Eurovision: the aftermath
Monday, May 28th, 2012 11:32 amApart from some light gardening on Saturday, when we planted a few seedlings and snipped back the buddleia again, to give other plants a chance, the weekend didn’t see much activity. As it was, the planting was done largely in the hope that a week or so of dry warm weather hasn’t dried the soil so much that they will just bake away to a crisp. I am taking the opportunity to splosh water over as much as possible in the cool of evening on the off chance that these tiny little plants can put down roots deep enough to reach the moister under soil. We shall see.
Saturday night was, of course, Eurovision. What can I say? It was a classic of tawdry banality laced with enthusiasm and cheese. I never thought Engleplonk would win, but I must say that by any reasonable measure his song and his delivery was far from being deserving of second from bottom. Still, the modern Eurovision has swung decisively east, so that’s that.
The highlights?1 My personal favourite was the offering from Turkey, though it only finished somewhere in the middle pack. The Turks generally dish up something that makes you scratch your head and this year we got something that looked like a musical treatment of the Life of Lenin, staged à la Fiddler on The Roof. All together now, “If I were a Bolshevik…”
I was vaguely surprised that Russia didn’t do better. Not because they were any good, but after the act had been introduced as a bunch of Russian grannies who wanted to raise money to rebuild a church that had been destroyed during the Stalinist purges, well… Who, I thought, would vote against them? Quite a few as it turned out. It did occur that whilst ostensibly a group act, they could have won the competition on the spot if they’d proven to be a real life Matryoshka doll2 and piled one into the other to leave the stage.
Ah, Jedward. Jedward, Jedward, Jedward… What to say about them, other than it is very canny of the Irish to arrange for them to be out of Ireland for long periods of time, whilst ensuring that the creaky Irish economy is not burdened with the cost of running Eurovision by winning. As usual, this odd pair were all energy and enthusiasm, but very little else. I was particularly struck by their costumes, which looked like a Sylvia Anderson brain fart from the brief period after Stingray, but before Thunderbirds.
Whichever the one on the left was, he was a quarter beat behind his brother through the entire performance, leading to speculation that he is, in fact, simply a complex animatronic construct controlled by his brother’s motion capture suit.
In the end the event was won by Sweden, by a woman with a name reminiscent of malt loaf, who looked like an unholy cross between Claudia Winkleman and Kate Bush performing a dance track that would have appeared in the clubs for a fortnight in 1997.
Special kudos and respect to Serbia for a song that appeared to have the opening line, “Vicious lecher, Droogie Poo” set to the tune of ‘Local Hero’.
Of course none of this would be complete without a small party, so we sat and watched with Furtle Minor in attendance, drank booze, and scoffed our carpet picnic, whilst Tweeting our observations to an expectant world. We were joined towards the end by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jfs, who arrived just in time to enjoy the regional nature of the voting at the end.
Sunday fell victim to the heat, pretty much. And the after effects of booze. I seem to have misplaced my white hat, too so I couldn’t reasonably be expected to expose my baldy pate to the unforgiving rays of the sun, could I?
1For a given value of highlight.
2You may incorrectly think of them as ‘babushka dolls’3
3I did.
Saturday night was, of course, Eurovision. What can I say? It was a classic of tawdry banality laced with enthusiasm and cheese. I never thought Engleplonk would win, but I must say that by any reasonable measure his song and his delivery was far from being deserving of second from bottom. Still, the modern Eurovision has swung decisively east, so that’s that.
The highlights?1 My personal favourite was the offering from Turkey, though it only finished somewhere in the middle pack. The Turks generally dish up something that makes you scratch your head and this year we got something that looked like a musical treatment of the Life of Lenin, staged à la Fiddler on The Roof. All together now, “If I were a Bolshevik…”
I was vaguely surprised that Russia didn’t do better. Not because they were any good, but after the act had been introduced as a bunch of Russian grannies who wanted to raise money to rebuild a church that had been destroyed during the Stalinist purges, well… Who, I thought, would vote against them? Quite a few as it turned out. It did occur that whilst ostensibly a group act, they could have won the competition on the spot if they’d proven to be a real life Matryoshka doll2 and piled one into the other to leave the stage.
Ah, Jedward. Jedward, Jedward, Jedward… What to say about them, other than it is very canny of the Irish to arrange for them to be out of Ireland for long periods of time, whilst ensuring that the creaky Irish economy is not burdened with the cost of running Eurovision by winning. As usual, this odd pair were all energy and enthusiasm, but very little else. I was particularly struck by their costumes, which looked like a Sylvia Anderson brain fart from the brief period after Stingray, but before Thunderbirds.
Whichever the one on the left was, he was a quarter beat behind his brother through the entire performance, leading to speculation that he is, in fact, simply a complex animatronic construct controlled by his brother’s motion capture suit.
In the end the event was won by Sweden, by a woman with a name reminiscent of malt loaf, who looked like an unholy cross between Claudia Winkleman and Kate Bush performing a dance track that would have appeared in the clubs for a fortnight in 1997.
Special kudos and respect to Serbia for a song that appeared to have the opening line, “Vicious lecher, Droogie Poo” set to the tune of ‘Local Hero’.
Of course none of this would be complete without a small party, so we sat and watched with Furtle Minor in attendance, drank booze, and scoffed our carpet picnic, whilst Tweeting our observations to an expectant world. We were joined towards the end by
jfs, who arrived just in time to enjoy the regional nature of the voting at the end.Sunday fell victim to the heat, pretty much. And the after effects of booze. I seem to have misplaced my white hat, too so I couldn’t reasonably be expected to expose my baldy pate to the unforgiving rays of the sun, could I?
1For a given value of highlight.
2You may incorrectly think of them as ‘babushka dolls’3
3I did.
