I'm sure, like many of us, there was a moment as a teenager when you wished your parents weren't really your parents. They couldn't be your real parents—they were too boring, too lame, too quick to punish you for doing stuff your actual, cool parents would have encouraged you to do.

In Adrian McDowall's short film Gutpunch, that wish becomes reality for 15-year-old Adam thanks to some news from a delightfully unaware and oversharing grandmother. After the dust settles, the awkward teenager and the man he thought was his father go on a mission to discover who his biological dad is.

McDowall's film takes a simple plot and elevates it to a new high with a wonderful, tongue-in-cheek style, committed oddball actors, and impeccable retro 90s production and costume design. Beyond the nostalgia, Gutpunch shows why dream dads aren't always all they're cracked up to be and highlights why the people who put up with your daily bullshit are the parents who count.

Watch the film and check out my interview with Gutpunch's writer Andy Yerlett and director Adrian McDowall as they discuss their (lack of) daddy issues, SodaStreams, and dating.

VICE: How did you come to this project? Is it a personal thing? Are you adopted? Do you have lingering wishes that your dad isn't actually your dad? Spill it.
Andy Yerlett: Sorry, no daddy issues here. Gutpunch originated from a couple of different places. When I was a teenager, a friend of mine was hit with life-changing news all very casually across the dinner table. Before they could process it, everything was swept under the carpet, and life continued as normal. I guess that's the origin of the film.

I started writing it after seeing a bunch of 1980s dating videos and wondered, What if you found out one of these guys was your dad? I joined the dots between what happened to my friend and these videos, and it grew from there.

Adrian McDowall: I'd worked on a bunch of coming-of-age stories before this, so I wasn't in any rush to revisit this territory, but the script was hilarious, and most importantly, Andy's take on the genre was totally original. But you only know if you can collaborate on a project when you get in a room together. Thankfully there was an instant bond over old-school gaming, John Hughes movies, and a shared desire to make shamelessly funny commercial films. It was a no-brainer.

Adam's story really struck a chord with me. Not because it reflected anything from my own childhood background per se, although for a number of years my brother did rather cruelly attempt to convince me I was adopted, professing that the lack of baby photos of me with either of my parents was factual evidence. Naturally, this made me look at my parents in a different light, and despite my mom producing an above-board copy of my birth certificate, I always remained suspicious that I was an imposter.

I don't know if it's because I was born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s, but the retro setting of the film, with old virtual-reality sets, pong, eight-bit games, and neon shirts made me feel super nostalgic. How intentional was the setting, or did you just want an excuse to gather all of your old favorite things?
Yerlett: It's a bit of both really. We had the plot device of a VHS tape, and a fifteen-year-old boy looking for his father on it, which naturally cornered us into setting it somewhere around the 90s. But the 90s are also my main point of reference when writing about being a teenager. I grew up in a house that looks very similar to the one in the film. So, although it is very much a 90s setting, it's the suburbs, and the suburbs don't really change. Half the stuff in Adam's room was collected from my parents' attic, so it was like seeing a weird mock-up of my childhood bedroom.

McDowall: Andy, Michelle Eastwood, and I are of a similar age, so our pop-cultural references mirrored perfectly and made it a lot of fun bouncing ideas back and forth of what clothes and products we could include. I was obsessed by SodaStream. I thought it was the coolest invention ever! Early on, I begged my parents to buy one, but sadly, we didn't own a machine until the fad was well and truly dead.

People can't stop writing think pieces about how we're in a dating apocalypse or romance is doomed, but looking back at VHS dating services, I'm reminded how brutally vulnerable, yet uninteresting, those made people. That seems worse than now. In making your own VHS tape, did you cull together old dating tapes for inspiration, or did you come up with the suitors lines from your own life experience?
We were keen to create an authenticity to the dating sequence that felt spontaneous, so we shot it on an old VHS camcorder and encouraged the actors to spontaneously react in character while I asked them a bunch of random questions. This was probably the highlight of the shoot for me. There is something special about working with great comedy actors like Rufus Jones, Justin Edwards, and Chris Wright, who are exceptional at improvisation. They can put on a wig and some random ridiculous clothes and before you know it, they have embodied the character and are able to create genuine moments of magic out of nothing.

Where did the character of Roddy Hart come from?
Yerlett: I wanted Roddy to be the kind of guy that you might look up to as a kid, and then totally regret that you ever did. I remember having a Brian May poster on my wall as a kid. I regret that. Then I went to a Brian May gig and bought the T-shirt. I thought he was really cool, until I got to school the next day, and then I realized and tried to distance myself from the whole thing. That's kind of what happens to Adam. He gets suckered in. So I wanted Roddy to appeal as superficially as possible—and being a virtual-reality tool ticks the box. He had to be everything that Mike wasn't.

Roddy is a massive, tragic fraud, but weirdly lovable. Rufus brought a lot to playing Roddy. He really got what kind of dick Roddy was and then really went for it.

McDowall: Roddy didn't really become a full-fledged character until Rufus donned the wig and started playing with his transatlantic accent. It was only then that I realized the full comedy potential of the character. The fact that Roddy takes himself so seriously while being so obviously ridiculous makes me chuckle like a naughty boy at the back of class. I think he deserves his own film. I could watch him all day.

Gutpunch plays with a lot of different styles, from quirky coming-of-age to a hapless sleuth story. But it simultaneously tries to slyly address more serious subjects like family, happiness, and love. Can you talk about a few of the film's main influences and how you shaped the film?
Yerlett: The different styles trace back to the bigger story that I was trying to tell originally, which was Adam on a Broken Flowers–ish trip to track down his biological father. I intended him to use the videotape as his road map and track down each of those dating weirdoes in turn.

After a refocus on Roddy, I think this was the best way to tell the story as a standalone short, but the DNA of that original approach is probably responsible for some of the different styles and changes in pace.

We made a decision to slowly drop the sense of style and the quirky tricks as we get closer to the heart of the story, and there are almost no tricks in that final confrontation with Adam caught between Mike and Roddy. It's all about the boy choosing which man he wants to grow up to be like.

I love telling stories that screw with the family dynamic. Gutpunch opens with a devastating bombshell for the family, but they pick themselves up and muddle their way through to a hopeful ending. That's kind of what families do.

Squid and the Whale is definitely an influence. I love the balance of comedy and drama in it.

Jeffrey Bowers is a tall mustached guy from Ohio who's seen too many weird movies. He currently lives in Brooklyn, working as a film curator. He's the senior curator for Vimeo's On Demand platform. He has also programmed at Tribeca Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and the Hamptons International Film Festival.

Photo via Flickr user Kat Northern Lights Man

It's not unusual to have never seen your dad cry. They're fortresses of steel, dads; the only thing that will get them going is weird, unimportant stuff, like a sick terrier pulling through or their team winning a championship. When it comes to showing actual emotion, though, the majority of them clam up. It's not their fault—for years society has demanded that men be masculine and stoic and never express their feelings—but it's also definitely not a good thing. Men in Britain are half as likely to go to their doctor for depression and one and a half times more likely to die from suicide. However, things have slowly begun to change.

A new survey has shown that the modern man is now three times more likely to cry in public than his father did. The average male Brit has sobbed in front of other people 14 times in his adult life, says the report, and about 30 times a year behind closed doors. That's quite a lot. Psychologist Donna Dawson, who led the study of 2,000 Brits, concluded it's because modern men face much less social pressure than their fathers did to maintain their composure in public.

It would seem that the stiff upper lip is starting to wobble, so we had a walk around London and chatted to some men about it.

Sam, 34
I cried last night. I was stressed out, and family dramas got on top of me. When I've had a few drinks, I cry a lot. It's always stress and family stuff that hits home. My dad never cried; I'm very different in that way. I saw him cry at my sister's wedding. My other half has only cried twice in the seven years we've been together. He cried once when I dumped him when I was angry, and he cried again when his dad passed away. At that time, none of the male members of his family cried—none of his brothers. I don't think it's a taboo any more, at all. Crying is a release.

FJ, 29
The last time I cried was when my friend passed away. That was 2009. Apart from that I've had, like, one tear now and again, but never actually full-on bawling. I could only cry about things going on in the world—real life. I have empathy for crises, people dying, stuff like that. If you look at stats, a lot men do suffer from depression and they don't speak about it, as it's not the manly thing to do. But I think it's needed—it's needed to flush out those pains, instead of bottling up.

Nick, 30
I haven't felt the need to cry since my last breakup a couple of years ago, so I've not had to suppress it. Nothing has happened to me where I've felt the need to cry. Except when cutting onions—that happens quite a lot. I'm just generally a very rational person, and if I get upset, I get upset in a mentally-stressed kind of way. I think it through internally. It's not something where I feel that I have an emotion that I need to let out by crying. I definitely can't remember a time when my dad cried. He certainly wouldn't in front of me. In the same way, I can't remember a time when one of my male friends has cried in front of me.

Phil, 27
I cried last week. I don't cry that much, but more than the average man. It was probably over something silly, but often it'd be stress or family issues. I'd never cry over movies or TV. That's not a real life issue. I feel a mix of anger and embarrassment before I'm about to . I don't have an issue with crying in public, which is probably a modern attitude toward it. There's no way my father's generation would do that. My dad was ill with cancer and would cry quite a bit during that period. It was probably medicine and the fact he had the cancer. Basically, I'm good with myself crying, but I'm not so good with other men crying. I do find that awkward—more than if it were a female friend. But I'll give them a helping hand all the same.

Joel, 28
I literally don't cry. I went to a funeral like two years ago, and I tried to cry. I tried so hard, but I didn't. It doesn't hit home for me as fast as everyone else. I get emotional, sure. I think about things, but I don't cry. I think I just reflect on things. I get somber and think about things in a different way, or try to show some type of empathy for what's going on without tearing up. I think my girlfriend gets mad at me because she feels like I don't show emotions enough. But I've read something that says crying isn't the only way to show emotions. Before that, I felt like there was something wrong with me. I think guys are starting to feel like they can cry a bit more—the rise of the metrosexual man.

Taco, 29
It's been a few months since I last cried. It may have been a film or song; I get pretty into them, and they trigger something on occasion. I probably don't cry enough, to be honest. I don't really have an emotional release to go to instead of that. I think when men cry they're really letting it out; they're not pretending to be something they're not, so I appreciate it. It's definitely still a taboo, but I guess progress has been made.

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It's been almost 28 years since Tim Burton's Beetlejuice hit cinemas and became an instant cult classic, a staple in the emo starter's handbook, reblogged on every pastelgoth's Tumblr page, and on the DVD shelf of every cinephile. It's easily in Burton's top three movies and many argue it's his best, the one that allowed him to reach those who felt an affinity with his bizarre brand of camp horror-humor and cement his status as a true auteur. After years of speculation, it's been confirmed that a sequel is in the works. What better way to commemorate a classic, so of its time and rich with heritage, than to continue its story years later, rather than leave it, a perfect piece of work of its time and place?

The sequels and reboots in Hollywood right now feel endless. Indy is donning the infamous felt fedora once more as the archaeologist-adventurer-teacher-hearthrob. Despite Harrison Ford being 73, it's never too late for a male star to be reprising his action-packed leading role, and so in 2018, we can expect Indiana Jones 5. The rehashing of old stories goes on and on, the stronger the appeal to our late 80s-90s nostalgia the better: more Batman movies, Ghostbusters, Jumanji, Full House, Star Wars, Star Trek, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and of course, Twin Peaks. In fact, if anyone's having a good old lucrative time right now, it's Ford. In addition to his Star Wars and Indiana Jones stints, he is also working on another Blade Runner movie.

Whenever a sequel is first mentioned by anyone involved in the original, little pieces of news are drip-fed out, such as Winona Ryder saying she'd like to do it, or Burton saying that he would do it. The will-they-or-won't-they game begins. For the next two to five years, pop culture fans and press engage in this inflammatory conversations, dancing around these snippets of quotes, until one or the other exhausts. The film finally reveals itself to a last hurrah of hype, to get locked away in a very separate cupboard; it's so separate from the original it barely even registers as a blip in cinematic history, not mentioned in the same breath. See: Mean Girls 2, Bring It On 2, Zoolander 2, Evan Almighty, Blues Brothers 2000, The Hangover Part II, Grease 2.

There are three things we know about the movies. One: Hollywood will franchise anything if it made money. Two: Hollywood does not like new things. New is scary—new writers, female directors, black directors, scripts, ad infinitum. Three (and this is possibly the most important): Remakes and sequels are never very good. Think very hard of a sequel you enjoyed. Ruminate for a while on that. Was it as good—really as good—as its predecessor? It wasn't, was it. It really wasn't.

I will not celebrate any of these sequels. I will not hope for this year's remakes being trotted out with their fancy CGI and haggard stars. We must say no more. No more Harrison Ford. No more hearts on eyelids. No more white pirates with dreads. No more.

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Student rent strikers held a protest party last night in London, as more students decided that the best way to deal with over the top rent was to simply not pay it.

The party started in the main square of University College London (UCL), where hundreds of students are withholding rent said to amount to over £1 million . The complaint is that the university rents out accommodation at a 45 percent profit margin, making accommodation unaffordable.

When I arrived people were standing around, smoking cigarettes, and listening to reggaeton, radiating the kind of energy you're still charged with when you don't have to work a nine to five. It was pretty vibey, and enough to make me wish that I was a student again.

However, the whole point of the event was to point out that being a student now kind of sucks. For many the financial cost is becoming untenable, and—particularly if you're in London—that's in no small part due to rent prices.

One second year French student named Jake said that his rent last year took up "about 85 percent of my loan, and I get a generous loan."

"It's disgraceful that the university says they charge competitive rents while I now have a room that's three times as big—fair enough, it's further out of London—and I'm better off," he said. "I didn't have money to do things I wanted to do. I could pay to eat, but I ended up with a job. We couldn't go out as a group."

At this point someone got on a megaphone and started leading chants, such as the fairly prosaic "Cut the rent! ", which was later superseded by the more original, "UCL, we got beef, cut the rent, don't be a thief!"

Before long there was a choreographed piece of protest theater, as flares were lit from the plinths surrounding the quad and banners were dropped from the surrounding walls.

Then the march set off. A bike-mounted sound system led the way, playing Grimes's "Kill V. Maim" as people chanted "UCL, cut the rent!" over the top.

The march made its way to the intersection of two main roads. The protesters plonked themselves across it and burned an effigy of Rex Knight, UCL's Vice Provost (Operations). Rex is seen as the enforcer of the university's marketizing agenda, and a lot of people were wearing masks of his face. He is, I'm reliably informed, a man who nibbles at his fingers during meetings, which has been taken by students as a sign of being untrustworthy.

The effigy burned fairly impressively, signaling the students' desire for a hasty Rexit. Increasingly the heads of universities aren't seen as kindly deans coaxing the best out of their students, but hated businessmen and landlords who occupy the same cultural space as estate agents and the CEOs of tax-avoiding corporations.

The burning was emblematic of a so-far savvy campaign, one that has taken on board a hard-learned lesson from the 2010 student movement: that journalists like to point cameras at things that are on fire. It's this kind of media nous that gets you editorials in the Independent saying you have "rekindled the debate about access to higher education, especially in the UK's most expensive cities." The university, on the other hand, has found itself in a PR shit-storm. Case in point: when it was accused of bullying its own student journalist who obtained classified documents about its business plans. Which isn't a great look.

Perhaps more significant than that is the spreading of this kind of protest. On the same day, Goldsmiths, University of London students announced a rent strike of their own.

A Goldsmiths, Cut the Rent campaign spokesperson named Joe told me, "The campaign has exploded. We tried to start a petition and all the hall residents we spoke to said, 'Well, why can't we go on rent strike?' We expect it to grow quite massively after the announcement yesterday—we're getting emails from people wanting to join."

Was he surprised at this progress? "Incredibly. The UCL campaign has done a lot of the important psychological groundwork that made this seem like a realistic possibility. There's probably a wider student malaise around rent and probably a willingness to act."

It's the question of contagion that could prove to be most interesting.

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F.E. Warren Air Force Base. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Doing drugs at work can make you love your job, make you better at your job, or at least get you through the day. But if you work for the US Air Force—let's say, defending the security of a massive stockpile of nuclear missiles—doing drugs is only fun until one of your fellow airmen narcs on you. Fourteen airmen at a nuclear missile base in Wyoming are learning that the hard way, as they're now under investigation for allegedly using illegal drugs like cocaine, according to an Associated Press report.

The investigation centers on the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, one of four strategic missile bases in the United States. The airmen who may-or-may-not have been coked up on the job were part of the security force responsible for patrolling the base, missile fields, and convoys that carry nukes. They weren't controlling the actual missiles, but they were entrusted with the "enormous responsibility" of securing the place, as AP put it.

This is just the latest scandal hanging over America's nuke troops, who in the past have come under fire for turning a blind eye to cheating on proficiency exams and allegedly using drugs like ecstasy. The Air Force Times reports that, in light of those incidents, the Air Force's Intercontinental Ballistic Missile community has been coping with "low morale, disciplinary problems, lack of resources, training lapses, and leadership failures."

So far in this latest investigation, 14 people have been suspended from their job duties, and if the accusations of drug use are true, it could lead to a force-wide crack down. General Robin Rand, the four-star commander of Air Force Global Strike Command who announced the allegations, said Friday that he will "wait for the investigation to give me more facts surrounding this circumstance before I go down the road of doing a command-wide urinalysis."

The Manhattan Detention Complex, also known as the Tombs, is photographed in New York, Friday, June 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Yanina Manolova)

When Jairo Polanco Munoz was booked into the Manhattan Detention Complex for allegedly stealing an iPhone at a Dunkin' Donuts, no one seemed to care about his suicide attempt behind bars last April. The 24-year-old was held on $750 bail and given a basic mental health check-up. He was supposed to get a more comprehensive one within three days, but a stabbing caused a lockdown and delayed his appointment.

Two hours before the deadline on Monday, Munoz was found sitting on a toilet, blue in the face and cold to the touch.

It's a story eerily reminiscent of one that made headlines in January. That's when 44-year-old Angel Perez-Rios died at the city's hellish Rikers Island jail complex after his mental health check-up was repeatedly delayed due to lockdowns.

"All someone had to do was review the chart," a medical staffer told the New York Daily News of Munoz. "He was left to die."

Also known as the Tombs, the Manhattan Detention Complex is where low-level offenders who can't make bail go before their trials in New York. Inmates say that, like its more-famous island cousin, MDC has a history of brutality. Munoz's death serves as a reminder that even if the movement to close Rikers in favor of local jails in each borough is picking up some steam, smaller jails closer to home have their own problems.

A spokeswoman for New York City's Department of Correction (DOC) told VICE in an email that the NYC jail suicide rate is less than half the national average. And it's true that suicides in city jails are rare; in 2014, there were zero. But the fact that there have already been two so far this year is troubling, especially given Mayor Bill de Blasio's emphasis on reforming the criminal justice system in the wake of years of criticism and a 2014 federal investigation decrying a "deep-seated culture of violence" at Rikers. A deal struck between the feds and the city last summer was supposed to usher in a new era of accountability, and in January, the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation took over the responsibility of providing medical care to inmates from a for-profit company.

Munoz's death suggests there's still an awful lot to be done about mental health in the jails of America's largest city.

"This suspected suicide, as with any death in DOC custody, concerns me greatly," Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte said in a statement. "We are conducting a thorough investigation."

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This post has been updated.

Marbella isn't the place it used to be. The criminal caliphate of the 1980s has receded in public memory, overshadowed by a kind of carnal Hunger Games where primped teenagers buzzed on jello shots wrestle one another for pole position in the mamading line.

But the Costa del Crime was once the inspiration for Sexy Beast—a place where drug kingpins shimmering with tan oil gleamed like ingots by the pool, living a life of money and blow. The community was effectively created by the absence of an extradition treaty between the UK and Spain between 1978 to 1985, which made fugitives tougher to bring to justice. Today, however, 76 of the UK's 86 most wanted in Spain have been caught, according to the National Crime Agency.

Jason Coghlan, 45, is one legendary ex-con who's been in Marbella since the 1990s. Originally from Brinnington in Stockport, he became a career criminal when he was thrown out of the Marines at 20 after skipping bail on a pub assault. Since 2012, however, he's run JaCogLaw, a firm that offers legal assistance to non-nationals at the mercy of Spain's justice system.

Coghlan—the star of the new VICE documentary, Walking Heavy: Britain's Most Notorious Reformed Criminal—has found a niche as a legal fixer for the Brits abroad who have no clue how to navigate Spain's legal system, and with a criminal pedigree that includes eight prison stays for crimes ranging from assault to armed robbery, he's a trusted advisor to many. We spoke to Coghlan about Marbella and his business.

Jason in Stockport

VICE: Obviously JaCogLaw is doing very well at the moment. Is it as profitable as a life of crime, would you say?
Jason Coghlan: It's infinitely more profitable, insofar as I can never be arrested for this. And in not having to look over my shoulder, and insofar as the joy that I feel—and I do feel joy. In the film, when I saw Bradley—young Brad—running up to meet his missus and his little baby boy , a tear sprung to my eye. And I'm not ashamed of that, because I looked at it and I thought, I did that... I did that.

I've done very well, and I continue to go from strength to strength. The thing is, I love a bit of cocaine, I love loose women, and, you can quote me on this, I have loved all those things. I've enjoyed my life. I've been a member of every single casino.

Is Marbella the place to enjoy those things?
Of course it is. If you wanna live the life of Larry like that, you've come to the right place.

Why Marbella, though? How did it become a notorious hotspot for criminals and ex-cons?
Well, there was a small period in the 80s or the 90s—perhaps the 80s—where there was no extradition with the UK. But the fact is you had Ronnie Knight here. You had all the ex-armed robbers here from the 80s, and then it became synonymous with gangsters and villainy. The sun shining, the birds on the beach with their tits out—it was fuckin' fantastic. Where else are you gonna be? And that's only ever blossomed—it's grown massively. This place is synonymous with British gangsters—and Russian gangsters as well now.

When did you get there? And what else is it about the place that made it so attractive to Britain's criminal elite?
I was first in there in the 1990s, when I started making substantial amounts of money, and my elders and betters were telling me that it's safer and more enjoyable to go and spend money on the Costa del Sol. Don't forget I'd never been on a foreign holiday as a child—I'd never been any farther than Scotland, even up to being twenty years old. The first time I ever went abroad I was twenty-three years old.

I'd just finished my first prison sentence, and I wasn't a fuckin' long away from having a second one, but I went and had a beautiful week in Fuengirola—wasn't even Marbella. All I could dream when I was next in, serving two and a half years for battering that kid's brother, all I could think about was, Fuck me, I cannot fucking wait. Soon as I get out this fucking gate, I am off.

Since then, the police have cracked down on fugitives in Spain. European arrest warrants introduced in 2004 have expedited the process even further. Are Marbella's glory days as a criminal getaway behind it?
It's not the place to be on the run. Do not come here on the run. I've said this many times in the national press: Do not come here on the run. But if you're a person who wants to enjoy the good life, and maybe associate with ex-criminal compatriots... why not come to Marbella! This is the number one spot in the world.

Do you think that's going to change any time soon? Or will Marbella remain the place where the UK and Ireland's gangsters retire?
Oh, they don't even necessarily retire, but you've got to remember that there's an opportunity for people here, if they're on the run. The reason a lot of people here are on the run is because drugs are trafficked up from Africa through Portugal.

If you're on the run, you can't go and get a nine to five job, even if you wanted one. If you're gonna be connected as a criminal, which you'll usually be if you've got to a stage where you're on the run, you have then got criminal links. Those criminal links, through one direction or another, will be operating here: trafficking narcotics up through Spain or Portugal, into France and then into Europe.

That is the opportunity that exists here, so people are always gonna be here. Because Africa is the weak link; Africa's where drugs are coming to from all over the world, including South America. They come up through Africa, and then you've got Morocco, which cultivates hashish—that's where all the weed's gonna be. It's no good sat in Africa; it's got to get up into Europe where people are gonna spend the money on it, and that's not gonna change any time soon.

So JaCogLaw is gonna be here to ensure that people accused of offenses—apart from sex offenses; we don't touch that... apart from sex offenses. We will defend anyone accused of an offense, in whatever countries we operate in.

What does a typical JaCogLaw client look like?
A typical JaCogLaw client is two types. There's the holidaymaker, who's gonna be up for something like an assault in a bar, or drunk driving, or showing his ass on the beach, or any other colorful activities that people get up to on the Costa del Sol. Then there's gonna be the kind of case that I get involved in, as what I prefer to call a "case manager"—people who are trying to traffic narcotics up the coast, from Africa up into Europe. The route for that is through Spain and Portugal. We operate very strongly in those areas. I would almost invariably be involved, at least at the outset of that case, no matter where I am in the world. If I'm in Thailand, if I'm in the UK, if a decent size case comes up or people are prepared to pay the premium for Jason Coghlan, to have the benefit of my knowledge and expertise involved, well then I'm there for that person, and I'll manage that case personally.

Related: Watch 'Walking Heavy: Britain's Most Notorious Reformed Criminal'

I've heard you have a very strong record. How many cases have you won?
I don't advise a client to defend a case unless it's winnable. I make sure it's winnable, and I'll dip my toe in the water, or one of my top lawyers will dip his toe in the water with the prosecutor and ask them: "In these circumstances are you prepared to drop the higher charge or drop the case altogether?"

So basically I've done the deal—I don't go into it blind; I go into it knowing what the outcome's gonna be. That's why we've got one hundred and twenty-six cases that are waiting to go to Strasbourg, and one hundred and eighty-three cases that we've defended that we've won. That's one hundred and eighty-three to nil.

You're setting up in Pakistan. You said that Marbella is not the place for people on the run—is Pakistan the place now?
No, it's just the demographic. I've always had strong connections with the Asian community, full stop. And my Pakistani brothers—my British-Pakistani brothers—who I'm very close to back in the UK have been asking me for the past twelve months if there was gonna be an opportunity for them to invest in JaCogLaw Pakistan, and we're at that stage now. It's the right time, and we're going to go there.

Critics will say that your firm is just helping the bad guys evade justice. What do you say to that?
I resent that implication completely. I say to those types of individuals that every single man and woman is entitled an inalienable right to justice through a fair trial. If you take away a man's right to access to justice—a man's right to a fair trial—then it's a police state, and we all know where that takes us. We don't live in police states; we live in strongly developed countries: Spain, the UK—we're protected under the European convention.

But even in places like Thailand and Pakistan—OK, these places aren't as developed, but they're trying to develop. I'm there to try and help that development. I'm not here to help people evade justice; that's not what it's about. But I am here to guarantee that if JaCogLaw is instructed, we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that man has a right to a fair trial and gets the best representation they can afford.

In the film you say you've only got one ball after a kicking from a prison guard. Is that true?
No, that's not true. In fact, why don't you clarify that—I was drunk that night. It was meant as a quip. A prison officer got his two front teeth knocked out, and seven screws were holding me down, one on each arm, someone choking me with his boot on my throat, two others pulling my legs apart while one other kicked me full blast in the balls. It was a very unpleasant experience. But it's the nature of the beast—a segregation unit in a maximum security prison—if you chin a screw and knock his teeth out.

In some of the most moving scenes in the film, you also talk about your tough upbringing and the beating you used to get from your mom. Reflecting on that now, how do you think it shaped your future?
To put that in context, how many other kids used to get battered if they were misbehaving? We were very misbehaved young men. It was the 1970s. It ain't the same as it is now. There wasn't the same level of education as there is now. And it's bullshit to say that people don't get a beating now. In more deprived areas, you'll find that the perceived correct way to chastise the kid is to give them a beating. Different levels of beating, fair enough. We got a fucking good hiding when we stepped out of line. My mom's a big horse of a woman. A big, strong woman who can fight. I've seen my mom beat up several people, including a man, when we were growing up, and I was always proud of her. And rightly so. It instilled in me a value of knowing and learning how to fight. My mom, to me, is my hero to this day.

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"You gotta see this real quick. You're gonna shit," Mimi Soltysik tells me. It's an afternoon in late February, and Soltysik, the presidential nominee for the Socialist Party USA, is leaning over his laptop in the living room of his cramped, cat-dominated Los Angeles apartment, showing me a YouTube video of a legendarily awkward performance by a seemingly deranged Chicago pop singer named Bobby Conn.

"It almost makes you uncomfortable, which is great," he says.

No matter who he's talking to, anytime there's air in the conversation, Emidio "Mimi" Soltysik (pronounced "saul-TISS-ick") tends to ask the other people what kind of music they're into, or what they listened to when they were younger.

When he first met his vice presidential candidate, Angela Walker, he picked her brain about music too, but his reasons were political. "What's one of the songs that shaped you politically? What were you listening to that pushed you to be who you are?" Walker recalls Soltysik asking. Music was important to Walker as well—her identity, she says, was shaped by "being a black metalhead." Her reply to Soltysik included Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy.

In some ways, the Soltysik for President campaign even resembles a friend's band, on a self-funded tour of half-empty venues. So far, Soltysik and Walker have had four campaign events: two in Pennsylvania, one in Indianapolis, and one in Thousand Oaks, California, an affluent suburb just north of Los Angeles County. "When you go to these conservative fucking strongholds," Soltysik says of Thousand Oaks, "not everyone is going to be happy about that. Oftentimes you may see your best responses in these really tough places."

The next stop, an event called "An Afternoon with Socialist Party USA Presidential Candidate Mimi Soltysik," is scheduled for April 9 at the Seventh Circle Music Collective in Denver, Colorado. After Soltysik and Walker clear out, Seventh Circle will host a night of alt-rock.

Like a band just starting out, the Socialist Party running mates don't assume the crowds are familiar with their act yet. "We introduce ourselves and explain why we run," Soltysik tells me when I ask what his campaign events were like. "From there, we open up a discussion with participants covering what's important to them."

Is this open-mic approach a viable way of getting elected as the next leader of the free world? Apparently not. "This campaign really has got little to do with the race to the White House," Soltysik says, before adding, in no uncertain terms, "We're not going to win.

"Bernie Sanders is running to win, and I think Jill Stein is running to win. Whereas—in a very hypothetical fairytale situation where we won in this system—we'd have to fire ourselves on the first day," he continues. "Because if we actually made it to that spot in this system, we would've have had to so thoroughly compromise who we are to get there, that we would've betrayed everyone."

It's safe to say the Socialist Party USA candidate won't be sworn in as president next year—and, increasingly, it's safe to say that neither will Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist senator who, on the surface at least, seems like the closest thing to an ideological ally that the Socialist Party is likely to see in a mainstream presidential race.

That's just as well for Soltysik, who emphatically isn't feeling the Bern. "His record is imperialist to me," he tells me. "He would not end the drone program. How that looks to the international community when our supposed socialist candidate—our progressive candidate—is saying, 'I wouldn't end the drone program.' It's like, where are we? Who are we?"

Soltysik's alternative is simple. In contrast to Sanders, he says, "We don't advocate for reforming capitalism. We actually advocate for the overthrow of capitalism. This is a revolutionary move."

Socialism was once a force to be reckoned with in American politics. Before the Cold War, and long before there was a senator named Bernie Sanders, socialists used to show up on ballots all the time in the US. Soltysik's political party, the Socialist Party USA, is an offshoot of the once prominent, but now-defunct, Socialist Party of America (SPA), a group Soltysik called "the party of Eugene Debs"—the turn-of-the-century labor leader and socialist hero whose picture hung on the wall of Sanders's Senate office in Washington.

The SPA was no joke. In its first two decades as a party, from 1901–1920, more than 1,000 SPA candidates were elected to public office, according to University of Washington researchers Rebecca Flores and Arianne Hermida, including 130 mayors, dozens of state lawmakers, and two members of the US Congress. But support for socialists waned in the 1920s, alongside the rise of the Soviet Union, and by 1960, American socialists had more-or-less vanished from elected office. The rudderless SPA floundered through the next decade, beset by internal disagreements, and eventually split in the early 1970s.

The Socialist Party USA has been one of the more prominent offshoots, having secured at least one local elected office since 2012, but others, like the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative Party, still compete for political oxygen. "Right now in the US, there's a ton of lefty organizations, and they generally tend to share some common history," Soltysik says, "but the infighting—the sectarianism—is incredible."

The Socialist Party USA suits Soltysik's temperament. The vibe is more low-key than what he calls the "heavily academic" tone of other socialist groups, and the party actively encourages goofing around at meetings.

"One of the best things I think I ever heard," he tells me, "was at one of our national meetings. Somebody asked our national secretary, like, 'Oh, I met some guy who's sort of interested. Should I bring him to a meeting?' The national secretary said, 'Well, fuck a meeting. Go have a drink with him. Go watch a movie or some shit.'"

That Soltysik likes his politics casual and crude makes sense. His origin story makes him sound like a character in a Springsteen song: He grew up in the depressed Rust Belt town of Reading, Pennsylvania, the son of blue-collar parents, who he says had him very young. His father was a welder at Dana Steel, and Soltysik remembers him coming home temporarily blind, his skin reddened from exposure to welder arcs. "I remember the shade he was. Kind of burgundy," Soltysik says.

"Such an American story," he adds. "They shut the plant. So many of these folks lost their jobs. My dad was one of them."

Between the ages of 17 and 32, Soltysik played guitar in a stoner metal band called Pill Shovel. The group attained enough local success in the late 90s to prompt its members to attempt a fateful move to Los Angeles in 2000. For money, he picked up whatever work he could find. "I think I set a world record, along with some of my friends, for getting fired from jobs," he laughs.

But like so many aging rockers, his body eventually rebelled, a development that became the catalyst for his political career. He needed a biopsy on his liver at age 26. "I think it scared me for a minute, but then I went right back, and kept on. I think it took me until I was about 32. At 32, I went to the doctor at UCLA, and he said, 'If you were a cat, you'd be on the ninth life.' And it was right about then I was like, Wow. I have a choice here to make. And it's tough, but I decided to go and try to get my shit together." He enrolled in college at 33, getting his degree in political science from Troy University in Alabama, and earned a Masters of Public Administration from California State University at Northridge last year.

Soltysik's bookshelf

At 41, Soltysik's socialist point-of-view feels youthful. Instead of a pipe-smoking bookworm drolly reciting Marcuse, he seems like someone permanently lodged in the Che Guevara–poster phase of the socialist life cycle. But beneath the surface, he's a guy who's cracked his books, and he knows his ideology front-to-back, although he admits his political education hasn't been easy. "I found myself frequently referring to a dictionary as I'm reading this stuff and re-reading lines over and over," he concedes.

Eventually, he found a leftist kindred spirit in the writings attributed to Subcomandante Marcos, the mysterious figurehead of Mexico's Zapatista movement. "I also found a lot of poetry in Huey Newton and bell hooks and Fred Hampton. From where I was coming from, it really resonated with me," he says. "Since then," he adds, "I've gone back to Marx. But it was definitely a process.

"He's someone who people can identify with because that's the life that he's lived, and he's very candid about that," Walker says of her running mate. After running for sheriff in Milwaukee County in 2014, Walker says she was over electoral politics. Although she earned 21 percent of the vote—an impressive achievement for a socialist candidate—the grueling process of campaigning had taken its toll.

"I had said I was not running for office ever again," Walker tells me. But after talking to Soltysik, she adds, "it was like he made an offer I couldn't refuse." At the Socialist Party USA National Convention back in October, the party threw its weight behind their ticket.

In some ways, the Sanders campaign has been good for business in the lefty universe. In most election cycles, obscure third party candidates get no press at all. But as evidenced by the fact that I'm writing this piece, the 2016 cycle has been different. Publications like Bloomberg and Salon have reached out to Soltysik, and his words have even been printed in the conservative-leaning Washington Times.

"When we made the choice to consider running," Soltysik says, "the idea was in acknowledgement that we'd receive media attention that normally we wouldn't."

On the other hand, with Sanders in the race, some socialist groups have thrown their support behind the Vermont senator instead of more purist candidates. Carol Newton, an organizer for the Los Angeles County chapter of Democratic Socialists of America had only kind words for Soltysik—but is supporting Bernie anyway.

"As a fellow human, has never disappointed me, has always done everything he promised, and has always been respectful," she tells me in an email, making it clear that she was not speaking for her organization. But Sanders, Newton adds, offers "more visibility than any of the socialist parties' candidates would have." Plus, she continues, he has a greater "likelihood of getting on state party ballots."

In spite of the political compromises required in backing a Democratic candidate—even one who used to belong to a socialist-leaning third party—Newton admits "there would be more power" in endorsing Sanders.

Soltysik says his own personal brand of socialism sprang from his experience in street activism in LA during his 30s. "A lot of the work felt like trying to cure cancer with a band aid," he explains. " see folks walking around with bags that costs hundreds of dollars to hold their goods, and they're just completely unaware of what's going on in the community, even though it's a few miles away." The "cancer," Soltysik decided, was capitalism.

"I did my research and talked to a lot of folks, and eventually found myself in the Socialist Party," he adds.

The author (left) and Soltysik at a meeting of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. Photo by Aidan Sheldon

Today, street-level politics are still part of Soltysik's day-to-day life. At his apartment, he invites me to go with him to a meeting of an organization called the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, held in a bleak warehouse on LA's Skid Row, where a large and permanent concentration of the city's homeless has lived for decades, sleeping in nearby shelters, or tents and sleeping bags along the sidewalks.

The purpose of the meeting is to give attendees grassroots tools to use at an upcoming meeting with the city's police department. Soltysik sits like a student, taking notes on the LAPD's surveillance systems, particularly its Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) program. When he has a question, he raises his hand.

The meeting turns into a teach-in, conducted in English and Spanish by a woman named Mariella Saba, who begins by asking us all to recount our "earliest memory of a time when you were treated as suspect or suspicious." Most of the stories are bruising, tinged with resentment toward a system that has seemingly mistreated attendees here on the basis of race, or appearance, for their entire lives.

Soltysik with spouse Lynn Lomibao

After the meeting, I follow Soltysik and Lynn Lomibao, his wife, to a restaurant nearby to debrief. A TV on the wall shows news footage of an anti-FBI protest outside of an Apple store in LA. The demonstrators are mostly white, and in some unseemly part of my scared, white soul, I realize I would have been much more at ease picketing an Apple store tonight than I was taking notes at an LAPD surveillance meeting on Skid Row.

Soltysik notices the difference too. "If you look at a meeting like we were at tonight," he notes, "I think you and I are the only white folks there."

"One of the biggest struggles we face, and one of the fears that people have is,If I get involved that means I have to do something," he adds. "You know to make those type of changes? It's going to require your active participation."

For Lomibao, this is what set the Socialist Party USA apart from Sanders. His supporters, she argues, aren't doing much by playing politics by the the rules, or by posting online that they "stand" with Sanders. "Ask yourself, what the fuck does 'stand' mean? Do you just mean posting a meme? Casting a vote? Do you honestly think that is going to bring about the changes that Bernie is talking about?" she demands.

But the great paradox of the Soltysik campaign is that the candidate himself steadfastly refuses to prescribe a method for bringing about that change, except to say that other people have to figure it out for themselves, in something he calls a "bottom-up" revolution.

"We have to look at this pragmatically, and look at this long term. Long-term health and peace? Winning the presidency wouldn't deliver that. Having the people come together from the bottom—and understand what a tremendous effort that is—that would do the trick."

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The strange envelope arrived to Eric Trump's Central Park South residence, Thursday. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Read: Someone Mailed Mysterious White Powder to a Muslim Advocacy Group

Donald Trump's son Eric Trump received a strange envelope in the mail full of white powder and a threatening letter on Thursday, CBS News reports.

Eric's wife, Lara Yunaska, opened the envelope, sent with a Massachusetts postage, after it was delivered to their Manhattan apartment at Trump Parc East near Central Park. The letter supposedly threatened the candidate's children and warned that he should drop out of the race. An investigation is underway to figure out what the white powder in the envelope was and where it came from.

This is the latest troubling incident in a presidential campaign season flecked with threats and violence. Last Saturday, a man rushed the stage at a Trump event in Ohio, and other Trump rallies have resulted in clashes between Trump supporters, protesters, and the police.

Also on Thursday, the hacktivist group Anonymous released what it claimed was Donald Trump's personal information, including a Social Security number and contact details, though some of that was already widely available online or wrong. The Secret Service is looking into that "operation," and it's not clear if the two events were related.

"What the fuck is up with Saskatoon?" Photo via Flickr user Eric Chan

If you have something nasty to say about that dickhole Larry from Saskatoon, you better yell it out now.

Photo via Flickr user Calvin W

In the biggest food chain controversy since Subway moved to ensure that its "footlong" sandwiches were actually 12 inches in the wake of a lawsuit, a pair of angry Californian latte drinkers are claiming that Starbucks menus across the country are full of lies.

A class-action lawsuit filed Wednesday by Siera Strumlauf and Benjamin Robles alleges that, contrary to the sizes listed on the menu, "Tall Lattes are not 12 fluid ounces, Grande Lattes are not 16 fluid ounces, and Venti Lattes are not 20 fluid ounces. Starbucks cheats purchasers by providing less fluid ounces in their Lattes than represented. In fact, Starbucks Lattes are approximately 25% underfilled." They say that this is no accident caused by careless baristas, but rather a deliberate strategy handed down from the top in order to save money on milk. The pair is seeking damages on behalf of everyone who has been cheated of those precious ounces of coffee, milk, and foam.

A Starbucks representative told the New York Daily News and other outlets that their beverages aren't all exactly the same size and that they "inform customers of the likelihood of variations."

Still via 'Canadian Cannabis: The Dark Grey Market'

Welcome back to Your Week On Weed, a brief excursion into some the news coming out of the Canadian cannabis industry over the past week, on both the legal and the not-so-legal sides of the pot biz.

Not a common sight these days. Photo via Flickr user tanjila ahmed

Pretty much on a weekly basis, we're inundated with emails raving about the latest "revolutionary" vaporizer—it's the size of a thumb, comes in silver and gold, and leaves no trace of smoke or smell, so you can light up at a goddamn daycare undetected if you please (sorry, Kathleen Wynne).

Over the past seven days, America saw six mass shootings that killed three and left 22 more injured. The attacks bring America's mass shooting tally so far in 2016 up to 69 deaths and 198 injuries. But the latest round of shootings attracted relatively little popular attention, especially when compared to the flurry of media coverage hoisted on domestic mass shootings earlier this month.

Europe witnessed two such incidents this week that left one dead and nine injured. Despite the lower tally, those tragedies seemed to receive more media attention, in part because of the grossly mismatched threshold for what constitutes a gun atrocity on each continent.

Meanwhile, both in terms of their settings (mostly drive-bys on the street and night spot or party shootings) and timing (mostly on the weekend), America's mass shootings this week were depressingly routine.

Last Friday afternoon, a drive-by shooting in Detroit, Michigan, killed two men and wounded two more on a residential street. On Saturday evening, four teens were injured in a shooting at a Portland, Oregon, birthday party. Hours later, one individual was shot dead at a bar and three more were injured in Wichita Falls, Texas. On Sunday, another party—this one at a park in Fort Myers, Florida—came under fire, leaving four injured. On Tuesday, yet another shooting hit a strip club in Atlanta, Georgia, wounding five more.

The only unusual incident occurred when four were injured in an Oakland, California shooting on Saturday. But that event, a drive-by attack on a moving party bus, was more notable for victims' apparent refusal to cooperate with first responders—a reminder that some mass shooting may go entirely unreported—than its body count.

In fact, this was the least bloody seven-day span for mass shootings in America since the period between February 27 and March 4. That week, which saw three killed and ten wounded in three incidents, was one of the quieter and more peaceful weeks this year.

Europe's two mass shootings, on the other hand, were both exceptional—even by jaded American standards. On Sunday night, a 22-year-old man shot up a crowded Kurdish wedding at an event center in Vahrenheide, Germany, killing a 21-year-old woman and wounding five others before taking off. On Tuesday, several shooters opened fire on a group of police in Brussels, Belgium, who were investigating last year's terrorist attacks in Paris. With tantalizing connection to one of the largest news stories of the past year, the Brussels shooting drew inevitable and understandable interest both for its immediate bloodshed and potential implications.

Even if the attacks in Europe hadn't been unique, they would likely still have drawn more attention than those in America if only because of the rarity of mass gun violence on that continent. These were only the eighth and ninth such incidents recorded in Europe this year—the 2016 mass shooting body count there currently stands at just seven dead and 36 injured. These were also the first European mass shootings in almost three weeks. The Brussels incident accounted for the first European mass shooting death since a shootout in Russia killed two people in January—and was the first western European mass shooting death all year.

The fact that six mass shootings can make for a blasé week in America reflects a cultural problem as much as a criminal one. It also highlights the ease with which Americans, who like all humans seem to have a limited bandwidth for processing tragedy and mobilizing it into outrage, can become calloused. We can only hope the relative rarity of these events in Europe—and the more pronounced reactions to those that do take place—encourages Americans to confront their own complacency.

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Illustration by Lia Kantrowitz

This article originally appeared on VICE UK

Balls are important—not just physically, but metaphorically. They're also the factory for sperm, obviously, and thus a hotbed for creating the future babies you may not want to keep. With news this week of a possible male contraceptive pill—like the one ladies take once a day—we wanted to find out whether straight guys would be up for taking on the burden of controlling baby-making as a result of sex.

There'd be this pill as one option, once they've sorted how make it soluble in our bodies and less of a libido-killer. Another option would be letting someone inject your balls a bit, to get sperm-killing gel directly into your vas deferens. Researchers in India gave that method the thumbs up years ago, but it hasn't been cleared for use in the UK yet.

We asked some guys how they'd feel about either method.

"Back in the day I heard they had to use orange peels"

VICE: Have there been any times you've worried that contraception hasn't worked for you?
Oliver, 28: Absolutely. Then you've got to trust that women are gonna go and get the morning-after pill. To be honest, I think the whole thing is still a bit primitive. Back in the day I heard that they had to use orange peels.

What?
They'd cut an orange, peel it and use the skin almost as a cup, and the fruit's acidity was meant to kill the sperm. I don't know if that's scientifically accurate, but I heard it on a podcast. Anyway, I think the body is way too complicated to start throwing pills at it, because fundamentally that could make you infertile. That's really what we're talking about.

But women mess with their hormones on the pill for years. Would you be up for trying male contraception?
I think so, but I'd feel more comfortable with the oral use of pills as opposed to an injection. I've never been good with needles, so I don't know, the whole prospect is a bit terrifying.

"'Hit and hope' has worked so far"

Gavin, Mikey, Will and Danny (left to right)

VICE: Hey guys, let's get right into it. Between an injection or a regular pill, which male contraceptive method would you choose?
Mikey, 29: Definitely the pill.

Will, 30: I've been speaking to my girlfriend about the pill, and she's gone off it. It messes you up.

So what's worked for you best so far, pills? Condoms? Coil?
Danny, 27: Fuckin' hit and hope!

Will: Anything where you're not covering yourself is preferable, right? I feel quite empathetic towards the other person involved; I've gone off the idea of women dosing themselves up for years on end just for me to feel a bit better.

Do you think that will change how much responsibility women take?
Mikey: I kinda hope so.

Gavin, 23: If they have to take the pill, they can take it, if I have to I'll take it—it doesn't bother me either way.

Will: My girlfriend was saying the other day that she told her mom: 'You should probably not be on the pill.' I mean, her mom's in her 50s. She goes to the specialist and they're like: 'Yeah you shouldn't be on that pill anyway.' Basically all these hormones just lead to cancer, and at the end of the day a whole lifetime of taking them will just fuck you up.

Danny: Taking something wouldn't bother me, since sometimes I do think, after getting up to mischief: shit, am I gonna get a phone call?

Will: A friend of mine has just become single for the first time in about 14 years and he is now so STD-scared.

That's another thing. If this took off, what do you think will happen with STDs?
Danny: Yeah that could let STD transmission go back through the fucking roof.

Have there ever been any times where you have majorly freaked out about the contraception not working?
Danny: I've driven a girl to Boots to get the morning-after pill; she was cool about it. But I woke up in the morning and she was like: 'I'm not on anything,' and I was like 'WHAT?!' Then she was like, 'Oh, I'm fucking skint too'. So I just took her to Boots and paid for it. It was OK though, and we made a joke out of it. So this male pill could be worth it just to stop things like that happening. Would've saved me 30 quid as well.

Will: Sometimes you get a text like: 'by the way I've had to go and get the morning-after pill.' But you just get caught in the moment, especially when alcohol is involved.

"I'd probably try the pill first but I forget to take things..."

Jack didn't want us to photography his face while we talked about dicks

VICE: If things changed and it became practical for men to be more responsible for contraception, would you be up for it?
Jack, 21: Yeah. I'd probably leave it a year and see if there were any side effects.

So if a doctor could inject you in the balls with something that made you infertile for up to 15 years, no side effects, a 15-minute procedure, and reversible at any time, how would you feel about that?
Well, as long as it is completely reversible and there's no side effects, why not?

If you had the choice between that and a daily or even weekly pill, also without side effects, which would you choose?
I'd probably try the pill first but I usually forget to take things.

What type of contraception has worked best for you so far?
The girl taking the pill, condoms, that stuff.

Have there been any times that you've worried about contraception not working?
Not really, no. At the end of the day, if the injection thing was proven to work I'd be up for it.

"Anything more advanced than condoms is better"

VICE: How do you feel about guys taking on more of a role in contraception?
Larry, 24: I'm kinda open to it; a lot of guys aren't ready for kids. Anything more advanced than condoms is even better.

Would you prefer the injection to a pill?
Yeah definitely: you forget pills, and people still get pregnant on pills.

Some people think it's a girl's responsibility to take control of the contraception, do you agree with that?
It's up to both parties innit—each person has to take responsibility. You're both taking part in the act.

"There's probably a little me out there somewhere"

VICE: What are your initial thoughts on male contraception delivered as an injection to the balls?
Tim, 28: Although it sounds great, it's potentially restrictive. If there's a chance that you might not be able to have children or it might make you impotent, or cause erectile dysfunction... I just think if you asked me now and said, 'it's a new thing we're trying,' I'd say 'absolutely no chance.'

If it were between that and a pill for men, which would you go for?
If both were on a level par, completely proven and reversible so you could have children and start a family whenever you wanted, potentially I'd go for the injection. But there's quite a high percentage of people that don't like needles. I mean, I don't mind them—I've had tattoos—but when you said about a needle in my balls ... I winced. And I'm not even fussed about that kind of thing.

What method of contraception has worked best for you so far?
Just asking the question first—whether the woman's on the pill. If I'm being completely honest with you, in the past it's been a question I ask in the morning, and if not we'd take it from there. Not anymore. I'm in a steady relationship now, but I used to work abroad for a long time when I was younger, and a younger guy doesn't really think with his head.

Have there been any times you've worried that the contraception you've used hasn't worked, or that you've got someone pregnant?
There's probably a little me out there somewhere . But seriously, nah, I've never really worried—theres' so much you can do nowadays, with morning-after pills and things. It recently happened to a mate, he got his recently-new girlfriend pregnant, and it was all dealt with and sorted out very quickly.

Is it the sort of thing you find it difficult to talk to your doctor about?
Not at all. I go to the clinic a fair amount, so I don't mind popping him out!

Welcome back to First-Person Shooter, a photo series that offers a brief vantage into the world of compelling and strange individuals. Each Friday, we give two disposable cameras to one person to document a night of their life.

For this week's installment, we gave a camera to Jay Wolman, the lead line cook of Brooklyn's Diner and Marlow & Sons restaurants—two local favorites in South Williamsburg. Diner changes its course offerings every night and posts its current fare online each day via scans of the handwritten menus the staff makes. Recent dank eats include pork shoulder and squid carpaccio, though the burger they regularly serve is particularly orgasmic. After Jay burnt through two rolls of film, we followed up with him to discuss what went down on the Friday night he snapped photos.

VICE: Can you tell me about what your schedule's like on an average Friday at Diner?
Jay Wolman: Typical Friday shifts begin for me at 1 PM. I'm a person of routine. On my way to work, I generally walk from my apartment and people watch. In particular, I like to watch the fools that stand in long lines outside of the Bagel Shop on Bedford every day (as captured in the photos I took). Never understood that one, they are such mediocre bagels.

Work begins with a meeting between the cooking team to discuss the menu. Every day the cooking team makes a new menu, and we make adjustments and changes from the previous night. The cooks write down their own personal menus of what they'll be focusing on, and then set a list of to do's that are required from each of us to get stuff done. Then we roll from there.

From 2 to 5 PM, my time is spent preparing for the dishes I'll be cooking that evening. The time goes by quickly and you have to work with precision and purpose. Service begins at 6 and goes on until 1 AM. You never really know when it's gonna get crazy, but the restaurant is usually at its busiest on Fridays at 9.

Who do you work with on Fridays?
I work with the same few people essentially every day. It's like working with your siblings. You love them, but they also drive you fucking nuts. It's a unit and you have to work together. It gets hot, it gets busy, it gets ugly sometimes. I love what I do, though.

There are some dead fish in one of the photos. What did you use them for?
We sold black bass on the Friday night I took photos. I was cooking them whole, just with the heads removed. Sometimes we save the bones to make fish stocks. But this time around, the heads just ended up in a big bucket.

This ended up being a busy night for the pork chop. It was marinated in cider vinegar and hot sauce. It came with some nicely roasted sweet potatoes and a buttermilk dressing. Southern vibes.

How did you spend the night and following morning after work?
I don't go out after work that often, but this night I met up with a group of friends I've been close with for the last 15 years. It's special to have my middle school friends up here living near me, so we try to get together often. I met up with them at a local bar, and immediately wanted a change of scenery. So we went out for shitty Chinese food at 3 AM. The next morning is always considered an extension of the night and the same group of friends met up at our local Greek diner. The food sorta sucks, but we've made it our ritual. We like the omelettes.

Follow Julian on Instagram and visit his website for more of his photo work.

Giorgos Roupakias, being transferred from custody to court (Photo: Dimitris Michalakis from VICE Greece)

This article originally appeared on VICE Greece

Two and a half years ago, a far-right Greek man allegedly stabbed a rapper in the streets of Athens. Pavlos Fyssas, a 34-year-old who rapped as MC Killah P, died of his injuries that night and 47-year-old Golden Dawn member Giorgos Roupakis was detained in connection with the murder. After 30 months spent held in remand, Giorgos walked free on Friday—he's served the maximum amount of time in temporary detention, and the case still hasn't gone to trial.

Meanwhile, the sensational trial of Golden Dawn as a criminal organization has run into one delay after another and remains far from its end. Pavlos, whose lyrics carried a strong anti-fascist message, was targeted by the neo-Nazi group while watching a football match at a cafe with some friends. He was singled out by Giorgos, who fatally stabbed him on September 18, 2013. It was a turning point in the political establishment's reaction to Golden Dawn, a group that had previously stuck to attacking immigrants and minority groups—though the ongoing trial still drags through delays.

Giorgos was released on Friday morning, before police drove him from Korydallos prison to his home. Neighbors weren't best pleased, and some shouted various insults at him as the police van drove in. News of his release inspired a big reaction in Greece, predictably. Giorgos was detained on charges of murder with intent, and belonging to a criminal organization. He was an alleged member of Golden Dawn's Nikaia branch—a relationship the organization originally denied when he was first arrested. Two years later, their leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos assumed political responsibility for the murder.

WHY HE WAS RELEASED

According to ordinance number 260 / 2016 of the Appeal Council, the maximum detention limit for Giorgos expired on March 18, 2016, when he was released. He's spent 30 months in custody from September 20, 2013, when he'd confessed to the murder to a judge. His temporary custody exceeded the maximum time of 18 months prescribed by Greek law, and went beyond the initial warrant issued against him for the murder of Pavlos Fyssas, but he was held for longer because additional charges were filed against him.

THE TERMS OF HIS RELEASE

Roupakias has been put under 24-hour house arrest supervised by a police guard, with his movements limited to court appearances when escorted by three guards. He is also banned from leaving the country.

"We said from the beginning, because the release of Roupakias was expected, that it is necessary to ensure his presence through all stages of the court case. From here onwards, we'll see how these measures apply," Andreas Tzelis, the murdered rapper's family lawyer, said to VICE Greece.

"The desire of the family and civil prosecutor which we represent is to ensure that he will be there when he must. What interests us is to ensure that this person will be there when the verdict is reached. It's clear what I mean and it's clear that there is a fear that this won't happen. I hope that the restrictions set by the decree are adequate and ensure what we want.

"This is a sad anniversary for the family," he continued. "The bitterness of the family is clear, but it's a bitterness that has lingered since September 2013. Bitterness, resentment, anger."

_{Woman no. 8, 2016. All photos © Whitney Hubbs, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles}

Los Angeles–based photographer Whitney Hubbs's new exhibition, Body Doubles, which opens Saturday at one of the city's eminent contemporary photography galleries, M+B, takes on the age-old form of the female nude. Asked why she wanted to take pictures of nude women, Hubbs answers emphatically, "Because it's so wrong! Because you can't do it! Because it's a cliche, because it's politically incorrect."

This kind of attitude is apparent throughout the photographs in the show, where skin tones are rendered in grainy greenish hues; blemishes, cuts, saggy bits, and other imperfections of skin are highlighted or even emphasized. Although Hubbs doesn't strive for the kind of perfection a fashion photographer might, the pictures are beautiful in the way David Lynch's films are beautiful. There is a clash in these pictures between the imperfections of the bodies, of the poses, of the way the photographs are made, and the formal perfection of the compositions.

Although the photographs are anti-fashion in this sense, they are also working against the kind of idealized pictures men have been taking of women forever. Hubbs frames this work to some extent as a reaction to artists like the late California photographer Edward Weston, famous for sumptuous black-and-white pics of his wife Charis Wilson in the buff. But you can also see references further back in art history, to the early color photography of Paul Outerbridge and other depictions of the female form going back to antiquity. One photograph, titled Woman no. 2, shows the truncated torso of a woman bursting forward from behind a red drape. It reminds be of the famous Winged Nike of Samothrace, now housed at the Louvre museum, but Hubbs's Nike has a nipple piercing.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 2, 2016}

Hubbs clearly takes great pleasure in looking at the female body, but has always been very conscious of the risk of objectifying women. For this reason, she started the process of making this body of work by taking self-portraits, putting her own image on the line. It was around that time I first visited her studio and became excited about her work. Last week in LA, I met with Hubbs over burgers to ask her some questions about the progression of her thinking since then that led her to create Body Doubles.

VICE: How did you come to do this work?
Whitney Hubbs: I took self-portraits a couple years ago, but it wasn't fun, it wasn't fulfilling.

I really liked them. But it wasn't enjoyable?
It wasn't enjoyable because I wasn't physically taking the picture. I get so much pleasure out of taking pictures. Ever since I was in the ninth grade, which is when I took my first photograph almost 25 years ago, I've been looking at Edward Weston and all those dudes that haven taken pictures of women. It's been ingrained in me.When I started doing self-portraits there was no pleasure in looking. So I started bringing women into my studio to pose the way I would want to pose. I found women that I had an emotional connection with or a physical connection with, or both, so they could be sort of stand-ins for me.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 5, 2016}

You wanted them to act as figures in a composition rather than portraits of people.
Yeah, yeah. That's why you never see their faces. I don't want it to be about who the person is, I want it to be about the gesture and the body.

I notice they don't have names, they are titled Woman 1, Woman 2... I wonder also if there is some connection to the de Kooning paintings with those titles.
Yes. I was talking to a friend about the titles, and he reminded me of that.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 11, 2016}

It also seems like those were some angry paintings of women. Whereas in your pictures, although the women are anonymous, I think they're not treated violently in any way, even though you don't see the faces and certain things are cut off.
I feel like there is subtle dismemberment, but it's a collaborative process in many ways. I don't plan anything out before a shoot, but I do have some idea of what I want. I was trained in the tradition of documentary photography, where I studied with Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan.

I was taught to be on the prowl, and to shoot a hundred rolls of film, and learn your camera really well. So if you see a shot, and it's the "decisive moment," you can capture it. So I bring that into the studio, where I don't have anything really planned. I like moving around the subject, and loosening up. I'll watch them do something, and ask them to do it again, or hold the same gesture.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 1, 2016}

The way these pictures look is different than many of the color pictures you see now, it's maybe a little less naturalistic, or doesn't have that sharpness and feeling of reality that digital photography creates.
Yeah, that's what I don't like, that's why I stopped shooting color and transitioned into making black-and-white fiber prints in grad school. I could bump up the contrast or lower the contrast, abstract it, make it more ambiguous and mysterious. So when I started doing these pictures, I wanted to take this ideas into color. In black and white, I would never use the full tonal range that's possible to get in the darkroom. So with the color, I decided that if I made it "incorrect," I would be excited to work in this.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 7, 2016}

Well, that also removes it one more step from reality. I guess also, removing the bodies from the identities of the people takes things further and further away from the facts of what exists in your studio or something.
Yeah, exactly.

Does that allow you to create something more psychological in a certain way? Or, what does that make room for?
It makes room for mistakes.

I guess it's like, sort of the errors or the artifacts that photography creates can be some kind of analogue to human nature or human imperfection or something like that.
Yes, imperfection. In one of the pictures, of a woman wearing blue tights, her skin is sagging because it is being twisted. I like those imperfections, which match the imperfections of the color in some way. I think a lot about performance artists of the 70s, like Ana Mendieta and Yvonne Rainer. There were mistakes in their performances because they're doing it live. I wanted to capture that sort of essence, to have it not be too perfect.

_{Whitney Hubbs, Woman no. 12, 2016}

I remember looking at your website a while ago, and there were all these pictures of men.
Yeah, so many pictures of men! In grad school, and right out of grad school, I photographed men a lot. I guess I was interested in trying to figure men out. Men confuse me, but I am also so familiar with them. But I haven't been interested in photographing men in a long time. I find it uninteresting. There's this bravado performance thing they do in front of the camera. And there's no vulnerability involved. The way the women pose and perform in front of the camera with me is so much more interesting and challenging for me, it's so much more fun.

Body Doubles is open from March 19 to May 7 at LA's M+B gallery. More information can be found here. See previous photos by Whitney Hubbs in our 2014 fiction issue.

Image source: Behar Anthony/SIPA via AP Images

I'm in Manhattan on the corner of 42nd and 2nd. It's Thursday morning, St. Patrick's Day, America's anthem for vomit and sexual coercion.

There will be moments of calm today, though they will be brief, or on the edge of a far-off borough. Like the Irish Haven bar in Bay Ridge, shadowy and lit with beams of green neon, little corners of conspiratorial-looking old Irishmen speaking in nods and winces. Its owner, Mike Collins, shoulders so wide you are certain he has to walk through occasional building entrances sideways, pointing around the room with bear-paw hands that look like they could pop the stem of a beer bottle off like it were the head of a Pez dispenser. "His parents born in Ireland ... Their parents born in Ireland... Parents' parents born in Ireland." He'll go on as long as you let him.

Or after the parade has begun, as you walk down west 45th street on the way toward 5th Avenue, past rehearsing bagpipe circles, one after another, every black inch of asphalt occupied, short men with broom-bristle mustaches, bald heads so round they look digitally rendered, surrounding two guys in the center beating cannon-blasts on the drums, the piercing whine of the bagpipes that sounds somehow triumphant and mournful, a commencement and a eulogy all at once, street cart smoke burning your nostrils like acid, you wandering around in a bubble of this.

If you find yourself in these places, you will perhaps experience a sequence where you are stopped motionless, something like a prolonged sigh, a feeling of being alive in the exact middle of a moment that is messy and ragged and yet all of it somehow synchronized.

And then you will be shaken from this, by the girl crashing into your back to keep from falling onto the concrete, in a shirt that says "Kiss Me I'm Irish Or Drunk Or Whatever." Or inches away, a group of cops, holding onto cigars or their hats or their balls, drinking tall cans of beer from a paper bag outside a place to make photocopies. "Yeah yeah you were trolling the mean streets of Massapequa or fucking New Hyde Park before you got here you little bitch."

If you come to Manhattan on St. Patrick's Day, there are scenes to behold of local-nightly-news B-roll pageantry, but really today is a calamity, a demolition derby of male ego and the limits of human biology. This is America: we build gorgeous monuments, but we're also a people aligning that monument so it looks in a photograph like it's our gargantuan pretend-cock.

And so, I am here at McFadden's on 42nd, a Manhattan dojo for heedless impulses and cinnamon whiskey. From 9 till 11 this morning is an open bar and brunch buffet. The ethos of everyone here is open bar, in a way. All you can eat, all you can drink, tearing apart the very limits of ALL, as a concept. Everything is yours, all yours, forever.

By 10:30 there is almost no room inside. Spare bartenders appearing from nowhere. Guys packed against each other, having conversations with roommates about last Friday, the Friday before that, every Friday, we're never getting the fucking security deposit back lol . Getting a text from a person in their phone as "Boo Boo Kitty Fuck" that says "lmao we r in the cab now." Guys waiting and pointing to the ceiling as the bass is about to drop like they've got a cure for a terminal illness located under a microscope. Guys calling "BRO FIVE COORS???" through the mob to the bartender across the room. A language of "my bads" and "good looks" and "nah it's straights" and "get me back laters." Thick arms, tiny ankles, plastic green leprechaun hats, meticulously configured eyebrow geometry. Our nation's most esteemed congregation of men in fleece outerwear. A tall guy really concerned that his NCAA tournament bracket is getting fucked up.

In the corner of the room, a guy points down at a tower of gray-black sausage and bacon the color of pencil erasers. He says to his friend, "You hungry?" Friend says, "Nah. I'm good. This shit is breakfast" and pounds a plastic cup of Bud Light. Moments later, Friend comes back with a plate of food anyway. It's a mountain of just potatoes. He eats half of one and throws the rest into the trash. Lots of today gets thrown in the trash, everything about this celebration is meant to be disposable. Plastic beads and plastic shot glasses, shattered and kicked around the floor, the girl buying a new t-shirt from the stand on the corner, leaving the old one in a wet brown heap on the sidewalk.

A DJ is playing songs now. "Work It" by Missy Elliot. "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child. It is an atmosphere of anticipation, of a moment's potential to become a bigger moment. When is Dave coming, is he bringing Charlotte, what song is next, how many lukewarm mozzarella sticks can I fit in my mouth till they start charging me, what bar is next, you want more shots? Wait for me I have to go shit at McDonald's. Text Brendan is he meeting us, my battery's at 14 percent.

"Hollaback Girl" comes on and everyone in the bar starts nodding and lurching, making that universal this-beat-has-a-dirty-diaper face. Bon Jovi and Billy Joel and Justin Bieber and cuz-I-see-some-ladies-tonight-that-should-be-havin-my-baby (baby), not just songs they know every word to, but a vibe they could sketch from memory with their eyes closed, all its little grooves, the predictably mediocre American lagers and the length of train rides from White Plains, waiting their turn on the mechanical bull at Johnny Utah's. Guys weaving to the bathroom like a military campaign. Drunk never changes; we love it because it is the dumbest, happiest, most loyal friend we've ever had. The whole day is like this, at McFadden's and Johnny Utah's on 51st, at Connolly's and O'Lunney's in Times Square, downtown, in Brooklyn. Even in pockets of the city where it's peaceful, where things don't feel plugged to a valve of Creatine, you can see, in the distance, heading toward you, a herd of something loud and green that is.

Lots of today gets thrown in the trash, everything about this celebration is meant to be disposable.

Around 1 I go downtown to McSorley's, the oldest bar in New York City, a place that until 1970 didn't allow women inside. Everything is fogged in copper grime the same color as the lager, sawdust on the ground. Every day, the same cheese plate: cheddar and American.

Outside, a young guy in a Joe Namath jersey is being told to wait because the bar is at max capacity. "We spent $20 to come downtown for this fucking place?" he says. He's backing into the road now. A car behind him has to wait. On the sidewalk next to him, a girl on her phone, revising plans with someone else. "Don't even bother, stay where you are, we're coming back—we're outside some shitty place it's got, like, shit all over the floors."

***

It's about 2:30 and I go back up to the parade route. A swarm of guys linger next to a mailbox in front of the Wells Fargo near the corner of 45th and 6th. They're all drunk and hot-wired and bumping into each other sort of half-on-purpose, like their brains are playing a loop of Jerry Bruckheimer trailers, like it is absolutely essential that they either cum or smack something in the mouth to survive. A reporter and a cameraman from BET walk up to them. They all lunge for the microphone.

The reporter asks them, "Do any of you guys know who St. Patrick is?"

They pause to contemplate. A second passes. A kid with a stringy black beard leans in, "Man nobody gives a fuck who he is. We're here to get drunk." They all howl. One of them tries to grab the microphone foam like a tennis ball.

The reporter says, "Is St. Patrick's Day a holiday only white people can really enjoy?" They all say YOOOOOOOO! for 18 minutes and then put their arm around one of their friends, who looks Hispanic. Joke's on you, BET segment.

In the street, behind the cameraman and the reporter, a stump of a young man walks by and shouts IRISH LIVES MATTER. The two girls he's with grab his shoulder and laugh, like, omg ur so bad! Stump Kid struts the rest of the way down Sixth Avenue like he's William Wallace.

Maybe you think it's unreasonable to condemn the rabidly recreational habits of white people on this day, the Caveman Olympics. But here was a truth, all day in midtown: People spitting something vicious at strangers who are unknowingly blocking doorways, at sweaty bouncers with rules to follow, cab drivers who can't do it guy I'm going to Queens sorry, at girls with inhibitions, at guys with more accentuated triceps, at red lights, barricaded side-streets. Guys roaming with no repercussions, guys aware of that eminent no-repercussion-ness, young white men block to block like whack-a-molers looking for someone to make feel small and breakable.

The BET crew leaves, and the guys start to drift toward the intersection, looking for something else. Eventually, on train rides home, they will sleep, but not yet.

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