You might well have heard of Max Gogarty. A 19-year-old gap year student who writes for Skins and “spends his money on skinny jeans”, he yesterday began what was to be a series of blogs detailing his travels to India. But he had reckoned without the ire of Guardian Unlimited readers, who lampooned him in a series of nasty, personal and quite frankly hilarious comments.

There are times when, even working on a highbrow publication such as Arena, alongside some of the sharpest minds in journalism, you start to wonder whether you aren’t getting, well… more stupid. One such moment was when I went to the cinema on Sunday to see the much-anticipated Daniel Day-Lewis film There Will Be Blood. I really didn’t get it.

Is the Camden scene dead? Certainly Arena’s resident subculture expert and Hawley Arms regular Hollie Moat has spent the morning weeping into her keyboard over an elegaic blog tribute to London’s most infamous pub.

According to the italicised small-print at the bottom of my work diary, Friday 8 February is notable for one reason. “The largest hovercraft was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight, in 1968.” This makes you wonder what the fucking hell they were smoking round at Collins HQ when it came to selecting nuggets of trivia for 2008. Who on earth cares about giant hovercrafts? But Friday 8 February is a rather momentous day.

The new issue of Arena is now on sale in a newsagent near you. As well as an exclusive interview with Daniel Craig, who’s exploring a troubled youth in his new film, we reveal what it’s like to fall in love with a contract killer (clue: FARC-ing awful). Chomsky-bashing journalist Nick Cohen interviews Islam-bashing novelist Martin Amis and gives a fascinating insight into a man who refuses to “watch my words like a politician”…

Having ‘the Volcano’ Lesley Vainikolo make his debut for England, despite already having represented New Zealand at Rugby League, raises a number of arguments about national identity and what it truly means to represent your country. But when it comes to Rugby, there is only one difference between the League and Union… two fewer idiots. The finest oval ball-shaped game comes to a climax this Sunday when the New England Patriots take on the New York Giants in Glendale, Arizona for the Super Bowl.