Eurovision 2013 Round-Up

Yesterday's Eurovision Song Contest was pretty bleeping amazing. Tell me this video of Romania's song isn't the most bizarre thing you've seen. Tell me, I dare you! It's been labelled "gay vampire ghost opera dubstep" and I suppose that's as good of a description as there will ever be for something that words cannot accurately describe.

But Romania was hardly the only WTF moment. Finland channeled her inner-bridezilla and ended her song with a lesbian smooch:


Greek men clad in kilts jammed and repeated the lyrics "Alcohol is free!" incessantly. (It's a message we can all get behind, anyway.):


This pretty Ukranian woman got carried onstage by an actual giant, sang about gravity, made weird hand motions to mimic a butterfly, and still ultimately finished in 3rd place:

Moldova screeched while wearing the most multi-functional dress you've ever seen:

And we picked up some "cool" "new" "dance moves" from both Belgium and Belarus.

About ten of us watched the festivities live together yesterday, and while Romania was obviously our collective favorite, our runner-up was the show's actual winner, Denmark:
I was smitten with the song within twenty seconds: a flute, those drums, a hot, purposefully disheveled young lady with perfectly messy hair and bare feet. All right, for me the appeal is admittedly half crush-based, but it's also half really catchy song. I might already own the MP3, even.

The runner-up was an astonishingly handsome man (hey, save some good genes for the rest of us) from Azerbaijan who probably had the best staging of the night. I don't care for the song, but I can't even make fun of it because I was just genuinely impressed with the effects:

I realize I write about Eurovision a lot for an American, but it is too funny/confounding of a ritual to not get excited about. Like, what was with this announcer who snuck in a plug for his new single and then gave control back to the main host who he referred to as "#MILF"? Man, I can't get enough: is it next year yet?

P.S., here are three honorable mentions that for obvious but not justifiable reasons were eliminated in the semi-final rounds:

• Montenegro (ASTRONAUT RAPPERS, GUYS!)
• Latvia (It's not an homage to the 80s, Latvia is just decades behind in trends.)
• Bulgaria (She wails, she drums, she's awesome.)