Once again, it's Eurovision time, Oh noes Options

[MARS]

Like every year, the infamous Eurovision song contest is going to be held on Saturday, this time in Oslo. For those with a passing interest, it's basically a music competition with participants from several European countries, including such typical European nations as Armenia, Georgia or Israel. Once all the entries are through, people from all across the continent have a chance to vote for their favourites but NOT themselves. Traditionally, local alliances and immigration play a bigger part than the music, with most of Eastern Europe giving the top scores to Russia while Western Europe sends many points to countries like Turkey. The actual music is mostly average at best and it's an open secret that many people regard the contest as a complete farce, myself included. However, there's this strange temptation that seems to affect even those who've sworn that they won't watch it this time and yet, they end up sitting through the three hours of bad music, outrageous performances and annoying hosts time and time again so they have a say when everyone and their dog is talking about it the following Monday. At least my experience says so.

So what do you think about this year's competition, the entries and all the other malarkey that surrounds this strange event?

[Alias]

The only reason to watch it is for the Eastern European women.

[Pickysaurus]

Bah Eurovision is a farce, it's too political.

[partyzanPaulZy]

Eurovision is full of cheap Pop, the sound engineer is a$$h...
and I am waiting when they will pull techno there...

Also the only Rock band that got high score in Eurovision I remember, is Lordi.

There is a rumour that few years ago, one chick without musical voice won in the Czech Republic,
because her father ordered his 20 000 employees to vote for her.

Other explanation is that main voters are typical consumer teenagers
which like plastic fake culture (like that heavilly edited photo turned into mess due to all the effects).

This post has been edited by partyzanPaulZy: 27 May 2010, 15:52

[wb21]

Bah Eurovision is a farce, it's too political.

I did heard some news about some controversy in Eurovision back in 2008 IIRC when a group from Eastern Europe/CIS sang political songs that attacked Putin AFAICR.

[Pickysaurus]

I just meant neighbouring countries generally vote for eachother.

Like, the UK doesn't really get on with anyone so we don't get many votes.... no matter how good or bad we are

[MARS]

Uhhh, guys...wait a second...the Germans actually...won!?

[Mylo]

woooot Germany has finally won xD after 28years of misery ... not that it's really a thing which matters... BUT germany won
My personal favourite were of course the dutch (schalalii schallalaa) , but didn't reach the final unfortunately.

Mylo

[MARS]

We were bloody lucky that many of the eastern countries didn't make it into the finals, though. They could still vote, but with most of their usual favourites (i.e. their neighbours) gone, many people from countries like Croatia or Estonia probably couldn't be arsed to watch the show or vote at all, adding more weight to the percentage that voted for us. Plus, that magnificient bastard Raab probably did a lot of advertising in several countries prior to the contest, you know, being backed by one of the most influential European media conglomerates and all. Under the usual circumstances with effective block voting, this might have turned out rather disappointing.

[MARS]

Sooo, another year, another Eurovision contest!

This Saturday, after last year's surprising victory, Germany seeks to accomplish the impossible by not just winning a second time in a row, but by winning a second time in a row with the same performer, 19-year-old Lena from Hannover. Will she once again win the day and be cemented forever as the most legendary German since Otto von Bismarck [/irony] or will she fail horribly in the face of sinister eastern European block-voting, her spirits shattered, her career cut short, and doomed to end up on that awful reality game show where D-list celebrities get exiled into the unforgiving jungles of Australia a few years down the line [/sarcasm]? Time will tell, gentlemen...time will tell!

[Сергеј Иванович]

i watched some of it yesterday, and i think that Georgia has a really good song. And our constestant was not that bad.

[Shiro]

Bliblablup, this is going to be the same thing as last year. Seriously, who the hell cares?

[Waris]

Bliblablup, this is going to be the same thing as last year. Seriously, who the hell cares?

millions, apparently

[MARS]

Everyone knows it's bullshit, but you just can't help it. It's like a car accident, as much as you try not to watch, you just can't look away. For me, Eurovision contests are very much like the movie Signs. Everytime it's announced on TV, I swear to myself that I'm not going to watch it this time, but when it's actually on, I end up tuning in regardless, only to get PTSD'd by that one scene where the alien shows up and......wait, where am I even going with this?

[Overdose]

A political broadcast disguised as entertainment.

Julius Caesar approves.

[MARS]

As does president Lukashenko of Belarus, apparently...

Off topic: Congrats on your new position as writer and update planner, mate. I see Andre has already contacted you on this matter. [/cryptic insider talk]

[Overdose]

Hmm? I always have been.

[MARS]

Never mind then. You changing your description text apparently coincided with me talking about a -very- related subject with Andre the day before. My bad, I guess. [/cryptic]

Getting back to the subject at hand - and I'm NOT making this up: Tonight this whole 24/7 Eurovision coverage has finally managed to invade my brain to the point where I actually had a dream in which I learned that Germany somehow managed to drop out of the competition despite such a thing being technically impossible because we're among the few countries that pay so much money for this competition that we literally don't have to go through preliminaries. However, the same dream also had me discovering exclusive narrated multiplayer gameplay footage of MW3 where the game got rid of many irritating elements from the newer games and actually felt a lot more like Call Of Duty 4, i.e. undoubtably great. At that point I realised that it was only a dream, though.

[Сергеј Иванович]

Man, u got really addicted on that contest... can i present something to you?

[MARS]

'Addicted' isn't the right word here. If something gets rubbed in your face enough times a day, it will likely show up in your dreams because dreams are the manifestations of our mind sorting through the impressions of the day.

[Alias]

Only good thing about Eurovision is the Eastern European women.

Just sayin'.

[MARS]

You actually said the exact same thing around this time last year but it probably holds true for most people I guess. They're certainly not in it for the music, obviously.^^

[MARS]

Victory goes to Aserbaidjan with a wopping 221 points, followed by Italy and Sweden. Germany comes out at a respectable 10th place with 107 points.

[Overdose]

Aser what?

[MARS]

It's actually spelt Azerbaijan in English. Wasn't intentionally misspelling it to offend any Azerbaijani members here on the forums.