Now, Spike (first-name basis, oh snap!) is in town for two days as a speaker at the Global Brand Forum conference for ‘marketing mavericks’; Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia, was also here, along with Al Golin (not to be confused with Al Gore, which is what I heard when someone yelled in my ear over the music at supperclub).

In true Time Out fashion, I knew someone who knew someone who was organising Spike’s ’social calendar’ for his one night in town, and she said we could hang out at the party. How do you say no? So at the stroke of 11, Spike shows up, decked out in NY Yankees gear and probably thick in the throes of jet lag, and sits back on the bed. The following is more or less an exact transcription of our exchange:

[Scene: I walk nervously up to his bed and wave, take my shoes off and essentially crawl on the mattress towards this award-winning director. Awkward moment No 1.]

LD: Um, hi, I don’t want to bother you, but I’m Laura and I’m from New York.

SL: Where in New York?

LD: I was living in Prospect Heights.

SL: Brooklyn! [Pause.]

LD: Uh, yup. So what are you doing in Singapore?

SL: Here for a conference. [Silence]

LD: Cool. What do you think of Singapore so far?

SL: I like what I’ve seen. [Silence.]

LD: Is this your first time here?

SL: Yup. [Even more silence.]

LD: Uhh, cool.

After about two minutes of Yankees talk (’they’re not doing so well right now’), I figured I had worn out my welcome. We shook hands, smiled, I said thanks and resisted the urge to yell ‘I loved Boyz n the Hood!’ over my shoulder (note: he didn’t make Boyz n the Hood), and I leave him to sink back into the pillows that are basically the size of his entire torso.

Sadly, I had fallen into the trap of assuming a celebrity wanted to talk to me as much as I wanted to talk to him. But I also got to say I shared a bed with Spike Lee…and that’s not a bad story.

There’s no denying that it’s a great space, unlike anything Singapore has seen before I’d bet (apart from the bed bar which shut on Mohamed Sultan Road). It is a big place, really big (there’s another room away from the main one with another bar and a central square lounging bed), so my initial thought was ‘How the hell are they ever going to fill this place?’ However, after a few top-ups of champagne, the place began to fill with even more party-goers dressed in white and even more weirdly dressed staff (waiters wrapped in clingfilm – seriously).
I only stayed for a few hours, which apparently was before it got very full, but I had to leave when someone started doing a ‘spoken word performance’ to strange music and visuals of bombs and Hello Kitty on the wall, waaay too much for me. I find performance art excruciatingly painful to watch and don’t understand the obsession with having it at launch parties here – someone please explain.

All in all, the supperclub is a very ‘cool’ place although maybe a little too cool. I really do hope it is successful but worry that the novelty factor may wear off pretty soon. Oh yeah, a word of warning: the toilets are unisex so keep your wits about you, and when you flush – it’s like a tornado went off in the bowl so keep your distance to stay dry. Also it’s dark in there, really dark, so ladies, make sure you do your make-up before you go in ─ you can barely find the mirror let alone see your reflection.

The line up was most certainly impressive, and the perfomers did not fail to deliver. Pussy Cat dolls must’ve been dancing at 3000 beats per second; Panic at the Disco’s energetic performance saw teeny boppers in the front row splashed with the emo rocker sweat; Alicia Keys and her band ROCKED every second with flawless, groovalicious sounds; Jason Mraz shocked the crowd (or maybe just me?) with a distinctly bluesy sound - trumpet solo and all!
Even Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up was a riot - and probably brought the most people to their feet. Although his self-deprecating Austin Powers-esque jibes (”you know this song - you must have a karaoke machine at home, baby yeah!”) made me feel a tad bit sorry for him.

The venue was a good combination of central location, wide open space, a sloping green so even the shorties can see and requisite stately colonial building. (this is Singapore after all)

Harry’s as the caterer was another good choice. Who would have ever expected sushi and vegggie wraps at an outdoor concert? There was also chicken kebabs but the cues were so long I passed. And prices were surprisingly reasonable - $6 for a wrap and $2 for a bottle of Fiji water.

Some let downs which made Singfest only GOOD and not GREAT - the sound and the crowd control.

It was just plain not loud enough most of the time and at moments the sound cut out altogether - at the beginning of Panic at the Disco no one could hear a peep, although the band was professional to a tee and the show just went on tantrum-free. A bigger, more experienced band (fronted by anyone named axel) would’ve thrown a hissy fit and walked off the stage fo sho.

The crowd got restless with the long breaks between acts - up to half an hour sometimes! PCD got everyone wound up and should have been smack bang before Alicia Keys as an opening act. But the long break between the two sets meant the buzz was gone. Many people walked out during poor Alicia’s set - exhausted and lacking the energy after a long and very hot day of listening to music.

That said, alicia herself was flawless - not a single imperfect note came out of her mouth. Her finale of No One had what sounded like an entire eastern european nation singing “Uh-uh-uh-uh-OH!” in chorus.

Would I go again next year? Yes. But I’d hope this baby would be a little grown up by then.

Sabina Fernandez

The gallery was spacious and had ample lighting and not the spotlight ones that make you sweat buckets. There was a hidden area with a couch and a lazy chair; a screening of one of Tim’s multi-media presentations was showing. My eyes were transfixed on the projector screen. My concentration was interrupted when I caught a whiff of buttered popcorn and turned to my left. The gallery’s owner Gary was micro-waving cornels! He put them in retro-esque red-and-white stripped boxes like the ones you would get in theatres circa 1960s. He saw me eyeing a box with intent, which resulted in him giving me one whole box of freshly popped buttery goodness.

I spent the remainder of the evening walking around the gallery and even had a cigarette while talking about art with the gallery’s consultant Eunjeong Park. Originally from Korea, Eunjeong has a liking to quirky collections, ignoring the current state of ‘Contemporary South-East Asian’ art attack in Singapore. She also reminisced about how she used to love smoking back in Korea and that it was too hot here to actually enjoy a cigarette. I agreed with her, but then she continued to say that at least it’s helping her addiction and that made me laugh. I asked her how much ‘Uncle Joe’s Story’ costs and she mentioned that it was me about $3000++ to take that baby home. I thought about it and realised that I wanted it because it reminded me so much of Richard Prince. I decided to save the $3000 and wait for the day when I can afford an actual Prince.

Even though I left the gallery empty handed, I took back with me great conversation, a stomache full of salty popcorn and a much needed serving of non South-East Asian art.

We stopped for a second to look at the mechanical ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’ by the same artist, which didn’t do much for us. It was pretty to look at but we were done in a second. Finally we made our way up two flights of stairs to check out Singaporean artist Zulkifle Mahmod’s ‘Sound work: Dancing with frequencies’. It was basically an empty school hall with plasma screens lined in a row. The steps of the auditorium has light sensors, when your body hits any of the sensors, they produce sounds and digitalised sound waves on the plasmas. I felt like I was a conductor of my own digital symphony, the novelty wore off and we made our exit.

On the whole, it was an interesting experience to see how Asian artists interpret their local traditional routines and landscapes with the use of modern technology and materials.

By the end of the year, Butter Factory loyalists will have to head on over to the Fullerton for their fix of creamy hip-hop and electro. Yeah, you read that right - one of Singapore’s most popular clubs is moving to One Fullerton with a bigger, badder more buttery space in mind (actually, it’ll be twice the size of the current Robertson Quay location, and twice as nice). Sceptics should bite their tongues - although Butter will take over the area where Centro used to be (among a string of other ex-nightspots), devoted Butter-goers will surely prove that the space isn’t ‘cursed’. After all, a night out at Butter is guaranteed goodness. We should know - we speak from experience (all work and no play makes AO unbearable).

Now, I’m all for national pride (esp. considering National Day is about a week away), but the reaction to Singaporeans cheering on Brazil seems to border on ‘tar-and-feather’ levels. Sure, you should cheer on your home team, but if someone makes a good play, don’t you resign yourself to applaud that, too? I mean, I do — I know how freakin’ hard it is to pull off that mid-level bicycle kick while surrounded by defenders in the 18.

It’s also not like the Brazil/Singapore rivalry is up there with Manchester United/Manchester City. This is the equivalent of your little sister playing your older sister in the backyard – it’s a friendly match. Winner gets a Popsicle. It’s a pre-Olympic game, which doesn’t get much friendlier (case in point: Manchester matches have post-game brawls, while the Olympics have cute, fuzzy mascots handing out souvenir pins).

How often do you get to see a team of Brazil’s calibre in this region? Let alone see how the Lions pull their game together against them? It could have been a massacre — I’d predicted 12-0 in all seriousness. But Singapore keeper Lionel Lewis made some solid saves, the Lions had control of the ball for at least part of the game, and Brazil didn’t embarrass us like they could have. Maybe my standards have dropped because I haven’t seen a great live football game in a while, but I give both teams credit for making my Monday night much, much more entertaining than it would normally be.

Fun facts: Attendance: approx. 33,000; this was the final game at the National Stadium before it’s torn down.

The comparison to Cirque de Soleil is unavoidable when describing Studio Festi, but this really is the only way to try to convey the sheer scale, vivid colour and imagination of the large-scale outdoor performances this Italian troupe pulls off. On the opening weekend of the Night Festival, a sizeable audience was wowed at the National Museum and SMU campus with a spectacle of grace and style. Stamford Road was cordoned off and earlier drizzle had petered out by showtime, giving Festi free rein to stage a delicately beautiful, virtually indefinable two-part humdinger that combined surrealism, magic, music, circus spectacle, pyrotechnics, romance and art in roughly equal measure. Never knowingly understated, in the Museum’s irrefutable neo-Palladian grandeur Festi were gifted the ideal backdrop for their latest creation, the aptly titled extravaganza The Dancing Sky.

A vague narrative thread ran through part one – a couple meets, falls in love, is forced apart – but Studio Festi is, in quintessential Italian fas

hion, a triumph of style over logic, and by far the best way to enjoy The Dancing Sky was to gaze up at the aerial acrobatics, absorb the breathtakingly pretty set-pieces and swoon. A trapeze artist danced around a white piano; elegantly clad ladies dangled off giant balls into the crowd; a sailing ship slid across the Museum façade; weird brides on wheels wore oversized dresses as they cut a balletic dash several metres up: such was the utterly lovely, slightly barmy stuff of part one. The bemused audience shifted over to the campus green for part two. A strange fellow dressed as a pioneering explorer climbed onto a podium with his telescop

e. As we stood in the darkness waiting for the dénouement, anticipation grew. Whatever were they going to pull off in this small space? Oh yes, obviously: a fabulous dance routine in and around a giant ba

tht

ub; a magnificent slideshow of classical-art images illuminated by water jets (how did they do that?); fire-spinning performers twirling their torches to a throbbing techno beat. Words don’t do justice; n

or do pictures, even. You had to be there.

Kudos, too, to the event organisers for shepherding the click-happy throng efficiently, though never heavy-handedly, throughout. Stylish presentation aside, this was hardly the seamless display perfected by Cirque de Soleil; but protracted delays and occasional longueurs notwithstanding, this made for sumptuous stuff. The total price of a fantastic night out? Twelve dollars and 35 cents, all of which went on the taxi ride home. Now that’s magic.

Jonathan Evans

Without a doubt, these plays were the best performances I’ve seen since I moved to Singapore. They were smart and edgy, dealing with issues like rape, suicide, unrequited love, and generational differences with tongue firmly in cheek, making even the strangest conversation palatable. The ultimate winner was ‘I’ll Have the Special,’ a comedy about a ‘desperate man finding redemption in his appetite’ (read: a murderer goes to a specialty restaurant to find a quick end to his life in four courses or less, including crab cakes with cyanide and a lovely apricot flambé for dessert — though no one’s ever made it long enough to order it). Former Straits Times journalist-turned-playwright/filmmaker Ken Kwek took home the best playwright award, while the play’s director, Pam Oei (of the Dim Sum Dollies), also took top honours.

Also impressive was ‘Esla and Frinz Go Partying,’ a story about the life of a balloon, from its primal fears (candles, children hyped up on the dangerous ‘red drink’, pins) to the pinnacle of its life (hearing the sacred song, ‘Happy Birthday’). Coral Anne Tong was the runner-up for best actress for her straight-faced portrayal as, well, a bunch of balloons.

Though the shows are over, there’s talk of a Short + Sweet musical version in December. Kwek and the director for ‘Esla and Frinz’, Samantha Scott-Blackhall, have also teamed up to put on Apocalypse Live!, a black comedy/political satire about Singapore in 2058 that’s part of the Singapore Theatre Festival in August. Keep an eye out for these talents.

More winners:

Best actor: Stephen Anthony Wiley, ‘Somewhere between the Sky and the Sea’

Best actress: Sharda Harrison, ‘How Do You Want Me? How Do You Like Me Now?’

Best new talents: actor Peer Mertz, ‘How Do You Want Me? How Do You Like Me Now?’
Playwright Dong Xin, ‘Help!’ (the first-ever Short + Sweet show done in Mandarin)

We’re really sore about our favourite lunch place, Tartines, closing down for no apparent reason. Psyched up for $4 nutella waffles, we rocked up to find the place gutted out without explanation. Not even a Dear John letter. We asked the aunties at the shop next door, but they had no idea why. The good news: rumour has it that Tartines is moving to a location near Amoy (yay!) although this could be a cruel joke (if it is, I will get you. I know where you work). Perhaps Capital Tower jacked up the rent. Who knows? Either way, if my waffles aren’t back within two weeks, it’s going to get ugly around the office.

www.tartinescafe.com.sg