Good Jeans are Easier to Find than Good Friends.

This is not okay for anybody who isn't a model.

Your jeans are too tight, too loose, too low-hung, and the worst critique of all- too far-flung from the standard issue of 501's (the bell bottom experience should never revive). At some point in our lives, we've suffered panic-room frenzy each time we think about hitting the books for a denim education.

In fact, it's almost hard to discern that ONE pair of jeans that would stick you through thick and thin (pun intended) thanks to fashion's unresting churn of different takes every season. Compared to a workwear staple in the 1900s, denim is a plethora of different shapes and sizes since.

Here, an abridged guide to picking up a trusty pair of jeans in 5 minutes tops.

1) The fit

Unless you enjoy sweating buckets hoping that your tailor doesn't butcher your jeans, the fit should be gotten right off-the-cuff. It is the single element that ties together an entire construct of your jeans, without you spending another buck on tapering.

Often, skinny jeans are silhouette-elongating magic pants that skims at every inch of your legs. However, they are also uncomfortable, difficult to breathe in, and damaging to your ball sacks. Instead of diving straight for the skinny-to-the-hilt look, try a slim fit, which is a wider option compared to the skinny jeans at the thighs and calves. A start would be to stop shopping at the women's section; and then to ensure a flattering fit that would break in well after a few wears under your belt, bend your knees when you first try it on. If you can't move in it, chances are, you won't be able to facilitate ease later too because they usually stretch up to just about an inch.

2) The wash

Results take almost a year to achieve, if not longer.

Next, eyeball your favourite wash. From a faded pre-wash evoking vintage "whiskers" to a keen shade of indigo barely manipulated, opt for a shade that doesn't make you look ruddy.

But unlike pre-washed jeans, there are, for the disciplined, raw indigo if you prefer a one-of-the-kind. Like a pair of cork-based footbeds that Birkenstock's has boasted to mould according to your feet, raw indigo is denim that hasn't been treated, which would eventually accord to your legs, depending on how well you break them in. Apart from the general rule of thumb that is to not wash your jeans 6 months before wearing them in, denimheads have also engaged in the complicity of raw denim care with other high-eternity tips:  Sit in the bathtub in your jeans to ensure optimal water temperature, hang them after wash upside down to prevent shrinkage, or just swim in the sea as myth suggests on how to wash your precious raw denim.

3) The rise

Hips don't lie.

However, sartorial advice should never be taken as God's word. Blogs are prescriptive such that if you're also wide-hipped, you should avoid a low-rise, because they are proportionately more for the torso than to elongate those pipes you want to show off. But that's just biased. Low rise jeans, while discriminate the petite, may actually be what you're looking for. These denim twills have witnessed a comeback with designers who favor its low-slung hip-baring look that has always been synonymous to the famous musical tropes of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and rock 'n' roll iconoclast Kurt Cobain. They are nothing of the waistband that hugs around the hip, only to reveal the midriff that exposes your pelvic floor discreetly, as you ease into a stretch. It's a sexier ambition than the dad jean option fielding our vision on the trendier streets.

With each rise, fit, and colour moulding your silhouette differently, sussing for jeans are essentially pure preference. Taking these tips off the bat, they should help you sieve out what you don't want, at least, before distilling the top crop. Always spare no effort when you buy a pair. Try it on and make sure you pass through the mirror check, twice.

When a stranger smiles at you. Accidental water marks impressed on my Levi's.

Minimalism has a father (and it wasn't the guy who invented Instagram).

Instagram's self-curate of photography is an art.

You don't need a Pew survey to tell you how much time you've spent on Instagram today. Right off the bat, you can probably recount the number of inspiring go-to places you've also seen: Hougang Block 15? No, it's Hougang, the mortar void deck of red lead and verdant, which makes for a perfect setting for creating art, or in most cases, artistic still shots. They can go from photos of stairways to car parks to #ootd's, a sideway glance from the art-types who'd never shy away from abstraction and intelligent contours of HDB architecture.

If you think Instagram is art, you're half-right. Not only is it art, Instagram is a "movement", the vanguard of minimalism playing off space, form, and HDB void decks. Nothing that I know of how to manipulate, excepting "selfies", though, doesn't count either. (My followers are sufficient proof). Minimalism has become an inescapable influence that has crept into the way we express ourselves, while Instagram has made that free, democratic, and mostly, accessible.

Not mine, obviously.

Flat laid like a pro.

But like a #throwback, you ought to know that these efforts didn't just exist when Instagram was invented, it happened before you were even born. Modern artists were into geometry just as the next blogger was into throwing out her belongings for the world to see.

We can learn a little from modernism, an age-old wisdom that involved hard-edged lines and solid colours. Less is more, right? Back then, guys like Frank Stella, and, later, Jackson Pollock with his abstract drip paint were mavericks of its art. So was Ad Reinhardt, whose famous canvases were flushed with all-blacks that could easily knock you off your Instagram page with minimalistic, thought-provoking controversy.

What's art depends on who's looking.

I assure you, there are no cats in these paintings.

Cartoonist, graphic artist, photographer, active pursuant of the Eastern mystic (depending on how you've heard about him), Reinhardt was the father of his modernist black-on-black grid paintings, each seemingly indiscriminate in color (what color?) and form. The artist, who first created cubic collages in the late 1930s and early '40s, moved toward pure abstraction by the Swinging '60s, a colourful time in opposition to the monochromatic paintings that furthered his oeuvre.

What arrests you when you lock gaze into a Reinhardt is everything the eye easily misses. Depth, the barest of primary colours lost in the sea of unwavering, still darkness, surfaces once the eyes manage to engage in the oil grids, with black paint drained out of its 5 x 5 canvas to produce a sleek, suede-like appearance. To catch the geometry here requires patience, which, compared to our age of instant gratification, really turns Instagram on its head.

With asceticism and pure joy, there is a sense of self-restraint and the confessional. A type of discipline when you stare into his paintings enmeshes your gaze. Reinhardt's subtle this way. His paintings are of a meditative experience that reveals more once your eyes uncover the green or red lines breaking each solid square, tracing lineage back to his early non-Western techniques used to create these pure, present still images of blue-black. That's why they're also vulnerable, not in the poetic hack of suicide-prone Sylvia Plath way, but, really vulnerable. Since the paintings are without visible brushstrokes, a single imprint of your fingertip could easily mar the surface. Without sounding like an art zionist, you got to see it to believe it.

Mind you, this was all before the Internet age. Before blogs gave everyone the license to critique freely, critics thought Reinhardt was Art. And Art is Reinhardt, indeed; the man was a kicker. A left-field player who stubbornly poked and antagonized what's meant to be Art: "I don't want to 'open up' art so that 'anything goes' or 'anything can be art' or 'everyone is an artist' or 'artist is like everyone else'."

It's no wonder why we're so anxious. As one friend used to share why he regulates tightly over what he uploads onto his own grid-themed Instagram, "I'm still figuring out my aesthetics."

Sound the death knell, it seems like somebody's going to have a he(art) attack.

Caption this, IG-ers.

If you enjoy selfies and "foodporn"-type shots, the Capitol is for you.

The Capitol Building is a vision with illuminated bidet sprays!

Wedged between the boot of city hall and the quay side of town, the Capitol Building is an erecting stature that boasts the same towering presence of Ion Orchard, Tangs, and even, Abercrombie and Fitch. Although they share similar powerful infusions powered through air vents- think yuzu, vanilla, and Ion's aloe relaxant, Capitol's floral spray matters because it throws off the simmering rank smells of concrete, sweat, and the urban buzz outside. "Breathe new life into luxe," it promises.

Since its restoration, Capitol has swung its doors open (with a Jubilee highlight of a film 1965 to boot) to fanciful eateries and upscale boutiques- a modern fixture of luxury hotels one can expect to par for the course.

Though, without breaking the bank, the swanky new mall is a better place to take your coffee, along with a couple of selfies.

Fixated onscreen toward my right was not what it looked like- a burger.

As a stopover for the blistering hot afternoon with plenty of time to kill, Capitol offers a platter of food options. Motivated by two-storey boutique cafes with a view to absorb the piazza's experience, the place is fully air conditioned with an outdoorsy view bathed in daylight. Apart from a few uninitiated tourists captivated by its interior, you'd find locals tucked into the corners of cafes, settled in with the atmosphere, serving as backdrop for a Sunday's painter landscape artwork.

More excitedly in its basement, you'd find the novelty in BreadTalk owned Palette, a multi-cuisine (read: food court) dining concept housing signature dishes with award-winning titles like a wrestling belt. But there's no fighting for seats here. Palette is an upscale food court with uniformed wait staff and a functional cocktail bar smacked at the entrance- just in case you missed it the first time. With unflinching gazes, they'd eagerly bring you to your seats, which, compared to the endearing concept of "chope" at real food courts, are assigned. You'd be handed with an iPad, per protocol with most dining concepts these days, and you'd want to ask for a glass of water. But that's not in tandem with the rest, no; water's three dollars, free flow.

Easy navigation make ordering food fool proof.

Confirming orders from a touch-and-go iPad beats old fashioned menus, hands down. 

If you're not yet dizzy from the glitz of luxury food court, the food actually performs well. It's what you'd expect from spending $11 for a bowl of soupy noodles. Or in our case, $4.50 for prawn chee cheong fan and $3.50 for six pieces of prawns swathed in crispy beancurd skin. Chugging beer alongside the afternoon dim sum is also a bliss, notwithstanding the chargeable service fee that'd later, much to our chagrin, top off our bill of two beers and dim sum to a steep $32.50.

That's me seducing the lens with a fun-sized seaweed wrapped beancurd roll.

A cool, tall one smooths over your palate, greased with delicious hawker dishes.

As the wafting fragrance hits you on the nose one last time before you sober up from the exorbitance of Capitol, joining back the school of people outside feels real. The crowd, the construction, the noise drilling into your consciousness can only be an awakening. That if Ion made you feel like the rich, Capitol would be royalty, like every whiff of its floral scent unique to its illusory lavishness.

Must be a bitch to clean.

BRB, I'm still dreaming up a title.

Hello, why are you daydreaming? 

Our minds are usually adrift, dimly aware as to where or, even, why we're fantasizing. Maybe the round table talk was getting a trifle tired over dinner, or, perhaps, we don't really care about that friend who can't stop yakking about his dismal relationship. We daydream because we're restless, in other words, regardless of what we dredge out from the mud-pit that is our imagination. "Can I leave?" "I need to scratch my balls, would he take that the wrong way?" "Can he tell that I'm not listening? OK. Make eye contact." 

Then, what about the unsolicited hours when we're asleep? Unlike with spacing out, dreaming is night-time activity. And dreams are cathartic. They're unique to individual experiences, and they could also be puerile. Between fantasizing about munching somebody till their eyeballs roll back into their sockets and overplaying an entire murder sequence on your boss, your thoughts can only be so ludicrous in dreams it makes daydreaming kiddie fodder. 

I suffered the latter last night after someone turned the A/C off and, groggily maneuvered my way to the loo to take a call time from sleep, resumed afterward unhappy, grouchy, and depressed. Because it happens every time someone disrupts the cyclical motion of rest, I'm starting to recognize a pattern. The mis-en-scene was a rustic hotel that elicited a Stephen King thriller, the characters were blurry caricatures of people who could cast an episode of Lost, and the plot was a thumping march toward my own imminent doom, eventually. In those couple of hours wherein I played victim/hero/protagonist in my own drama, the fear was so gripping I woke up dislocated (psychically). 

But why do we dream? Theoretically, dreaming has nary of a function to the everyday life. It barely makes anyone smarter or relaxed as some scientists have claimed. I'm my own testimonial of its misbelief because even the most violent of naps have not honored my GPA nor increased my serotonin levels. Perhaps its most credible explanation lies in the still processing of memories, where our brains suss out important information and interpret them accordingly to whichever feeling was consciously dominant before we hit the rack. So, for instance, if you've just suffered a break up, you are going to be dreaming up a sad tale; or, if you've just taken an important paper, you might dream about failing- because you're anxious. "Don't sleep unhappy", as our mothers used to nag.

However, all this makes little sense because we're theorizing something that is just as functional as to reprieve from a busier daytime (or social media). Dreaming is actually less symbolic, contrary to Freud who romanticized that we are all poets in the night. It is neither an auspice that tells you which lottery digit to buy nor a warning that shapes our future, than merely memory processing like a videotape while we rest. It plays back memorable events relentlessly and sometimes distorts the tape. That that basically delineates the entire Sinister 2 movie, featuring Ehtan Hawke and a bunch of super8 home reels on August 20, dreams too, are terrifying to anticipate.

What is more disconcerting about dreaming is the type that overruns its effect into the day. Like mine, your dreams could spoil the mood. If you were dreaming of something hellish, you would not be able to shrug off its aftermath as if it were just conversations at the water cooler. Bad dreams weigh down the merriest of men, in brief. I couldn't even sit proper and write this until I hit the gym, because bad dreams embargo your daytime cheerio.

The only logical retort as to why we dream and interpret them is because we don't leave questions unanswered. If we do, it makes us feel uncomfortable, like a rash whose itch won't stop until you got to the rub of the problem. The natural curiosity of Man to question, argue, and make for a case in point about almost anything is evidenced in the emphasis we place on matter as infinitesimal as a dream. (Representative: The Chicken or the Egg dilemma.) But before I derail into the intellectual hodgepodge of dream psychology, my stake is a simple one: Don't be that asshole that analyses everything. 

Born in a typical Chinese family wherein traditions eclipse common sense, I spent most of my growing up years swathed in superstitions. That they were "life-altering", a dream was supposed to crack a hole in the universe by predicting the next Big Sweep, leaping ahead the rest who but all want to get rich quick. If there were any clues leading to numbers, I was the Reiki master, reporting number sequences to my parents. ("Go for the gold, you idiot!") And I indulged in it. I would forage for numbers sleepily lost and then watch them snake a queue at the lottery counter, hoping against hope that for once, dreams do come true. 

They never did. So don't be that asshole that squanders money on dreams too. 

That Was Embarrassing... The New Fantastic Four Punishes Its Audience For Trying To Care.

In the anticipated flop of Marvel's "first family superhero" movie Fantastic Four, the latest reboot had me at its first half, wide-eyed and eagerly consuming backstories usually unseen from the claptrap of superhero blockbusters. Sure, it's great with what stood Fantastic Four's opening apart from other Marvel heroes like Ironman and the rest of The Avengers. There was a curiosity to its origin story, made up by a new cast of relatively green actors (Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan) to the blockbusters. But somewhere between the middling action and confusing onscreen chemistry among its characters, I gave up. It felt almost embarrassing to follow through; not least uncomfortable that its brilliant cast had to makeover an entire franchise with what little was offered to them in its screenplay. Wait, would there even be another movie?

By now, there are four. Not of the superhero members Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben, whose powers make one hell of a potential, but four desperate movies that have all but left viewers disgruntled with lackluster results. I know, their powers are almost-lame for the effects, with an elastic rubber belt, a disappearing woman, a walking torch, and a rock. But those of us who aren't familiar with Marvel's Fantastic Four comics would be aware of Tim Story's 2005 campy make of the superhero quartet. They were bad, but they survived. It’s the one where, with Ioan Gruffard, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans and the dimly known Michael Chiklis playing the equally, physically unrecognizable Thing, I wished I caught Wolverine Origins, instead. Though, this version shouldn't have followed suit.

Unlike with its predecessor, director Josh Trank, who carved a pretty good "superhero" film Chronicle out of the hand-held cam genre, succeeded a different initial take. First, he did away with the caricature of superheroes. Besides keeping their powers, almost everything else about our beloved members were refreshingly offbeat from its all-familiar plot: viewers were invited to new onscreen bromance between Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, something not offered before, but captured decently over the span of their boyhood, where interactions over a teleporting machine introduced early into the film as a twelve-year-old’s creation (scoff) became the catalyst for the movie's only adult space action. Dr. Franklin Storm, represented by actor Reg. E. Cathey, also adopted The Invisible Woman, who was played by Kate Mara. Furthering the distance from the original, the cast travels inter-dimensionally, instead of eating radioactive rays for breakfast from a spaceship. Stretching our imagination beyond this universe, the members stepped foot onto an unknown CGI-splayed Planet Zero where they were to meet freak accidents that would then uniquely alter them irrevocably, therefore giving them their "powers". While we've all heard the last one before with how superheroes would spring from their pedestrian lives into glorified heroic ventures, for one, everything from the comics felt too camp, too unreal for modern theaters, as if we were supposed to empathise the fact that freakish accidents could be a blessing in disguise if it's almost-Godsend powers. For Trank, 2015 gave us enough resource for a humanised plot to tap on our imagination for what is to be wished that they needn’t have to suffer the dangers of inter-dimensional travel. You get the backstory: If you can't insure an unpredictable rally of loyal comic fans, you can't insure space travel.

I almost didn't want them to transform, as Trank cleverly dovetailed their origins to a terrifying sci-fi mishap. I loved the far-out concept of Planet Zero, contrary to reviewers who felt that it looked too much like Mars-- on an amateur's green screen. I loved, with electrifying verdure that traced lava patterns on the craters, how ignorant the characters were to its omen when they took things into their own hands with the teleporter after getting half-assed drunk, embittered by the fact that history's Neil Armstrong took credit for real science. "Let's get a closer look!" Says one intoxicated scientist Reed Richards, who should be a public warning that drinking on the job is always dangerous. Most of all, I loved how Susan Storm didn't even go there, but got her powers anyway from helping her beloved friends. I loved how accidental director Trank made the whole thing look, which eventually became the entire movie. A wreck.

It was good, at first. It made me love my superheroes again with tidbits thrown in here and there about rewriting characters with a grittier script, as if growing up should not age me from loving my juvenile hobby. But all that fell away when reality hit harder than, well, everything about it. From the poor action sequence, to the “ah?” illogical storytelling, the only fantastic thing about the movie was its fans, who filled the theaters full last night. Apart from scathing reviews that I shall not expatiate because everything that could have been said and spat about the movie has already been eloquently written to tear it apart, nobody talked about the groundwork that is its film score, a fantastic rhythmic harmony by Philip Glass who, may I assume, was brought onto the project because everything else was a prompt that I should quit my superheroes, and grow up after its fourth attempt.

Of course, Fantastic Four is not ridiculous because it's bad. It's bad because it's too easily one of the worst works of movies I've seen. To note, I'm not faulting the opportunities it could have exploited, given its great preface for a darker narrative about modern superheroes. (Remember how well Nolan's Batman did?) I'm lambasting the fact that it's a result produced from intentional meddling by the studio guys, to and fro with its director, which isn't anyone's business in the first place, until you make it so public I can't watch a movie without tagging a bad name to it. What's awful about it is that it punishes an audience who's paid money to watch a work fraught with disagreement between its makers and studio superiors. It's like watching a final year project of a movie that has suffered the critique of the unbendable, criteria-abiding lecturer policing as high-eternity mentor. It's as we all know, "artistic integrity" sacrificed for good grades. Or in Trank's state of duress, for saving Fox's face/rights. 

Just after reviews flooded in, somewhat mutating the movie into a blockbuster scorn today, Trank took to his personal Twitter account to profess that he'd a better version of it, but we won't get to see it. Insinuating that Fox had a hand in his movie, nobody cares. Or, at least I don't. In fact, I don't want my money back; take it, I signed up for it despite early buzz that the movie was going to drop with a silent thud later. I was optimistically adamant about reviews because I didn't even like Marvel's The Avengers anyway. Superhero movies, which have become a thing of a brisk trade, aren't usually good movies on their own. They're overdone with huge earth-shattering explosions and underwhelmed by little expositions. And Fantastic Four was going to be my saving grace for the latter. What Fantastic Four succeeded in was neither, due to its own off-screen dilemma. 

Thanks Josh Trank, you not only distanced yourself from a work you produced, you turned tables on the studio that granted you access to everyone's highly-favored squad of family superheroes. Granted, you're a talent, but like your Reed Richards who dumped his friends after the accident because he felt "no good for anybody", you played Martyrdom to nauseating effect this time, which really reminds me of that one group member who discredits teamwork just because the pitch was bad. Nobody likes a downer and you made a fantastic case.