When we first saw this video of Rodolfo Chikilicuatre performing the song, “Balia el Chiki-chiki,” which won the right to represent Spain at the Eurovision 2008 songwriting competition, we were content to believe that Europeans are just a strange race of alien, lizard people. But it turns out there’s some cleverness behind Chikilicuatre and his original composition “”Baila el Chiki-chiki.” First off, Chikilicuatre is actually comic actor David Fernández Ortiz of Barcelona. This is him sans pompadour.

Ortiz created the character of Rodolfo Chikillicuatre on the Spanish late night talkshow Buenafuente where he was billed as the inventor of the vibrator-guitar. The character rose to popularity after performing a parody of reggaeton called “Baila el Chiki Chiki.” (We knew there was a reason we like him!) Buenafuente’s host Andreu Buenafuente decided to enter the song into the Spanish Eurovision 2008 songwriting contest as a joke because this year Eurovision opened the entries to anyone who could upload a video to MySpace. Voting was left to the people and Buenafuente and his television station LaSexta promoted the crap out of their boy resulting in a landslide win with Chikilicuatre earning 56.28% of the votes, according to Wikipedia. (The second place winner only earned 14.6%.) Some Spaniards are upset because the song is a parody and they don’t think it should have represented the country and some people thought it was unfair because Chikilicuatre had a private network backing him. We think it’s awesome because clearly televised songwriting competitions, like televised singing, dancing and acting competitions, are stupid and lead to mediocre art and the dumbing down of the populace, so they deserve whatever they get. Also, we give big ups to Spain because America would never have the balls to do something like this for fear it might upset Jesus or veterans or something. Chikilicuatre did have to revise his lyrics to comply with Eurovision 2008 rules, though. The original song contained political references to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Hugo Chávez and Mariano Rajoy, which were removed, but a reference to “Porque no te callas?” was kept and a non-political reference to Serbia was added. In the end, “Baila el Chiki Chiki” only managed to tie for 16th place with Albania at the European competition, which seems kind of fitting for this strange, little tale.

Rodolfo Chikilicuatre [Wikipedia]
Rodolfo Chikilicuatre [Official Website]