The Eurovision Thong Contest
Posted on Sunday 17th May 2009
No I haven’t developed a lisp. All will become apparent later.
Due to revision pressure I haven’t been out lately or up to very much. Instead, long days sat at home trying to continue the job of stuffing knowledge in. This has also meant too many opportunities to watch drivel on TV. And the Euro Pop Fiasco is no exception.
Yet again it served the expected fare:
- hosts who struggle to read an autocue
- the usual parade of mediocre, inoffensive, instantly forgettable bubblegum-pop
- hyperactive flag waving by the audience
- typical tactical en-bloc voting, especially by the Balkan and Baltic states
- singers who can’t stay in tune despite having ear monitors
- stilted interaction with vote announcers due to satellite delays
All of these go without saying. A few things, though, grated and are worth mentioning:
- Sir Terry has hung up his spurs and left sizeable shoes to fill in the commentators’ box. The Australian coverage was provided by Julia Zemiro and some bloke I’d never heard of. They had the chemistry of Stephen Hawking, the spontaneity of an atomic clock and the comedic ability of Grounds-keeper Willy. Please bring back Terry and his bottle of Bailey’s.
- Why is Israel in the competition? It isn’t in Europe, either geographically or historically. The same could be applied to Cyprus, which is part of Asia, but at least has some national ties to Greece. And what of Georgia and Azerbaijan which are mostly in Asia and have little by way of ties to traditionally European countries? If the entry criteria get any slacker, it will wind up like NATO which has some member states that are over 1000km from the North Atlantic.
- There is no reason why French continues to be the joint language of the competition with English. It may have been relevant during the first few years of the competition when France was one of the lead forces, but their importance has dwindled with expansion. Only 4 participating countries speak French and, of those, in 3 it is not the first language. English is now the recognised international lingua franca (oh yes, the irony!) and most countries in Europe use it for cross-border business, thus French is utterly redundant.
- And to explain the title of this post – why did rather too many female performer feel they had to wear practically nothing? Perhaps it was rather warm under the studio lights. It couldn’t possibly have been an attempt to woo the male vote could it.
Anyway the spectacle is over for another year and we can all get on with our lives, safe in the knowledge that as long as the Eurovision Song Contest exists, that unique brand of wuss-pop that should have remained in the 70s will not be allowed to die.
Oh Dear, Stand up, Go for a walk toward the TV – Turn it off Rick. You sound cranky! Crack out the Wii fit – invite a clutz over for a coffee, co-erce them to use the Wii and sit back and watch. ROTFPMPLOL
Seriously the endorphins will have you loose as a goose and ready to absorb the font of knowledge that is Intensive Care Medicine. If that fails – Crack a red and cry into the glass. Same endorphins – no where near as much fun though.
One assumes that your music collection doesn’t house dusty ABBA Vinyl in a box somewhere :-)
In Britain, the godlike Graham Norton has replaced Terry Wogan. He did an excellent job, and indeed started off by saying ‘I know, I miss Terry too.’ Is it trashy TV? Of course it is, and it’s still as political as it ever was (the voting that is). How the hell Norway won, other than the fact that a lot of people of both sexes seem to fancy the singer, God only knows. But it’s a fun excuse for a party. Germany thought they could get Dita Von Teese in for extra points, which was the best part of their act, but still a cheek!