Update: Lordi, the Finnish Eurovision entry brought to my attention by Alex in the comments is possibly the most brilliantly insane thing ever. Videos: Could You Love a Monsterman and this year's song Hard Rock Hallelujah.

Serbia & Montenegro won't be participating in the quasi-musical, mostly-political, pan-European cringe fest that is the Eurovision. Why? Because they couldn't agree on the song... The song? Really? Everyone that's seen or even regularly enjoys it knows that music has very little to do with its appeal. It's all about being unbelievably hilarious (or hot).

Long before Simmon Cowell & co unleashed their own brand of hysterical musical humiliation the Europeans had something called Eurovision. Sure, some might say that the yearly event have given us great bands like, ahem, Abba but most contenders bleep off the radar faster than millionaire's yacht in the South China sea. No, the reason we all watch it religiously year after year is because we revel in the embarrassment of it all.

The music & choreography is generally so bad it feels like an American production intended to mock the European music scene. It's the funniest 3 hours of TV on the planet and it doesn't end with the performances because an hour-long pan-european voting session means that soon after being comical it all becomes very political.

The winner usually wins (or loses) due to various reasons: war (the UK does terribly badly ever since the Iraq war), cultural similarity (Cyprus gives Greece the maximum of 12 points yearly), geolocation (Scandinavians bounce the top marks back and forth), language (proud countries who refuse to sing in English usually don't stand a chance)... At the end of the day, like in every other talent show, one of the strongest determining factors is how hot the performer is. You only have to watch the last two years' winners (2004, 2005) to understand what I mean.

So we all know this isn't about the music (chill out Serbia & Montenegro), it's not about having someone molest your eardrums in Norwegian or rap in Dutch, it's about the show about not taking yourself too seriously, it's about Israeli transvestite singers falling under the weight of the trophy. Mostly, it's about taking the piss out of every country but your own. What a great way to bring Europe together!