I made it through the second day of the semi 2 rehearsals with my Eurovision fan status still intact! It’s a miracle! One thing that helped is it was very much business as usual, as countries did exactly what you’d expect them to do, give or take a few deviations. No robots, no mannequins, minimal breakdancing. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so if my math is correct, this is probably the image/word count average for this.

(Get coffee. Now. And a pastry. Get one for me too, please.)

10. Georgia
Oh, Georgia, bless your ethno-jazz soul, how kind you are to a struggling San Francisco girl who is not a morning person. I don’t deserve you.

Living in San Francisco can be both an advantage and a disadvantage during the rehearsal weeks. The upside is that by the time I am awake most of the rehearsals are online and I can skip the part of the day where I endlessly refresh pages to see whether whatever country whose song I couldn’t care less about already rehearsed (because what else am I going to do during rehearsal weeks). The downside is it allows you to watch all of the entries from the second semi-final back to back. After the trauma of yesterday, I was grateful to start off the day with a moment of zen, meditation, and general consideration of my frail morning nerves.

Iriao perform their entry the same way they wrote it: entirely oblivious to the Eurovision world that surrounds them, with blue and red lights. I hope you are not planning to play any kind of stage color drinking game. If so, I hope you don’t really need your liver.

We are who we are, and who we are is who we wanna be (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

11. Poland
It’s Norway, only reversed: the act is identical to its NF incarnation here too, except unlike Rybak, that means an ineffective staging and an adorable but fairly useless performer.

The staging concept is supposed to scream “look! We’re cool DJs” but it’s more of a whisper than a scream, and even though I have now progressed to the point of being able to remember how the chorus goes, my brain mashes it up with “DJ, Take Me Away”, which cannot possibly be a good sign for Poland. If you needed a sign to tell you that in the first place, that is.

Sing it away! (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

12. Malta
Malta is doing a modern interpretive dance of that Doctor Who episode where the Doctor screws up Narnian history by landing too close to that lamp post, making the faun mistake the Tardis for the Wardrobe and therefore missing his fateful meeting with Lucy. When she wanders into Narnia on her own, she runs into Christabelle, who has already successfully managed to scare the White Witch so much she cursed herself into a mirror, and easily traps an unsuspecting Lucy and forces her into performing as a dancer on her upcoming Eurovision gig.

If this made absolutely no sense to you, it means I have succeeded in adequately describing the concept of this year’s Maltese performance. Of course, I could have used the shorter, more concise version – “it’s Malta at Eurovision” – but where’s the fun in that.

Bigger on the inside (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

13. Hungary
Hungary have gone all innovative on us and placed their lead singer in a no man’s (is)land between the bridges and away from the band members on the main stage, in a section I didn’t realize was part of the stage until today. They also showed they mean business when they made me discover that the lighting rig does have a button marked “yellow” somewhere, as yellow spots were – erm – spotted during this rehearsal. (Combined with blue, obviously.) There’s also a stage dive, hiking, fire, and basically anything they could think of to avoid showing the actual stage without having to bring one of their own.

It’s still a loud song that is screamed in Hungarian, and still not for everyone, but it’s within the realms of credibility – even with the stage(d) dive – and it’s competent enough to actually come across as a sane moment of relief from what just preceded it.

On top of the world (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

14. Latvia
I finally figured this one out! Apparently this is a teaser for an upcoming musical about the lesser-known details of the life of Mata Hari. How did I not realize it sooner, when they weren’t even that subtle about it, singing about cracking codes and all. I’m such an idiot. Of course Funny Girl is a code name! It’s not like Latvia was ever that literal in their songs. I mean, did they bring guests from other planets to perform? Angels? Sea Wolves? Why would they bring an actual funny girl? What was I thinking, I’m just a stupid girl to you…

However, if you count yourself among the 95% of Eurovision viewers who couldn’t care less about lyrics, that whole Lady in Red shtick might work for you. Seriously, Laura, you go gurrrl, oh em gee, that dress gives me life, yaaaaas queeeeen slaaaaay!

(I had to use those words just once, to check whether any of them are easier to tolerate once you’ve written them yourself. They’re not.)

I’m not your toy, you stupid boy (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

15. Sweden
Sweden has gone all Sweden on us, giving the Portuguese a patronizing passive-aggressive pat on the head while saying, “You’re such a darling that you put all this effort into building a stage, you’ll never be us but we really appreciate the gesture regardless. So anyway we brought our own stage so there’s really no need for you to be involved in this at all as we won’t be using your whole setup. You don’t mind, do you?”

They are getting a bit sloppy, though, as they couldn’t even be bothered to remove the price tag. It’s still there, barcode and all.

We found something better (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

16. Montenegro
Step 1: Check Serbia out, do the same but get it wrong
Step 2: Make bad color and fashion choices, that’s how you ruin a song

(Not that there was ever much of a song to ruin here, but then that’s true of the Serbian template too.)

No Name (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

17. Slovenia
Finally! It’s taken days of rehearsals, but I’ve finally got myself a little fluffy pastel cloud, courtesy of Lea SIrk’s hair stylist! Hvala, Slovenia! There’s also much choreography, many sparkly thingies, occasional moments in which the lights are not blue, and some very on-point vocals. There’s still no song, but I suppose it’s too late for that.

There’s also a surprising cooperation here between Romania and Slovenia, making sure that any kid who survived the Romanian mannequin attack will be sent to bed immediately. After that third place last year, Moldova is not to be trusted, and having all the kids across Europe televote for them is a luxury no one in this semi can afford. If only the delegations in semi 2 would invest as much effort in their songs as they do in their sabotage plans.

Jestem (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)

18. Ukraine
While we were busy refreshing messageboards, the world marked the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, which took place on May 2nd, 1998. While most wizards and muggles alike joined in celebration, there were also several violent incidents. The worst of them took place earlier in the day, as Hogwarts students from Slytherin and Gryffindor engaged in a heated brawl inside the room of necessity. A botched spell accidentally triggered a cursed piano which was nearby. It is yet unclear who is responsible for placing the curse there, but Lord Voldemort himself is suspected, as he is rumored to have hexed multiple items within the Hogwarts walls following his failure to assume the teaching position of Defense Against the Dark Arts. From what we can gather from reports, the curse involves a ghostly incarnation of a young Tom Riddle haunting the piano. The piano also surrounds itself in fire when any attempts to break the curse are made.

Matters got out of hand when a seventh-year student used an Accio spell to bring giant spiders from the Forbidden Forest as reinforcements. Several students tried to escape when Ministry of Magic officials were summoned, but a succession of magic mishaps resulted in the students apparating into Hogsmeade with both the piano and the spider in tow, and then having one of the foreign exchange students activate their Flu Network escape. Instead of Lisburn, they ended up in Portugal.

Harry Potter, who was due to give a motivational speech at the farewell event for the British Eurovision delegation, was called in to personally handle the situation, while Hermione Granger and her husband and Harry’s best friend, Ron, had to cut their Spain vacation short.

Ron, who is still terrified of spiders, volunteered to do crowd control, while Harry attempted to disarm the piano – that old expelliarmus charm never fails – and went poof, because of course Voldemort had an extra security protocol in place in case Harry Potter decided to visit, leaving that ghostly shade of Tom Riddle and a smoking staircase behind him.

As far as we know, this is still a developing story. Hermione Granger has assumed control of the affected area and is doing her absolute best to contain a situation that is already being referred to as “Harry Potter and the Cursed Staging”.

We promise to bring you more news as soon as we get it, and we shall see whether this incident will impact the rest of the rehearsals. Stay tuned.

Work your magic (Eurovision.tv / Anders Putting)