The show starts with psychedelic accordionversions of Eurovision songs. It’s bad. Seriously. There’s a man playing horse, brandishing a sword and there are women in blue bathrobes. Just when you think it can’t get any weirder on come people in bear suits. Bear suits, people! Both Grizzlies and polar bears, because we don’t discriminate. It’s like Disney on Ice, but without ice – Dima Bilan used it all up last year. And who’s in those suits? I can just imagine them bragging to their friends “I’m taking part in Eurovision this year” and no-one believing them. Murders have happened for lesser reasons, I’m just saying.
Unfortunately Andrey and Natalya –as we discover Mr Grabbyhands and Ms Poofyhair are called, and really what else could they be called?- turn up and they look like they’ve been caught in the blowdrier for two hours. Ms Poofyhair, dressed in a glittery towel, reminds me of the Cindy doll I used to have as a child: I’d brushed and pulled on her hair so often it turned exactly into what Ms Poofyhair is now sporting on her head. And to think… all these years I thought Cindy was gathering mould in my parents’ attic, when she has been presenting Eurovision all along.
Croatia is sending something Julio Iglesias-y, André tells us. Oh, be still my heart. They’ve discovered the technique of turning the wind machine on just one person. It’s uncanny, the thing seems to have it in for her. The Girlfriend predicts he’ll be “expressing the song with his eyebrows”. His eyebrows end up behaving. Unfortunately his vocal chords don’t. He’s wearing riding boots, he’s rugged like that. The girls in the chorus start stroking and touching themselves, Julio’s boots must be turning them on. On comes a clothes change and hey presto! We have two lead singers! This inspires Julio and the girl to start wailing. It’s all very dramatic. We’re not impressed. -Q
Ireland starts with a shot of the most unenthusiast smiley fake drumming ever. “It’s Jem and the Holograms!” someone proclaims. The girls are sooo styled, wearing hip leather gloves, a fashionable rebel’s quiff (is it the year of the quiff I begin to wonder), a punky outfit… oh, it’s all very fake rockchick. Their singing is good. Ooh, and here comes the wind machine! The Girlfriend is warming up to this song… “perhaps I should give it one point”. So generous.
The only thing good we can think of for Latvia (singing about a traffic jam, shouting a word that sounds suspiciously much like “vodka”) are the backing singers’ dresses. It’s all very symmetrical. Impressive. Three songs into this contest and we’re resorting to grumbling, it must be really bad. “Well, he can play with the camera”, Yes, I suppose, “He also has pins on his jacket”. Yes… yes he does. “And a falsetto”. Hmmm. The singer is very tormented about the traffic jam. It must be one Serious Traffic Jam he’s singing about. Anja comments “I thought the girls’ dresses were funny”, André pats her on the head “I thought you would”. That’s a good girl, have a cookie!
Oh, Serbia how I love you. A song about an old shoe brought exactly the way one should bring a song about an old shoe. It’s a difficult concept, but it includes the Magical Quiff (I’m expecting a “Eurovision was sponsored by the Laboratoires Garnier”-statement any time soon), pointy shoes, a leatherboy playing the accordion and a hilarious dance routine. The bald men in the chorus look scary enough to score with a certain segment of the queer population, and the little lego “IT-crowd” backdrop is amazing. Love it!
Wow… impressive fake nails you’ve got going there, Poland. And they had some leftover curtains to dress the backing singers in. Recycling is so very important. The singing … well, the singing is from another planet.The backing dancers try and salvage this horror by getting some random rythmic gymnast to jump through the screen swirling a red ribbon. For no reason I can think of. I mean, it’s not as if the lyrics were screaming for a rythmic gymnast twirling a red ribbon. The lyrics might not be screaming for anything, but the singer is, yikes, and for that matter, so are we: ”think of the children! Please shut up!” And just when you think it can’t get any worse, Poland goes for that last high note. Aaaaaaaaaaagh! Save us!
André’s only comment is “ai ai ai”. How apt.
The boys on the sofa are perking up when they see Norway’s Alexander Rybak. “Well hello there”. The dykes roll their eyes. “He’s too toothy. And too smiley. He forgot his ritalin and overdosed on prozac. And he looks twelve, you perverts”. There’s a beautiful homo-erotic love story when three men pull at each other, but oh no! One of them breaks free and cartwheels over to the female backing singers. He’s converted, he now likes girls! Thankfully the other two still have each other. The message must be “Threeways don’t work”. The pyros make the boys on the sofa protest: “we can’t see him now!”. Honestly. –Q
Ah. The first break. Old Eurovision winners are dusted off and put in front of the camera: The woman from Teach in has the best Dutch accent “Yourovisjion is about sjitting and dansjing”, we wonder if Dana International always had such a big nose, Dima Bilan learned an English sentence by heart and Marija Serifovic has acquired a second chin. The Girlfriend’s dreams are shattered by this last discovery.
And Cyprus does nothing to comfort her. It’s all so fragile, she’s a little elf: she looks like she may come from Norway’s fairytale, but she sounds a little less impressive. “At least Rybak dared to look in the camera” The Gays grumble, still sore that we didn’t join their Fiddler-worship. But this girl looks so young and fragile that we don’t dare make fun of her too much. Though we do miss Lordi’s monsters. They could eat her for breakfast. And use her little friends as toothpicks. But we don’t think that. Even if the song seems to last four hours. And puts us to sleep. Not us!
Anja does nothing to help my stereotyping of her by saying the Slovakian girl is wearing a nice dress. Anja, sometimes you make it too easy for me! We’re taking bets on whether or not they’re going to be singing in tune. The “no” camp is winning. The male singer comes on, sporting a casual “I haven’t had time to shave”-“just out of bed look” that probably took the Russian hairdressers five hours to accomplish (and those guys are already overworked with the mega quiffs) and they procede in trying to break glass with the high notes. It makes us miss Tuesday’s Czech Republic’s performance, and that’s saying a lot.
By this point we’re noticing a new pattern in this year’s Eurovision: trying to suck up to the audience by shouting inane stuff like “Thank you Moscow, “We love you, Europe” and crap like that. Preferably in Russian. Did it ever work? No. Then why do it?
The Russians let us know that “Ded Moroz” means “Santa Claus” in Russian. What this has to do with Eurovision I don’t know. These postcards are getting weirder by the minute.
And lookie here, Denmark is sending “I can’t believe it’s not actually Ronan Keating!” singing a song written by none other than the actual Ronan Keating. “Does anyone still care about Ronan Keating?” one could ask, but apparently Anja and André do, gushing about the fact that Ronan promised to come to Russia if this song made the final. Spare me. The best thing about this song is the fact that the Russians seem to have miss-spelled Ronan Keating’s name. They credit him as “Ronan Keeting” in the little info-box. Brilliant! There’s a lot of smoke (which unfortunately doesn’t lead to a big coughing fit), probably meant to “Set a Mood”. Yes, set a mood for boredom. Brinck seems unable to close his legs, it’s pretty scary. And then he falls to his knees… sigh. It’s not impressive, Brinck, really. If you don’t have an ice skating rink, don’t bother. He ends his song with a very butch punch in the air. The horror! And that for Eurovision! Thankfully the next shot is of a bunch of Danish gays ecstatically waving their flag about. -Q
We come to the realisation that it’ll be hard to find 10 finalists at this rate. Mr Grabbyhands and Miss Poofyhair went for another visit to the hairdressers, their hair is even bigger than it was before. Or it might just be a natural phenomenon with all the wind machines in the neighbourhood. We ponder their relationship further, perhaps Grabbyhands keeps pulling her close because she’s drunk and she’ll fall over if he doesn’t? Her bodylanguage is screaming “piss off” and we think she forces out a few French words. In no particular order. We don’t think she’s actually forming a sentence, but who knows.
Ah, Slovenia with the shadowplay. Been there, done that. “Perhaps she’s too ugly to come from behind the screen” someone wonders. “Perhaps she’s agoraphobic, we shouldn’t mock these things” and we wait… and wait… and still no singing… we keep waiting…. Oooh, people with instruments are coming from behind the screens! Hurray!….. no singing…. Wait for it…. Wait for it… and finally! Out she comes, dressed in a flesh coloured curtain, she opens her mouth and already we miss the blessed minute where she just stood quietly behind her screen. “Spazzzzzzibaaa” she shouts at the end of it all. Or something like it. Whatever. I hope that was Russian for “I’m sorry”.
Hungary, ladies and gentlemen, goes for no less than two clothes changes in about 20 seconds! Way to go, Zoli! Yay gayness! This guy makes Deen look butch. And not only that, but he is packing. He is! He either borrowed Jari Silanpaa’s cockring, he stuffed a sock in there or he is one popular boy in the Moscow night clubs. His singing is bad, but his lisping is the cutest. He deserves 12 points just for being gay in Hungary. You go, boy!
Azerbaijan makes us worry if there is anyone in this whole contest who will manage to stay in tune. Apart from Rybak then. Perhaps there’s a problem with the monitors. There must be some excuse for this, right? God, the girl keeps winking at us. Cut it out, it’s scary! Out of nowhere the guy starts playing the banjo. Or the ukelele. Something small and guitar-like in any case. There’s pyro! Windmachine! Well they do sing they’re “on a mountain high”, it gets windy there. -Q
André tells us Sakis Rouvas from Greece is a half-god in Eurovisionland. Excuse me, Andre?? Pardon me ? Sakis is nothing less than a GOD, thank you very much. Ah, and Sakis left his little polo shirt open a bit, he knows how to cater to his audience. We wonder why the little polo shirt is so wide, but then Sakis starts shaking his… his everything and the shirt rides up, showing us a glimpse of Sakis-bellybutton. There we go, that’s the Sakis we know and love! The Greeks have a fantastic accent “Get reed of the old, take a hold and be free”. The conveyor belt prop is glittery, it allows Sakis to do a fabulous moonwalk and turns into a stapler at the end (the prop, not Sakis). It’s fantastically multifunctional. Someone comments he seems to have a bit of an ego, ascending like he does, at the end of the song. Hush it, at least he managed to hit his high note. He deserves all our respect for that! –Q
“It won’t be a hit” a spoilsport says. “No… unlike “Believe” someone else replies.
The Lithuanian sits at his panio and looks a bit sickly. This semi final is a bit meh if you ask me. “Well, the décor is nice” someone remarks. And by god, Sasha suddenly gets up and walks away from the piano… but the piano keeps playing!! How is it possible?! Meanwhile my gaydar is pinging like mad and I’m trying to keep myself entertained. Why do backing singers in Serious Ballads either wear curtains or slutty short dresses? Is there no middle ground? And not only does Sasha have telekinetic piano playing abilities, he can also make fire in the palm of his hand (scary. Seriously scary) and shows off his linguistic skills by mumbling what appears to be a sentence in Russian. A sentence! The others had the decency to stick to a few words, you bloody overachiever. -Q
Where is Moldova anyway? I wonder about it every year, and then I look it up and forget all about it. Apparently Heidi aus Tirol is from Moldova, and she’s wearing the shortest skirt I’ve ever seen folk dancers wear. If the kids at the local folk dance group here (yes, we do have one) were allowed to wear outfits like this, folkdancing would be a whole lot more popular! Of course this is folk dancing in the gale of a wind machine, that’s a whole different category. -Q
Albania up next. Enthusiasm! Wind machine! Fantastically stupid silly dance song! The costumes are beyond ridicule… far far beyond. She’s dressed in a ballerina mini skirt, there are two guys made up like mimes, and a man in a green bodysuit and glitter mask. You have to see it to believe it. “They should have explained the costumes and the act” someone says, “Or she should have sung in English. Perhaps she’s explaining it in the lyrics”, someone else replies. Erm…sweetie… that *is* English. –Q (yay!)
Shots from the green room in the break. The Slovakian guy does not look sober.
Anja tells us “the Ukraine brings us an act you wouldn’t even see in the sleaziest bars”. André explains that Svetlana was on holiday in India while composing this song and got licked by a holy cow. And then she knew she had to take part in Eurovision. Wow. The things a holy cow can do: Svetlana is dressed like a cheap prostitute and throws everything but the kitchen sink at her “performance”, or no, let me rephrase that, if there was a kitchen sink to be thrown, she’d have thrown two. Her men are dressed like sex-slave centurions (the Romans, not the cylons) and at one point she stops pole dancing and gyrating her hips long enough to sit down behind a drum kit draped in Ukrainian flags. And long live the wind machine! “Perhaps we should take flags on stage next year” I offer. Everyone stares at me “Like that would help us…” – Q
The postcard that comes before Estonia tells us Gagarin means gagarin. Que? It might be a Russian joke (newsflash! The Russians have humour! But then they’ve already proven that with their opening and interval acts…). Thankfully Estonia is a breath of fresh air. Someone told the lead singer to smile at the camera, which she does, and the wind machine kicks in right at the start. It must be nice to play an instrument or be a member of a band at Eurovision. You basically have to stand or sit there and do a decent impression of pretending to play. Lots of camera time, zero stress. Perhaps that could be my role in one of the upcoming contests. Just hand me a banjo or something. –Q
Finally we’re at the end with The Netherlands. This semi was so bad that I’m actually loving them! Gordon put glitter in his hair and is more gay than I remembered.Their outfits are shiny. Shiny. It’s the Dutch version of a pun, I’m sure of it. “Look at our suits, they’re shiny… like the song. Get it? Get it?” Loving their backing singers, loving the “wave your handsh in the air” moment, and the song is so over the top they don’t even NEED a wind machine. Take that, all you other losers! Gordon is clearly having the time of his life and it makes me smile and actually sing along “Sjiiiiiiiiiiiiiine! Sjiiiiiiiiiiinie! Sjiiiiiiiiine!”. Anja says the Toppers brought half of Holland with them (the other half are still in Antwerp) and André quips “a song with a message”.
Ah, the voting. Mr Grabbyhands grabs Miss Poofyhair by the arse: “Wote! Wote! Wote!” they shout. “Don’t! We’re not allowed to vote in this semi! You’ll just waste your money” A&A shriek.
The interval act is one mega folkdancing festival. It’s boring. Backstage must be huge, half of Russia seems to be onstage. Finally Svante “presses his magic button” (yes, he actually says that, the pervert) and we find out who qualified.
“Be my valentine” Mr Grabbyhands tells Poofyhair when the Ukraine gets their ticket to the final. “I’m already taken” she’s quick to reply. Ha! You go girl!
“Oooh, this dress is too tight” she goes “It’s just very hot” he replies. I’m sorry, what is going on here? Get a room!
“What country you want? What country you want?” Poofyhair and Grabbyhands shout at the audience. “We want presenters who actually speak English!” we shout back.
“Don’t touch my face, you’ll ruin my make up” Poofyhair snaps at Grabbyhands. Finally! Only took you two semis!
This semi was in one word… trying. But at least Sakis got through. And Albania. And Estonia. And *all* of Scandinavia. All of them. No country gets left behind in the north, people!
Looking at the draw I’m thinking France is probably doomed and I wonder… should I get excited about the final? I’ve seen it all before after all… but who knows. Perhaps there’ll be extra wind machine action.Let’s hope so.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment