On Saturday (6/4/12) Rihanna performed her concert in San Jose which marked the first of a series of concerts in California - Rihanna's state of primary residence. The big advantage of these concerts is that it allows Rihanna to sleep in her own bed between concerts. After more then five weeks on the road that has got be a relief. The main disadvantage of this is that is raises the possibility that Chris Brown might be joining her in that bed and they won't be doing much sleeping. The other disadvantage is that it gives the US great opportunity to take pot-shots at Rihanna in an effort to stress her out.
On that last point the US doesn't seem to be holding back. On Thursday (4/4/13) afternoon (local) Rihanna became the latest victim of the 'Swatting' trend. Basically this involves calling in a false report of a violent crime in progress to the police in the hope they will send a large police response to the address in question hopefully including a Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team. For the householder on the receiving end of this practical joke this is obviously hugely stressful because they're either faced with a lot of heavily armed police or if they're not home (as Rihanna wasn't) they're left wondering if a violent crime has really been committed at their home and what damage the police did trying to find out. The general trend of 'Swatting' has been designed to promote an internal US discussion about gun control and what is a proportional police response to a number of potentially heavy armed offenders. One US county whose name I can't remember because it's too small to afford a SWAT team has responded to this question by arming it's patrol officers with commercially purchased AR-15 Bushmaster rifles along with their department issue body armour. Personally I'm just hoping the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is learning from what is becoming a growing trend.
Also on Thursday rumour has it that Rihanna's mother Monica Braithwaite having turned down the option to give her deposition of evidence in the Berdon LLP case in a Barbados Court and actually gave it in a Washington Court. While I don't think Ms Braithwaite has anything to hide in this case Berdon LLP's lawyers job is to make sure that Ms Braithwaite's evidence serves their clients purpose rather than Ms Braithwaites. Given the level of Inland Revenue Service (IRS) involvement in this case any slip by Ms Braithwaite could be used to incriminate either her or her daughter in a future criminal case regarding tax evasion. Just to hammer the point home just as Ms Braithwaite was (allegedly) making her deposition US actor Wesley Snipes was released from prison having served a sentence for tax evasion.
If Rihanna's family is anything like mine her mother would have no doubt claimed the change in arrangements was to avoid putting extra pressure on Rihanna's native Barbados. In reality though it was so Ms Braithwaite would be in the US on Friday (5/4/13) for her birthday so she could celebrate with her daughter. Rihanna seemed to oblige taking her mother out shopping in Beverley Hills posing for paparazzi shots and posting a few Instagram pictures of her own. Curiously those Instagram pictures didn't show up on my Blackberry Twitter feed but did show up on my PC Twitter feed. However by that point someone had already sent them to my Blackberry.
The main stress on Rihanna on Friday though was of course Chris Brown's appearance before Judge James Bradlin to answer allegations that he perverted the course of justice by fraudulently filing paperwork claiming that he was carrying out community service work in West Virginia at a time he was being filmed and photographed in California. Two days on still little is known about the exact detail of what took place during Brown's Court appearance. Mainly that is because it was it was an in chambers hearing attended only by the Judge, Brown, Brown's attorney and an LA County prosecutor. However what seems to have happened is that two mysterious envelopes where presented (we don't know by whom), entered into evidence and a continuance was granted until June 10th (10/6/13) for that sealed evidence to be considered. Of course the main aim from the US was to keep Chris Brown in play for the rest of Rihanna's tour while hoping that interested parties will now activate and expose their intelligence gathering networks in an effort to find out what these two mysterious envelopes contain. I doubt many will bother though because this new evidence will have to be pretty epic in order to have any impact on the case by explaining away the evidence already presented by the prosecution. The setting of the June 10th date means that Rihanna will have to go through all this again before her concert in Cardiff, UK. Presumably the CIA handlers were hoping that nobody would notice that while Cardiff is in Wales it is most certainly under the full control of the UK Crown.
If Chris Brown's Court appearance and her mother weren't enough stress for Rihanna to deal with on Saturday she also had to deal with the international reaction to the US' continued protection of Chris Brown which can best be described as one of raucous laughter. Apart from the events of the Grand National and UK singer Jessie J Tweeting out her great enthusiasm for Chris Brown which I covered in my post "I've Had an Adventure" Swedish retailer Ikea also announced that they'd withdrawn their Elk meat lasagne from sale because they'd found it to contain traces of pork. As there is no real risk that any Muslim or Jew would have been exposed to the tainted Elk Lasange (I doubt Ikea even sell such a product) this was a Ikea contributing to the general level of amusement that surrounds US attempts to sell the idea of Chris Brown with any level of credibility.
Sadly all this does seem to have had some negative effect within Rihanna's core social circle. While Melissa Forde did fly with Rihanna from LA to San Jose it is clear that there has been some sort of row. Personally I think that this had something to do with Forde's enthusiastic response to Rihanna's analysis of the Jessie J Tweet. However to be fair to Ms Forde with everybody else rolling about on the floor laughing it must have been hard for her to keep a straight face. To make matters worse the San Jose concert was apparently attended by US starlet Selena Gomez who along with Justin Timberlake became Swatting victims right after Rihanna and during Chris Brown's Court appearance. Therefore I should explain that Selena Gomez is the ex-girlfriend of Justin Bieber who is currently being used to test out reaction to Chris Brown as he tours around Europe. So far France have kicked Bieber out of a hotel, Germany have seized his pet monkey and masters of the peacekeeping mission Norway have cancelled tests and exams so students can go to Justin Bieber concerts. I should also probably explain that Justin Bieber has also long been used as a metaphor for me while Selena Gomez has been used as a metaphor for my friend's step-daughter. Might be going down to see them next weekend, long story.
Anyway as for the concert itself no official information has been released and the reporting in the local press has been extremely poor. There has been only one review published and that focused on the issues surrounding Rihanna such as her history with Chris Brown rather than any aspect of her performance such as the set-list or the start time. However a local fan did film the whole thing and has posted it up on the Internet. I'm sure Live Nation will claim responsibility for this for not having contacted the web-host insisting they take it down for copyright infringement. As a result I have now watched one of Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour performances in full for the very first time.
Admittedly with only a limited frame of reference I would say that all the stress clearly affected Rihanna's performance. Although the show wasn't anywhere near as bad as earlier concerts where she was recovering from illness Rihanna seemed subdued with an air of going through the motions about her. She performed her standard set-list and costume changes although Act 2 (Jump) and Act 3 (Man Down) were switched. This appears to be a permanent change in an effort to liven up the show. That's because all the new material of the Intro ("Mother Mary") followed by the "Phresh of the Runway" act followed by the "Jump" act left everything feeling flat and slow. Injecting the old material of the "Man Down" act sooner helps break the monotony up. Hopefully this forced changed will result in a growing understanding amongst Rihanna's management that the "Unapologetic" album was a big mistake. A greater hope is that "Birthday Cake" will be dropped from the set-list entirely. After all while I've not heard the recorded version the live version certainly gives the impression that Coldplay only invited Rihanna to record "Princess of China" in an effort to convince her that Birthday Cake and Chris Brown was a really bad idea.
Anyway while I was watching the show Rihanna's tour promoter Live Nation confirmed what has long been know by announcing that Rihanna's tour is to be extended by the addition of a third New Zealand concert in Auckland on October 9th (9/10/13). However proving that Live Nation and their CIA contacts have already more than lost the intel game I can confirm that unless urgent phone calls are made over the coming hours Live Nation will tomorrow announce that Rihanna's tour will be extended further by two October dates in South Africa. This was the CIA handlers real reason for continuing to protect Chris Brown. By offering South Africa the unique opportunity to inspect Rihanna (and possibly Chris Brown) up close South Africa could be tricked into signing up to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operation in Mali in the hope that they could steal an advantage on their African neighbours by using the unique information they'd gathered on Rihanna's progress. The rumour that Rihanna may also be adding an Israeli date does put an interesting spin on this issue however I hope that if Rihanna does play Israel it will be her last concert of the tour and she won't be allowed to leave the country until certain conditions are met. After all I've heard those 2000 some Ivorian men that the French are training won't be ready for deployment in Mali until at least a week after Chris Brown is indicted.
The US pressure on Rihanna of course continues with her today attending (without Chris Brown) a basketball game between the LA Lakers and the LA Clippers. The Lakers are of course a reference to that Christmas day game Rihanna attended with Chris Brown while the Clippers will always be a reference to the old English slang term in which a 'Clipper' is a female con artist who pretends to be a prostitute but after taking the money fails to deliver the goods. I think the important thing to remember is that still neither of them are the Boston Celtics but then I know nothing about basketball which is a stupid sport played by morons with too much time on their hands.
23:59 on 7/4/13.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment