Word: bjorns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Abba had it so much easier. The Swedish rock group (whose leaders, Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, had been burned on Broadway once before, with their 1988 musical Chess) simply sat back and let a bunch of other folks take Abba's hit songs, graft them onto a flimsy story about a girl looking for her real dad on her wedding day and turn Mamma Mia! into a smash hit on Broadway--and just about everywhere else in the Western world...
...first part of the book reads like a pastoral of a child's suburban springtime. Jon, the focus of the book, spends his laconic, carefree schooldays fooling around with his best friend Bjorn, reading comic books, eating candy and telling jokes. He lives in a slightly odd, magical universe where a pterodactyl may swoop down and fly off with his kite to his mild surprise. Stilts are used instead of cars and sometimes Jon's father lets him "drive it to the garage." The characters all have the faces of animals, but not in any sort of realistic...
...than Serena and Venus. Pathetic! An old grumpy bald guy, all angry that he can't get into the dance. Just trying to cause trouble. Yeah, I know - he was always trouble, but he used to be kinda cool, when it was him and Jimmy C. and that dreamboat Bjorn. So sad, now - a big Mr. Grumpus. He was hanging with that sex-fiend Boris, and they were saying how they were gonna take the dance floor after the girls and show everyone what's what. I don't think anyone even watched...
...they are coming back. Andy Pesky, president of the premium travel agency ProTravel-The Zenith Group, calls them "the hottest thing out there." While many mid-20th century middle-class folk might have felt uncomfortable in such swanky settings, today, observes Bjorn Hanson of PricewaterhouseCoopers, "everyone has moved up in economic status in their own mind, so everyone feels entitled--even feels that a luxury vacation is a birthright...
...increase the box office too. Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, of Abba, had a Broadway failure despite their great score for the rock musical Chess in the mid-'80s. But Mamma Mia!--essentially a greatest-hits album adorning a fluffy story about a girl searching for her real dad--has been breaking attendance records in London, Toronto and Los Angeles. Which means that more than just Abba fans are singing along with Dancing Queen...