More excitement and tension than the World Cup
The best thing about the Eurovision Song Contest (besides the garish trashiness of most of the entries) has to be Terry Wogan's running commentary (every year he starts drinking Irish Cream from the start, and he's doing double shots by song seven -as Terry said, you have to- and by the end of the night he's so plastered that he gets more and more cynical and his commentary becomes a pure joy).
Serbia and Montenegro did very very well (we came second! Wooo hoooo! I am delighted-so much so in fact that I have absolved Zeljko Joksimovic of the Crimes Against Music known as his pop career), and it was very very close, so I'm a bit guttered we didn't win (although we did beat the Greek strippers and the Turkish neo-nazi mock-Celtic rappers).
But if anyone had to beat us, then I'm at peace with it being Ukraine's entry Wild Dances (apparently wild indeed, as when they were rehearsing they broke the stage)featuring
Ruslana and her extremely skimpy leather costume
Of the many entries that had me wondering whether the choreographers were on drugs or had a lobotomy/a strange and subtle sense of humour, the most memorable has to be the French entry featuring as one of the backing dancers a Grace Jones lookalike woman who weaved her arms manically and ambled across the stage on stilts (the singer only came up to about her knees). The burning question here, as in so many other things, is *Why?* (also Terry Wogan's burning question at the success of the S&M entry)
It was a great night all in all, (Food! Drink! Friends! Trashy tv! SMS messages from nanji!- all the components of joy) and it got more loud and raucous as the night went on (Terry Wogan was not the only one imbibing ethanol). And despite Mr. Wogan slagging off the S&M entry very wittily I did actually like it due to patriotic and genuine reasons (the goose did not appear on stage, alas, and the rather attractive woman from the Ad Hoc Orchestra sported a fiddle instead)- I thought they'd done an excellent job (they even had tasteful, classy costumes)
All the political voting is the best part of the night, but still I was stunned that Croatia and Bosnia had clearly forgiven us for war crimes and given the Serbian entry the maximum amount of points (12), as did Sweden and Austria (where the presenters giving the results of the televotes were both ex-pat Serbs and announced 12 points for S&M with quite some glee I thought)
Although I was dissapointed we didn't win, this was nothing compared to Jasna who had in some drunken moment days previous placed a £2 bet on S&M winning the contest (the odds were 12:1) and was seeing it all slip away amid sorrowful visions of how much booze she could have brought with that money had she won.
So all the Balkan countries rallied around Serbia & Montenegro, and all the Baltic countries rallied around Ukraine (Jasna: "Fuck man, we should have invaded the Baltics and committed genocide there too, that's quite clearly the way to musical popularity")
Ah, only another year to wait until the next extravaganza, but it's all right because I have the semi-finals on tape to alleviate withdrawal symptoms.
Serbia and Montenegro did very very well (we came second! Wooo hoooo! I am delighted-so much so in fact that I have absolved Zeljko Joksimovic of the Crimes Against Music known as his pop career), and it was very very close, so I'm a bit guttered we didn't win (although we did beat the Greek strippers and the Turkish neo-nazi mock-Celtic rappers).
But if anyone had to beat us, then I'm at peace with it being Ukraine's entry Wild Dances (apparently wild indeed, as when they were rehearsing they broke the stage)featuring
Ruslana and her extremely skimpy leather costume
Of the many entries that had me wondering whether the choreographers were on drugs or had a lobotomy/a strange and subtle sense of humour, the most memorable has to be the French entry featuring as one of the backing dancers a Grace Jones lookalike woman who weaved her arms manically and ambled across the stage on stilts (the singer only came up to about her knees). The burning question here, as in so many other things, is *Why?* (also Terry Wogan's burning question at the success of the S&M entry)
It was a great night all in all, (Food! Drink! Friends! Trashy tv! SMS messages from nanji!- all the components of joy) and it got more loud and raucous as the night went on (Terry Wogan was not the only one imbibing ethanol). And despite Mr. Wogan slagging off the S&M entry very wittily I did actually like it due to patriotic and genuine reasons (the goose did not appear on stage, alas, and the rather attractive woman from the Ad Hoc Orchestra sported a fiddle instead)- I thought they'd done an excellent job (they even had tasteful, classy costumes)
All the political voting is the best part of the night, but still I was stunned that Croatia and Bosnia had clearly forgiven us for war crimes and given the Serbian entry the maximum amount of points (12), as did Sweden and Austria (where the presenters giving the results of the televotes were both ex-pat Serbs and announced 12 points for S&M with quite some glee I thought)
Although I was dissapointed we didn't win, this was nothing compared to Jasna who had in some drunken moment days previous placed a £2 bet on S&M winning the contest (the odds were 12:1) and was seeing it all slip away amid sorrowful visions of how much booze she could have brought with that money had she won.
So all the Balkan countries rallied around Serbia & Montenegro, and all the Baltic countries rallied around Ukraine (Jasna: "Fuck man, we should have invaded the Baltics and committed genocide there too, that's quite clearly the way to musical popularity")
Ah, only another year to wait until the next extravaganza, but it's all right because I have the semi-finals on tape to alleviate withdrawal symptoms.