TV4's Nyhetsmorgon: Vocation – Ett barn är fött (A child is born) LIVE on Abbey Road, December 22, 2011.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=vocation_ett_barn_ar_fott&videoid=2126555&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se
TV4's Nyhetsmorgon: Vocation – Sleigh Ride -LIVE on Abbey Road, December 22, 2011.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=vocation_sleigh_ride&videoid=2126551&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se
This music makes me think of the music I heard one odd pre-Christmas night 21 years ago at the Abercrombie & Fitch at Georgetown Mall, where, within 15 minutes, I ran into and spoke with both then-Rep. and future UN Ambassador and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and then-ABC News correspondent and Gator alum Forrest Sawyer, wearing a trench coat that made him seem like Joel McCrea in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, one of my all-time favorite films.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forrest_Sawyer
I was the first person to tell Richardson about his future House colleague -and present U.S. Senator- Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and because he had never heard of him, at first, I think he thought I was joking about Sanders' VERY liberal politics.
"Even for Vermont" I think I told Richardson a few times.
The store had too many contrasting colognes being sprayed into the air for my tastes -by the adorable sale clerk from Kentucky who worked there- but when you were there, it felt like you were in the most Christmas-y place in all of Washington, D.C., besides near the National Christmas Tree on The Ellipse, where I'd been earlier that night.
(Far away from the decidedly un-Christmas feel of SE Broward County this week.)
Yes, back when the late and much-missed Au Pied du Cochon was just a few blocks away up on Wisconsin Avenue, the default hangout for my friends and I after we saw a film in Georgetown, esp. a foreign film.
Back in the early '90's, there were sometimes even two new au courant foreign films playing within four blocks that had the New York Times film critics abuzz, like Indochine or the Chinese film, LIFE.
When I was there with my friends and my then-significant other, the restaurant seemed almost magical, straight out of a film with interesting, attractive people, delicious-smelling aromas, and some "wicked" people-watching wherever we turned our heads.
We felt so "civilized" when we were there, which as pretentious as it sounds -and no doubt was- was no less true.
At certain points in time in the 15 years I lived up there, Au Pied du Cochon was one of the best places in all of Washington, D.C. to be.
That's where we ate and drank after seeing all three films of the Three Colors trilogy of Krzysztof Kieślowski, starring, respectively, longtime HBB favorites Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy and Iréne Jacob. (I actually bought the film posters of "Blue" and "Red" and had them in frames in my home.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Colors_Trilogy
Boy, thinking back to THOSE days, it REALLY makes this area seem underwhelming, fun-wise.
Downtown Hollywood could do worse than to have one-tenth of the sort of magnetic persona that area of Wisconsin Avenue had at night.
But in order to have even that, you need something for people to do at night besides eating, drinking or shopping, and right now, what is there?
No movie theaters, no bookstores with either charm or programming, no old-style news stands...
It's completely lacking in energy.
Maybe once the FEC commuter train is running in a few years and most of the shop owners in Downtown Hollywood who are now so rude and unfriendly have fled, someone with some common sense will invest some money and take advantage of its natural advantages.
I must tell you, though, among my friends, many who used to regularly patronize Downtown Hollywood at night, the collective corrosive effect of so much rudeness, second-rate service and products, and perennial worrying about both parking and safety/crime, has burned too many people, too many times.
"They're just not that into you."
Not that this avoidance has helped The Village at Gulfstream Park at night very much, though, because they are NOT going there either.
Some new faces with common sense and personality at Hollywood and Hallandale Beach City Hall, on the City Commissions, wouldn't hurt, either.
Notice all the 4's for Channel 4 above the ginger bread house doors!
Helena Insulander of Vocation is interviewed by Nyhetsmorgon hosts Kristin Kaspersen and and Steffo Törnquist. December 22, 2011.
http://www.tv4play.se/nyheter_och_debatt/nyhetsmorgon?title=samtal_med_morgonens_musikgaster_vocation&videoid=2126473&utm_medium=sharing&utm_source=permalink&utm_campaign=tv4play.se
Nyhetsmorgon homepage full of video clips and info:
http://www.tv4.se/nyhetsmorgon
