The Eurovision 2008... The Final

Hooray for Block Voting

So the Eurovision has come and gone for another year, Terry Wogan was back (YAY), the sbs site is up and running and I've had a nights sleep to reflect on its glory. So what observations do I have from the 2008 Eurovision "Spectackylar" live (albeit delayed) from Belgrade, Serbia... Where the most important thing is it's at the junction of two rivers... apparently...
Anyway, Russia won, clearly Vlad decided that he wanted to win it and put the word out (with the choice vote for us or hold this Plutonium please) and the Eastern voting block voted accordingly.
So how did I do?
Well as normal my favorite entry (Finland) didn't win... it didn't even do well, as it came equal 23rd with the shite act from Germany and only beating Poland and the last placed UK. That's normal though (although Ruslana and Lordi did both win...)
My pick for the winner before voting was the Ukraine which ended up coming second with a phenonmenally strong finish. And my traditional 3rd round of voting pick was Greece which looked very strong early on but didn't get the points from the Balkan countries i thought it would, with Russia getting stronger Eastern votes than I thought. So it ended up getting pipped for 2nd by Ukraine just at the end (Russia AND the Ukraine 1 and 2 with a Balkan country 3rd? Voting blocks much?).
Other observations... I don't like how they change the voting display, I can see why they don't read out votes 1 to 7... with 43 countries voting that would take forever. But they should stick to changing the colour or marking the countries that have already voted so I can keep a tally of my progressively changing picks based on which countries have voted.
Otherwise Azerbajian has started its Eurovision career rather promisingly with the insane entry and Spain's entry is definately worth looking at given how hilariously bad it was (a comedy entry trying to be so bad it's good, but going to far and ending up bad, which in turn then made it good). And I think Terry Wogan is correct (as always) when he signed off "good night western europe)... unless there is some big changes Eastern Europe will win every year and the poor ole UK will come dead last each time too...

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

The Eurovision 2008... Preliminary Final Two- 6/10 again

A Little Bit Disappointed
So the second preliminary final has come and gone and once again the sbs website appears to have crashed due to the number of people on it. I'm not going to lie I was a little bit disappointed with this final. It didn't even seem to be able to match the quality of last nights entries... Ah well...

The quality had me struggling to even pick 10 entries to go through, I picked 6 I was fairly certain of and then took my best guesses for the remaining four. I got 4 out of my 6 and then 2 out of my 4 guesses...
My list of 10 was Turkey, Ukraine, Albania, The Czech Republic, Croatia, Malta with my 4 guesses Iceland (but the link doesn't work properly yet... Sweden has been uploaded there), Sweden, Cyprus and Macedonia. I was unsure about Belarus and Denmark too but elected Macedonia and Sweden over them because Sweden had won before (I'm guessing a LONG time ago) and Macedonia has the Balkan voting block behind it.

So for those who didn't watch it The Czech Republic's answer to your favorite sluttly girl band didn't go through (much to my surprise, one singer, two back up singers and two "gyrators" would surely get votes...), nor did Malta's 16 year of cry for sympathy ("I'm young, can sing and own and AWESOME Jacket) or Cyprus and Macedonia. Instead Georgia, Portugual, Latvia and Denmark got through. Now I'm just going to be flat out un-pc and say Portugal was shit, it was a crap song and she was ugly. If you're going to vote for crappy Ballad stuff sung by a chick vote for Malta, that wasn't as bad... As for Latvia, wow... pirates... Amusing enough song albeit a little bit High 5. I'm happy it went through but I never thought for a minute that it would... especially since Dustin the Turkey from Ireland DIDN'T make it through last night... And Croatia's "one up" of Fiddy Cent was brilliant, I see your 50 Cents and raise you to 75...

Anyway ranting aside I wrote down a few observations. First of all I think Kylie or Madonna would do pretty well in the Eurovision but in the hypothetical question How could Australia win if we entered? (Without Gina "ooh ahh just a little bit" G) The answer (and not the Shannon Noll, Guy Sebastian bullshit we WOULD enter)... Enter the Wiggles... They would kick all sorts of ass...
Second observation, yes the host chick was reasonably attractive and being a European handball "champion" could probably kill me without blinking but her voice was horrible. It's like someone incapable of speaking english doing their best Fran Dresher impersonation... I want to kill things hearing that... And as always the scripted "banter" makes me want to attack the television almost as much as some politicians do.

Ah well
Sorry for the lateness was waiting for the sbs site to get updated to put my links in...
Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

The Eurovision 2008... Preliminary Final One- 6/10

Full of Indignation
Yes, once again viewing the Eurovision has filled me with conflicting emotions... The shear joy that some of the entries bring (Finland and Ireland) contrasted with the rage felt viewing some of those shit Balkan pop/ballad entries. The amazing "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!?!" feeling you get with entries like Bosnia Herzegovina and Azerbaijan (to a certain extent, Azerbaijan was a good feeling, Bosnia not so much) is contrasted by the pure rage I get when I observe the Eastern Voting blocks at their vile best/worst... I mean how the FUCK did Serbia win last year? And What the fuck is with Romania/Russia/Armenia getting through and Ireland not? It's pathetic...
Anyway... this will be the first of three Eurovision based notes for 2008. The first preliminary final for all of those who didn't watch it or did and feel the need to relive the memories through my coloured glasses (and could be bothered to read this note... if anyone does).
First of all I screwed up... I only picked 6 out of the 10 entries to go through which is terrible. For the record I picked Estonia (as a hopeful), Azerbaijan (weird but kinda cool... can't find a link), Slovenia (with wheelie shoes), Ireland (a puppet... awesome), Andorra (shit but I thought it would go through...), Bosnia Herzegovina (WTF?! but it's Bosnia... always through), Armenia (fairly crap, but it's an "eastern country"... and check out the dancers MASSIVE feathered mullet), Finland (Awesome... Waxed leather pant wearing nordic metal at it's Eurovision finest... it's like Lordi out of its costume... they even have an axe), Russia (shit... but it's Russia, they scare everyone into voting for them) and Greece as my 10... Now the more astute of you will have noticed the mistakes I made, Estonia, Ireland, Slovenia and Andorra didn't make it through instead Romania, Poland, Israel and Norway (shit, terrible fake tan, far to proud of his arms and shit).
Anyway that's a brief rant about the first preliminary final and I will write another tomorrow... and then Sunday will see a longer note written about the whole thing...

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

My first Eurovision rant

So dredging through all the shite I've written on bookface I came across a very early and exceptionally unsophisticated attempt at a posting on the Eurovision dating back to 2007. So here we go, nicened up for your reading/viewing pleasure.

As some of you may know I'm a MASSIVE Eurovision tragic (nearly didn't go to the Bathurst Stampede one year because they clashed). Except for this year where I had to turn it off halfway through the voting (my favorite part!) because of the fucking Eastern Europe/Balkan voting block. There's NO way Serbia should've won with that bullshit entry...
Anyway I've done some trawling through you tube for videos of some of the better entries over the last few years.

Lordi, 2006 Eurovision Winners and a band that look like they payed to much attention to Gwar and the Lord of the Rings...

"We are the winners"- Lithuanian entry 2006... Awesome, especially the bald guy on the end. Ironically (although perhaps unsurprisingly) they DIDN'T win.

Ruslana from the Ukraine in 2004. The winner and yet another tops entry, try and imagine Xena going raving with whips. She's apparently got 2 university degrees in music, and is pretty hot too. Pity she can't speak English very well. And yes I have seen Simon Farrow's email on her entry... The full length video clip (complete with 42000 drummers and men-with-topknot smacking each other with sticks) is found here

Moldava 2005 Grandmamma in the Rocking Chair with a Drum... Rather amusing

Ukraine 2005 complete with commentary by Terry Wogan... Kinda a flat song but pretty cool all the same.

Once again with the Ukrainian entry, this time 2007 and yes I think the singer is a transvestite but get over the song is hilarious. The Ukraine churns out some ball tearing entries, I look forward to theirs almost as much as the Austrians (or maybe more as the Austrians never get past the pre lims because they aren't in a eatern voting block)

Ans speaking of the Austrians Alf Poier, 2003...Mr Bean meets Peter Garret and an example of why everyone has to love the Austrian's eurovision entries.

Russia 2007, not brilliant but looks DAMN nice.. more people should dress and look like that.

And finally I can't find a video of Sweden (or maybe norway) from 2005... which was kinda a glam rock meets Warrick Capper and brilliant.

So there's part of the reason the Eurovision is AWESOME and you all need to watch... and also why I'm going to Oslo, 2010!)

Love, Hugs and Kisses
ANt

Is it Irony? Art? or just AMAZING (the reprise)

Once again another post stolen from my bookface notes... this one being the best note I've ever written...

So a while ago now whilst trawling my favorite blog a while ago I came across a link to this site, Dinosaurs Fucking Robots (be warned while the site is "work safe" any observation of you observing the site will probably affect your career and social standing... but don't let that bother you it is amazing to see). At the time I filed it away in my memory as a bizarre yet amusing example of people with to much time on their hands and access to the net.

Anyway a few months pass and now it is now (what a profound observation I hear you think... that's me, full of profoundaties) and I've been discussing/thinking about the almost limitless potential of the internet, nearly instantaneous communication of ideas/culture/technology/thought etc to ANYWHERE on the globe in almost any format you can possibly think of is a pretty amazing thing if you think about it. And from what I've read/been told it's completely unkillable (like you can kill a bit here/there but it just re patches itself or something... so it would be like trying to destroy jelly that regenerates and reattaches itself... or at least in my mind that's the metaphor I use to visualise fighting the internet). I know you can try and censor the fuck out of it China style (and no doubt this post won't get there due to the words "Censor" and "China" in the same document). All that potential and what do we use it for? Uploading bad photos of drunk people, advertising, you tube, porn and wikis about TV shows...

Discussing this at length with (or perhaps at) people I remembered the earlier mentioned "Dinosaur" site and I thought of it as a perfect example of what I'm talking about.
We have sitting on our desks the tool to cure diseases, educate, amaze and astound the masses, communicate ideas and generally be super dooper (ok I may be exaggerating there, and it's not just on the desk but it's wired into the wall and what not... but you get my point... the internet had potential) and instead of this we've made a website of pictures (drawn by multiple aspiring artists) of dinosaurs and robots having consensual and non-consensual sex...
Think about that for a second...
The technology to unite the planet (well kinda... and the debate over whether or not that's a good thing can be a different post... But remember if we want a "star empire" we're probably going to have to unite a little bit) and we've harnessed that technology to drawn pictures of Dinosaurs fucking Robots... That site is probably being beamed into space on radio waves right now, only to be discovered in millions of years by some alien planet in a different solar system light years away and they're just going to sit there going "WTF! This is what they spent their time doing? Holy Fuck... Lets go probe and then nuke those weirdos"

Anyway... Trawling that site and I found this picture and my mind exploded.


I mean seriously... A well drawn picture (I imagine it took someone with a certain amount of talent a decent amount of time) of a dinosaur fucking a robot... Posted on the internet with a quote about how if we harnessed our potential we could reach our dreams/conquer the stars (possible reach the stars and conquer our dreams... although I have some weird dreams that the addition of a "conquering" force may not improve...). Regardless the irony of this whole thing should be plain to see...

The quote (I'm assuming) is intended to be optimistic... you know a "how awesome is our potential, we can do anything, you go girlfriend" sort of thing...
but then the internet is like the fundamental opposite... It CAN do anything and is just filled with pirated music and games (thumbs up), stupid people and facts about celebrities who shouldn't be celebrities (As best I can tell Paris Hilton is famous for being famous... related to that, is there a Hilton hotel in Paris? And can you find it online without having to trawl through gigabytes of pictures of her looking like a slut?).

So putting that quote on the internet underneath a picture of a dinosaur fucking a robot... The Irony is registering at about a 12...
But THEN you think about it a bit deeper... clearly this isn't an accidental thing, no Nietzsche Family Circus here... not even a Garfield Ramdomiser... This was deliberate...

is the intended statement now "Look... with all this limitless potential and technology at hand this is all we can achieve?" Kinda a depressing thought really... You have what is essentially a holy grail for technology (ok that's a stretch too) and all you do is make hand drawn anachronistic porn...

But then I plowed a little deeper into this dense thicket of thought (why you may ask? What the fuck is wrong with you? Give it up and move on... Partly I proceed because I get to write phrases like "thicket of thought" and "partly I proceed" but this picture has got me thinking more than almost anything this year... possibly a poor reflection on me I guess... No surprise I'm single). Perhaps the intention is more along the lines of "we have the ability to achieve anything if we want to bad enough... Even getting a dinosaur to fuck a robot is a possibility if we dare to dream" (although that's a weird fucking dream). That's a bit more optimistic and in line with the quote... but still fucking weird...

So I'm really not sure what I think about this picture, it's definitely good... Anything that makes you think that much can't really be bad, and it did provide a chuckle when i first saw it too... but is it positive? depressing? ironic? satirical? or just plain out and out fucking weird... The one thing i know is it's lucky you can't buy it as a poster because it would be really hard for me to explain why I've got a big picture of a dinosaur fucking a robot on the wall...

Anyone else got any thoughts? besides "that's fucking weird" and "why the hell are we even friends?"

Love, hugs and kisses
ANt



For those interested here is the artist's website and yes i have emailed him

ps I did my research and the quote is from Thomas Edison and it should read "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves"

pps I am also aware of the irony of someone studying for their third degree wasting their own brain power thinking about something as monumentally stupid as the above post... and then using the internet to share such a monumentally pointless post about something so fundamentally stupid and pointless with a bunch of people who probably could be spending their time better anyway... But I figure by this stage we're so deep into the irony quagmire that we couldn't get out if we wanted to... quick... to Twitter!