Artist Vincent Valdez is opening a new exhibition of his work in Los Angeles this weekend. With impeccable timing, Burn, will feature cityscapes showing the City and its people in “a process of destruction and regeneration”, with many of the paintings depicting local landmarks engulfed in flames.

This is simply brilliant – funny, scary and cool – and in HD on Vimeo.

  
Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Last month, Letterman finally showed the Bill Hicks performance that he censored back in 1993 - allegedly he felt at the time that the Pro-Life and religious gags went too far.  It’s just classic Hicks and good on Letterman for rubbishing his earlier decision. The interview with Mary Hicks, his mother, is also worth watching. 

These lego models of New York life are brilliant, creative and funny. Apparently, sometime NYT illustrator Christoph Niemann was feeling a little homesick in Berlin, where he is now based.

These are my favourites, but also check out his beautiful children’s books and other illustrations.

Steve Lazarides is about so much more than just Banksy. His roster now includes photographers and sculptors alongside graffiti artists and his other “Outsiders”.

His latest book is a beautiful collection of their work.

This campaign by the British Humanist Association made me smile. Apparently they are trying to raise money to roll the campaign out across London, with serial God-basher Richard Dawkins pledging to match what they raise.

Clearly no end to Damon’s talents. He pops up again here on the BBC’s promotion of their coverage of the Beijing Olympics – to be screened for the first time this evening. The short animation – created with Gorillaz collaborator Jamie Hewlett – was specially commissioned by the BBC and is based on the Chinese folklore, Journey to the West – or if your are of a certain age, a TV programme called Monkey!

Despite being officially the coolest man in music, ever, not to mention being the cover star of one of the most iconic album sleeves of all time, Paul Simonon's first love was always art, and with a couple of notable forays into music - Havanna 3AM and, more recently The Good, the Bad and the Queen - he has pretty much been non-stop behind the easel since the Clash split up in the mid-eighties.

Anyone who bought the TGTB&TQ album, or caught one of their gigs will already be familiar with his style - he painted the sleeve and the stage backdrop. If not you can catch an exhibition of his work which will run for a couple of weeks from 17th April at the Thomas Williams Gallery in Bond Street.

It's his first one-man show in London for five years and features a series of paintings inspired by the bullfights he witnessed in Madrid in the summer of 2003.

I'm not sure if it's the quality of the work or just that ex-Clash fans want to own a one-off piece of his work, but the paintings are expected to fetch upwards of £30,000.

What's the phrase "....turning rebellion in to money".

Hot on the heels of Sarah Silverman's much-watched brilliant video, "I'm F*cking Matt Damon" comes Jimmy Kimmel's (her boyfriend)response - "I'm F*cking Ben Affleck".

Very funny and just amazing who will turn-up to bask in Kimmel and Silverman's glory. (Parental guidance - contains bleeped-out use of the F word).

According to his web site, sleevefacing (taking pictures of yourself with an album cover strategically placed over your face) was pioneered by a DJ called Carl Morris.

What started as a bit of a laugh has turned in to a bit of a phenomenon with nearly a thousand sleeves on Flickr and sleevefacing becoming the cool way to disguise yourself from future employers/lovers/police etc. on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Here are a couple of my favourites.

Good to see Dieter Rams getting some long-overdue credit for his influence on Apple, but I hadn't quite realised just how similar their products look to Braun's own iconic 1950s and 60s designs. Here's Braun's portable radio alongside the IPod

and here's Braun's speaker and the IMac! Homage or rip-off? You decide.

This mugshot of David Bowie, taken by New York police, after his arrest for marijuana possession in the mid seventies, recently went up for sale on ebay.

It's such a great photo. He doesn't look the slightest bit guilty or remorseful.

Bowie is so cool - you could almost believe that it was posed for a fashion photographer rather than some sweaty duty Sergeant - and a lesson to the current crop of law-scraping celebrities (Hilton, Spears, Gibson et al) that every photo is a (self) promotion opportunity.

Bartle, Bogle & Hegarty seem to have had the Audi advertising account since time began.

If they continue turning out fabulous work like the latest ad for the A8, which broke last night, nobody will be challenging them for it anytime soon (Trivia fans - the soundtrack is "The Beep Beep" by Simone White) 

My default position with people on Second Life is, why don't you go and get a first one?!

Or is that the point? Anyway.

Normally I give a wide berth to any stories about Second Life, but this recent article piqued my interest. It appears that US broadcaster HBO has paid a six-figure sum for the rights to a Second Life machinima "documentary" about resident Molotov Alva and his transition from the real world to Second Life, and is planning to submit it as an Oscar entry in the animated short-film category and show it at Sundance.

Make your own mind up. I still think it is nonsense, but it is interesting that major broadcasters are looking at machinima films and Second Life to uncover new animation, writing and directing talent. A cartoonist's My Space, if you will.

The World Press Photo Exhibition is on at the Royal Festival Hall at the moment. It features over 200 photos from around the world covering everything from the war in Iraq to Zidane's sending-off at the World Cup in Germany.

Spencer Platt's work, depicting families returning home to Southern Beirut after the five-week assault on Hezbullah by the Israelis, has been selected as the World Press Photo of the year.

You can see all the photos here or go along to the RFH. It's free of charge and runs until 9th September.

Good on The Hospital Gallery in Covent Garden for putting on the Warhol v Banksy exhibition - a sort-of pop-art equivalent of Federer v Nadal.

Whilst Banksy is primarily known for his outdoor graffiti art, it is his indoor work that I find most amusing and most moving (often at the same time!). Expect to see Banksy's pastiche of Warhol's Marilyn Monroe featuring Kate Moss (left) and his update of Hopper's "Nighthawks" complete with English football-fan thug (below).

As for Warhol, the exhibition will be showing some of his portraits of the Beatles which have never been seen in the UK before.

Get along to the Hospital Gallery, Endell Street, Covent Garden before 1st September. What's more it's free to enter.  

The writer William Burroughs said that Jack Kerouac's amazing novel, On the Road, "sold a trillion Levi's, a million espresso coffee machines and sent countless kids on the road". Bob Dylan said the book "changed my life, like it changed everyone else's". Trueman Capote said "That's not writing, that's typing".

Wherever you stand, 50 years on from it's publication it continues to sell in bucket-loads - 100,000 copies in the USA and Canada alone last year - and the impending anniversary has kicked-off a kind-of mini Kerouac retrospective.

The infamous "scroll" on which Kerouac reputedly wrote the novel in 20 speed-and-coffee-fueled days is itself on a US tour, doing the rounds in libraries and museums. 

Legend has it that Kerouac, frustrated by writer's block and convinced that his flow was hampered every time he changed a sheet of paper, sat down and typed out the entire novel on one 120 foot sheet of paper in one go, using Benzedrine to keep him awake at night.   

Over time this story has lost some of its lustre. The three-week myth was probably perpetrated by Kerouac himself and it is clear that the book went through several edits and iterations before it ended up on the book stalls.

However, it remains a unique memento to the style of writing that Kerouac called "spontaneous prose".

How much the finished article changed from Kerouac's original will become clear in early September when Penguin Books will mark the anniversary by publishing "On the Road:the Original Scroll" - the full, original, uncensored text with the characters real names and original content.

Some of the content was censored at the time and deemed too controversial for publication. Apparently, there is nothing writers wouldn't or couldn't get away with today, but it will be fascinating all the same to see what the upholders of morality thought at the time.

Then, currently in production, Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries, Central Station) is set to direct a Hollywood film version of the book, produced by Roman Coppola and starring Kirsten Dunst as Neal Cassidy's wife Carolyn. (Great trivia fact here; Carolyn Cassidy is the only survivor of the books various protagonists. She is alive and well and living in Bracknell in Berkshire - thanks Pete!).