The Wooden Finger Guide to the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest - Part Two

13. Moldova - My notes became markedly more drunken by this point, so the descriptions will, in general, become briefer. All I can make out is that this was the Eurovision's 258th attempt to 'blend the traditional with the modern', that there were 'nice legs and boots', and something about 'Cassock dancing'. Can that be right? Well, it must not have made much of an impression. Rating: 2.5 euros.

14. Malta - As I think Terry Wogan said once, Malta, unlike some of the larger Eurovision countries, always try hard. The singer was not quite what I expected, with the figure of an opera diva, and the voice of an R&B diva. Either way, it was one of the better voices in the competition. Rating: 3.5 euros.

15. Estonia - The artist's name, 'Urban Symphony', gave me hope that we would hear something approximating The Verve. Riichard Ashcroft though never looked this good. The lead singer, with her beautiful, long, dark hair, was simply stunning, and the cellists behind her broke my heart. It made me want to move to Estonia as soon as possible, although perhaps it was not wise to inform my wife of that fact. Song: 3 euros. Eye candy: 5 euros.

16. Denmark - Ronan Keating had a hand in writing this song, and one of his doppelgangers was chosen to sing it. The rock band was a bit misleading, as the song was as wimpy as most of Boyzone's catalogue. The unnecessary high five between two of the band members made it that little bit more nauseating. Rating: 2 euros.

17. Germany - The Germany had the best band name to this point: 'Alex Swings, Oscar Sings', and possibly the best song name too: 'Miss Kiss Kiss Bang'. The lead singer camped it up for all it was worth, and just when you thought it couldn't any more kitsch, out pops Dita Von Teese, with her waistline that defies imaginiation. The song itself was rubbish, but the production was amazing. Rating: 4 euros.

18. Turkey - Too much flesh for flesh's sake, and compared to Estonia, quite classless. Lauren noted that the guy looked like he had been tied up in a carseat. Rating: 1.5 euros.

19. Albania - The weirdest entry by far. It included a fairy, two midgets for her to stand on, and a green man with discoball sparkles on his face. I still don't get it. Rating: 2 euros.

20. Norway - Inexplicably the favourite to win the competition, the Norwegian entry featured an elf with a fiddle, complete with his own band of Pan-like followers. Not the worst entry, but apart from the twin blondes, nothing startling. Rating: 3 euros.

21. Ukraine - I was wrong - this had an even better song title than Germany: 'Be My Valentine (Anti-Crisis Girl)'! It included mostly naked gladiators trapped like hamsters in turning wheels, and lights designed to induce an epilieptic seizure. Basically, it was the second weirdest entry. The singer gets extra points for her drum solo though. Rating: 2 euros.

22. Romania - Essentially a Dungeons 'n' Dragons wet dream, with a bunch of skinny women in reed-like dresses swaying before the dungeon master's throne. Otherwise, not particularly interesting. Rating: 2 euros.

23. United Kingdom - Boring, Lloyd-Webber rubbish. Rating: 1 euro.

24. Finland - Another top band name, 'Waldo's People', delivered an unusually upbeat song about homelessness. Really, only the burning rubbish bins give you a clue to this, otherwise it looks like a younger version of the Edge gone gangster. Rating: 1.5 euros.

25. Spain - I can't remember much about this entry. I do remember that I've forgotten my Spanish though. Rating: 2 euros.

The Wooden Finger Guide to the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest - Part One

1. Lithuania - Since Eurovision voters generally have memory spans comparable to goldfish, it's always a difficult task to be the first act on stage. Lithuania didn't make it any easier on themselves by choosing a guy that appeared to be singing a love song to his hat. Furthermore, with the sparse arrangement on stage, too much was left to our piano-playing friend, who didn't have nearly enough charisma to pull it off. The most action he could muster was to light up a flame at the end... things would have been far more interesting if he had set fire to his hat instead. Rating: 1.5 euros (out of 5)

2. Israel - The Israelis made a peculiar choice by picking the Witches of Eastwick to represent them. Singing in three different languages was a nice postmodern touch, although it doesn't really help much if the tune sucks. At least the crowd went wild, waving their huge plastic hammers with the Star of David about. Rating: 2 euros

3. France - The best entry to this point, and as it turned out, the best entry of them all. Patricia Kaas, with her moonlight-coloured skin and high cheekbones in tow, delivered a typically late-night Parisian club tune. By the end of the song, she was gripping the microphone like her life depended on it, and you expected her to undergo the full transformation into a ghostly creature of the night. Stirring stuff. Rating: 4.5 euros

4. Sweden - This couldn't have been more Swedish if the performers had come out swinging Ikea stools. A blond, buxom woman dressed in white belted out a pop-operatic chorus, and by the end of it all the Kremlin was lying in a thousand pieces. Rating: 3 euros

5. Croatia - Europorn made its first appearance with the Crotian entry, featuring a lead singer who can't get over himself and an array of girls pleasuring themselves in the background. The wind machine was the real star though, certainly more than the girl in white, whose main contribution appeared to be to squeal every now and then. Rating: 2.5 euros 

6. Portugal - A lovely little entry, starring a rather earnest young lady, a backdrop covered with clouds and flowers, and the most enthusiastic drummer north of the Mediterrenean. You couldn't help but be filled with a warm, happy, cuddly feeling (this may be why my wife liked it so much). Rating: 4 euros

7. Iceland - This entry starred Yohanna, an 18 year-old who may now be the richest person in Iceland. The song ('Is It True?') is not bad in an '80s power ballad type of way, although it could have been improved if they had ditched the second-hand prom dresses. Rating: 3.5 euros

8. Greece - It was time for some nightclubbing, and who better to take us there than a hairless Greek man with his top few shirt buttons inexplicably undone? If that wasn't enough, there was also the flashing conveyor belt which he was busting his moves on. Every act should have a flashing conveyor belt. An absolute riot. Normal Eurovision service had been resumed. Rating: 3 euros Unintentional comedy value: 4.5 euros

9. Armenia - The Armenians trumped the Israelis by sending out a couple of gypsies, complete with jewelled headbands. You could almost smell the shisha on stage. It started in a promising way, with the best backbeat of the competition, but soon dissolved into cliched Euro-dance with the trademark key change at the finish. The garter belts were either a highlight or lowlight, depending on your sexual orientation. Rating: 3 euros

10. Russia - The hometown entry threw up a surprise by opting for a brunette, who was kind of pretty in an Anastasia Myskina-like way. The Russians finally justified the use of the big screens that had been floating around every performance, replaying film of the lead singer wailing along, and digitally aging her as the song progressed. Either that or her make-up wasn't built to last. Rating: 3.5 euros

11. Azerbaijan (Who?!) - Flexible dancers trying to distract you from an awfully pedestrian beat. Ho hum. Rating: 2.5 euros

12. Bosnia-Herzegovnia - With the array of military figures on stage, it was like something straight out of 'War and Peace'. Or 'Alice in Wonderland'. It was good to finally see some guitars on stage, unfortunately they didn't do much with them. Rating: 3 euros

Entries 13 to 25 to follow.

The Wisdom of Patrick Smith

In an article in today's Australian about the state of the Richmond Football Club, one of the most arrogant and least considerate football writers, Patrick Smith, claimed that 'The grip on reality at Punt Rd is hardly strengthened when cheerleaders in the media write that the Gary March-led board has nothing to feel awkward or disappointed about.'

What on earth could he be referring to? Well it's most likely Caroline Wilson's article in yesterday's Age. Let us go read that article again and see if Patrick's claims hold up.

'If president Gary March put his hand on his heart he would admit he had so far failed to fully rebuild the least successful AFL club in almost three decades.'

Hmm, I don't think that's nothing Patrick. But maybe you missed that sentence (possibly because you had disappeared up your own ego). Let's see if we can find anything else. Whoops, here we go:

'As bad as the playing group has been this season — and yes, they have been shocking'

Strike two, Patrick. Though I suppose that's really just talking about the playing group. Surely Caro is holding up her pom-poms for the place as a whole. But wait, what's this?

'No one is suggesting that all is well at Tigerland. Clearly the football malaise is infectious and as good as young Trent Cotchin might be, no cure is in sight.'

Ah well Patrick, you can't win them all. Maybe one day you will refer to an article without blatantly contradicting it. And that cannot be a bad thing.

The Pros and Cons of the ‘Watchmen’ Film

Pros:

• The Dr. Manhattan flashback sequences were well done. The Doc’s backstory is one of the most poignant parts of the book, and it is delivered with pretty much the right mix of feeling and detachment.
• Good performances by Jackie Earle Haley and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Rorschach and the Comedian. Both of them gave a very good idea of what their characters were all about.
• The movie did not tone down the violence of the book. In fact, if anything it turned it up, in some cases quite gratuitously.

Cons:

• A key facet of the ‘Watchmen’ comic was the juxtaposing of scenes and symbols to create a greater degree of depth in the meaning of the work. This is a technique that could have – at least in part – been translated to film, but it is mostly absent. As a result, in some scenes the pacing and dialogue of the film seem rather odd.
• The story is set in 1985, but apart from a few retro hairstyles, the look of the film hardly conveys this fact. That being the case, why not set it in the present day with the Americans having won the Iraq war and George W. Bush being elected President for a third term? Such changes would also have a similar resonance with modern-day filmgoers as having the Americans win in Vietnam and Nixon as President had on the original audience.
• In the book, the Nite-Owl and the Silk Spectre are relatively normal people dressed up in costumes, not the brutal fighting machines they are in the film. It is hard to see how they could be scared of anything given the way they tear into the Knot-top gang, despite having been several years in retirement.
• On that point, it is a shame that none of the ‘normal’ characters could have been fleshed out a bit. A major theme of the book was how they react to the super-heroes and threat of impending war; here their viewpoint is almost entirely absent.
• Ozymandias does not smirk. He may as well have written ‘I am up to something’ on his forehead.

Graphic Novels That You Would Like If You Weren't Too Chicken To Read Them - 'Watchmen'

When Time Magazine named their 100 greatest novels of the 20th century, ‘Watchmen’ was the only graphic novel to make the list. If the list had been restricted to the 10 greatest novels it still should have made it. ‘Watchmen’ is the greatest comic book series there was, is and probably ever will be – both an uncompromising deconstruction of the superhero genre and an extensive realization of the possibilities of its medium. I first read it when I was seventeen, and I soon realized that all the comic books that I had read up to that point were exactly what everyone claimed them to be – kids stuff.



The actual premise and plot for ‘Watchmen’ are not overly complex, even if they were somewhat revolutionary at the time. The story is set in an alternate version of 1985 in which the US won the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon is still President, and the Americans and Soviets are locked in a nuclear arms race. Superheroes have been outlawed for almost a decade, following police protests that the masked vigilantes were making it impossible for them to do their jobs. The series begins with the bloody murder of one of these ‘heroes’ – namely the Comedian – and our cast of key characters are gradually introduced as we observe their reactions to their compatriot’s death. As the story unfolds, more and more of these characters come under threat, leading to the theory that somebody is planning to wipe out all of the remaining masks. The truth, however, is far stranger, as we learn to what lengths one hero is willing to go to in order to protect the world.



The plot itself really only takes up one half of the series, with the other half devoted to one-chapter portraits of the six main characters. The second chapter focuses on the Comedian, who has made himself into a violent, amoral reflection of our highly troubled times. Chapter four retells the story of Dr. Manhattan, a man-turned-god whose mind-boggling power is the linchpin of American’s defense system, despite his scant concern for political conflicts. Chapter six examines the psychology of the series’ narrator, Rorschach, whose hardnosed brand of justice makes the Dark Knight-era Batman look like a bleeding heart. Chapters seven and nine are about the second Nite-Owl and the second Silk Spectre, who are considered to be the most normal of the remaining heroes, although as their stories show it takes a special type of personality to dress up in a colourful costume and proclaim yourself a defender of the people. And chapter eleven is about Ozymandias, labeled the smartest man in the world, whose extraordinary intelligence is both an asset and a burden. Each chapter reveals something not only about the hero in question, but also about the human condition itself and how it is affected by the society that we find ourselves in.

However, by far the most startling aspect of all about ‘Watchmen’ is the multi-layered approach to storytelling that it takes, using the comic book form to juxtapose symbols and themes to create an incredibly dense piece of work. One of the most pervasive examples is the comic book being read by the kid at the newsstand, whose tale of a shipwrecked mariner desperate to save his hometown from murderous pirates mirrors both the chaos of the Watchmen’s world and the moral predicaments they face. But almost every page has something that is either intimately connected with another scene that is being laid out simultaneously or with another scene before it, with varying degrees of subtlety. Some may see some of the innovations – such as laying out chapter five in the form of a symmetrical Rorschach blot – as cleverness for cleverness’ sake, but it’s difficult not to admire the achievement at least, and it still provides the reader with the chance for a greater degree of reflection than 99 per cent of the works in popular culture. Even the creators – writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons – have rarely shown signs of replicating the series’ structure, probably knowing how hard it is to capture lightning in a bottle twice.



In the years following ‘Watchmen’ many other ‘realistic’ superhero works have appeared, often earning the moniker ‘the next Watchmen’ for their more mature approach to the superhero genre. However, ‘Watchmen’ itself is unrepeatable – it took the genre to its outermost limits, making all of the other series that came before or after seem like only a small part of it. Which is not to say that the superhero genre is dead; subsequent series have explored and built upon aspects of ‘Watchmen’ to great effect, such as the man-on-the-street viewpoint used in ‘Marvels’ and the stories of heroes meddling with international affairs in ‘The Authority’. But 1986 will always be year zero for superhero comics – the point where they finally stood up and demanded to be accepted as serious literature. Those strange men in the masks and tights would never be simply kids stuff again.

The Finger Points Outwards - No.18

The 50 biggest names in sex from the past 55 years.

The greatest ever complaint letter.

Letterman's farewell to George Bush

Big Day Out 2009

If you’re looking for a comprehensive review of the Big Day Out for 2009, this isn’t one. For one thing, it’s impossible for one person to see even a sizable proportion of the acts on offer. For another, even for the acts you do see, your average punter doesn’t tend to know more than half the songs. Any review is therefore going to have gaps all over the place, nevertheless, this is how the day went…

The first thing that was notable about this year’s BDO at the Flemington Racecourse was that there was plenty of grass. The organizers had apparently spent about $1.6 million on making sure that the areas around the stages didn’t resemble the dustbowl conditions of last year’s event (not that I was there). This meant that we could spend a good deal of the day doing what you should be doing at any decent outdoor festival, i.e. lazing about.

The second thing that was notable was the sheer volume of red, white and blue that could be seen about. Personally, I’ve never felt the need to display my patriotism – even on Australia Day – indeed I’ve always felt it to be peculiarly un-Australian to be going about brandishing the flag. But apparently I’m part of the last generation to do so; no doubt we’re only a few years from some unsuspecting overseas artist stage diving into a giant replica of the Southern Cross, only to be swallowed up and never heard from again.

Anyway, we arrived around one and spent essentially the entire afternoon hanging around the Green Stage. First up were the Ting Tings, bringing a fair contingent of girly-boppers along with them. Their pop-rock sound is probably better suited to a smaller venue but they did an admirable job nonetheless, putting new spins on radio-friendly hits such as ‘Great DJ’. Their best effort, however, was set list closer ‘That’s Not My Name’ – a song I once considered laboured, but which, in the second half of the tune, turned into something of a freakout.

Somewhere in the middle of the Ting Tings’ set, a guy in a colourful wig jumped on top of the tent that was housing the sound equipment. Once there, he became the target for a bombardment of bottles, including one bottle of sunscreen, which for some reason he believed to be a good idea to open up and drink. Decent effort by the chap, even if his day did end at about 3 of the clock.

New Yorkers TV On The Radio sauntered onto stage next, and proceeded to prove that black guys can even out-indie us white folk. Their set list was somewhat confounding – who opens up with two songs that are not on your latest album? – but their energetic performance more than made up for it. Indeed, their sound was somewhat more aggressive than on their records; even a mellow song like ‘Shout Me Out’ was transformed into a veritable wall of sound. Best of all though was ‘Staring At The Sun’, which no longer sounded like sunspots, but more like a star gone supernova.

We were sitting over in the drinking area when My Morning Jacket appeared, and their laid-back brand of rock fitted perfectly with swigging down a Tooheys Extra Dry. ‘I’m Amazed’ confirmed that it was a song built for a field full of people, while the downright bizarre ‘Highly Suspicious’ actually made some sort of sense when accompanied by the sight of dudes bashing away on guitars. MMJ finished off with the eight-minute ‘Touch Me I’m Going To Scream’, which though excellent, gave a hint of the sound problems that were to plague the next act. That act turned out to be Melbourne’s own Cut Copy, who sounded like they were being transmitted through a faulty radio. A real disappointment given that they produced my favourite album from last year, but hopefully I’ll get to see them in a more sympathetic venue sometime soon.

It was then over to the main stage for UK superstars the Arctic Monkeys. I’ve never been able to put my finger on why I only like, as opposed to love, the Arctic Monkeys, but now I think I’ve hit upon the reason: Alex Turner’s voice. Well, that and the songs have no melody. Nevertheless, if you’re a Monkeys fan you would have been psyched by their performance, and I still tapped my foot along to their best songs like ‘Brianstorm’ and ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’. And I did appreciate the synchronicity of them playing ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ as the sun was setting. 

With it now dark it was time for the BDO’s headline act, Neil Young, to make his way onstage. Unless you own all of his 30 or so albums there’s going to be a lot that’s unfamiliar to you, but he’s still an outstanding performer and you still find yourself enthralled by his biggest hits no matter how many times you’ve heard them. Apparently he finished off with a cover of The Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’, but I can’t tell you anything about that since we were already gone, driven away by the chill that had descended. An incomplete end to an incomplete day, but I guess if you want completeness you’re better off having a Big Day In instead.

Tennis Australia Unveils Plan to Turn its Women Tennis Players Into Russians

Faced with mediocre results and budget cuts, Tennis Australia has unveiled its radical new plan to return to world supremacy by turning its top female players into Russians.

The scheme went into action during the week when the newly-rechristined Samantha Stosurova was seen warming up on the practice courts and sipping from a hip flask of vodka. There have also been reports of Casey Dellacquaova sporting shoes made by up-and-coming Russian manufacturers as she wanders Melbourne's streets.

One player that may be exempt from the makeover is Jelena Dokic, who has made it through to the quarter-finals of the women's draw. However, a loss tonight may result in her being housed in a babushka doll for the remainder of the week.

Tennis Australia hopes to have at least five blond-haired blue-eyed women in the top 20 by the end of next year. Rumours are also afoot that, if the plan is successful, the tennis authority may have similar plans to turn its professional male players into Frenchmen.