Monthly Archives: January 2024

Unorganized predictions and hopes for Eurovision 2024

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We’re well into national final season now—six countries have released their songs so far and many more national selections are underway!

Holy fuck, holy FUCK, Luxembourg’s song this year is a total bop and I’m excited to see it on the Eurovision stage!!! It’s the first song revealed that truly clicks with me, but France and Ireland chose respectable efforts too. I love that France won’t be alone in sending a song en français this year. It means that France’s song won’t feel like the “token song in French” this year, as so often happens in modern Eurovision. As much as I complain that France cares too much about their language compared to other Eurovision countries, the truth is that I adore the French language.

Thank heavens Ireland didn’t choose that godawful boyband song from their national final. I’m not sure if “Doomsday Blue” has qualifier energy, but it was the best choice of the six. It’s got a nice varied pace and a mix of harsh and peaceful sections, unlike “Go Tobann” which is full-blast hectic.

As for the other three confirmed songs, Albania is disappointingly similar to their previous few entries and Czechia and Slovenia just don’t do much for me. Maybe a revamp could bring more life into some of them, but inevitably you won’t root for every single entry in Eurovision.

My dream 2024 German entry would be a German counterpart to “Cha Cha Cha” that hypes up the audience, but we sure as hell aren’t getting that. I wish I could say I’m rooting for one of the two German-language songs in Das Deutsche Finale, but from snippets I’ve heard of each of them, “Oh Boy” intrigues me by far the most. It’s total jury bait and will probably instill hope among German fans, but I still really fucking want Germany to embrace their own language again. Why is NDR still obsessed with the idea that radio-friendly pop does well in Eurovision, and so repulsed from German-language music? It’s about time a different German broadcaster takes on the contest.

I haven’t followed much of the other national finals, but I’d be excited if “Damdiggida” by Keiino represents Norway. Their song is infectious and full of personality, very Norwegian-sounding. It would be a fierce competitor especially for the televote. If they make it to Eurovision, I hope the juries give them more respect this year.

Out of the internally selected artists, I’m most excited for Marina Satti—she seems intent on sending a song that’s true to herself and should curtail the Swedification of Greece. The Netherlands and UK both made strong choices and I hope they deliver on stage. I’m happy the Netherlands has been embracing their language lately, but it makes my eye twitch that Germany can’t do the same.

I might make another post about my hopes for Eurovision 2024 at the end of February, we’ll see. But don’t expect anything too in-depth until I get to 2024 in my review series. Suffice to say, I have a lot to look forward to in my Eurovision trip.

Cookie Fonster’s Treatise on Eurovision 2002: Baltic Host, Baltic Winner

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Intro Post

< 2001 Review | 2002 Review | 2003 Review >

A few hours after this post is published, we’ll find out who Ireland will send to Eurovision 2024. National final season is shaping up!!! (Please tell me they won’t send Next in Line.)

Introduction

Eurovision 2002 began a brave journey through first-time host countries, which meant a lot of smaller, less experienced broadcasters were put up to this task. The first to take on this daunting challenge was Estonia’s ETV, who hosted the contest in its capital of Tallinn. It seemed uncertain at first whether ETV could host the contest, but they pulled through thanks to fundraisers and a loan from the Estonian government.

Once they were certain they could host the contest, Estonia decided to have some fun with it and themed it upon fairy tales, as we’ll see in the postcards. It was the first contest to have an official slogan, which is “A Modern Fairytale”. The rules of the contest were mostly the same as 2001, with one small change: the recap after all the songs were performed was done in reverse order, to reduce bias towards entries performed late.

All countries that were relegated from 2001 (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, North Macedonia, Romania, Switzerland) got to return this year, and six countries were originally going to be relegated this year: Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland. However, Portugal withdrew from the contest, which meant Latvia got to participate after all. Latvia went on to achieve the unlikely feat of scoring first place with one of the least popular winners in Eurovision history.

This year as a whole is something of a black sheep. It doesn’t have many uploads online compared to others in the 2000’s—I could only find British and Spanish commentary, so I went with Terry Wogan—and most of its songs aren’t well-remembered. I’ll come in with an open mind so we can find out together if this year was as bad as everyone says. The hosts are genuinely enthusiastic this time, which is a welcome change of pace.

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Cookie Fonster Slogs Through Eurovision 2001: Trying Too Hard to Impress

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Intro Post

< 2000 Review | 2001 Review | 2002 Review >

I won’t start writing my 2002 review until after MAGFest 2024 (January 18-21, I’m leaving on the 17th). This will be my fifth time at MAGFest and after the event, you’ll see content related to it on my YouTube channel!

Introduction

Denmark won Eurovision two oh oh oh,
so now was their second turn to host the show.
Copenhagen was chosen to stage this event,
an agreeable choice without too much dissent.
They chose a stadium capable of housing
a staggering audience of thirty-eight thousand.
Some say they wanted to outdo Sweden,
and indeed, this record still hasn’t been beaten.
That no one’s surpassed it is much for the best,
since the stage looked like merely a blip to most guests.

Austrians, Belgians, Romanians, the Swiss,
Cypriots, Finns, and North Mac had to miss.
Lithuania returned this year, as did Slovenes,
plus Bosnians, Greeks, Poles, and the Portuguese.
Of the new guys that poured in here since ninety-three,
Estonia became the first winner. Yippee!
It was twelve years ago, far too long in fans’ eyes,
when a country last received its first ever prize.
From this contest up until two thousand eight,
the winner would be someone new. Ain’t that great?

Every achievement last year by the Swedes,
the Danes were determined to beat and exceed.
The Swedish hosts may have seemed cheesy last time,
but they’re nothing compared to these hosts’ endless rhymes.
They hosted the song contest in rhyming pairs,
but I think my rhymes are more clever than theirs.
Since I wanted a breather from the BBC,
I watched this contest’s broadcast from RTÉ.
Marty Whelan still comments for Ireland today.
He’s much more respectful than Wogan, I’d say.
Now what are we waiting for? Let’s have some fun
and review Eurovision two thousand and one!

(Phew… this poem was so tough to write. Also, if you’re reading it out loud, stress the third syllable of Copenhagen.)

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Cookie Fonster Recaps Eurovision 2000: The (Second) Year of Radio Guitar Pop

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Intro Post

< 1999 Review | 2000 Review | 2001 Review >

Introduction

The first Eurovision contest of the new millennium was the fourth of six (soon to be seven) in Sweden, the second of three in Stockholm, and the first of two in the Globe Arena (now called the Avicii Arena). It featured the biggest in-person audience thus far, a whopping 13,000. From this point onwards, ten to twenty thousand became a typical Eurovision audience size, though Denmark would try outdoing it a year later.

The lineup of participants now featured four countries that would automatically qualify every year to keep the contest afloat: the UK, Germany, Spain, and France. This rule was implemented before the 1999 contest but applied to 2000 onwards. I suspect this was done because the EBU didn’t want to risk France’s relegation, which would have happened in 2000. The Big Four/Five rule was controversial then and it’s just as controversial now. Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Portugal, Poland, and Lithuania were relegated, while Finland, North Macedonia, Romania, and Switzerland returned after missing last year. Russia came back after two years of absence and Latvia made their debut, which bumped up the number of participants to 24.

Latvia made a strong debut with third place, Russia scored their first of four second places, and much to the audience’s surprise, Denmark won for the first time in 37 years with “Fly on the Wings of Love”, sung by the oldest singers to win the contest.

Thanks to a sponsorship by Microsoft, this was the first Eurovision contest broadcast on the Internet, which meant Americans could finally watch Eurovision live without going overseas. (EDIT: Two months later, a friend of mine showed me an RTÉ video that proves Eurovision 1997 was also broadcast online.) Unfortunately, not all viewers got to enjoy the contest in full. The Netherlands cut their broadcast short because of the Enschede fireworks disaster which killed 23 people, then re-broadcast the contest a month later.

I’ve heard that every year when the Eurovision hosts are revealed, some fans scream “can Petra Mede come back instead?” Since I’ve seen snippets of her amazing hosting, I’m having the same thoughts as I sit through the presenters’ cheesy, blatantly scripted gags.* At least I have Terry Wogan with me to snark about them! Well, not literally, because he died in 2016.

* Credit where it’s due, the Swahili part got a laugh out of me.

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Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 81: Hard to Say Anything + Honest Apple

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Introduction / Navigation

< Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 >

Season 7, Episodes 8-9

Sadly, my MLP blog post series is going through the same problem my Homestuck blog post series went through in late 2016 and early 2017: I’m slow as hell and unmotivated to write them. To repeat my words from 2017: But when you’re easily distracted by certain things this kind of stops being the thing you do the most often?

Season 7 Episode 8: Hard to Say Anything

In five words: Big Mac gains love interest.

Premise: The Cutie Mark Crusaders discover that Big Macintosh has a crush and thus sneak in with him on a trip to Starlight Glimmer’s old town. They try everything to help him win Sugar Belle’s heart.

Detailed run-through:

To begin this episode, the Cutie Mark Crusaders meet up at Sweet Apple Acres and rediscover their old costumes from a talent show. They’re not the same costumes from The Show Stoppers, but they look familiar because other characters wore them in the first two seasons.

Scootaloo: Whoa, that sure is a lot of apples.
Apple Bloom: Are you making another delivery to Starlight’s old village?
Big Macintosh: Eyup.
Sweetie Belle: That’s an awful long way for a pony to go, isn’t it?
Big Macintosh: Eyup.
Apple Bloom: You’ve been going there a lot lately. What is this, your fifth trip this week?
Big Macintosh: (laughs) Eyup.
Apple Bloom: OK, well, have fun!

Starlight’s old village is very isolated from the rest of Equestria, as you surely know. It’s not connected to anywhere else via public transit, so the only way there is by hoof. This begs the question: how did Big Mac discover a mare he liked all the way over there? I’m guessing it all started with a lengthy offscreen conversation with Starlight Glimmer, where an offhand mention of eligible mares piqued his interest.

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Cookie Fonster Relives Eurovision 1999: The Death of the Language Rule (and the Birth of Me)

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Intro Post

< 1998 Review | 1999 Review | 2000 Review >

Please enjoy my first Eurovision review of the new year! I wonder how far I’ll get when the 2024 contest happens? I don’t think I’ll catch up, but maybe I’ll reach 2015 or so. Remember, I’ll be in Malmö and/or Copenhagen during the contest.

Introduction

An audience filled with flags, cheerful hosts accompanied by electronic music, a stage full of flashy light effects, seemingly endless pleasantries before the contest properly begins… yep, the first Eurovision contest after I was born isn’t far from what we know it as today.

Eurovision 1999 took place in Israel just as it would twenty years later, in its capital city of Jerusalem just as it did twenty years earlier. The number of participating countries was reduced from 25 to 23, so seven countries were relegated (Finland, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland) and five rejoined (Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Denmark, Iceland, Lithuania). Lithuania had last participated in 1994 and Hungary wouldn’t rejoin until 2005. Perhaps this decrease in participants was done to allow for commercial breaks between the songs, which were filled by mini-interval acts for the live audience and non-commercial broadcasters.

This year featured two massive changes to the rules: (1) the orchestra was abolished and (2) just like from 1973 to 1976, the language rule was abolished. Technically, the orchestra wasn’t fully abolished, but broadcasters could now opt out of providing one, which is what Israel did. From this point onwards, all Eurovision entries were sung entirely over a backing track.

The first winner of post-orchestra and post-language rule Eurovision was none other than Sweden with “Take Me to Your Heaven”, who would become the biggest power player till the present day. Iceland scored second place with another pop song in English, and Germany combined four languages to reach a respectable third place. One more fact: This was the first Eurovision with three presenters, which would be the most common amount from 2010 onwards. One of them sang Israel’s entry in 1992, “Ze Rak Sport”.

I frankly don’t have high expectations for these next few years of Eurovision. I’m bracing myself for a bunch of cheesy Eurodance, painfully off-key singing, and nonsensical English lyrics. Maybe Terry Wogan’s commentary will make it more bearable, we’ll see.

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Quick update on my MLP blog posts

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Happy new year 2024! 2023 was a great year for me overall, the first one in which I truly felt like a responsible adult. The two best things I accomplished that year were moving into my own house and attending GalaCon 2023, my first ever pony con.

In celebration of the new year, I’ve made a small change to my MLP episode reviews: they will no longer be exclusively posted on Friday mornings.

In the early days of this blog post series, when my episode reviews were short and quick, a weekly queue helped smooth out my workflow. But now, I haven’t released new MLP posts two weeks in a row since March 2023. This means that the rule of releasing posts on Friday mornings only serves to make me put off starting my next post for the whole rest of the week. Now that my posts are more detailed and carefully written, it’s better off to release them as soon as I’ve finished writing them.

Come to think of it, the original weekly system is similar to how my Homestuck post series began, way back in 2015, except I didn’t have a queue system then. I originally wanted the posts to be weekly, but I switched to twice a week because I was writing them so quickly. Back then, it only took me a few hours to write a Homestuck post and I’d spend the next few days obsessively rereading it and proofreading. As my posts got more detailed, I tried various ways to keep a consistent schedule but they all fell apart. That’s how it always is with projects of this type: when the posts get more detailed, the originally spacious schedule is too tight for them.

Enough off-topic rambling. My next MLP post will cover two episodes: Hard to Say Anything and Honest Apple, the latter of which I’m currently working on. It’ll be released within the next few days!