Eurovision 2009; Semi-Final 2

Time for some proper comments on Thursday's semi, before the big night tonight :)

I wasn't so bothered about Thursdays final, and the only songs I was really keen to hear were Estonia's and The Netherlands. Of course, I was curious to see how the favourite, Norway, would do, and there were a few other songs of worth, but I guess without Finland it just didn't seem such a big deal...

Anyway, here are my thoughts;

• I missed the opening act completely, and half of Croatia, but have a thing against Croatia in esc anyway, so didnt mind
• We had a few problems with the signal being bad when stood in certain parts of the room, particularly where my host was preparing food. Ultimately food took priority over the rubbish that was the first few songs...
• As Poland came on I remembered that I had heard maybe 30 pleasing seconds of the song and so we settled to watch. It was quite moving and was making me sad, so maybe it wasn't so bad that the computer then decided to freeze and we missed most of it.
• By the time we rebooted we were half-way through Norway too. However that was the end of our technical issues
• I actually don't remember much of the others. I thought Greece was good from what I heard of it, but was a little distracted at the time :) Hungary was a disaster. They should have kept it simple. He was too out of breath, and the outfits were shockingly bad... Lithuania was actually ok, given their bad track record for the past few years. Azerbaijan was a nice highlight as well. And Denmark was pedestrian but pleasant enough.
• Anyway, then it was my favourites both tucked on the end. Estonia was classy, dramatic, and all in all very very good I thought. Shame I couldnt work out what she was singing. And Estonian and Finnish can't be that similar because the subtitles looked nothing like what she was singing. The Netherlands was just so much fun! Ok, it was incredibly cheese layden and perhaps having 3 middle-aged men and 3 vuluptous backing singers isnt going to be able to compete with, say Greece, but the singing was good, the dancing was naff, and the overall impression was that they were having fun which made me happy. I knew they wouldn't get through though. They are like us, part of no voting block, falling between the lines. A real shame. Eurovision is taking itself too seriously lately, and that was a throw-back to the good old days :)
• So then it was time to compile a list. Again a mix of what I wanted and what I thought would go through; Croatia, Poland, Norway, Denmark, Azerbaijan, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, Netherlands and Serbia just to make up numbers.
• The interval act was hit-and-miss for me this time. It started a bit boring, but got better. As Rachel said, it was much like what we had seen at the Russian Winter Festival. Ah, that was a good day :) Anyway, I'm am so looking forward to the interval acts tonight. I'm so excited!

And then the votes were announced. The commentators weren't so vocal tonight, so got to hear how annoyingly naff the actual presnters were. Oh dear oh dear. But yes, charming in a way I guess... I got 7 out of 10, which isn't bad, but I'm dissappointed I won't get to hear Poland properly, and 'The Toppers waz robbed', to quote Rachel.

Roll on tonight!!!