☆❀☆

+ This year's Victoria Day weekend has been somewhat cold, as usual, but still nice overall. I finished all of my Obligations on Saturday and Sunday, and now I get to just relax and do nothing. (I might relax, but I will not do nothing.)

+ The interval act from this year's ESC with Baby Lasagna vs Käärijä was pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

+ Wrote a little. Feels good. I also have a finished thing that I don't know what to do with. It'll go up on my writing DW as usual once I'm done a few nitpicks, but I haven't decided if I want to crosspost it or not. It's one of those stories without much substance and not much happening. On the other hand, it's a rarepair. Hm. (I'm leaning toward not crossposting because I can't be arsed to make a decision on how to tag it, but we'll see.)

+ I rewatched Conclave with the director's commentary. It's a good commentary; would recommend giving that a look if you enjoyed the movie. Lots of insight into cinematographic choices and casting choices etc. I found it interesting that they deliberately sought out an unknown to play Benitez - since the cardinals don't know what to expect from him, the director wanted the audience to be unable to have any preconceived notions of the actor, too. It's not something I'd considered but it makes sense. (And it means they ended up with Carlos Diehz, which is of course wonderful.)

+ ...Also spent way too much time playing Delectatio Morosa. On the one hand, I generally like to complete all routes when I play visual novels. On the other, getting the Bad Routes will be hard for me - I am way too attached to these characters and I don't want to upset anybody. On the third hand, I am curious about how cardinal Lawrence could possibly fuck up so badly that it ruins his relationships with everybody, including Benitez. So.

+ I'm rather glad that I did not go to Calgary this weekend to watch the judo nationals in person. It would have been interesting, but I think it would have also been very stressful for me, and I don't really need that. One of our competitors placed, and the other did not. I looked in more detail about the match for our guy who did not place, and found out that our friend was going up against someone from Montreal. So, against someone from a bigger club with many more training opportunities due to the location (compared to here in this small northern town, where the club is small, the opportunities are limited, there is nobody at his level/weight category to train against, and the nearest training camps are 5 hours away). Of course, this is a generalization. But taking that into account, I'm not surprised, and think the guy from our club did very well considering the circumstances. Even getting to compete at the national level at all is a big achievement.

ESC semifinal 2!

( Continued )

So! We have ESC semifinal 1.
( Thoughts )

Ahhh I wasn't able to watch the second ESC semifinal, because I was at work. But I was able to listen to it and kind of... glance at the performances in between working on things, heh. Random thoughts under the cut, just scattered notes I took during the songs.

( Continued )

I saw someone suggest that Alexander Rybak would absolutely slay the devil in a fiddle battle. You know what, they are very right. 'The Devil Went Up to Norway' parody song when?

(That mashup* he did of his 'Fairytale' with Kalush Orchestra's 'Stefania' is excellent, since we're on the subject.)

By the by, dude hasn't aged since his 2009 ESC win. Are we sure he ain't secretly a folklore creature?

Whoops, forgot to post about ESC Semifinal 2.

...Then again, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on it, actually. I didn't enjoy this semifinal as much as the first one at all.

Top picks from semifinal 2 were Estonia, Georgia, and Belgium.

The only one I was truly invested in was Estonia - another country act! Very Johnny Cash. Loved it. I thought it was a great entry and I'm very happy that one went through. Will next year be hosted in Tallinn? ;) Probably not, but who knows!

Georgia's act was kind of off the wall, but I thought it was executed well, even if it wasn't what I'd usually listen to. And the costuming was weird, but fun!

Belgium sounded good and was really solid overall. That sounds like a low bar to clear, but a whole lot of entries were just plain blah, which might be what made it stand out to me. Plus, dude just had a really nice voice (not to mention was very good-looking, buuuut that's neither here nor there.)

Dark Horse: Serbia's 'art pop' entry was a little bit too weird for me. I wonder if it would have worked better if I'd been able to watch the performance properly? Had to work, so I could only listen, and only got a glimpse of the artsy handwashing. But since it went through, I'll see it in the final, I guess! Anyway, the chorus got stuck in my head and didn't leave (except for a few intervals in which Norway's space wolves overtook it), so there is that. It has a nice rhythm, at least.

I saw some people speculating that there were sound problems in this round, especially in the first half of the show. I'm inclined to agree. A lot of entries sounded slightly off, and not in a "this person can't sing very well" sort of way (though there was some of that), but in a way that pointed to it being a tech issue. Which really sucks, because... well. Sound is one thing you definitely don't want to mess up in a song contest. I'll probably enjoy the recorded version of some of those a lot more than the live.

...What do you mean, 'Eurovision is in two weeks'?

Wait a minute, how is it May already?!

Where on earth did the time go?

Who is this weirdo still talking about Eurovision a week after the final? It's the Canadian who can't even vote in Eurovision! :D

It's a week later and I still have feelings. What?!

I think it's partly because I missed out on this last year. I was so terribly sad, both because of the ESC cancellation and because of worldly happenings in general, that I just... didn't want anything to do with it. I didn't even listen to any of the 2020 songs until this week. So now... I guess I'm just soaking up all that Eurovision joy while it lasts. Or maybe this is one hell of an ESC hangover. :'D

With regards to 2021, there wasn't really any particular act that I wanted really badly to win this year, which probably helped. There also weren't any entries in the final that I intensely disliked, so it was easy to be broadly happy about Italy's win, and to feel general goodwill to the whole damn lot.

(Though, okay, if France had won, I think I'd have been very surprised, but it was a very well-done chanson and as far as I can tell was an excellent example of its genre, and it's grown on me a lot since the final, so in the alternate universe where that happened, I think I would have been okay with that....)

Thoughts on the 2020 music: I like Go_A's entry just as much as the one sent for 2021; not sure if I prefer "Solovey" to "Shum" but they're both very very good, and I'm going to have to look up this group's other music later.

Sweden's 2020 entry was so good, ahh. I wish it had been The Mamas for 2021 too - I mean, don't get me wrong, Tusse is a cutieface, and I liked his song, but I don't think I'll remember it later on (I'll probably remember his clothing more than his singing), whereas "Move" is really really good and I think it'll stick with me quite a bit longer.

UK's 2020 entry was also much better than their 2021 entry. 2021's sounds like the ending theme to a Dreamworks knockoff of a Pixar film, whereas the 2020 song is... pretty nice actually?

A few more 2021 thoughts:

At some point after Semifinal 1, I was like, "I'm going to make some Eurovision icons :D". But I only made one before I got distracted by something shiny. Looks like I'm stuck with TIX and his fluffy coat for now.

The more I listen to Netherlands' entry, the more I love it. I really liked the live performance - the singing was good, the dancing spectacular - and it just sounds really really good to me. This is not a 0-point song, man.

....Germany's, on the other hand, is definitely a 0-point song, and I love it. Every time this thing comes up on shuffle I crack up. It's so earnest and at the same time kind of "hahaha fuck you" but not in a serious or malicious way. I recall at the end of the live performance, the singer added, "I wish you a joyful life" - lol Jendrik, well, you've certainly brought me some joy, so thanks for that.

Norway's entry keeps growing on me. I saw someone describe the vibe as "Like 90s-era Backstreet Boys, but with one singer" - and yes, yes, I think that's it! That's exactly the mood it gives off, and probably why I keep listening to it. And that's even though, when I first heard it in the semifinal, I found the song itself kind of underwhelming; but it reminds me so much of some of the stuff I listened to in high school (...though Finland's entry also does that, in a completely different way :D ).

And then I heard that KEiiNO came in second in the Melodi Grand Prix, so of course I had to listen to their entry. Monument is a pretty good song - of course I'm biased, because I like this group, and I loved the entry they sent to ESC a few years ago, but... I think I can see why TIX's song won the MGP. It's like, of the two, I think KEiiNO is better musically, but, TIX's stage show is very Eurovision-y and memorable in a meme-y way (I don't think people will be quick to forget those devils and chains and the silly angel wings), plus like I mentioned before, his song taps into nostalgia in a way that a lot of this year's Eurovision entries seemed to be aiming for.

(Speaking of MGP, come to think of it, it's surprising that I never paid any attention to it before... I think it's mainly that as far as I know, none of my friends follow it, and half the fun of song contests is discussing the entries with other people. And then by the time I remember about Norway's song selection contest, it's over. But maybe I'll look into seeing if I can watch the MGP final next year.)

...Anyway, that led to me reading a whole bunch of months-old Norwegian salt about the MGP win/defeat, haaa. Which is not how I expected to spend my time (nor a method of language practice that I would have thought of before), but there we are. Even if I can see why people voted for that entry, I can't blame people for being mad that KEiiNO lost, either - because they did do a good job, and because the winning song isn't to everyone's taste, and because of TIX's older work being... what it is.

That, combined with all the ESC semifinal/grand final salt of "Norway and Azerbaijan only made it to the final because the singers were fake dating for votes", has meant that ESC has amused me in different ways than it usually would.

This year's ESC has been so damn tropey and weird and delightful, and I'm just going to drink this feeling up as long as it lasts.