silver

( Individual scattershot thoughts about all the countries, mostly constructed from the two recaps. Thank goodness for the recaps; everything blurs together after twenty-six songs. )

THEN THE HOSTS SING ABOUT TWELVEEE WHAT WHAT WHAT (also oh poor dear---"he's from South Korea" - "oh" - "oh".) Is this kindergarten?! I was totally charmed by the hosts though--especially Asbæk--and actually enjoyed the interludes with them, although I still winced when they talked to the singers. Argh. I liked their Eurovision museum too.

As for the scoring: my favourites never win! That's okay though, I love watching them. I don't have strong feelings on Conchita's win; the song was okay and the singing was okay, but otherwise not very memorable to me. Wait, I take back the strong-feelings part. Her speech after winning? ON POINT. Holy cow. Well said.

I think Sweden >> Netherlands. France deserved WAY more than 2 points, what? I also liked Denmark, Belarus, Greece, basically anyone who had an upbeat fun song. I don't like slow songs in Eurovision. Slow songs require good singing and good sound systems/recording systems (I'll go back and listen to official music videos and like a lot more, possibly because they are actually recording in a booth and possibly autotune). I don't think Eurovision is really designed for either of those, and I prefer the ones that are just energy and fun.

The STAGE was so cool, though. That was the #1 winner, as far as I was concerned--such a cool set up. The whole thing was like a cube with grids of lights, and the floor and the sides lit up (or were projected onto?) And it made it so flexible. Like when the roller-blader skated around, little white shapes followed in her wake, and Austria's entry had the song's phoenix wings of flames appear in lights, and Sweden had beams of light radiating out in like a jewel-shape, and dancing mustaches were all over the place for France, and on and on. I really liked that stage. Props to the lighting team and people designing the displays, seriously.

Other really cool thing--how they introduced the countries! The flags I mean. How every country had their own little segment. Ukraine putting down post-its! Assembling the dominoes (and his expression of temporary despair when a row accidentally falls) for Switzerland! Finland with ice blocks on what looked like an icebreaker ship!! I realized that I am not very good with flags, and that there are way too many tri-colour ones. Also one country who I forget totally cheated with a puzzle of their flag, but it was an adorable scene and a complex flag so I forgive them.

The various countries dialing in to tell the scores: ergh. I enjoyed how they all said [variations] of "hello, [city] calling!" That was charming. But they do this weird pause where the hosts in Copenhagen would say hi and then the person calling in would have a frozen face (deliberately) for a good few seconds, which was creepy. I assume this is for filming purposes of some kind or other and it gets cut to a length where the frozen-expression isn't uncanny, but as it was it was creepy and made me think the connection had frozen. Also, stop with the lonnnnng teasing suspense! Gets old so fast.

This was also the first time I'd ever created/been owner of an IRC channel, and I did not set it private and so someone wandered in and was rude and I learned in a hurry how to kick/ban. First ban, then kick. Thank god mibbit had UI for that; I had another tab open in "all the channel op commands" and was frantically trying to figure out the intricacies.