Eurovision Night

This is the amazing "Mood-O-Stat (TM)" charting my mood throughout the entire Eurovision Song Contest Last Night! I realise that the captions aren't particularly clear (sorry) but it's a good job I was going to explain the chart anyway, point by point (well, even if some of them are brief)! Oh, and I've tried to put them in a reasonable order, but I couldn't remember when some acts actually went on stage....

1.) Start: Okay, it's starting, Terry Wogan is in the hotseat again, everything looks to be another three or so hours of stupidity and laughter at some of the genuinely outrageous acts.

2.) Hosts: Best-dressed woman in Serbia? No offence to the poor woman but none of her dresses were up to a particularly high standard (there were about six dress changes - none of them were very attractive or appealing. At least not to me). Oh, and she had the most annoying voice ever.

3.) UK: Had to go second, which could be bad, could be good. Anyway, Andy Abrahams was a million times better than some of the rubbish that the UK has produced in recent years. Great job for an ex-binman.

4.) Turkey: My favourite act of the night. They were amazing! Tuneful, obviously had some passion in them and sang in Turkish. It's always a bonus when you don't have a clue what they're singing. That way, if the lyrics are pretty rubbish, you don't have to worry about it and can just concentrate on the song. Top marks!

5.) Latvia: I knew it. Someone was bound to bring out some awful pirate-based song eventually. This year, the Latvians did it. Dressed as buccaneers, out of tune... and it went on longer than any other song (or maybe that was just because it was so dire)....

6.) Ukraine: She wasn't half bad, really. Like Madonna but from, er, Ukraine. Not amazing but we agreed that it might end up somewhere, being the type of song that it was. People like those type of songs.

7.) Russia: Well, as soon as we saw this act we knew that it was going to at least be in the top three. That said, the song was pretty bad. The man singing it was sometimes out of tune and the song was generally just insipid. Perhaps it was the introduction of Andriy Plushenko, the ex-six-time-world-champion-ice-skater, on roller-blades that got the votes....

8.) End: Actually, it was a good laugh. But then, there were some awful songs. Ah well, on to the voting.

9.) Turkey Leads: Yes, come on Turkey! Show them that you really were the best song of the night!

10.) Greece Leads: Well, she wasn't that bad. Like a Greek Britney Spears. Certainly looked like her. Definitely a more deserving winner than some of the other entries.

11.) UK Gets Points: Ireland, what did you expect? Could always count on them for something. He really didn't deserve to get NO points!

12.) Russia Leads: Oh... dear. There were a lot of happy scenes in the Russian camp. Maybe it was rigged... Or maybe this it was just going to be another year where Bloc voting really takes hold.

13.) Turkey Drops Off: Somebody should have given them some points! Were they all blind? They were clearly the most... well, you know my feelings by now. But seriously, just a Top 10 place? This is an atrocity!

14.) Russia Extends Lead: No-one was going to catch them. Fifty points ahead. A gap that big can't be narrowed very easily anymore, unless something radical happened.

15.) Bosnia Gets Points: 12 points for Bosnia? I must have been living in a different world to everyone else. I know these certain 12 points were from their next-door neighbours but still... no-one must have any taste anymore.

16.) Russia Wins: Bloc voting never fails. There were worse songs, I'll give them that.

17.) UK Dead Last: Poor man. I feel sorry for him. It really was our best entry for years but alas, he didn't get anywhere.

Desperation

I am currently distraught that I no longer have anything to watch over a light lunch on Thursdays. Possibly my favourite TV programmes of recent times, Dexter, finished wonderfully last week. Now all I can do is hope and pray that a new series is planned for the strangely lovable and moralistic serial killer.

What will I watch? Desperate Housewives also finishes next week, only to return after a summer break. House won't last must longer - I'm already over halfway through a season that only has 16 episodes. I doubt Boston Legal has much longer to run either. Heroes may be the only TV programme left, since Pushing Daisies also concludes in a couple of weeks to make room for Euro 2008. Mad Men also reaches its conclusion next week, and it's such a shame. I hope another season is in the pipeline for this brilliant American drama.

Will I be left hanging for the summer months? Will I really have to endure an entire summer without any good TV? It doesn't look good. Luckily I have the farcical Lost (which I watch simply because it is completely stupid - everything that made the story even remotely believable has been thrown out of the window) and The West Wing (finally showing Season 5 on More4, which is great - I only started watching this amazing political drama in Season 6, so I am glad that every previous season has been shown in its entirety). But still, it's still quite shocking that I can hardly find anything good to watch anymore.

Away For A Short While

Well, you might have read the post on my other blog but for those of you who haven't, I'm not going to be posting for a short while - the next time I can post will probably be Thursday, but please bear in mind that I'm totally bogged down with work at the moment and really have to get it all sorted in the next few days so it could be longer.

In the mean time, listen to the song I recommended on Jamjarsuperstar and relax. I promise to get back to everyone when I get back to my post!

It's the Start....

... of a Hollywood craze? I've just read that there's going to be a new Terminator film. Now, with the return of films such as Indiana Jones in the pipeline too, is Hollywood becoming less and less creative?

It seems like there are fewer and fewer original storylines for blockbusters coming out right now. There have been plenty of blockbusters that base their storylines on the old Marvel comics and old TV shows (Transformers, the new Hulk movie, Iron Man to name a few). With this new Terminator film and the return of Indiana Jones, what kind of message is this sending out to movie-goers? "Sorry, we're all outta ideas" comes to mind. There's also a multitude of directors re-making films and especially films from overseas (Sleuth, Dark Water and The Eye, for instance). Maybe this is the start of a downfall for the great Hollywood movie. Maybe the writer's strike will cause a big crash in the amount of truly original scripts brought forward. Perhaps international cinema will be a better prospect in the future.

Drinking to... Something

Well, some extensive research on underage drinking has well and truly shocked me. Okay, not quite. Some of it is achingly predictable but treats the reader like it is ground-breaking realisations. I think we all knew that more teenagers now drink than those who don't drink (some sarcastic congratulations go to the person who found that one out).

I was a lot more interested in facts like the type of alcohol that is consumed by teenagers. For instance, one 330ml bottle of alcopops can contain more hard alcohol than a generous shot of whiskey. Shocking, no?

To be honest, I don't think enough emphasis is placed on the effects of alcohol to the looks of a person after long-term drinking. It's something that's not reversible, unlike the early stages of diseases like cirrhosis. And let's face it, a lot of teenagers nowadays are incredibly vain; put the idea that they'll be ugly if they dirnk too much in front of them and they'll be clean sober forever more. Some of the effects of alcohol on looks include a blotchy face, bloodshot eyes, a furry tongue (eww, gross) and depression. Well, okay depression sometimes isn't obvious but hey it's pretty bad.

Come on health services, play on the vanity of young people in order to get them to listen!

Maybe-Not-So-Time-Wasting Question Of The Day

Is it possible that there is a very strong link between "The Wedding List" by Kate Bush and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films (either volume, doesn't really matter)?

Well, this may not be as stupid as it first seems.

Let's have a think about this. Both are about brides getting revenge after a wedding-day massacre, both indicate that there was more than one murderer and in both cases the groom is fatally wounded. So Kate's bride uses a gun and Quentin's uses a sword. Still, not much difference.

Coincidence? You decide.

Hair Today...

I live in an area where blonde is the hair colour of choice. Apparently, if you're not blonde you're not attractive. If you're not blonde you're nobody (sorry Tina, but you're off the hook because you're naturally blonde).

At least, this was the impression I was getting. There are thousands of chavas where I live (for those living outside the UK and have no concept of chavas: they're people who wear tracksuits permanently, listen to bad rave, have too much gold jewellery and skinheads). This makes everything really awkward. To be honest, there are two types of people where I live: old folks and chavas. Now, for someone who dies their hair red and wears bright clothes like me, you're officially an outsider. I'll talk about clothes in another post.

For now, let's ask ourselves what the world has come to. I get stared at in the streets a lot more now that I've died my hair. Any guesses for who does it? Yep, blonde-haired chava girls. They obviously feel threatened by someone who dares to be different (since when did you last see a group of young people who were a real mash-up?) but I think this is sad. It's like what I was saying in my post a week ago ("A Loss of Individuality") - only more hair-related. It's good to see people who experiment more with their hair. Maybe people really are just scared to stray from the flock.

Second Coming

So what's up with the new series of Heroes? Well, I think that it's started a lot better than the last season, although there were lots of loose ends at the close of volume one. The focus has once again shifted to how a lot of the characters are struggling to be normal (most notably Claire) although there is an action element with the murder and attempted murders of everyone in a certain photo...

I think Heroes would be a much better TV show if it actually kept trying to focus on how the superhuman characters struggle to keep their powers secret. The whole idea of the Company could have been kept, as this would still have fitted in with the idea of the heroes struggling to lead a normal life. But all of this saving the cheerleader and saving the world business leads the show into a realm of predictability. I hope the fact that Peter is back (shudder) doesn't lead it down this road again (I dislike Peter's character - he's a dreamer, highly annoying and obviously thinks that he's the best one of the lot).

Of course, we always have lovely Hiro to add some comedy and warmth to the scene. I'm so glad he didn't die last season. I was worried when Sylar hurled him back straight through the building but now I know that he's just warped back in time to colonial Japan then it's all okay. My favourite character hasn't died!

Well, we'll just have to see how it goes. As long as the action continues like this I might be more endeared to this series. And I hope Peter doesn't escape from Ireland (which by the way, is so obviously not Ireland - listen to those accents!)