A Fan's Playground

Yesterday evening I watched Eurovision with a couple friends! We watched the stream a few hours later than live, because that's the time that worked best for us, so it wasn't IN THE MOMENT but it was still extremely fun. As you can see above, I tweeted my thoughts as we watched.

I've never actually watched all of a Eurovision program before, only seen individual songs that people have linked as being particularly good/fun/hilarious/amazing/enjoyable/whatever. So seeing the entirety of what Eurovision had to offer was actually in some ways surprising to me: I'd only ever seen the cream of Eurovision and wasn't expecting so many boring slow love songs with no fire or sparkles or weird costuming choices or anything. But there were still enough acts that really brought what I understand to be the spirit of Eurovision, and overall I enjoyed myself hugely. And I loved the little intro segments they did before each country's performance, that briefly introduces you to the country and then the performers go to Austria to participate in some sort of Austrian activity; they could also be pretty gloriously weird, though some of them were also just boring.

The hosts were, you know, hosts: awkward jokes, overly-large smiles, but they were competent at what they were doing.

And then the reveals of the votes! THAT TOOK FOREVER. And given how LONG that takes, did they really need to take so much time in between the end of the show and the beginning of the vote tabulation? I got pretty bored and ended up staying up definitely past my bedtime, and I didn't even make it to the end of the full Eurovision experience; I skipped out as soon as the last country had provided their votes.

This part was particularly fun to watch with my friend B. For many countries, he made guesses based on history and politics as to who each country would give top points to, and almost every time he wagered a guess he was right. Magic. The only one that he got really wrong was saying Ireland would give UK 12, and they in fact gave UK like 1 or something. He was flabbergasted.

I was interested to see how many votes Russia got; for a while there they even looked like they were going to win. Between their extremely mediocre act and the current political situation with their expansionist tendencies, I really didn't think they'd do well at all. The lead Russian singer though was super adorable in how emotionally overwhelmed she was by everything.

The actual winners, Sweden - well, I did actually enjoy their act, unlike Russia's, but I also thought it wasn't nearly the stand-out that most of Europe apparently did.

I felt kind of bad for Austria that they got zero votes after having won last year, but then I wouldn't have given them any points either, so. Their one redeeming quality was setting the piano on fire.

My top five acts:

1. Serbia (that glorious majestic singer with amazingly sparkly hair singing about being beautiful when being different) (unfortunately this youtube version doesn't actually capture the true sparkliness of her hair)

2. Belgium (idek, it's just great)

3. Latvia (ooooh a song that doesn't just sound like your standard pop!)

4. Georgia (look at that outfit!)

5. UK (it is fun and charming and involves glow in the dark outfits! though it felt like the man was doing more telling the woman how to behave than the other way around, which I was less fond of)