Iva’s personal site - Squirrelism.net

Q: One of the keys to an Eurovision victory would be a complete madness on the stage.
A: Of course, get a bunch of people to dance, put some chick in a cage, get someone to jump out of a piano, change clothes (if that’s actually possible within three minutes)…do stuff. And all that shit.

Q: Would you ever think a non-English-speaking song could win at the Eurovision when EVERYBODY is speaking English these days?
A: Well, what do you know, ever since 1999 when the language rules changed, all the winning songs were in English.

Q: When did a ballad last won at the ESC?
A: Ages ago, in 1996.

Q: Would you ever say that looks really, really don’t matter in the times when the most of the female singers are more undressed than dressed?
A: Well, what do you know, Marie N. was a pretty girl, Sertab Erener was barely dressed, Ruslana wasn’t wearing underpants, Helena Paparizou’s dress was shorter than some tops. Come to think, bless Lordi, they were guys with scary masks and costumes. And their song wasn’t about getting it on.

ripped from TV by yours truly

Well, whatdyaknow, we broke the rules!!!
On Saturday, 12th May, Marija Šerifović, a girl in a suit won the Eurovision Song Contest, without a flashy performance, singing a ballad in Serbian. This was our first time at the Eurovision as an independent country, we’re pissing everyone off by not being able to form a government 4 months after the elections and, well, the mood towards us was really not good last week. And then this girl and her five backing vocals, backed by a wonderful songwriter, an amazing composer and a hard-working team went to Helsinki and won the contest! Also, should I even try to explain what kind of a welcome home party they had?

Neighbour votes, you say? Well, let me tell you two things:
1) We would’ve won even without them. Marija was that good, yeah. The difference between first and second place was huge.
2) We used to live in the same country with those five countries. Hello, this is like a painful divorce that finally ended on friendly terms. Should we hate each other? Urgh, no. There was so much hate going on for 16 years, this is beautiful. By the way, my father said that it would be better to live like in the 80s and be the last on a contest like this than to be torn to pieces and win it.
3) Greece always votes for Cyprus and Cyprus always votes for Greece. Norway always votes for Sweden.

The voting was set up/it’s a gift for the most-loser country in Europe, you say?
The semifinal scoreboard speaks a lot. Look at the difference. I also wonder what happened to the UK votes in the finals as people couldn’t change their minds that much within 2 days.
…and it’s kinda cute that two of three -ia Baltic countries and Andorra didn’t like us at all as one sent the most disgusting weird-faced “look, I have breasts!” chick ever to compete for them, the other sent the band whose song could only make me fall asleep and the third send a carbon copy of Blink 182. Shame, because I really like Catalan language.

Ugly fat shemale/dike/lesbian with glasses? You people are mad! ,you say?
1) It’s no one’s business if Marija is a heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual. How does that affect her singing?
2) Also, how do her looks affect her singing? Would she be a better singer if she looked like Beyonce or J.Lo? Ummm, no. She has quite a career here, she’s been winning contests since she was 12 years old and it’s all because of what it should be the reason for it: MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC.

Nationalists, nationalists, nationalists. They don’t want to sing in English. Either that or they don’t know languages at all., you say?
1) Ha, ha, haaaaaa! In this city, which is, well, about 50% of the population of the whole country, the most of the population speaks at least two foreign languages. Kids overuse English, even when it’s not neccesary, I am one of those people who bitch about it, because I am all for using of one language at time, thank you very much.
2) There IS an English version of the song. There’s also a Serbian/English/Finnish/Russian version of the song. How’s that for being multilingual? The Finnish bit was sang a capella at the press conference and the English version was played at the welcome back party. BTW, if you need the song lyrics, they have it all here.

Speaking of that, how about returning to the old language rule? Wasn’t the point to embrace our little differences and accept the fact that we’re a bunch of different nations crowding one little continent which is geographically actually just a huuuuuge peninsula? It was so wonderful to hear Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Catalan, German (twice!), apart from the standard occasional Spanish, French, Portugese and this mishmash we speak here that’s supposedly three different languages. It was also wonderful to, just like last year, hear some Italian, another proof that ESC is truly missing Italy.

So, with these words, see you here in Beograd next year! Keep a diet, because we have great food and, just to let you know, the heat is horrible in May. Desert days and tropical nights the most of the time and the nearest sea is 600 km away.

P.S. I will update this sometime soon and post my reviews of all the songs and contestants. Either way, I voted for Georgia and I also really loved Hungarian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Swedish, Slovenian and Russian songs (the last one only if I close my eyes at the lyrics, that was just…tasteless). Also sad Denmark and Cyprus didn’t make it to the finals, but that’s life.