Bulletz Over Beirut

More pics from HeroMachine. It’s my preferred time-waster this weekend.

I played around with Hero Machine 3, and this is the result! It was fun. Problem is…it’s not useful for school, which is what I was hoping for. It’s not got the right options for an idea I was playing with.

THE ARABIC MUSIC VIDEO DRINKING GAME

DISCLAIMER: 

In no way to do I encourage excessive drinking. I recognize that nearly all adults have had a drink, and of those, many of us have played drinking games.  The vast majority of us do so responsibly. This post is meant more to be tongue-in-cheek and a commentary on the nature of music videos in the region versus a genuine attempt at encouraging the world to a) drink excessively and b) watch music videos excessively. Both are potentially hazardous to your health, though alcohol’s effects are far simpler to discern. 

Please keep that in mind when reading this entry. 

Every time I go out to eat, TVs play one of two channels: Fashion TV or an Arabic music video channel. I hate Fashion TV (it is very thin women walking 24 hours a day) but I have come to accept music videos. They follow discernible patterns that help with language and cultural acquisition. Yeah, that’s my excuse.

I honestly believe that you can learn a great deal from music videos. They are rather parochial reflections of what is considered “cool,” “hip,” “romantic,” etc. in the given culture that produces it. Arabic language music videos vary considerably by country, though they share a few basic premises that make it possible to develop common criteria between them. That being said, these criteria have variations, which are addressed later in the blog. 

I decided to capitalize on my increased knowledge of the genre by doing what any reasonable TV watcher would do: create a drinking game. While I don’t drink myself (I am allergic to alcohol) I know many people do. 

So ladies and gents…presenting the Arabic Music Video Drinking Game (Lebanese Edition!) You do not have to speak Arabic to play! A ten video minimum is recommended for the full experience. 

RULES: 

Please feel free to download the attached JPEG to play. Depending on where you live in the Arabic-speaking world, check the “Regional Variants” section below.

SUGGESTED DRINKS: 

• For folks to don’t drink: pomegranate or blood orange juice
• For light drinkers: Al Maaza or 961 beer
• For wine-os: Ksara or Massaya, whatever’s cheaper
• For big hitters: Arak (if you don’t know what that is…just go for beer.) 

REGIONAL VARIANTS:

All countries: Replace the famous singers with ones from your respective country or region. Same with drinks, but note some of my suggestions. 

Gulf States:

• Grape juice is fine in any Gulf country. You’ll have to use homebrew or maybe Red Bull if you want to try something stronger. 
• If you do use homebrew, make sure whoever made the homebrew knows what they are doing. Canadians are a good bet.
• Find pirated videos. Like they’re gonna show all the cool Lebanese videos in say, Kuwait. Or Saudi. You get it if you live there. 
• Only sip when a male singer is wearing a keffiyeh. You have a lot of those. 

Egypt: 

• Only sip if traditional musicians appear: drink if they are “Nubian.”
• Don’t bother with wine unless it’s Cru Des Ptolemees.

Tunisia: 

• Why would you drink arak when you have thibarine? Go get some! 
• Yes, any “Berber-dressed” person counts as “from a village.”
• If you don’t play with Ayman Lseeq, you are a chump and should play the Lebanese version. 

Morocco

• Get some Medallion wine.  
• See the Tunisian section on Berber rules. 
• Drink if the male singer is dressed like a rapper. 
• Bottoms up if the female singer is dressed like a rapper. 
• Play with Ahmed Soultan because GAWD DAMN HE IS HAWT.

Algeria: 

• Drink if the singer pays homage to raj. 
• Again, Tunisian rules apply on Berber dress. 

Enjoy! Please comment if you have suggestions for rules, regional variants in particular! 

Glimpses of Vienna: my tour and priorities. 

An Austrian Holiday: Sisi and Me

Beirut is a serious drag for me in the winter. I know many people would love to live in Mediterranean weather when one can almost wear shorts at Christmas dinner. As lovely as that sounds, warm(ish) temperatures are not accompanied by sun in Lebanon, so that staying there in winter feels much like living in a damp closet for about four months. My apartment is dark, as is most of the city, and just about every day, a cold, uninviting rain drenches the streets. Everything smells the way a dog does after playing in the rain, so the rains don’t signal renewal the way rains do in cleaner places. I was all too happy to spend ridiculous amounts of money to go to Austria for Christmas, if only to see snow.

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So far, my trip to Austria via Munich looks just as Christmas-ey as I expected. Here are the pics to prove it. 

This is the video I produced for the Week Without Walls trip to Vietnam I chaperoned November 14th - 21st 2012. It was…quite an experience. 

My European Vacation: a project to demonstrate Animoto for teachers, as well as a showcase of some of my pictures. Enjoy! 

Galway Bay. For some reason, each time I have visited this area, I’ve had a strange sense of a home I never lived in. It’s hard to explain, but I think I’d be better equipped to do so if I was a firm believer in reincarnation. This place resonates the past in me. I find the Bay to be a very peaceful, comforting place. It’s like my feet sink into the peat, and my soul says “Ahh.” 

Weird, I know. But I like it. The pictures don’t do this place justice. 

Comments on Europe and the Middle East

The first and most obvious connection I can draw between these places is that I have visited them in the most recent past. As I have made my way from Beirut to Dublin, they have become more connected for me, and not in the most comfortable of ways. I have lived in Lebanon for a year now, and I have visited several Middle Eastern and North African countries. I have waited with great anticipation for my trip through Europe, as I have grown tired of dealing with the hassles of living in Beirut (few as they are compared to so many people who suffer, I know.) I am of course duly impressed with both Germany and the Netherlands for their infrastructure, solidarity-based taxation/benefits systems, and by just how damn pretty these countries are, especially the Netherlands. What leaves me cold is the uncomfortable, very obvious racial and nationalistic overtones that I have encountered in their national dialogue. The situation in England and Ireland is slightly different, but I can’t say that sits well with me either. Don’t get me wrong — every host I have had on my trip so far has been generous, kind, and more worldly and sophisticated than most of my American peers. Not all Europeans have strong feelings against Middle Eastern people, either. The sophistication I mentioned, however, comes with a price — an air of superiority that pervades most discussions of the world outside. The Middle East, especially Turkey and Morocco, bear the brunt of an open and disturbingly assured racism that makes me wonder: if I lived here, how “welcome” would I actually be? Europe is closing its doors for economic as well as nationalistic reasons. It is in many ways more racist than America, because racism is so ingrained in the culture and not discussed in the same ways it is in the US. The baseline of just about any discussion on Muslims in particular is “they shouldn’t be here.” Fear abounds. Muslims are “Europe’s Mexicans,” and I believe most Americans will know what I mean. Read on if you want to know more about what I think of all of this.

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