Eurovision 2005 - Finals

Tina and I had a bit of a throwdown on this. She wanted to watch the Lost episode we had downloaded and I demanded that as part of our cultural experience we had to watch the Eurovision 2005 finals!

Read back a bit to check the semis (this is the 3rd post on this topic, we are through the looking glass now) for the rules and setup.

10 countries advanced from the semis and 14 made it in from last year. The Ukrainian duo hosting were ABSOLUTELY hilarious. The English was about letter perfect but their accent and pacing made it sound like a Yakov Smirnov parody.

I'll spare the play by play for the whole thing, not much changed from the semis. Some quick notes on the countries not coming in through the semis.

UK - A black girl, pretty standard Americanish pop. Her asking us to touch her flame seemed a thinly veiled reference, during the course of the song, the lyrics removed the veil completely.

Malta - Alot of lady. You expect opera from that frame but no. She did have a nice voice but it was awfully Celine Diony.

Turkey - Totally bizarre pop/traditional Turkish dress thing.

Albania - nothing to report except that I was a bit surprised to see them still alive (Albania that is). I put them in the Abe Vigoda category of people/countries that I just found out had not expired and both unsettled me slightly.

Cyprus - Human size mirrors on the stage that seemed not to reflect anything. Cyprean guy dressed like a "Billy Jean" era Michael Jackson. Lame pop.

Spain - A song with about 15 pages of lyrics. The women singing were too old for the dance they were doing.

Sweden - I'll let the Local say it. Note that the Greek girl that won was from southern Sweden.

Ukraine - The host country so the crowd goes nuts. Kinda rock/rap but pretty cool (delivered by a balding white guy but still). Backup dancers are 2 guys wearing handcuffs doing breakdance moves. At least it was technically impressive.

Germany - Indecipherable rock, lead singer in leather pants jacket and bikini top. Who can vote against that?

Greece - eventual winner. Britney pop and nothing remarkable.

Russia - Rock by a girl, don't really remember anything about it

Bosnia - 3 girls from the 50's

France - Like a real up tempo Norah Jones.

What got us was the scoring at the end. They open the phones up and people start voting. I have no idea of the mechanics but each country assigns points to 10 of the songs. You get a 1 point vote, a 2 point vote etc. ending w/ a 10 and a 12 (that looks really confusing....each country assigns a 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,10,12) and you can't give yourself any points. I went to turn it off at this point totally ok to just check the results the next day.

Tina seemed shocked that after 'sitting through all this you are not going to see how it ends?'. She could not have been more right. The voting is the best bit.

After the 10 minute voting closes, the hosts call each of the 39(!!!!!) countries and ask for their votes, 1 by 1. It took hours and was strangely fascinating. The board would reorder itself showing the rank of the countries as the votes were announced. As I mentioned last time I am a Moldavia supporter (runner up for Croatia). Latvia and Denmark had to be stopped, their gayness was off the scale and I began taking the whole thing insanely seriously.

As they announced each country I would wildly, loudly begin screaming geo-political speculations about how they were going to collude against my favorite former Soviet Republic in favor of the conninving Danes or treacherous Latvians. I came to hate the Latvian and Danish flags which look a bit alike.

I was like Fred Flinstone in his gambling episode ( Bet!Bet!Bet!) and absolutely wrapped up in it. By the end I was painfully reminded why I should not be involved in my kid's Little League careers because competition does something bad to me. I identify with it too personally, like a good American I suppose. So those that worry I am losing my edge here, please don't.

souvenirs and pictures of museums don't intrigue me much as they don't say much about the differences here, but the double CD from the Eurovision 2005 will always be an important memento for me.