{"id":331,"date":"2006-05-11T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/wordpress\/?p=331"},"modified":"2010-01-11T00:19:24","modified_gmt":"2010-01-11T00:19:24","slug":"countdown-to-eurovision-2-meet-the-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2006\/05\/countdown-to-eurovision-2-meet-the-losers.html","title":{"rendered":"Countdown to Eurovision (2): Meet the losers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">Although the website gives you <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/english\/participants.htm\">full sound and video of each of the competing songs<\/a>, I prefer to take my Eurovision without warning or expectation, and advise virgin viewers to do the same.  It is useful, however, to identify the country with the longest odds of winning: it serves as a focal point for the evening, and as a yardstick of consensus badness by which the other entrants may be appreciated.  If you&#8217;re lucky, it may also set the scene for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alf_Poier\">an Alf Poier-like boilover<\/a> in the voting to help get you through the long, dark, latter half of the event.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">This year&#8217;s bottom rung (100-1) is occupied by Moldova, who lucked their way into the final with last year&#8217;s drumming granny stunt.  This year they&#8217;ve retreated into Wayne and Wanda territory with a song written by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/english\/392.htm\">a concussed 4-year-old trying to recite a Ricky Martin number<\/a>:<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Every night I need my Loca<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Every night I need her boca<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Every night I need my Loco<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Need him crazy just un poco<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">There are several countries with worse odds, but which may not qualify for the final.  Absolute bottom (150-1) is Portugal, with a girl group singing a song composed by a Nigerian email scammer: they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurovision.tv\/english\/997.htm\">GONNA MAKE YOU SMILE IN ALL CAPS<\/a>:<\/div>\n<blockquote style=\"font-style: italic;\"><p>I\u2019LL MAKE YOU STOP THINKING SAD THINGS FOR A WHILE<br \/>AND EVERYTHING WAITS WHEN YOU\u2019RE DANCING IN STYLE<br \/>I&#8217;M GONNA MAKE YOU DANCE<br \/>MAKE IT WITH STYLE<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Judging from the typography they&#8217;re going to yell the entire song, presumably concluding with a cry of &#8220;this are perfectly 100% legal&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although the website gives you full sound and video of each of the competing songs, I prefer to take my Eurovision without warning or expectation, and advise virgin viewers to do the same. It is useful, however, to identify the country with the longest odds of winning: it serves as a focal point for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3789,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/3789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}