm action genre, revived so unexpectedly wonderfully in 2015 by the overhauled Guitar Hero Live and, albeit to a lesser extent, the mechanically sound but compromised-on-delivery Rock Band 4, gets a couple of potential crackers in 2016. First up is the new, crowd-funded Amplitude, a remake of Harmonix's loved-by-some, ignored-by-millions PS2 title of 2003. You can play that as soon as January 5, on PlayStation consoles. Rather more exciting is Thumper by Drool, a studio set up by former Harmonix programmer Marc Flury and Lightning Bolt drummer and game artist Brian Gibson. I first wrote about it in April 2015, and while there's no release date just yet, this "rhythm violence" experience gets me pumped just by watching footage.

Scares-wise, three indie games have my absolute attention. Night School's Oxenfree and Campo Santo's Firewatch I've already written about in detail in 2015—the first is all teenage hormones and ghostly presences on a former military base, while the latter, not a horror game by any conventional means, turns the Wyoming wilderness into a stylized but super-tense environment of shadows and suspense. At least, I hope there's some of that to proceedings. And then there's Routine, a (what feels like) several-years-in-the-making survival horror set on an abandoned Moon base—one now home to what appears to be a variety of mechanical nasties. Made by a small team at LunarSoftware, it's currently in its crunching stages, adding the smaller details that'll make the finished game so enveloping, hopefully. I swear I shit myself slightly every time I watch the now-ages-old alpha trailer.

The Games That'll Be OK, At Least, But I Don't Know, Some Might Stink

A whole bunch of triple-A titles slip comfortably into this category of anticipation, purely because of precedent screaming that not everything is likely to be rosy. The fourth main Uncharted game, A Thief's End, was struck by a few delays, moving its release date from 2015 to April 2016. If it adds little to the existing formula for the series, it'll still be an enjoyable Hollywood-aping romp—but likely terrifically hollow with it. There was a real sense of finality, of loose ends being tied, to Nathan Drake's story come the climactic cutscene of Uncharted 3, so whatever this follow-up has to add to his tale, beyond the return of a presumed-dead brother, it really needs to be substantial or else the familiar gunplay will pale well prior to the game's final stages. Two words of warning: Crystal Skull. (And some more that it'll need to trump: Rise of the Tomb Raider.) The prehistoric Far Cry Primal, due in February, needs to mix up its more modern precursors' tried-and-tested mechanics, too, for it to feel like a significant step forward for Ubisoft's shooter series. Just replacing semi-automatic firearms with bows won't be enough.

Hitman (March) and Mirror's Edge Catalyst (May) are two more high-hopes affairs, from super-publishers Square Enix and EA respectively, that have slipped back in the schedule to allow for further development time. Both seem promising based on preview footage, but the real test of their merits will come when players get their hands on these franchises-furthering releases. Hitman will succeed or slump based on just how flexible its contract killings are—a recent Edge magazine cover feature talks of myriad routes to each of Agent 47's objectives, many of which require a great deal of planning. Sounds like a YouTuber's dream. Catalyst, meanwhile, demands that its first-person free-running movement is super responsive—which makes October's update from EA DICE that this exact element of play needs plenty of tweaking ever so slightly worrying.

Hello Games' procedurally generated space epic No Man's Sky could be the great beacon that attracts millions more gamers to the indie sector, or a title disastrously crippled by too many months of teasing. I'm hopeful that it'll be a uniquely engaging sci-fi affair quite unlike any Elite-shaped peers, on account of the art style and 65daysofstatic's soundtrack; but just how long people stick with it will depend on the variety that emerges from the sexy math driving its world- and creature-building. The long-awaited PlayStation exclusive The Last Guardian, from Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda, could go either way—will its puzzle-solving aspects feel dated, due to the time it spent in development? Will it fail to connect with the player on the same emotional level as SotC and the hugely celebrated game that came before it, Ico? As if so, many a critic will deem it a failure.

Simply more of the same won't work for Dishonored 2, and while Arkane's follow-up to its Thief-ish hit of 2012 offers the option of choosing between a male or female protagonist, it's how that selection works within what'll presumably be a similarly structured campaign for both characters that'll really make its world either feel alive or flat. The Xbox One exclusive Crackdown 3 is largely selling itself on the promise of spectacular environmental destruction—like Just Cause 3, then, but without sticking explosives exclusively to objects marked with red paint, as Reagent Games' revival of a series on the furthest-back burner since 2010 is promising that anything in the game can be blown to smithereens. Which sounds like fun for 15 minutes, but without a compelling story, sessions are sure to be curtailed, for me at least. (Again, just like Just Cause 3.)

With very little prior experience of its parent series, I can't confidently comment on whether the Altus-made RPG-cum-dungeon-crawler Persona 5 is going to be a guaranteed winner or not—but I know plenty of people who loved Persona 4 with every ounce of their blackened hearts, so what the hell, let's say it'll feature in 70 percent of the top ten lists come the end of 2016. (I probably should restart Persona 3 to work out what all the fuss is about.) Assuming it comes out in 2016, Final Fantasy XV is likely to be more divisive amongst followers of Square Enix's long-running role-playing series, abandoning as it does turn-based combat for real-time scuffles and casting the player as a dude who looks like a depressed boyband reject. That said, I quite liked the game's "Episode Duscae" demo, with its dazzling battles and massive summon, so I'm remaining optimistic about this one. They should probably fix Ci(n)d(y)'s clothes, though, as that getup's going to get her arrested.

Unravel, a physics platformer backed by EA money, looks incredibly cute but may prove to be complete bobbins—we only have to wait until February 9 to find out if it'll make a star of its lead character Yarny, when it's released for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. PlatinumGames' Xbox One-only Scalebound looks like a one-bro-douche-and-his-dragon buddy adventure that could be one long dubstep-soundtracked Beats By Dre commercial dressed up as a video game. It's been shelved a few times in the past, ahead of both Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101, but it'll get its time to shine (or not) in late 2016. I dunno about this one. It's doing nothing for me in its trailers.

Tacoma is The Fullbright Company's follow-up to Gone Home, due out for Xbox One and PC sometime this year. It shifts its setting from 1990s Oregon to a space station some 200,000 miles from Earth, but it mustn't be a mere reskinning of the same gameplay ingredients—poke around here, stroll about there. Previews at Game Informer and Polygon have been positive, but there's plenty riding on Tacoma to prove that Gone Home wasn't a one-hit wonder for its makers—and the same can be said of imminent Myst-inspired puzzler The Witness, Jonathan Blow's first game after the runaway success of Braid. It's out for PC and PS4 on January 26.

And, um, throw Remedy's Quantum Break and Ubisoft's The Division in here for the time being, too. The former's video game meets TV show approach sounds a lot like 2013's Defiance, and that was so much hot garbage—but perhaps the end product here will be rather different. We'll find out in April. As for Ubi's new Tom Clancy-branded shooter, its mixing of MMO features with third-person cover play and RPG elements could be a too-many-cooks recipe for mediocrity, though its premise is appealing—a bank note-spread pandemic beginning on Black Friday as good as obliterates the United States in five days, leaving the titular department of tactical agents to bring order back to the shattered country. Accompanying asset cancellations—an app was planned and scrapped—and several release delays have put The Division on the spot, though, as both one of 2016's most anticipated titles, and one that'll receive a considerable amount of critical scrutiny. It's out on March 8.

These Games, Yeah, I'm Not Too Sure About These Games

I played Star Fox Zero, Homefront: The Revolution, and Battleborn in 2015 and, to cut an already short story shorter, they weren't very good in the states I saw them. Nintendo's first Fox McCloud game proper for the Wii U was hamstrung by terrible controls, which is unexpected from developers Platinum—hopefully it'll have been retuned come its April release. Dambuster Studios' sequel to 2011's original Homefront sees a resistance force striking back against the USA-occupying Koreans, but it played—at Gamescom 2015—like the most tired kind of first-person shooter anyone could have the misfortune to sit through in this day and age. It was like the worst Far Cry game imaginable, in the blandest urban environment. And Battleborn, Gearbox's next great hope after the Borderlands games, is one of several multiplayer "hero shooters" coming out in 2016, and for me lacked identity enough, despite its colorful collection of playable characters, to really leave an I'd-play-that-again impression. It was alright, but alright isn't going to cut it at the register.

The zombie masses will get their share of run outs in 2016, with Dead Island 2—the sequel that I'm pretty sure nobody asked for—and Resident Evil spin-off Umbrella Corps both forthcoming. The latter, more straightforward shooter than horror experience, sounds depressingly like 2012's Operation Raccoon City, a game so bad that your local GameStop store manager will personally punch you in the face for trading it in. (It's not all bad, though, because he'll also give you one whole American dollar to numb the pain.)

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There hasn't been a decent Sonic the Hedgehog game for absolute eons, so don't expect Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice to be all that much to write home about when it's released for the 3DS sometime this year. The new, crowd-funded Friday the 13th video game doesn't have a lot to do in order to improve upon the awful NES game of the same name, released back in 1989, but the pitch—a one versus seven multiplayer—is surely reliant on there always being enough willing victims in any single session. And what happens when everyone wants to play as Jason? Blood, guts, and buckets of gore is promised, but I just don't see this being a heap of fun. (Though I am very prepared to be proven wrong.)

Finally, just a word or some on Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, the wobbly breasts beach volleyball game by Team Ninja that's not being released in the West. If you're legitimately so upset that a game's own publisher, in this case Koei Tecmo, put the brakes on distributing a teenagers-titillating T&A "sports simulation" overseas, that you're somewhere on the internet ranting about how the left-leaning Western media has ruined your fun, get a grip. No, no, not on that. Not right now. I mean, whatever you do in the privacy of your own home is up to you; but if you're going to jerk off to some bikini girls, do you really need to do it while pressing circle and square buttons with your spare hand? Get it on import in February if you must. Nobody's stopping you, and doing so will definitely teach those gosh-darn "SJW"s you love to hate so very much a lesson. And before you get onto YouTube (again) to have a pop at me, I'm just as much into boobs as the next person who's pretty much into boobs. Boobs are great. Hooray for boobs. But DOAX3, even considering its new "butt battles" and squidgy Soft Engine physics, looks boring as fuck, so I'll pass.

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