By that I mean – BUSY.  We’ve already had our previously unheard of (for our wee church) MASSIVE speaker – yep, tonight I shook Jerry Savelle’s hand.  Things you think you’d never do in life, that was probably one of them.  I’ll not go into detail, as I know that David will do a worship recap on Sunday for tonight and Sunday morning.

To be honest, it’s a bit of a blur as there has been a lot of preparation leading up to this, so we’re decompressing!  Sunday we have Rev. Barry Tubbs, who works with Kenneth Copeland Ministries.  So yes, like a said, a big deal.

Anyway, all very good, very spiritual, very life-changing….but in the back of my brain is a little quiet voice, persistently telling me…it’s the EUROVISION SONG CONTEST THIS WEEKEND!!!!

Look, it’s ok, I can see all you State-siders scratching your heads, and saying “the WHAT?”  Now, I know you’ve all been coasting through your American Idol cossetted lives, but let me tell you, if you’re under the age of 53, you have SOOO missed out.  OK, here comes the details; I’m a fangirl, so this could get boring.

Eurovision Facts (ok, I nicked them from eurovision.tv & Wikipedia):

• The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries’ songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. Each country participates via one of their national EBU-member television stations, whose task it is to select a singer and a song to represent their country in the international competition.

• The Eurovision Song Contest has been broadcast every year since 1956, which makes it one of the longest-running television programmes in the world.

• It is also one of the most-watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally.

• Not only stars like ABBA, Celine Dion, Cliff Richard and Julio Iglesias took part, but also dance act Riverdance thanks its fame to the Eurovision Song Contest.

The show is contentious due to the unashamed political voting where one country votes for their neighbours, even if the song is completely pants.  In the UK, the presenter Terry Wogan commented on the show for donkey’s years, but has sadly retired.  He never took it seriously and had threats of bodily harm from the Eatern European countries who take is VERY seriously.  It costs a fortune, the UK etc. never get many votes but they can’t get voted out as they provide big money to fund the annual shindig.

The hamming up to the camera?  Excruciating.  The hosts who SHOUT EVERY WORD? Deafening.  Most of the ’songs’? Truly dire.  So why do I watch it?  Well, part of it is engrained, I’ve been watching this show every year since I was in the womb, and moving to Australia hasn’t stopped this.  Due to the diverse ethnic make-up of Australia, it’s very popular ans shown on the SBS channel.

The biggest reason I watch?  It is freakingly, awesomely hilarious for all the wrong reasons, and it is the campest extravaganza on the planet.  Keep your Mardi Gras (both New Orleans & Sydney) – NOTHING comes close to Eurovision.  Flames – check.  Big fake drums – check.  Costumes that rip apart to form something shorter – check.  We’ve even had dancers coming out of pianos, hard rock ogres, large Maltese women writhing about in bed, the same darn song from Turkey every year, and men in cropped tops (yes Sakis Rouvas from Greece, I’m looking at you).  But just now and again, you get the occasional catchy pop gem…

So far, my favourites this year are Armenia, Iceland and Portugal.  The Irish entry is passable, for once they haven’t gone out of their way to find the only people in the country who can’t sing, and trust me, that’s really hard to do.  The UK one is OK and Lloyd-Webber penned, but I know for a fact that the ones I like never, ever win. One year I’d really like to see these guys sing for Ireland (@donalskehan, who can cook up a storm AND sing.  Wow.  I’d vote for that.)

It’s all about the cheese.  I don’t think we’ll get to host our Euro Party this year (sad!) with different European foodstuffs and voting sheets for all the guests.  Mind you, some of it gets painful (oh, around country 28) so the option of a beer from each competing country to numb the pain becomes very attractive.

If I’ve piqued your interest at all – you can check out this year’s entries online – just click on the flags!

Have a listen and tell me who floats your boat!

I’ll leave you with the hysterical official video from one of our favourite entries from recent years, Iceland.  Yes, I’m a freak, but I LOVE IT.