Exposions/Egypto Techno

Explosions have been going off all around Cairo for the past few days. Everytime I try and drift off to sleep, "BANG! BANG! BANG!" and then I hear shouting and more banging.

Most disturbingly, most of these explosions are caused by children...some as young as five or six years old.

Okay, enough with the theatrics: the explosions are little firecrackers set off during the feast of Eid, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

Thank Gad, too. Ramadan was really starting to drag-on-a-dam.

Well, as anyone who knows me knows, I just love German techno. And rejoice...the week here started with a bright bit of news. The legendary (in some circles) minimal-dub-clicky-experimental DJ, artiste, innovator and all round Germanic hero Thomas Brinkmann is coming to Cairo for not one, but TWO shows in a couple of weeks.

However, given that big room trance and banging progressive house still get more play in Cairo than Fonzie at a sorority house, it'll be interesting to see who actually shows up to see Brinkmann drop his clicks and cuts.

Nonetheless, it should be fun, and at the least, um, "stimulating."

In other music news, I've seen some pretty hot shows here over the past few weeks. I really enjoyed a show by the gifted, Spanish, medieval crew Music Angtigua (read my review here .) Imagine the soundtrack to one of Sting's sex parties and you'll get an idea of what this sounded like...

Other highlights over the past few weeks include Eskenderella, who are basically like the Constantines of Cairo...the only diffrenece being they play ouds (lutes) instead of guitars and Eskenderella haven't slept with all my female friends. No yet, anyways.

In other news, I guess the Justice/Headbangers juggernaut is really taking America by storm...

P.Y.R.A.M.I.D.S.

Right.

In keeping with the Daft Punkian theme here, I finally made it out to see the pyramids in Giza.

Now, first up, Giza is essentially a suburb of Cairo filled with ugly, dirt-stained apartment blocks. If the pharaohs could see what Giza has become, they’d be turning in their graves…or in the British Museum or wherever they’re buried these days.

ANYWAYS……

Along with being Cairo’s armpit, Giza is also Cairo’s shit receptacle. What a dump. Seriously. Some of Giza’s more charming attributes include shit-clogged canals, shit-clogged streets and shit-clogged shit heads trying to scam some of your shit. Shit city indeed.

My roommate and I (not Sinbad – I have a new place and a new living situation) took Cairo’s efficient metro system out to Giza and BAM! As soon as we stepped off the metro (which is about 30 minutes drive from the pyramids) people were already starting to harass us.

“Wear you fron? Oh! Canadah! Canada dry! Hahahaha…Welcome to Egyptian!”

Long story short, we agreed to get into this minibus which – we were told – was to take us to the main gates of the Giza plateau. Well, the bus didn’t take us to the Giza plateau; it took us to some dirty prick’s stable where said prick tried to get LE 140 (140 Egyptian pounds) out of us to ride some of his fucking camels around the desert for a while.

I’d had enough and told him I could get into the gates for LE 30, at which point he responded with “your 30 pounds is shit!”

I lost it. Snap.

“You’re shit!” I told him, and we stormed outta there – through shit-stained stables and garbage-lined alleys – and headed toward the main gates.

People are really friendly here, but much like people in Peru and other third-world tourist havens, a good chunk of the “friendly” people are simply looking to get into your pants. Wallet, I mean.

As we approached the great pyramids, the locals swarmed around us like Ginos swarm a
Diesel Factory outlet sale. It was loco.

When one guy tugged at my sleeve and asked me where I was from, I pulled out my massive BlueBlocker sunglasses, put them on and said blankly: “I’m from the future.”
He didn’t get it. (Photo courtesy of my dirtbag roomate, Mr. Shane McNeil Esq.)

Finally, we realized that the pyramids actually closed at 3 p.m. (I’m getting mega sick of Ramadan) and thus, we were forced to take a tour AROUND the site. So we got on some wild horses and galloped away from the crowds, away from the shit, away from the garbage and away from Giza.

We rode into the desert and met the Pyramids.

DS VS DP

Seperated at mirth?

Mosh Pit

So the other I day I had to go to the Kafka-esque, bureaucratic HQ (pictured above) of Egypt’s archaic immigration system to renew my passport. Wow. If you think dealing with paper pushers in Canada is bad, try coming to Egypt. I’ve never dealt with a more backward, unwieldy and complex system in my life. Getting a student loan to study homosexual, Ukrainian bandura music in Stalinist Russia would’ve been easier.

Here’s why.

First, one has to line up to get photocopies of your passport photo, which in the end look smudged and black. Honestly, after getting mine photocopied, my photo looked like Eddie Murphy circa BHC II.

Next, you have to wait in line to submit paper work that is then entered by hand into giant books by carpel-tunnel’d bureaucrats.

After this, you have to wait in a separate line to pay for stamps, which you then have to take back to the original lineup with your passport.

Two hours later, you have to wait among a throng of others and yell out your country until you’re granted your passport. I spent about an hour cramped among burqa’ed Indonesians, impatient Koreans, pushy Brits and sneaky Sudanese – all the while yelling out “Canadia! Canadia!”

I soon realized I was getting nowhere. I spotted an opening and I went for it. I elbowed a pair of elfish Indonesian girls, outflanked an Iraqi guy with bad breath and slammed into a trio of Kiwis. Then, I spun around, slapped an Egyptian guy’s tits, head butted an old woman who was pushing into me and dove for the front of the window.

After diving over the glass and leg wrestling the Egyptian official, I grabbed my passport, stage dove into the throng, and crowd surfed out of the building, where I was arrested and tortured and forced to listen to Collective Soul.

Top Three Bureaucracies of All Time

1. Imperial China – Led to the development of dirty novels, due to the surplus number of literate(ly) bored bureaucrats with no jobs and plenty of time – among other things – on their hands and minds.
2. Communist Russia – Quotas were all that mattered. Factories produced boots with heels on toes. Nobody noticed or cared. Except the peasants.
3. Rome – Bureaucrats managed to propel their empire, raise legions, organize campaigns, build aqueducts and print up orgy guest lists for 2000 years using only papyrus and a stern sense of dedication. Impressive.

No Money: Mo Problems

Mmmm. Due to some budgetary constraints, I’m now living on about $5 a day for the next week. That’s when those bitches at DFAIT give me my next payment. While $5 a day may seem low, considering some families pay about $7 a month in rent for a slum apartment here, the amount will due for the following staples: cigs, juice, falafel, shisha, tea, and about a fistful of opium.

(Just kidding about the dope, Mom.)

If you recall, I’ve complained about one of my roommates ad nausea on this blog (the Sinbad one), but now I kinda feel bad for him, as his laziness is approaching (I hope) its slothful nadir. For the past two days, hommie WOKE UP at 7 p.m. – and though he ate the piece of “aish” (which is translated as “life” and means bread) that I was saving for breakfast – he seems really down lately and hasn’t left the house in a while.

Also, he bought some baby food the other day and at the whole thing with a little spoon.

Pop Quiz: For how many years was the Great Pyramid at Giza the largest structure in the world? What replaced it?

…and

Top Four Releases I Want To Get Right Fucking Now But Can’t Because Buying Records In Egypt Is Like Buying Gum In Singapore So Please Yousendit Me These Releases Right Now:

1. Luomo – Paper Tigers: Still listening to the first two albums…still
2. VA – Kompakt Total 7: Total 7? More like Totally Awesome 7!
3. Justice Vs. Simian – We Are Your Friends: So what if Sweeny was on this three years ago? It’s new for the rest of us.
4. Lo Fi Fnk – Wake Up

Engrish

Okay, so now I'm an English teacher.

Not in the "dude, let's go to Thailand and teach English so we can get tons of chicks and do a bunch of yabba and party on the beach with trannies and for sure get a Red Bull shirt and it'll be crazy" kind of way.

Not even close.

In fact, I was sitting in the corner of a dusty church in downtown Cairo going through the alphabet with a guy from Darfur who has serious problems with the letters E and H. It's not paid, but I figure if I've got enough time on my hands to do a blog, then I've got enough time to help a brother out.

On Tuesday, I went out for a drive with these guys who try and transform Cairo's streets by planting trees and painting walls and picking up trash and stuff. On one street -- which was literally in the shadow of the pyramids -- the volunteers had really done a nice job of removing an impromptu garbage dump in the middle of the street and planting trees and fixing street lights. Nice work.



Long story short, we pulled back out onto the expressway in their little sedan and barreled through miles and miles of garbage-strewn slums and donkeys and stinking burning trash and dust and cats and filth and humanity before arriving at the next street, where a fresh row of trees had been planted.

Talk about banging your head against a wall.

Okay, here are my top three Israelite kings of all time:

1. David - Musician, adulterer, conqueror, legend.
2. Jehoash - A minimalist. Not only did give the temple a redesign by ridding it of all those gaudy, pagan symbols, but he also clamped down on Baal worship and fired the sacred whores.
3. Saul - Suffered from depression and liked David’s band. Nuff said.

And my top four buys of the last year:

1. My $250 laptop, which was purchased from a dude in a car with leather seats at a gas station in North York, Ontario. The keyboard doesn’t really work, but I don’t really like typing, anyways.
2. My $20 H&M polo shirt. Sure, it looks like a dead cat when you pull it out of the washer, but…
3. Kompakt Speicher CD ($22), mixed by Michael Mayer. Is it possible to wear out CDs? No, it’s not. But if it were, this CD would have the comfortably warn look of a sweater in a J. Crew catalog.
4. Iftar last night: half chicken, tabouli, stew, chips and bottled water: $4 CND. Take that, world bank!

Tempers Clash in the Middle East!!!! OH NO!!!

Ok, with all this fasting going on, blood sugar levels around Cairo are dangerously low right now. To paraphrase Beyonce, “all this fasting has got me so crazy right now.”

Case in point, I was looking at some new apartments yesterday (because I can’t live with Sinbad anymore – he’s turning me into a slob) and these two skinny Arab dudes started pushing and shoving each other. I thought they were joking around (guys are really touchy feely here) until one of the dudes picked up a squeegee and fucken’ slammed the other guy in the head with it.

Not wanting the situation to slide into chaos or become an imbroglio (or worse – a quagmire), I grabbed the dude with the squeegee and tried to break up the fight, until this other guy came into it and gave the other cat a knuckle sandwich.

Long story short, I went to break up that other fight, leaving the squeegee guy alone. Two seconds later and squeegee man was now wielding a much deadlier weapon: an iron bar, which he started swinging around like he was at batting practice. I managed to grab onto it and subdue him until their mom showed up and shut the fight down.

I’m going for Iftar tonight at a fancy resto and plan on dropping LE 100 on some regional dishes like fatool…I’m also going to sip on a crisp pint of olive oil and smoke three packs of cigarettes.

In a related story, I met with the UN drug people here in Cairo and quickly found out that this outdated bureaucracy’s ineffectuality extends throughout the entire administrative apparatus – from peacekeeping all the way down to monitoring drug use.

I want to do a story on Bedouin drug traders and the lucrative Bango market in Cairo, and this is the best quote I got from THREE fucken UN workers over an hour-long interview: “Well, um, how does the drug trade actually work? It’s really a touchy issue and we can only speculate.”

Speaking of nomads, I've been doing a lot of traveling lately and I've got a Shit List of music that I'm sick of hearing in hostels and traveler gatherings:

1. Jack "Jack" Johnson -- Seriously, this dude needs to chill the fuck out a little bit. Geez. Take a vacation or something.
2. Pearl Jam -- It’s not the fans I hate, it’s the band.
3. G. Love and Special Sauce – More like G. Love and Lamesauce
4. Sublime -- To quote Charlie Brown: "Aughhhhh"
5. Manu Chao -- That's probably spelt incorrectly -- don't care. The musical equivalent of a Che t-shirt. (Sorry Chad.)

And here’s a list of music I need to hear more of:

1. TI
2. Mike Jones
3. Kavinsky
4. Nickleback (I'm not kidding)
5. Daddy Yankee
6. Ame
7. The Rice Twins