Ridiculous.

As I was driving home from work, I was thinking about many jumbled things at once, as seems to be usual and a thought suddenly popped into my head.

What is "ridiculous" nowadays?

In my lifetime, I have seen many things, both mundane and unusual and both good and bad. I have seen a black man elected President of the United States. I have seen a reality show host elected President of the United States. I have seen a captain land a plane perfectly on the waters of the Hudson River. I have seen two airplanes flown deliberately into the World Trade Center and people flee for their lives as they came down. I have seen the Chicago Cubs win a World Series for the first time in over a century. I have seen the Boston Red Sox win a World Series for the first time in 86 years.

The fact that I can say that Rita Moreno is a strong advocate for women's rights yet worked right alongside Bill Cosby and Morgan Freeman on "The Electric Company". I mention this specifically because the Freeman accusations came up today.

The fact that a man had so much money that he was able to do this.

I mean seriously, what is the meaning of the word ridiculous now? Can anybody be surprised in anything or be surprised? I believe that they can but a little part of their brain should be open to just about anything.

In my first blog post, I mentioned the loss of wonder in our society, per Fred Rogers. These events and occurrences show that we shouldn't lose any sense of wonder and amazement, whether the event be good or bad.

Heck a 16th seed beat a 1 seed this year in the NCAA tournament.......by 20.

Ridiculous. Exactly.

Vision Impaired

Now I am not the main demographic of the LOGO channel......

Seriously, I'm not.

Although I am sure they have some quality programming on.

But this afternoon, I might tune into that channel to see a very strange event that has been going on for years and that most Americans probably would go HUH? to its mention. That event is the grand final of the Eurovision Song Contest.

What the heck is it? Well, imagine if each state had to send one singer with one song to a competition, then is sung live across the country and people from the states send in votes on the other states songs and that's how the winner is determined. So, for example, the song from New Jersey would be judged by the viewers from the 49 other states, which is a logical idea.

So in Europe, they have done this contest every year since 1956 and it has become an event of showing off national pride and occasionally weird costumes:

This is from the Belarus entry in 2010

This is from the Estonian delegation in 2018. Cool but still weird

And this is the present Israeli contestant...........yeah

Anyway, the countries seem to take this very seriously. And so do the contestants. The reigning Eurovision is Portugal who won it with this song:

                             

The country that has won the most is Ireland, who have won 7 of these contests, including a run in the mid 90s of winning 4 out of 5 from 1992-1996. Kind of like the Yankees most recent dynasty.

Now while people may never have heard of the song contest, I will bet you that they have heard of two of its most famous winners. In 1974, a Swedish group dominated the contest with a song that led them to greatness and eventually led them to worldwide domination. I speak of course of ABBA.

                                

Then in 1988, a young singer representing Switzerland took home the title. However, while she was representing Switzerland, she was from Canada, and in a few years, would captivate the world. Her name is Celine Dion.

I don't know if America could ever do this in amongst themselves, especially given that song contests are amongst the popular programs on television already, but it would be interesting to see Wyoming and Florida fight to the death, or rather sing to the death.

What do you think?