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Edited 2018/05/13 to add video links, correct various typos, add some additional things, and fix the I am so very British part where every other sentence began with "Oh"! ☺
Edited 2018/05/17 to add full video.
Eurovision 2018 - the grand final
Okay, down to business. I got my wild cherry diet Pepsi and I got my Black Jack gum here and I got that feeling, mmm that familiar feeling that something rank is going down...
[fx: needle scratch]
Wait... crap... wrong script.
This one. This is Eurovision, that glittery music extravaganza that proves that Europe is more willing to forgive Germany than the United Kingdom. In fact, post-Brexit, if the UK gets zero points it'll be doing well. It's all political, see? Bloc voting. The fact that the songs suck compared to some of the other countries, that's an absolute coincidence.
Just getting into the mood watching Love Love Peace Peace on YouTube. Even though we had the lovely Italian girl, Hovi, and JapanGermany's entry, not to mention Dami Im and the sweet Austrian... that interval song was definitely the best performance of the night. And the applause when Rybak turns up.
So, I have some random pastries, a mug of tea, and fiery chilli tortilla Pringles. I'm all set to enjoy the show. I am watching the broadcast on BBC One.
You cannot watch too
[updated 2018/05/17]
It calls itself "full show" rather than "live stream" because one of the songs has been replaced by a different version (jury performance?). Why? If you're like the last person on planet Earth that doesn't know what happened, keep reading...
Until 11th June, you may be able to watch the show via Swedish broadcaster SVT.
Introduction
This is the big contest, the big night, so we'll see lots of bits of Portugal. As last year was hosted by three guys, this year ups the ante with four woman.
After a confusing mishmash of random bits of video, we see a guy on stage playing a weird sort of guitar, with a woman called Ana Moura singing one of those South American style love songs that sounds like a funeral ballad. In Portuguese, of course. The stage mostly dark. Now Mariza who might be singing in Portuguese, or might be just making stuff up. It's hard to tell given her vocal style. Ah - I hear words ending in "oosh", it's Portuguese. But perhaps one of the strangest and most sombre Eurovision openings I've seen, ever.
The flag ceremony
The world DJ scratching champions (that's "a thing"?) as the competitors come out to their flags (in competition order), the flags held up by pretty girls (mostly) dressed as sailors. That's the theme here - maritime things. Which is pretty obvious given Portugual's location.
The Danish stroking each other's beards.
Norton says that there's more emotion in the songs tonight following Salvador and Jamala's songs. But, wait, is it because of these simpler songs, or is it because of Salvador's bollocking of the entire music industry. It seems that RTP has taken this to heart with a much simpler stage, recalling the contests of the late '90s, which is forcing the competitors to think more about the staging and performances rather than just coming up with a cool video wall effect.
China objected to tattoos and gay guys. The EBU pulled a Ghibli and basically said show it as broadcast, or not at all. So hasta la vista, China.
Right then, it's time to start. Sixteen minutes on, as if this contest doesn't go on for ages and run overtime.
1. Ukraine "Under the Ladder" (Mélovin)
Norton has said it's a contact lens, not a fake eye. Why? I guess because it looks freaky, as if the rising out of the piano effect isn't already something like the birth of a vampire. Nothing like starting with a pop horror film.
2. Spain "Tu canción" (Amaia & Alfred)
Oh dear. The couple in love had the poor luck of being in second place. Nobody nowhere never (ooh, a triple negative!) has won from a second position placing.
A bloke in a red suit, and the woman dressed in a surprisingly tasteful-yet-revealing dress put on a heartfelt love song in Spanish. Probably not to everybody's taste (especially if you actually like Hungary's song). It's one of Spain's better entries in recent years, but... okay, come on guys... get a room already.
Oooh, the bitchy Norton said "I give it a month" and then "They're obviously deeply in love, one day they'll regret that". Such an old romantic...
3. Slovenia "Hvala, ne!" (Lea Sirk)
Third song, second in a national language. It's almost like the old days when practically nobody sung in English. This song is... probably much better after some drugs and alcohol. Wait, this is the one with the "where's the music?" bit in the middle. Okay, she's doing something different for the silent bit. The annoying thing is that I don't like this genre or the style of music, but her performance sells it enough that it is growing on me.
4. Lithuania "When We're Old" (Ieva Zasimauskaitė)
My favourite song of the year. From watching an interview with Ieva, I can say that the old couple dancing are a famous couple from Lithuania, other people are members of her family... and the guy on the bridge? Ieva wanted it to be real, not an act. It's her husband. Awwww...
Yay, Norton likes it. This is utter praise, surely, from him.
No more comments, this is my favourite of the entire contest (did I mention I liked it?), so I'm going to enjoy it. Again. Can't have enough of a good thing.
5. Austria "Nobody but You" (Cesár Sampson)
It's the gospel soul song. It's a good performance again, but an image that flickered through my mind as I saw the raised stage that he was on was the landing pad of the Eagle transporter in Space 1999. Yes, that was well done.
6. Estonia "La Forza" (Elina Nechayeva)
Opera with the €60,000 swirly dress. I don't think the song will win, but it's an interesting idea - if the hosts are not going to set up a video wall, bring your own, and make it round, and stand in it. And, hell, she can really hit the high notes.
7. Norway "That's How You Write a Song" (Alexander Rybak)
As I said before, Rybak's back. Gotta hand it to him, he's a great performer. And I swear he hasn't changed in the years since we last saw him. It's just occurred to me the meta aspect of entering a song contest with a song about how you write a song.
Come on Rybak, we need more violin!
8. Portugal "O jardim" (Cláudia Pascoal)
Somebody else with pink hair. Eighth song, the fourth not in English. We're on a roll tonight. Well, this is a gentle one isn't it? Somehow I expected somebody with pink hair to perform a song with a tempo about twice what this is.
Oh weird. I listen to this, especially the louder chorus bit, and I think of Ergo Proxy, this song should accompany the flight of the wind ship.
Nice voice, all the same.
9. United Kingdom "Storm" (SuRie)
In an amusing coincidence, the ninth song is important to British people, it's the point at which Terry Wogan would... come on, you know this by now, right?
Strange staging that looks like a carcass of a giant animal.
Oh, whoa, a stage invasion for the UK song. Somebody just grabbed the microphone off SuRie to shout something about nazis and freedom. She looked pretty rattled by that.
Update 2017/05/17: The full show is now available, with this performance replaced by one where nothing weird happened. In a way it's a shame, because if you look at SuRie's eyes after the interruption (in the above video), you can see it isn't terror. Sure, it was undoubtedly frightening to have somebody appear out of nowhere and grab the microphone (he'd have had to be right in her face for that), but there's something else there. A determination. A desire to pick up the microphone, pick up the song, and not be defeated by what happened. Indeed, I reckon that's the moment that the words of the song actually took on meaning. Listen to her before...and after. As they say over leftpondian way: shit just got real.
They've suddenly jumped over to the green room. Will she perform the song again, or what? Okay, we're going on to Serbia now.
[edit 2018/05/13 and 2018/05/17: and this is why the official Eurovision channel does not have the live performance of this song, nor the original live stream of the contest. But, hey, it's YouTube. Plenty of ways to watch what really happened, even if the organisers would prefer to saccharine gloss it.]
10. Serbia "Нова деца / Nova deca" (Sanja Ilić & Balkanika)
(or "Нова деца" in a regular font or if you're using RISC OS)
Ah, it's the gothic one. Short dark haired girl is pretty (the one doing most of the "aaaaaaaaa" vocals). Did you notice? Post-Brexit, fewer countries are performing in English. And this song, let's face it, it's a techno-gothic that reminds me of Era. That, actually, was pretty good.
11. Germany "You Let Me Walk Alone" (Michael Schulte)
A new one - The Big Five (and the winner) don't need to qualify. This is like Mick Hucknall... what was it... Simply Red. Hey, how'd he get video effects behind him? It's a heartfelt ballad to the guy's late father. It's a bit too Coldplay for me, but this ought to get some points for Germany - it's a brilliant performance, and yet another one that yanks on the heart strings.
12. Albania "Mall" (Eugent Bushpepa)
Oh, crap, the song means "yearning", not "urine". Must pay more attention to the commentary.
And, hey, a song in Albanian. Look at all those tattoos. I'm not fan of tattoos, but if people want to draw on themselves, it's their body. So maybe we ought to take screenshots of this and flood Weibo with the pictures. I get that the Asians tend to associate tattoos and organised crime, but hey - if you're watching a broadcast stuffed with our ***ked up Western culture, you get it, warts and tattoos and all.
Aha, Norton said Middle Earth haven't joined Eurovision. He spotted the Elijah Wood connection. Yet another great performance.
13. France "Mercy" (Madame Monsieur)
Now, I understand that France would prefer to perform in French, but really I hope you're watching this with subtitles. It's a gentle song with very simple staging and a hard hitting message. I just wish the female singer wasn't dressed like the villain overlord. This song really needs people to pay attention to the words, and one of the best French entries in a long time.
Oh, so JP Gaultier did the outfits. If that's the case, it's actually pretty restrained.
14. Czech Republic "Lie to Me" (Mikolas Josef)
Come on! Blanking the video in addition to flashing the lights.... whoa, did he slip in a reference to masturbation there?
OMG, don't look up the lyrics!
Di Caprio never did anything with the mysterious backpack. Boring!
15. Denmark "Higher Ground" (Rasmussen)
Whoo, it's the Vikings!
Come now, let's see you guys beat the crap out of McLeod. Remember, there can be only one! Complete with Russell Mulcahy's signature exploding windows (did they even have glazed windows in the ninth century?). Whatever, that song was great fun.
16. Australia "We Got Love" (Jessica Mauboy)
You know, this song reminds me of the stuff that was on The Chart Show in the late '80s. I mean, think of something with more than a dash of Cyndi Lauper. Lots of flashing lights and Jessica certainly hurling herself all over the place. Australia is a strong competitor in this contest, and think about it, it's morning for them. Could this be a winner for them? Perhaps, indeed.
I tell you what - I'm putting Lithuania in my first place. But for the rest? Whoa, this will be a hard year.
A shout-out now to the memory of Lys Assia - the Swiss performer who won the first Eurovision (and died earlier this year). Yes - shocker! A Swiss person won it for Switzerland!
17. Finland "Monsters" (Saara Aalto)
Doctor Who's Missy trying to breathe life into a song that's going to suffer following Jessica Mauboy. She's going to make friends with all the creatures hiding under her bed, but she's not scared any more - which she keeps saying. In my experience, the ones who say they aren't scared...are.
Nice jump off the upper staging.
Norton has said the EBU offered SuRie to perform again. She declined to repeat the song. That might actually work in her favour.
18. Bulgaria "Bones" (Equinox)
This song is weird. I'm watching this and trying to... think of something to say, except that these guys are definitely the crew of some space ship, and not one on friendly terms with humanity. But in a very eighties kind of way. We could easily be back to Blake's 7.
19. Moldova "My Lucky Day" (DoReDoS)
I've just worked out the blue-yellow-red outfits. It's the colours of Moldova's flag. It's just a shame the stage set, the Monty Hall problem, cost maybe a euro and a sixpack or two, not to mention three rolls of gaffer tape.
I'm loving the microphone transmitter shoved into the back of the woman's dress. It looks like a radio controller unit. So, to keep this sci-fi theme going, let's say she's a bot.
Another local language, and a nice touch with the lookalikes.
20. Sweden "Dance You Off" (Benjamin Ingrosso)
This, along with the falsetto and soundtrack that is minimalist. This is late '90s boyband fare. Coming from Sweden...yup, there's the horribly dated robot effect voice. What the hell Sweden? You gave us Abba, Carola, Loreen... My god, did he just throw in some Jackson moves? I'm guessing Sweden doesn't want to win. Shame, we could do with some more Petra Mede.
21. Hungary "Viszlát nyá" (AWS)
Oh, god. Okay, credit that it's not in English. But this is bloody awful. Shouting, screaming. This is the side of metal that's closer to Slipknot than Nightwish. I said it during the semi final, I think a song needs more than raucous growling. I think I'll stick to Nightwish, Within Temptation, Mysterya, etc.
Thank god that's over.
22. Israel "Toy" (Netta)
Hehe, I wonder what VinceH is making of this. I'll have to check his Twitter feed when this is done. This is... something that only Eurovision can give a global prime-time three minutes to. Points for the many maneki neko, but... come on, how can you hope to take this song seriously? You sort of expect her to dissolve into this epic animé transformation sequence. I just hope that the entire rest of the world, especially Eurovision newbies, are watching this open mouthed with half-eaten wotsits hanging out.
There are like a dozen reasons I should hate this with a passion. Why don't I?
23. The Netherlands "Outlaw in 'Em" (Waylon)
Poor Netherlands with solid cliché rock country style following Israel's clucking noises. Is that jacket a skinned cat? And the dancing. And the guitar spray-painted black (does he ever actually play it).
To think, when I was younger, my music channel of choice was CMT (Country Music Television, Sky analogue). Don't worry, I grew up, moved to ClassicFM so I can mash up Hayley Westenra, Nightwish, and J-Pop. Yes, my phone playing songs on "shuffle" mode can be...interesting.
24. Ireland "Together" (Ryan O'Shaughnessy)
The girl at the piano is cute. Big cheer in the audience for the lovers. And why not? It's not "my thing" but it's 2018 and I've figured out enough about life at my age of 44 to know that "love" is strange, complicated, and illogical. So if two guys (or girls) fall in love...
It does seem strange to have them performing to a song about "I thought we'd be together 'til we die", isn't this a post-break-up song?
Piano girl is still cute.
25. Cyprus "Fuego" (Eleni Foureira)
Sorry, I just don't like this one. You know how Mariah Carey murdered a bunch of Christmas carols? Well, this is like murdering Beyoncé songs and then polishing it off as a Eurovision style performance.
It's very Eurovision, for sure, but it's the sort of thing that Salvador was complaining about. All of the classy entries this year, and the bookies like this?
26. Italy "Non mi avete fatto niente" (Ermal Meta & Fabrizio Moro)
Final song of the night, and it's a new one (an auto-qualifier), and of course in Italian. A beautiful language, that we've already heard. And it's a song against fear, with on-screen messages in many langues.
It's amazing how many of the songs this year are intended to make you feel something. It's almost as if Europe is maturing as a whole. Or maybe all this fake news and right wing bollocks are meaning that we all need a continent sized group hug? Of course, Israel will win and we'll be back to the beginning. ☺
Two hours and eleven minutes later, it's time for a recap.
My picks
- 1. Israel - this will probably win, of course
- 2. Ireland - piano girl FTW!
- 3. Norway - how to write a song
- 4. Germany - feel his history
- 5. Spain - sorry, I'm here for the feels tonight
- 6. Serbia - techno-gothic
- 7. Australia - a great performance tonight
- 8. Portugal - for some reason, I quite like this one
- 10. Denmark - this needs to be a theme song
- 12. Lithuania - such a lovely song, I hope it does well
Interval act 1
The hell is this? Ireland gave us Riverdance. Sweden gave us taking the piddly out of Sweden, then taking the piddly out of the contest. Portugal? People, it's twenty past eleven at night. You keep this up, I'm going to be asleep.
Thankfully that's over.
I should talk about Estonia. She's a talented performer and it's an astonishing dress, but would I put it on my MP3 player?
That's part of the criteria that I used this year for my choices. Which ones would I want to listen to in the future? Lithuania is already on my phone (in both English and Lithuanian versions). Denmark will be added soon, along with Portugal.
Listen to the recaps with your eyes closed and see what you think without the visuals.
Oh no. The hosts are going to do some comedy. A... bizarre recap of the 53 songs which didn't win it for Portugal in the past. Oh, they like sad songs. That explains the sombre nature of the opening and interval act.
A mention of the JESC held in Tiblisi. Damn, that girl is belting out her song, with a younger girl doing something weird with a piece of card. Could upstage some of tonight's adults. As is usual the JESC winner gets a moment to talk to the quirky hosts and, well, she's pretty fluent with English.
Interval act 2
Salvador's new song and... oh wow. His heart operation has obviously done well for him. He's still...unique in a way only he can be, but looks so much better. Oh yeah, he's enjoying himself. And nearly missing his cue. Gotta like this guy.
I've just looked at the clock. Quarter to midnight. And how many countries to get votes from? Aren't we going to be ridiculously overtime?
A duet of the winning song with Salvador and a Brazilian whose name I didn't catch, who Salvador is apparently a big fan of.
A quick look on-line, it looks as if the UK stage invader is a political activist who shouted something like "For the Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom". I guess he's not a fan of The Daily Mail.
The results - jury votes
Ukraine gives 12 to... France. A good start for them.
Azerbaijan offer 12 to... Albania (a muted reception there)
Belarus, the dancing/kissing pair, give 12 to Cyprus.
San Marino give 12 to Israel (to put Israel first now).
O-GENE presenting for The Netherlands give 12 to Germany.
F.Y.R. Macedonia with 12 points for Estonia.
Malta offer 12 to Cyprus.
Still nothing for UK and Spain.
Georgia offer 12 to Sweden - oh, he's a dark horse here.
Spain offering 12 to Cyprus. I must be missing something in that song.
Austria offering 12 to Israel.
Denmark giving 12 to Germany.
Spain has points. The UK has none.
Mel Gedr...Giedr...however you spell it. It's the UK to offer 12 to Austria.
Sweden giving 12 to Cyprus.
Latvia offering 2 points to the UK, and their 12 to Sweden.
Sweden? SWEDEN?
Albania giving 12 to Italy.
Croatia offering another 2 to the UK, and 12 to Lithuania - yes!
Ireland offering 12 to Cyprus and nothing at all to the UK!
Romania give their 12 to Austria.
The Czech Republic give their 12 to Israel, putting them back in the lead.
Iceland are giving their 12 to Austria.
Moldova, interesting accent, offer their 12 to Estonia.
Belgium give their 12 Austria. He's come out of nowhere to climb into 2nd place at this time!
A brief cut-out to promote the Eurovision Young Musician's contest (apparently in Edinburgh - is it going to be on BBC or what? Norton doesn't even know about it).
Talking to Austria and Israel. I guess the adverts are over now.
Norway's oddballs from last year giving their 12 to Germany.
France give 3 to the UK, and 12 to Israel.
The current favourite, Cyprus is currently fifth.
Italy offer 6 to the UK and 12 to Norway.
Australia, where it is daytime, offer 12 to Sweden.
Estonia, giving 10 to Lithuania to keep them on the left of the scoreboard, offers 12 to Austria, pushing him to the top position.
Serbia gives their 12 to Sweden.
Cyprus give their 12 to Greece, oh, no, Greece failed. It'll have to go to Sweden instead.
Armenia, is that male or female? He/she gives 12 to Sweden.
Bulgaria giving 10 to help push Lithuania back to the left of the scoreboard. Their 12 is for Austria - he's got a lead of around 15 points now.
Greece will obviously give their 12 to Cyprus. There's zero surprise there. She should have given them to LaLaLand instead...
Hungary with 12 to Denmark. Finally some love for the Vikings.
Montenegro, two points for the UK, and 12 for Serbia - with loads of booing in the auditorium.
Germany, the woman there still shouting and wearing a weird dress. 12 to Sweden.
Finland now, interesting hairdo, offer their 12 to Israel.
Russia (booing in the audience) offer their 12 to Moldova (and more booing).
Switzerland, finally, a country that ought to be more impartial. Oh, she's doing it in French to give 12 to Germany.
Israel offering a big eight to the UK (to give them 23 points), and 12 to Austria (to give them 229 and second place).
Poland offering 12 to Austria. He's back in the lead, leapfrogging with Sweden.
Lithuania give their 12 to Austria, he's back in the lead after falling out for a couple of seconds.
Slovenia give another 12 to Sweden.
Portugal finally, the final jury, offering 12 to... Estonia. Austria has won the jury vote, and Lithuania is on the left with 90 points.
Austria, 271; Sweden 253; Israel 212. And the Ukraine has come last. Who was that again? Oh, fake eye vampire guy.
Okay, Austria has won the jury vote. Now to turn everything upside down for the televote. But, first, here's the jury scoreboard.
- Austria 271
- Sweden 253
- Israel 212
- Germany 204
- Cyprus 183
- Estonia 143
- Albania 126
- France 114
- Bulgaria 100
- Moldova 94
- Lithuania 90
- Australia 90
- The Netherlands 89
|
- Ireland 74
- Czech Republic 66
- Norway 60
- Italy 59
- Spain 43
- Slovenia 41
- Denmark 38
- Serbia 38
- Hungary 28
- United Kingdom 23
- Finland 23
- Portugal 21
- Ukraine 11
|
The results - televote
There's Jon Ola Sand looking very excited.
Did anybody get zero?
Australia get a mere 9 points. That's got to hurt.
18 for Portugal and Spain.
21 to Sweden. Well...
23 to Slovenia and Finland.
25 to United Kingdom.
32 to the Netherlands.
58 to Albania.
59 to France.
62 to Ireland.
65 to Hungary. What?
66 to Bulgaria.
71 to Austria. Whoa. He's out.
75 to Serbia.
84 to Norway.
91 to Lithuania. Not bad.
102 to Estonia.
115 to Moldova - eh?
119 to Ukraine (which had a mere 11 from the juries)
136 to Germany, not even enough to top Austria.
180 to Denmark.
215 to the Czech Republic.
Will it be Israel or will it be Cyprus or will it be Italy?
249 to Italy.
The next result will tell us if it's Israel or Cyprus.
252 to Cyprus - IT IS ISRAEL!
Israel garner a massive 317 points, to clean up with a tidy 529 points, Cyprus in second place with 436 points. A 93 point difference.
THE BRITISH VIEWERS GAVE 12 TO LITHUANIA!!!!!!!
SuRie, the UK, came 24th out of 26th. That's not unexpected for the UK. It's a shame her performance was invaded.
Well, okay, the weird act came first. And Salvador did a very quick handover of the trophy, he apparently doesn't like Netta. Sorry, Salvador. Sometimes music has to be different to get the message across. Plus, come on, we Eurovision viewers aren't surprised. But think of news programmes in the rest of the world that will be reporting on this.
The results
- Israel 317
- Cyprus 436
- Austria 342
- Germany 340
- Italy 308
- Czech Republic 281
- Sweden 274
- Estonia 245
- Denmark 226
- Moldova 209
- Albania 184
- Lithuania 181
- France 173
|
- Bulgaria 166
- Norway 144
- Ireland 136
- Ukraine 130
- The Netherlands 121
- Serbia 113
- Australia 99
- Hungary 93
- Slovenia 64
- Spain 61
- United Kingdom 48
- Finland 46
- Portugal 39
|
The winning song once more
This needs to be said
RTP, EBU... where the hell was the bass? What was up with the audio? I watch with headphones, proper ones for enjoying symphonic metal. The audio of the performances sounded worse than if I'd taped it (for millennials, kids of my generation used little cassettes with spools of magnetic plastic tape inside). The best sounding audio was the EBU sign-off... What?!?
This also needs to be said [2018/05/13]
[updated 2018/05/17]
Why does the YouTube Eurovision channel not have the live broadcast of the UK entry or the contest? Will it be uploaded once somebody has muted out the protest, or will it simply be left to somebody else to upload this (along with their national commentary)? You know, in this day and age, glossing over something ain't gonna cut it. We all know what happened, many of us were watching. And today the newspapers and social media are full of photos, videos, and quotes of the incident. It makes the total absence - the UK entry given is presented as GRAND FINAL LIVE - UNITED KINGDOM and in brackets it says "Jury show performance" - it makes this absence almost embarrassing. And, you know what? I cannot speak for SuRie, but if it was me on that stage, I'd be somewhat offended. It happened. It was dealt with. And SuRie took the microphone back and carried on, to a rousing ovation in the hall.
2018/05/17: We have a compromise. A video of the entire contest, with the UK's performance switched for another (jury show?) recording. Took 'em long enough though - probably had to be approved by dozens of different organisations. Meh... bureaucracy... ☺
As for the stage invader - quite a number of videos on YouTube are aiming for clickbait calling him a "streaker". He wasn't. He is a political activist with a typically stupid name, something like "Dr ACactivism" (spot the pretentiousness with the "Doctor" prefix). What he said was "For the Nazis of the UK media, we demand freedom, war is not peace" - whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. The idiot has been outed on several sites (which I am not going to link to) as a Corbyn supporter. That, along with Israel winning. You can imagine how the right wing are enjoying this. I'm surprised the Daily Mail or the Express haven't yet run an article on "how inept Labour and their band of delusional Corbynistas ruined it for Britain in Eurovision" or somesuch.
Instead, it's up to the Mirror to lead the yearly call for the UK to withdraw from the performance. Well, since this dickhead was some sort of British political rapper activist narcissistic asshole taking Britain's problems to a global arena for his five fleeting seconds of fame, I think you people might want to look at yourselves a little closer. And not just that, let's also point out Rylan Clark-Neal (the beardie bloke commentating on the semi-finals) who tweeted: AND TO THE FILTH THAT JUST DONE THAT TO US I HOPE YOU BROKE YOUR LEG WHEN YOU WAS DRAGGED OFF (since deleted, but cached). The activist is a dickhead, but so are you Rylan - wishing for a person to have their leg broken. And for the love of God, learn your native language!
After the end
As always, a difference between the juries and the public - except for Germany that was fourth in both. Estonia, Lithuania, Norway, Hungary, Finland, and Portugal stay about the same.
Biggest change up for the Italy, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Ukraine. Biggest change down for Australia and Bulgaria. Otherwise, the order is slightly different but the results between the juries and the public are not really so different this year; though they did provide different winners.
I'm glad Lithuania did well, and also the Vikings.
Same time next year, then... And being in May, that will be after the scheduled time of the United Kingdom's exit from the EU... Maybe the UK will do quite well in 2019 thanks to sympathy votes from an astounded Europe that simply cannot understand why the proud British public voted to shoot themselves in the head. At point blank range. With an M2HB .50 machine gun. Ludicrous Gibs - that's Brexit, that is.
One last comment
Oh what! Just reading Vince's twitter feed and it went silent around the time of the second-to-last song. A later update said that he'd hit his daily tweet limit. Huh? I didn't know there was a tweet limit. How is one supposed to spew sci-fi references to a big lengthy song contest if Twitter is going to throw a sulk? Idiots...
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| David Pilling, 13th May 2018, 18:52 |
Watching the voting I couldn't work out what they were voting for - not the songs, not favourite country. One day we'll find out.
|
| VinceH, 13th May 2018, 20:08 |
This is a bit unscientific, but...
Manually counting through my tweets from yesterday (so I may have miscounted) suggests the total number up to the point I was blocked was 300 (including those prior to the contest).
Viewing the page source of my blog page archiving the tweets from last year and doing a count of the times twitter.com appears results in 344. I don't think there are any links to twitter.com in there that aren't links to actual tweets - so that's 344 tweets on the night.
And there would probably have been other tweets during the day.
So Twitter's daily limit looks like it's around 300 - and that's either lower than it was last year, or a new thing.
|
| Rick, 13th May 2018, 20:52 |
It appears to be 2400 tweets per day, broken down into unspecified hourly limits - https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-limits |
| Rick, 13th May 2018, 20:55 |
WTF PORTUGAL?
Just looked at some of the photos of the stage invasion and the bloke IS WEARING A BACKPACK!
After what happened in Manchester, particularly, can anybody give me a good reason why ANYBODY that wasn't an official photographer or artist support (with an ID badge) was allowed into the arena wearing a backpack? |
| Jessica, 13th May 2018, 23:16 |
"this dickhead was some sort of British political rapper activist narcissistic asshole"
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 |
| Rick, 13th May 2018, 23:31 |
[edited blog desktop view charset to be utf-8 so the emoji work ;-)] |
| Sam, 19th May 2018, 12:46 |
Interesting comments about Ireland. I thought you didn't like gays? |
| Rick, 19th May 2018, 20:11 |
I prefer to judge a person by who THEY are, not assumptions borne of their orientation, religion, colour...
If you're referring to my dislike of homosexual marriage, it is explained here: https://www.heyrick.co.uk/blog/index.php?diary=20120512
Nothing to do with sexual orientation, everything to do with how much of "the word of God" the church is willing to ignore. If they ignore the bits that aren't popular in contemporary thought, well, then what value the rest of it? If we can disregard Leviticus 20:13, then it may be that other things ought to be disregarded as well - Isaiah 41:10, perhaps? |
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