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.
(Originally Posted) 23:59 on 7/4/13.
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