March 2012 was seventh-busiest month ever at Hallandale Beach Blog, with individual page views at 19,167; Most-read day: March 27th - 925 page views; Sara Edwardsson

Christer Lindarw ("After Dark") performs "La Dolce Vita" and "Mamma Mia" from SVT's "Den Flygande Mattan."  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boVS7_XETBA


March 2012 was another good month for us here at Hallandale Beach Blog.
In fact, it was our seventh-busiest month ever in five years.
(Earlier I said second but I misread it.) 
With some positive -and long overdue- changes soon appearing here that will offer readers even more original content and options to become even better-informed, I fully expect that those numbers will continue to grow.


Number of individual page views: 19,167.
Most-read day was March 27th with 925 individual page views.


The single most-read blog post for March 2012, with 385 individually-recorded page views, was actually my May 8, 2011 post about talented artist Christer Lindarw, a.k.a. "After Dark" and his appearance on a very clever and hip Children's TV show on SVT last Spring:
"Only in Sweden, my friends! Drag act 'After Dark,' Timoteij, et al perform on dynamic kids show 'Den Flygande Mattan'; Nothing like it in U.S.!"
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/only-in-sweden-my-friends-drag-act.html

Sara Edwardsson -press photo by Markus Granseth

Speaking of that popular blog post and Sara Edwardsson, the brilliant creator and host of Den Flygande Mattan, she recently wrote on her website that as of now, SVT doesn't have
plans for a sequel to The Flying Carpet show, but, "men man vet aldrig…"  
(You never know...)


The multi-talented Sara has been busy touring Sweden since last Fall performing with Amy Diamond and Nassim Al Fakir in concerts that largely feature skits and children's songs, some of which are found on Sara's new album that dropped in early March called, ”Kom, vi sjunger barnkammarboken!” 
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www.svt.se/barn

http://www.facebook.com/gotalejonproduktion

Only in Sweden, my friends! Drag act 'After Dark,' Timoteij, et al perform on dynamic kids show 'Den Flygande Mattan'; Nothing like it in U.S.!

Christer Lindarw (After Dark) - La Dolce Vita/Mamma Mia from SVT Barnkanalen's "Den Flygande Mattan" March 2011. (With lyrics)http://youtu.be/boVS7_XETBA
Only in Sweden, my friends, only in Sweden!


Ever-vigilant Darin over at popular music blog Scandipop got it right a few months ago regarding fashion designer Christer Lindarw's alter ego musical drag act, 'After Dark' performing on SVT's Children Channel's dynamic show, 'Den Flygande Mattan' -The Flying Carpet, just a few weeks after the talented women of Timotiej performed there, too.


Don’t mind doing it for the kids…
by scandipop on February 14, 2011
http://www.scandipop.co.uk/?p=4862


I was laughing, smiling and crying at the same time at the image of the whole thing, above, whether the young boys in suits and fedoras dancing like they were a Vegas act during La Dolce Vita, http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/35/27/57/dfm_after_dark.jpg
or the eager little girls doing their best Agnetha and Anni-Frid impression during Dancing Queen, when Christer was walking into the audience and they sang along without any coaxing.
It was fabulous!


FYI: The dancers are students at BASE23 Stockholm Dance Academy


I actually started a blog post about SVT's wry, whimsical and pop music-heavy kids show 'Den Flygande Mattan' back in January after I came across a particularly cute clip while looking for something else from the SVT Play website.

Here's the show's animated intro:


http://youtu.be/HAzAMpUvjOY
(The name of the show's band -with a cute female drummer no less- is The Flying Carpets.)


I added a little here and there as various artists I know and have followed performed their songs on this popular show, which is hosted by the talented and vivacious Sara Edwardsson.


She is a DYNAMO and has the perfect personality for the show, upbeat like a favorite aunt who knows lots of interesting things she wants to share and impart and never talks down to you just because you are a kid.
Not that I had an aunt like that, but I sure wanted one.


(Slight digression: When I was in high school, a popular and otherwise smart girl I knew somehow, on her own, mistakenly got it into her head that actress Jaclyn Smith was my aunt, since my mother and I were both born in Texas, my mother's hair looked very similar and we had the same last name. Really.
I let that confusion play itself out over a few weeks, but it was a nice thought and certainly a 'fact' that I could've happily lived with!)


Then, in early March, Timoteij performed some songs and I took some notes about that:
http://www.timoteij.se/2011/02/03/den-flygande-mattan-2/
http://svt.se/content/1/c8/02/35/27/57/dfm_timotej.jpg

Timoteij - Kom - from SVT Barnkanalen's "Den Flygande Mattan" February 2011. (With lyrics). http://youtu.be/zj4B2BEvRks



Then, almost as if on cue, everything about that post I'd spent time on disappeared when the power in the neighborhood suddenly went out.

Oh, and that fail-safe automatic Save function on Blogger that's supposed to automatically keep my stuff here from disappearing entirely into the ether by accident or screw-up, well, not so much. It did save the title, but, of course, that was the least important part of the effort.


A few weeks later, I noticed that Darin at Scandipop had written on March 14th about Christer Lindarw performing his drag act on the show -after I'd already seen it for myself via the SVT Play website.

After Dark, but pre-watershed!
by scandipop on March 14, 2011http://www.scandipop.co.uk/?p=5227


I decided that I'd needed to re-write my original post as best I could remember, so that those of you who have never seen it, 100% of you, can get some sense about how truly cute and amusing it is. But I'd already forgotten a lot so...


The 'one-of-these-days' post about why South Florida currently seems to have about ZERO original LIVE English-language programming for children in what is supposed to be such a "creative community" -go ahead, just ask them over at LIV on South Beach and they'll tell you how clever they are!- will have to wait for another time.

Until then, I will just throw out a small south Florida shout-out into the blogosphere for:

a.) Chuck Zink and The Skipper Chuck Show on the old Channel 4 when it was WTVJ, which I was at a few times as an audience member when that was a very tough ticket to score;

b.) Banjo Billy's Fun Boat on Channel 10, WLBW, not WPLG-TV, in the late '60's, where the hook was amiable host Dave Herbert playing Dixieland music, not exactly that hip then -or now- but definitely outside-the-box thinking.

c.) Sunday Funnies, the Sunday morning staple of the then-WCKT, wherein actual Channel 7 news reporter Wayne Chandler -when it was an NBC-affilate during the Dolphins' heyday- read the Herald's Sunday comics along with a robot named Toby, that for all the world looked to be in a very large plastic garbage can.
http://www.theparklander.com/previous/july04/Toby.htmYes, what a potpourri: New Orleans Dixieland music, a dark blue Captain's cap and the Sunday comics and a robot when Charles Schultz's Peanuts was still the most popular newspaper comic strip in the country.
And now on local TV we have... what?
ZERO!

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Speaking of children's television, tell me where the local equivalent in South Florida was this past week for this story I found on SVT's Lilla Aktuellt, about a Swedish girl named Anna that was born on September 11th, 2001, about what it's like to have your birthday be a day that most people think of in such a negative way, or what she thinks about what happened to Osama bin Laden?
http://svt.se/2.62895/hem


In the South Florida media market of today, kids under 13 get on TV because they are cute or fat or stupid or are shot dead in drive-bys or graduate from high school when they are 11 or have rich parents who book a big-name music act for their bar mitzvah or call 911 when their mother falls asleep in a drug-fueled haze and their baby sister has wandered out of the apt. or fallen into the pool or...
But mostly, when they are on TV, they are shown in a store buying something.
It's so predictable!


But where's the Miami TV stations' attempt to serve that particular demographic?



SVT's Lilla Aktuellt video: Anna föddes samma dag som terrordåden
(Anna was born on the same day as the 9/11 attacks)
Video available for watching on website until May 3, 2012.
http://svtplay.se/v/2415038/anna_foddes_samma_dag_som_terrordaden


Lilla Aktuellt homepage/hemsida: http://svt.se/2.62895/hem


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See also:
http://swedishstereo.blogspot.com/