Some words of mine on Beirut

http://www.listener.co.nz/lifestyle/travel/the-new-beirut

Having a blast in the Leb

Been thinking about guns a bit lately. This week, Mikhail Kalashnikov the inventor of the AK47 turned 90. If I had a choice between being the guy who invented the AK47 and the guy who invented Velcro, I would pick the AK47. I hope someone made him a cake shaped like an AK47 with 90 little candles that look like bullets. Actually, I bet he got that when he turned 47. That would have been funnier. Speaking of guns, I had a shooting weekend in Lebanon. Brilliant fun. Car loads of unshaven men roaring into the Beqaa valley with trunks full of guns. The humble Matwa was the target. Bigger than a sparrow, smaller than a pigeon. Fast little buggers and they have a habit of flying low. Hundreds of men standing in fields, blasting away. What could possibly go wrong? A few things as it happened. The count at the end of the weekend was 1 dead and 9 injured. And I’m not talking about the Matwa. As a result the Lebanese government has banned the sport. It was already illegal but none of the soldiers or police at the numerous checkpoints on the way into the valley seemed to care that we were all off for a few hours of bang bang. It will be a different story from now on they reckon so I’m glad I got in there last weekend.

Lebanon and New Zealand. The U2 connection.

Cedars of Lebanon is a track on the new U2 album. Bloody brilliant album by the way. This track means Lebanon joins NZ as the second country to have a tree related song written about it by the world’s greatest rock band.
NZ got One Tree Hill, the tribute to a kiwi who worked for the band and died just before the Joshua Tree album came out. So the way I see it, this U2 tree connection brings our two countries together. We are like brother and sister. New Zealand can be the good-looking brother who is really good at sport and Lebanon can be the wild slightly slutty (in a good way) sister. We can go out and get drunk together. Not that Lebanese people need an excuse to get drunk as my Lebanese mate pointed out.
Maybe that’s why it seems like all Lebanese food was created by someone with a hangover. Incidentally you might not be aware that Shakespeare was Lebanese? My mate Habib told me. And if you don’t believe it the facts are on the interweb.
Other famous people Lebanon are trying to claim. The bloke who thought up the idea of sticking wheels on suitcases and the maker of cookies and cream ice cream.

Beirut’s Hall of Fame and the wanking president.

Up in the hills behind Beirut is one of Lebanon’s best-kept tourist attraction secrets. The Hall of Fame. A house full of life like silicon dummies. Well, they’re not all dummies. Albert Einstein is there, and the pope. He was freaky, either his head was a little small of his hands were a little big. The joint is fricken hilarious. Little sensors trigger some of them off and they talk or sing to you over the sound of the little motors that drive the body movements. The late Yasser Arafat is there. I thought he was broken, he wasn’t talking but his lips were vibrating.
‘Mechanical error?’ I enquired. ‘
Oh no explained our guide. As you know he had Parkinson’s before he died’…. Fair enough.
Leonardo Da Vinchi looked cool, although the Mexican blanket he was wearing seemed a little odd, but my favorite men were all together. Saddam Hussein and right next to him George W and Bill. George didn’t talk but check out the video footage. He has shifty little eyes like the baddie from Thunder Birds. An accident? I think not. And Bill was brilliant. He was delivering the 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman,' speech over and over and it was combined with some interesting hand movements. An accident? Not from a team that recreated the quivering lips of someone with Parkinson’s.

Church merch

Holy water, they should bottle this stuff… hang on, they do. When I found it in the church shop I wished I had come in dressed as a vampire, but I guess they see that gag played out all the time. I spilt someone my wife to see if the stuff was for real. It didn’t make he skin burn so I think the stuff could be fake.
The Catholic Church is right into its merchandise; I haven’t seen this much stuff for sale since I went to a Rolling Stones concert. I also got a cool little bracelet. Funny thing is it looks very similar to the Hezbollah bracelet I bought the day before. Almost looks like they come from the same factory. Now that’s an interesting though isn’t it?

Global Warming Saves Lives.

Ok, so the hailstorms in Lebanon might not be a result of global warming. They have a hailstorm season every year. But how big does a piece of hail have to be to set off a bomblet? The answer to that question is as big as a walnut.

You know bomblets, they are the little bombs that come out of a cluster bomb and pepper an area the size of one or two football fields. The Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) is campaigning for an international treaty banning cluster munitions.
But in the meantime the US and people she supplies munitions to like Israel are dropping them as fast as they can.
Last year in Israel’s war on the Hezbollah, hundreds of cluster bombs were dropped. Trouble is, a lot of the bomblets fail to explode and can remain dangerous for decades after the end of a conflict. The brightly coloured canisters attract children who often die or lose limbs when they pick the things up.
That’s why it was a nice change to se Mother Nature helping us out with some walnut sized hail this week that set off a series of explosions. Now if we could direct the XXL hail to danger spots around the globe we would have an eco friendly way of cleaning up the mess America is making in the Middle East.

Baking a better world.

The French have one and the Lebanese, despite all their problems have one to.
Bread, every country has it so it must be a great source of pride to a nation to have a type of bread named after them. Kind of like the way a town feels when they get their first university. But there are a lot less breads named after countries than there are universities.
Good on you France I’m glad my great granddad and his mates and my granddad and his mates were able to help you out twice last Century. And thank you Lebanon. It wasn’t enough for you to send out thousands of your most highly trained kebab makers to feed the late night drunks of the world. You also gave us your bread. It might not be much in the way of thanks but I have written a letter to the United Nations suggesting that France and Lebanon get a 5% discount at the UN cafeteria.