Ethan’s Journal

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.

Well, I haven’t really been up to much since my last post. I worked all day yesterday, taking some breaks to read Kerry’s NYTimes opinion piece on an exit strategy for Iraq (which I unfortunately can’t find a link for), my weekly Dan Savage, and Thomas Friedman’s op-ed about immigration. Regarding the latter, many people whose opinions I respect absolutely detest Friedman, but I can’t say I know too much about him. Yesterday’s piece started with some strong points about unavoidable impacts of globalization before veering sharply into crazy-town (you’ll take your barcode and speak English and like it or get the hell out). There was also an interesting piece in the Times about Syria’s apparent crackdown on dissidents across the country.

Syrian officials are aggressively silencing domestic political opposition while accommodating religious conservatives to shore up support across the country.

Amy pointed out that if you replace “Syrian officials” with “American officials”, the sentence works just as well.

I’ve also been F5’ing michaeltotten.com in my anticipation of him revealing his super-secret travel location. This afternoon I was richly rewarded by his absolutely ridiculous “Open Letter To Hezbollah”. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that this dramatic piece of chest-puffing appears when he’s back safe in Portland nearly four months after he wrote his entirely content-less piece for the LA Weekly, or that he tells Hussein that he doesn’t know Beirut because he doesn’t hang out in the Richie Rich cafes and bars MJT frequented, or that he refers to the act of looking at his website “internet surveillance”, but this piece is a notable gem in the already rich tiara of Totten’s jack-assery. I suspect this bold move is meant to throw his readers off the trail after several people (including, uh, me) responded to his “guess where I went that I wasn’t supposed to” shenangigans by listing all of the places he could have possibly been referring to as perfectly permissable places to travel (Syria, Iran, et al).

So, since I’ve done nothing of consequence the last few days, I’m letting loose with a post I’ve been crafting and perfecting– but mostly just sitting on–for a little while. Here are a bunch of pictures I had in a folder for a post I was going to make back in November. A very rough and incomplete and non-sequential accounting August, September, and October, a few of months that I forgot to keep track of…

One of my favorite pictures ever. Geoff, Ray, and Amy in the souk in Damascus. File under album liner for future band.

In our hotel…this way to Mecca. (Damascus)

Ray, Geoff, and Amy relax in the catacomb chapel beneath St. Paul’s. (Damascus)

Ray, Geoff, Charlie, and I at the taxi stand in Damascus. We first met Charlie in ’02, when he told me, “You smoke like a tough guy…like a fish…like chicken.” In the several times we have encountered Charlie since, I have never asked what in the hell he meant by that.

Ray contemplates his Lebanese heritage atop the big hill in Jounieh.

Geoff contemplates infinity. (Jounieh)

The church atop the big hill in Jounieh.

This picture is from the first night Russell and Bridget arrived in Beirut. I have no idea why, but it cracks me up every time I see it.

The lot of us at Yabani, Beirut’s best subterranean sushi restaurant. Later in the evening, three of us guys (I can’t remember which three) were denied entry to Y-Bar, the club downstairs. One of the narcs at the door said, “Three guys. No way. It’s a nightclub, don’t you know?” Nightclub or not, it was also like 9pm. I actually ran into the same sexist door policy with our friend Bjorn at De Prague tonight, actually. I mean, I understand the rationale behind the strategy, but I appreciate it when bouncers play it a little closer to the vest.

The Italian Job.

I didn’t realize until making some photoshop zombies recently how much Russell likes this pose. This was at the little bar in the Starco building (I can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s no longer in business…which I think we found out after telling somebody to meet us there). Geoff and Ray were leaving the next day.

Grafitti in Chatila.

This was from one of the first few nights Dan and Addie visited. We were at Kayan, which was relatively new as Gemmayze joints go. They gave us a bunch of free food and stuff.

On the balloon over Beirut. I surreptitiously judged all our guests on their willingness and/or enthusiasm to go on the balloon. Addie masked her fear with hysterical laughter, which broke the instrument I use for such judgements.

Balloon pros.

My first and last attempt at cooking kafta. If I tell you this story over brunch, Amy will be quick to point out that I didn’t actually make the kafta, but rather bought it at the HyperMarket, rolled it into tubes, and grilled it. Fair enough.

Amy stands over some ancient mosaics and looks over the Cypriot coast. There was a massive (and architecturally impressive) wood and steel structure over the site. It’s not often I trumpet the superior qualities of Lebanon, but in Baalbek, this site would have been located behind the public washrooms (which is a testament to the magnificence of the ancient sites of Lebanon, not to any Lebanese disregard of the same).

Our rental in Cyprus. Notable only for the right-side steering. I didn’t realize that the Cypriots drove British until we were in the rental car parking lot.

A botched attempt at a nice couple shot, but a successful attempt at a nice Amy shot. (Cyprus)

A flattering photo, I think. (Cyprus)

Amy rises from the dead. (Cyprus)

Our side-view mirror was taken out by someone even less adept at driving British than I. I made an attempt at the old stick-and-duct-tape fix. You have no idea how hard it is to find duct-tape in Cyprus…and I have no idea if my credit card company ever reimbursed me the 80CYP for the damages.

My mom and dad gaze at the Cypriot sunset…and the mysterious figure rising from the water.

One of two sea turtle remains we saw on the beach. (Cyprus)

A lizard in Baalbek. Presumably behind the public washrooms.

Good golly, I’ll never tire of making Star Wars-related jokes about the get-ups they give tourists at the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus. To that effect, my mom looks for potential takers on a slightly-used R2 unit.

My mom plays it cool with the argileh in Damascus.

Hey, it’s Charlie!

Our good friend and favorite bartender Mike at Brooke’s, a place that sucks, before he started working at Torino, a place that doesn’t suck.

Out of sequence…the gang at an outdoor restaurant in Baalbek. Highlights of the afternoon included accidentally ordering about 10x too much food and the snotty teenage waiters speaking to us in French. Fortunately for us, Russell speaks French. Unfortunately for the waiters, they did not.

Yesterday our internet went out for a couple hours. Not an event in and of itself…our internet was out tonight until a few minutes ago (there was a big storm and the television reception apparently isn’t the only thing that’s water soluble). We went for a pleasant mid-day stroll, which is and event for me in that it requires leaving the apartment on a weekday during daylight hours.

It was pleasant enough. We went to the travel agent and bought our Oman tickets. We’re visiting the Gulf state for about 10 days at the end of the month. It should be a lot of fun, but I hope I am not gritting my teeth too much at how expensive it is. I may have to get more poisonous toothpaste. After paying for the tickets, we had a nice french fry and mannush (however it’s spelled) lunch.

My favorite neo-con blogger is back after taking a trip “somewhere [he] wasn’t supposed to go.” I am suspecting it was up his fundament. Actually, it was probably either Syria or Iran…neither of which are off-limits to Americans.

Speaking of fundament, Paul Krugman had some choice words in his NY Times column the other day about John McCain and his apparent reversal of sentiment on two fellas who put the “fundament” in “fundamentalist”, namely Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Senator John McCain obviously believes that he can’t get the Republican
presidential nomination without Mr. Falwell’s approval. During the 2000
campaign, Mr. McCain denounced Mr. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson as
“agents of intolerance.” But next month Mr. McCain will be a commencement
speaker at Liberty University, which Mr. Falwell founded.

On “Meet the Press” yesterday, Mr. McCain was asked to explain his apparent
flip-flop. “I believe,” he replied, “that the Christian right has a major
role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is because they’re so
active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be a part
of our party.”
…
But if you choose to make common cause with religious extremists, you are
accepting some responsibility for their extremism. By welcoming Mr. Falwell
and people like him as members of their party, Republicans are saying that
it’s O.K. – not necessarily correct, but O.K. – to declare that 9/11 was
America’s punishment for its tolerance of abortion and homosexuality, that
Islam is a terrorist religion, and that Jews can’t go to heaven. And voters
should judge the Republican Party accordingly.

As for Mr. McCain: his denunciation of Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson six
years ago helped give him a reputation as a moderate on social issues. Now
that he has made up with Mr. Falwell and endorsed South Dakota’s ban on
abortion even in the case of rape or incest, only two conclusions are
possible: either he isn’t a social moderate after all, or he’s a cynical
political opportunist.

McCain, man, I remember when you used to be cool.

I was going to try to tie this in with a discussion Amy and I had the other day about theocratic division of power in Lebanese government (president must be Maronite, prime minister must be Sunni, etc.) to the de facto theocratic pre-requisites in the States (the president must be a practicing Christian, preferrably not Catholic). But since I couldn’t adequately explain where I was coming from in person, I figured I couldn’t very well explain it in a blog post. I even had a sweet Joe Haldeman quote worked out about it being a shame it wasn’t policy because policy can be changed (although he was talking about the disproportionate number of minorities drafted to fight in the Vietnam War).

Anyway…

It sure is tough to come up with something to post every day.

PS: The title of this post comes from a Learn Visual Studio 2005 video I got from a co-worker several months ago but finally just watched. The first example is a “Hello World” program in multiple languages (French, Spanish, German, etc). The narrator has a hilarious accent when he does the languages…”BON-JORE MOND-AY!”

Another rainy day in the ‘Rut. Again our plans of far-ranging exploration were dashed. Instead we had a quiet brunch with all the embassy people and expats at Casablanca before taking a brief, damp walk on the corniche. It’s nice to see that Sunday on the corniche is such a ritual for some families that many were still making a go of it despite the somewhat dismal weather.

On our way home, we got a new membership at this funky little video store. Our friend Ben (who has since gone back to Baghdad) turned us onto it, describing it as a little piece of entrepeneurial ambition by two brothers, featuring lots of bootlegged new releases. We rented Syriana and Land of the Dead. I enjoyed the former, but it was a little hard to follow, especially since our copy had volume issues. Also, the text below would periodically appear across the screen:

I had to set up some crazy audio rig to make it listenable. As Amy mentioned, the Beirut parts were interesting. Definitely not enough cars. I’d like to see it again at some point to fill in the pieces I missed, as I had to relinquish attempts at understanding certain parts of the movie so that I could focus on others. Kind of like in college when I resolved myself to failing Engineering Economics so I could pass Calculus.

Land of the Dead was satisfying as zombie movies go. It had some interesting new ideas, but was kind of lazy otherwise (I guess when you’ve basically invented the genre, as George Romero has, you get a little soft). A funny excerpt from the featurette: Romero relates a conversation with Dennis Hopper in which Hopper is describing how he’d like to play his corrupt overlord character. “So Dennis said, ‘I was thinking Rumsfeld…’ and I said, ‘Exactly!'”

Laptop connected to the M-Audio MobilePre connected to a car cassette adapter in the tapedeck of a “jambox” (as Amy and all the other Texans would call it).

Coda: On the topic of Ben…we were glad to see Jill Carroll released and going home. Ben was kind of friends with her apparently, and had told us the heartbreaking story of her capture when we went down south a few weeks ago.

Last week, I read an article in the Village Voice about “mutant bike clubs” in NYC and the recent defacement of Brooklyn Industries bike-themed window displays. The vandals etched “Bike Culture Not For Sale” with acid on the window glass. My first thought was, “Wow, what a completely moronic and infantile gesture.” But then it got me to thinking about New York in general. I lived there for very nearly 8 years and I have to say I know Brooklyn, as well as parts of the Lower East Side, East Village, and (shudder) midtown better than I know the town I grew up in (in the sense that the town I grew up in has changed so radically since I last lived there). Yesterday we watched a movie supposedly set in New York. At one point they supposedly went to Coney Island and rode the Cyclone. I could tell it wasn’t actually the Cyclone because (a) the seats were all wrong and (b) the rollcoaster in the movie was situated next to some tall trees. While during that entire time I lived there I would be loathe to call myself a “New Yorker”, it is certainly the city that resonates with me more than any other.

So I read this article about mutant bikers defacing shop windows and I felt, almost quixotically so, that it had something to do with me. And it occurred to me that every time I read about proposed subway fare hikes or wifi in Madison Square Park or some proposed stadium, I feel like it affects my life in some way, however tangential that effect might be. I find myself wondering how long I’m going to feel like that. Am I going to be 50 years old and running a tidy web-based hardware interface business in Buenos Aires, yet cocking an ear when I hear mention about the latest snag in going forward with the 2nd Ave. subway line?

In the interest of continuing to try to post everyday, a general accounting of the last 36 hours or so…

Yesterday our friend Rudy put on a production of Antigone (or at least a portion of it) at the Lebanese American University (LAU, not to be confused with AUB). Amy and Bjorn went and checked it out, but unfortunately I couldn’t make it. I had previously decided to stay home and polish up the last few scenes of my as-yet untitled screenplay. It’s (what I am hoping to be) a delightful tale of a cantankerous Calcutta shop-keeper who goes on a spiritual journey of self-discovery through the Indian countryside when his estranged brother, who lives in a remote rural village, sends him a mysterious message requesting his aid. Just kidding. I had to work. The plot I outlined, however, is the plot of a non-existent movie that I always accuse Amy of going to rent when she goes to the video store. It is a commentary on Amy’s refined cinematic taste (in contrast to my own).

After they returned from the play, we ordered some more brown bottles and grilled some chicken. Amy opted to stay in, but Bjorn and I went out. The first stop was De Prague for the purposes of saying hi to a friend of his…nearly not getting in due to their sexist door policy. The whole “Two guys? No sorry, we can’t let you in.” pretty much hangs a skull above the doorway of a joint for me (though that is a terrible metaphor, because if a place actually literally had a skull above the door…). After this brief foray, we went to the after-party for Rudy’s play. It was actually the first time I’d been to anything like a house party in Beirut. Rudy has a great apartment with a great view up on a hill in Achrafieh. It was a nice, small gathering of new faces, but we ended up leaving before too long. In general I feel more comfortable mingling with strangers as I get older, but I often feel that when I mingle with younger people I return to the social awkwardness that was a hallmark of my early twenties (not to be confused with the completely different social awkwardness of my teens). Afterwards we had a nightcap at Torino and headed home at a reasonably respectable hour. Then I proceeded to stay up till the unreasonable hour of 6am instant messaging with my friend Ray. My justification at the time was that if I was going to allow myself to work till 3am a couple nights earlier in the week, I could allow myself the luxury of staying up till 6am to have a conversation with a good friend.

Today we’d planned to get out and about, but the weather was terrible. So instead, we stayed in and watched some terrible TV. I am imagining that Lost In Translation star Scarlett Johannsen is wishing that The Perfect Score would be erased forever from film history. We also got fairly engrossed in some made-for-tv, William H. Macy movie called The Wool Cap. The terrible weather caused our television reception to go out several times during the course of the film, but luckily it was being shown with a half-hour offset on another station.

Our television reception is apparently water-soluble.

I also made dinner, a note-worthy event in and of itself. I can probably count the number of non-grill, non-egg meals I’ve made over the past year on one hand.

Also noteworthy, at least in my opinion, is that we have run out of salt. An interesting side-effect about moving somewhere with a one-year time limit is that you can easily keep track of how much of the long-range staples you use over the course of a year. Before we came here, I calculated (and somewhat underestimated) the number of disposable contact lenses I’d need for a year. The fact that I’ve only just cracked into my second tube of prescription flouride toothpaste* tells me that I haven’t been using it as much as I should.

Ten months worth of salt (I have to admit to posing the scrubby duck there…it belongs in the sink).

* Facts about my prescription toothpaste:

• Number of lethal flouride doses per tube: 6
• Antidote to flouride poisoning: milk
• Reason for having poisonous, potentially lethal toothpaste: I grind my teeth, causing lesions

(After talking a big game about making a post every day, I dropped that ball in the second inning. I guess I’ll have to do two posts today to make up for it.)

Two nights ago, Amy and I went to the Blue Elephant, the best (and to our knowledge, only) Thai restaurant in Beirut. Our dinner was a wedding present from our friends Matthew and Mary Ann and we were under explicit instructions to order the Royal Thai Banquet for two. What a royal banquet indeed. I didn’t even know what a lot of the dishes were, but they were all good and the main attraction was seasoned chicken wrapped in banana (?) leaves.

A great time was had by all (even if they didn’t have the right beer).

I spent a large part of the night trying to figure out how to acquire one of those sweet Blue Elephant ashtrays. I considered simply asking whether I could take or even purchase one, but I thought my request might be deemed weird and refused and then I would be forever branded as “that weird ashtray fetishist” among the staff. I also considered just taking one (as I was sure they had crates of them in back…there are Blue Elephant locations around the world) and leaving a big tip in exchange for their complicity. However, I had last-minute panic about running up against classic Lebanese entrepeneurial spirit. To wit, “Despite the fact that these people just spent a large sum of money on dinner for two, I am going to harrass them over a 15 cent ashtray and thus deep-six the chances of them (or any of their friends) ever coming here again.” I’m sure it’s all in my head, but clearly a suitably complex scheme is required. Next time we go I’m going to have Amy create a distraction and then…

This is the hand-made card in which our wedding gift came. It was sitting on top of the computer monitor for a while. It has some Stella artwork…or possibly poetry…inside.

Thanks Matthew and Mary Ann!

The title is from a post called beirut.year.slice(304, 305); that was languishing in my WordPress drafts. I had gotten this far:

I got about two hours of work done this morning before the power went out. It remained out for about an hour and the generator wasn’t working for some reason, so I took a walk with Amy.

I saw this and realized that not only have I become lazy with my updates, but that time is running out (!) and precious memories are on the verge of being lost forever (!). In all seriousness, I am going to make a resolution to make one post per day, be it ridiculous or sublime, for the remaining 50-odd days that we’re here.

I’ve been working a lot, which explains some of my lethargy in the blog. It’s not as if I need to keep some kind of personal record of this…

…especially since I’ve accepted a full-time, salaried position with the company I’ve been contracting with for the past 1.3 years. After freelancing with no health insurance for like 4 years, I figured it was time to get adult…though not so adult that I’ll actually have to change out of my pjs to go to work. The position officially starts June 5 when we are in Austin, TX.

+++

A few weeks ago we went to Syria for what will probably be the last time in a long while. Amy covered it very well in a post or two on the subject. I have only to add that I really enjoyed each trip that we made to Syria. It’s a wonderful place and I’m very glad to have had it as a counterpoint to Lebanon over the past year (I’m speaking of geography and people and speaking nothing of politics). I remarked somewhat apocalyptically to Amy the other day that I hope these pleasant memories aren’t jogged then jarred two years hence by a news report of “Damascus in flames on the morning after the U.S. Operation Syrian Freedom initiative.”

Wow, real desert.

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Finally, at long last, we have brown-bottle Almazas in our own home. For those of you that don’t know, Almaza (the main–and to my knowledge only–Lebanese brewery) makes two formulas: one comes in a brown bottle and is generally available only in restaurants, and one comes in a green bottle and is available in stores or for export. Some people will tell you there is no difference, but these people know nothing of beer, for the contents of the brown bottle are vastly superior to that of the green. Formerly we had been relegated to drinking the green bottle within the confines of our own home, but no more! Thanks to our friend Bjorn, we now have the brown bottles (and theoretically a phone number to call for delivery). And, after getting the deposit back on the bottles, they are actually marginally cheaper than the greens (688LL vs. 750LL or about 0.04USD).

+++

I looked up from my work today and saw my ISP was installing internet service for yet another soon-to-be-happy customer.