LOL--Lena on Sesame Street

Via sarah_create 

Okay, I realize only a limited percentage of readers will get this, but I still think it's funny. The 2011 Eurovision song contest starts today (like American Idol, only with an international competition twist--one entry from each participating country in the European television network). Last year's winner was Lena Meyer-Landsrut from Germany, so Germany is hosting this year's show. (She is also their entry for this year.) Germany seems to be rather excited about this event? At any rate, here's Lena doing a guest performance on Sesame Street, in which she and Ernie search for Bert, who apparently didn't show up as planned for the apple picking:

In case you missed the original, here's her winning song from last year (then the above one will make more sense). I'm thinking the Sesamstrasse version is a little lighter on the messed-up relationships...

Eurovision 1st semifinals

We did our annual Eurovision fest tonight. It was only half the entrants as there's another semifinal in a couple of days. In general I thought the songs were better this year than last--at least, there have been fewer truly scary ones so far. The one song we all kind of liked that didn't go on was Norway, and urgh to Georgia. But most of the ones we really liked moved on. We had near unanimity on Finland--I could tell when I first heard it that it would be second son's favorite. He's always liked the nature ones, but so far they haven't done so well. (Slovakia last year and Croatia the year before.) My favorites were Finland and Azerbaijan. Some of us liked Serbia. Some of us thought they were very confident and happy but looked like they were advertising a 1970s supermarket experience.

Some years I have a hard time finding one I like. This year there are several (more to come). But it's always such a fun look at a continent and what's the same and different about people in countries most Americans know nothing about. (Can you find Azerbaijan on a map?)