Blogwatch

Hurrah! Real genuine new content on Excuse Me For Laughing - lots of it! And it's ace too! He Who Cannot Be Named offers his views on recent gigs by indie-darlings-from-across-the-pond Rilo Kiley and The Arcade Fire, as well as on Jean-Luc Godard's 'Weekend':

"I urge you to watch 'Weekend'. Watch it, because none of your friends will have and you just have to tell them about a certain mad as a bag of ferrets French film that likes fucking about with the medium and likes barking Marxist philisophy in your face while decrying the crumbling moral body of the Western world. The problem is that modern film has evolved a grammar that is staid and all too audience pleasing. Sometimes, we need de-education. Sometimes we need to grubby our hands in the basic nutrients of cinema and get in touch with our Iron Age-equivalent cinemagoer. Old films have ways of surprising precisely because the common garden viewer has left it so far behind. Still, I preferred 'Pierrot Le Fou'. That's the one for Godard virgins. The sun, you see, it's always the sun, spraying its rays on a diamond sea. That and Anna Karina stabbing someone in the head with scissors. Lovely, so very lovely".

Elsewhere...

Inspector Sands takes the Tories, Rebekah Wade and Paul Dacre to task for "gypsy-bashing", while Jonathan takes a more general look at political opportunism and the success of recent campaigns in bringing pressure to bear upon our elected representatives and shaping policy decisions;

Kenny reviews another stack of novels, including Haruki Murakami's 'Kafka On The Shore', Michael Chabon's 'The Final Solution', Ian McEwan's 'Saturday' and Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Never Let Me Go';

Del writes about Woody Allen and his heroes - "It occurs to me that many of my heroes are those who refuse to shy away from the harshness of existence, but strive to present it honestly, change it, and most of all, laugh about it: the absurdity of life on earth";

Thanks to Phill aka Mr Fixit, Mike's BBC Radio Nottingham interview is now up online.

And finally...

Amidst all the festivities for St Patrick's Day (otherwise known as Guinness Aid), Sarah celebrates St Cuthbert's Day. What do you mean, you didn't know it was the 20th March? Or that he's the patron saint of Northumberland?