Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

Finland, once the eternal loser and failure has become a real Eurovision powerhouse in the past few years. Finishing 6th and 2nd in the past few years and qualifying already four years in a row - fifth one coming this year - has also managed to sneak in to help other delegations like Albania last year and  this year Ari Levelä is doing stagings for Austria and Cyprus, Teemu Muurimäki who created the famous green bolero for Käärijä among others will dress up JJ and even UMK show producer (and one of Käärijä's dancers) Matti Myllyaho is involved with Austria's staging. Estonia's entry this year is co-written and produced in Finland, the Swedish entry is by Finns and then we have Finland itself in top-10 in the odds to win the whole thing. In short Finns are behind four entries in the Top-10. And Käärijä will perform in Basel as interval act. Again. That brings us to the curious situation in Finland: the media and people have pretty much forgotten about Erika Vikman and our en...

December 6 is the Independence Day in Finland and the traditional way of celebrating it is infront of the TV where an hours long live broadcast from the Presidential palace takes place. Being a sober democracy the ladies here don't get many chances to dress up like royals or Hollywood stars so one of the main focus of the evening is What are they wearing? The media speculates and comments the dresses and poor you if you end up in the list of the worst dressed or make some major etiquette mistake. Anyways, Helsinki 2007 hostess Jaana Pelkonen is now a MP and thus invited to the ball. She has been every year one of the most photographed and stylish and best voted ones, and this year she had a surprise for us: She wore one of the dresses from Helsinki 2007 Eurovision, the green one by Teemu Muurimäki. Recycle! Yes. Way to go, Jaana.  For Jaana the presidential ball is a special in many ways; here she met her fiancée in 2007 when she was invited thanks to the job well done in ...