When it comes to major American pop stars fetching up in our lovely city, Londonist sometimes thinks that the Eighties never ended. Following Madonna's permanent move here, and Prince's celebrated 21 shows last year, the third in the triumvirate of pop megastars from the Decade That Style Forgot is to join them - Michael Jackson is reportedly coming to town, and he'll be on a nice little earner if he does. Like Prince, Jackson......

Lasers, screens, explosions, giant mutant zombie mummies (hmm, we may have inadvertently made a cruel pun there), apparently the latest gig gizmo is to parade your offspring, as opposed to The Offspring, which in this case might actually have been better. Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz Posh, Baby Beau, Barbabelle, and Scary Phoenix and Angel Scary Murphy all joined their famous Mums onstage at the O2 this week, during the track Mama. Surely these people......

Autumn is settling in nicely in London and Chinatown is getting ready to celebrate. The Autumn Moon Festival is exactly what it sounds like: it is a celebration of autumn harvest, the changing of the seasons and, conveniently, is the time of year when the moon is particularly big and visible. This lends itself well to rolling out the many Chinese myths and legends about the moon and the Autumn Moon Festival is a......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

Typically 80s nights can be either a bit naff or full of students singing along to songs they're not old enough to know, but we're happy to come across one that sounds like actual, amazing fun. Prom Night is in town at the Buffalo Bar this Saturday, and as it's the last one in a while, we thought it only fitting to catch up with the boys and girls for their last dance. When......

Heathrow is often a scrum of paparazzi and obsessed fans when a big star arrives, especially from a celeb-fest of a city like Los Angeles. No scrum was in evidence yesterday, however, as former uber-superstar Michael Jackson touched down and breezed through the terminal. In fact, quite the opposite. Airport staff were more helpful than normal, rushing to carry his nine suitcases. Which is nice. For the Jenny Bonds of the world, he wore......

Quick! Where‘s your Oyster card? Haven’t got one? Not for long. London's mayor is to give away 100,000 free Oyster cards, which offer cheaper travel on public transport. Ken Livingstone said the cards had revolutionised travel in London, speeding up buses and Tubes and reducing queues. Since the financial merits of having an Oyster card aren’t really debatable anymore, the only thing left to ask is: are you for an increase in the widespread......

Tony Blair has obviously been listening to a lot of Huey Lewis lately -- he thinks it’s hip to be square. And what is more squareishly hip than to broadcast your political party on YouTube in the hopes of attracting the Cool Kids? In the 58 second clip, Blair explains that Labour’s goal in broadcasting on their new YouTube channel, Labourvision, is "to enable you to hear unmediated, fresh, first-hand, what it is we are......

Graffiti hit the news a couple of times today. Two very different stories show what a complicated and divisive subject this is. At one end of the scale, Banksy once again wins mainstream approval for a new piece of commissioned work in 'Santa's Ghetto' (Oxford Street) featuring Michael Jackson beckoning to Hansel and Gretel. And then there's Bromley lad James Lyons, who's been put away for 12 months in a young offenders' institution for......

This Day In London’s History 1990: Pandemonium in Westminster as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fails to win outright victory over Michael Heseltine in the Conservative Party leadership contest. Following a lengthy period of discontent from her own party, including the resignation of Sir Geoffrey Howe from his position as Deputy Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher’s leadership was formally challenged for the second time in as many years, this time by Michael Heseltine. It was widely......

Jagshemash! Borat is a hit. It's getting rave reviews, grossing millions, and definitely the most quotable thing we've seen in ages. But Borat seems to have missed most of the -ist cities, and we were all wondering how the film would have been different if he'd made his way around the world on the -ist tour. In Shanghai, Borat would be observing Inane Learnings of Penis Photos for Make Benefit Glorious Flat World of......

Victor Frankenstein was a tad taken aback when he realised exactly what is was that he had fashioned: How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! -- Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his......

We've had an elephant and a mammoth, but now London has a vulture! This ones real too! Eleven more tube station will become step-free by 2011 including Vauxhall and Finsbury Park. There are conflicting reports over what Michael Jackson actually sang at last night's WMAs, but whatever it was, no-one seems to have liked it. It's been a bit of a struggle with the press so far, but the new production of The Sound......

Lord Mayor, John Stuttard, is planning to make London a centre of business education and professional learning. After today's bus strike which no-one seemed to know about, tomorrow will see technical staff behind BBC News walking out of work. So, Al Jazeera have picked a good day to launch their English language service tomorrow with a plan to 'build a bridge between cultures.' Michael Jackson's in town ahead of tomorrow's World Music Awards and......

Martin Jefferson is set to 'perform' in London on November 15th. No no... no need to tag your children and send them off to the countryside. It's a music thing: Michael Jackson will perform "Thriller" from his famed 1982 album in a rare public appearance at the World Music Awards next week, organizers of the awards said Wednesday. The 48-year-old reclusive pop star will receive a Diamond Award, given to artists who sell more......

Heart warming animal story of the week: A dove that became extinct in the wild more than 30 years ago has been successfully bred at London Zoo. Planning on going to the 2012 Olympics? Then you will be expected to use public transport. Oh joy. Michael Jackson is coming to town to make a 'rare public appearance' next month for the World Music Awards. Looks like the Profumo affair may be turned into a......

As a Girl Guide in Cyprus in the early 1990s I thought I had it good. Singing, dancing, doing crafts, collecting clothes from the neighbourhood for recycling…it was a lot of fun. The annual Guide camp was the pinnacle of the year – I loved camping out under the stars and cooking breakfast over a gas stove every morning. The in-fighting, bullying and politics were another matter, but to get the opportunity to do......

A manhunt is underway for the guman who opened fire on two men outside Finsbury Park station last night, wounding a female bystander in the process. Its thought the same person is responsible for an earlier shooting on Upper Street. Network Rail wants to distribute its own free afternoon newspaper across 10 of its London stations. The 'sex theme park' for the West End is official. Amora - The Academy of Sex and Relationships......

It's come to our attention that our very own motley crew, Towers Of London, have turned down the opportunity to re-record the classic: I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles for West Ham because they're Everton fans... Is that really news? Anyways, we thinks this is a good thing because we're still waiting for Michael Jackson's definitive version of the song. In completely related news chubby cheeseballers Keane are back. Hooray! They're playing a surprise, intimate gig......

Peter Pan is back. Captain Hook couldn't kill him, Robin Williams had a damn good try while Jeremy Sumpter's attempt was mostly ignored, but now children’s' author Geraldine McCaughrean has breathed some fresh life into Michael Jackson's inspiration for messing around in kids' bedrooms. The not so catchy 'Peter Pan in Scarlet' will tell readers what happened next not only to Peter, but the rest of the gang too: McCaughrean said: "Neverland was such......

The two men who stabbed a 31-year-old man to death last Thursday had mugged an other man sitting on Kensal Green Tueb platform just 30 minutes previously. A 47-year-old banker who was suspended by HBOS has launched a £10 million action against her employer, claimign that her boss could not "manage a clever and successful woman". Abigail Morri, artistic director of theSoho Theatre has quit after 13 years, saying "It's almost running too smoothly for......

- Tony to meet Taoiseach for first time since IRA disarmament. - One of the largest people trafficking gangs ever is 'smashed' in London raids. Pan-European gang was responsible for smuggling thousands of Turkish-Kurds into the country. - Man arrested in Trinidad in connection with London bombings. - Madame Tussauds continues trend of immortalising transient fads by 'waxing' Little Britian. - And talking of Tussauds...Michael Jackson has been mobbed (again) outside the waxworks. Did he......

- The flood warnings are back. Developments in East London are being built on the flood plains apparently. And we're not sure who's running the flood defence systems. - Michael Jackson is 'thrown to the ground' in Wacko fan scrum outside Billy Elliot theatre. - Tiffany raiders remanded in custody. Youngest is 18, oldest is 20. Police were in waiting after being tipped off it seems. - Sven's house gets another brick through its window.......

When we read the headline 'Orgies and battles' promised at Paul McCarthy's pirate theme park in today's G2 we misread the artist's name as Paul McCartney and immediately re-examined our judgment of the Beatilic one - imagining the ghost of John Lennon made animatronic and Yoko One made apologetic thanks to a long walk along a short plank. Then our eyes came into focus again and we shoved McCartney back into the file marked......

Is it yet possible to write something about German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen without mentioning his little 9/11 faux pas? (Oh wait, the Guardian just did...) For those of you who might not remember, just five days after September 11, that wacky Karlheinz declared at a press conference that the attack on the World Trade Center was, in fact, "das grosste Kunstwerk, das es je gegeben hat." For those of you with rusty German, that......

There's a lot of pressure ridign on Depp, Burton and their adaptation of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. After all it's a remake of a pretty good film based on a near-legendary book by the greatest (?) children's writer of all time (none of that Rowling nonsense here please!). What's great though is that the film seems to have surpassed all expectations, at least it has for the broadhsheet critics. It's four stars from......

We covered the Guardian's (one star) review of Revenge of the Sith last week, so for the sake of consistency we should look at what the Independent and the Times make of Part III today. As you might have already guessed, neither paper is really 'enthusiastic' for the film. In the Independent it's just one star from Anthony Quinn, who calls the film a "turgid, subliterate spaceballs"...before getting really nasty: I would like to......

No, nothing to do with the Michael Jackson trial... This is how the first platypus has been described by the Natural History Museum's mammal curator Daphne Hills. Now over 200 years old the juvenile male specimen is deemed too valuable to go on public display, but was recently photographed for an Australian newspaper. The photos give Londoners a chance to look at the animal that was at first dismissed as a fake by British......

It's fair to say that Michael Jackson's life isn't going so well right now, what with the child molestation trial and everything, and it's just taken yet another turn for the worse as London's own Heart Fm has taken the decision to remove him from their playlist. Ok, so not totally remove him, but relegate him to times when "there's less chance of children or parents listening". Now we don't have kids, but when......

Forget the Michael Jackson trial, the big 'celebrity' case you should be following this week is Elizabeth Jagger's attempts to get an injunction on some dodgy CCTV footage. A couple of weeks ago 21-year-old Liz was caught on camera, "engaging in sexual activities" outside Kabaret’s Prophecy nightclub in Soho at 4 in the morning with Calum Best - it's the D list celebrity match made in hell. The resulting stills were then splashed all......