eurovision YouTube Channel video: Emmelie de Forest - Only Teardrops (Denmark) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final. Mälmo, Sweden Uploaded May 18, 2013. http://youtu.be/p3f9v8ebuD4
Denmark's earnest Emmelie De Forest wins the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest in Mälmo, but Anouk & The Netherlands gets 12 first-place points from Hallandale Beach Blog, and around here, that's the only vote that really matters. And yes, we vote early and we vote often.
eurovision YouTube Channel video: Anouk - Birds (The Netherlands) - LIVE - 2013 Grand Final, Eurovision Song Contest 2013 Grand Final. Mälmo, Sweden
I'll have a post in the coming days on the singing hits and misses of the show and an overview of what I thought worked and didn't work production-wise, so this will be my quick recap.
But I did want to mention that I thought that the "Stockholm smorgasbord" skit was the best of the interval bits, with host Petra Mede singing and dancing and acquiting herself quite well and showing why she was the surprise choice to host the show, even if as Karl at the Scandipop blog tweeted Monday, she overdoes the accent when speaking English.
Petra Mede's English accent is just too much. Too much. It's like a parody that doesn't stop. Tone it down love. #Eurovision — scandipop (@scandipop) May 13, 2013
The skit also had the advantage of not just being funny, but also true. I hope to be able to find a clip of it and post it here soon so you can all see for yourself. I watched the show from beginning-to-end, and then the after-show interviews as well, and only had about 3-4 times when the SVT Play feed seemed to stall or there was a momentary blip, and all but one of those came during the judging. That's always the deadly-dullest part of the show, as viewers are forced to listen to people from 39 countries stall for time with their little amusing anecdotes instead of simply reporting their own countries results via the awarding of 8 points for 3rd place, 10 for second and 12 for first-place.
As it happens, this year, Emmelie De Forest's status as winner was already perfectly obvious when they still had about 4-5 counties to poll, as we could see in the background while host Petra Mede was forced to continue asking a question that was already moot.
Norway's Margaret Berger finished fourth.
All my incoming blog-related emails from readers on Saturday were from people who just LOVE the song, some of whom even wrote that they'll now consider purchasing the new 10-song CD of this wonderfully-talented Dutch singer most said they'd never heard of until today.
That's the power of blogging.
'Sad Singalong Songs' now available in stores and at iTunes, probably for about 8,99 € or about $11.50 USD.
That's a very good deal, indeed.
I also suggested they tale a close look at the official video for "Birds" as seen below on her VEVO YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/AnoukVEVO
and consider subscribing to it, as I already was.
AnoukVEVO YouTube channel: Anouk - Birds, from her new CD titled 'Sad Singalong Songs'. Uploaded May 15, 2013.http://youtu.be/xPDYbuaXlA8
If yours truly was involved with a major Hollywood studio and I had an upcoming drama project involving someone like Cate Blanchett or Rachel McAdams or a similar genuine acting talent, especially a period piece pre-1960's, I'd figure out some way to get this song in the movie before somebody beat me to the punch. With Anouk singing, nobody else.
Multi-talented DxDutch does it all: sings "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" and plays talent scout and spots Old-style flash mob in the Old Country, complete with costumes: Flash mob in Munich shopping center startles some shoppers but amuses the hip and the cool kids who "get it"; #voXXclub, @DxDutch
Last week I first got wind of this interesting video and insight into German pop culture, courtesy of a Tweet by super-music talent DxDutch, one of the genuine stars of the YouTube generation, and an actual YouTube Partner, just like vlogger extraordinaire and HBB favorite Justine Ezarik, i.e. iJustine, http://ijustine.com/category/vlogs/ (See vid of them together at http://youtu.be/LBvWk6yv5XE) It features the music and antics of Universal Music Group (Germany) recording artist s voXXclub. http://www.universal-music.de/voxxclub/home
voXXclub YouTube channel video: "Rock mi" flashmob in den Riem Arcaden in München. Uploaded March 19, 2013.http://youtu.be/0Y_VqqXphaQ
Over the weekend I was going thru my large YouTube inbox of subscribed videos I hadn't gotten around to watching yet because of the NCAA Mens Basketball tourney, the usual unethical doings in Hallandale Beach and environs, and some other matters not worth getting into now. There, staring back at me from my computer screen was this remake byDxDutch of a Sonny Bono tune that he wrote and which became a hit for Cher in 1966, reaching #2 onBillboard's Hot 100 list. And who, counter to some of her fan's fears, is NOT dead -NOWTHATCHERISNOTDEAD...
CNN video: Dutch National Team is target of racial abuse in Krakow, Poland during team practice for Euro 2012. Pedro Pinto reports from Warsaw on incident, rumors of cause and what UEFA is doing. Tourney starts today as Poland hosts Greece in Warsaw. June 7, 2012.
The Netherlands plays Denmark on Saturday, an ESPN match airing at 11:45 a.m. and then plays Germany on Wednesday.
Some of you more regular readers of the blog might recall that my pre-2010 World Cup prediction was that the Orange would win in South Africa, but instead, they lost in a very ugly and depressing way in the title match to Spain, a style that really upset a lot of Dutch football fans at home and around the world.
TRAINING DUTCH TEAM ORANJE FOR EURO 2012 !! NEDERLAND HD
TEN Network News, Australia: Playground inspiration at the railway station in Utrecht, The Netherlands. August 11, 2011. http://youtu.be/vZrUuC8j7XY
Dutch genius and ingenuity at its best -making the familiar even more useful and fun! The quickest distance between two points is a slide!
Despite The Netherlands being a small country, size-wise, it's ranked number eight, right behind Sverige (Sweden), in the number of readers coming to my humble blog, and the home of a few readers who fairly regularly send me a head's-up on interesting ideas, news stories, songs and videos.
Blijvendie ideeënkomen!
Let me take the opportunity to show you some of my favorite recent Dutch treats...
(In case you forgot or weren't reading the blog then, as I've previously mentioned here, The Netherlands is a country that my family has always had a great deal of warm feelings for. We not only knew a few very friendly Dutch emigres in North Miami Beach as I and my sisters were growing up there in the 1970's -esp. me- but one of my two younger sisters studied in Rotterdam at Erasmus University for a semester her junior year atIU -January of 1985- and absolutely LOVED IT.
So much so that four short years later, she had her honeymoon in Amsterdam and the rest of the country after getting married in New Amsterdam -New York!- which is when I first became aware of and a regular subscriber to the salmon-colored New York Observer.)
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KLM Royal Dutch Airlines video:KLM Personal Space Experiment
I first posted this video in my January 10th, 2011 post titled Armin van Buuren feat. Christian Burns - This Light Between Us -Official Music Video; Unplugged version with Christian Burns & Eller van Buuren at
The land that feminism forgot: They wouldn't dream of working full-time, spend three hours a day drinking coffee and their men pay for everything - have Dutch women found the secret to happiness?
By Liz Jones
Last updated at 11:34 PM on 9th March 2011
Have you wondered what life would be like if feminism had never happened? If we were all housewives? If we were not required to live on our wits and our adrenaline, and were able to take up a hobby? If men were happy to step up to the mark and look after us?
Am I talking about travelling back in time to see what life was like in the Fifties? No, it is much simpler than that. I am catching a flight to Amsterdam.
TV4.se Nyheterna video:Kommuner raggar arbetskraft i Holland.
Sverige behöver invandrad arbetskraft. I dag finns det tusentals kvalificerade och arbetslösa invandrare i Sverige. Samtidigt raggar kommunerna arbetskraft utomlands. TV4Nyheternas Lena Sundström har besökt Emigrantmässan i Utrecht.
TV4 Nyheterna reporter Lena Sundström visits an Emigration Fair held in Utrecht, The Netherlands in February that sought to motivate smart and educated Dutch workers to consider emigrating to Sweden, with various parts of the convention space dedicated to different aspects of life in the country, with about 100 cities and towns represented. This fair is very successful as over 700,000 Dutch citizens a year seriously consider emigrating overseas and over 120,000 actually do it.
It's not said in the video but one way of looking at this fascination that Sweden holds for some Dutch citizens is that just as kids who grows up in small towns in the U.S. often aims to go to a big city some day to do whatever it is they they aim to do, so it is that for a person who grows-up in a small and congested country like the NL, where land is precious, going to a country with lots of space to breathe sounds appealing.
For someone from NL, the mid-central and northern parts of Sweden -where as I recently wrote, film director David Fincher has recently recorded some scenes in Sollefteå for the new American film version of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starring Daniel Craig- can be like visiting another planet.
Space is everywhere, along with hills, mountains and lakes.
To quote myself, whether in Iceland or the Hill Country of Bandera, Texas, the Faroe Islands or Holland, "girls love horses..."
And if there are a few things we know about our friends in the land of the Oranje, de nederlandse, one is of them is that Cinzia ♥ horses and Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean.
That is a stone-cold fact you can't deny.
I first discovered Cinzia's earnest YouTube videos a few months ago after seeing it next to one by Eva Skemm, another devout teenage horse lover -from the Faroe Islands- whom I first mentioned in my July 27th post,
Question: If Miami-Dade County or Broward County had a 'Sister County' sort of deal along the lines of the Sister Cities program, with Amsterdam or Rotterdam -cities where my sister her honeymoon and went to school for a semester while going to IU- and they did an exchange of elected officials and employees, what would happen quicker?
The people from South Florida "accidentally" flooding the city, or the Dutch using common sense and some style to make Miami more sane, livable and possibly, sexier?
Slate
HOME / ARCHITECTURE: WHAT WE BUILD.
Can Cities Save the Planet?
Scientists are skeptical. Planners are hopeful. The Dutch are pragmatic.
By Witold Rybczynski
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Winning With Water
According to Timothy Beatley, an urban-planning professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Green Urbanism, the per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of American cities are almost twice as high as those of their European counterparts. Hardly surprising, since European cities are denser and more compact, homes are smaller, and people rely to a far greater extent on mass transit. So if Americans are to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, we will have to do a lot more than switch to reusable shopping bags and recycle our soda cans. But as a recent conference on "urban design after the age of oil" at the University of Pennsylvania (where I teach) demonstrated, there is something of a disconnect between the global-warming problem and the available solutions.
On Tuesday night I had the pleasure to meet several members of the Dutch delegation that came to Miami for a two-day ThinkBike workshop. The purpose of the ThinkBike workshop was to learn from the expertise of Dutch planners. They came to teach us how we could improve downtown Miami’s bikeability. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the actual workshop, but I was able to make it to the post-seminar cocktail hour. Over a couple of Cold Stellas I spoke with several members from the Dutch delegation, a gentleman from the County Public Works Department, as well as citizens all of whom participated in the seminar. The feedback I recieved was extremely positive.
By the way, I spotted someone riding one of the Dutch bikes -with the KLM basket- in May in Hollywood, east of The ArtsPark, that I strongly suspect had been stolen
I didn't know what it was, though, since I hadn't read the story yet.
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Houston Chronicle
Steffy: U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertise
By Loren Steffy
June 8, 2010, 10:13PM
Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.
Please be sure to read my blog post of almost a year ago, August 18, 2010, titled Fascinating Deutsche Welle TV video of innovative architect Thomas Rau in Amsterdam, and what he's done with the WWF HQ in The Netherlands
Last year before the 2010 World Cup tourney started in South Africa, I predicted that The Netherlands would win, likely beating Spain 4-2 in the final. C'est la vie.
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This was a real gold nugget of useful information.
Glassworks (Amsterdam) video: Mini vs. Monster: The New Mini Family (3D Commercial with Monster Trucks!); Directed by Robert Jitzmark. Filmed at Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada. http://youtu.be/KZ0PRAVgcyY
No Minis were harmed in the making of this wonderful ad!
Dutch advertising agencyBSUR enlisted the creative forces at the Amsterdam office of Glassworksand Stockholm production company Camp David to team together to help create the first stereoscopic TV commercial to ever air in The Netherlands. And the results are both impressive and hilarious.
I originally came to this short report -in English- on Deutsche Welle TV after reading a story on FC Bayern Munich boss Karl-Heinz Rummenigge's efforts to bring salaries down and keep at least some ticket prices family-friendly, and I'll be posting that story soon.
This video explains why architect Thomas Rau decided to rent (instead of buying) his office interior, why this is, supposedly, better for the environment and financially attractive for manufacturers, though the truth is, he makes the disposition of the furniture the manufacturer's problem, not his, when he tires of it.
Then, Deutsche Welle visits a client that he has worked his magic on -the head office of WWF Netherlands in Zeist- and explains how their building became the first energy neutral building in the land of the Orange.
http://www.archicentral.com/wwf-zeist-the-netherlands-rau-architects-11212/http://sustainablecities.dk/en/city-projects/cases/zeist-home-to-the-wwfs-innovative-new-dutch-headquarters "A key maxim he follows is the use of 100% recyclable materials. Rau has committed himself to designing environmentally-responsible architecture." http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5887227,00.html
Some day, if I can remember to, I'll write here about my plans circa 1990 to travel and write from Eastern Europe after the Berlin Wall fell. Among other things, I was going to write about how rural communities were coping with the rapid economic and social changes that lay before them, the effect of decades of pollution on the communities and foreign investment, and the employment prospects of the young people who suddenly had choices their parents never had, and who could now move west and leave their problems -and families- behind. Marie Ciganek, who was from the then-Czechoslovakia, was the savvy and friendly woman who was then in charge of Eastern Europe at the D.C. office of the WWF, and she couldn't have been more helpful and encouraging, even suggesting some folks I contact to make my goal a reality. http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/
But despite lots of hard work on my part to make a real go of it, the plan could never be worked out financially, which was very depressing, as I had some very definite plans for doing some very interesting things once I got over there.
It was while going around talking to people in Washington and doing some investigating that I first found out for myself how many of D.C.'s think tanks and foundations that have funds that are supposed to be used to help and encourage Young Professionals in their career efforts, were actually not much more than wink-wink slush funds/vacation jaunts for well-known establishment types already working at mainstream American news media outlets, print and electronic -and they were NOT so young, either! I won't name names here but... well, I could. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me to see how routinely "requirements" were flouted by well-connected media types to secure things they weren't really eligible for!
This was also roughly when I was routinely plowing thru Foreign Affairs magazine in one week, often on MARC train trips up to Baltimore from D.C's Union Station on weekends for Oriole home games at Camden Yards.
Somewhere, in the archives, there are photos of me reading it in-between innings out in the centerfield bleachers, my favorite area for watching a game there.Perhaps even this essay from 1993, The Collapse Of 'The West' by Owen Harries http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/49202/owen-harries/the-collapse-of-the-west
Those were the days! Yes kids, once upon a time, not so long ago, the Orioles were very, very good...
When I was at IU in Bloomington, I used to routinely listen to Deutsche Welle's English-language radio broadcasts on my shortwave radio, http://www.dw-world.de/ which was even more interesting when I had a girlfriend at the time who spoke fluent German, one of the languages I never quite cracked. http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_multi_mediaplayer/0,,4128016_type_audio_struct_4703_format_WMedia,00.html
Talar ni tyska, Dave? Nej! For more information: http://wwf.panda.org/who_we_are/wwf_offices/netherlands/ http://rau.eu/en
