Sunday 27 May 2012

Eurovicious

So, meinen Europaischen friends, the ghastly Spectre of a Pantomime Dinosaur that is Eurovision has staggered, squawking and gasping, to its pitiable, undignified end for another year, like a battery-farmed Phoenix. Now, some might think that Eurovision is neither a worthy nor a relevant subject for criticism when set against the backdrop of far more Important and Urgent matters that press on us now from every side. But let us not forget, comrades, that in these days of swingeing, cruel cuts to arts budgets across the Continent, even from the most liberal and enlightened of regimes, that an awful lot of money is sunk annually in this hideous cardboard-and-paste travesty, something we all pretend not to take notice of, yet for some reason feel obliged to carry on with, as one continues to invite an embarrassing Auntie to family events, even though she is guaranteed to drink the punch-bowl, offend a significant proportion of the other guests, and have to be carried out insensible at the height of the festivities. So, having, as it were, shelled out for its dinner, and drinks, and probably a taxi home, couldn't we do a bit more with it? Yes, I know, I know that looking for a platform for the serious, living musical arts in the Eurovision Song Contest is a little like comparing Monica Bellucci with Les Dawson in a frock. It's just a different kind of animal. And yet - if we must, if we HAVE to have this raddled, desperate old Dame mincing horridly across our screens every year, couldn't we at least beg her to reach down and grab hold of even a small fold of her strapped-up Balls, and give us some (whisper it!) Entertainment? If we were looking for a role-model, wouldn't Quentin Crisp be more the thing than David Walliams' Emily Howard? I mean to say - this year,  Britain had an absolute Gift in the palm of its very hand, and fluffed it worse than ever pudding-faced, overgrown ten-year-old made a hash of the part of the Virgin Mary in the school Nativity Play. For Chrissakes, we had ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK. And what did we do with him, with a veritable God of queasy, cheesy, verging-on-full-blown-camp anachronism? It could have been outstanding. What an opportunity for something hugely, outrageously, louchely Post-Modern. Joe Orton remade by Aki Kaurismaki. Missed. I have just heard a guest on some sort of Radio 4 Arts round-up saying, ( ironically, no doubt, for we can only speak of Mainstream Pop Culture Ironically), "At least we avoided the dreaded 'Nul Points'." What is THAT to take pride, or comfort, in? A revindication of our mediocrity as an Artistic nation, even in the context of a defining celebration of the Mediocre. Not even notable enough to be the Worst. To quote my daughter at the age of nine, placed sixth in a regional chess tournament that had five prize places - Not even a ****** Medal. Next year, I appeal to the French - they are supposed to be good at this sort of thing - or possibly the Belgians (I'm British, I couldn't possibly admit to being able to tell them apart) - to wheel out Johnny Hallyday, in all his Phantom of The Opera grotesquery, have him mime some "de trop" Rhum Baba of a faux Rock Opera number, and give Eurovision the opportunity to embrace once more its true and rightful heritage as the crowning jewel on the public brow of the Theatre of the Absurd. And leave mercifully behind it the memory of the washed-out stain from the stage-fright sick of a Californian Baby Beauty Queen that it has, of late, become.

About Me

My name is Anastasia Kashian. I am an artist and sometime writer, living in the twin states of Limbo and Penury, somewhere within the bounds of the European Economic Disaster. I like Turkish coffee and Russian tea, and in the field of gastronomy, I love to devour both the Raw (in terms of charcuterie and pungent, plague-ridden unpasteurised cheeses) and the Cooked (in terms of the catholic variety of Slimy Things that once Crawled With Legs Upon a Slimy Sea - bring me your Molluscs and Crustaceans, Mud-Dwellers and Bottom-Feeders, that I may saute them with garlic in olive oil, and a good slug - how appropriate - of cheap white plonk. Had I mentioned that Mediterranean cooks love tentacles more, even, than do Japanese Manga pornographers?) And of course - read carefully the Subtext - you spotted it already, didn't you? the title of my blog is an arch, wry, pretentious sidewards nod to my distant roots as an Anthropology graduate, back in the heady and ground-breaking days of Post-Post-Something or Other. Note, if you will, my precise, wide-ranging vocabulary. See, Jane, see, Peter, see my Vocabulary. My Vocabulary is Wide-Ranging. That is a Low-Brow Popular Culture Reference. (And sufficiently out-dated to show how really Au Fait I am with what's Moving in the World Today). Look, Jane, look at the Low-Brow Popular Culture References. I have a Wide-Ranging Vocabulary and I can make Low-Brow Popular Culture References. I could carry on in this vein for pages, because I am intellectually moribund, but I shan't, because I am also very, very lazy, and have the attention span of a cartoon animal. (You're thinking about that one now, aren't you? The capacity of the human mind to find meaning in vacant trivia continues to grow unabated. It's one of the things that keeps me going.) I am writing a blog primarily to find storage space for the numerous opinionated rants to which I am prone, on a variety of subjects about which I know little to nothing, and on which my aforementioned opinion is rarely, if ever, sought, making me as qualified to Discourse as the majority of writers who get Paid for doing it, my wider purpose being to release overcrowded space in my brain (it seeming impossible to re-allocate this material to the empty, whistling prairies within that organ which nature must have intended, before abandoning the project, to fill with useful skills and practical information), and also, (possibly a matter of more immediate importance) the file space on my hard drive. Art being my Day Job, when I want a creative leisure outlet more active than hunching over a dying laptop trying to watch subtitled Cine D'Auteur or listening to obscure music, I cook. That's about it, really.