Imagine your photography being seen by millions of Metro readers worldwide! Its that time of year again. Yes, the Metro Global Photo Challenge is back! This year the themes will be: People, Places and Climate Change. For your chance to see your work in print around the globe and win one of 3 trips for two to a Metro city of your choice simply submit your photographs by Sunday 18th October 2009. No entry fee required. Go to www.metrophotochallenge.com/ie for more details. Now let your imagination run wild! Upload your photos at www.metrophotochallenge.com/ie LET THE WORLD SEE THROUGH YOUR EYES sponsored by WIN A TRIP TO ANY METRO CITY WORLDWIDE! CLOSING DATE FOR ENTRIES THIS SUNDAY frais? Fun-due: Dip in at the Cheese Pantry range of drool-inducing numbers that include apple crumble and carrot cake, a large slab of which virtually filled our neighbours table. Service was friendly, and a dropped plate and its wayward muffin wasnt enough to faze one waitress who scooped up the mess quickly and calmly. We parted with 55 which included two glasses of a light Italian ros, a tea and a coffee and awarded the Pantry an agreeable trois points. Lucy White 104 Upper Drumcondra Road D9. Tel: (01) 797 8936. www.thecheesepantry.com GIG Spandau Ballet Tuesday, October 13, 2009 metrolife 13 bulletproof panda fur vests for the last 20 years. They use the shaved pandas as sniffer pandas and to date have intercepted nine billion yen worth of drugs. Its pretty much all about pandas with me at the moment. Will you have your Yamaha keyboard in tow? I will. Its a tiny keyboard, so it fits in a sports bag and Ryanair cant tell its a musical instrument and do me for the 25 bonus musical instrument charge. One time they looked in the bag and saw it, but I told them it was a childrens toy. And I was taking it to London to give to a very, very sick child. They let me off. Daragh Reddin 100 Facts About Pandas by David ODoherty, Claudia ODoherty and Mike Ahern (Square Peg Publishing, 10) is out now TRY THIS: Cup cakes The bun du jour is the colourful cupcake but if youre tired of paying patisserie prices for your mid-morning treat, why not try baking your own? Makes 20 to 24 cakes Ingredients: 240g butter; five large eggs; 240g sugar; 280g cream flour; 80g self-raising flour. For the fondant icing: 300g prepared white fondant icing; three drops blue food colouring; three drops green food colouring. Method: Preheat the oven to 190C. Melt the butter and allow it to cool. Line a muffin tray with paper cases and grease the top of the pan so they dont stick. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale and thick. Sieve the flours together and fold into the egg mix. Next pour the butter into the flour and eggs and mix until fully incorporated. Spoon the mix into the paper cases, then bake in the oven for 15- 20mins. Allow to cool on a wire rack. To make the icing, place the fondant icing in a heatproof bowl and allow to soften over a saucepan of hot water. Add blue and/or green colouring as required in separate bowls. Allow to cool do not overheat the fondant. Spread the fondant icing over the cooled cupcakes, as required. From Rolys Caf & Bakery by Paul Cartwright, Paolo Tullio & David Walsh (Gill & Macmillan, 20) The return of Spandau Ballet has been a strange thing to behold, if only because many of us had wrongly assumed theyd settled their differences and hitched their wagon to the comeback trail years ago. In fact, its taken until now for the kings of wine-bar pop to shake the dust off their loafers, touch up their quiffs (those who still have hair fit for purpose) and bring their collection of super-smoove ballads out of retirement. Most curiously, their return has been greeted with all the frenzy of a Smiths reunion. Wrinkly fans who swooned over them first time round have led the stampede but younger music lovers seem every bit as thrilled at the idea of Tony Hadley, Martin that bloke off Eastenders Kemp and company crooning their way through such 1980s staples as True, Gold and Only When You Leave. As youd expect of a bunch of guys now eyeballing their 50s, theyre not quite as svelte and pretty as in their heyday. However, a slew of recent television appearances have suggested that Spandau Ballet are otherwise oddly well preserved. Of course, the biggest miracle is that theyre even speaking to one another, yet alone sharing a stage. In the 1990s, any hope of a reunion seemed to have been thoroughly snuffed out when Hadley, guitarist Steve Norman and drummer John Keeble unsuccessfully sued songwriter Gary Kemp for unpaid royalties (to add to the humiliation, they then had to sell off their right to the name Spandau Ballet to pay their legal bills). Still, nostalgia and the prospect of a humongous pay-day can exert a powerful tug and we should probably feel honoured that theyre kicking off their comeback tour in Dublin. Eamon de Paor Tonight, The O2, East Link Bridge D1, 6.30pm, 49.20 to 70.70. Tel: 0818 719 391. www.spandauballet.com ART REVIEW BAD! www.tuberadio.fm Making a radio playlist of all your favourite artists is appealing but how about doing it with music videos? Tube Radio sees itself as a cross between iTunes and YouTube, where users can join for free and make their own playlist using the site to easily find videos and share their playlists with others (Michael Jackson, pictured, currently dominates the Top Ten). Users will also find rare videos with biographies and lyrics. www. comparedownload. com Anyone that likes to buy their music on the Internet might wonder why this site was not around sooner. It does for music what others do for the insurance and holiday markets and compares the prices of music so you can get the best price for the single or album youre looking for. http://thisismyjoystick.com/ Here is a games site where real gamers give reviews that are free of manufacturers spin about new and older games on the market. The site also has podcasts with gaming news and things such as what the website team are playing. Anthony Gibson NET RESULT Art and humour dont always make successful bedfellows but Laurina Paperina hits the right note in her Irish debut show BAD!. Hello Kitty meets Ren & Stimpy via The Simpsons in her playful and subversive exhibition that puts cutesy characters by the likes of Japanese artists Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara through a blender with added razor blades. Straddling the divide between high and low art is nothing new but when done with such finesse, the results are at once clever and silly. A good working knowledge of art history is a prerequisite though. How To Kill The Artists 5 is a video animation in which artists meet their maker in suitably tongue-in-cheek fashion: David Hockney dives into one of his (empty) swimming pools; Jackson Pollock eats dynamite and explodes all over a blank canvas and Francis becomes bacon, while high-pitched dialogue and rudimentary cartoon sound effects complement the cartoon violence. Bad Post It is a wall installation of simple but adroit drawings on Post-It notes, from portraits of Shirin Neshat to Andy Warhol (with and without glasses) to a charming example of pointillism, one of Picassos demoiselle dAvignon, Man Rays bloody nail- studded iron and much more. Less compelling is a series of photographic prints of living artists whose faces have been drawn on to a balloon (above) the relentless in-jokes are borderline exclusive but a seriously nervous Matthew Barney superimposed on to the head of a small dog is very, very funny. Lucy White Until Nov 7, Rubicon Gallery, 10 St Stephens Green D2, Tue to Sat noon to 6pm, free. Tel: (01) 670 8055. www.rubicongallery.ie index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html