Bill Drummond on the Lebanese: A million quids for your thoughts

Image credit: The Seven Streets

Now I am positively sad! It seems Bill Drummond - the very controversial man who fronted KLF has been in Lebanon as part of his cake baking activities which he defines as such in today's guardian, and I was not able to get my part of the cake! The good news is what he says about Lebanese hopistality (emphasis is mine):
"I have been constructing cake circles for more than 10 years now. What you do is take a map, draw a circle on the map. The centre of the circle has to be somewhere that you can bake cakes. Each cake you bake there, you then take to the edge of the circle, knock on a door; when it is answered you say: "I have baked you a cake, here it is." Now most people might love the idea of someone baking them a cake, but when you have this strange man standing in your doorway trying to give you a cake, you will undoubtedly have a lot of things going through your head. It may be all cosy in the Guardian offices when you are baking each other cakes, but out there in Bootle or the Dingle, as in when I was constructing the Liverpool Cake Circle last autumn, it can get quite confrontational.
That said, there have been parts of the world where I have constructed a cake circle and every door you knock on they invite you in for a meal and they get their neighbours in to meet you as well. Based on my experience, I would say that the Lebanese are the most friendly and welcoming people in the world."
Mind you, this is the man who burned one million quids in the UK challenging audiences to find a meaning in the act!

Bil Amaliyeh: Ya nas el dinyeh doulab...

Copyright: Miled Issa
I loved Toom Extra's take on tyres, but I think this post from Bil Amaliyeh whereby stamps commemorate the best of your nation is simply hors-concours!... I love it.

Jawla fi al manatek

 A teaser and a revealer again... This time for Bank Med and Middle East Airlines. Mind you the tease ris much more interesting than the revealer. The teaser asks "bitmayyil?" which means "would you drop by?" and then in the revealer do we understand that mayyil is the Arabization of miles which means sky miles with MEA hence the line "what are you waiting for to start your miles" or "what are you waiting for to drop by". Considering this is a product no one would be interested in, the whole thing seems a tad pointless to me.

Bavaria with 0,0% alcohol (so much it has earned a certificate in IRAN the most non-alcoholic country in the world) is positioning itself as "for everyone anytime" - in case you want an extended version of the headline it's "for everyone anytime including those guys from Dahyieh who would not want to be seen drinking alchoholic stuff which makes it OK for them to consume it." Get it?

Cafe Super Brasil has won the corniest award ever, but at least they are being funny about it "the best coffee in Lebanon does not need reading coffee marks"... Yes, cute.

I am sorry but "3a raseh" which means "be my guest" and litteraly "on my head" is disugsting when associated with food in that way. I think it's quite repulsive that food is displayed in such a way and I don't care what the meal is because I can already feel a hair in my soup....

 Now when was the last time your bank told you that the interest rate had a tax???? You didn't know? Me neither!!! So now they are telling us tricks of the trade and nevermind if IBL bank is going to pay it on your behalf the mere fact that it is exists - and that this ad exists - is spooky by itself.

Remember John Lennon's imagine lyrics? "Imagine no possessions"? Well, forget it, what you can imagine is paying for those possessions through pin-pay... Now isn't that lovely?

 

Speaking of cell phones, Alfa has played it very geeky with this new line whereby "he's lost without a cell phone"... A bit too nerdish perhaps, but we all know that nerds ending top of the pack later...

Now can anyone explain to me what an object that has four wheels, four doors, what seems to be an engine, side mirrors, front lights (I am judging by what I am seeing) can be? In my family we call them "cars"... Apprently the Rymco people are amazed the new Nissan Sunny is one such thing to which the appelation applies. "Shift"? Eltellak! (in case you did not get the joke "shift" which is the selling line of Nissan means "you see?" and eltellak means "I told you"...)

Aymi dobb tyabi, rayha....

This comes courtesy of the super blog Bil Amaliyeh.... Yes, "it sucks... it's best if I went and became a palm tree... It's more dignified." Anyone not living here does not understand how much resilience it takes....

When your best ally is your enemy

And so it happened again!... After Marie France posters which have been defaced but an ultra-Christian person who, oddly, turned out to be an acquaintance of mine (and he bragged about what he did in front of me!) here comes Mohamad Sibai doing exactly the same thing for the LGBT community in Lebanon who for a while now have been trying to shed a light on their cause without much success. And in he steps with his homophobic article published in Outlook the mouthpiece of the American University of Beirut - what sparked his outrage is seeing two men holding hands on the street. And as a direct response the www.lebidaho.com website is doing some posters on the wall specifically targeting this - except this time they have all the visibility they crave!... Mohamad Sibai has "pleasured them at any price" as the title of his infamous article says. Really, sometimes your best ally is you enemy.

Antabli: Back to the source but not back to the fountain!

Photo credit: Mark @ 248 a.m. 

Photo credit: Rana Salam

We have learned from Rana Salam that Antabli is going to be back to downtown Beirut, above are the old and new logo. Rana explains that the three added stars were for the prestige bit, and well - I guess this being Antabli and all - one has to stick to Arabic caligraphy that says "super retro futuristic" (since they wanted the brand to enter 21st century). But try as I might to see the "birke" or "fountain" (note Mark's photo and the old logo having a fountain!) I could not find one in the new shop... When Souk el Barghout (flea market) was being held in downtown Beirut Antabli installed its old fountain out in the open and I even tasted lemondade there - little did I know that it was going to be an orphan feat and that the very well known fountain is to be ditched. So Antabli is back to its source in downtown but not to its fountain!....

PS: This "thing" above called the Antabli fountain has nothing to do with the old Ottoman style fountain which was the original one.

SPF: Strange (Poisonous) Fruit.... after Billy Holiday

Well, the ad is not used to its full potential, there are other ways of pointing out the racism issue. I give an example, when one of my students wanted to tackle the subject head on, we did a tv script for a washing powder which featured their Arabic-speaking Ethiopian maid. The rationale was simple, the washing powder ads are addressed to the "lady of the house", the one who washes, cleans, does the laundry, and picks children for the school bus - it has ceased to be the wife, now the maid does all of this. We even loaded the copywriting with some very racist terms such as "hal mas7ou2 bi bayyedle wejje" (this powder makes my head white - a local expression that means "makes me proud").

This being said, I don't think it is "mediocre" though as Mustapha from Beirut Spring judged it, after all if it got us talking about it (for the right or wrong reasons) then the message must have gone across. In addition we call know that a horse designed by a committee is a camel, so consider that - for an ad from a ministry - this is not bad at all!...
Update: It has been brought to my attention that the video above has become private, lucky Mustapha from Beirut Spring has already posted a description of it: “An attractive white girl in a bikini saunters out of a swimming pool and seductively applies sun oil as she lounges. The lifeguard keeps staring and smiling at her, but when she gets a bit too tanned and turns into some horrible black creature, the lifeguard suddenly changes tack: He turns stern, prevents her from swimming and forces her to don a domestic worker’s uniform.”

And even made a still from it:

The key to a man's heart is through his Carton.

There's a new magazine in town called "The Carton" about Lebanon's vibrant food culture which comes courtesy of Art And Then Some, the magazine is produced somewhere between Beirut, London and Dubai (where the team is mainly based), and the first issue is now out (it can be found in alternative places such as Papercup, Tawlet, Dar, Art Circle, Luanatic, Librairie El Bourj and Ginette). If you are a facebook person, you can find them here.