This is probably old news but the rather glorious winners of the Eurovision.

I broke a wine glass toasting their victory.

Lordi won? Holy shit!

Sour grapes from Malta: [link]

One of the members of Lordi looks like a Predator in that picture.

Finland rules!

The country that brought us Linux and Lordi....

Ian Copeland died: [link]

Ian Copeland died

so sad. He certainly helped shape the music of my youth.

Back to Lordi, this is a better quality video, plus excellent commentary from the Brits: [link]

plus excellent commentary from the Brits

I'm a big fan of understatement, but that video needs commentary by Mike Judge: Butthead, it's Gwar! It's Gwar!! Except Gwar was more entertaining. I liked "the rockalypse" but the music was pretty lifeless. I kept thinking they should be singing "Immigrant Song" because a) it's much better, and b) I'd love to see the guy in foot tall boots singing "Valhalla we are coming!"

I think it's a pretty darn catchy song. I mean, yeah, it's mired by murkiness but when the zombie keyboardist's gravity-defying vocals swoop in, I get the goosebumps.

In a completely unrelated but much more bizarre story, I saw Marlena Shaw, three or four weeks ago, in a Galway nightclub called Cuba. She was terribly good and terribly sexy. Anyway, it seems that when the nightclub sent her performance fee to her account, the US bank blocked it because the transaction referenced Cuba. She was only allowed her money after the bank had been assured that the venue had nothing to do with Cuba, the nation.

She was only allowed her money after the bank had been assured that the venue had nothing to do with Cuba, the nation.

I highly recommend Ann Louise Bardach's Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana. You can read a couple chapters here. It's a really compelling book, even if ultimately I found it pretty depressing ("yeah, yeah, what don't you find ultimately pretty depressing?" shut up, man...). Endlessly fascinating, completely twisted (the carte blanche given to Cuban exiles who've committed outright acts of terrorism both here and abroad), and surprisingly central to our current political situation (she makes a compelling case that w/o the Elian Gonzalez episode Bush wouldn't have won FL in 2000, & Jeb has very, very strong ties to the exile community.) And Fidel doesn't come off any better; Bardach is no Castro apologist. If all that sounds rather bleak I should point out that the book is very lively and is filled with outsized characters and soap opera-worthy twists, which I don't mean disparagingly. When you're telling a tale that in many ways is a decades long family feud (I was unaware that a lot of Castro's relatives are, and have been all along, key players in the Miami exile community) a lot of soapish elements will work their way in. I know we're all busy, and most, if not all, of us have an ever-growing pile of books we may or may not get to, but I hope someone takes a chance on my recommendation.