I have been a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1998, when Israel won it with Dana International singing "Diva". But, to be honest, I became a BIG fan of it in 2001, after Antique made it to the top three representing Greece, being greek pop/dance music and especially with heavy influences of τσιφτετέλι (Tsifteteli, or greek belly dance music) and now I can boast of having become a quite good critic of the ESC, being able to predict the winner on 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Yes, I even dared to predict that Marie N was going to win with such a crappy and "regular" song!But this time myself, as millions throughout Europe and beyond, got surprised. None of the big favourites of the audience, media and critics, Mihai Trăistariu from Romania (singing Tornerò), the Théa Anna Vissi from Greece (singing Everything), the Bosnian group Hari Mata Hari (singing Lejla) and Carola Häggkvist from Sweden (singing Invincible) were the winners.
Of course forget about the Big 4: The crappy british rap sung by a DJ who is just 32 but looks as old as my father, the German parody of a texan country song, the sad, slow and boring french entry (who do these guys continue sending poor balladists? Get real guys, the ONLY true french-language balladists is Céline Dion) and the worst song Spain could ever send, destroying Las Ketchup's career once and for ever (who the hell thought that was a good song?).
Not even some songs I liked won: neither the Croatian folk dancers that sung Moja štikla with Severina Vučković; 
not even the one-eyebrow armenian version of Ricky Martin, André. Not even Sibel Tüzün singing a great song in in greek, english and turkish! Forget about Eddie Butler representing Israel -bring Shiri back to stage, בבקשה!-
not even the one-eyebrow armenian version of Ricky Martin, André. Not even Sibel Tüzün singing a great song in in greek, english and turkish! Forget about Eddie Butler representing Israel -bring Shiri back to stage, בבקשה!-But let's get real: The Finnish monsters won! OMG! I was so f***in' shocked that so many people were voting for the finnish band Lordi, whom to me looked nothin' more than hard rock singers dressed as monsters that could perfectly fit in a Halloween chapter of Star Trek! But then I had to admit, the guys gave a very good show with those costumes and the lead singer's wings opening at a precise moment, not to mention his double-hatch/sceptre that spitted fire!
The funny thing is that you could actually see the horror in the faces of Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas when the local presenteres were reading the results of their national vote. They were terrified! I can imagine all my greek peers wondering "will these monsters topple our goddess? why in hell?" the question could have never been so appropirate :-D and what was even more appropriate and FUNNY, was when the Dutch presenter Paul De Leeuw started making sexually direct moves and comments to Sakis, whose heterosexuality has been questioned quite a few times. Oh, those on-air seconds were so funny! Kalísperma! HAHAHA (kalispera means "good evening" in greek, and sperma stands for .. "sperm") Typical a thing to do for Paul, gotta love him!
I almost peed my pants when he rushed to give the results and OMG..."I like your blouse, Sakis" "You look like Will & Grace, you two" "Will you have my mobile number now or after twelve points?" And trust me..if you have ever seen Paul..you would know it wasn't planned in advance. It's just the way he is. And let's be honest -there's never been anything fun about the ESC and now there was! He was really funny. After the drama that was 90% of the voting and so many people in Europe wishing at least Russia (with the help of its allies Estonia, the Ukraine, Armenia, Belarus, Latvia, Moldova and Lithuania) could win the finnish monsters, this was a breath of fresh air!! I bet Queen Beatrix was laughing her a** off! hahahahaha! Paul, Europa houdt van u!
But let's be serious and look at what happened. Sadly for many of us, the best act won. That many of us don't like Hard rock? True, but the guys did it pretty well. I hate to say that but, none of the rest gave a world-class show. The Finns did, so, let's wait until 2007 in Helsinki! No need to talk about Athens because they organised everything perfectly, offered a prime-class show and well, I think I was a greek in my previous life. Υεια σου Αθήνα! σ' ευχαριστώ πολλί! 
6 comments:
I would not describe Lordi's act as hard rock, more like a parody on the genre. The music was quite catchy too.
I think, after the semifinal it was very predictable that Suomi would win.
Our entry was this year a real disgrace, but what was wrong with German country song? I find it very cute. But what I understand, I think that MarieN's song was not crappy at all. Derivative, but very good piece of eurotrash.
And the BIG questin? Why don't you move to Livejournal? It is really inconvenient to communicate here.
There is a mistype in my prevoius comment. "Quiestion", of course.
I'll "borrow" your link to the video with the Dutch guy, if you don't mind.
No, I don't mean to say I didn't like the Finnish song. But, you know, I liked Romania's, Greece's, Turkey's and Ukraine's the most. The German song? well, not bad, in fact the girl reminded me of Dolly Parton, hehehe, but you know, there's a lot of resentment towards anything Texan on this side of the Atlantic Ocean
"I Wanna"? not a bad song, in fact, I like it, but .. yeah .. a classic example of Eurotrash. Marie N has sung better songs!!
What's wrong with blogspot? =) convince me
IMHO, LiveJournal has much better developed social networking element. Here are some advantages.
1. Includes standalone blogs as well as communities (somewhat similar to forums). Just a couple of examples, related to the topic of your post:
http://akoe06.livejournal.com/
http://community.livejournal.com/oneurope_live/
2. Hierarchical comments under every post (unless you decide to block this option). You receive email notifications for every comment in your jurnal, and for every responce to your comment in other journals and communities. You can allow anyone to comment in your journal, but you can also restrict it to your friends-only. You can also "screen" comments, and decide whether you want to make them visible to other readers.
3. Friends list, that allows you to track new posts in interesting journals. Two users can have no relationship, they can list each other as friends mutually, or either can friend the other without reciprocation.
4. Friends could be classified into groups, so you can filter the posts in friends list according to particular criteria.
5. Security options on journal and post level: public, friends-only, user-group only, private.
6. Semagic software that allows you to edit your posts, as well as to manage friends and old posts.
Here is the more detailed description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveJournal
It costs nothing, so you can give it a try.
Romanian song was great, but the singer sounded somewhat asthmatic to me. :)
BTW, where did you find other songs of MarieN?
Hmmm, let me think of it. Although I'm satisfied with blogger (and I will never use MSN Spaces!) I might give it a try. Let me think about it
I also liked Tina Karol, but sometimes she reminded me of a Ruslana with a sore throat :-D
Marie N songs? She has published some songs in French and one of my co-workers is learning french, and he borrowed it at Espace France, like a French-sponsored media center here in Caracas. Interesting music though :-)
Think. :) You can use both Blogger and LJ for a while and then decide which blogging platform meets your needs better. Let me know if you decide to give it a try.
Tina is actually much better vocalist than Ruslana, but on stage it looked somewhat second-hand mixture of Ruslana, Shakira and Paparizu. :)
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