Bulgaria Honored Whitney Houston With A Beautiful Tribute

A wonderful performance of The Greatest Love of All

Some of the best female voices honored the legacy of the late singer last week in a popular Bulgarian bar.

I Will Always Love You, I Have Nothing, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, I'm Every Woman and When You Believe were among the songs performed in SOFIA LIVE CLUB,  which was jam-packed for the night.

The tribute was brilliantly organized by the Bulgarian pop group "TE" and their lead singer Preslava Peicheva who was also hosting.

The evening started with a beautiful performance of So Emotional by Peicheva and continued with other top Bulgarian female singers such as: Polly Genova, last year's entry in the Eurovision song contest, Mariana Popova, Eurovision 2006, Maria Ilieva, unarguably one of the best Bulgarian female singers, and many more.

The audience rapturously applauded all the performers and could not resist but danced and sung with them some of the best songs of our lifetime.



After the almost two-hour concert, all the singers gathered on stage for another wonderful performance of one of the most touching songs of Whitney, The Greatest Love of All.

Houston died suddenly in Los Angeles in February at the age of 48 of accidental drowning due to the effects of cocaine use and heart disease. She was often called "The Voice" in reference to her exceptional vocal talent. The Guiness World Records ranked her as the most-awarded female act of all-time.

Commercials, PLEASE, Stop Ruining My Day!

Commercials get more and more aggressive, no doubt!
I would roughly classify the most upsetting ones in three different groups:

1. The most provocative & the nastiest ones: I'm sitting on my sofa trying to relax after a hard day at work and I'm watching my favorite evening show. It's time for commercials.

The first one starts with a death poll of people who had a certain virus (I intentionally would not mention any names of deadly viruses since I do not want to transfer the bad feeling from the commercials). The ad tries to sell me a vaccine against that virus. It actually tries to convince me and all other viewers that one does not have any other choice but to vaccinate themselves, their relatives and all their closest ones in order to avoid the fatal virus. They replay this ad in every commercial break!

OK, we may buy it, but, please, do not put us on the verge of tears or make us think about death every forty minutes or so just because you want us to buy your product!

2. The less provocative but still nasty ones: Again, I'm sitting on my sofa trying to relax after a hard day at work and I'm watching my favorite evening show. It's time for commercials.

They show a social commercial about abandoned children who would not even have a piece of bread for dinner unless the viewers send them money through instant messages. While watching the commercial I remember a friend of mine who is a teacher on a minimum salary, trying to raise her three children with her husband who happened to be a teacher on a minimum salary as well. They hardly have enough cash to pay their bills. I've seen them several times unable to resist the appeal from the TV screens and sending messages to help these children in need, even though they were hardly able to supply food to their own children.

I wonder why they do not they show these commercials on 50-inch TV screens in the luxury hotels where rich people could see them and react. Why are those commercials torturing the ordinary people watching TVs at home but not, for instance, the politicians who are relaxing in posh SPA resorts at the same time?

3. The dull ones: I'm sitting on my sofa trying to relax after a hard day at work and I'm watching my favorite evening show. I spill a greasy sauce on my shirt. It's time for commercials. I wonder what they'll come up this time with?!

An unknown lady in a black evening dress takes a 5-litre detergent out of her bag during a ballet concert just to show what she washes her brother's stage clothes with. Her brother, on the other hand, smiles back at her while rehearsing on stage when he sees his favorite detergent!

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I'm sitting on my sofa trying to relax after a hard day at work and I'm watching my favorite evening show. It's time for commercials.... I cannot stand it anymore and I turn off the TV.... I'm finally relaxing!

Whitney, drugs, politics & business interests

You may wonder what is the common denominator of those words in the headline. I think it's pretty obvious but if you do not, keep reading.

Here is the story as I felt it:

I spent the whole evening on 18.02.2012, watching the "Going Home" Ceremony of Whitney Houston live on CNN. It was hard watching. More than three hours friends and relatives of Mrs Houston shared their memories about her with the whole world. It was touching. Everyone talked about her being a wonderful performer, a loving person and an unspeakable talent. However, the topic about her personal struggles with drug addiction was not omitted entirely.

After the ceremony I couldn't fall asleep. I was browsing through the Internet when I ran across a two-part documentary by a top Bulgarian journalist, Miroluba Benatova, about Bulgarian drug smugglers kept in Brazilian prisons. Some of the interviewees were Bulgarians who said they were convicted of smuggling because the police found raw cocaine in their suitcases at the airport. However, other Bulgarian prisoners said they were arrested because the police thought they led suspicious conversations on the phone, allegedly they were talking about smuggling drugs. All of the prisoners were sentenced to five to ten years in prison.

After watching all this I couldn't help but link those two broadcasts I watched that night. Then I remembered Oprah Winfrey's interview with Whitney in 2009 when Mrs Houston admitted she had problems with drugs. A problem the whole world already knew about. Houston explained she was smoking marijuana and she laced it with raw cocaine. She also confessed she has been doing that for years.

Here comes the paradox, followed by at least a dozen rhetorical questions. Why governments, NGOs, lobbyists, interest groups and pretty much everyone all over the world vigorously stated they were fighting against drugs when nobody has ever asked Whitney how she got her raw cocaine? Who sold it to her? Why did it happen that everybody knew that a vast majority of celebrities was addicted to illegal substances and still nobody has ever tried to prosecute and put in prison their dealers? Why did they put in jail drug mules in Brazil caught with a few kilos of cocaine in their bags but they did not also throw in jail Whitney's dealer whom she gave her fortune of tens of million dollars to?

The questions kept coming. Was there political reluctance to fight drugs or were there business interests involved? Last but not least, would people worldwide have been mourning on 18.02.2012 because of the death of Mrs Houston if her longtime dealers were convinced, prosecuted and put in jail just as the Bulgarian mules were in Brazil? Nobody would ever know the answer to the last question but it's definitely worth thinking about it!

Balkan humor: Boris Tadich's Monkey Face

The picture below is a screen shot of the profile of Boris Tadich, the President of Serbia of two mandates, in the Bulgarian version of Wikipedia as of 10.01.2012.:

The creature on the profile picture corresponds to Celbus albifrons, a type of New World primate.

And this is Boris Tadich in the English version of Wikipedia:

I hope somebody fixes it before our neighbors accidentally run across it and take it, by mistake, personally.

BG Journalists Ignore Code Of Ethics With Impunity

A news story on a national TV channel this morning, provoked me to sit down and write about the problem, which has bothered me lately.

A Bulgarian journalist, Petya Dikova, clearly ignored one of the principles of Code of Ethics (COE) in a news piece for the morning show "Tazi Nedelq", broadcast on the national TV channel, bTV.

Dikova did a standard news story on the forthcoming wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. She interviewed people from Bucklebury, Berkshire, UK, the place where Middleton grew up.

However, while showing the interviews with the local people, Dikova said that one of the interviewees did not want to talk on the record. It was a middle-aged British lady. The refusal of the lady to go on the record did not prevent Dikova from including her in her material, though. Dikova even said that the lady did not suspect that the cameraman, who was far away at that moment, was actually filming her and that Dikova was carrying a switched on voice recorder in her bag.

This harmless lifestyle news story leads to a broader problem - failure of journalists to comply with the Bulgarian COE. The Code states that journalists must gather their information by honest and lawful means. Needless to say, this way of gathering information does not qualify as honest means.

Lyuba Rizova, Head of News and Current Affairs in bTV, said in an interview after signing the COE in 2004, that the Code gives journalists not only freedom but also obligations. Easy to say, hard to follow.

The interviewed lady in Dikova's news piece would probably never find out that her conversation with a Bulgarian journalist was aired, as the interview was broadcast only in Bulgaria.

However, several rhetorical questions come to mind. Is it ethical for a journalist to disrespect the wish of its sources? Why are the editors of the media tolerating such an act? Why is the civil society silent about such disrespect of the rights of a random citizen?

Too many questions concerning the Bulgarian media arise from such a trivial news story. Sadly, this is not the only example. bTV is not the only media which does it. Just print a copy of the Code, sit in front of the TV, and cross out the violated articles. In an hour or two, the majority of them will be crossed out. Try it!

Photo: http://commentarama.blogspot.com

Pepsi Ad: Bend It Like Beckham

The latest ad of Diet Pepsi shows David Beckham kicking three balls into three distant trash cans on the beach. The video was disguised as behind-the-scenes shooting.

Doubts over whether the video was fake or real circulated the web during the past several days. Is Beckham the coolest player on the planet or has Pepsi gambled that so many people would watch the video, that it will meet the goals of the ad, regardless its execution. 

Two issues to point out concerning the idea and the authenticity of the ad:

First, the idea of the video quite resembles a commercial of Ronaldinho for Nike in 2005: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNwLn85I75Y

Second, disregard the first point for now and leave it to the authorities. The ad did meet its goals. It provoked its target group and has been watched almost 1.5 mln times since last Thursday.

Product sales are up, customers are happy with Beckham's ball tricks, who cares whether the video is fake or real?!

Bulgarian MPs donate limos to orphans!?!?!

Bulgarian members of parliament (MP) donated 30 limos to orphans last week, Standard newspaper reported. 

At first, the idea of the MPs was to put the limos for auction. However, that option was later dropped, as the MPs said they thought the luxury vehicles were too old and expensive to maintain and no one was going to buy them.

What a brilliant idea! MPs are so generous, plus they cut their costs. I suggest BBC does a follow up story on the Bulgarian homeless and abandoned children as there is clear evidence the national authorities are taking serious steps to better the living conditions in the orphanages.

Now, imagine some of these:

Photo: Party Limo Service

in front of this:

An orphanage in Bourgas, Bulgaria. Photo: www.news.bg

Priceless!