With the credits rolling on The Secret History of Eurovision Part 2 - a serious documentary that matched momentous events in European history such as the siege of Sarajevo, or significant cultural changes such as the emergence of a visible gay community in many formerly repressed Eastern European countries post the fall of the Berlin Wall, and did it very well - Kerry and I, waiting for my gorgeous guy to arrive back from Bathurst (caught in horrendous traffic yet again, though not as bad as last year when he was hours late; what is it with Eurovision and awful traffic conditions?), almost leapt out of our chairs with excitement when the grand tones of Eurovision came on, and Julia Zemiro and Sam Pang welcomed us to this year's first semi-final from a monstrously large stadium in Dusseldorf.
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| Kerry had made a hat for each evening in the German colours and looked suitably Oo-ro-vision-ish! |
Unlike last year when I thought they were a bit tame, and didn't push the commentary envelope hard enough, they came to the fore early with hilariously politically incorrect comments about the acts, while managing to stay suitably deferential, and light hearted, and avoiding the bitchy void that can so often swallow up commentary on events like Eurovision. Hmm are there any other events quite like it? I think not...
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| The 3 hosts were a hoot and as usual for all the wrong reasons - the woman on the left Anka is supposedly a comedian, the man is Germany's equivalent of Rove McManus and the leggy blond is a newsreader. They did attempt witty banter in an attempt to show Germans are a thigh-slappingly funny lot but it simply ended up looked like b grade vaudeville schtick. Naturally this fits the Eurovision mould perfectly. |
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| Stella Mwangi performing Haba Haba for Norway. Sort of catchy, combining the standard folk music with dance, but ultimately let down by a silly title. Great hair though! |
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| Great hair Albania! The rest of your act underwhelmed, despite the title, Feel the Passion, but the hair... I could enjoy it all day! |
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| As Julia Zemiro (one of the SBS commentators) remarked, 'this number is the first time Eurovision has combined pop music and boxing'. Silly song, sillier title, hot male dancers. |
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| Talk about 60s psychadelic! Nina and Nina of Serbia turned on all the technicolour fun that anyone could ever need for their number... |
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| What big eyes you have Nina! The better to express myself in an OTT style! |
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| I fell asleep during Switzerland's song. Well, not really but it wasn't the most exciting of ballads, and I believe there is more hip and happening paint drying going on out there... nice smile though |
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| Ah Paradise Oskar. It's very sweet that the protagonist in your song wants to save the world but all I can remember from your sweet folk number is that yur song's hero is an atlas nerd. Not in itself a bad thing, but not the sort of stuff that makes for a daring cutting edge pop song. |
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| Ah Malta. Funky fun pop song and hot cute gay boys! I love you! |
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These guys should have gone through to the final! They had three costume changes, endless pyrotechnics, wind machine... honestly if you were playing a Eurovision drinking game, this song alone would have got you smashed in three gloriously excess-filled minutes. My tweet for these guys after the weird guy in top and coat tails that didn't do much beyond (badly) prancing around the stage? 'so Alice Cooper is helping out Croatia! Very nice of him!'
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| Either Hungary has Michael Bolton in a dress or a drag queen lost her way from Oxford Street and ended up singing for Hungary. Either way, catchy-ish song, very short dress, and a total inability by the singer to dance at all, unless you count oddly awkaward baby steps back and forth on stage which made it look like she really needed to go to the loo. |
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| Portugal - camp as a row of tents and then some! They were dressed as twee Portugese versions of The Village People and as I remarked in my tweet, 'Portugal's homage to the Village People is somehow more camp than the real Village People'. Cartoonish fun but awful song. Quintessential Eurovision in other words. |
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| Not sure the whole 'used car salesman meets brylcreem addict flaxing' is the way Portuagl should have gone..but they did! |
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| No, this is not a homage to helicopters but the start of Azerbaijan's song. It was sweet and enjoyable in it's own way, although the title, Running Scared, most likely referred to the fact that try as he might to seem in love with his female co-singer, the clearly gay male singer simply look uncomfortable, smiles aside, and would happily have run in the other direction. |
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| The aforementioned possibly gay male singer from Azerbaijan. My dear boy - if you are going to wear white, make sure the white jacket matches the white jackets. |
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| The female co-singer from Azerbaijan who did a fabulous job of acting as if she was madly in love with her co-singer, even though it's likely because he's so fabulous to shop with! |
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| Oh Greece. You featured a rapper, that made Vanilla Ice look talented, so points deducted there, but your lead singer was the stuff of gay wet dreams.... a gorgeous hunk of manhood so all is forgiven. |
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| Yeah - hellenic colums in bright blue. What's not to like Greece? |
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| Yes totally unneccesary to have two shots of the Greek singer in the one blog posting but he's HOT so I am willing to relax standards, such as they are, and allow it just this once. Or twice, or as many times I have shots of smokin' guys. |
My gorgeous guy once again encountered bad traffic coming back from Bathurst on the first Eurovision night, and while we're not sure if it will stand up to the rigours of scientific scrutiny, we do have a hypothesis that the traffic on the Friday night is awful largely due to everyone rushing back to Sydney to watch Eurovision. Yes, naturally that's the cause....
Quite cleverly, he staged his arrival during the ad break, which meant no acts were missed, which is either a good or bad thing depending on the song, and we had a wonderful night laughing, applauding and enjoying the canp kitsch of this festival, which is quite accurately referred to as Gay Christmas.
So here's who I picked as my Top 10 (only 10 of the 19 countries made it through to the final), and here's who actually won (once again, CROATIA WUZ ROBBED!)....
MY PICKS
Albania, Turkey, Georgia, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, Hungary, Portugal, Azerbaijan, Greece
WHO ACTUALLY MADE IT THROUGH
Serbia, Lithuania, Greece, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Switzerland, Hungary, Finland, Russia, Iceland
>> so Kerry and I picked about 50% of the winners each which given the block voting (only some overlap between us), votes cast by the board overseeing it, and the vagaries of good and bad taste, wasn't too bad.
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