Oh dear. Back in the day, a roguish campaign to rib your headteacher might have consisted of a home-made comic strip passed around during maths or some naughty graffiti in the bike sheds. These days, offensive slurs can be carefully placed on MySpace, beaming out your libellious, text-speak rant to the world wide community. Such is life for Muswell Hill headteacher Aydin Onac, who is the victim of a somewhat tasteless online crack, depicting......

Photos by Naomi Kuyck-Cohen and Cian Oba-Smith. Read Naomi's review of the day here.......

After much speculation, one of the capital's most elusive artists, previously known only by a single-word moniker and a distinctive body of work. has emerged from the murk to reveal his name and face. Banksy? Not him. We're talking about dubstep artist Burial, hotly-tipped for this year's Mercury prize and a man whose shuddering bass and industrial squawks have scored many a sojourn through nighttime London's bitter streets. Having long shunned the limelight, Burial......

As winter's days grow increasingly numbered, it's the time of year when our thoughts must turn toward formulating a survival plan for the most gig-loaded two days we know: the Camden Crawl. Back for its 7th year from 18 - 19 April, Camden Crawl 2008 will see 130 artists playing across the festival's 25 venues along with, for the first time, the addition of an outdoor stage. A variety of daytime activities are planned......

Every now and again we try and bring you the finer things in life. Sure, there's loads of indie, goth, electro and Viking death metal to talk about but what about music on the more classical end of the spectrum? Portico Quartet are currently touring their "inimitable" sound with Basquiat Strings and will headline a gig at the Union Chapel this Friday. We'll be there but we're not sure what to expect. They have......

A fairly quiet time for Londonist music, but this week saw us introduce you to The Wave Pictures on Thursday, catch indie up-and-comers Parka at the Borderline on Tuesday, and suggest you catch "J-Dilla changed my life" at Cargo this evening. Throughout the week, NME favourites play their three week series of Awards shows, and this week sees Babyshambles play Brixton Academy on Monday night, Richard Hawley and Mercury nominated Maps play the Astoria on......

And now for something completely different. We stumbled upon Joey Herzfeld and some of Hooverville at the Carling Academy back in January. Their extraordinarily different sound, great musicianship and stage presence alienated half the crowd and transfixed the rest. Were they mental or brave musical pioneers? We couldn't resist snagging them for an interview purely on the basis of a song called "Cavity Search" and a frenetic gypsy dancing interlude. It went like this.........

Just when you thought MySpace, Facebook, and other social networking sites had pretty much achieved world domination, along comes a site with even more infinite aspirations. Londoner Victoria Vanstone’s yourdeathwish.com wants to help you create the “perfect” funeral. Yes, in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, you could be well on your way to arranging the funeral you’ve always dreamed of: choose the musical set list, the wake menu, the......

Nu-metal stars Linkin Park are the main draw on Monday night, with support coming from the mighty Biffy Clyro as they play the first of two consecutive nights at the O2, and whilst tickets are all sold out, there are a few floating around on Scarlet Mist and such like. Stephen Fretwell plays a sold out show at The Troubadour, and reggae star Finley Quaye plays the first of a three night stay at the......

Talia has already covered the more common places to go dancing tomorrow night, but for a more alternative music New Years Eve, then wander over to Kings Cross’ Monto Water Rats to catch Brighton rockers Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster play a special New Years gig with support from Gingerbread Men, The Foxes and a few others. Alternatively, there are still a few tickets available for Super Fury Animals at Royal Festival Hall. The fun starts......

When Lisa Connell hit the local press last month we were impressed by her spirited determination and charitable entrepreneurship in the face of personal adversity. We caught up with her this weekend to find out how the fundraising's going, whether there's been any naughty business yet and just where should you take Barnet's finest once you've bid her up? So, how’s the dating going? Well its still in the early stages. I’ve managed to......

In the UK, Joe Rogan is probably best known for playing Joe Garrelli in the sitcom NewsRadio, as a presenter on the American reality show Fear Factor, and as a commentator for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. What us Londoners may not be aware of is that Joe is also a prolific stand-up comedian, gigging regularly to huge audiences around America for over fifteen years. He mixes traditional stand-up with political satire, a dissection of......

The Treatment Rooms is a privately owned three-story house in the West London suburb of Chiswick, which over the past several years has had its exterior walls transformed into an ongoing self-contained conceptual piece of mosaic art. The vibrant and well executed mosaics, which cover the front wall of the house and the back garden wall are well worth paying a visit to see. Recently, Londonist took an opportunity to visit the Treatment Rooms......

Several big artists put on sale tours and one off shows earlier this week, so be sure to get booking for the following: Amy Winehouse plays Brixton Academy on Thursday and Friday 22nd and 23rd November, before playing Hammersmith Apollo on the Saturday 24th November. Tickets for all three nights are rapidly going fast at £22.50 a person. Reverend and the Makers play the Astoria on Wednesday 24th October. Tickets are £12.50 each. Super Furry......

Nothing’s more mashable than the Periodic Table. It’s the ultimate nerd icon and eminently adaptable for other purposes. A Periodic Table of the Internet is currently doing the rounds, bringing the concept into the 21st Century. A genius idea. Not least because all the smaller sites on the Table are sure to blog about it, thus perpetuating its longevity. And now it’s our turn. Look, there we are. Bottom right corner. Propping up such......

London Lit Plus?...Plus what? No, you misunderstand. It's like the London Literature Festival. With knobs on. What, you mean your line-up's full of Daily Express columnists? No, you misunderstand again. This time for weak comedy effect, I should wager. So what is London Lit Plus? It's an open literary festival running from 29 June to 13 July. Hang on. Those are the same dates as the London Literature Festival. Are you sure you're not......

Hello mum! I'm Chris, a stand-up comedian. I'll be blogging once a week about fun or interesting gigs I have, or just to give my opinions on the London comedy scene. As it happens, I'm very good at opinions. I've got at least three at the moment, and I'm hoping to have a couple more by the end of the year. If you enjoy my column, why not try making a game out of......

We all know that London is one of the largest, most exciting, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural cities in the world. What other city combines huge amounts of history, taxi drivers who actually know where they're going, a pub every ten metres, fantastic parks for lazy Sundays, and more live theatre and music than you can shake a stick at? None that we can think of. That's why we all live here, after all. Two London comedians......

One of Londonist’s favourite web 2.0 communities, last.fm, has just been bought up by American firm CBS for a rather tasty $280m (£142m). Whilst it may not have been sold for as much as other social networks (such as News Corp's £294m MySpace purchase and Google's $1.65bn buy-out of YouTube), it does mean that last.fm can stay in London and still keep its open source nature. Dave explained what Last.fm is all about much better......

First slides, now colouring in and camping. Tate believes the children are art's future. They’re going to teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside... Sorry, but we all need a Whitney moment once in a while. Today, 150 young people will receive an invitation to attend a day of workshops at Bankside culminating in a mass sleepover in the Turbine Hall. This is part......

This is a new weekend column brought to you by the founders of Niceties Tokens, Liz and Pete of Team Nice. Pendulums So this week, Jacqui Lait MP, the Shadow Minister for London invited Pete and me to Westminster for a chat about niceness. Before I start this – I must stress that Team Nice is not politically biased towards any political party. All we want to do is improve niceness. Jacqui, Pete and......

It’s a surprisingly busy Wednesday night at the Soho Revue Bar for a new acts showcase, and Londoner Alice McLaughlin has her work cut out. Sandwiched between two certified oddballs — louche kimono-clad innuendo machine Antony Elvin and equal parts junkyard blues-ster/mad inventor Thomas Truax, Alice is that far from rare breed: a girl with an acoustic guitar. How do you stick in the audience’s minds in that company? Here’s how. It helps if......

Every Sunday for the past nine weeks, Advice Booth has been open for business on Brick Lane. Questions ranging from the mundane ("why doesn’t he like me?") to the philosophical ("what is beauty?") will be answered in exchange for £1. Following an in-depth discussion, customers are given a lollipop and a typewritten piece of paper, outlining the advice. The Booth also has a refund policy, which means that if you are dissatisfied with the......

There's no question in my mind that My Space is a wonderful thing but I find it alternately inspiring and overwhelming when you get a glimpse of the sheer number of bands and promoters are out there trying to do their thing. It doesn't help that at the majority of gigs I've played on the so-called "toilet circuit" I haven't been that keen on the other bands, I'm not someone who will randomly pop......

Sick and tired of wading through the bleepings and scratchings of super trendy MySpace-famous outfits we thought we'd offer you a break from them, too, with a good old-fashioned dose of angular noise from the truly fabulous Popular Workshop. They've played more gigs than you've had hot dinners, their frontman looks dapper in a hat and if John Peel was still around they'd have set up home at Maida Vale studios by now, so......

Playing a gig as a solo musician can be quite a strange experience. Rocking up to a dingy pub on your own with just a guitar for company can be at once isolating and liberating - you may miss out on the friendly banter of bandmates and friends but it certainly seems to make dealing with calamity easier, as I experienced last Tuesday night. The pub in question - Leonard's on Northampton Road, EC2.......

As the fair weather of Spring tentatively approaches, any attempt by the pretty blue sky and sunshine to wean us all off our incessant computer based social networking by dragging us outside is made more difficult by the advent of Trig.com. Based in Sweden, it's designed to be a "new social networking site for an urban and sophisticated web community of dynamic, inspired and creative individuals, who are primarily fuelled by their own dreams,......

We here in the Ist-A-Verse know that we're sensational, but it's very rare that we get a chance to be sensationalistic. This week, we've decided to have ourselves a little fun and try our hand at tacky tabloid headlines, using nothing more than our favorite posts from this week. Torontoist Special Report: Rosie to Trump: "Fire 300 Bicyclists for Fraud!" On DCist: Students Go Wild for Slogans, Secrets and Sexual Harassment The action was thick......

The Optronica festival took place last week, and Londonist was lucky enough to get tickets for the sold-out session on Friday evening at the BFI IMAX, where we were treated to video mash-ups by festival programmers Addictive TV, and a reactive retelling of Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper trilogy by the director himself. It was easily the trendiest thing we'd been to all year - possibly ever - as proved by the high proportion of......

Not only is Steven Lindsay in possession of a spellbinding voice that's as rich in tone and nuance as a vintage claret, there is also a queue of admirers for the cinematic songs he fashions for it. Keane’s Tom Chaplin and novelist Ian Rankin joined a chorus of critical praise for Lindsay’s 2004 solo debut, Exit Music, and now the urbane singer/songwriter from Glasgow, once leader of chart act The Big Dish, is preparing......