Flickin' Against the Pricks

by Holden Caulfield

Now I've got a cousin called Kevin.  He's sure to go to heaven.  Always spotless clean and neat, as smooth as you'll get 'em.  Actually, I haven't, and even if I had, there's no way he'd have beaten me at subbuteo, 'cos I was okay at it back in the day (whatever that means).

What’s Eating Gilbert O’Sullivan?

by Phil Thornton

This month our resident plazzy revolutionary takes a cheap swipe at national heroes and other assorted individuals who have done something infinitely more constructive with their lives than he has. .

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, HAPPY NEW YEAR SWINESTERS!

IT WAS A VERY BAD YEAR

by Andrew Vaughan

“When I was forty-seven
It was a very bad year
It was a very bad year for rock music
Of independent means
Soul Music stagnated
As James Brown went to heaven
When I was forty-seven”

Pictures of Lily 

by Finton Stack 

At times during 2006, it felt as if we were drowning in a sea of cunts. Aside from the ongoing Kate / sweaty moonface wankfest , we witnessed the rise of the Stage School kids. Their champion was Russell “dress sense of a widowed rag & bone man” Brand with his skanky hair & even skankier cock. Russell was once addicted to crack & smack but, being the notoriously publicity shy soul he is, rarely speaks of it.

New Year - the gear

by Shaun Smith

Statistics released by some boffin with too much state-financed time on his hands last year claimed that January 23rd was the most depressing day of the year. Bollocks. Even though it provides the title of a woefully bad 1970s song by Pilot, January is a quality time to be alive in my book. And, unlike some, I’ve always enjoyed the first month in the calendar for as long as I can remember.

Too Many Cooks?

by Phil Thornton

Never have the wise words of that camp bloke from the Adelphi reality series, Hotel rang so true...

'Just cook will yer'

Look, I'm a sucker for these celebrity chef and cooking programmes myself. Saturday Morning Kitchen with that fellar who used to wear a doo rag and was very handsome til he put a bit of beef on (gratuitous culinary metaphor no 1) and that annoying Itie with the Frankie Detori accent, Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, Rick Stein, even Ready Steady Fucking Cook.

best/worst of 2006

by Shaun Smith

better ones:
Italia winning the World Cup

England deservedly not getting past the World Cup Quarter Finals

Pinochet croaking

Spending more time on a train drunk than the cast of Von Ryan’s Express for Aberdeen away pre-season

That Argentina goal

Emily Blunt

hearing Robert Armani’s Circus Bells played at a certain 40^th birthday celebration in Glasgow

The Ashes 5-0 whitewash – sporting excellence from a team of “has-beens” expertly written off by the British media

Easy Levee 

by Danny Evans

Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke is both utterly powerful and utterly gruelling.  It is an assault on complacent modernity in both its unflinching depiction of its failures and its disregard for the fast food attention span.  It is long, but gripping.  Tragedy unfolds upon tragedy, outrage upon outrage.  Strong labouring faces crumple in the struggle to show stoicism, drunk women spit scorn on their rulers and a student tells Dick Cheney to go fuck himself, speaking from the wounded soul of a city and for the whole of the thinking world.

JAKE AND DINOS CHAPMAN

BAD ART FOR BAD PEOPLE

LIVERPOOL TATE UNTIL 4 MARCH 2007

by Andy Vaughan

Spread over seven rooms the mid-career retrospective of the Chapman Brothers' work is entitled 'Bad Art for Bad People' and the contemporary artists challenge us into what we see as good or bad art and whether 'bad' art is for bad people - or even made by bad people. Or is it just art for the 21^st century. Tackling the subjects of sexuality, asexuality, brutality, consumerism, death, glory, Nazism and Christianity. And that is often in just one installation.