EuroTastic

If ever there was a talent contest that parallels a kath-and-kim style leisure suit, it is Eurovision. And let me tell you, it’s beautiful.

Eurovision is not like anything else I think you can see on TV. It’s brilliant serious-meets-cringe-worthiness leaves American Idol and Neighbours for dead. These people are MASTERS of awkward. So good, in fact, they market and sell awkwardness as the content of their show… and it’s like crack to us.

Every theatrically possible way to create awkwardness is covered, or has been at some point in Eurovision’s illustrious past. Most importantly, the awkward cringe-factor. Glitter. Sequins. Spandex. “Sex Appeal”/ attempts to get there. Poorly translated English lyrics diced into other languages. Shameless eye sex. Hairless men that you wouldn’t want to meet in an alleyway. And it’s all so magical.

Then, the awkward thought that this might maybe be taken seriously in some places.  And the joy of imagining the where and when’s of these scenarios.

Then, the wonderfully awkward guilty pleasure of watching ethnic stereotypes being met a.la Borat. A standout of the latter for me was the wonderful wonderful contestant from Serbia, Milan Stanković.

There are five plastic, cross-sectioned tubes at the back of the stage. In two there are women who are wearing stylized, cut-up-once-wedding dresses, doing some form of dance movement. Two others house identically tanned men in blue jump suits. Ready and raring for action.

Milan Emerges from the central tube.

In an electric blue, glittery and not-quite-spandex TAILED coat, covering a top-and-jeans combo in xerox white. There are acrobatics. There is lots of vertical jumping on the spot. And towards the end, the wedding dress ladies descend from their tubes to the front of the stage, turn around, lift their arms up Beyoncé-style, and I believe try very honourably to get bootylicious. My little sister watches this display noiselessly, her mouth slightly ajar in awe. She turns to me and utters; ‘Zorba-rap-fusion.’ What a beautiful phrase. 

For some reason I’m unable to embed the video but you can watch the glory for yourselves here.

The thought this is actually, physically happening somewhere in the world I live in just warms my heart in ways you can’t imagine.

The last main awkward-factor of Eurovision, and at times the sweetest, is the poorly translated English interjections in songs otherwise of national tongue. Aside from the occasional contestants who just reek of sex, but this year I’m yet to come across one.  And this year, a treat from Macedonia with their accompanying RAPPER.  Joy, joy, joy, joy. Pure, unadultered joy. And you can have some of it right here.

(Underneath this wondrous video there is a bit of a comment war about whether Macedonians are Greeks or Turks or something or other.. anyway it gets quite heated. And in this sense took my focus off the Macedonian rapping. That’s the kind of thing I was talking about in my last core post Buy My Blog.)

In a fair dinkum sense, Belgium was terrific and I think should have won. 

It’s even more awkward that when you talk about Eurovision contestants and they are actually good, you need to stress the fair dinkum part.

Fence Sitting- Feral or Funny?

I hope you all enjoyed the alliteration of that title. 

Swapping drunken stories is a cornerstone activity of uni students. Witnessing drunken happenings before they become stories is an activity even more celebrated. 

 

And they are usually met with raucous laughter, even though you know and understand that both Jenny vomming in a bush and vomit itself are disgusting. 

But you laugh anyway. 

Because it’s hilarious. But why? 

It isn’t only drunken tales that are ironically funny. Today I was told a story about a particularly unusual breakup, in which the girl called the guy into her workplace to ‘talk,’ (i.e. to dump him, I assumed,) which then somehow turned into him ‘having his way with her’ ( at her place of work,) which then somehow allowed him to create the ‘opportune moment’ whilst ‘having his way with her,’ to say the words required to terminate their relationship. 

 

That story is really not funny. They did the dirty at work, which is just plain feral, (I think in a change room or something, this detail was brushed over,) then the girl was rejected whilst busy experiencing (well, presumably,) an emotion far on the other end of the spectrum. Horrible. 

But when I heard it I laughed like a banshee. And I’m giggling reliving the moment when I first heard it right now. 

Think about it- it’s awkward for the person who did the stupid thing because that’s embarrassing, awkward for the people laughing because they are laughing at another’s pain, and even more awkward that these lolz are being generated from the subject matter themselves- airing out their awkward laundry for the sake of our lollage. 

(Yes, I just used the word’ lollage’. And yes, I recieve tertiary education.) 

I think it’s the raw absurdity of these awkward tales that makes people laugh. But they are absurd because humor, ( the ultimate social lubricant,) well, this brand of humor specifically is rooted ironically in awkwardness- the cryptonite of social cohesion. Hows that for a paradox? (If you want to go further with this chicken-or-the-egg game, that fact this paradox exists is also pretty awkward…) 

Well, I’d rather tell myself that at night then ‘we are all horrible people that laugh at the misery of others out of pure evil.’ 

Eh Eh Ehhh

You were fired. Leave already.

There’s always the people that can’t let go. Be it from school, relationships, phones lost, they just can’t leave it. They can’t say goodbye.

They can’t accept that being fired is embarrassing and it means you probably shouldn’t hang around anymore.

YOU'RE FIRED

Alas, Dear Readers, this is a scenario that confronts me.

The last place I worked before my current position was a quiet little café in a neighbourhood pretty much ruled by pensioners. Suffice to say it wasn’t the busiest place. We did sell a lot of lemon slices though.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Anyway the reason I got a job there was because another girl was leaving. (read: was fired) But little did they know that she wasn’t going anywhere.

My shifts were relatively long- around 7 hours each. So a dedicated effort to appearance was completely unnecessary, if not ridiculous. If you can imagine it, I would take orders and deliver meals to people’s tables in loose-ish faded jeans and a plain black t-shirt, with my hair back because that’s just plain hygienic.  Enter fired girl.

If it hasn’t been implied already, this neighbourhood was not trendy by any means. Most of our customers would come in whilst on a walk or something, generally in track pants and orthopaedic-friendly runners.

Every time she’d come in it was an entirely new, and very pre-empted LOOK. Nay, AURA. One day it would be aloof-I-don’t-care head-to-toe-black with leather heels to the sky and black smokey cat eye makeup, the next it was sun-goddess-summer-fun-look-at-my-floral-dress-and-accordingly-bright-yet-subtle makeup. Standing next to me, in my coffee stained t-shirt, handing someone a chicken foccacia.

Awkward.

I never had any idea what to say to her, because all I was thinking was “You got fired. Why are you still here?”  Followed closely by, “Why on Earth would you spend that long getting ready for a place like THIS?” again leading me back to the initial question.

Surely you wouldn’t want to hang out (and I mean hang out, for hours at a time some days,) at a place that has actually, physically told you, in that many words, ‘We. Don’t. Want. You.”

Another thing I struggled to understand was the way she would speak to myself and the other female employee my age. The word condescending was re-born with every word that exited her mouth. I should also mention she is the same age as me.

It was like being in year 7 again and watching those girls that wanted to grow up too fast strut around in their hitched-up netball skirts. And it was really disarming.

Now being a university student, and dare I say an adult, I found it really really REALLY awkward being back in that adolescent-social-power-struggle time warp. But this time I had a reality to step back into.

Eventually I was offered another position and have only seen her in passing a few times. But I have no doubt she still hangs out there. And I think I’d almost pay money to find out why.

Hey… You aren’t English

Being Australian, I’m sure we can all agree that the accent we most try to copy is that of our Pommy Motherland.  

Apparently, so do the Yanks.

We’ve all tried to sound English at least once in our lives; mimicking an English relative or friend, ( consciously and subconsciously, ) watching/ bagging some English sporting team, or not being able to help ourselves when Jamie Oliver dances onto the TV armed with a bottle of olive oil.  

The problem is that no matter how skilled a linguist, if you’re not ACTUALLY English, you invariably sound ridiculous. And it gets awkward when the person fails epically. Or doesn’t realize the joke is over.

Anyway here is a video of yours truly attempting to master the English Accent. This video was taken in a  friend’s car, at Falls Festival ’09 waiting for the crazy amount of traffic to subside so we could leave. Ignore the sunscreen and beanie…

Yeah…