(There are things far worse than shooting an Archduke…)
Today’s topical question comes to you, thanks to an article in the online Times - to wit: Could there be a TV show more tedious than the Eurovision Song Contest?
Yes, that same old, same old Eurovision Contest: That pathetic love-to-hate child of a gay Sweeney Todd (”The demon hairdresser of Amy W. Street”) and an anorexic, croaking, Croatian she-goat.
I’m not sure who ever thought it was a good idea to have the nations of Europe search their various asylums for the insane to find the least talented nitwits in the land and hand them a microphone and a ticket to one of Europe’s capitals.
One could argue that sending these severely mentally and vocally challenged persons to invade foreign capitals is a step up from Europe’s old tradition of sending out armies to sack and burn same cities but, as step ups go, it’s hardly in Neil Armstrong’s “A small step for man” territory.
I can imagine that some capitals might prefer the Mongol hordes over yet another ABBA type infestation. You can say what you want about those Khan boys but at least they didn’t sing at their victims - and even if they had done, it could not have been as disagreeable as the mighty warbling of 99% of all Eurovision participants.
Still, though I think that this damn show has all the charm of a Big Brother House pajama party, the artistic taste of Jerry Springer’s mouthwash and all the suspense of Prime Minister’s Question Time, I have to admit that I couldn’t suppress a delighted giggle when I read the following news story:
“Georgia has chosen a song that mocks Vladimir Putin as its entry for this year’s Eurovision contest in Moscow. “We Don’t Wanna Put In” includes a play on the Russia Prime Minister’s name in a Seventies-style performance that is unlikely to get Russian organisers of the contest dancing in the aisles. It also features the line “Gonna try to shoot in/some disco tonight” - at which the trio of women in the group mimed being shot in the head during their performance on Georgia’s public television last night.”
I am quite sure that Putin, like queen Victoria, was not amused when he heard about this.
Not that I care much about old Vlad’s feelings. Hell, he is a former KGB apparatchik, so I’m not sure he has much in the way of feelings - apart from the almost obligatory Russian sense of grievance and paranoia.
When I look at Putin I can see (apart from Dobby, the house elf, that is) a more or less grown-up version of Charlie Brown. Still friendless, still complaining and whining, still delusional and incompetent but now with a toy box filled with Uzis, bombs and various clever poisons. A Charlie Brown turned Charlie Manson, if you like.
Still, the article also served as a not so tacit warning against the whole idea of broadcasting bad music to innocent but excitable bystanders:
“Georgia has a patchy record of disco diplomacy. President Saakashvili staged a Boney M concert in a village on the front-line with South Ossetia in October 2007 in an attempt to ease tensions. He said then that he hoped the sound of the group’s 1970s hits such as Rasputin and Daddy Cool would “lure people out from their trenches”. War broke out ten months later.”
Truly, I can sympathize with those South Ossetians here. When it comes to that famous ‘casus belli’ thing, shooting an Archduke or bombing Pearl Harbour is nothing compared to Boney bloody M.
Same goes for that stupid Eurovision Song Contest, of course. If some alien fleet will eventually come and microwave planet earth like a dubious pizza, it will, no doubt, be because one alien civilisation or the other got fed up with picking up signals of that dismal show.
(Some things are even worse than Waterloo…!)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment