A Taufik/Olinda Final, Please

  • Sylvester was bizarrely bad this week, it felt like watching a car crash. After junking his previous identity (which I actually liked) for a less radical hairstyle and a lot of gummy smiles (while he was about it he might as well have junked the pathetic rocker poses which no one above the age of 12 should find cool, but alas, he didn’t), this week he seemed to have completely lost grip even of that second tenuous identity, and instead just tried to be everything to everyone.

    I mean, Music Of The Night? (Or should I say, Der Music Of Der Night?) Has he heard Michael Ball singing it? And if he has, why did he even think for a second that he could? I haven’t cringed so much since Christopher Lee’s Josh Groban attempt, and even then at least Christopher had the right type of voice and good diction, neither of which seemed within Sly’s reach in this performance. His other two were less embarrassing but still stunningly mediocre compared to what I have come to expect from him. Boyzone’s Picture Of You??!! Ozzy Osborne run for covaaaaa, this man is truly a bad boy rocker. Kiss From A Rose is a nice song, but so hard to sing well that even Seal himself screwed it up when he tried to sing it live at the Oscars, and I think it was also slightly beyond Sylvester’s ability tonight.

    Sly’s biggest mistake this week was in song choice. Music Of The Night and Kiss From A Rose need to sound effortless. Boyzone was actually a pretty good match because there are some similarities between his raspy style and Ronan Keating’s, but out of the cesspool of crap that is Boyzone’s repertoire, he certainly reached right down to the bottom and groped around. Sly is a good singer, who has impressed me many times in the past. But tonight confirmed that his rightful place must be third.

  • Olinda has the best voice in the competition, but I keep longing for her to grow some stage presence. As far as I’m concerned, that’s her biggest inadequacy. Her size and build is fine with me. I’d rather look at bubbly funky-haired Olinda than, say, the surgical (and sartorial) nightmare that is Nicolette Sheridan.

    But it was just awfully disappointing to see a performance of Holding On For A Hero that sounded even better than Fantasia’s, but featured Olinda just…well…bobbing around. Hopelessly Devoted To You was a boring song boringly performed. Olinda is not good at looking dewy-eyed, although she’s fine at conveying less sweetie-pie emotions. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is a case in point, especially that one brief shining moment (brownie points if you can name the musical those last four words come from) where she thrust the mike downwards so that her (fantastic) high note wouldn’t deafen everyone, and she was utterly compelling.

    I want more of those moments from Olinda, which is why I don’t want her to leave this week. I want to see more of those moments from her in the finals, where she really does deserve to be.

  • Every week I worry about Taufik the same way I used to worry about Fantasia – after such a good performance, how is he going to top that next week? And then I see him the next week and am amazed, and so I start worrying about the week after. True to form, if he gets through this week you can bet I’m going to be worrying about whether he can top Ain’t No Sunshine in the finals.

    Unlike Sly, Taufik did know how to sing a song from a musical, and knew how to change his voice accordingly. Unlike Olinda, Taufik knew how and when to just ground himself and radiate presence even while standing still, and I don’t think anyone can deny that where dancing is concerned, he’s head and shoulders above the other two. The only criticisms I could make are that he did go flat a number of times during This Is The Moment, and his outfit for True To Your Heart was awful, but really, assessed in completion, Taufik ruled this night.

But! DO NOT ASSUME TAUFIK IS SAFE. Sly has crazy teenage minions, and Olinda has money. If you think Taufik’s pretty good but can’t be bothered to vote for him, then for the first time ever on this blog I must appeal to your sense of patriotism. Just imagine Sly representing us at World Idol. Cringing? Good. Text 2 to 43657. VOTE FOR TAUFIK.

Non-Malays For Taufik!

All the Mandopoppers are going to vote for Sly because he sang Jay Chou’s An Jing, and all the aunties are going to vote for Olinda because she sang Teresa Teng. I dare not make any predictions for Daphne, because I generally find it easier to understand why someone would vote Bush for president than Daphne for Singapore Idol, but lots of people obviously do like her.

I thought Taufik sounded great on both songs he sang. I did miss his nifty moves, but given that every fast Asian pop song I have ever heard has been unmitigatedly terrible, it was probably the right decision to stick with the ballad and the smooth mid-tempo number. Which means…do not relac one corner! UNDILAH TAUFIK!! (How weird is it that I know how to say “Vote for Taufik!” in Malay, but not in Chinese?)

Time To Vote

Right, crunch time’s looming and it’s time to declare my candidate of choice:

Taufik for Singapore Idol! Great moves, pretty good voice, consistently entertaining to watch and, in my view, the best overall performer remaining in the competition. I think Olinda’s great too, and she might actually do better for us on a world stage because her voice is so unique, but Taufik’s the one I want to watch every week.

Also, if Ken Lim’s none-too-subtle comments about Taufik’s “niche appeal” to one particular race are actually true, then there probably aren’t enough Malays in Singapore to secure a victory for him, so he needs my vote more than the chinks in the competition do. Non-Malays For Taufik! Who’s with me?

[Yes, this post is deliberately parochial. Blogging my views on the US presidential elections would be pointless, since (a) I’m not American and (b) I suspect none of my readers support Bush either so I’d just be preaching to the converted anyway. Also (c) Ralph Nader is not going to win so to pursue the ultimate goal we are left only with Kerry who (d) does not fire me up but who at least does not fill me with alternate parts rage and pity. Not quite the stuff of illuminating blog entries, is it?]

Evil Twins

Back home after lindy-hopping, we were watching the tape of Singapore Idol which my father recorded for me. Douglas Oliveiro was giving his comments on someone.

My mum: That’s Douglas O, he’s a local rock singer.
Alec: He looks like Colonel Gaddafi.

After a short WTF??!! silence from the rest of us, we realized how right he actually was.

(Off to Sibu tomorrow. Back on Sunday. So happy.)

When Exams Attack

Studying will really really begin tomorrow. For real. Really.

Unfortunately, going by previously established patterns, dear Reader, this probably means you’re in for a rather slow 3 weeks. No more of my rapier wit and irresistable personality! No more visceral vignettes of my swinging rock and roll life! Indeed, my friends, you will have to get by with my usual exam output of unrestrained music geekery, pointless links collected during hours on end of study avoidance surfing, and most certainly nothing even remotely intellectual.

So, pretty much the same as what you’ve always got here, just with even less of a life than before. Sigh. Here’s a little taster:

Music Geekery
Newly arrived from Django, yay!

  • Bubba Sparxxx: Deliverance
  • Dirty Three: Whatever You Love You Are
  • Aereogramme: A Story In White
  • Lewis Parker: Masquerades And Silhouettes
  • Bedhead: What Fun Life Was
  • The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone

Pointless Links
In honour of For Alec, who had his first actual bout in a boxing ring a few days ago and wisely decided not to tell me about it until after the fact: Mike Tyson Quotes.

Here’s one I’d like to highlight for you, you big dolt no one in particular, because of course I’m totally cool about the fact that my favourite nose in the world could quite possibly have been broken before I got the chance to see it again – “I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain.”

Nothing Remotely Intellectual
I certainly never kept my Will Young mania a secret on this site during the original Pop Idol, and I see no reason to be shy about my commitment to its American franchise. This Ryan Seacrest fellow is a poor substitute for Ant and Dec, and I like Pete Waterman so much more than the painfully inarticulate Randy Jackson, but at least sexy Simon is still around, and getting sexier by the episode. Oh, and GO FANTASIA!

Debating And Pop Idol And Coffee Sugar Nazism

The tournament was great. Will won Pop Idol. A good weekend!

Before I say I think the tournament went pretty damn brilliantly the typical Michellian disclaimer is necessary – ideally, I’d have liked more teams and judges involved, and ideally the first proposition team in the final wouldn’t have turned a motion which had great potential for something interesting (This House Would Shaft The Axis Of Evil) into an incredibly boring debate about removing Oxbridge privileges. But apart from that, everything seemed to run almost disturbingly smoothly, which actually worried me quite a lot – I kept thinking I’d somehow overlooked some huge glaring problem and waiting for the anvil to drop, but it just never did, and I’m reasonably proud that in roughly four years of tournament debating (since ’98) mine was the first tournament I’ve ever been at which ran on time.

So thank you, Mark, for putting up with all my malaise and moodiness, for being lovely in so many ways, and lastly (and very importantly) for booking rooms that actually existed this time. We were both admittedly mightily pissed while exchanging affirmations of love and friendship and each other’s general wonderfulness on Saturday night, but I stand proudly by everything I said, even now in the sobering light of day. Been great working with you, dear.

I raced home from the tournament with a beatific smile on my face, headed straight to the TV room in search of Avril, who’d taped Pop Idol for me, and did a lot of girlie screaming. Realized later that this is the only British pop cultural whirlwind I’ve actually gotten sucked into in my two and a half years here, but this one really did manage to reel me in, hook, line and sinker. I’ve explained to Alec that I came upon it at a vulnerable time; that having not seen him for two weeks due to our respective ski trips and missing him dreadfully I was just there for Will’s taking (oof, perhaps a bad turn of phrase there) that fateful Saturday evening in December when I wandered into the TV room and was transfixed. He remains unconvinced. Oh well. Good luck and best wishes, Will. Your profile is distinctly primatial but from the front you’re lovely, cheesy grin and all.

Much like the Sunday after the last debating tournament I organized, yesterday was a whole lotta wonderful nothing. Woke up at noon. Lunched and coffee’d with Russ, whom I dearly wish hadn’t brought me that belated Christmas present of American Gods, because he inconsiderately went and bought himself the tripod I was going to give him, and now I’m stuck for ideas. Treated the congregation at mass to an unusually muted and reflective version of Shine Jesus Shine (the hymn Fr J disdainfully refers to as likening Jesus to Brasso). Lingered downstairs with soup, John, Tay and bizarre conversation that involved coffee sugar Nazism (Me: “Does it make me some sort of lesser person because I like two sugars in my coffee, goddamit?”) and awful puns about a strange guy called Terry who comes to our hall and makes trouble every now and then. (Tay: “Man, this is scary. I’m terrified, man. I’m developing terranoia…I really don’t like it when he comes over here. I get all territorial.” And so on.)

Seeking Xen Calm

You know you’ve reached a low point in stress management when you wish it was time to start studying for the exams just so you could start eking out that simple existence of 2 am nights and 8 am mornings, and deeply boring but satisfyingly routine and sedentary days.

I refer to “low point” because I hate that existence, but it’s a hell of a lot better than this week’s frenetic staggering between exponentially increasing numbers of To Do List items – write research project (yo, if anyone’s an expert on the public international law aspects of Internet regulation, please talk to me), decipher Jeremy Bentham for jurisprudence dissertation, magically produce completely organized intervarsity debating tournament (this Friday and Saturday) out of arse…

But enough whinging. After writing a similar diatribe last Thursday I then allowed Russ to persuade me that I really needed to be at Cargo that night for our monthlyish Xen worship session, and although I then managed to miss 3 hours of lectures the next day and generally descend into self-hatred, it was well worth it just for the half hour of mind-boggling virtuosity that was Killa Kela’s mouth. There was also the unique cultural experience of being in a room full of white Brits who seemed to know every word of Roots Manuva’s Witness and joined in especially enthusiastically for the “cheese on toast” line, the sweat-soaked live exuberance of New Flesh (new album Understanding, currently stickered all over London), and DJ Vadim, endearingly Russian and generally loved by all.

Other causes for joy: long overdue ejection of dishwater-dull Darius from Pop Idol, which I, er, accidentally stumbled upon on a lazy Saturday evening in late December and have been, er, accidentally watching ever since. Grin. Go on then, pour forth your ridicule. I’M NOT ASHAMED! VOTE FOR WILL!

But moving on swiftly… :)

More glimmerings in the gloom include recent arrivals from Django (Sparklehorse: It’s A Wonderful Life, Marine Research: Sounds From The Gulf Stream, Sonic Youth: Goodbye 20th Century, stuff by Pavement, 20 Minute Loop and Silver Jews also on the way), a rather lovely boyfriend carrying pancake batter in a plastic jug on the tube in order to come over and cook me dinner, and actually understanding the maths in Cryptonomicon, which reassures me that two and a half years of law hasn’t cottonwooled my brain yet. Yet.