A Lebanese Fight On MEA Plane from Paris to Beirut

Leave it to the Lebanese to forget every bit of “civilization” they’ve learned in Paris the moment their plane leaves the tarmac to their home country.

The first is “ebn l Chouf,” the second is “ebn Baalbak” because one’s region is enough threat apparently. Soon enough, the crew is involved in calming the men, followed by calls for every Holy figure known to man. Yes, a typical Lebanese fight – at several kilometers in the air – down to those filming planning to post it on YouTube the moment they land.

Well, the video is on Facebook and you can watch it here or on YouTube:

Does anyone know why they were fighting in the first place?

Crest Arabia: Spread a Smile?

Crest Arabia has recently launchedan online campaign called “Spread The Smile.”

Some of you may remember a campaign centered around “smiles” by Crest last year, where we had to vote for some of our female friends in their quest to be voted as person with the best smile. But no matter, the premise this year is quite different and more engaging: Instead of voting for the prettiest smile, you’d be voting for the person who made you smile the most, be it because of a joke they posted, a picture or even a video.

Upon liking their page and checking the leaderboard, I was surprised to see that almost none of the top-voted entries are actually creative. Most of them are pictures of babies looking cute. And what’s worse, none are funny.

I had to dig among the videos and pictures to find ones that made me smile. When it came to the text submissions, the corniness shone through. There’s one submission, with over 2000 votes, which goes like this:

“i wanna tell you a story
simply……. smile to everyone
no thing deserve ..smile ….life is short and at the same time it’s so good 🙂 :)”

If you think this is straight out of a tweet by Elissa, it’s highly possible she might have said it as some point.

Among other text entries, you have one with over 1730 votes that says: “Go east go west Oral B and Crest are the BEST” – what are we now, first graders?

Come on people, is this the best you can do?

The campaign is creative, to be honest. The involvement in it that I’ve seen so far? Pitiful.

If you think you can do better you can still enter the competition, which ends on March 31st. You might as well come up with a Lebanese Meme and submit it, it’ll still be better than the stuff getting votes, regardless of how overdone you think memes have become.

You can check out the Crest Arabia Facebook page here and the Spread The Smile competition here.

The Iron Lady – Movie Review

Behold Meryl Streep who might as well have caused the movie’s producers to change the title from “The Iron Lady” to “The Iron Ladies.”

In a tour de force performance, Streep portrays former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher through the rise and fall of her career. Opening in 2005, soon after the London subway bombings, the movie portrays an Alzheimer-inflicted Thatcher as she struggles to cope with life. She imagines herself at times still being a prime minister. Her husband Henry (Jim Broadbent), dead for years now, is also a constant figure in her life through hallucinations.

And as Thatcher sits alone in her house, she remembers as she rose to power, as she defied the stereotypes enforced on her by British society to become the first ever female prime minister of the country and remain in that position for more than eleven years, the longest ever for prime minister in the 20th century.

To speak about The Iron Lady would be to speak about Meryl Streep for one is the other: a whole that cannot be divided into the sum of its parts. In a performance for the ages, Streep sweeps through every second she is on screen, cementing her status as a truly magnificent force and constant fixture to be reckoned with. You can never really go overboard with complementing Meryl Streep on her acting. In fact, I predict future generations to ask us why we haven’t really complemented her more. She pulls off the most difficult of roles and makes it seem like an afternoon walk in the park. When it comes to Thatcher, she nails the tone, the posture, the mannerisms down to the way she tilts her head when making a speech. That is the mark of a great actress – the greatest actress to ever come on our screens. Watching her incarnate Thatcher is a joy to the eye, ear and to the soul.

The heights that Meryl Streep takes The Iron Lady to are marred by what could have been a stronger script. I personally found the movie very engaging, albeit slightly disconnected as it kept going back and forth in time without a strong foothold in either. However, the overall mixture, in my opinion, works. Nevertheless, as possibly the only biopic to be made of Thatcher’s life, I would have liked the approach to be less of a senile woman remembering the days where she ran the country and more of what that woman did when she actually was in charge. Despite the movie being engaging, it is still unfocused. Imagine a movie being made about Ronald Reagen, often mentioned in the movie, focusing more on his years while struggling with Alzheimer’s and not of his two-term presidency. This is the case with The Iron Lady.

Despite some left-wing squeamishness in dealing with the right-wing nature of the character of the movie, The Iron Lady cannot but be considered a great movie solely for the reason of the great lead it boasts. Look at it this way: it is an average script, touched by the hands of a genius who turns in into cinematic gold. It may not be for all tastes but no one can deny the absolute brilliance of Meryl Streep. And for those with whom the movie works, like me, you will be entranced as you watch the life of this woman unravel before your eyes.

8.5/10

A New “Fatwa”: Girls Cannot Sit With Their Fathers Unless Their Mothers Are Present

This is a picture of a newspaper article in Arabic that I saw circulating today.

The article translates to: “Muslim sheikh Mohammad Al Aarifi warned girls saying that some young girls sit in front of their fathers with a nice body, wearing tight outfits, showing cleavage such as when short blouses and tight pants are worn. She is young, her father is young and he might, therefore, hit on her if he saluted her or kissed her or hugged her…”

Simply put… What did I just read?

Some people need to be neutered. Or perhaps some regulation as to how can actually analyze any form of religious scripture needs to be enforced.

And I thought the “banana fatwa” was stupid enough. In case you didn’t know, another “sheikh” decided that girls shouldn’t consume bananas or cucumbers because of their sexually provocative nature as vegetables and fruits. Where do these people come from again?

The Batroun – Tannourine Highway

Back in 2000, I used to go on trips to Tannourine with a friend and complain about the constant works taking place on the roads leading there.

“It’s for a good thing,” the man always told me. I never knew what he meant until very recently. I only realized the importance of the full scope of the project at hand yesterday when it took me ten minutes to get from my hometown to Tannourine, using the newly opened section of the Batroun-Tannourine Highway, the part extending from the town of Bejdarfel to Assia.

Easier commute, easier ambulance trips, easier impromptu road trips…. You name it.

We, as Lebanese, always nag about the dismal state of our infrastructure. So it’s nice to highlight something good for a change. And this is definitely on the advanced side. Instead of working on already existing roads, they’ve created new ones in valleys and mountains to cut distances short. And the effort put in the highway shows.

There’s still a little more work that needs to be done on some of the newly finished sections: put up lanes and fix some asphalt-related issues, but overall, it is a great drive. At some points, with the towering mountains around you all full of snow, you feel like you’ve been taken out of the stereotype image you have of Lebanon and to some section of the Italian alps. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Batroun’s MPs have been working hard to get the highway plans underway and hopefully their enthusiasm and the highway will be properly maintained. The final stretch of the project extending from my hometown, Ebrine, to Batroun will start soon.