I Am A Swede

Another former contestant has passed away. This time it's Franco Battiato who, together with Alice, represented Italy in 1984 with "I treni di Tozeur". He passed away yesterday at the age of 76.

Well, after seeing the performances in the first semi-final I feel even more strongly that this is a weak year. I would be hard pressed to pick 10 songs that I feel deserve a place in the final.... Again, this is only my personal opinion though.

I guess I'm supposed to be in awe of their fantastic careers and their longevity, but I'm so bored with Nadal and Djokovic (and Federer too for that matter) that if they all retired tomorrow I wouldn't miss them one bit.

^^ Absolutely only in my opinion. And if there's one thing I've learned from watching this show through the years it's that my opinion usually diverges a great deal from popular opinion....

^^ I can see why. It's a very even field this year. Too bad that it's because most of the songs are quite bland and uninteresting and not the opposite.....

Next week it's finally time for Eurovision week.... On a more somber note... Earlier this week former Swedish Eurovision participant Svante Thuresson died, 84 years old. Together with Lill Lindfors he gave us our first top 3 result back in 1966, with this unforgettable classic.

^^ True, it did grow worse over time. Personally I felt though that when it tipped over into unbearable and finally made me quit watching, was when the triangle was Ridge/Brooke/Nick. And then Taylor came back from the dead and for a while we had a quad of Ridge/Taylor/Nick/Brooke. That was painful. By then of course the overall writing had also taken a plunge into the abyss and that was enough for me to give up on the show. It was a bit sad though, because to this day I feel that B&B during it's heyday was a top class soap opera.

^^ I think the main difference is that back then the show actually had more than one story going on simultaneously. Even Ridge's waffling between first Caroline and Brooke and then between Taylor and Brooke never dominated the show so completely as Liam's waffling does now.

It's amazing that this is still going on. (The complaining about players grunting) I remember that this was an issue already 30 years ago with Monica Seles. There was even talk that the reason she was so thrashed by Graf at Wimbledon 1992 was because she tried to keep her grunting down after opponents earlier in the tournament had complained, and that it affected her play.

So true! "ER" is the gold standard for medical drama, just like (in my opinion at least) "Hill Street Blues" is for police drama.

Today it's exactly 40 years since the musical "Cats" premiered in London....