NEW YORK - AMERICAN STANDARD IS A SINK COMPANY AND A SHOW

I moved to New York two months ago and started interning for this photojournalist. I was his intern for about five hours, during which I helped him install a shelf and he bought me a juice to show his gratitude. Then he helped get me a job interning at Vice probably because I drink too much juice and it would start to add up. Anyways, I was reminding him to come to the Vice Photo Issue Exhibition at Spencer Brownstone and he told me about another photo show that's opening tonight for Christian Hansen and Peter Van Agtmael, two guys who traveled around the country together twice in a figure eight taking photos at places like the Idapalooza Fruit Jam Queer Music Festival, Mardi Gras, and Detroit. 

BERLIN - CHEERS! GLOBAL WARMING

Here's another reason to feel terrible the morning after binge drinking: you were not only most certainly generating regrets you won't realize you have until later in the evening, you were gulping down the future of the children, not to mention drinking away the whole planet’s future. Beer is a climate killer. After a recent trip to Munich, where we spent a few days' pay on beer for two nights, we decided to figure out exactly what we'd done to the world.

LONDON - BOATIN' WITH BOTTIN

William Bottin is one of the finest purveyors of electronic disco around right now. His tracks have a clear Italo influence, and he's actually Italian, which probably means he has more of a right or something. Even Andy Bell from Erasure likes him! We caught up with him for a quick chat. It would've been nice if it actually was on a boat, but it was just Gmail.

MEXICO CITY - DANIEL LEZAMA'S SPIRIT FIBERS AND FLAG VAGINAS

Painter Daniel Lezama is a sort of rebel in the Mexican art world. There’s those who hate him, those who idolize him, and asshole curators who refuse to say hi, but everyone knows him and has an opinion. Daniel plays with Mexican history in an absolutely free way, paying no mind to who's supposed to be respected, which may not be a big deal here but apparently Mexicans are easily offended when someone doesn't venerate historical figures like Benito Juarez and friends.

BASQUE COUNTRY - SHITTING CLASS HERO

Meet Rambo. He's also nicknamed Sodom, most probably because he looks a lot like Tom Angelripper from the German thrash band Sodom, but slimmer. Rambo is well known in the Basque Country’s squat scene, he plays bass in grindcore band Iron Batasuna, and has a fondness for something we could place freely between scatophilia, social activism, and… art? When having the urge to empty his bowels, he doesn’t hesitate to do so in the nearest outdoor locale, be it idyllic green forest or the entrance rug to the mansion of a local bigwig. It's his "thing."

BERLIN - A.D. DEERTZ LIKES THAI PROVERBS AND GERMAN CHEESE ROLLS

German designer Wibke Deertz studied sculpting in the Netherlands and never really cared that much about fashion. And then she co-founded a clothing label called A.D.D. in 2000. Sadly for you girls, she recently switched to menswear and just opened up her first flagship store, A.D.Deertz, in the heart of Prenzlauerberg--right across the road from that cool jeans store, next to that hip Lebanese food joint and the not-quite-so-hip drums bar on Kastanienallee--but at least you can finally force the shopping thing on your boyfriend. As soon as Wibke returned from her recent trip to Bangkok, we visited her Berlin atelier to find out why she quit making ladieswear and whether the world outside of Berlin is really that interesting.

AMSTERDAM - HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN DRUG SUPPLY

Lately when someone is puking in a club in Amsterdam, the relevant question is no longer “Too much booze?” but “Too much G?” And the answer is either a new wave of vomit or a weird facial expression from someone who a few seconds later falls asleep. GHB is no longer for lower-eschelon suburban 16-year-old wiggers looking for any role in the date rape at a house party milieu--it’s the new Ecstasy and the new Heineken.

PHOTO ISSUE EXTRA - THOMAS HÖPKER’S DDR-ARCHIVE

Thomas Höpker has seen, experienced and shot it all—from Lepra quarantines to American Army bootcamps. He is not only one of Germany’s most influential photojournalists in the history of the trade, he's also the first German to ever enter the sacred Magnum agency and become its leader from 2003 until 2007. When Germany was still seperated, he was one of the very few and actually the first journalists from the West who was given the permission to enter and document East Germany (it was strictly supervised, of course). He hated this work and only recently revisited his archives from this time to put together a GDR-photobook that will be published soon...

HALIFAX - GLOBAL HOTNESS

A lot of important issues threaten the earth today: the economy, world hunger, the continuing existence of Ashton Kutcher, but none may be as critical as Global Warming. Maybe the Kutcher thing, although according to one theory -- one theory that may or may not be mine -- killing Ashton Kutcher would actually reverse Global Warming. Regardless, many experts believe that we're at a critical juncture, and we need to change the way we live if we have any hope of not killing our planet. Is saving the world possible? We had a little chat with Halifax Green Party Supporter and environmental activist, Steph MacDonald.

MILAN – HOOKERS, GAYS, DRUGGIES, AND DEATH

Elizabeth Pisani is a smart lady: a journalist-turned-scientist with a PhD in epidemiology who's worked for the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and UNAIDS. She is also the author of the whistleblowing The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, an international bestseller that outlines the myriad ways in which governments, NGOs, and the United Nations has wasted billions of dollars trying to fight HIV and AIDS because they like to ignore that the disease is largely spread by prostitutes, gay men, and drug injecting folk.