101...and Boney M

Hello! Post 101. Guess that means I am a real blogger. I have a lot to talk about as I am starting to think about moving home and all that and of course, like anything administrative in this country, it is 10 times more complicated and annoying. But more on that later.

First, I need to conduct some research.

I saw Mamma Mia! last night at the cinema and it was fantastic. I loved Meryl Streep and the girl who I will refer to as Karen from Mean Girls. She was fantastic!! Pierce...you are still soooooo dreamy, especially in your boater shoes and crisp summer dress shirts, but his singing was a bit off the mark. Anyway, I came into work today with an ipod fully loaded with ABBA in order to share some of my new songs with my office mates.

I was recently promoted to manager and share an office with two younger staff. I'm not sure if I'm the best example. I trash talk HR or anyone else that gives me a hard time, offer my philosopy on how things should be working, curse at my computer when it malfunctions and I occassionally show up in very wrinkled/non matching outfits. Oh and I often blast music and sing while I do my work. Anyway, they seem to respect me and ask me lots of questions, so I guess I am somewhat helpful. I love listening to music when I work and so do Angelina and Abrie. So today we did basically what was akin to a "dance off" and each of us kept finding songs on the internet to see if we could find ones we all liked or maybe to introduce someone to a new song.

Now I'm from across the pond, Abrie is from south africa and Angelina is from russia. Three continents is fairly vast. But we found a lot in common. For example, we all liked hotel california. And we all love ABBA. But then, Angelina suggested this band I have never heard of.

"It's called Boney M." she said.

"Bone what???" I replied. She instructed me how to spell it and I looked up the song on youtube. When I pressed play, I heard some song that I have never heard in my life.

They were both completly shocked. I continued my research later in the day and asked my colleague Theresa if she knew this band. "You're kidding. Not knowing them is like not knowing Michael Jackson." And my colleague Barbara said the same thing. "Course I know them, everyone does. You must be kidding. That's like saying you don't know the YMCA. Or any normal famous group." But every Yank that I asked said they had never heard of them.

So I did a little more research on my beloved Wiki (and I have donated, I love it so much) and apparently Boney M is like another ABBA type band, popular around the same time and coming out of Germany. The music is actually really good. I mean, if you like fun cheesy pop, which I do. But apparently the albums were only released in the U.S. for the first time last year. And they are def not in the itunes store. I just checked.

So can you please go on youtube and look up this band and leave a comment if you have ever heard this song in your life? It will help with my multi cultural research. You can look up Rivers of Babylon, Rasputin and Sunny which are the ones we listened to today.

Other things we had in common (just a few):

Angie and Abrie - Dr Alban (he wrote scatman)
Me and Abrie - How Bizarre and that stupid ass song about girls that wear A and F...you know the one??? how does crap like that make its way over here but we don't get bands like boney M which have global appeal?
all of us - Fascination (by Alphabeat...also only over in Europe for the moment I think...but I love it)
Me and Angie - Debbie Gibson (except she liked some new song and I played "out of the blue", and neither of us had ever heard the other one).

Fun right??