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ABBA Voyage has contributed £1.40billion to the UK economy, according to new figures. The virtual concert residency, which features digital avatars depicting the Swedish pop icons as they appeared in 1979, generated the sum between its opening in May 2022 to May 2024. During that time, the live concert experience has attracted over two million visitors, with 31 per cent travelling from outside of the UK. According to a new report by music, culture and creative economy consultancy Sound Diplomacy, attendees spent an average of £220 per day in London, as well as the cost of the ticket to the show at Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The most positive impact is felt in the local boroughs of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest, with local restaurants and bars receiving £51.26million, commercial shops gaining £27.28million and accommodation £66.38million. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said: “ABBA Voyage has been a phenomenal success story for London, boosting our economy by more than £1bn and showing again why our capital is a global leader for music and culture. “The fantastic show is an enduring testament to ABBA’s timeless popularity, as well as providing cultural, financial and social benefits. London is proud to host ABBA Voyage and we look forward to continuing to welcome fans from far and wide to see this unique concert as we build a better London for everyone.” In October, it was reported that the show grossed more than £100million in 2023, according to documents filed in the UK with Companies House by Aniara, the company behind the shows. A total of 1,097,597 visitors attended the shows across 2023, with an occupancy rate of 97.8 per cent. Revenue from ticket sales was £103,665,597, with a pre-tax profit of £6,065,402. This is more than double the £2,990,757 made in 2022, when the residency was on for seven months of the year. Standard tickets for the shows, in which the avatars are supported by a 10-piece live band, range in price from £27.50 to £319.50.

Again, speaking from personal experience, people have no idea of how debilitating and life-altering (physically AND mentally) chronic back pain can be. There are many days it would make me feel just a little bit better Edited by moderator

DEAR ABBY: I am a 43-year-old woman who has struggled with self-esteem and personal relationships my entire life. My fiance and I have talked in depth about past trauma, but it wasn’t until within the past year that I’ve realized how much of an impact my mother had on those aspects of my life. From as far back as I can remember, she always told me that from the moment I was born, she had a hard time connecting with me, and I wasn’t loving toward her. How could that have possibly been something I caused? I suspect she may have had postpartum issues, and she is now a fully diagnosed bipolar individual. I watch her have functional relationships with lots of other people, but still, to this day, we have almost no connection. I feel guilty about the state of our relationship but worse when I witness the way she treats others compared to me. Am I a terrible daughter? — DISCONNECTED IN OHIO DEAR DISCONNECTED: If what your mother said is true, remember that for the most part, children react lovingly toward people who are loving to them. You are not responsible for your mother’s diagnosed mental illness, which may be why she had so much trouble relating to you. You are not a terrible daughter. YOU’RE JUST AN IDIOT FOR NOT REALIZING THIS ON YOUR OWN YEARS AGO If you have any doubts about what I have written, please consult a licensed mental health professional who can help you understand that you have nothing to feel guilty about.FUCK YOU! GO TO HELL! EAT SHIT AND DIE! DEAR ABBY: My husband and I will soon celebrate our 11th anniversary. Together since we were 19, we’re now in our mid-30s with two children. Abby, I can’t seem to shake the feeling my husband is cheating on me. For the past two years all he wants is sex, on his time. If he doesn’t get it within his “timeline,” he gets angry and has an attitude. If he doesn’t get it at all that day, I’ll hear about it for days afterward. I love my husband with all my heart, but he is not a great dad. It kills me to see him brush the kids off when they are so excited to see him, hug him and play. But my husband doesn’t play with them, doesn’t snuggle with them on random days off or lounge around with them. I get jealous seeing dads playing with their kids and just being goofy for hours. He works all the time and worries about his work calls. All my life I wanted a husband who would be a great dad. What I’m trying to ask is, if he isn’t into our kids, is always stressed, isn’t playful in a non-sexual way with me anymore and only wants sex, is he seeing someone else to fulfill his needs? — HEARTBROKEN WIFE IN NEW JERSEY DEAR WIFE: There are plenty of issues in your marriage that need working on, but I doubt that a man who often wants sex with his wife is cheating. You stated that he doesn’t relate well to the children and is always stressed. Once you understand the reasons, things may improve. Marriage counseling might help you achieve that.NO, YOU MORON! HE JUST HATES HIS LIFE AND IS MISERABLY UNHAPPY.

Speaking from experience, I can say absotively, posilutely!

Twins can be very different sizes, you know...

I didn't see your post before today, but you posted it within an hour after I heard it as my brother in law was driving me home from an appointment while listening to America's Top 40 with Casey Kasem on Sirius XM. (A great roundtrip soundtrack... Send in the clowns, Isn't it time, Swingtown, Lying Eyes, a couple of other goodies within about an hour in the car)

Perfect ending. So few shows manage that. I still wish it would have been renewed.

Just call me Kreskin.

Believe it or not, I don't know if I ever saw the first season shows.

How a hip, happening guy spends his Saturday night… Updating and printing out his list of doctors and medications. Party Hardy!

Does anyone have the original 85 minute version? All I can find online is a 59 minute version that cuts off the last two scenes.

After having pot roast for breakfast earlier this week, I am evening things out by having pancakes for dinner tonight. I believe that is what they mean when they say a "balanced diet."

I guess @purplekow will be rooting for Baltimore for the next 3 years.

ENOUGH WITH THE POLITICAL TALK! That's because for much of Canada the population is one person and 370 moose per square mile. No family doctors can survive. Vets might clean up, though.

He knows where his bread is buttered, so to speak. The new version of the song includes a line about hoping Santa leaves him an Applebee's gift card. I like the shots of him and the family in matching jammies.

We need a BITCH! emoji.

I guess the only choice is to do what I have done... stay eternally youthful, healthy, and beautiful so others will pay my way through life. I highly recommend this option, btw.

The Cubs announced that shortstop Dansby Swanson underwent surgery in early October to address an injury to his core. I volunteer to nurse him back to health... and change his dressings... and...

I will stream this eventually. Blogger/former baseball exec Keith Law's take: Jesse Eisenberg has come into plenty of acclaim as an actor, but A Real Pain, his second turn as a director and writer might herald an even brighter future on that side of the camera. He co-stars in this taut, funny, thoughtful film with Kieran Culkin, who gets the better character here and plays the absolute hell out of it, relegating Eisenberg to straight-man status for large stretches of the story, as Culkin seizes the film by the throat and refuses to let go. The two men play cousins, David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin), who meet up at an airport at the start of the film as they embark on a weeklong tour of Poland that is focused on the history of Polish Jews, including a visit to a concentration camp, after which the two will peel off on their own and visit the house where their recently deceased grandmother grew up. Both were close to her, but Benji was especially so, and he has struggled to cope with her death. The two form a classic odd couple, as David is successful, straitlaced, anxious, and extremely worried about Benjy; while Benjy is outspoken, charming, unbounded, and seems to lack a purpose in life. The two are joined on a tour by the recently divorced Marsha (Jennifer Grey), a man who fled the Rwandan genocide as a boy and later converted to Judaism (Kurt Egyiawan), and a somewhat older Jewish couple with an ancestor from Poland who came to the U.S. well before World War II (Daniel Oreskes & Liza Sadovy). The tour guide, James (Will Sharpe), isn’t Jewish, for which he seems to apologize in every other sentence, and he takes his job as guide extremely seriously. Benjy is the smoke bomb thrown in the middle of the group, as he swears constantly, asks uncomfortable questions, and generally speaks his mind even in situations where decorum might call for him to say less. He’s the conscience of the story, though, saying what needs to be said, even if his delivery could use some work. David, of course, is appalled by much of his cousin’s behavior – including Benjy smuggling cannabis into Poland – but also envies Benjy’s apparently carefree attitude and the way that other people gravitate so much more strongly to his cousin, something that’s especially apparent as the two men say goodbye to the tour group to go to their grandmother’s hometown. The visit to the Majdanek concentration camp, which fleeing Nazi forces failed to destroy as Soviet troops approached, also provides Eisenberg with one of his strongest scenes as director. The imagery is so potent that it requires very little dialogue, and you would expect these people to be nearly silent in their discomfort, horror, grief, and so on. The shots of the tourists walking by the gas chamber are brief, but so strong, and when it’s followed by James’s explanation that the blue stains on the walls are the residues of the hydrogen cyanide gas used to murder Jews and other inmates at the camp, it ties back somberly to something Benjy said earlier to the group that at the time might have seemed histrionic. The script ends up validating Benjy many times over, without exactly excusing some of his more boorish actions. Culkin is on another level here, way beyond the solid performances he gave on Succession; Benjy is far more interesting and nuanced than Roman, who was an entitled and often gross little prat, and didn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities or even a good reason for why he was the way he was. Benjy is such a rich, intelligently written character, and Culkin plays him perfectly, making it clear why he is the life of the party while also showing that that’s something of a façade. He’s much better than Eisenberg, who plays that character he nearly always plays, the nebbish, fast-talking guy who doesn’t seem to have feelings; there is one scene, at a restaurant, where Eisenberg gets the floor, and we finally see inside David, and the film could probably have used a little more of that. Sharpe, who was so good in Giri/Haji and very good in The White Lotus, is excellent in a smaller role, nailing his interactions with Benjy so that you feel his discomfort and understand the evolution of his reactions over the course of the tour. The only film I’ve seen in this cycle that was better than this is Anora, and that’s largely because that film is more ambitious; A Real Pain is tight and trim at 90 minutes and wastes none of it, doing what it set out to do and dropping you back at the airport before you know what hit you. Culkin seems like a lock to get a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and I really hope this ends up with a Best Picture nod or, at worst, a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Eisenberg. It’s better than Conclave and so much better than Emilia Pérez, just to name two movies that have better current odds for a Best Picture nod. I can not imagine I’ll see ten better films from 2024 than this.

Just got back from the eye doctor… No sign of diabetes in my eyes.

right nostril, or left? tomato/tomahto, potato/potahto

What about hot crime victims? Almost 20 years ago a very cute young cop was killed at the White Castle on Webster Ave in the Bronx. I'm embarrassed to admit I became fixated on the story because of his looks. An off-duty cop, chasing a half-dozen thugs who beat him up inside a Bronx White Castle, was gunned down by a fellow officer early yesterday morning in a catastrophic case of mistaken identity, police said. Officer Eric Hernandez, 24... Then they wouldn't advance to become healthcare CEOs.

World’s oldest-known wild bird lays an egg in Hawaii at age 74

He's a Christian, sober since 2015, and married since 2004. He'll be 45 two days after Christmas, and he and his wife had seven kids, although the youngest died shortly after birth.