FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
http://www.starz.com/extras#/magic-city-new-trailer “Dictators come and go like the weather down here.” -Ben Diamond
Hmm-m... how would our fictional friend and hotelier Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, pictured above) or for that matter, even our fictional enemy Ben Diamond (Danny Huston), over at Starz' addictive "Magic City" -about Miami Beach in 1959- have handled things after getting double-crossed but good by Marlins owner and president Jeffrey Loria and David Samson to spend real money and field a competitive team, after City of Miami and Miami-dade taxpayers were forced to pay for a new stadium that they never got the chance to vote on via a referendum. You know, the salary dump that everyone in South Florida is talking about but which the Marlins are refusing to even hint at on their official Twitter page? https://twitter.com/Marlins And you saw that fact reported where in local Miami media? If you ever needed more proof of how completely imaginary so much of the world of Twitter is, how it's often nothing but sheer chicanery, not facts, the Marlins have answered that question adn are Exhibit One in their typical pathetic way. Yes, definitely a body dump in the Everglades. But body dumps in the swamp are so last year! (The body dump in The Everglades comes at 0:55 in the trailer above.)
Tossed overboard from a prop plane on the way to The Bahamas is this year's LBD.
After this week's latest salary dump and multi-player trade with the Toronto Blue Jays, I strongly suspect that South Florida's amateur screenwriters (and creative writing classes) are going to be busy devising novel plot twists that involve a murder-suicide element or body dump in Everglades with Marlins' Loria and Sampson. More soon on the predictable Loria move that did not surprise me a whit.
Anyone who objects to giving Miami-Dade County voters a choice or spreads lies about Norman Braman must have a hidden agenda!It's time for a change! Alison Austin, Shirley Gibson, Luis Garcia and Alice Pena believe in better oversight, honest government and fiscal accountability.
Yes, the three basic aspects of local government that Bruno Barreiro, Audrey Edmondson, Barbara Jordan and Dennis Moss have consistently failed to do over the years.
Plus, as you recall from my previous blog posts here involving the M-D County Commission meetings on the involuntary public financing of the new Marlins Stadium and how that was handled, I still haven't forgotten Comm. Dennis Moss' over-the-top insulting attitude and treatment of the hundreds of citizens who turned-out and had to wait for hours and hours in the chambers before the meeting was eventually postponed, with Moss' spite in full-display.
Just one of the many things that happened that day at County Hall that I observed and mentioned here that South Florida's sleep-walking print and TV reporters consciously chose not to mention afterwards, because they like to play nice with the commissioners and their staffs. Moss, well, I especially want to see him kicked the hell out!
CBS4-TV, Miami
Norman Braman Denies Bullying Voters, “Handpicking” County Commission
Sweden's nationally-televised WTF (musical) car crash moment of Saturday night during Melodifestivalen -Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li., performing "Mirakel"
Proof that, at least in Sweden, some people love a (musical) car crash as long as they are not in it...
No, it's NOT your imagination.
I really HAVE been avoiding mentioning what's been going on thus far at this year's installment of Melodifestivalen, the iconic and nationally-televised song selection contest over five weeks that annually leads to Sweden's choice for the Eurovision Song Contest, this year, taking place in Azerbijan in a few months.
I could get into the reasons why I've NOT mentioned what's doing with familiar Hallandale Beach Blog favorites like Molly Sandénand Timoteij so far, but it's easier to say why I've broken that silence -Sweden's nationally-televised WTF (musical) car crash moment of Saturday night -Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li.
As always, seeing is believing!
*All screen grabs on this page are from SVT by South Beach Hoosier
To say the least, the reviews of Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li are in and they are so angry, scathing and unmerciless in their pummeling, that it's a wonder that many of my friends and folks I know, like Sofie and Pernilla -who keep coming back to the blog!- who watched the show LIVE Saturday night didn't, well, blow a gasket.
Or make like Elvis and shoot their TV set!
Though now that I think about it, maybe some of them did, since as of early Monday morning, I have NOT heard from some of them after Saturday night's deltävling 3 -Third heat-of this year's competition in Leksand, like I did after the two previous weeks the past two Saturday nights in Växjö and Göteborg, respectively.
I urge you to watch this video ASAP because this video will probably be yanked-off YouTube very soon by SVT for copyright reasons, but it's the only one I've seen that shows how truly horrendous the act was.
Oops! Too late.
They already hit it and removed it since I saw it a few hours ago.
Since that's the case, watch their performance here on SVT Play's website, which will have the entire show online for viewing until MIDNIGHT Tuesday morning Stockholm/Central European Time (CET), which is one hour ahead of GMT and six hours ahead of yours truly in Miami, in U.S. Eastern. So the deadline for seeing this is 6 p.m. Eastern.
Get moving, because the clock is ticking!
Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li appearance starts at 0:45:58 on the vid, ends at 0:50:05.
I watched the show in its entirety on Sunday afternoon, taking notes.
So, did I mention that people were angry?!!!!
Apparently, more than I thought, there were thousands of people watching TV in Sweden on Saturday night who thought they'd say a big f-ck you to the Swedish music industry, and do it by spending what amounts to about two bucks to text this "car crash" -the favorite metaphor being used among Swedish bloggers to describe this performance the first 36 hours afterward- and send them directly to the Finals in Stockholm on March 10th, at Globen.
Hmm-m... imagine if a participating country's national Eurovision song selection competition was hijacked by the country's usually-friendly folket in order to send the worst possible act to Baku, Azerbijan for the actual European competition...
Hmm-m... now that's a question so preposterous and diabolical that even Stieg Larsson never thought of it while toiling away in Gamla Stan thinking of things for Lisbeth Salander to get upset about!
Yes, it's sort like what the Florida Marlins did in November in announcing their new Miami Marlins logo and uniforms for their new stadium in Little Havana... which was, itself, a rainbow-colored WTF moment as far as most fans were concerned! Yet typically, the condescending Marlins owners and management act like this finished product is what they always wanted, and don't much care what fans really think. They're so in love with the idea of being "bold," of marketing themselves in Latin America in pastel colors, that they've lost sight of what the real fans who actually attend their games think.
For those of you reading this outside of South Florida, I honestly DON'T see anyone wearing this stuff around the area, that is, except for the sort of person at the shopping mall who does so clearly to bring attention to themselves. Like the sort of woman who purchases a new expensive purse or accessory and takes it with them to Sunday brunch and tried to appear blase about it, even while craning her neck to see who notices it.
...it certainly got people talking, as well as voting – “Björn Ranelid” and then “Ranelid” both became wordwide trending topics on twitter last night after his performance.
At the ESC Xtra, which LIVE blogged the show, when it was finally announced that Ranelid & Li had qualified to go directly to the Finals in Stockholm, along with Molly, they wrote simply,
I am lost for words Sweden. See ya next week…
At the more action-oriented Schlagerblog, which was not so crazy about Molly's song, either, they wrote
The big surprise for the Schlagerboys was how excited we got about Björn Ranelid feat. Sara Li. Who'd have thought a bonkers orange bloke wandering around the stage rambling on in Swedish while his granddaughter prances around for the chorus in a glittery frock would be so fab! The best bit was near the end where the key change should have been, when he clearly forgot his microphone was live and started mumbling the words to the chorus. Love it!
I'll have my updates on Molly Sandén and Timoteij and what else is going on in the competition later in the week before Saturday's competition from Malmö.
