I took Friday off in what I hope will be the beginning of a pattern for the remaining 5 weeks I’m working here. To facilitate the day off, I worked until about 2am on Thursday, and then further stayed up till 5am in order to have some “me” time. I spent part of the time downloading and listening to the new Morrissey album, Ringleader of the Tormentors (the title of this post is one of the song titles). I was not impressed upon first listen, but maybe it will grow on me. There is perhaps more to the story than that, as each Morrissey record up till this one has a special place in my heart and I have an obsession that goes beyond the music, but that is a tale for another time.
I was going to bed just before Amy was getting up for early morning spin class. Fortunately I was still able to get up at 10 or 11am on Friday to enjoy my day off. I went and got my hair cut at some place Amy saw in the movie Ras Beirut.
Later, Amy and I walked downtown, where we had lunch, dropped by Advance Car Rental and made a reservation for Saturday, and paid a visit to Virgin Megastore. Not surprisingly, they still didn’t have a copy of the Lonely Planet Arabian Peninsula book. Amy has been to nearly 15 bookstores and has been unable to find this book. I guess all the tourist trade with the Arabian Peninsula is one-way the other way. All was not lost, though, as we were able to pick up the first issue of Timeout Beirut.
We stopped by Torino later in the afternoon for coffee and tea. Amy and I leafed through Timeout. It’s great to finally have something of a source of stuff going on around Beirut, albeit the source appears less than two months before our departure. We’ve often felt, rightly or wrongly, that news of most events we would be interested in travels by word of mouth rather than the promotional channels we’re used to. By virtue of not being plugged into these circles, we generally find out about stuff after it’s already happened.
One of the surprising first impressions of the magazine was that the reviews (for restaurants, cafes, and even movies) generally ran the spectrum from neutral to negative. This isn’t really a criticism, as the writers are probably just being fair, but you’d think the first issue of such a publication would err on the side of positive reviews and pick the best selections. Instead, Applebee’s gets a relatively extensive review and 2 (out of 6) stars.
An interesting aspect of the movie reviews is that selections are tagged as edited for screening in Lebanon. Brokeback Mountain is among these (not surprisingly…we didn’t even think it would screen here). Also, Syriana, which makes us very interested to see what they cut (I can only guess it would be the Hezbollah parts, but I wouldn’t think they’d be problematic). Of some disappointment were the features on Haifa (the Britney Spears of habibi-jams) and (I can barely bring myself to type it) “metrosexuals”, as well as the cover-piece “Beirut Revealed.” The latter was essentially a retread of things we’ve heard over the past year (but of which we’ve seen no evidence) with regards to Beirut being a burgeoning cultural mecca. I want to be positive, because I think the publication is a great thing, but I can’t bring myself to be condescending enough to judge it (or Beirut, for that matter) in some kind of little-league of urban culture.
After a while at Torino, Bjorn showed up and Amy went home, still fatigued from her early morning exertions. Bjorn and I stayed much later than we probably should have, “piling up saucers” as Hemmingway might say.
We were a little sad about this on Saturday, as we set off to go hiking in the Chouf. Amy more than adequately covered our Saturday adventures, so I’ll withhold my own commentary and let the outtakes suffice:
After driving back to Beirut and returning the car, we attempted to rent some movies, but were almost entirely rebuffed by a complete breakdown of logic at our new video store. I ended up with the completely irredeemable Devil’s Rejects.
On Sunday, we had intended to have a little bbq with some friends, but the capricious weather 86’ed our plans.
Speaking of 86’ed, I’ve been banned from commenting on Michael Totten’s blog after making some critical comments about his “Open Letter To Hezbollah”:
Ethan, you’re a troll. You come in here slinging insults, but you can’t (or at least won’t) make any kind of factual argument whatsoever. You must be even more fun in person.
You’re out of here. Bye. Further comments will be deleted.
Posted by Michael J. Totten
He’s right, at least insofar that I am more fun in person. The gist of my preceding comment was that he had written an article for the LA Weekly about Hezbollah (and I use the words “article” and even “about” very loosely) that contained practically no information about Hezbollah itself, but plenty of meticulous detail about how they were rude to him. I also made some comments about his tough-guy, adventurer schtick becoming even more insufferable after he realized he could fleece his readers with it. Anyhow, given that this isn’t my first offense and given how sensitive the guy is to criticism, I’m surprised I wasn’t banned sooner. And I don’t really blame him. But if he’s going to leave it up to his detractors to provide “factual arguments” to augment his self-absorbed opinioneering, he’s going to have to share some of that PayPal cash.