This weekend you all missed a special treat. "Eurovision 2005: Song Contest". And, unfortunately for everyone who missed it, it only happens once a year. On top of that, this year was the 50 year anniversary gala. And let me say...it didn´t disappoint.

As you may know, I am a reality TV junkie. I can´t get enough of it. "Fear Factor", "Trading Spaces", "Who Wants to Marry My Father?", etc...For my money, I just don´t think there is any better form of entertainment. Eurovision 2005 was like "American Idol" on steroids, minus the judges having sex with ugly contestants and some snivelling British idiot acting like God.

Here´s the deal...
Each year, 24 teams from European countries compete for the trophy. The winning country then hosts the following years competition. This year, we travelled to lovely Kiev, Ukraine to watch the magic unfold. The competition itself, while off the scale for unintentional comedy, isn´t the only show. The songs and competitors are about what you would imagine...mostly attractive women dancing around in very little tight clothing. Now, I´m sure you´re all asking..."How could he even stand to watch that? It´s sounds horrible." I managed. I was watching with my roommate and his girlfriend. They were trying to judge and decide who was going to win based on skill and performance. I had a slightly diferent scoring system.

First of all, if the country sent a man up to perform...automatic zero. If they sent a boy band up, they slide to negative five. If the men on stage outnumbered women, they could garner no higher than a "5" from me. After that, I graded strictly on "talent". My top three were Bosnia, England (that stereotype about British women was way off for one night) and Israel.

What stands out from that list? HOW IS ISRAEL IN A "EUROPEAN" CONTEST? I asked the same question and the response was that they always were. I have no idea. Next year, I think New Zealand is competing.

The funniest part of the whole contest was the scoring. Each country voted, but couldn´t vote for themselves. Enter the great geo-political game. After watching this, you would have thought that each countries´ own Machiavelli was in charge of voting. Without fail, countries voted regionally. They couldn´t vote for themselves, so they voted for countries around themselves. Portugal voted for Spain. Andorra voted for Spain. Scandanavia stuck together. Latvia voted for Russia (KGB rigged this vote too). Everyone voted for Greece. Their "talent" was ok, but certainly not number one in my book. Everyone shit on Germany and France...not sure why. They finished at the bottom. Spain wasn´t much higher. My hypothesis was that all the smaller countries ain´t too happy with the countries that control the EU.

The second funniest part was the interviews with some contestants. The contestants could sing in English or their native language. I imagine singing in English might help because it seems to me that there would be a higher possibility of voters in other countries understanding English than Slovenian or Latvian. But, when the crew came to interview people, the wheels came off the bus.

For example,

Host- "How are you doing tonight?"
Cyprus Contestant - "I LOVE EVERYONE."

Now, maybe he literally does love everyone, but I doubt it. I suspect that he didn´t know too much English and I further submit that he only knew that phrase. The funniest part was that he said nothing else. Just staring into the camera with a shit eating grinning talking about loving everyone. Now, I have seen people like that before, but usually they were under the influence of something.

Greece won the competition. Start counting the days until "Eurovision 2006: An Athens Adventure".