And So, To BED

After my pre-Christmas adventures with the street urchins, I trudged off to O-Bar and got another beer, and, despite just having had dinner, found I still had the munchies and therefore had to have these:

Ain't nothin' yummier'n mushroom heads.

I love garlic mushrooms. Not least because their mouthfeel reminds me of cockheads.

'Nuff said.

Nearby, I noticed a couple of those "young brown boy-with-older Caucasian man" types - cousins to the controversial "ladies of the night" that ewik wrote about. I'm sure the one seated closest to me was in it for true love *cough*. But to add more frisson, presently one of the waiters came 'round with another skinny brown boy in tow, and introduced him to the white guy with a proud "Here he is, sir!" A flurry of cell phone numbers being exchanged ensued , as I smiled to myself. Whatever floats your boats, fellas. Everyone has their own story, indeed.

Took a quick leak before leaving and just had to take a picture of this sign:

"I saw the sign..."

Oh, yes, indeedy. People have lost more than their innocence in O-Bar.

And speaking of lost innocence, it was time to return to another place where I misspent mine.

At midnight, I was finally in BED. For the first time in a long, long while.

What to say, what to say, really? I have been a BEDhead since they first opened, but haven't been back since their first big renovation. Not surprisingly, the place looked strange yet oddly-familiar to me, like a Botoxed old flame I hadn't seen in a good long while.

It was darker and seemed smaller than I remembered. Or maybe, to paraphrase the great Norma Desmond:

Say it like an old-timey party queen.

Oooh, snap.

Sniping aside, I have many happy, drunken memories of BED, the same way its current habitués will undoubtedly have theirs. The BED of my memories was no happier or "better" than theirs; it was just a different BED, that's all. The stage looked smaller than the one they had during the first renov, and there were three shirtless go-go boys who stood onstage looking lost and goofy when the DJ effed with them by playing an orchestral club number. I guess if they were meant to dance to soaring violins, they should've been issued leotards, eh.

I didn't know they cordoned off the second level. Some sort of VIPS-Only thing, or cost-cutting? This must be a regular thing, because the restroom with the famous aquarium was located upstairs. Now the restroom is tucked away at the dark far end of the floor. With a communal urinal trough. Nice touch there, Tony.

You must do something about the ladies, though. The john was so full I thought there was an orgy going on, and I pitied a little meek girl who seemed to be thinking twice about entering a roomful of pissing penises, gay or no gay. Also, the shyer boys were lining up four-deep for the ladies' urinal, so I basically pulled the female inside and shoved her firmly in front of the toilet door - much like placing garlic before vampires. Tough enough to be a girl when it comes to potty times. Even tougher when the john is unisex and one is a shy and retiring Pinay having to compete with pee-shy gay boys. In which case one shouldn't even be mingling with the BEDheads.

But I digress.

One of the solicitous crew got me my compli beer promptly - a welcome change from BED's previous "I'm-too-good-to-take-your-order-much-less-return-your-change" thugs. No doubt the lad was hoping I would finish the beer quickly and start ordering the next of what would be many rounds. I ensconced myself near the bar and scanned the ever-growing sea of faces. Some old and recognizable - there was Ronnie giving instructions to the staff, and another guy who was once a rival for a boy's affections (I won, btw, bully for me) - but most of them were new.

Someone was drinking Blue Curaçao and I smiled at the memory of having the same concoction at the late, lamented Blue Cafe and thinking "I love Blue Curaçao. It's like drinking Toilet Duck, but without all the fatal and messy side-effects."

"Hell, this shit is better'n Drano!"

I had to chuckle when I finally noticed a nice-looking, beefy guy surreptitiously making eye contact nearby. My, my, oh my. I'm an old warhorse and wasn't up for a trick, but stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllll...

I'm beginning to like this new, slender build - an unsought result of involuntary teetotaling, lack of sleep, an excess of stress, and insufficient nourishment. I actually just have three inches to go before I'm back to my college-age 27-inch waistline. Makes me have second thoughts about beefing up again and bringing sexy back next year.

Anyway, for some reason I was more interested in the three nerd-types surrounding me. I dunno. Whoever said that "Men don't make passes at boys who wear glasses" sure wasn't wearing his. There's just something about banging nerds with extreme prejudice that gives me a raging boner. Proper-looking boys are just so nice to sully in the sack. The meatier ones, well...nice to look at, nice to hold, they lie in bed, all dead and cold.

Guess who this dweeb* grew up to be?

(Answer at the end of this post)**

I stayed for a bit and might've seen some bloggers. I would be lying if I said I wasn't half-hoping to catch a glimpse of some. Peek-a-boo - don't think I saw you.

At any rate, BED started to fill up with one skank too many, so I decided it was Mission:Accomplished and headed out. On Nakpil, I saw a truck saying Rapid HIV Testing, and volunteers handing out fliers.

Hm.

Signs of the times, eh?

And I didn't bump into anyone I knew as I trudged toward my car and took off into the dawn.

That was new.

*dweeb
An even lower form of life than the spod, found in much the same habitat as the former. though more prevailent on talker systems. Unlike spods, upon receiving the desired response to the question "Are you male or female?", dweebs will then engage upon a detailed description of themselves and how wonderful they are, often in the hopes of truly impressing the other with their "charm" and "wit". Nearly all dweebs are male, but very few actually live up to the image that they present. Dweebs, unfortunately, are often the cause of ill-will, and may well bring a bad reputation to the system in question. They are often, however, easy to wind up and can be the source of great mirth to the seasoned user. From the Computing Dictionary.

**Ryan Effin' Seacrest. 

The B-Side

Bonus Beyonce. And the last you'll hear of F1, promise.

From The Mirror's item on Beyonce at the F1 Rocks! concert:

"On stage, Beyonce had 12 wind machines to keep her cool 

and one of her £250,000 diamond earrings flew off."

Ahhh, kaya naman pala: 

What the eff?

MY EARRING!!! MY @^&#$&£250,000 DIAMOND EARRING!

If you liked it, then you shoulda put an earring on it.

If you lost it, then you gotta start to look for it.

Woh-oh-oh, woh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, woh-oh-oh!

Sige, mag-Whipping Wanda* ka pa. 


*Whipping Wanda: The term used to describe a whirling, rapid circular motion of the head, thereby "whipping" one's hair around. Normally done by burlesque dancers, strippers, and former lead singers of American R&B girl groups. Also a reliable way to lose £250,000 diamond earrings and possibly, one's hair extensions.

Le Grand Prix

 The calm before the storm.

This was it.

The final night of F1 Rocks! And you could tell, too. For starters, the gatekeepers were far stricter inspecting VIP lists this time around. And no wonder - we got to the venue at 7 p.m. and there was already a massive crowd gathered, unlike the previous night when it took awhile for the audience to reach critical mass.

The crowding was evident even in the VIP lounges, where we had to fight tooth and manicured nail to secure a spot. Luckily one of us was able to stake out a nice cozy divan, where we plopped our belongings as placemarkers and stationed a couple of guys from our entourage to stand guard.

Barbarians at the gates.

Even the balconies were full of already-tipsy revelers, and there was much jostling and shoving of beautiful people. As the evening progressed, it didn't matter if the VIP lounges were populated by some of Singapore's local elites and expats. Svelte models and slinky socialites hungrily eyed our divan as they clutched their drinks. Their burly escorts tried to muscle in on our territory by grabbing seats we already said were reserved, or plopping their asses down unceremoniously on our divan without so much as a "May I?" It was a classic display of Singaporean kiasu.*We had to go for drink runs one by one, in order not to lose our precious spot.

The crowd was pumped and ready to rumble.

Outside, the Black-Eyed Peas got the party started with - what else? - Let's Get It Started. It was nice to see Allan Pineda aka Apl.de.ap ("Dude, Pinoy, pareeeee!!!" ) whipping the crowd into a frenzy with Where Is The Love? Foxy Fergie  - back to her brunette roots, thank God -  fueled the fire with Don't Funk With My Heart, before the group launched into Boom Boom Pow! Things got really wild by the time they got to their latest smash -I Got A Feeling - at which point I, too, got a feeling. A feeling that I wanted a drink, doctor's orders be damned.

After the black eyes, there was no peace.

And so it passed that I violated my short alcohol abstinence via two tall, cold glasses of Heineken. The taste of alcohol felt strange on my lips after months of sobriety, and while it was refreshing to actually drink at a party - especially one such as this - I realized I didn't really miss it that much.

Mistah Boombastics, with pyroclastics.

I didn't invade the buffet table that night, having been force-fed a heavy dinner before proceeding to the venue. Besides, I was in no mood to elbow Calcarrie models lunging for salad and salmon. In the concert pit, after Fergie and the rest of the BEP had finished their set with jets of confetti and fanfare, intermission entertainment consisted of a few guys getting into shoving matches. I can't say I was surprised; if the air-conditioned lounges had turned into carpeted saunas due to sheer body warmth, I could only imagine the steaming temperatures and flaring tempers in the jampacked open field.

Fergie revving up the revelers.

There was also much jockeying for position in the balconies where we also managed to secure strategic strongholds - how fitting that the venue used to be a battlefort. But the combatants there were not starving models, but fellow photographers hungry for a good shot. From cell phone snappers to professionals with huge telescopic lenses, we all hawk-eyed one another's vantage points like snipers.

Domo arigato, Mister Robotos.

Finally, as the clock struck midnight, the stage lights went dark, signaling that our common target would soon  be in sight:

From stage darkness, there were diva lights.

The crowd - 10,000 strong by official count - roared as Beyonce, in her first-ever performance in Singapore, shone solo in the spotlight.

 The Queen B.

The midnight star opened with a bootylicious version of Crazy In Love, and oh, what a naughty, naughty girl she was!

The Golden Girl, front and center.

 

Boobylicious.

To the left, to the left.

Beyonce continued whipping the audience into a frenzy by launching into a series of crowd-pleasers: If I Were A Boy, which she cleverly interspersed with stanzas from Alanis' You Oughtta Know.

Ohhh, mercy, mercy, B?

 

 No one else Knowles how to whip those weaves.

A medley of Destiny's Child hits was next, followed by a couple of ballads, some tribute to Michael Jackson, then a couple of fast numbers I wasn't familiar with.

Oh, these steps remind me of Orlando.

 Will she stumble?

 

Will she fall? 

 

Fall, damn you, fall!

 

There's still time to fall, Bey.

 

Dammit.

Of course, the crowd went nuts when the Bey Babe asked them to sing along for her smash hit Irreplaceable. Having the audience sing the chorus of the very popular song also helped her catch her breath in between her livewire performance. Clever girl.

 "Now whatchu'all lookin' at?"

 "Oops! There goes my skirt, right over my knees, oh my!"

Naturally, when the YouTube video montage of internet camwhores doing their versions of Single Ladies came on, the place just combusted. Beyonce then re-emerged to do a live version of that worldwide hit, whose video prompted that Kanye West meltdown on the VMAs.

"Where'll all mah independent women at?"

"Shake yo' head, shake that thang!"

"Stop! In the name of love!"

And just like the previous night, having seen what we had come here to see, my entourage wisely decided to avoid the hordes of departing concert-goers by exiting before Beyonce gave her encore.

Bye-bye, Bey.

It had been swell. But now it was time to rest, and the next day, off to home.

Home where another force of nature was taking the country by storm.

*Kiasu: Hokkien adjective literally meaning, "afraid of losing". A highly pejorative description beloved of Singaporeans, and possibly their defining national characteristic. The nearest English equivalent is "dog in a manger", though even that is pretty mild.This word is so widely used by Singaporeans and Malaysians that it is incorporated into their English vocabulary (in the form of Singlish). It is often used in describing the social attitudes of people, especially about South East Asian society and its values. Its widespread use is often because these attitudes are common—to not lose out in a highly competitive society, or to the extent of parents imposing heavy study labour on their children in their wish to make them at the very top of all other students. Growing up with this attitude, these students often become ambitious businesspeople, with the desire to be on top in wealth and prestige regardless of whether the most prestigious careers are aligned with their true capabilities. From Wiki and TalkingCock.

And no, TalkingCock doesn't mean what you're thinking. Roughly, it's a Singlish term for gossip, slang, or idle talk. Imagine cocks crowing. Or hens clucking. It's a lot like that.

Spectator Sport

I have no idea if the organizers of F1 Rocks! were a sheltered bunch. Or maybe Singapore is too sanitized to realize what a kiss of death Lindsay Lohan has become. I've personally wasted enough time on internet gossip sites to follow the ongoing Chernobyl meltdown that is La Lohan, or, as one of my favorite sites calls her, "Blohan." So, given all that I've read and seen about her in the internet tabs, I didn't quite believe the press items about Lindsay "hosting" F1 Rocks!

I used to feel sorry for poor Linds. I liked her in Mean Girls and thought she was a good actress. Even Meryl Streep, her co-star in  A Prairie Home Companion, thought so, too, for she went to the length of defending Lohan when talk of her rumored drug usage and wild partying first surfaced.

Magnificent Meryl's silence on - and subsequent non-involvement in - the issue since then is more telling than any signature Miranda Priestly stare.

Lohan's antics used to be amusingly scandalous - a flash of her famous firecrotch here (pic NSFW, but look if you don't mind meatcurtains), a meltdown with lesbian lover (and now ex) Samantha Ronson there. But her antics - along with her insistence on self-destruction - have grown tiresome. After all, Lindsay Lohan had everything : beauty, fame, talent, riches. And yet she seems hell-bent on just pissing everything away on coke, booze, and meth benders.

Anyhow, this post isn't just about Lohan's continuous downward spiral. It's about me personally witnessing a moment, just one among many, in Lindsay's star turn to hell.

Shortly after Simple Minds awoke me from my bored stupor by singing Don't You Forget About Me, I sauntered off to one of the open bars to grab a drink. On the vidiwall, I saw a confused-looking blonde woman wearing a racing helmet onstage, with her back to the crowd and looking agitated as she spoke to someone off-cam.

"Who is that wreck and what the heck is she doing up there?" I thought as I gazed absently at the screens. And then, like a boulder tumbling off a cliff, the realization hit: it was LindsayeffinLohan.

Considering Lohan's long and heavily-rumored love affair with drugs, I couldn't help but wonder how she even managed to enter a country where drug possession is punishable by death. I also wondered if the entire F1 event would be later upstaged by headlines screaming "Hollywood Starlet Busted for Drugs in Singapore!" I was also too busy wondering to even think of immortalizing the moment with a picture.

Anyway, so there she was, in the flesh. Confirmation that the rumors were true, after all. I'd heard that Pussycat Dolls frontwoman Nicole Scherzinger was supposed to act as presenter for this event, but apparently had dropped out amidst rumors of a split from her F1 driver beau, Lewis Hamilton. So Lohan was the next best thing - or maybe the only thing they could get on short notice.

Her job sounded simple enough : welcome everyone to F1 Rocks!, say something about how exciting the event was, and name the various headliners that were up next.

She spouted the fluff stuff passably enough until she got to the part where she was supposed to announce the acts. As I mentioned, ZZ Top and Simple Minds had already finished their sets when she came on, and yet she kept shrieking "And up next, we've got ZZ Top, Simple Minds, and BEYOOOONNNNCEEEEE!!!" Never mind that the finale for that night was No Doubt, and ZZ Top were probably catching a few zzzzzs themselves already.

After her third flub, the crowd started getting restless, and some of us started booing her. Yes, I said "us". My bloodthirst quickened enough for me to abandon my comfortable chaise in the VIP lounge, stumble down to the viewing balcony, and heckle La Lohan along with most of the drunken Ang Moh Gui* in the audience. When Lindsay shouted "I'm so happy to be here!", a white guy beside me yelled "But we're not!!!"
And the more she flubbed her lines, the louder the heckling got. "Get off the stage!!!" "Go home, loser!!!" "D-List twit!!!"

When, in a reference to the ongoing Formula One races, Lindsay quipped how she was ready to be an F1 driver, too, the guys groaned and I yelled "Nooooooooo!!!! For the sake of pedestrians and fine cars worldwide, noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!"

I gotta hand it to Linds, though; she certainly held our collective attention the entire time she was onstage. It truly was like watching a trainwreck: you know it's ghastly and gruesome, but you simply can't look away.

Eventually I think the production staff decided to make do with what little they already taped, and whisked Lohan off the stage before the increasingly restless crowd started mauling her. From the vantage point of the viewing balcony, overlooking the grassy pit below seething with screaming spectators, I was reminded of the ancient Romans having yet another bloody good time at the Colosseum. I entertained visions of Lohan flubbing the ancient gladiator motto: "We who are about to die, salute you!" then being crowd-surfed before being torn to pieces by the howling mob.

Spectator sports.

Now that's entertainment.

* Ang Moh is the local, common term for a white foreigner. Ang Moh Gui literally translates as Red-Haired Devils, or simply, those drunken expat boors.

Bonus: The beautiful Lindsay Lohan, aka The Ang Moh Gui :

Added Bonus Attraction : Lindsay Lohan and Beyonce Tussle For Biggest Dressing Room At F1 Rocks!

And lest you think I'm making this all up: Singapore Resoundingly Boos Lindsay Lohan

Up Next : A Date With Destiny (Or, Who Did I Run Into In Little India?)

Sing, Sing, Sing, Schwing!

So, what the hell WAS I doing in Singapura, anyway?

Thanks to that free junket I mentioned last post, I was in the Lion City (which is literally what Singapura means) to attend the 1st-ever F1 Rocks Singapore with LG! - billed as the only officially F1 endorsed concert during the Grand Prix week in Singapore. F1 Rocks! boasts of featuring name acts from the region and from the world (and by "the world" I mean the U.S., which, whether we like it or not, is the epicenter of all that is pop.)

The line-up for this event - the first in what the Singapore Tourism Board hopes will turn out to be a successful annual crowd-drawer - wasn't too shoddy: N.E.R.D., No Doubt, ZZ Top, Simple Minds, The Black-Eyed Peas, and for the grand finale, The Artist Formerly Known As Beyonce Knowles.

 Formula Fierce.

Now, I'm often nonplussed when it comes to local celebrities, coming from a field that deals with them on a regular basis, but when it comes to international superstars, I can be just as agog as the next screaming fan. Whether they admit it or not, everyone loves a brush with fame, basking in the reflected glow of the spotlight, and the bragging rights to say "Dude, I saw Bono in Sydney, pareeeeee !!!"

F1 fans.

We would be attending what were actually the second and third nights of the three-night extravaganza, thankfully missing the opening night which featured Canto-pop and local Singaporean stars. I'm sure they were great, but ai yah, so sorry, I'd rather clip my hangnails, lah! This second night's headliners were more interesting: N.E.R.D., ZZ Top, Simple Minds, and No Doubt.

The only way to go, baby.

Thanks to heavy media connections (always good to have friends in the media), we had VIP privileges and didn't have to sweat it out with the local and expat peasants on the grassy fields of Fort Canning Park, where F1 Rocks! was being staged.

Instead, we enjoyed the use of several VIP lounges high up in the actual fortress mansion, where a closed-circuit giant screen and vidiwalls projected the onstage action if we were disinclined to brave the stifling Singaporean heat on the VIP viewing deck a level below and actually see the performances live.

Step right up, folks.

Front and center of the fortress mansion was the F1 Rocks! stage, said to be the biggest that had ever been set up for a rock concert in Singapore, and good enough for the demands of just about any world-class act. Sparing no expense, the organizers had it flown in from Australia, but the full glory of its sights and sounds would not be revealed until much later in the evening.

Places, everyone!

The VIP lounges, naturally, had several open bars which served everything from champagne to piss (and by piss I mean Heineken), as well as a constantly-replenished buffet table and roving promo girls shoving pints of Häagen-Dazs down our throats.

 

The show is about to start.

It was aaaaaaaallllll good.

We were pretty much beat from the harried schedule, coming in from the flight, a hasty check-in at the hotel then a quick dinner before attending to the real business at hand. So we were happy to just hang around the lounge, the other guys taking full advantage of the free booze while I flopped onto an ergo chaise and caught a quick catnap while N.E.R.D. warmed up the still-sparse crowd.

 

No one. Ugly. Allowed.

The pretty wait staff was very attentive and tested the limits of my doctor's orders to stay away from alcohol. The fates intervened when I, frustrated at being dry all these months and finding myself adrift in a sea of increasingly-drunken revelers at an open bar, tried getting a beer. Both the Singha and Heineken dispensers, which had been working perfectly just moments earlier, started spitting foam instead of lager, while I tried to stop my own mouth from following suit.

ZzZzzzzZzzzzzzzzzz*ngOrk*top.

I finally gave up, got 7-Up, and snored through the electric guitars of ZZ Top (since I was only half-awake, I don't know if they played She's Got Legs, one of my favorite 80s songs). Simple Minds woke me up when they sang their only hit, Don't You Forget About Me (the theme song from the classic John Waters movie "The Breakfast Club"). It brought back good memories of the 80s and so I deigned to watch them live from the balcony, singing nostalgically along.

"Don't you forget about me," begs Simple Minds' frontman Jim Kerr.

I was probably really bushed - and the other guys with me really buzzed from all the free booze - because we weren't really enjoying ourselves. Well, we were enjoying the smoked salmon and ogling pretty girls of all races (with me giving a few side-eyes to some of the male specimens, as well ), but as far as the concerts themselves were concerned, it was like "Well, we've stayed this long, might as well wait for Gwen Stefani to come out."

So we stoically soldiered on, enduring more Häagen-Dazs alternating with Johnnie Walkers punctuated with vodka tonics interrupted by the occasional bubbly. Well, I mostly suffered through Macadamia Nut ice cream and 7-Ups - everyone else was getting royally soused.

Finally, the giant screen showed this countdown:

The countdown was highly doubtful.

Naturally, it was a solid ten minutes of crowd screaming later when No Doubt strutted onstage and electrified the audience - which by official count had swelled to nine thousand strong by this time - with a roaring rendition of Spiderwebs. I must admit, Gwen Stefani's voice was powerful and in good form that night. She rocked the joint like nobody's business, and for a woman who's given birth twice, her torso, in full signature display, looked impressively taut and tight. The girl was foiiiiiineeeee!

But there was no doubt who ruled the night.

Still, fine as she was, Gwen was no match for our increasing fatigue and the undeniable fact that we weren't 18 years old anymore. So, in an act of blasé pop blasphemy, after hearing Don't Speak, Ex-Girlfriend, and a couple of other songs I wasn't too familiar with, we unanimously decided to troop back to the hotel without waiting for No Doubt to finish their set.

Don't speak! I'm singin' here, I'm singin' here!

 As we lurched down the Fort Canning steps while Gwen belted out I'm Just A Girl, we were met by latecomers coming up to see the show. A ruddy-faced Ang Moh*, who probably assumed we were just a bunch of ignorant drunken fools, asked "Hey, don't you guys know No Doubt is performing tonight?"

"No doubt!" I snickered.

The lights were on, but we were off for home.

After all, compared to a hot soak in the tub and the comfort of crisp linen sheets, Gwen Stefani was just a girl.

*Ang Moh : Simply put, an expat. Specifically, it is a widely-accepted and simple term used to describe Caucasians. The term originated most probably in the 18th century, to denote the British settlers arriving in Singapore for the first time. Ang Mo(h) - literally translated means “Red hair(ed)”