Cozmo is a vanity fair!

Photos: Wonder8

Nevermind that Zaytouni used to be the brothel area of Beirut, with its new restaurants and clubs it is bound to regain that same title again! But then, when people like Wonder8 are doing such a cool job branding places, no wonder it is attracting people. Their latest project is Cozmo - I will spare you the technical details of it is supposed to be in terms of eateries - but it seems they've been shortlisted for some award because of that. Do note that awards mean nothing to me to be honest, but I do like the product above.
(*Don't bother looking for them on the menu, lusty paid-by-the-hour women come as side orders but there's nothing a maitre d' worth his salt cannot fix)

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.

"Le Wagon-Lit une histoire" de Arty Stotle et Happy Cure sur les editions 7UPstairs Publishing

Open publication - Free publishing - More aristotle

Chers amis,

Avec ce livre 7Upstairs Publishing aura 25 livres qui sont “sur le marché” concurremment (sans que le mot marché ait une connotation lucrative, car tous les livres sont accessibles gratuitement sur la toile depuis le link www.issuu.com/tarekchemaly), pourtant – à part la signification de ce livre au niveau numérotation (à noter que certains livres ont été publiés mais ne sont plus disponibles) – il s’agit aussi d’un retour aux sources:
C’est un poème collaboratif entre Arty Stotle (qui qui a fait sa première apparition sur le titre de mon anthologie « the wit and wisdom of Arty Stotle » et qui est devenu plus tard un nom de scène lors des concerts avec Haussmann Tree) et qui est donc de retour avec Happy Cure (un autre philosophe Grec falsifié – Aristote et donc Epicure) qui pour des raisons personnelles désire rester anonyme.
La nouveaute de ce livre c’est qu’a part le fait que vous pouvez le consulter sur le site vous pouvez aussi le telecharger gratuitement pour vous faciliter la lecture.
7UPstairs Publishing ne survit donc que par vos efforts, elle produit des livres culturels, anthropologiques, graphiques, qui cherchent à dépasser le personnel pour accéder à la mémoire collective. Soyez alors généreux et propagez nos efforts !
Sincèrement,
Tarek

Mohamad Sibai wants MEN to please him at any price

"The other day, I saw a couple holding ands along Hamra Street. Normally I would never look twice, but something was not right. They both had short hair, facial hair, and rough voices. The sight was disturbing. Call me sexist, call me whatever you like, I couldn’t get that image out of my head for the whole day. I couldn’t believe what I saw, I know that Lebanon aims to be an ideal “secular” country, but if this is what “secular” is then maybe it’s not such a good idea."
The word is NOT sexist, the word is homophobic. The above piece is the introduction of Mohamad Sibai's article in OUTLOOK the moutpiece of the students of the American Univeristy of Beirut. The uproar was so great that the editor of the newspaper Logine Kamel issued an appology:

Now here is my take on the matter:

In a recent guest lecture I have been giving at the American University of Beirut about graffiti and street art, I found myself explaining one specific artwork, emphasizing the fact that the word “gay/homosexual” and “deviant” are the same in the Arabic language (Chaz). It said: “Who is deviant? Your mother is deviant. I am only a homosexual.” Someone in the audience immediately replied: “Only…. a homosexual?”

Naturally, the presence of such a narrow-minded person in the audience could have been left undisturbed. However, I decided to take the bull by its horns and I said: “Studies have shown that people with the most homophobic tendencies are the ones who unconsciously gravitate towards homosexuality.”
Here is the work in question:

So it is simple, if Mohammed Sibai is afraid of his own homosexuality, but the person who sprayed the above is not... Also, the one who did the below:

So what? I love him - it says... But don't say that to Mohamad Sibai he might have a heart attack! Actually, I go back to the title of his piece "PLEASE ME AT ANY PRICE" - well, some people are ready to do that to him for free, but if he insists on paying - I wonder if it is by the hour...

The unbearable LIGHTness of being... Almaza

What can be said?... It's the new 38% less calorie Almaza Light. Fine, understood. Now can anyone explain to me the above? I am seeing the light (... at the end of the end of the tunnel and it turns out to be the train)? Light sent me a friend request (thank Goodness I am not on facebook!), and it's light, it's Almaza, it's summer (and it's also stupid and meangless). And of course the stapled paper at the bottom of the ad with their "hayda jawna, hayda nehna" selling line (this is our mood, this is who we are) is the required beach reading for the summer for the glitterati who anyway are too posh to be able to read Arabic.
Just a hint, why not have gone with "no more beer bellies" or "fits every swimsuit" or perhaps spoof other soda ads such as "Just for the taste of it" (Diet Coca-Cola) and "Now you see it now you don't" (Diet Pepsi) and imitate their layouts while making fun of them!....
Now for some very good beer ads, please try this for sighs.... :)

Stella Artois - Reassuringly expensive

Alfa Blackberry 1,9 USD a week - as seen by USEK students

Rola Assaad

Serge Mikhael

USEK students in the Esquisse class were given the brief to rework the Alfa Blackberry campaign, among the standouts in the concepts were Rola Assaad who played the "haBB @ 1,9 USD" (Habibi is my love and BB is blackberry - she even tried to do the BB in the shape of hearts) and the word play "Jama'a @ 1.9 USD" which jama'a (gathering) being very close to jema'a (week).

As for Serge Mikhael he spoofed the ads of Clorets and twisted them head over heels, therefore making them immediately recognizable but with a twist!...

Note that esquisse means sketch hence the fact that ads are raw and not retouched or photoshopped or whatever. If you wish to support these students feel free to circulate this!



Ma tJEEPlé ekherté!

Image source unknown

OK, this is just too funny!!... But complex to explain. It refers to Lebanese diva Sabah's song "jeeB el mejwej ya Abboud" (or bring the double bamboo flute Abboud) but jeeb can be easily substituted with Jeep right... General Purpose (origine of GP, or Jeep!) copywriting indeed...

Marilyn: 5 drops of J'adore (Dior)

If  you haven't seen the magnificent ad Dior did for their J'adore and which was shot at the galerie des glaces at Versailles and which revives screen legends Marlene Dietrich, Grace Kelly, and Marilyn Monroe, starring Charlize Theron then you must! Now here's my problem - Monroe has been notoriously associated with Chanel No5 when, in 1954, she asnwered the question of what she wears to bed with "5 drops of Chanel No.5"... What can one say but quote Isabella Rossellini about the image of her mother Ingrid Bergman appearing in an ad "Poor mother. Dead nearly twenty-five years and still working."

D.O.M.N.Q - L.H.O.O.Q.

First it was Elissa, as a pseudo-copy of Marcel Duchamp's masterpiece L.H.O.O.Q. (read it in french to undestand!), now comes Domique Hourani as a follow up... Still did not find anyhting on Haifa or Nancy... But who knows what the future will bring!

Activate your BB pintrest

Research credit: Miled Issa
As if the situation is not bad as it is currently, the prices of Blackberry subscriptions have gone down at both providers in Lebanon... If there was one remote hope of actually getting the youth interested in anything but their cell phones now that possibility is forever gone. Actually, due to the evolutionarry stress made on them, it seems that the thumbs of the new generation are getting smaller and flatter... One look at the Blackberry and you will understand why!

Abou el Ziz (w nahhoul)...

Photo credit: WonderEight

So, your client is a cheapo joint which sells falafel... What do you do? According to every self-respecting, photoshop-operating, up-and-coming designer, you go and give him the identity that would put him on par with La Tour d'Argent in Paris alienating thus his clientele, making his image hybrid, upscaling him to the degree of surrealism... Or, you can simply hand the case to WonderEight who gave Abou el Ziz  the coolest, most down-to-earth logo, understanding thus the needs of its customers for an approachable and affordable cozy place where "el dayn mamnou3" (borrowing is forbidden) and where on the door - the guys were cute enough to add - "fout khal el beb bal ghal" (enter, we never close shop!)... And did you see this round aspirator which is reminiscent of the 70s when it was the only way to get the smells out (my sources tell me that the aspirator is actually there for aesthetic effect).

Lebanese copycat number one zillion and one....

Original post by Charbel Harb

OK so this is copycat one zillion and one... And to say that previously I was impressed by it!!!... Daniela Tobler is not immune to stealing!