Last night was the first round of the Eurovision semi-finals!
And I missed it, dammit. But since I was out being social, I am willing to forgive myself, especially cause I can still catch the final round on Saturday night (I was just informed by CB that the second semi final is only broadcast on digital cable and we don’t have that). Goofball gave a fun play by play over at her blog last night.

But what exactly is Eurovision? That’s the question I asked CB right around this time last year when he mentioned it to me. Here’s a simplistic answer for you (the whole system of voting and eliminations is complicated, at least from what I can tell…if you’re interested in the whole explanation here’s the link since Wordpress is now being a goober with hyperlinks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest):

“The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries’ songs to determine the most popular song in the competition.” - taken from the Wikipedia

Some prior winners of Eurovision? ABBA in 1974, Celine Dion in 1988 and Tatu in 2003

Belgium won once in 1986 but that’s about it. Here was the song that Flanders chose to submit this year (they alternate every other year Flanders and Wallonia get to pick a singer to represent them).

No, those words are not a real language.
No, Belgium did not move on to the finals this year.
No, I can’t honestly say I’m surprised.
Although they were up against a singing turkey puppet so I’m sure they’re a bit dissapointed.

In true European intrigue-y fashion, there are some theories around bloc voting due to cultural similarities between countries as well as theories regarding the influence of immigration from Eastern to Western Europe that now strongly affects the outcomes of the contest. Often it seems that patriotism overrides the importance of the actual quality of the song. As a result, Western Europe does not seem to take the contest as seriously as it once did, resulting in entries like Ireland’s Dustin the Turkey (the irony being that Ireland holds the most wins in Eurovision history). CB, who is a cross cultural psychologist, gave me the link for the study above and seems to pretty much agree with the fact the voting demographic is heavily impacted by immigration.

If he researches the phenomenon and writes an article I wonder if we can get free tickets for next year’s finals?