Saturday, May 20, 2006

Finland the clear winner


of the Eurovision Song Contest. Mostly posting this for Jennifer's benefit. I'd give Lithuania a second, for their song, "We are the Winners of Eurovision."
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[UPDATE] Alright so Lithuania ended up a bit further down the list, but Finland pulled it off. Interesting to watch the vote tallies coming in, with clear favoritism by almost every country going to the sappy, truly syrupy songs of their immediate neighbors. In a few cases you could see favor shown to countries from which large immigrant communities had originated, such as when Germany gave high points to Turkey. But I would be willing to bet that Finland got the attention of a lot of teenagers and people who are just sick of watching long-haired people in suits flail around to nonsense music and convinced them to vote. Finland carries the day because at least they acted like real people - fun, ballsey and with a song that was at least a real song as opposed to the over-arranged Altria-style entertainment that most of the rest offered up. It would be nice if, at the end of every crap competetion you could have confused looking people giving out flowers and trophies and realizing that the whole thing was a crock of shit. In fact, this was the first TV competition I saw that was not crap. Finland deserves high honors for putting some perspective on a crappy contest and for helping to restore faith in real democracy.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:23 PM

    The NYTimes has this to report:
    Three conservative groups in Greece plan to take legal action to eject Lordi, a Finnish hard rock band led by Tomi Putaansuu, from the Eurovision song contest, saying the band, which performs in monster masks and horns and plays songs like "Chainsaw Buffet" promotes Satanism, Agence France-Presse reported. The groups, the Union of Female Greek Scientists, the Beacon of Piraeus and the Center for the Coordination of Hellenism have lodged preliminary complaints with the Athens prosecutor's office, the chairman of Greece's state broadcaster and the European Broadcasting Union, which shows the annual contest, one of Europe's most popular media events. The video for "Hard Rock Hallelujah," Lordi's entry, shows the band storming into a school gym, striking dead a group of cheerleaders and raising them back as zombies.

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  2. Anonymous9:30 AM

    Yeah GWAR!!! whoops, wrong band

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