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Spoleto Festival USA Finale. Sunday, June 10, 2008. Middleton Place.

It was warm on Sunday. I had shade envy — walking around to shoot various picnics I kept wondering if other people’s spots weren’t cooler.

With the warm day and the concert not on the Great Lawn for the first time in ten years, only one lone couple was out from under the trees — with their umbrella lying on its side.

But a lot of what we like about the festival is that it pushes us a little. You know what I mean, you’d never cram in to the Cistern to see Sophocles but when it’s over you’re glad you did.           

The heat served the same purpose – there’s no way the night would’ve seemed as nice if we all hadn’t have sweated first.

And we did sweat. The Finale wouldn’t be the Finale without the Great Schlep (see right).

The scene was typically atypical. Pigs in a blanket and fine silver. Frisbees, footballs, bocci balls and bon mots being thrown about. Firefly-tea-infused-vodka-with-lemonade, wine, beer, and jello shots being thrown back.

A cooler with the chorus to “Beer For My Horses” written on it was a red dot in the blue-state festival crowd. (The line of bumpers rattling over the plantation’s cow catchers displayed many a Democrat sticker.)

Just when you think Taylor Webb couldn’t get any cooler there is she is giving away her woven-reed fans.

Surely Sheila Lauffer, seven months pregnant, was feeling the heat but she didn’t show it. She and Lauren Sanchez had a long and fascinating conversation about smocking, transcripts are available in the bookstore.

We caught Manning and Barbara Williams headed into Middleton Foundation President Charles Duell’s private party in a ribboned-off area by the restaurant.

There was no announcement made about the show starting, so by the time we took our table, chairs, cooler, stroller and candelabra (and we had by no means the most elaborate picnic) back to the car and made our way to the hill, John Kennedy was already ten minutes into the concert.

At 8:40 it was still light (so it was key that we got our stuff packed away, because we always forget a flashlight) and the Ashley view was…insert your own adjective here. I like tremendous, to go with the always bombastic closer(Copland’s Third Symphony this year).

The stage lights shined on some smaller live oaks, much younger than the butterfly gardens reflecting them. They of course also shined on the young Spoleto Festival Orchestra, playing for their youngest audience of the fortnight. One fellow sat off to the left, legs crossed, meditating during the Philip Glass pieces.

Private school alum Jonathan Sanchez grew up in Charlotte, taking cotillion and smoking Camel Lights.

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Saturday, June 7.

Having conquered Upper King and Cannonborough, the party juggernaut rolled north of the crosstown Saturday night for two Piccolo Finale satellites.

5 pm. Home of Tyler and Michelle Smyth, Ashley Ave. 

We got here a little late for this one but that freed up the hosts to give us a tour, white sangria in hand (pinot grigio and orangina). The Smyths had spent a year renovating this place, doing pretty much all the work themselves, and are now living on the first floor and renting out the top.

Homemade pimento cheese and cucumber sandwiches and lumpias (more about those in a minute) rested on the mother of all kitchen tables.

“I think it weighs about three hundred pounds,” Michelle said.

Tyler found the twelve-foot-long, three-inch thick piece of mahogany while looking for dog collars on the list of Craig. It spent a little time at JMO woodworks, where David Pastre (who with wife Amy recently begat Otto – welcome to the neighborhood little buddy!) helped work on it with a belt sander and a bandsaw. It took three men to install it just in time for the party.

I got the last lumpia, a Philipino pastry sort of like a mix between an empanada and a spring roll. Michelle’s parents Lucy and Dom Bellon get them from a Mr. Erese in Goose Creek.

We also got to see Tara Romano again – got her last name right this time!

7 pm Home of Jay and Amelia White, Hampton Park Terrace.

Only a short walk to this newlywed cottage, where the party spilt out into the street. Good mix of architects (shocker), headlined by Sheri and Dinos Liollio, and regular folk, including some of Jay’s fellow Grace Episcopal bellringers. Word is that writer Lisa Rogak (author of dozens of books, including A Boy Named Shel) is hoping to do a Midnight-esque book about Charleston bellringers, if only she can find a murder to attach to it.

So if anyone knows of a good one, let her know. For now we’ll have to be satisfied with this dead rhinoceros beetle that Jay (a deacon at First Scots Pres) pinned down while on a mission trip to Honduras.

Signature cocktails: Mint juleps, Pimms, Cockeyed Limeys. (See instructional diagram). 

Spread included: Antipasto, strawberry shortcake ladyfingers, sliders (I ate 14.)

People who commented on how tired I looked at the Choc Drops party: 5

Updates on some earlier parties:

Eighth Almost-Annual Piccolo Fiction Open. Sat., May 31. 5 p.m. Blue Bicycle Books, 420 King St. Hosted by Jonathan and Lauren Sanchez and Kevin Murphy and Adrienne Antonson.

This free event has bounced around to different venues over the years (Chas. County Library, Port City Java MUSC, City Gallery, to name a few). We hope it’s found a home here. The alley between Carolina Business Interiors and the former French Hare at 416-418 King was a shady haven where the five winners in this annual short story contest read their works (each about 1,000 words) to a Standing Room Only crowd.

Adrienne Antonson, of Spinster fame, was determined that Kevin and I not put on a “book nerd” event. (Kevin edits Dark Sky Magazine.) She painted the posters and took an old copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Shipwrecked and deconstructed it, sewed the pages back together. Our landlord thought we were hanging prayer flags.

First place winner was Charleston’s own Lisa Kerr, for “Birds-Eye View.” Others in the money were Audrey Brown of Summerville for “Your Father, Fredrick;” Debra Daniels of Columbia for “Limits;” and to Wilma Reitz of Greenville for “Lost in Murphy’s.” A special invitation to read was extended to Charlie Geer of Charleston for “All Good Things.” Since Charlie was in Spain his brother Andrew Geer served as proxy.

Wines: Crane Lake and other whites. “The coldest in town.”

Cheeses: Roué de Brie, Herb-infused Boursin, Unsmoked Gouda and Jenesaisquoi.

PFO founder: Lisa Annelouise Rentz of Iodine Literary Projects.

Contest Judges: Mary Kelly Wilson (past PFO winner and pastry chef at Cypress, Rentz, Sanchez and Murphy.)

Sound system: Fuzzco.

Podium: Amelia of MaxJerome.

Timeless or Of Its Time? Exhibition Two. Work by Glenn Keyes Architects and Gibson Thompson Guess Architects. Civic Design Center, 85 Calhoun. 6 to 8 pm. 

It’s dangerous having this many architects in one place. What if something tragic were to happen? Sales of Bjork and David Byrne would plummet. And who’d remind us that they don’t have a TV? Or if they do have a TV that they don’t have cable?

Rising ink costs prevent me from listing everyone in boldface. See the gallery.

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Thursday, June 6. 10:30 pm. Party for the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Sugar Bakeshop, Bill Bowick and David Bouffard. 59½ Cannon St.

You could call it the Zoolander Effect. Take two stylish guys from New York, put them in a transitional neighborhood and add pastries, chocolatinis and champagne and the result is some hip and really, really ridiculously good-looking people. I mean, look at this picture. I’m not a good photographer. All the other party photographers have fantastic cameras. Mine is crap. The room was just that smoking.

But even without the Spoleto SCENEsters, the bakeshop and gardens of Sugar are pure eye candy. Bill Bowick and David Bouffard, architects both, are of the form-follows-function school – the space was a wonder of workable décor, mixers and stainless steel bowls, racks of cupcake tins, sacks of flour.

The backyard is a minimalist (Maya Lin-ist?) garden of modern delight. Pea gravel ground cover, old shutters as dividers, a big blue storage shed that reads nothing like a shed. (“Reads” is architect for “looks.”)

Sculptor Loren Schwerd, (formerly of CofC, visiting from LSU), and the V-tones’ own Noodle McDoodle (I believe his real name is Don Something) were checking out Jared Charzewski’s (currently of CofC) video installation, projected on ostrich feathers. Cindi Gasparre, Harleston Village Neighborhood Association president and lifesaver/babysitter to the stars said the billowing white plumes made her feel cooler.

Architect Randolph Martz explained that a recent photo of him had mislabeled his glasses. “These are my angry, discontented architect glasses (see left). But they can also be my haughty, supercilious architect glasses.” (Right.)

The Sugar duo lives in the house next door. Bill bakes while David is still designing, at Liollio Architects alongside Jay White, who with his new bride Amelia arrived on his-and-hers Pashley city bikes. Brian Sanders and Jen Hurst, also of Liollio, came on a Columbia Twosome tandem.

I was pumped to talk about Chipper “Mr. 400” Jones but this ain’t the crowd. The closest I got to sports was hockey – Lauren Curler said her brother-in-law Brian Rafalski just won the Stanley Cup. She and her husband celebrated with a special St. Petersburg bottle of Veuve. Sweet!  

Signature drink: Chocolatini – crème de cacao, Godiva liqueur, Stoli and a little crème, with shaved chocolate around the lip.

Spread: Drinks and desserts. Galvanized metal buckets of ice held bottles of Spanish cava, waters (thank you!) and cola. Actual, literal chocolate drops with Hershey’s kisses. Cupcakes: red velvet, chocolate icing, homemade caramel-icing, fresh strawberries, brownies, blueberry tarts, lemon tarts, Derby pie tarts.

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 Wednesday, June 5. Party for Homeland and The Great War. Home of Susan Bass and Tom Bradford, undisclosed French Quarter location.

Laurie Anderson stood alone in the middle of the room, brandishing a large knife and asking if anybody wanted a piece.

Susan Bass and Lynn Hanlin had just brought out a giant chocolate cake in honor of the performance artist’s 61^st birthday, and Anderson had set to cutting pieces while Lou Reed (longtime companion/new spouse) took pictures with his phone.

Yours truly got the first one – even though I tried to politely pass it, a la Milton from Office Space.

Jill Almeida, an old friend from Glenbard West High School back in Illinois (“Fight On, Hilltoppers!”) introduced me.

“He owns Blue Bicycle Books and was trying to get a copy of the 1989 Spoleto program for you,” Jill said.

Laurie was extremely nice and even seemed interested in this non-story of me failing to come through on Jill’s birthday gift. Knife-wielding aside, she was relatively petite, almost pixie-like. I would never have recognized her as the spike-haired techno-wizard chanteuse who had just played Memminger.

On the other hand, Lou Reed looked exactly like Lou Reed, even if you had no idea what he looked like.

Bass always makes sure to set out a performer’s-only table, this one had roast chicken and grape leaves and couscous.

Outside, in the garden of hydrangeas, monkey grass, and a wall coated in creeping fig, fans blew fresh air over a tomato patch and under an old ligustrum tree. Thanks to these mini-mistrals, a Louis Latour Chardonnay, a Southern Rhone-inspired red from Oxford Landing, and the best signature cocktail yet, folks managed to stay pretty cool considering the misery of the afternoon.

The Memminger blackbox had not exactly been an icebox. Walter Crocker, who changes sets there, said that the air conditioning is often turned off during Chamber Music, and can’t go back on during a performance, because it sounds like “a 30-lane bowling alley with everyone bowling strikes at the same time.” So my theory is that the A/C didn’t go on till 3 p.m. yesterday and was still trying to catch up.

Cool as cucumber cream was Elin Cate, who’s looking to quit her day job as a drug researcher and go full time with Charleston Chemist, a line of bath and body products inspired by area aromas. No, not the bluestone in front of Kickin’ Chicken on a Sunday morning in July. More like Confederate Jasmine, cotton fields, and sweet tea.

Edwin Gardner, David Boatwright and Reggie Gibson were in a heated discussion about something — perhaps who should be Buist dad of the year? Geoff Marshall of the Post and Courier podcasts must’ve been driven mad by the heat. He’d gone home for the weekend. To London.

“Just wanted to tickle the homeland,” he said. “Give it a Facebook poke.”

Robert Prioleau (pictured with wife Rachel and friend Marni Durlach, right, also in the penultimage page of your festival program book) and fellow cycling advocate Peter Wilborn (at home, hydrating?) were contemplating riding to Beaufort on Saturday. There were a lot of cyclists on hand: Whitney Powers, Lenny Greene, Harlan Greene (with partner Jonathan Ray), Katherine Saenger.

By midnight Reed and Anderson had long split, reportedly off to SNOB – and so it was safe to play “Walk on the Wild Side.”

Signature cocktail: Rosemary-infused syrup, lemon and gin with a sprig of rosemary.

Cheeses: Whoops. Hey, I got the shot of Lou Reed, okay. Get off my back. 

Celebrity Spotting #1: On King Street Thursday night I spotted “30 Rock”/Piccolo Fringe’s Paul Scheer and Jack McBrayer walking by St. Matthew’s Lutheran. I freaked and honked the horn. My wife got all over me. She recognized them from somewhere, but didn’t realize it was because she knew them only as Kenneth and Donny, the competing NBC pages from her favorite show. “Jon!” she said. “Why are you making fun of those dorks?”

Superstar Spotting #2: Folly is a good place to relax during the festival and not be out of things. Traditionally, many of the performers stay there. I remember seeing the cast of Mother Courage at Folly in 2000. And it was that same year that tightrope performer Antoine Rigot suffered a serious neck injury diving into a wave.

At Taco Boy on the middle Sunday of the festival we ran into Lynn Letson, having a margarita with friends. She said she’d been out till 2:30 in the morning, riding around in a friend’s golf cart. 

“We went to Taylor Mac earlier, and he had all his drag costumes laid out on the front of the stage. My friends said, ‘Lynn, that looks just like your bedroom.’”

Between gushing over Evelyn Ray Sanchez and the SPB, Lynn basically admitted that she has a fever, and the only cure is more Spoleto.

“I get so turned on by everything for these two weeks, I can’t sleep!”

Mega-superstar Spotting #3: Friday morning, That Guy from Stripes came in the bookstore. Bought about five or six old children’s books and gave me a hard time about the time-consuming process we have of logging all the books we sell.

BM: That’s a lot of work Why don’t you get a scanner?

JS: I’m waiting on my residual check from Ghostbusters.* 

“I wanna party with you cowboy!”

*Yeah, I didn’t actually say this.

Fri., May 30, Spoleto SCENE Party for Monkey: Journey to the West. Church Street home of James and Dolly Small.

Hosts: Elin Cate & Harry Waikart, Justin Harris, Caroline Nuttall, Elizabeth & Stokes Player, Mary Ramsay, Jackie & Neil Thomson and Taylor Webb.

Last year this reporter caught hell for comparing Spoleto SCENE’s Soiree to a prom.

The point was that it was like a prom…with an open bar and put on by the best party planners in the best city for parties in the South. (And the South is to parties what the ACC is to basketball).

Well, this year’s white party was a little like a fantastic version of an illicit high school party you threw at your grandparents’ house – passed hors d’oeuvres of seared tuna on fried wontons, ginger monkey martinis, glamorous young professionals, and a troupe of Asian opera/circus performers.

And it’s not like Mary Ramsay sneaked the keys to her grandparents’ home while they were in Cashiers.

“They are actually hiding out upstairs,” she said. “They didn’t want to be the old people at the party.”

Well I for one would have loved to have met Jim and Dolly Small, because this 1794 single house is easily the most truly Charleston home of the party circuit thus far.

“It hasn’t changed since my mother was growing up here,” Mary said. (Poston notes a partial restoration in 1961).

A moss-covered brick walkway led through a lush garden of geraniums, tea olives, begonias, more. (At Mary’s grandparents’ suggestion, oriental rugs covered the slippier parts.) A green vinyl couch on the porch. And a patina of peeling paint that all my architect friends would kill to be able to replicate.

Members of the Monkey orchestra Nathan Lodge (keyboards) and Alexander Robang (bass trombone, of Mount Pleasant!) posed with an unnamed ancestor.

The party planning team hung paper lanterns and other touches, but the house already had an asian theme: lotus flowers, jade statuettes, Chinese toile wallpaper.

Waiters tried gallantly to get trays of chicken satays, rice cakes, edamame salad spoons, and duck rolls out of the kitchen before being mobbed by hungry cast members.

They may have been wearing white but Evan and Jen Harris bleed Tarheel Blue. Jen was reconnecting with fellow Carolina alum Julia (Sanchez) Griffith, (at left, carrying bounce clutch by l_design).

At midnight, efforts to move everyone uptown to Chai’s were meeting resistance. This was a group after love and excitement, not getting home to David Letterman. Monkey baritone Elvis Liu was deep in the backyard flirting with Sonni James of the Westminster Chorus

“This is my American girlfriend!” he said.

Food: JBC Catering

Signature cocktail: Ginger Monkey – ginger infused vodka, white cranberry, lime, triple-sec and a piece of candied ginger on a skewer.

Most terrifying: glasses of red wine – they must be banned from any white party!

Best moment: Parade of the Monkey cast.

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Thursday, May 29 party for The Burial at Thebes and the break/s. Church Street home of John and Shea Kuhn. 

Sprawled out on a couple of couches in the family room, Mark Bamuthi Joseph, beatboxer Tommy Shepherd (a.k.a. Soulati), DJ Excess and the crew of the break/s, were watching the Lakers finish off the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals.

“Oh! Kobe’s gonna get 40!” Joseph said.

The game in hand, I came into the kitchen, where Paul Bentall of the Nottingham Playhouse — Creon in Burial at Thebes – was discussing natural law with a member of the opening night audience: ‘“…absolute value is the dignity of the human being…”

It’s always a wonderful moment when the guests of honor arrive. We missed the break/s’ entrance but the chorus of Burial came in ready to have a good time, and not necessarily ruminate on the curse of Oedipus.

“You enjoyed it?” said Maxwell Hutchinson (chorus leader), with a smile. “A bit gloomy, though right? I mean, all that wailing and moaning.”

The role of Antigone calls for a good bit of wailing and moaning by the lovely Catherine Hamilton.  She was reluctant to give her age so we will be too because she could play far below it, and we don’t want to blow her chances at a guest spot on Gossip Girl.

Peter Basham, who plays Antigone’s fiancé, Haemon, sings, acts, plays the violin and dances shirtless in the show. I’m going to be a man and admit it: the dude’s even better looking up close.

“This is the next James Bond,” Bentall said. “Daniel Craig look out.”

So when Basham went out of the kitchen, perhaps to avoid slipping on the puddle of drool my wife left on the floor, and Lisa Sexton and Susan McAdoo chased after him, I wasn’t surprised.

My mistake. Sexton later corrected that she was encouraging her shy friend to reconnect with her old mentor from Westminster, Joseph Flummerfelt.

This was the second straight party to feature great artwork by the host family. Hard to say who’s the best out of the three talented Koon Children, aged 6-10, Madeline, Philip or Louisa. Let’s get Nick Smith over there for a proper review.

Great party. No need to wait in the bar line because the staff (mostly young family friends) circulated with trays of wine. And – guilty pleasure — first time I’ve ever seen a TV on at Spoleto. I blended in with my fellow sports fans by urging Phil Jackson to put Kurt Rambis in.

Be sure to ask John and Shea Kuhn (not pictured, a thousand apologies – I shall exit stage left and claw out my eyes!) their story about getting miracled outside of Marriage of Figaro almost twenty years ago by none other than Nigel Redden.

Party index:

Cheeses: Ossau-Iraty, Comte, Reblochon, Bleu d’Auvergne, Saint Nectaire, Belletoile Triple Cream, Taleggio, unnamed spanish goat log. (Thanks to Harriet Franke, daughter of O’Hara and Flynn owner Michael Franke and Kuhn family babysitter.)

People who founded O’Hara and Flynn named O’Hara or Flynn: 0

People who came to the party not knowing it was for two plays, sat down with the cast of the break/s and had a long conversation with them, not getting into any specifics, but all the while talking about the completely wrong play: At least 1

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Wed., May 28, 2008. 10 pm. Party for Imani Winds and Festival Concert featuring composition of Andrew Newman. South Battery home of Drayton and Kat Hastie.

Hanging with a group of fans in the stair hall walk, Imani Winds oboist Toyin Spellman-Diaz was explaining that, no, this wasn’t a sideline.

“Actually, this is my job,” she said.

Well if the whole globetrotting musicians thing doesn’t pan out for the Imani quintet, clarinetist Mariam Adams seems ready to take over my job.

“Who are you and why are you dressed so fabulous?” she said to a young man in a bright orange jacket and matching streak of hair.

Answers: Jeffery Rhodes, and because he’s the representative of host Kat Hastie’s artwork, which was hung all over the ballroom, a la the Barnes Collection.

Through his roving Margo Kaufman Gallery (named after his grandmother, the business card features the only picture of her to survive Katrina) Rhodes also sells Townsend Davidson, David Boatwright, Tim Hussey and more. And last night he was also showing work by Stella Nova hair salon. (The streaks often compliment the colors in shows. And no it didn’t show up in the picture.)

There was nothing else artificial about this event. No theme, no tricks. The signature cocktail was Crane Lake wine. You don’t really need to try and wow people when your house has been in the family since 1874 and you have a ballroom.

Mediterra Catering brought pork tenderloin on white beans, chicken and tuna skewers, melon wrapped in prosciutto, miniature cheesecakes.

As things wound down and the room cleared out, Kat’s daughter Eugenia Payne was casing the spread.

“I need to pack a lunch for tomorrow,” she said.

Payne was pumped about Charleston’s own Jack Hitt’s little-mentioned visit to Piccolo. Hitt is a regular contributor to Harper’s and The New York Times Magazine. He’s the one who told the story on This American Life about the fiasco production of Peter Pan in Sewannee, Tenn., that ends with one of the lost boys falling from the ceiling and breaking his leg.

Speaking of public radio, Performance Today commentator Miles Hoffman was on hand. He seemed a little disappointed that his name wasn’t easily recognized. Fair enough, I mean, the guy spends all year in relative anonymity up in Spartanburg, he can a least expect a little love at a Spoleto party for a classical concert featuring four conductors (John Kennedy, Emmanuel Villaume, Joseph Flummerfelt, and the lovely Kathryn Voelker, of the Eastman School).

Hoffman carefully explained the difference between NPR and American Public Media. NPR is All Things Considered. APM is Perf. Today and Prairie Home Companion.

But which one is Delicious Dish?

Party Index: 

Weather: Rain

Spoleto Orchestra Members: 2 that I found, and they were actually in management.

Where the SFO hangs, according to them: The Kickin’ Chicken.