The good, the bad, and the really good!

The bad: "Money talks" by Blom bank/Alpha prepaid services.... Somewhere between stupid and silly hangs this ad plastered all over town... Supposedly you get free talking minutes on your Alpha (One of the mobile phone lines providers) for the use of Blom bank cards. When I read money talks, I can only think: Bullshit walks! (Mercifully they got rid of the talking lobster in the original mediocre installment of the campaign)....

The good: The "Chateau Musar" wine... Only problem: It's a good "wine" ad, not a good "musar" ad. All Lebanese wines have the same problem (Ksara, Kefraya, Musar, and the new Chateah Ka)... They all lack visual and conceptual differentiation. Not one has dared stray away from the tried and tested.

The really good: The Exotica (Leading flower shop) mother's day campaign (Which falls on the onset of spring here in Lebanon) - a set of Russian dolls with the second (An onwards) having a flower painted onto them, but the first (The original" mother") has none. Genius!

Barking up the right tree

The Chateau Ksara 150 years celebration billboard (Ksara being one of the most famous Lebanese wine) speaks of class and exudes smartness. The cork of the bottle has been transformed into the stem of a tree (Which botanically can be traced back to its age due to the number of concentric rings in its bark). Speaks for itself, really.

A day in the life of a wall

As the pinguins who resemble heavily veiled women do their imperial walk on a stairway near the "ring" bridge, someone is campaigning for pop-sensation Haifa Wehbe to be our president-elect (In a country devoid of presidents since last November), Z is stenciling his ray ban clad face, while the Sukleen man goes on about doing his street-sweeping job under the scrutinizing eye of a banner that says "Public space" - on a wall that's obviously a private one

Get down - boogie boogie

Previous installment of the blog has discussed the 3rd commemoration of the death of Rafic Hariri on February 14th.... Well, there seems to be a general mobilization with ads and aids (Suddenly Hariri Jr. wakes up to the fact that the north needs 52 million USD in redevelopment funding and gladly gives the cheque from his own pocket). The above are some of the tacticals plastered around town: "2005, we went down, they got out" (In reference to the Syrian Army), "2008, go down, they won't come back" (In reference to Syrian allies' strong position in Lebanon through the Hizbollah)

Blowing my own horn

ArbabAd's January 2008 issue (http://www.arabadmag.com/) has been better to me than my own university graduation album. Indeed, whereas I was too lazy to send a photo of myself to the graduation album, the new ArabAd features two photos of myself at just a few pages' interval.

The first accompanies a posting of this blog (Wherby the ArabAd people decided that I was one of the movers and shakers of the new blog revolution sweeping the Middle East), and the second is a discussion with yours truly about why I am one of those rare genetic mutations who are not on facebook (And who will never be).

Who is copying the food?

Lately, there has been a good bunch of copy related to food outlets. The "wake cup" campaign initiated by Dunkin Donuts has not gone unnoticed to the eyes. But it was Nando's who actually took the (wake) cup from Dunkin! Investigation by Beirut/NTSC showed that all the Nando slogans were produced in-house by staff and managers which only seconds my theory that (what's dubbed) "amateur" copy can sometimes outweight the best the pros in the business.

Their billboard sports wishes for the new year of among others "prosperi-perity" (with peri peri being their trademark sauce). The waiter's t-shirts also show some amusing slogans on both the front and the back as well. To say that their creative work is worth my money would be hypocrite though because I eneded up dining eleswhere that night.

Fame... out here on my own!

Today's youth lack of culture is bewildering... In 2006 I was in a writers' conference in Portland - Oregon, and one of the workshop members (Who were mostly in their early twenties) was reciting her poem. When she finished, I turned to the workshop leader and said "It reminds me of Duran Duran's "Hungry like the wolf""... And he said: "I knew there was something familiar in it!"... To this the young girl replied: "What is Duran Duran?"... Not "who" but "what"! She had never heard of the mega boy band of the 80s, who almost single-handedly put British pop on the map.
In another installment of the series, I was talking to my students about ex-ex-Spice girl (I say ex-ex- because they seem to have reunited) Geri Halliwell's rendition of the weather girls' "It's raining men" and to my astonishment, they had never heard of the original song. Not only this, but when I talked about the super TV clip which was a remake of the iconic scene from the movie "Fame" (Where Bruno Martelli's father puts his music on full blast from the ghetto blaster and the students create a traffic jam in NY while dancing in the street), I discovered that there too, they had no clue as to what I was saying!
I mention all of this because, if someone never heard of "Fame" then most likely the name "Irene Cara" doesn't mean anything. And even those who heard of it, right now, the name rhymes with nothing. And yet, Irene Cara was the actress-singer who played the role of Coco Hernandez in the movie (For a full press release of her achivements please go to http://www.irenecara.com/), along this feat she managed something no other singer in the history of music managed to do: She was the only ever person to sing twice on the academy awards night, interpreting the two major hits that spawned from the movie, the up tempo "Fame" and the ballad "Out here on my own".
In contrast to one another, one of the songs boasts of self-assurance, whereas the second is a creative person's lament to being alone in a harsh world. The two sides of the same coin eventually.
As Beirut/NTSC was growing in terms of posts and information, I had a big worry: Was anyone actually reading this?... Lately, my brother told me to install sitemeter and have my mind at ease. Again, this worried me more: What if, indeed, no one was reading this... But I had to know.
Somewhere between "fame" and "out here on my own", I now know that my readership is not huge, but at least there is traffic it seems. I was certainly pleased that the people reading were by no means friends or family only, but also people from Urgway, Hong Kong, US, UK, etc.... Which is quite pleasing. Of course, for a blog that has not been advertised, I cannot expect a readership bigger than the one I have, but at least I now know I am not alone. Thank you.

Is it a crime?

And here we go again! The Valentine's day massacre (No, not that of Al Capone, but rather of our own slain ex-prime minister) goes again. For its third year, Hariri supporters were smart enough not to call for demonstrations - at this stage such demonstrations would only prove how lacking in popularity. It is the exact analogue of the United States post-9/11.... A huge capital of affection and sympathy squandered by a total lack of strategy. And a huge need to take revenge. And a complete amateurism in politics. And a very fierce religious ideology.... Hmmm, all those attributes belong to both - the American policy and whomever's running the Hariri show. The novelty this year, is attributing to a dead man anything from taking the Syrians out, to fighting terrorism, to - who knows - a miraculous cure of AIDS based on banana peels. It is a crime done to the memory and the legacy of the man... What's not a crime, however, seems the savings one can do in City Mall. After the major Christmas blunder campaign (Nothing will ruin my Xmas) at least they redeemed themselves with this one). And it's no crime to redeem one's self.