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It's time again. Today is the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest, this time in Malmö and more political than ever.
I already watched one of the semifinals and like always we will get a mixed bag of musical craftmanship and craziness Eurovision is known for.

Here is the link to the official site.

By the way, the contestant for the Netherlands, Joost Klein was disqualified after he hit a female production assistent and the police had to investigate.

After there were alleged threats of violence against a production assistant. No official source has said there was any actual physical altercation.

And they're having a hell of a time filtering the boohs from the venue out during every Israeli performance - they had to increase the feed delay from 7 to 14 seconds for additional processing.

There's been calls from extreme right to vote for Israel as an anti-Palestine vote, and in Italy, where the percentage of the half finals was leaked, 40% voted for Israel.

I should have wrote that there was an alleged attack, right.

It will be interesting this year for sure.

Of Israel wins - and they're one of the favorites - I'm not at all sure if there will be a ESC next year. I can see several countries boycotting.
A lot will depend on what comes out afterwards about what happened. If the NL broadcasting company is right and this is much ado about nothing, it will reinforce the perception that Israel is heavily pushing for a top three place to justify "the West stands with us" - the main sponsor being an Israeli company is not a good look right now with Israel even being allowed to participate despite Gaza.
The rules have been stretched a lot this year. In all kinds of weird ways.

There's now been an official statement made.
After leaving the stage and heading to the green room backstage after the second half final, against official agreements, Joost was being filmed. He repeatedly asked to stop filming and not to follow him. The camera woman kept filming, and he made "a threatening gesture" towards her. Both sides have indicated there was no physical contact.

Whatever gesture that was, expulsion and disqualification is completely out of proportion, given what others have done on the past or even on this edition, with only a fine. Not to mention it's still a complaint, so under the "innocent until proven guilty" stuff he should have been allowed to participate and then been disqualified afterwards if things turned out that way.

It is weird how fast they disqualified him for it. Did someone pulling strings in the back to get a certain outcome?

One of the favorites getting disqualified and Croatia, the other big favorite, getting absolutely 0% media attention?
Yeah, this edition will no doubt be remembered, and not in any good way

Cooooool show this year eh?

"Hooked on a Feeling" ?

Interesting choice for the start.

Also interesting choice of music for Israels entrance.

They absolutely did their best with filtering the music and you could still hear the booing and the crowd singing the NL number during Israel.

Speaking of songs that sounds like it they belong in a 80s anime:
Spain probably broke a record with that song.

Holy shit, we already got more points than last year.

All other things aside, I think the Big Five - UK, DE, FR, IT at least - had good candidates.