On Saturday I had the dubious pleasure of hosting a Eurovision event - three screens, one of which was a projection onto the wall, showing the night of all nights, the Grand Prix of Entertainment, the Eurovision Song Contest. A few weeks ago I was in raptures at the idea of seeing the thing live, in Europe, with the possibility of voting (even if I knew I wasn't going to) for every country except the one I was in. Which, given that Germany usually sucks, wasn't too much of a problem. On the day, however, I lost all of my enthusiaism and couldn't remember why I'd wanted to watch the damn thing in the first place, as we shopped for booze, food and rearranged our entire room in its name.
In the end I quite enjoyed it, even after a whole day of trying to get the digital projector to work and failing (my techhead surfie flatmate wandered in about three minutes before showtime and fixed it, using a handfull of cables I don't know what to do with and would certainly never own. Then he proceeded back to his room to boycott the "Shit festival"). It's just so glorious in its mix of deadly serious chicks in sparkly dresses, camp dance routines and rich countries like France and Sweden seemingly taking the piss while Turkey belly-dances pop-stlye and the Ukraine takes the piss out of the Germans.
Actually that was the favorite of the night at our place, because it combind sparkle, satire, men in tight shorts and a man dressed as a woman while pretending to be some kind of disco nazi - his song went "Eins, zwei, sieben - TANZEN!" while boys in silver sparkly bike shorts did some kind of pogo dance.
Another favorite moment of mine was the oh-so-crap British pop band Minogue-esque song, which looked and sounded like a Virgin commercial (although I appreciated the camp "Would you like something to suck on during the flight?" they threw in).
It was, however, kind of tragic how no-one likes the Germans. During the voting when the Danish presenter said gushingly "And X points for our neighbour Sweden!" one of Simon's friend's said "But we're your neighbours!" in an agonized tone. And when another country deigned to give Germany five or so points the German commentator said on behalf of his country he was "surprised and delighted". Pathetic.
3 comments:
I like the Germans. I really do.
Oh come on Torshy, no-one likes the Germans, specially when we're talking music. The scars left by the Germans willingness to embrace David Hasselhoff as a pop star haven't faded for the rest of the world yet.
I too was a sucker for the Ukranian effort, and the extremely weird, camp goth "hands in the air" Swedish number.
Strangely the UK entry was the only song I was still humming the next morning. A big worry. Though not as much as a worry as the fact one British commentator was on ABC radio last monday morning complaining that the only reason the Brits didn't win was because of their involvement in Iraq - seriously. Hmmmm about as popular as the Germans those Brits.
I was humming it too! What have those evil Brits done to us?
Post a Comment