EUROVISION

Tonight was Eurovision!

For you non-Europe residents out there, who have no particular reason to care about this, let me explain: Once a year, a bunch of European countries (plus some "European" countries, like Israel and Azerbaijan) each send some horrendously kitschy pop singer to compete in a glitzy, over-the-top song contest, then vote on each others' acts in a transparently partisan way that has little to do with musical talent and a lot with who has socioeconomic ties and/or historical mutual hatred.

This is known as the Eurovision Song Contest, and it's a whole lot of fun.

Watching from Perle, a Berlin gay bar beloved among expats:


Here are some observations about Eurovision:

1. Yes, the voting is ridiculously biased. Viewers vote by text message, and since you can't vote for yourself, most simply choose whichever other country they most identify with. In fact, a large part of the fun in watching is debating whether Serbia will go for fellow Balkan nations only, or if Norway will throw one wild card in along with its otherwise all-Scandinavian votes.

2. France hasn't gotten the memo that this is now officially known as the "Eurovision Song Contest," no longer the "Grand-Prix Eurovision de la Chanson Européenne." While all the other countries' presenters conversed with each other in English - and some in quite passable German, since Germany was this year's host country - France determinedly spoke French and ONLY French. I'd be the last person to say everyone in the world ought to be forced to speak English, but at this point, France is just making itself look silly.

Incidentally, Belgium's presenter was precisely the same on the using-French-only front. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Dutch-speaking half of Belgium is pissed off right about now.

3. Yes, most of the music is terrible and kitschy and dressed up in blindingly shiny costumes. What I realized, though, is that I'm more or less willing to get behind anybody who's at least putting their all into it, doing their genre justice. So, the irrepressible identical twins from Ireland; the smirk-y, wink-y boy band from Russia; Iceland's cute, swing-ish band; the impressive traditional Greek vocals unfortunately paired with terrible rap in English; even Germany's beloved Lena, who won the contest last year as a wide-eyed teen and returned this year as a sultry starlet - I can get behind all of those. What I can't stand is the forgettable, cookie-cutter pop.

Of course, that's who wins.

As it was explained to me, everyone votes for the neutral party, the one who's politically and culturally inoffensive to all sides - which is how we ended up with Azerbaijan's saccharine, Disney-esque duo actually winning. By a large margin.

It's okay. Really. Azerbaijan has never won before, and the singers were truly, gratifyingly thrilled. I'm trying to be happy for them. But in my heart the real winner was:

MOLDOVA!!



The crazy hats! The girl on the unicycle! This, this is the sublime absurdity we've come to expect from Eurovision.

Or as one Youtube commenter neatly summed it up: "I want whatever the Moldovans are smoking."