Eurovision 2012

Those of you who were in Baku recently are up on their Eurovision winners. Go Sweden! Except that winner Loreen (pronounced Lore - E - en) looks about as Swedish as Kermit the Frog. I saw some video where Swedish fans were over the moon because of their victory. Judge for yourself. The song sounds like every other song on pop radio, but she does dance a version of the Curly Shuffle that's sort of interesting.



I would describe Eurovision, but it's one of those things that you can easily figure out for yourself if you just watch a couple of entries. The Russian Grannies came in second, despite the fact that they've now incorporated an oven into their act, so they can bake and sing at the same time. Understandably, their contract insists that they be put up in digs with indoor plumbing (and I'm not making that up).



The competition has a big gay following, and the NY Times reported that Iran was on the alert for mobs of invading LGBTers from neighboring Azerbaijan. When the Iranians are not worried about their nuclear program, apparently they get their knickers in a twist over their total lack of homosexuals. And this despite that fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most gay looking head of state on the planet.

Anyhow, here's your what they call a preview video, from Romania. I offer it because it has the best footage of a band not playing its instruments, plus nice shots of traffic down the main road of Bucharest. There's one video of this group that opens with a bunch of people photographing ATVs splashing around on a road presumably outside of Bucharest. (I don't know my Bucharest all that well.) Driving seems to be big with the Romanians.



Here's a look at the competition from the newsy side. If you were questioning my assertion about the gay following for the event, they do mention former winner Dana International, a transsexual who took the prize in 1998, much to the dismay of many of her fellow Israelis, who were back in Jerusalem wondering how she got to be the official entry. (Ahmadinejad probably still gets a kick out of that one.)




You could spend the rest of your life watching Eurovision videos, provided you've got YouTube fired up. When you're done, your assignment is to write a 1000 word essay comparing everything you've seen to what we formerly used to think of as music.

No easy task, that.
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