VICTORY IN OUR TIME! We got our grubby hands on some Eurovision pictures, so we can share the assorted horrors of the international song contest with you. This is how the prospect of this post makes me feel:
Incidentally, this man is Greece's entry, Sakis Rouvas. His Wikipedia page describes him as both a musical act AND a former pole-vaulter. He also reportedly ripped open his shirt as part of his performance.... and yet he's seriously one of the more BORING people from the night.
For instance, this is NOTHING compared to the thunder brought by Albania:
Incidentally, this man is Greece's entry, Sakis Rouvas. His Wikipedia page describes him as both a musical act AND a former pole-vaulter. He also reportedly ripped open his shirt as part of his performance.... and yet he's seriously one of the more BORING people from the night.
For instance, this is NOTHING compared to the thunder brought by Albania:
Kejsi Tola won Albanian Idol, and if this is any indication of what kinds of entertainment that nation regularly produces, I am going to start summering there. This brave soul has no qualms about wearing a tutu while allowing a nefarious, semi-vampiric mime to put on her shoes and riding on the back of a trusty man-steed on a break from his day job as a gay cat burglar who mostly only robs fourth-grade productions of The Little Mermaid. Kejsi's song is called "Carry Me In Your Dreams," and I think it's safe to say I will.
Seriously, that just underscores my burning need for someone to air the damn thing over here (ahem, BBC America) so that cranky old biddies like me don't have to watch it streaming over the Internet, or root around for YouTube clips, because see, maybe those cranky old biddies have already spent about 90 percent of the day on the Internet staring at things and typing and being glared at by a laptop screen, and they just want to retire to the couch and watch something on a BIGGER screen that doesn't involve waiting for certain clips to buffer.
Is that too much to ask, Universe? Do I want to have to see these nice Azerbaijan people on a small computer screen? Wouldn't it be better to watch on my nice TV with the soft support of my couch under me as I collapse sideways in awe?
This woman is dancing with fire. In front of a backup dancer in gold leggings wearing the same expression I imagine Posh Spice would if you forced her to watch while you systematically castrated every pair of her stilettos and then fed them to apes. And a dude who is probably your Carnival Cruise director. All while she herself is wearing an ice-skating costume with HALF A PAIR OF GOLD CHAPS.
Compared to that, this is pretty weak sauce:
Come on, Sweden. You have a woman singing disco-opera with the intensity of someone who is furious about it, and the best you can do is a posse of ladies whose bejewelled masquerade masks may have been designed for an excised scene from Coneheads? I GUESS it's impressive, but it's not blinding me with confusion, so what's the point?
Sister act Inga & Anush went with a different sort of costume:
Presumably this represents a form of dress associated Armenian folk music, since helping the world experience that in a new way was their stated mandate for Eurovision. And I guess they succeeded -- I never expected to experience Armenian folk music in a way that made me wonder whether The Judds have ever considered a job at Medieval Times as a nightclub act.
Svetlana Loboda of Ukraine went with a more Pussycat Dolls approach to performing "Be My Valentine," the chief lyric of which appears to be the word "BOM" -- as in, and I quote, "You are so sexy BOM // Gonna make me crazy BOM // We're gonna do the BOM-BOM // Ain't that amazing BOM."
Fun fact: Svetlana created a clothing label in her native country called "F**k the macho." Not that forcing your backup hunks to dress up like the Tin Man reimagined as Xerxes isn't totally macho. Because it is. Totally. Look for The Wizard of Sparta soon at a Ukrainian theater near you.
But the big news of this year's contest was that not only do Germans love David Hasselhoff, but they ALSO love Marilyn Manson -- and when she dated him, Dita Von Teese developed such a huge following over there that she agreed to perform this year for Eurovision.
So while the group Alex Swings Oscar Sings entreated her to "sing skiddly skiddly bo" and "do the skiddly buffely boodely bump," Dita slowly reduced herself to glittered pasties, which I guess accounts for the "boodely bump" part of the song. Some suggested this might give this band a decided advantage, but in the end they placed 20th out of 25 countries. It says a lot for how bad your performance must have been if you couldn't do better despite trotting out a woman in bedazzled pasties, a dude wearing skintight mirrored pants, and tha host of backup dancers that look like waitresses at a WWII-themed strip club:
Oh well. They tried. Better luck next time, Germany. Maybe if you can get more Americans to participate as guest stars, someone SOMEWHERE will decide this exhausting marathon of questionable talent and resplendent camp deserves to air on cable. And then I will do the happy dance:
