Was it the clothes? The dancers? The absence of drums? The nepotism?
Such are the questions preoccupying the Icelandic nation, after our girl Selma was eliminated in the Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals last night. I think it’s safe to say that everyone was ‘surprised’. After all, Selma had been tipped as a favourite by Eurovision-enthusiasts and bookmakers [outside of Iceland, I might add] for winning the semi-finals. Besides, in the humble opinion of YT, she sang and performed like a seasoned pro.
Of course we were treated to the spectacle of camp that we were all expecting, but what I was not expecting was rampant and blatant imitation of last year’s winning number, from the Ukraine. It was called ‘Wild Dancing’ or something and it had the main singer ‘Ruslana’ [which has prompted much hilarity in these parts, since ‘rusl’ in Icelandic means ‘garbage’] dancing about in tribal garb and featured the copious beating of large drums. So last night I reckon about half of the acts had big drums on the stage, with the main singer typically running off to the side somewhere to beat a large drum in the middle of the song. [Guffaw!]
So the general consensus around here is that if our Selma had only tossed her mike aside for a minute and taken one energetic drum solo, she would have made it. And also if the dancers had refrained from lying down on the floor in the middle of the song to writhe around like dying starfish.
OK BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NEPOTISM?
What, indeed. This morning’s Fréttablaðið has an interview with a young woman who’s written her BA thesis on Voting Behaviour by Individual Nations in the Eurovision Song Contest. Now why anyone would choose that as a thesis topic is completely beyond me – particularly as it reveals nothing that we did not already know. The Nordic countries vote for each other, Greece and Cyprus inevitably give each other maximum points, eastern European and Baltic states also favour one another, etc. The only thing remotely new in this woman’s findings is that a) Germany and Austria are an anomaly in that they don’t favour each other when it comes to handing out points and b) the only thing that most people consider certain is that Finland and Portugal will never win the Eurovision Song Contest.
ENOUGH ALREADY!
Eurovision has already commanded far too much space here [but only because Selma was eliminated, sour grapes and all that] so I give you weather: much the same as it has been in the past few days, bright sunshine but prolly fairly cold since we have winds from the north. Looks beeootiful from the window, though. The mbl website lists current temps at 5°C. And now I’m debating whether or not I should give you sunrise/sunset times, since daybreak/nightfall no longer apply. There’s a difference, you know. Daybreak actually occurs before official sunrise because it starts getting light before the sun rises above the horizon; the same goes for nightfall/sunset, only in reverse. So in the absence of daybreak/nightfall, we have: sunrise 03.57, sunset 22.54.