Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘Middle Easterners’ Category

Every week, a few “important” news stories or topics fall through the Ethnic Avenue cracks and aren’t posted. Either our staff (me) doesn’t get around it, runs out of time, or–in the middle of trying to write it up–realizes that it doesn’t meet the strict "quality controls” of a true Ethnic Avenue post. The bad part is that a good amount of the stuff that doesn’t make it is actually worthwhile shit.

So, to address that problem, I’ve decided to start an odds-and-ends roundup session at the beginning or end of every week (or so). Think of it as trash time in a basketball game, when all of the second- and third-stringers take the floor.

Airlines Gradually Making Us Into Illegal Border-Crossers

I-didn’t-know-people-actually-used-it airline, Spirit Air, is going to start charging its passengers $30-45 for carry-on luggage. According to them, you’re paying for overheard-compartment space, since you don’t have to pay for anything that fits under the seat. The rationale is that:

…having fewer carry-on bags will help empty the plane faster. [Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza] said the idea is to get customers to pay for individual things they want, while keeping the base fare low.

Even though most of us won’t ever set foot on a Spirit Airlines plane, people (myself included) know that if that shit takes off (pun intended) it’ll only be a matter of time before it triggers copycat fees from the bigger, real airlines we actually use.

I won’t repeat the same joke people have been making for months: that they’ll soon start charging you a buck to use the bathroom (since it’s probably true). What I will say is that: just like some people have been trying to carry all of their luggage on since they started charging for checking it in, those same people are going to try to stuff everything under their fuckin’ seat.

Now, imagine that you also have the same seat luck I do (next to huge fat lady every other time I get on a plane), and you can imagine how much more unpleasant flying is going to become.

Sometimes I wonder if the airlines are just fucking with us, seeing how much we’ll put up with before we actually stand up for ourselves.

Obama Smackdown: Palin Edition

Obama’s smackdown has been holding pretty steady in the past few weeks. I haven’t cataloged all of the Sean Connery moments, but there have been a few good ones. The best one came last week when, in response to Sarah Palin’s criticism of his recent nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia, he said:

I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues.

Translation: “Sarah Palin criticizing me about nuclear issues is like Gilligan giving the Professor advice on how to get off the island.”

UPDATE: Listen to the pregnant pause after “Sarah Palin isn’t much of an expert on…” You just know he wanted to say, “on shit.”

Coming Soon: Ethnic Variations of Jersey Shore

Despite its incredible popularity, I’m not a big fan of MTV’s Jersey Shore. I’ve seen enough to “get it,” and it didn’t take me long to confirm my reasons for avoiding these sorts of douchebags and dumb-asses in my daily life, at all costs. But, now, the producers of the program are looking to make a Persian-American version of the program, and there’s already a Russian-American version in the works.

Two things come to mind. First of all, these producers have an obvious master-level understanding of the douchebag and its various incarnations. They seem to know which groups “trend” in that direction and they’re cashing in on that fact that not everyone has the fortune (or misfortune) to see them in action on a regular basis.

If you live in a city like Los Angeles, you take exposure to a diverse population of douchebags for granted. It’s a diverse place, so it stands to reason that a certain percentage of each population will be douchebag.

On any given weekend, Los Angeles for example, has at least four or five thriving douchebag communities in full swing. Segments of Hollywood: classic, white-guy douchebags. Downtown and East of there: Latino douchebags. Glendale and Burbank: Armenian douchebags. West Los Angeles: Persian douchebags. They co-mingle in each others’ territories, which leads to—in about equal proportions–conflict or alliances, grounded on their shared interests and priorities.

So, I guess to make a reality show based on some (or all) of these populations makes sense. But if I don’t like the live-action version(s), why would I want to watch it on TV?

I was relieving my pockets of their collections of fresh restaurant napkins when I received a message from a reader with this story. It’s about how this Polish woman is suing an Egyptian hotel on the grounds that her daughter got pregnant while swimming in their pool.

Magdalena believes the teenager conceived from stray sperm after taking a dip in the hotel’s mixed pool. She is now seeking compensation from the hotel…The mother is adamant that her daughter didn’t meet any boys while she was there.

Unlike everyone else, I’m not so quick to judge Magdalena and her fertile daughter as complete frauds, or as perpetuators of old, unfunny jokes about how stupid Polish people are. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. This woman is a goddamn genius, one that’s obviously schooled in the ancient world. She’s single-handedly revealed a dirty trick those sneaky Egyptians have pulling for 3,000 years. I’ll explain.

Everybody, especially if they were around in the 70s and 80s, knows that there used to be a condom brand named Ramses. What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s (appropriately) named after Ramses II, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh (1279-1213 BC), who fathered between 160 and 200 kids (with various wives, of course). Without getting into the whole thing, he was basically one of the most kick-ass pharaohs of all time, earning himself the moniker “Ramses the Great.”

Young Ramses smiting some foreigners.

I, like a lot of other people, always questioned how Ramses managed to father so many kids, especially late in life. Sure, he had lots of wives, but in those days, most of your kids died at birth. And, if you’ve seen what he looked like at the end, you’d wonder too.

But thanks to Magdalena, now we know. He used the old Egyptian pool trick.

Ladies, let's take a little dip in the pool.