Author Archives: cookiefonster

Cookie Fonster Makes Sense of Eurovision 2025 (Semifinals): Calm After the (Shit)storm

Posted on by
9

Intro Post

< 2024 Final | 2025 Semifinals | 2025 Final >

I started this post at my German grandma’s house on May 18, wrote parts of it at various airports and on flights, then finished it back at home! I hope you enjoy it, and you better get hyped for my grand final review.

Introduction

The time of year has come and passed, and Eurovision 2025 has just ended! I was originally going to wait a few weeks to write my review, but the contest had so many results that pissed me off, I decided I need to get my thoughts off my chest as soon as possible. Now the reason the results piss me off is because this year had an absolutely stellar lineup of songs, but not a single one of the top three actually deserved to be there. Two of them are songs I actively dislike, and one I find listenable enough but came from that country—you know, the one that gets a disproportionate amount of votes from their ad campaigns—at the expense of far better songs. But I’ll get into more detail in the grand final post.

Eurovision 2025 was the third edition of the contest hosted in Switzerland, after Lugano 1956 (the first contest) and Lausanne 1989. Four Swiss cities bidded to host (yes, technically the past tense is supposed to be “bid”, I don’t care), and those were Basel, Bern, Geneva, and Zurich. On August 30, 2024, the host city was chosen as Basel (first time in the German-speaking part of Switzerland) and the venue as the St. Jakobshalle: an arena with 8000 seats, and a full capacity of 12,400 when you include the standing audience. I was in this exact arena during semifinal 2, and I have quite a lot of stories from the trip to tell in this and the next blog post. But the main focus of these posts is the songs, not the trip. I will soon start making a YouTube video about my trip to Basel, and it’ll probably be 30 minutes to an hour long. For now, just know I had a fabulous time and the trip completely surpassed Malmö 2024 for me.

The semifinals were presented by a duo of women like last year. As the show points out, we yet again have a brown-haired Eurovision veteran and a younger blonde-haired Eurovision newbie. The veteran is Sandra Studer, who competed for Switzerland in 1991 scoring fifth place and provided commentary in Swiss German most years from 1997 to 2006. The newbie is Hazel Brugger, a TV host and comedian known for her dry wit. A third host, Michelle Hunziker, would join them in the final.

This is the third contest in a row with 37 competing countries. It was supposed to be 38 at first, but that number seems to be cursed. Montenegro returned after last competing in 2022 (and before that, 2019), only to get a dead last place. Moldova was originally going to compete too and even organized a national final to be held on February 22, but on January 22, they dropped out of the contest and canceled the selection, because of the heavy criticism of the entries chosen. A real bummer, because they had had perfect attendance since 2005 and would normally bring something fun to Eurovision.

So in terms of drama, how did the contest compare to last year? It went pretty well actually! I didn’t hear of any feuds between delegations or contestants during the show; it seems like they all got along and everyone was on their best behavior, including the Israeli delegation. In addition, I could tell that Israeli fans felt much safer in Basel than they did in Malmö. Not until the results did anything resembling a shitstorm erupt, but that’s a matter for my grand final review. One other difference from last year is a change to the qualifier reveals sequence: for all reveals but the last, the countries are narrowed down to three before we find out who qualified. I’ll discuss my thoughts on this change later in the post.

Since the German entry this year is a song I properly love, and better yet, a song that’s actually sung in German, I’ve decided to watch all three shows with German commentary. ARD hired last year’s German commentator for the show, Thorsten Schorn. I can tell he’s gradually finding his footing as a commentator and developing his own style that’s a little different from Peter Urban, more actively humorous. I have 11 non-qualifiers to get through in this post. Most of the NQ’s are understandable enough, but one was a major fan favorite that had zero reason not to qualify.

Continue reading →

Cookie Fonster Reviews Every MLP Episode Part 83: Not Asking for Trouble + Discordant Harmony

Posted on by
Reply

Introduction / Navigation

< Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 >

Season 7, Episodes 11-12

Whew, I finished this post the day before I leave for Eurovision 2025! And after I come home, I’ll be preoccupied making a video about the trip, then a pair of blog posts reviewing the contest. I’ll review the non-qualifiers in the first post and the finalists in the second, as per usual.

Season 7 Episode 11: Not Asking for Trouble

In five words: Yaks are being needlessly stubborn.

Premise: The yaks have returned! Pinkie Pie is sent on a mission to Yakyakistan which gets buried amidst an avalanche, but the yaks refuse to accept external help to solve this mess.

Detailed run-through:

To begin this episode, Pinkie Pie sprints across Ponyville screaming “oh my gosh” over and over, because Prince Rutherford, the leader of the yaks, invited her to an event called Yikslurbertfest (inspired by Oktoberfest?) in Yakyakistan. Rarity asks what in the world Yikslurbertfest is, and Twilight Sparkle apparently knows it’s a sacred yak holiday. I’m a bit surprised Twilight knows it, but also can see why: she probably read it in the pony equivalent of a Wikipedia spiral, which I guess is a regular encyclopedia spiral.

Pinkie Pie claims she subtly hinted to the yaks that she wanted to attend this event, which means she sent a huge amount of letters begging for her to go. Twilight Sparkle officially declares Pinkie Pie the friendship ambassador to the yaks, and then Pinkie sets out for Yakyakistan.

It’s bittersweet to see Gummy now, because he reminds me of my toothless cat who I had to put down in February.
Rest in peace, Mini.

Continue reading →

Small update on fixing old posts

Posted on by
Reply

Today I started fixing the broken images on my Homestuck blog post series (starting from part 1) and uploading from my own computer, because the MSPA web domain keeps being more and more broken. Mostly so I have something to do while bored in the last few days before my upcoming trip. That’s all!

Wait, that’s not all. I’ve decided to add a changelog.

  • May 8, 2025: Updated Homestuck posts 1-14 and 1-2 (rewritten). Shit, I kind of want to resume the rewritten posts, but now’s not the right time.
  • May 9, 2025: Updated rewritten Homestuck posts 3-9 (rewritten). After I finish the rewritten posts, I’ll fix the Problem Sleuth posts. How many goddamn times now have I had go through my entire Homestuck blog post series and fix shit?
  • May 10, 2025: Updated Homestuck posts 10-16 (rewritten), completing the rewritten Homestuck posts, then did the Problem Sleuth posts which were basically a failed experiment. Also, I found out a way to fix an annoying problem with GIFs in my posts, where the last frame appears for only one frame. Compare these two images:
Continue reading →

Cookie Fonster Re-Scrutinizes Eurovision 1968: The Result That Shocked Europe

Posted on by
2

Intro Post

< 1967 Review | 1968 Review | 1969 Review >

This is going to be my last Eurovision blog post before I leave for my trip to Eurovision 2025! When I get home, my plan is to make not just a blog post, but a full-fledged video about how the trip went, then write a pair of blog posts reviewing each song in the contest.

Introduction

Though the United Kingdom had hosted Eurovision twice already, 1968 was their first opportunity to host right after winning, and they were clearly intent on pulling off another win. Eurovision 1968 was hosted in the Royal Albert Hall in London, a concert hall opened in 1871 with a seating capacity of over 5000. It’s an impressively sized audience for its time and there are multiple floors of seats, as you can see in the broadcast. I bet it must have been an unforgettable experience in the arena! The show had the same presenter as the last two British contests, Katie Boyle, and it’s most notable as the first Eurovision contest to be broadcast in color. This means we’ll finally get to see what horrific color choices some contestants have been making. And hopefully a few nice outfits too.

The contest featured the same 17 countries as last year: all the previous participants over the years but no Denmark. The voting system is the same as last year too: each county has ten jurors who vote for one country each, but never their own. In third place came France with a returning winner, in second came the UK with the legendary Cliff Richard, and beating him by one point we have Massiel from Spain. This is the first year where Spain won the contest and the only year where they were the only winner, which means that of the countries that have already won, Spain hasn’t won in the longest. The result came as a shock to Eurovision viewers, even more to Cliff Richard himself, and it led to a bunch of conspiracy theories.

The show begins with an upbeat orchestral reprise of last year’s winner “Puppet on a String”, and as usual I enjoy the arrangement a lot. Then enters Katie Boyle to introduce the show in her usual British fashion, and after just five minutes the songs begin.

The BBC broadcast the contest without commentary this year, but unfortunately we don’t have a copy of the uncommentated broadcast. On YouTube, I could find full commentary from Norway and Sweden in color, Spain in grayscale, and a few snippets of France’s commentary in color. Last time I watched it with Norwegian commentary, so this time I’ll watch with the other commentary viewable in color, which is from Sweden and done by Christina Hansegård. I wonder how much of it I’ll understand? I picked up on a decent amount of the language throughout the middle third of 2024, partly due to my Eurovision trip that year. I think I caught her saying that the contest will be broadcast in color in seven countries, among them Sweden? See, I’m fairly good. The trick is a little something called context clues.

Continue reading →

Cookie Fonster Uncovers Eurovision 1967 Again: The Year Where the Host Spoke Russian

Posted on by
Reply

Intro Post

< 1966 Review | 1967 Review | 1968 Review >

Only ten days left till I go to Basel for Eurovision 2025! The trip is pretty much all I can think about right now. I’ll try to get at least one more round 2 review done before I leave.

Introduction

The host didn’t do the whole show in Russian of course—she spoke other languages too. I’ll get to that in a moment.

After Udo Jürgens gave Austria their first victory, Eurovision 1967 came to Vienna in the Großer Festsaal der Wiener Hofburg, a hall in the palace that was once the summer residence of the Habsburg dynasty, and is now the residency of the president of Austria. Austria went all out showcasing their culture in the show, as much as they could in a grayscale broadcast. We begin with the theme song “Te Deum” arranged in the style of a Johann Strauss waltz, then a piece composed by Strauss himself. Following that, Udo Jürgens conducts an orchestral arrangement of “Merci, Chérie”, and I love how happy he looks.

The contest featured a lineup of seventeen countries, one less than the last year because Denmark began an eleven-year break from Eurovision. That’s because the director of TV entertainment in their broadcaster thought Eurovision was a waste of money, sadly. The voting system was changed back to how it was from 1957 to 1961: each country’s jury gets ten votes to distribute across various countries. The top three were all power players of 20th century Eurovision: France went back to their usual high results with a third place, Ireland scored their first ever second place, and the UK won for the first time with a Europe-wide hit, “Puppet on a String”. The only nul-pointer this year was Switzerland, and they deserved it because their song is fucking awful.

As a presenter, we have the Austrian actress Erica Vaal, and she was pretty awesome. She opened the show with a friendly yet professional speech in German, which was neither too long nor too short. She continued with the same speech in French, English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. I give hats off to her for that speech, especially because of the Russian part because she didn’t need to do so but did it anyway, and made viewers in the Soviet Union feel welcome as a result. Then she finished with a sweet addendum: “Ladies and gentlemen of Sweden, Netherland, Norway, Finland, Portugal, and Yugoslavia: I would have also liked to welcome you in your native tongue, but time was too short for me to learn them. But should there be another contest in the near future in Vienna, I shall do my best to also please you.” Also, her voice is quite pleasant to listen to—I went off in my last post about how much I love the sound of deep female voices, and we get even more of that here. Once she finishes her multilingual speech, the pleasantries are done and the songs begin.

I can only find two countries’ commentary on Eurovision 1967 on YouTube: the Austrian commentary and the French commentary. I’ll watch with Emil Kollpacher’s Austrian commentary once again, because I can understand the host and don’t need to hear her being talked over. Also, here’s a good point to promote my German-language commentary spreadsheet! It contains all the Eurovision commentary from the DACH countries that I could possibly find, and I’ll be sure to update it after Eurovision 2025.

I already ranked this year a few months ago when deciding what song to 8-bit cover for 1967, so the rankings for this post should be easy. I don’t expect them to change much.

Continue reading →

Homestuck Fan Album Review: Fondly Regard Illustration

Posted on by
Reply

Introduction

First off, happy belated 4/13 everyone! This is actually my first ever Homestuck-related blog post since I finished my review of the entire comic in 2021. I tuned in to the premiere stream of this album, released for Homestuck’s 16th anniversary, and had a burst of inspiration to write reviews of all 32 songs. It’s not a tall order by my standards—I’ve done much larger music review projects before!

The concept of this album is the same as that of the Cool and New Music Team album .jpeg: the track art is made first, then someone has to compose a song based on each artpiece. I was sort of expecting the songs to be largely themed upon post-canon Homestuck media, but instead, most of them are about Homestuck itself, and I think that’s really neat. It shows that even nine years after the comic ended, fans are making new musical interpretations of its characters, locations, and story arcs. There are a few songs related to its spinoffs though. As a Homestuck fan musician myself, I know a few of these composers personally—Cecily Renns, koba, and Rainy (Andy) to name a few—but most of them are unfamiliar names to me. This shows that a brand new generation of Homestuck fan musicians has blossomed, and I love that.

Continue reading →

Progress update for my Homestuck fan album review (and other posts)

Posted on by
Reply

At the end of my last blog post, I promised that I would review a Homestuck fan album that had come out a few days prior: that album is Fondly Regard Illustration, and that review still isn’t finished yet. But I’m pretty close now: I’ve reviewed 25 songs out of 32! It’s taken over two weeks because as it turns out, reviewing Homestuck fan music is a lot harder when a lot of the people who wrote these songs are interested in reading my blog post. I need to think of something interesting to say about each song and find a way to give constructive criticism to the ones I think are weak. But I can promise you, I’ll finish the post before I leave for my trip to Eurovision 2025 in Basel (which is on May 11). Probably at least a week before that, actually.

And after my Homestuck fan album review is finished, I will finish up my round 2 review of Eurovision 1967. I’ve been stalling on finishing it because I don’t want to be finished with that before my review of Fondly Regard Illustration. Then comes one more post I’ve been putting off finishing: my review of the MLP episodes “Not Asking for Trouble” and “Discordant Harmony”. I’ve already finished the first of those episodes, then the second I should be motivated to get done after I finish the Homestuck fan album blog post.

I’m excited to share my Homestuck fan album with whoever is interested in reading it. I would say “with you guys”, but a lot of people following my blog these days are here for the Eurovision posts.

Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966: The First Woman Not to Wear a Dress

Posted on by
6

Intro Post

< 1965 Review | 1966 Review | 1967 Review >

Introduction

My original review of 1966 was titled “Cookie Fonster Revisits Eurovision 1966”, which wasn’t entirely accurate because I was watching the year for the first time. Now that I am watching it for the second time, the old title is accurate, hence the title “Cookie Fonster Actually Revisits Eurovision 1966”.

We’re back in Luxembourg City, once again in the tiny Villa Louvigny, but this time the place is decorated much better. There’s a cute spiral staircase to the right of the stage and an elaborate chandelier behind the stage that looks nice in black and white. The presenter is different too: this time, her name is Josiane Shen, and she seemed to have a slightly bigger career than the last Luxembourgish host.

The lineup of countries was exactly the same as 1965, so once again we have 18 participant countries. Only two got zero points, and both are surprising ones: Monaco and Italy. In third place came a beautiful guitar tune from Norway, in second came a fun but bizarro jazzy waltz from Sweden, and in first place came Austria with an Udo Jürgens ballad. For him, third time was the charm! I should also mention that this was the first year where the EBU enforced a language rule, so it’s rather amusing that the winner had a few phrases in a different language thrown in.

I can’t find British commentary for this year, so I’ll watch with French commentary. François Deguelt commentated for France this year—he’s the singer of the wonderful “Ce soir-là”. He said at the start that he had to fill in for Pierre Tchernia who was unavailable and that he hoped he could comment the show in the same fashion.

I absolutely love the orchestral reprise of “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” at the start of the show and I’m pissed that rearranging the winner at the start of the show wasn’t done every year. Josiane gives us a short, no-nonsense introduction, then the first song begins.

Continue reading →

Cookie Fonster Reevaluates Eurovision 1965: The Year That Gave Me a Headache

Posted on by
5

Intro Post

< 1964 Review | 1965 Review | 1966 Review >

Introduction

Since Gigliola Cinquetti won 1964 with her smash hit “Non ho l’età”, the next destination for Eurovision was Italy, who hosted the 1965 contest in the concert hall of their broadcaster RAI, located in Naples. After having seen the catastrophically bad hosting of Eurovision 1991, it gives me whiplash to see RAI put on a professional (if not particularly inspired) show with a host who’s fluent in three languages. Renata Mauro did most of the show in Italian, but as with the Danish host last year, she also gave a speech in French and English at the start, and had no trouble using those two languages in the voting. Her French sounds fluent with only a slight Italian accent, and her English is a surprisingly good imitation of Received Pronunciation.

While Eurovision 1991 makes up for the shit production by having an amazing lineup of songs, 1965 has the opposite problem: every song but one is a total piece of crap. Well OK, I’m exaggerating here, but it really is insane how much better the winner—“Poupée de cire, poupée de son” by France Gall—is than everything else. She was a French singer who competed for Luxembourg in Eurovision with a song I absolutely love, then went on to have a stellar career. In second place came the United Kingdom with “I Belong”, and in third came France with a song I hate with a passion, “N’avoue jamais”. I’m warning you now: if you like any song this year other than the winner, you probably won’t like my review of it.

The lineup of countries had two additions from 1964, making for 18 in total: Sweden returned with a controversial entry after skipping last year, and Ireland (who would soon become a 20th century powerhouse) made their debut. Crazy enough, this was the fourth year in a row with four zero-pointers. The good thing about ranking this year is, I already did it a few months back (which was a pretty miserable experience) so my job this time is easier. That’s assuming none of my rankings change.

I watched the contest with British commentary last time and I’ll do the same again, even though the French commentary is archived too. That’s because the video quality on the French-commentated uploads is pretty bad and I tend to enjoy British commentators more, even though I can understand both. Our old friend David Jacobs is back for the second last year, though it doesn’t look like his 1966 commentary has been archived, so for our purposes it’s our last time seeing him.

One more fact: this is the first Eurovision contest broadcast outside the EBU. As I said in round 1, it was also broadcast in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Viewers in those countries would gradually long for the day they could join the Eurovision family.

Continue reading →

Cookie Fonster Reassesses Eurovision 1964: A Winner I’ve Turned Around On

Posted on by
4

Intro Post

< 1963 Review | 1964 Review | 1965 Review >

Introduction

As of this writing, Eurovision 1964 is the oldest Eurovision to take place in a city I’ve been to: Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. The show took place in the Tivoli Concert Hall, known in Danish as Tivolis Koncertsal. It’s hard to visit Malmö without also visiting Copenhagen, especially if you’re playing from abroad, and it’s a real beauty of a city. This couldn’t have been reflected much in the broadcast because it was in black and white, and fans aren’t able to see it today because nobody has been able to find the full video broadcast of Eurovision 1964. The reason why is that Denmark’s DR is one of few host brodacsters in the early years that didn’t save a copy of the show. At some point, DR wiped their video tape of Eurovision 1964 to make way for a different recording. The missing video broadcast is what the contest is best known for today. Well, that and the smash hit from Italy that won by a landslide, “Non ho l’età”.

Sixteen countries competed once again, but the lineup was different from the last three years: Sweden dropped out due to a strike and Portugal made their debut. Italy got first place as I said, the UK got a distant second, and Monaco scored third. Strangely enough, for the third year in a row, four countries got zero points, one of which was the newcomer Portugal. The voting system was changed from each jury awarding 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 points to just 5, 3, and 1 points, and the headcount of each jury was reduced from 20 back to 10. The scoreboard was redesigned too: now it showed only country names without song titles, and had a horizontal bar graph to the right showing how many points each entry had.

Now back to the video footage problem: the only parts of the show that have surviving footage are the winner’s reprise and a few other snippets from the beginning and end of the show. Some of those snippets came from Denmark’s broadcaster DR, others from Finland’s Yle. This means we have small portions of the commentary from both countries, as well as audio of the French commentary. Over the past few years, fans have been making video reconstructions of the 1964 contest assembled from these snippets, as well as footage of contestants performing their songs in other shows. You can look at these YouTube uploads (1, 2, 3, 4) to see how the reconstruction has evolved over the years. Italy is lucky enough to have the winner’s reprise recorded. Portugal’s song has their national final performance archived, since RTP has preserved every single year of Festival da Canção. Not too surprising because FdC is Portugal’s pride and joy. Most other songs use a later video recording of the artist performing their song, but a few use footage of the artist performing a completely different song, which I don’t like because the lip movements don’t match the song.* For those songs I’d have preferred to just have photos, but I admire fans’ efforts to reconstruct the show regardless.

The show opens with a military march of some sort, which if the reconstruction is to be believed is interspersed with a video montage of Copenhagen. Then comes the presenter, Danish actress and TV presenter Lotte Wæver. She did most of the show in Danish (which I can understand much more of than last time), but graciously gave short speeches in English and French at the start. Fitting the increase in internationality of the hosting, the scoreboard had all the country names in English this time, instead of the local language. The reconstruction has the screen captions feature each country’s name in Danish, but I’m not sure if the show itself did that or not. I’ll watch the latest reconstruction I linked for this blog post. It’ll feel a lot like watching the music videos and national final performances of Eurovision 2020.

* As of this writing, those are the Netherlands, part of Norway, Denmark, Germany, and Spain. 11.5 out of 16 songs have a recording of the artist performing them, which is pretty damn good!

Continue reading →