Mike Ashley set to make a killing

And so it came to be that man of the people Mike 'Two Pints' Ashley finally did the honorable thing and put Newcastle United up for sale. Thank fuck. But don't get me wrong; this isn't about one man's sheer bloody-minded megalomania nearly destroying the club he loves. This is class warfare, pure and simple.

Something about Ashley's 'mucking in with the prols' everyman aesthetic boils my piss more than any Russian oligarch or Middle Eastern excuse for a little good-natured racism. The dude who has made his millions selling shitty sports clothes to spotty youths deigns them worthy of a couple of hours of his company every other week and expects to be loved for it...

...but gets death threats instead. Good. Because no amount of polystyrene-clad beer gut disguises the fact that Ashley and his privileged kids are no different to Cameron and his privileged kids or any toffee-nosed Fulham fan. And his privileged kids.

Vote Red, watch football, hate the rich. Revel in the hypocrisy of it all.

Donks?

Knightley Watch

Ladies and gentlemen, a regular feature! And I better get Bill Oddie in the pikchah because it looks like this one's going to run and run.

Speaking of which, take a look to your left...

...woah. Minus ten billion donks.

Born Ruffians - Hummingbird
(Warp)

Oh oh oh! Born Ruffians buzz along like a hyperactive slinky. They’re cute as a button; ‘Hummingbird’ rides a wave of ride cymbals, popped bass lines and grainy guitar histrionics, all the while buoyed by singer LLL’s off-kilter, off-key, off… This, is good, okay? Hey hey hey!

Four donks.

Keira Knightley
An opinion piece

“Women hate me and I don’t care”. With the sheer bloody-mindedness of a hardened Millwall fan, Keira Knightly has succeeded in pissing off half the human race in one fell swoop.

Holed up in a bunker with Big Bad Baz Bamigboye and other assorted Daily Mail oiks, the young rose of English acting attempted to avoid the cavalcade of flak coming at her from all quarters by breezily asserting her superiority to every fat, ugly, poor bitch that ever saw fit to speak ill of her.

“I don’t know why so many women hate me” sobbed the beautiful star of sumptuous new period piece The Duchess (“A TRIUMPH!” – Baz; “A fascinating study of marriage, morals and mores” – Marie Claire; Four Stars – Glamour) before bravely continuing to detail her weight, dress size, gravitational pull (that of a wombat, apparently) and net earnings for the past financial year. “I am skinny. I’ve always been skinny”. Disingenuous, moi?

Well let me wade in here on the side of the untouchables. Keira, I have been subjected to too many of your awful, fatuous period ‘films’; your voice is so affected it makes me want to take a rasp to your Adam’s apple; you look like a boy – you ACTUALLY look like a boy – add a dick and you’d end up with James McEvoy; you have a complete and utter, resounding, absolute, sheer lack of tits; you make girls who don’t look like shoe horns feel bad about the fact and seem to derive blissful pleasure from this.

Women hate you? Keira dahling, everyone does.

A self-righteous five donks.

Step Brothers

If you look closely at John C Reilly's crotch above (I did) you can see the outline of his pee pee pretty clearly.

Three donks.

Bloc Party - Intimacy
(Wichita Recordings)

In what is surely the most brazen attempt yet to deprive the musical bottom feeders ('industry types') of something to earn money on and the musical mouth breathers (http://blogspot.com - why not start your own?!?) something to, erm, blog on, Bloc Party have put their third album 'Intimacy' up for download immediately upon completion. For five quid you can circumnavigate the lumbering hype monolith and get music on your iPod that yesterday you didn't know existed. This is a gesture on Bloc Party's part that I can only applaud. So much, in fact, that I circumnavigated the biz entirely and downloaded it straight from Isohunt. Get over it, I hate myself enough already.

Musically this is the band's most intense offering to date. Opener 'Ares' flaunts the dichotomy between the organic and the technological in a way that progresses easily from previous effort 'A Weekend In The City', showcasing some of Matt Tong's most bombastic drumming along with Silent Alarm-esque Kele yelps (Kelps?) before diving headfirst into beautiful waves of synth strings. It displays perfectly where the band find themselves today - aware of where they arrived here from, but destined for somewhere far more urgent and, perhaps, important.

Single 'Mercury' continues this train of thought, with layers of vocal tracks bonding to form a siren song to something or other. I have neither the time nor the inclination to posit a meaning for 'My mercury's in retrograde', but rest assured it WILL be all over the clubs and you WILL be dancing.

So, 'intense', 'urgent', 'important'; sounds good, right? Well, yeah. But, BUT, if you take away the countless layers of samples and tracking, you're left with what is probably Bloc Party's weakest collection of songs to date. As a whole it sounds massive, but take any song alone and it sounds, dare I say it, a little rushed. Whether this is a convenient illusion or not remains to be seen, but nobody actually LISTENS to music anymore so it shouldn't be a problem.

Three and a half donks.

Save Your Breath vs Fireworks - Split
(Zone 6 Records)

I'm going to kick this off with a football analogy, so indulge me for a moment. Like Anton to Rio Ferdinand, British pop-punk has always defined itself from its American brother by being, frankly, not as good. Pretty crap, to be honest. Really quite bad. Like, embarrassing bad.

But lo, what is this?!? Save Your Breath are heading up the resistance! And in the kind of coup an African nation would be proud of, SYB have pulled transatlantic pretty boys Fireworks for some heavy petting. That is, a split CD.

Kicking off with an actually half-decent intro track (for it is true!), SYB proceed to slay with a couple of barnstormers that, despite sporting possibly the worst song titles ever ('Bin Laden Saw Your Slogan Shirt And Now He's Got A Rap Career'? Jeeezusss), have enough going for them to stop you skipping straight to track four. There's some lovely textured guitar work going on here, and the singer has a cute little yelp during the jumpy bits that I bet the girls will love.

Fireworks are a known quantity, and they don't disappoint here. As proper MUSICIANS you always fear they're going to descend into some CoCa-style circle jerk, but it never happens; the instruments bounce off each other like they're having a fist fight. You want a piece of me? Come on and give it your best shot!

Four donks.