#oh and i found him on facebook but i think he got hacked in 2010

[nice2meatu]

Looking Back: Beyond Tellerrand Düsseldorf 2017

If you were to ask me what it is like to attend a Beyond Tellerrand event, my initial answer might be:“Welcoming and inspiring!” followed by a very long monologue about why I think it is one of the best conferences in the whole Web Industry. That monologue would most likely contain words like “the atmosphere”, “such diversity” and “bloody brilliant organization by Marc”.

After going to BTConf 2016 in Düsseldorf I was very eager to go again this year. It was the best experience out of all the conferences I attended so far, which, of course, set some high expectations for the 2017 edition. I was looking forward to meeting friends, new people and those I've only known via Twitter or through their blogs. Hugs to you wonderful human beings!

The speaker line-up looked promising to say the least, as well as the events around the conference itself. Arriving on Sunday afternoon, I made it to the hotel, dropped my bags and headed off to Sipgate, where the Conference warm-up took place.

Warming Up – Chillin’ ‘n’ Grillin’ at Sipgate

Free drinks, free food (vegan, vegetarian, grilled goodies like pulled pork, chicken and beef) sponsored by Sipgate, and free talks. We were sitting in front of the office chatting until 10PM. If you were especially curious what it‘s like to work for Sipgate, you could even join a short tour around the office.

The first nicety I want to mention here, which is just one of many tiny details that together make this conference so worthwhile: you could get your badges at the warm-up venue, reducing the time to wait at the conference venue the next morning.

Day One

Wake up. Realize you‘re in a hotel. Realize that it‘s time for BTConf to take off! Shower, breakfast, off to the venue it is then.

Day One – The Exhibition

Arriving at the Capitol Theater right on time and meeting my friends Jan and Mario, we joined the rest of the crowd and entered the venue. The foyer, which Marc calls “The Exhibition”, and rightly so, was packed with people. You might find stands by sponsors, or one corner being taken by the Microsoft Edge team, where all talks could be watched on a TV screen. Eva-Lotta Lamm, who made sketchnotes of each and every talk, had a standing table where you could buy posters she made (she would draw a little something on each poster on request – what a feat), and next to one of the two bars stood a table with books on it.

This table, a new part of the Exhibition suggested by Frederic Hemberger, was the “Book Exchange”. You could bring old books you don‘t need any more and put them on the table for others to take. For free. Also for free: there was a whole table filled with candy sponsored by Mozilla.

All of this surrounding the counter in the center where volunteers hustled their asses off in order to answer questions, give everyone their badges, goody bags and any information they needed. While I‘m at it: big shouts to the volunteer crew, whom I partially got to know, and “Oh Boy” they were doing quite a job there and doing it very, very well.

Cheers to my friends at etherTec Systems, who took care of the conference Wi-Fi! Considering the amount of data going through the connection they had set up.

Day One – The Auditorium

On entering the auditorium you were greeted with music played by Tobi Lessnow. Tobi is a musician, who is producing live during the event, and, just as last year, he was HOT. Dancing behind his decks, headbanging, booty-shaking – he really hooks you up. Last year a sideshow act next to the stage, this year he was on the stage doing his thing.

At the front of the stage stood an old TV screen showing a live C64 demo coded by Björn Odendahl, who also created the shirt design of the 2016 edition.

Take a Seat – It's About to go Down

Music off, lights out, show on. The opening titles by Sebastian Lange are something to watch and right after there is Marc Thiele entering the stage. Smiling, greeting everyone and introducing the first speaker of the day: Christian Heilmann.

A short note on the pace at Beyond Tellerrand: talks are seperated by 15 or 30 minute breaks and there‘s a lunch-break for 2 hours. Before and after each talk, Marc takes the stage for a few words on what's next, who‘s next, or what to watch out for in the foyer.

Breaking Out of the Tetris Mindset

Although being heavily jet-lagged coming in from Seattle the day before the conference, Christian opened it with a wonderful talk. He told us how all the different building blocks of the web combined to make it what it is: a diverse medium built by diverse people. A medium which, after more than 20 years of ongoing development, still has fundamental problems. And yet, both ends of the spectrum of developers working with and on the web contribute to make things better.

“If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear”

In the end it all comes down to a single phrase written into the W3C HTML Design Principles specification:

“In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity.”

See the transcript of his talk on his own blog or at the end of the wrap up post for this edition of BTConf (all videos, transcripts available can be found there, so I'll spare you of posting links to each talk or speaker from now on).

Cultivating Community

After this great opener, Sharon Steed entered the stage in order to talk about how we communicate. On one hand, how we, as people in general or as a community (be it inside a company or as web developers or designers or social-media peer-group) communicate; and on the other hand, how this communication can be improved, how it can be used to make us better contributers on our teams.

“The foundation of all great communities is empathy!”

Sharon, an empathy consultant, has a speech impediment: she stutters. The points she drove home were how and why empathy is such an important subject, how good communication makes a community inclusive and what it means to be a positive communicator. All very important points and I hope that everyone in the audience listened closely.

Design Systems

As I‘ve seen Jina giving this kind of talk twice already, it wasn‘t particularly exciting for me personally, but I heard a lot of “Uuuhs” and “Aaaahs” during the session. Jina worked for some of the largest companies in the industry, such as Apple or GitHub, and sure is knowledgeable when it comes to this subject.

First, she took a look back at how Design Systems have existed for a long time already. She told us how pattern libraries, style guides and toolkits evolve and become more and more a deliverable when working on the web.

Pointing out where challenges lie and showing how to work around those were the main takeaways for me. I've already found out the hard way how maintenance can become quite a challenge when a design becomes a grown-up system living next to the website it should mirror.

Comedy and Microservices

Phil Hawksworth. Well, Phil. I really like him. I met him for the first time two years ago while sitting on a beer-bike in Freiburg after the Smashing Conference. (The ride we had that time will luckily never be told in public.) After finding out he will present at BTConf I sent him a note via Twitter.

Phil talked about Microservices and how web developers can use tested working solutions to existing problems to reduce the workload it would take to build all by themselves.

Feeling this syndrome of “not in-house” myself from time to time, this talk really helped me understand when it makes sense to diverge from the standard track and go for prebuilt solutions. The best example I can think of (and Phil also mentioned it in his presentation) is IFTTT.

“There is great power in avoiding responsibility.”

“If This, Then That” is a conglomerate of microservices, where one can create recipes or use existing ones. A recipe can look like:“If I post something on my blog, send a message on Twitter, post something on Facebook and forward the whole thing to Medium.” Since I last looked around there, it sure got more capable than that.

He also talked about static site generators and how they are the perfect example where Microservices help out in making a static site more dynamic.

One of the main points that stuck with me was:

“Complexity can be a barrier while simplicity can be an enabler.”

Keeping it simple and avoiding complexity, can make your, and the life of your co-workers, that much easier.

Hacking the Visual Norm

Data Visualization is really not my cup of tea. I always imagined it to be about endless meetings, where people show pie-charts and bars get thrown around and how on the x-axis there's humor and on the y-axis there‘s the time the meeting will take – and we all know what the graph on that chart will look like.

And here‘s Nadieh Bremer showing how Data Visualization with d3.js is something unimaginably creative and awe-inspiring. You really should go to Visual Cinnamon, Nadieh‘s homepage, and see for yourself as I‘m completely unable to explain the concepts she presented in my own words.

From my perspective, she turned one of the driest subjects every company has to deal with into art.

Peace, Hellfire and Outer Space

Talking about art, meet Seb Lester (creator of typefaces, artist, calligrapher), showing the audience how the typefaces he created have been (mis)used around the world – and beyond.

NASA chose his typeface Neo Sans for one of its projects; the 2010 Vancouver Olympics for all their branding; and then he finds it used on a menu in an Indian snack bar.

Yet, while everyone and their mother used his letters, noone knew the person behind them. Seb showed us a picture of his desk at home, followed by a short video of him doing a calligraphy. This video (fancy a compilation?), among others, propelled him first into the world of social-media and later on international TV.

I love fonts and typesetting, although I‘m not very good at it. I tried some calligraphy but failed miserably – to be honest, I‘m hardly able to recreate my signature since my last name changed after getting married! Meh. However, I almost shed a tear over how beautiful his calligraphies are.

Some found the talk to be cheesy, or thought it to be mostly about himself, marketing his own brand. I found it inspring and also very interesting, as you got to see a different angle on your own work. You may create the most beautiful of fonts, which will be used in space and during the Olympics – and then it‘s the menu of that snack bar around the corner.

The Final Talk of Day One

Award-winning illustrator Yoku Shimizu, who created the design for the BTConf T-Shirts for this year, took the stage and brought a witty and inspirational presentation with her. As she learned speaking English in New York, she also brought a lot of four-letter words with her, which, mind you, did not have a negative impact on the quality of her speaking.

Yet, no matter how well she spoke, the slides were what really mattered to me here. Wonderful illustrations, so unique and yet still identifiable as hers. True pieces of art for each and every image.

I really laughed when she stated (this is not a quote but how I kept it in mind):

“I once did a cover of a Batman Comic. audience cheering and clapping I know, I know. Thanks. It‘s not my favorite type of work, looking back, but it‘s always great for street credibility when teaching young students how illustration works.”

A client project from her early work as an illustrator showed us how creating illustrations for a newspaper, on demand, the night before the paper goes into print, can be a challenge of epic proportions. As Yuko pointed out, it was either working night shifts and taking in whatever feedback was thrown at her from clients, or you‘re out of business because the will tell everyone in their network about how you failed to meet their requests. Talking about demanding clients is something not everyone does on stage from what I know.

Hotel? What Hotel?

Right after the conference, we went to eat and decided, as Jan and Mario hadn‘t been there before, to head to the old city centre of Düsseldorf.

“The longest bar in the world” consists of over 300 bars, restaurants, discotheques, breweries and pubs all on a spot of half a square kilometer. If you can name the drink, you can get it. While nothing for the faint-hearted, it sure is a sight you‘ll remember.

We didn‘t take it to the end of the night, though, as we knew we‘d have to get up in the morning for day two of BTConf.

Day 2

Wake up. Realize you‘re still in the same hotel. Realize that it‘s time for the second day of BTConf to take off! Shower, breakfast, off to the venue it is again.

Blow Away Them Hangovers

While my peers and I decided to take it easy on the first night, a few other attendees (and speakers?!) didn‘t look all too flashy or awake on the morning of day two.

But five minutes into Espen Brunborg's talk, everyone was on the edge of their seats. This has to be the funniest, freshest and most interesting talk I‘ve seen in a long, long time. From how Espen presented, to what he talked about and what the key take-aways were, this talk had it all.

I even caught him referencing “Planet of the Apes” which reminded me of someone else occassionally doing so. Twitter Banter. Love it.

Apart from all the laughs and jokes, the presentation drove home the point which Christian Heilmann had made clear on day one: it‘s not how you got the one holy truth or how others “just don't get it”. It is about how both ends of the spectrum are right in what they do and how, together, joining forces, great things could be made.

I witnessed Jeremy Keith not saying “progressive enhancement” in a talk

Along came Jeremy. He replaced Ellen de Vries, who couldn‘t make it, and I must say it‘s not too shabby a replacement to have Jeremy Keith present as a surprise. Jeremy ran the Indie Web Camp together with Joschi Kuphal on the weekend before the conference and originally planned to only attend the conference.

Well, so much for best-laid plans: there he is on stage talking about how we developers can evaluate technology. How well does it work? How well does it fail? Both important questions to ask before setting out to use a brand-new tool or technology. How well does it suit my needs? How well does it serve the user?

He came to quote Postel‘s law (or the robustness principle) which is a general guideline when it comes to designing software:

“Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others“

Being the great storyteller that he is, it was a joy to listen and learn from Jeremy‘s seemingly endless fountain of knowledge. Although he did not say “progressive enhancement” in his talk, he talked about the idea behind it, saying that evaluating technology by looking at its robustness and how it serves the user first should be the way to go.

Performance and Accessibility

The talk I looked forward to the most followed up now: Patty Toland of the Filament Group talking about Performance. The Filament Group, who won the Agency of the year award at the 2015 Net Awards; which created loadCSS, a script I incorporate in all websites I build since I got a hold of it; which shows and tells everyone how performance should be a first class citizen when it comes to evaluating technology for building sites and apps for the web.

Patty didn‘t disappoint. Although it was a pretty fast-paced talk with slides changing in seconds, I was able to follow it quite nicely as I knew some of the facts being presented from reading the Filament blog and Scott Jehl's book Responsible Responsive Web Design, published by A Book Apart (book recommendation: check). Luckily, one can access all slides via the wrap-up article I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

Showing how bad performance can impact the life of many users, how bad performance is an accessibility concern, how page weight can cost people a lot of money which they may not have – all of this while backing it up with statistics, case-studies and more. Lovely.

One thing that stuck in my brain is the fact that 3G takes up close to 40% of the network speeds accessing the web on a daily basis. 2G is just as common when taking in global statistics, and around 20% of people in North America own only a smartphone or some other kind of mobile device – no desktop or laptop or broadband internet in sight. Think about this the next time someone states:“Yeah but we all got fiber, now. Why should I care?”

I hope more people care about the low-end of devices and networks, now that they‘ve seen Patty on stage.

Tell a Story with JavaScript

Sarah Drasner, who I had the pleasure to meet once before, told the audience how animating SVG with JavaScript can be part of the user-journey, and how it can make an interface not only usable but also enlightening.

Her presentation contained some nice animations she had created. To see how gradually revealing information can make it more digestable was an eye-opener.

Being on the bleeding edge when it comes to JavaScript, she also talked about her experiences with React and Vue, two competing frameworks being used by many developers around the globe. As I‘ve only dipped my toe into the waters of developing with Vue, it's been great to see her talking about it.

Luckily, after the conference was over, I sat across her at the dinner table and we had the chance to briefly but excitedly talk about how we both love Vue. This resulted in Jeremy stating:“You talk about this as if you have found Christ.” Well, not so much, but it is pretty awesome.

Are Machines Creative?

Quasimondo, also known under his real name Mario Klingemann, works in the field of deep learning and machine-learning, a universe completely foreign to me. I know what people in this section of the industry do, but how leaves me with a group of questionmarks hovering over my head.

So it was impressing to see what Mario had to show. He asked the question of whether a machine can be creative and answered it with another one:

“Can humans be creative?”

Showing the capabilities of his machines by endlessly zooming into pieces they‘ve created themselves or how a computer tried to recreate human faces (talking about five-year-olds portrait painting here) sure was an experience.

I couldn't figure what to make out of this talk: mind-blown. Little did I know what computers are already capable of. A lot of us must have heard the news that a computer beat a human-being at chess, Go, Space Invaders or whatever but a computer rendering art or recreating it? I felt that‘s a totally different thing.

And one thing only a few among the attendees realized: Mario‘s slides all had computer generated art as a background. You couldn‘t tell until the second half of his talk – it looked just like an old oil painting with a few cracks here and there in the paint. Stunning.

All Good Things Come to an End

So, the final talk had to come and it came with something very special to me (and possibly to a lot of people in the audience). “I‘m a fan of David Bowie!” is something millions around the world can say and here I am saying it too. Not the first time, but still.

On stage stood Jonathan Barnbrook, who worked with David Bowie for the last fifteen years and through four LPs released to the public. With wit and insight, and without taking himself and his work too seriously, Jonathan said that it‘s important to not take too much pride in your workings.

You might work for one of the most stellar figures in popular culture and do your best, and still someone might not “get it”.

Showing the artwork for the LPs and other pieces he created (working for Adbusters, for example) made clear how great design is not cramped with a lot of things to make a point. “Good design is as little design as possible.” is one of the ten principles of design by Dieter Rams, and here you got someone who clearly understood what this meant.

Somehow not everyone sees or feels the same, and when Jonathan presented the artwork for “Blackstar”, David Bowie's final LP, social media fired back:

“This Jonathan Barnbrook must be the laziest designer in the world!”

and

“I bet he charged millions for this crappy black star on a white background. This is ridiculous!”

were only two of some comments he showed in his slides.

The End

The 2017 edition of the Beyond Tellerrand event in Düsseldorf was just as good as the one the year before. Thank you so much to Marc Thiele, who never grows tired of sweating the many details I cannot mention here because it would blow this already lengthy blogpost completely out of proportion. If I needed to describe Marc with a single word it would be “caring”. Thanks again for caring and taking the time to talk to anyone having questions before, during and after the conference. While it might be his job to do so, you can see that he does it with excellence and with a passion. If it wasn‘t for that passion, I suppose the conference would be just another event, just another option among many.

Closing this post I will say one thing: I‘ll keep returning for as long as there‘s a BTConf, that‘s for sure. With so much value for money and such a familiar and inviting atmosphere, how could I not?

#btconf #beyondtellerrand #web development #web design

[konstantinwrites]

Treasures from the Roof of the Insurmountable, Part 1

Small Worlds XI (Wassily Kandinsky)

Hi friends! So, I ranked all 42 songs of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest. It was as simple as comparing each song to every other and missing every social event for a month. I didn’t give /10 scores and didn’t add a bunch of space between songs to signify gaps in quality, like a cool blog would. However, many generous friends of mine reviewed these songs as well. For an alternative, reasonable point of view, theirs is here.

I understand that asking to listen to 42 three-minute songs on the Internet should be reserved for astonishing lovers, but I hope that you’ll give them a play. The reviews are based primarily on the studio versions, linked in the title, but for fun I more strongly recommend the embedded live performances. This turned into an epic nine-parter only by luck -- Tumblr wisely halts this kind of obsessiveness by setting a limit of five embedded videos per post. 

Anyway, I think you’ll like at least some songs. Not this next one, but some.

42: Spirit of the Night by Valentina Monetta and Jimmie Wilson (San Marino) (Returnee, Eurovision 2012, 2013, 2014)

I will make a conscious effort not to embalm you in Eurovision completely, but I have to bend here since Valentina Monetta breaks all unwritten rules anyway. This was her fourth Eurovision appearance, all for the Most Serene Republic of San Marino, in six years. San Marino houses less people than you saw this weekend, sure, but there are probably a few other musicians in the country that would like a boost to their career.

Maybe some of them were on stage for 2012’s timely “The Social Network Song” (titled “The Facebook Song”, pre-zucc), with which Valentina began her pillage of this contest. (If you have patience for exactly one hyperlink...)

 The lyrics incandesce:

Are you ready for a little chat?/And a song about the Internet It's a story ‘bout a social door/You’ve never seen before;

And the “Social Network” music video, all morning bedsheets and Safari browsing and wild leers into camera, is like the aftertaste of a burp from the dude who ran ARK Music Factory. 

Throughout the last eon, the early to mid 2010′s, peace still ruled. It was underpinned by dark respect for the creature, and fear, but effective and true peace it was. In Year 3, Monetta qualified to the grand final. Appearing in that show was supposed to be the prologue to another Sammarinese age of serenity. Yes, she breathed too hard and accidentally set the Finnish commentators on fire, then threshed her wings and flew out through the arena roof. Human Eurovision performers have gimmicks, too. It was our Monetta, we prayed to her benevolence, and she made other countries and micronational principalities respect us as well.

But we grew tired of living in fear ourselves. If our Monetta was truly done with this world, we would be happy to raise a new generation in peace. Families waited to resettle back to their birth land, planning carefully. At dawn, sometimes, you noted the unsavory magicks in the distance, still discharging in the air. The tribe elders knew that kids were their most important constituency: every evening, a few fun rhymes with the kids that made each of the elders look silly; every forgathering, the children could run off after roll call. Irreverence and joy, with which the children played games on the hills, was as crucial as the considered warnings that the adults were made to hear.

Come spring, at the agora, Elder Dendroch took his deepest breath of the year, all wheeze, as he screwed in the VGA cable to the projector, casting the San Marino 2015 Eurovision artist announcement onto the smooth side of the hill. During the countdown, even All-Naked Christoph went silent. This was to determine his capacity to continue to gyrate himself around the fire each morning without being clawed by Monetta and thrown into the nearest cactus. Her swift retributions of All-Naked Christoph was one of the few Acts that the tribe was grateful for; however, now they yearned for calm and agency. They were ready to pay the price -- and cover their eyes at breakfast.

What a cheer, then. It was, indeed, someone else for 2015. The slothful bards were worth their silver on this day, spooling blunt limericks on the spot, tribesfolk teary with laughter. The eyes of all, awash with joy and soapy bubbles, feasted on daydreams about this new era. Resettling back to town, with everything as it has been (apart from the bread, now a furry green pet), we gleefully watched Anita Simoncini rap -- for we could scream, “No!”. The year after that, Serhat proselytized us, trying to make what sounded like, “I am a dick tit” happen. We loved telling him that it’s not going to happen, and besides, he was the neighboring queen’s chief accountant and she was not letting him out on any more trips like that. Our power was back.

But, well... You saw the rest. You saw 2017. Not even Mostly-Naked Christoph thought that eurodance would rise again. Not even the gloomiest of the kids ever had in mind that Monetta was always in control, and that there is nothing that we can ever do but point our projector at the stars.

“Spirit of the Night” is a dance anthem structured around a conversation between two horny and dim-witted patrons of a San Marino club. “Hey, are you the one I dream about?/Baby, I am.” After successfully capturing his target’s interest with this awful line, the man proceeds to use amateur pick-up artistry to delve into the murky depths of her insecurity. “Every time I see you smile/There is sadness in your eyes.” 

Luckily for him, his quarry eats this obvious nonsense up. After connecting through dance, he seals the deal by revealing that he’s a hurt, insecure man who is in need of a woman to protect him. “Hey, are you the one to take my pain?/Just take my hand/I’ve been so hurt before, it’s hard to trust again.” Nonstop key changes and a reference to obscure weather phenomena attempt to mask the utter vacuity of “Spirit of the Night,” but nobody is fooled. 1/10.

Richard Hansen

41: Keep The Faith by Tamara Gachechiladze (Georgia)

Ten seconds in, this has all the potential in our supercluster. It becomes “Keep The Faith”, but that moody horn-driven bar can lead into a Jay-Z track, a Antony and the Johnsons symphony, or the title screen of “Swordfish”. But it becomes “Keep The Faith”, and it’s a little awkward; I live and work in Georgia, and super enjoy this country. 

However, this song is derivative garbage, devoid of any sensory pleasure. It has many siblings, songs of this type, all grey, parts-per-million pollutant specks. It’s a pure ballad and a very specific type of ballad, none of which have ever been enjoyable: pie-eyed on piano, throaty-vocaled, vowel-elongating, forcefully important, crudely pitch-raising, artless fat zeppelins of songs, avoiding melodiousness by purpose and not even by chance. 

I like the few seconds in the bridge where Tamara and the backup singers go, “Oh - ohhh - oh! - ohhh!”, and I like the final string cadences, the last two notes in the song. I wish they’d signaled the end to something not so comprehensively dopey.

Please also let me just add here that I adore “Mzeo” by Mari Mamadashvili, the Georgian winner of Junior Eurovision 2016. 

I’ve cried listening to it. I’ve showed her performance to many people. Don’t revoke my residence permit. Look at how much good stuff Billy wrote.

Having heard a plethora of Georgian music over the past year, I really didn’t have my hopes up going into this one. But I have to hand it to Tamriko, she may have actually pulled it off. The song’s video isn’t much to talk about, and I found the opening lyrics about hiding behind a veil and then panning to a woman in a hijab to be slightly off color, but the tune and subsequent lyrics are actually pretty cool. One might say the video had my sentiments shaken, but not stirred. That’s right, I referenced James Bond (Jamesi Bondi) and how could I not? The ominous violin, three-key piano repetition and horns - the song practically screams, “put us in the next movie!” and I happen to agree.

If we got rid of the whole weird hip-but-frowning aspect and replaced it with an unmistakable gun-toting secret agent silhouette, complete with tastefully nude female figurines, Georgia might actually have a hit on their hands. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big believer in letting music speak for itself and in many ways this song does, but at the end of the day it’s also a pop song and that music video HAS to be tight. Get this out to Eon Productions, Georgia; I’ll be disappointed if Ed Sheeran gets to do another title sequence.

As far as vocals go, Tamro fits the role pretty nicely - she can really belt it and it adds to the overall grandness of the song. As a matter of fact, grand is probably the word I would use to describe this. It’s the kind of song that makes you clench your fists and pump your arms dramatically and ceremoniously. Tamo’s powerful vocals and lyrics are engaging and entertaining; my only real worry is that with such a Bond-sounding song, people might have a difficult time seeing it as its own thing. Not to mention, if people dislike James Bond, they’re probably just going to see this as some hack interpretation of an Adele hit. While some might view it as lacking in theme originality, I see it as a distinguished work operating in a certain genre (a difficult one at that). I don’t think the sky will be falling on this song any time soon! Qochagh, Sakartvelo! 8/10.

Billy Moran

40: Gravity by Hovig (Cyprus)

The lifetime of this adult contemporary rockvomit is: released to the suffering masses, all 4th grade boys for three days repeat-blast “Gravity” on the family speakers, then torrent Battlefield and yelp and chaotically shake their faces to its menu music and forget about “Gravity” forever. No other integration of this song into a human life can be permitted.

This wailing, free trial-distortion-effects, tragically detached one-dimensional nonsense would take aback a NHL video highlights editor, and they’re immune to this stuff. “Gravity” is for a montage of, like, a corrupted toothpaste factory, where the toothpaste is evil. There is something a little demonic with the toothpaste. It’s been breached. There are lich in the toothpaste, hiding themselves and their sorcery, and they now terrorize users of toothpaste all over the world. Only those who still use tooth powder have not yet turned. With this paragraph, I have now released more beauty into this world than the Cypriot entry. I’m not proud of putting lich and toothpaste together. I know I’ll answer for this one day. Sometimes you have to drive a point home.

This is a solidly made pop ballad with a catchy chorus that I could see getting good radio play for about two weeks before being promptly forgotten. While somewhat catchy on first listen, it quickly loses its appeal and you realize there is nothing more there than another over-produced pop song that makes oatmeal look plain and generic. This song is the definition of standard, meaningless pop. It's begging for some sort of edge to it, some sprinkles to go with its vanilla. As is, I'd much rather listen to “Hook” by Blues Travelers.

Ryan Haskell

39: Dying to Try by Brendan Murray (Ireland)

I like Brendan’s voice. For 54 seconds, he makes a serviceable dyingtotry. I like that the first line of this Segway-speed ballad gets close to saying, “Take a leak of faith with me”. I like his tuneful delivery through the lightly layered first minute, and you could stroll to this and take sips of still water and feel correct.

Then the songwriters take out their game hunting rifles, trundle us into the basement and serve us a soup of impotent key change, never-ending chorus and string accompaniment, all of which we would spoon out of the dish in a less savage situation. You eat — you have to — belch, relax a bit, and then notice Brendan at the table, his meal long finished, as he mouths to you, “trying to die”.

As an American who grew up American, with American parents and American grandparents, I myself am American. That said, I definitely identify with the Irish a bit - they’re my ancestral roots and I root for the guys for sure. But I have to say, Brendan Murray, bud, you let me down. The song can be summed up in one word: boring. The kid looks to be about 15 and, sure, he has some pipes (little Irish pun there), but I have to believe these impressively high notes he’s hitting have more to do with his lack of pubic advancement and less with actual talent.

The music video takes us on the journey of love’s rocky road, complete with a daughter of Elrond and a poodle man that would make Dr. Moreau jealous. Perhaps I would have paid more attention to the lyrics if the featured couple were less visually jarring. I mean, the woman was fine… But the poodle man! That hair! There’s a million elf-y looking guys in Ireland to complement the girl, and they choose that guy!

My biggest complaint comes at the peak of the song’s rising action. Brian is walking through the grassy knolls of Ireland, as one does, and the viewer is treated to a beautiful melancholy landscape that just screams of Ireland. But instead of giving the listener something to complement the breathtaking view, we get a gospel choir harmony as Brian dives into his chorus. It was the perfect moment to incorporate cultural music - so poorly utilized by Israel - and Ireland missed it! If a lovely flute had accompanied Brian as the camera raced across the Irish shoreline back to our visually perplexing couple, I think I would have poured a shot of Jameson on the spot and shed a tear for all the struggling lovers in the emerald isle. Instead, the song loses its identity and all my invested interest is gone with it.

Brian, the wise fifteen-year-old he is, ever wary of love’s slings and arrows, tells us, “No one can promise that love will ever learn how to fly”, but I can promise Brian that his song won’t be flying to the top of any billboard charts. Maybe something a little more fun next year, huh Ireland? Sláinte! 4/10.

Billy Moran

38: My Turn by Martina Bárta (Czech Republic)

The indifferently mute student can be the most frustrating. Staring at the arithmetic poster for two minutes at a time, boring with their pen more and more millimeters of their desk hole, finding the right moments to sip a hidden can of Fanta with the vigilance of a mosquito pursuing a meal from a human absentmindedly playing the Chrome dinosaur game -- apathetic students cause little obvious trouble in class. However, asked to contribute to any task, their monastic silence and translucency can drop a teacher’s command of the classroom to the floor. Other students, especially ones wavering between “kind of paying attention” and the Frowning Face With Open Mouth emoji, sense the student’s apathy, think that the lessons are, indeed, for nothing, and mentally teleport themselves out of there as well.

Which brings me to “My Turn”. It would be out of date during Pangaea, but out of date is very often fine. The prime disappointment is that it has a harmonious, sentimental melody to throw around, as most ballads do, but concretely refuses to get out of the hotel elevator, or the Saturday morning wine tasting. There are many piano works like these; it shouldn’t be an excuse to bunt and be another, especially because it’s got a pleasant tune. I’ve listened to “My Turn” at least 30 times and can recall the main progression with roughly the same clarity as remembering why Fletcher Christian mutinied and vamoosed to Pitcairn Island, the Wikipedia summary of which I probably read once, or maybe someone told me. Before going home, Teacher Eurovision will leave an inspirational message for Martina on her desk. “You can be different!” The next morning it’ll only be used with a shout of, “Kobe!” and be another clump a few feet from the trash basket.

Czech Republic’s Eurovision results, 2007 (debut) to 2017:  28th in a 28-song semifinal; 18th in a 19-song semifinal; 18th in a 18-song semifinal; Not participating for five years (understandably); 13th in a 17-song semifinal; 9th in a 18-song semifinal, 25th in a 26-song final; 13th in a 18-song semifinal.

Czech selection committee: just put a donk on it. You’ll like the results.

Not only did Ms. Martina choose to submit a song written in English to the Annual Eurovision Ritual, helping the beast of globalization devour her culture and language, but she also submitted a song with lyrics so boring that they flee from my mind immediately after I’ve heard them, as if Gilderoy Lockhart himself has just charmed them directly out of my cerebellum. Lyrics: 2/10.

Luckily, the music video itself is far more interesting than the song itself. I’m at least 80% sure this video depicts what people experience while rolling on Ecstasy. Nude bodies of various age and shape, writhing in ways that are at once harmonious and cacophonous. Here an old white man finds peace in a warm-towel embrace of a large black man. There a bald man hangs his head in his ultimate shame only to be comforted by an equally bald woman. At one point the bacchanalian dancers just all freeze and turn their heads sharply to one side, staring at the audience with eyes that contain something between abject misery and ultimate pleasure. Disturbing! Music video: 7/10. I found this video hilarious. Personal enjoyment: 9/10.

Cody Phillips

#eurovision #eurovision 2017