Jam magazine - brings nothing new to the Charlie Sheen nightmare

The News of the World launches men's supplement Jam - what a very sad and tired retread of masculine fetishes it is. The title alone is a pre-Loaded memento mori - y'know, bedroom air guitars. Nasty lank hair. Wanking.

Cover boy Liam Gallagher is a '21st Century Boy' when the b/w pic harks back to the mid-90s. Yellow-toothed David Bailey snaps the portrait, sooo 60s, darling.

The John Lydon Glenda Slagg page snarls into sundry confusions: he tells us that he calls the Royal Wedding the Royal Weeding - 'because there will be a bit of cross-pollination in the family for once.' Gardening question: what has weeding to do with cross-pollination?

Did someone edit this magazine or was it thrown together by celebrity bookers weathered by eye-rolling riders?

Another 90s-looking relic, in the shape of Prof Brian Cox, boldly recycles his old uni notes to tell us about a star that blew up 700 years ago. Nothing more recent from the atheist campaigner? The accompanying eye-like nebula photo would be better placed in a Specsavers ad, with Cox as the 'before' case study.

Jam being a cliche-in-progress, the feature on organised crime groups inevitably follows. With street crime rates on the rise, this is just what the world needs - another magazine crime polish for the enlargement of mirrored scrotism.

It's just as well the publication is a giveaway: anyone in mags will tell you dark covers don't sell. And a near-monochromatic inside, with bits of spot colour (in the few ads mainly), associates dreary notions of fantasy machismo with psycho cellar dwellers. If you want to give someone a nervous breakdown in this fragile little world suggest a piece on trannies and whether they dress right or left in drag.

I once wrote apropos of Tony Parsons, and an idiotic piece he disgorged in GQ about his soldier daddy and his (Tony's) love of guns, that cultural masculinity thrives on the degree of harm it causes: the more others are deprived of something the more the depriver - the hapless male catalogue reader - feels valued as a man. Jam brings nothing new to this Charlie Sheen nightmare.

One bit of hope is in the editor's letter, pre-written in spirit in another age by aging scrote James Brown, the founder of Loaded, now proud owner of the Sabotage Times website: 'Most men [don't read magazines],' writes Mark Hayman. The poor chap must be a professional masochist.

The Hurt Locker: Six Oscars for a propaganda war movie

When Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker was first released last year, much was made of its detachment from the politics of Iraq's 2004 post-invasion period. Because it didn't play The Star-Spangled Banner everytime a US bomb disposal squaddie swaggered out to unpick yet more enemy street ordnance, it was thought apolitical - especially by compliant film critics who pasted phrases from the press packs into their reviews.

In fact the movie is a deft piece of war propaganda. Its unsung assumption is that its US soldiers are in Iraq for some good purpose - no need to spell it out - and that lives are put at risk for some good reason, you fill in the blanks. Shot largely in neighbouring Jordan, its Iraqi citizens are extras to the director's focus, there to be bellowed at, moved on or suspected: they stand about staring uncomprehendingly in their rags at the principals, passive cattle to the cowboy rustlers; or wallpaper in a movie soap.

At no point does anyone say to a US soldier, "What the fuck are you doing in my country?"

The Hurt Locker stylistically is a spaghetti western without the pasta (or the western for that matter). The alpha male catalogue is picked clean of options as brooding men engage in horseplay bonding rituals when not crouched in padded suits over IEDs. Their essential characteristic is muteness. Their lack of outward drama is in inverse proportion to the risks they take. This emotional internalisation makes them pretty useless human beings, hopeless shoppers in superstores. hopeless fathers and husbands.

For they are addicted to the "rush of war ... for war is a drug." The movie makes this plain. But that's just a gloss to the real business in hand - the further movie fetishisation of machismo. Just about every Hollywood flick glams up conventional ideas of masculinity. The Hurt Locker pathologises its heroes - just as The Dark Knight unveils a troubled Batman - yet places them on an altar. It's a romantic thing to do. It's the fulfilment of our dream expectations. We can launder our relish by redressing fantasy superheroism as a sickness. And the superhero need not wear a blue cape.

How many Oscar jurors saw the movie this way? Bigelow's pretence at political objectivity was dropped in her Academy Awards acceptance speech - "I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men in the military who risk their lives on a daily basis in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world." The Hurt Locker is about the men, not the women.

While a useless contribution to any understanding of the pathologised male as superhero, the film did at least put the wretched Avatar in the Oscars shade.

'Tatlersnob': The man who is utterly obsessed with Nicholas Coleridge

Nicholas Coleridge: In the company of Jordan, Megan Fox, Justin Timberlake et al, he is now a sex object: in this instance, the pin-up of 'Tatlersnob'

Even my most unforgiving critics - yes, you - will readily agree that Madame Arcati has a talent for finding human nuggets: very singular creatures with peculiar tastes. The gorgeous Robin Tamblyn and his preoccupation with Kevin Spacey. Fish and her exquisite fanaticism for Nicky Haslam. Now meet "Tatlersnob".

Tatlersnob, 28, is the alias of a young man who has a fixation on ... Nicholas Coleridge, 52 (job title below), the man who presides over Vogue, Glamour, Tatler etc, in the UK. Recently, Tatlersnob began dropping comments on various Arcati posts in praise of Mr Coleridge: after a while I thought, "I do believe I have spotted another nugget for my Museum of Charming Peculiarities." [I thought these words as a proper sentence]

I am quite confident that Tatlersnob is not a tiresome stalker or clinical loon: he appears to have an incomprehensible obsession with the upper classes (as framed in upmarket glossies, I hasten to add), the aristocracy and Coleridge in particular as icon of the genera. Tatlersnob, after a little persuasion, agreed to a brief, explicatory interview ....

Tatlersnob! Crazy name! Now look, it's become apparent from messages you've left on Arcati that you have a thing for the Managing Director of Condé Nast and novelist, Nicholas Coleridge. Tell me as much as possible what this "thing" is and how it started - do not stint on detail.

I'm a 28 year old male from the wilds of Scotland. I do so love the upper class and the aristocracy. All those ex Eton and ex-Le Rosey types: so attractive and sauve.

You stinted on detail. Anyway, starting with what remains of his hair down to his well shod feet, give us a guide to your thoughts on Nicholas' body parts. I mean, what do you think of his face, his shoulders, tum, other areas, legs etc. And tell us what you think he is like as a person.

Mr Coleridge has such a handsome face. He looks quite sporty and like he enjoys the outdoors. His chest looks quite wide and muscular and he seems to have lovely chest hair. He may well ride and so have very muscular thighs and bottom. AS a good snob I'm sure his crown jewels are well polished and sparkling.

In your dreams what would you love to happen between you and Nicholas, bearing in mind he's a happily married father of four. Share your fantasy - do you have fantasies about him?

I would just like him to take me out to dinner. I'm sure he is a very interesting person. It would be so lovely listening to his lovely voice for a couple of hours.

My own view is that Nicholas is a status obsessed snob as reflected in the magazines he oversees such as UK Vogue, Tatler, GQ etc, and in his rather facile novels which are just about money. How is this healthy? Defend your hero/fantasy lover from my brutal assessment.

I'm sure Mr Coleridge is just going by the old adage "write what you know about". He knows so much about high society and the upper classes, then why shouldn't he write about them? Mr [Geordie] Greig and he made a wonderful team at Tatler and Tatler needs to be somewhat snobby to remain a society magazine.

Christmas is a-coming. What would you love to buy Nicholas and him you.

I'm sure he could could find me some vintage copies of Tatler or maybe get me an invitation to bounce around a stately home. I would take him as my guest as it's always fun to have someone else to bounce around a stately home with.

Tatlersnob! Thankyou for sharing. xx