Shh! We don’t want to jinx things, but apparently the O2 is set to become the busiest and bestest venue in the world. (Well, bestest is perhaps subject to opinion: the Shepherd’s Bush Empire is pretty hard to beat if you ask us.) Anyway, all things being equal, by the end of 2007 its ticket sales will have exceeded those of Madison Square Gardens for the whole year, even though our pet bubble only opened......

Tutankamun's coming to town! First we had Anubis and now pyramids are popping up all over London. Created by Brazilian pop artist, cheeky looking Romero Britto, with the help of 1500 school kids, the biggest - a colourful 45fter - was unveiled at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park yesterday whilst its smaller sibling, just 25ft, will sit outside the O2 on Peninsula Square, guarding access to the first major exhibition at the sweetly named Bubble......

We at Londonist try to cook with seasonal vegetables where possible and a trip to Borough Market early on Saturday (always go early before the gastro-porn tourists arrive, or on a Thursday when many of the stalls are now open) saw us staggering home with armloads of rhubarb. This long, pink creature is one of complexities. It is actually a vegetable yet we choose to use it as a fruit and it’s silky texture......

When tipped for the top, many artists can't live up to the hype that has been created for them by the press. Mika, on the other hand is different. Revelling in the limelight, the 23 year old jumped on stage at London's Koko this week to start the first date of his six date UK tour, fully recovered from a bout of flu that cancelled the first date in Brighton on Tuesday. Support came......

No sooner have we mapped the Space Invader invasion that a new slice of retro game graffiti pops up. Bubble Bobble on Bear Gardens SE1 snapped here by daveknapik raises the bar a little when it comes to pixel power. And if your'e confused as to what exactly Bubble Bobble is there's an online version right here.......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Londonist stumbled across DeathBoy a while ago now through numerous mentions over on Warren Ellis dot com (you can read our interview with Warren here) and have been meaning to sit down and have a natter with the band for ages. We finally got the chance to have a few beers with Scott Lamb (vocals) and Jason Knight (guitars) ahead of their FuturePunk gig tonight and found them to be disarmingly self deprecating and......

Somerset House on a warm sunny evening has to be one of Londonist's favourite places to be. Whether you're watching a band or catching a film, there's nothing better than sitting on the grass with a glass of pimms feeling like you're in a small idyllic bubble of London, even though you're practically on Waterloo Bridge. As previously mentioned on Londonist, this week the annual Film4 Summer Screen season kicks off with its, quite......

There's been opera, dance, film and... weird stuff on bendy poles to keep London busy and out of doors. And now there's Metamorphoses in the park courtesy of London Bubble, the theatre-makers with a reputation for "inventive and unpredictable events that reflect the diversity of our city and its people." It doesn't get more diverse than this year's summer tour of London's parks. Naiads, nymphs, animals, men, women, gods and goddesses all make appearances......

All the weeks highlights from our international sister sites. Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues......

We at Londonist enjoy a shock prediction as much as the next tournament previewer, but Brazil are going to win this group. Comfortably. We just don’t think they’ll win the cup. It’s likely they will score eight or more goals in the opening three games such is the awesome nature of an attack that will critically puncture most opposition, but in the knockout stages the better teams and the more sophisticated coaches might start......

Now, time to clear one thing up once and for all. The image above is not a Banksy. Everyone, from this week’s TimeOut to whoever scrawled that speech bubble is making the same mistake. Just because it’s a black stencil, it must be Banksy. In fact, this South Bank graf is by Arofish. We know this because (a) his tag’s written at the bottom, (b) he’s used this stencil before and (c) it’s on......

Just a quick, special edition of the FFN this week as there's no real cinema releases, so Instead we're going to take a look at the films we're really looking forward to in 2006. These aren't necessarily the ones that we 'guarantee' will be great, they're just the ones we're pinning our hopes on and will be quite annoyed about if they don't live up to expectations. We've split them up into three sections......

It's a difficult time to be law abiding. If you be a good little consumer and hand over a wad of money to see a film at the cinema instead of downloading it then you get to sit through a warning telling you to BEHAVE. Same if you rent a DVD and end up with a lecture on why you shouldn't be watching pirated copies that can't be skipped even though you're one of......

Today, like many of the Sundays that will follow until Spring returns the leaves to the trees, has started off pretty perfectly already. Waking up to a gentle glow from the fire, it's toasty enough to climb out of bed, stoke up the embers and get a little blaze going. The scratching at the window means it's time to feed the lizard and then climb back into bed to watch Futurama. Only then can......

The London Film Festival is almost upon us. If you were in Trafalgar Square last night you will have seen highlights of the festival on a giant screen and there's two more nights of that before things kick off properly with The Constant Gardener. The Screen on Trafalgar Square events are free and tonight there's a special presentation of three newly restored Charlie Chaplin short films, The Keystone Silents, with live musical accompaniment by......

For the longest time we just didn't know what to do with Gwyneth Paltrow so tried our best to ignore her. For a while she was 'the head in a box chick', but then along came The Royal Tenenbaums and we sat up to take notice again... where the hell did that performance come from? After the horrors of Bounce we still worry after her and while that mess was obviously just a plea......

Seven days to go until the London Film Festival opens its doors. Here's another two of the films on offer. It turned a few heads when it was announced that Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories) was going to direct the film adaptation of Charles Bukowski's Factotum, but any misgivings can be more or less laid to rest - perhaps because if anyone knows a thing or two about drinking it's the Norwegians. Not that Buk's......

Bubble opens with fresh ground being broken, but it's only when the camera pulls back that you realise it's a grave that's being dug. It's a loaded opening not only for the plot, but for what the film perhaps represents as an alternative to the mainstream (and indeed independent) movie distribution system. While the rest of Hollywood was running around like headless chickens and constantly coming up with new brain-dead ways to fight piracy......

With something like 20 screenings per day at this year's London Film Festival we figured we'd offer a little help this week in deciding which films you should underline and circle in the programme. First up is Lodge Kerrigan's Keane, already a hit at the Telluride, Toronto, New York and Cannes Film Fests, it's sure to be a critics favourite and while less showy than a lot of the other films on offer it......

It's been a while since the Londonist caught up with our non-'Premiership' teams, but it's back and with a snappy new title to boot. Loans Mid-September and few would have predicted Watford to be in 3rd place. The Hornets narrowly lost to table-toppers Sheffield United last week, but a Milk Cup win over Wolves mid-week should keep that bubble from bursting for the moment. Adie Boothroyd hasn't been resting on his or anyone else's......

It's hot and sunny in London and everyone has the same idea: let's go to the park! Turns out the touring theatre company London Bubble has the same idea. This summer, they will be touring their new show The Crock of Gold across the London parks, starting at dusk and continuing past your bedtime. Audiences follow the actors on a journey through the woods with the Great God Pan and the leprechauns who have......

Remember Martha Lane Fox ,the woman behind the internet boom's hottest property: Lastminute.com, and poster girl for the dot-com bubble? Well if you ever heard Martha on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs you'll know that her 'luxury item' was a karaoke machine. Well now it seems Martha has transferred her passion for amateur sing-a-longs into a real business venture: the Lucky Voice private karaoke club. Apparently Lucky Voice is "committed to making London a......

Londonist's dad always used to say "You get what you pay for" and "Buy cheap, buy twice" so even now, many years later and with overdrafts of our own, we still refuse to look for bargains so convinced are we that as soon as we get them home they'll fall to pieces. But that was before we started using Freecycle which quite happily bypasses the dad rule by offering goods completely free. We've been......

The treasures of the pharoah Tutankhamun are returning to London after more than 30 years, the BBC reports. And they're going to be on show in the Millennium Dome. This is extremely good news. The horde is a priceless array of death-trappings that is as rich in symbolism and cultural and ceremonial complexity as it is in precious metals. It was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, and remains perhaps archaeology's most spectacular achievement,......