And now for some European geekiness...

I've actually known edawn long before I was ever on LJ--she and her husband are some of our oldest friends from where we used to live in Germany (the first time we lived in that town). She and her husband had recently moved (back, in his case) to Germany and had a toddler, and we had just moved their with our own toddler. So we did a lot of things together, which naturally includes us getting introduced to one of her husband's uh, deep interests: the Eurovision Song Contest. It's supposed to promote friendliness and jollity among European countries postwar. I don't know about that, but it does promote a lot of wannbe songwriters and performers, and occasionally a "real" song (Abba and Celine Dion both got their start there, I understand). The way it works is that every country has an entry, it's broadcast on European TV, and people call in to vote for their favorites, which usually is rather politically driven. (You can't vote for your own country--but a zillion Turks live in Germany, so Germany's vote often slants that way, for example...)

Anyhow, the first semifinal round was yesterday so we watched in on line. I thought there were more "good" songs than in some years as opposed to stupid ones. Dumb kinds of songs: Rah rah rah we are the best, so vote for us! or how about [insert name of country] is awesome! or total nonsense words in English! Medium bad ones are the ones where the verse or chorus is nice but the other is terrible, or they just don't seem to fit together. Kind of like a book or movie that's had too many creators and the plot just doesn't hang together. Then there are the structurally okay ones that are complete unmemorable. (The ones a book agent will say is fairly innocuous, just "not for me.") Some have a memorable tune--it's just awful! And of course there are some where music is not the intent, and they hope to win with a stunning visual display of destroying their drum set with battle axes on stage. Um. Sometimes there are some nice ones, though. I generally like Malta, and this year really liked the song. I liked the verses on Israel's but not the chorus so much, I liked Iceland and Portugal, but man--Sweden was like, weird! The singer is an opera singer (this is a popular music contest) and the song switches between soaring soprano operatic and very low and gravelly, almost like a man's voice. And Switzerland didn't advance, although I kinda liked theirs, too.

And that's today's geekfest...