Woody Allen's written a short piece for The New Yorker:

The point here is that in life one is entitled to a side dish of either coleslaw or potato salad, and the choice must be made in terror, with the knowledge that not only is our time on earth limited but most kitchens close at ten.

The New Yorker: Thus Ate Zarathustra

The good people at Pitchfork Media have assembled 100 Awesome Music Videos. And they truly are, starting with the video for A-Ha's classic Take on Me.

Hooray for YouTube!

Can't sleep. Off to reservist soon. I like green, but it's just not my colour dammit.

I already have a copy of Murakami Haruki's Dance Dance Dance, but I couldn't resist picking up a used copy of the Vintage International paperback, just for the startling cover art by John Gall. That was my sole purchase at Zouk's monthly flea market - Flea n' Easy.

One of my pet peeves is the abuse of the "@" symbol in names, and I thought the curators at the Singapore Art Museum latest exhibition might have been able to avoid this but no -- their latest exhibition is called Fiction@Love . What's that symbol doing there anyway? The phrase makes no sense whatsover.

In my opinion, the curators tried to be a bit too ambitious - the whole collection lacks a compelling focus, but it's worth a look (only $3 and there's the rest of the museum!). Stuff I especially liked were Amano Yoshitaka's black-and-white, close-up, Lichtenstein-ish portrait of a Gatchaman character, very different from his opulent, ethereal, and Yamaguchi Ai's "Hyaku no hana, yuki wa furitsutsu" installed in a small room near the second floor exit.

While you're there, go look in Gallery 2.7 (or was it 2.8?) for the work of video artist Paul Pfeiffer. I like John 3:16 and Fragment of a Crucifixion (after Francis Bacon).

Lately, if I'm not escaping into books or design or book cover design, I'm spending the weekend outside wandering around the fringes of the central area. I can't stand Orchard anymore, even more packed with people now that both the Great Singapore Sale and the school holidays are here.

Constrained by the small floor area, Karen and Kenny have tried to display the Moleskine notebooks for their little exhibition at BooksActually as best they can. The whole experience is a bit voyeuristic -- you are looking through someone's personal notebooks after all -- and the disposable rubber gloves provided add a fetishistic tinge.

Kenny says more books will be coming in week of 5th June. Go over and say hi.

Something to do this weekend!

Yes, I think Moleskines are overpriced too. But you don't have to buy one - just get something else from BooksActually :)