Showing posts with label Maria Haukaas Storeng. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maria Haukaas Storeng. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2008

My issues with this year's Eurovision contestants - no. 7

Maria Haukaas Storeng of Norway

"Love can be hard sometimes
Yes, it can catch you off guard like bad crimes"


Hmmm, this is problematical on just all sorts of levels. First of all, Maria seems to be drawing a curious distinction here between 'bad' crimes on the one hand and, well, 'good' crimes on the other. What are all these good crimes? Perhaps I shouldn't dismiss this out of hand, after all I'm instantly conjuring up an image of Tony Benn with pipe in mouth, arms flailing about like only Rory Bremner can, saying "oooh, think of the suffragettes, they had to break the law". So, in the interests of fairness, I've taken this issue very seriously and done some painstaking research, ie. I googled it. And, indeed, it seems there are some things that are against the law which are, if not exactly 'good', then certainly relatively harmless. For instance, in Miami, it is strictly illegal to impersonate a bison, while in Missouri you could find yourself hauled before a court for shaving without a licence. So presumably these are the sorts of things Maria has in mind for her 'good' crimes, while the bad ones are obviously things like murder, rape, arson, and grievous bodily harm. But while being randomly murdered or having your house burnt down could certainly be said to "catch you off guard", does that entirely capture the gravity of the situation? I think not. On the other hand, it might just capture the lesser gravity of being the victim of an unprovoked bison impersonation, so in my view Maria should really be singing "love can catch you off guard like those not-so-bad crimes they have in Miami".

(Phew, I thought I'd never get to the end of that paragraph).

To be fair to Maria, though, she offers a far more robust and convincing argument later on in the song -

"If it ain't right, it is wrong"

Let's face it, the girl's got a point. Which is more than anyone's ever said about John Barrowman.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but...

Since Keith Mills is, with his customary humility, busily awarding himself a royal pat on the back for correctly predicting all ten qualifiers tonight, I may as well point out that I achieved the same feat. Actually, I think my own accuracy should count for more, if only because at no point in the last two months have I ever made the (now demonstrably bizarre) claim that Norway is "clearly the worst song in the contest"! Keith really can't be let off the hook about that, because while Maria's performance has undoubtedly become more polished over the course of the rehearsals, at the end of the day it's still exactly the same 'appalling' song she started out with. As Keith has noted himself in previous years "you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear", so I think that stands as pretty conclusive proof that Norway never had a sow's ear to begin with. Face it, Keith, your radar was way off, however much you've tried to row back in recent days - and I've noticed a few signs of you trying to do the same with Andy Abraham. Now there's a "slight chance" that he won't finish last, apparently. Such generosity. Doubtless if he finishes in the top ten, Keith will somehow trumpet that as yet another "correct prediction".

OK, rant over. For now.