Dr. Oh My Lord

When you move here, everyone reminds you to STOP CONVERTING INTO DOLLARS. Mostly because you don't MAKE dollars, so it's pointless. (If you don't live here and don't understand, trust me.)

Oh...and then there's the whole reason of not wanting to have a heart attack.

Here is the first Dr. Pepper I've ever seen in Israel after a late-night mee-nee-mahr-keht visit.


Here is the same Dr. Pepper with a view of the price tag.


Here is Ichilov Hospital which admitted me after falling into a catatonic state.

Looks like I'm switching to a new drink. Good thing there's not a water shortage in this country.

Oh wait...

Abu Lovitt is Concerned

After talking about it for months, I finally got around to installing Google AdSense on this blog. According to their terms and conditions, I CANNOT encourage people to click on the ads or they will kick me to the internet curb. Let me be clear: I am NOT doing that!

(GOOGLE KNOWS EVERYTHING PEOPLE; don't screw with them. Yes, I'm totally scared of them.)*

That said, I was all eager to see what ads it chose to display first, based on the content I write about. Here's the first one I saw:

"2008: God's Final Witness: Unprecedented destruction will come in 2008, leading to America's fall."

Google, I don't know how to tell you this but I AM NOT A MEMBER OF AL-QAEDA! No matter what this ad thinks.

Thanks, Danny, for helping me figure it out! Although we currently have a big space at the bottom of the page...working on it...

*I am still surprised I didn't get blacklisted for this post. Or this one.

List This

Last week, I went to an Israel21c happy hour hosting a group of techie bloggers from the Bay Area with What War Zone??? secret field correspondent "Melissa." The group was brought over by the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, presumably to see life in Israel, our impressive hi-tech industry, and so on.

Upon entering, Melissa and I surveyed the premesis and after about five seconds, darted STRAIGHT for the fries. I ask you this, my loyal readers: at any point in life, does free food lose any of its luster? Are we too old to get excited by this? To be fair, we were both starving but the fact that it was on the house just added to the experience. (Did I mention the salad and bruschetta? Mmmmm.......)

If you stare at it long enough, you can actually see into heaven.

When shmoozing with a couple of people, one guy started to mention a couple of tech/media conferences he had recently been to: Com.Vention and Kinnernet. I wanted to say, "Umm…do you have a speech impediment?" Turns out...they're just clever names. Those tricky, tricky techies!

I managed to get a photo with one of the delegation participants. Anybody want to take a guess as to this man's identity?

Who's the guy on the left?
If he looks happy to be in this picture with me,
you might want to get your monitor looked at.

Do People Lie on Their Resumes Here Too?

Post 2 of 2 today...

I'm writing a short humor piece about looking for a job in Israel. Is the process different from in the States or other countries? Job descriptions, interviews, customs, etiquette? Send me any observations or funny stories and we'll see what happens.

Can I Buy a Vowel?

Shalom, my loyal readers-I hope you all had a wonderful chag. We recently talked about Israeli reality TV but at the end of the day, this country (and much of the world) is still obsessed with American pop culture. Just last week, Channel 10 covered the recent microphone snafu on "American Idol" with Brad Pitt which presumably many of you TV-watching Americans know about.

Well, at least I think they were talking about "American Idol". They may have been talking about a bake sale.

I thought we made it pretty clear here. How in G-d's name did this unfold?

Channel 10 Production Director: "Ya'alah, we go live in ten seconds!"
Screen Editor: "Rega! We have many typos and look like idiots!"
Channel 10 Production Director: "Yiyeh b'seder! Who caaaaaaaaares!?!?!?!"

Is this the news or "Wheel of Fortune"? You decide.

Hat tip to Frgdr.com.

Eat Your Heart Out, Johnny Carson

Three posts in one day??? What in the name of Dizengoff Center is going on here? I’ll tell you what’s going on.

For those of you who are new to the War Zone, last year, my main man David Brinn formerly of Israel21c was gracious enough to invite me to the Maxim magazine photo shoot here in Tel Aviv. It was then that I met Israeli model Nivit Bash, causing the Israeli Department of Transportation to dispatch three city workers to clean up the puddle of drool outside the Hashalom train station. I wrote a piece for this here blog, an article for 21c, and another update here and there.

Just because…

So guess whose stuff comes up first, second, third, fifth, and sixth in a Google search? Every month, I get a good number of Google searchers who type in “Nivit Bash” and find their way to my blog. This may have something to do with the first post being my most read, at least since I installed Google Analytics in December.

Since plenty of people seem to be interested in Nivit (it must be for her political views), I thought it might be worthwhile to interview her. People get to learn more about her, she gets publicity, and I get more page views (especially if she becomes the next Talentless Biotch Formerly Known as Bar.) Nu, zeh ween-ween! The model currently entered in my phone as “Nivit the Jewish Goddess” has agreed to meet with me Friday at noon for coffee (entered as such in order to distinguish her from Nivit the Supreme Court Justice and Nivit the Backup Point Guard.)

As far as I can recall, this will be my first real one-on-one personal interview, Larry King-style. What in the world should I ask this woman? Anything you guys are curious to know about? Clearly I have to broach the topics of arsim, line-cutting, and chumus, right? Who has ideas for questions, topics, and general interview decorum? If this goes well, hopefully it will lead to more interviews with other interesting Israelis. (And just to pre-empt the question, yes, she has a boyfriend. She made sure to mention it approximately 1.28 seconds after our conversation began.)

“Dudu from Kfar Pines, you’re on with Nivit Bash.”
(Think that’s pronounced “pines”? Welcome to Israel.)

Abu Lovitt is Now Terrified to Order in Restaurants

They're calling out to Abu Lovitt again and this time it's from my office computer.

I did eat chumus in Abu Gosh a few weeks back. Could this have anything to do with it? Or maybe it's my dirty Arabic vocabulary.

On that note, good Lord, are you people familiar with the food called koosemet? If that's hasn't caused hilarious and embarrassing social interactions, then my name is Billy Ray Chickpea. That's like eating from an American salad bar and having to ask the kitchen worker if they have more "mothertucker."

Aleph, can someone tell me how to say "koosemet" in English and, bet, if you don't understand what this is all about...umm...I don't know what to tell you.

Just Call Me Abu Lovitt

Ok, Google, ya might want to work on those targeted ads.

How in Allah's name did this happen? Did someone buy a Koran on my computer when I was in the bathroom?

Thank G-d It's Thursday

Ok, so it's Friday. But yesterday was Thursday. And in this country, that's the last day of the work week. Has anyone made the "TGIT" t-shirts yet? I call dibs.

Today is Friday which in this country means shopping day. Or coffee day. Or "get as much done as humanly possible because tomorrow, you ain't doin' squat" day (aside from sitting on the beach...ha ha, Jerusalemites.) I should seriously do some shopping, as I still have my Pesach gift certificates from a year ago that I should probably use at some point. What brave soul wants to take me shopping?

Sheinkin Street's shopping district. This country makes me laugh.

I should probably start at Castro, whose clothing seems to be ubiquitous. I could be wrong about this but as a citizen, you are legally obligated to have at least one shirt with the red label hanging off your body attracting attention. I'm tempted to hold out to see if they take away my teudat zahut (identity card) at the end of my first three years.

One place I will not be going is one of my least favorite stores: Fox Baby, the cousin of its American counterpart, Baby Gap. I'm sorry but I hate one year-olds who dress nicer than I do. That's humiliating.

Clerk: "Awww, is the wittle baby crying because he needs a new diaper?"
Parent: "No, he's pissed off because his Dora bib doesn't match his sweater vest."

Why is this kid laughing?
Because his Hebrew is better than mine. Punk.

Ok, it's 9:30 AM, I'm still in bed, and we just lost an hour (did you change your clocks?) Coffee time. Mmm....coffee.

"Ehhhhh....Mah Zeh Bracket?"

The wait is over. It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year.

Purim? I’m talking about March Madness! If you haven’t filled out your brackets yet, be sure to do so.

It was estimated that employers lost over one BILLION dollars last year in lost productivity during the two-and-a-half week period of March Madness. For my Israeli readers who aren’t familiar with this tradition, let me translate for you:

March Madness = coffee and cigarettes

In fact, I think seven of my co-workers are getting into March Madness as we speak.

Can you feel the excitement???

Anyway, without further ado, I will now reveal my Final Four picks:

UCLA, North Carolina, Texas, and Haifa University.

Haifa definitely has a long road ahead of them but the Fighting Bahais are due after underachieving each of the last seven years. Go Haifa U!

And a chag sameach to all.

Israeli Culinary Lesson #494

From the Department of What the Hell Was I Thinking?

I just ate lunch at a little place with home cooking. Feeling adventurous, I accepted the worker's offer to try the ghoulash-like dish which he referred to as "fajitas". Up to this point, I considered my worst decision in Israel to have been going to the mas hachnasa (income tax authority) three times in a week. There's a new #1 in town, folks.

And if I ever decide to eat "shakshuka" in Mexico City, please shoot me. Sorry, Big Felafel, still searching for Mexican food.

Ech Omrim "Walk Down Memory Lane"?

If you've been paying attention, you saw that I've been looking for an apartment. Well, I was looking, for all of three days. Thanks to Homeless, Israel's version of Craig's list, I found something almost immediately, doing it in Hebrew all by myself I might add! Exciting.

I'll be moving just a short walk away to Sderot Chen, close to Kikar Rabin (Rabin Square), where I'll be living with a 36 year-old female social worker. The move's on Friday so today's one of the big packing days.

For every minute of actual packing, there's of course two minutes of close examination, reflection, and throwing away. Under the departments of examination and reflection come a few pictures. Almost all my photo albums are still in the States at my parents' house but I somehow managed to unknowingly bring a few pics over here with me. The ones below are from almost exactly 15 years ago during my year abroad.

I always wanted to submit this to a photo contest. Somewhere in Tel Aviv.


Working in the fields on Kibbutz Ketura. Aleph, that's me pretending to be ignorantly pulling a pipe as if it were a weed. Guess you had to be there. And bet, no, those weren't my clothes. They belonged to the kibbutz. I'll never forget all of us getting to choose work clothes, trying on horribly ugly outfits as if it were some kind of fashion show from hell. My favorite was a form-fitting sleevless leopard shirt. If there are pictures of this, I hope they've been destroyed.

Teaching Israeli Arab high school students in Tarshicha, the sister city of Ma'alot, up in the Galil. This picture was staged for PR purposes. I don't remember any actual one-on-one tutoring. Instead we mostly stood at the front of the class and led interactive discussions in English on such important topics as professional wrestling (very popular in Israel) and the lyrics to Michael Jackson songs.

Ok, back to packing.

Inaugural What War Zone Caption Contest

I feel like this is notable so I'm posting it. Blogger now supports Hebrew and Arabic!




What do you have to say about that, my loyal readers? Best caption wins a prize.

"Buy Our T-Shirts, You Fat Americans!"

Hello, my loyal readers and visitors from Jpost's Must See list! To those of you new to this War Zone, feel free to look around and stay a while. And Merry Christmas to any non-Jewish subscribers out there...

So this day started like most others, with me hopping online to check news and sports scores from the night before. While reading Jpost.com, I happened to spot an ad for "Major League Shirts in Hebrew." Ok, I'm a sports fan, I'll check it out.

Hmm...where are my Texas Rangers? Strangely absent. And the Montreal Expos haven't existed since 2004. Also a little weird. Unless you offer me 2004 prices, I may have to shop elsewhere.

Anyway, I figured I'd take a look at one of their shirts and clicked on the New York Yankees. The description reads as follows:

Show your love and support for your favourite team, as well as your sense of fun - with this great t-shirt featuring the insignia of the New York Yankees baseball team on the front.

Notice anything? The British spelling of "favorite" which is certainly not a crime, although probably not the best marketing tactic when selling baseball shirts to Americans, although it does begin to explain the extent of their knowledge of baseball. I half expect to see a shirt for "Brooklyn Dodgers" any time now...

But take a look at the shirt sizes.

Could this be any more specific? My kid turns six and a half tomorrow. WHAT TO DO???????

But keep scrolling down...

XL? XXL? XXXXL???? HOW FAT DO THEY THINK WE ARE? Apparently Israelis aren't the only ones in need of some good hasbara. Sure, the world may not hate us...they just think we eat Big Macs seventeen times a day. I always found it a little weird to see people walking around with the shirt that says "XXXL" on the front. Why not just write "I am enormous"?

I just chose "XXXXL" and entered "3" in the Quantity box, displaying the following message:
"Sorry, Yankee-we are unable to accommodate your order. The mailman suffered a slipped disk lifting the box. Lose some weight, fatso."

All this web surfing has got me hungry. Time for breakfast. But what to eat on a poor writer's salary? Too bad Israel doesn't have Arby's... Oh yeah...that's not unhealthy. Does it come with a free session with a gastroenterologist?

What better a X-mas present than free "What War Zone???" email updates!? Sign up on the right!

And Now a Quick Word from Our Sponsors...

Or am I their sponsor? Anyway, a plug for a couple of things that came across my virtual desk recently.

The Jewish Reconnection Project is a web-only mini series which shows young Jews in New York and Jerusalem talking to each other and sharing how their Judaism affects their lives. It'’s meant to give viewers a sense of the diversity of Jews around the world and to let college-age people express their own ideas about Judaism with the goal of creating a stronger, healthier Jewish community. The JRP is the baby of Todd Schechter in New York whom I haven't met, although we do share 3 mutual friends according to a certain social networking site.

Whatever you do, don't become friends with this guy.

IsraelVintage: Icons on T-shirts sells t-shirts online decorated with icons "collected along the way" through Israel's 60 years. The site itself reminds me of one of my faves, Busted Tees, in its appearance and models (although there is currently no Hebrew version of "Don't Tase Me, Bro". Nobody steal the idea...IT'S MINE, DO YOU HEAR ME???)

Shabbat shalom, everybody.

Eat Your Heart Out, Ray's Pizza

In the spirit of Ray's, Famous Ray's, Original Ray's, and the like...

From Sunday's New York Times Magazine...the Ethicist!

While negotiating the sale of his share of a small shawarma restaurant to a friend of his, my husband learned that a famous shawarma chain is opening a branch near the restaurant. He fears that if he tells the friend, he will back out of the deal. It feels wrong to withhold this information. Must he tell? — Wendy Schor-Haim, Tel Aviv

Famous shawarma chain??? Huh? Yeah, because any Israeli can recite on command the top 10 famous shawarma places. That's like saying "Tel Aviv's famous stray cat." These places aren't exactly known for their differentiation.

Without further ado...Israel's top 10 famous shawarma places!!!

10) The one on the corner with this poster

Yeah, that narrows it down.

5) The one with the Baba Sali on the wall

4) The one where the guy behind the counter is extremely proficient not only at cramming as many tosefot (additions) into the pita as possible, but doing so only seconds after finishing his cigarette. Ech omrim "wash your hands, Shmulik"?

Ok, that's enough...

So what did the Ethicist say?

Each party in the sale of a company is expected to exercise due diligence on his own behalf, availing himself of public information like that surrounding a famous chain’s expansion plan. Seller and buyer must respect the law and fair business practices, but because each party wants to maximize its benefit at the other’s expense, both must also heed the rule of caveat emptor.

Fair business practices? Dude, have you been here before? I have to threaten civil litigation to convince the taxi driver to use the meter! "No, I will not pay 50 shekels to get from Ben-Yehudah to the shuk! I can see it from here!"

How Israeli cab drivers apparently see Americans

So how did the story end? Happily, as the shawarma rumor turned out to be just that...a rumor. A national pizza chain came in its place. Mmm...pizza.

For another Israel-related Ethicist question...

(Thanks, Larry and Nadine.)

Intro to American Football

Before the new Israeli Football League kicks off this year, let's get a few things straight.

Israelis, here are our first lessons on American football:

1) You have seventeen chances to get three yards.
2) The object of the game is to hit the ball through the hoop before the other teams wins three sets.
3) And the average play looks pretty much like this one.

Yup, just your average touchdown.

Hello, (Nivit) Accidental (Bash) Google (Nivit) Visitors!

In the spirit of this post...and in honor of the testosterone-driven searchers who are ending up here on a daily basis...

NIVIT BASH NIVIT BASH NIVIT BASH!

And on top of that....
CHUMUS!
CHUMUS!
CHUMUS!

Get to work, Googlebots! Thank you for your patience.

Any (Word)Press is Good (Word)Press

Hardy har har. Only nine days till WordCamp Israel, a one-day seminar on blogging including workshops on business, marketing, technology, and other impressive sounding words. The keynote speaker is Lorelle VanFossen who apparently has been blogging in one way or another for 13 years about topics such as travel, nature and travel photography, web design, and more.

13 YEARS??? 13 years ago, I was the first person I knew to get email and we were writing each other with THIS thing.

Somewhere, a teenager is reading this and having a heart attack.
No, Caitlin, we didn't have Facebook either.

(By the way, 14 years ago, I was also realizing you could go into your Eudora preferences, change your "From" name in a lickety-split, and prank your friends. Ahh, the early days of the internet. Ech omrim "lickety-split"? Ok, I'm digressing.)

Here's some nice press for What War Zone???. In honor of the conference, Lorelle features some English and Hebrew Israeli blogs to watch out for including this one, calling it rip-roaring and twisted. (Boy, you barbeque even one baby on Yom Ha'atzmaut and nobody lets you forget it.) I'm looking forward to the conference; should be interesting And I may migrate this site over to WordPress sometime. (And Blogger will be hacking my site in 3...2...1...)

On an unrelated note, it's fun to go into this site's statistics and see where readers and accidental visitors are coming from. Recently, someone ended up here after searching on Ask.com for "im going on holiday to israel do i have to wear a burqa". Check it out. I don't know what's more surprising, that someone knows so little about this country or that there is a living thing on this planet not using Google for searches. Right now, somebody is getting defensive as he drinks his Mr. Pibb and watches movies on his Betamax. I also like how this guy writes his life story in the search...not sure what else to say about that. By the way, I just checked: Lycos, Altavista, and Dogpile search engines are still out there. If any of my loyal readers still use any of these three sites, you will receive a prize.

Right now, hundreds of former employees are wiping away their tears with their stock certificates.

And lastly, here's another, umm, interesting search. Hey, it's a comment, what can I do?

Olmert and Abbas: Hot or Not?

I recently came across the website MyHeritage which, with the use of face recognition technology, will create a collage of your very own celebrity matches in about one minute. Sorry to digress already but I feel the need to say “ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME???? WHAT YEAR ARE WE LIVING IN????” If I had seen this just ten years ago, I would have seriously gone into cardiac arrest. I remember the first time I discovered "virtual flowers" in like ’97; that was arguably the coolest thing in the history of the world. In the last couple of days alone, I have edited a movie, added it to Facebook for the world to see, and video-chatted with an old friend in Los Angeles. Seriously, that is straight outta the Jetsons (wasn’t that an NWA album?) Point is, I’m always shocked that everyone just accepts the unprecedented leaps in technology with so little awe and perspective. (In just a couple of clicks, I was also able to decipher the words to a Milli Vanilli song. This could never have happened 15 years ago. Should I have kept that to myself? Girl, you know it’s true.)

Anyway, here are my results.

Some of the initial thoughts which crossed my mind…

• Umm…WHAAAAAAAAT??? Is this some kind of joke? Julianna Margulies? Eva Longoria? Mira Sorvino??? BABES! I’m not really sure what these results mean but it can’t be a bad thing, right? Either way, I’m printing this out to show to women in bars, much like George did the picture of Susan to enter the “forbidden city” of models.
• That was pretty much my only thought. Oh yes, there was one more: Who the heck is Marco van Basten? Apparently he’s a Dutch soccer manager and former player. Clearly the similarities end at looks since I once struck out playing kickball.
  

Then I wondered, what other tests can I run? And can I draw any meaningful conclusions from them? Here’s round two.

Notice anything strange? Apparently there’s only a 90% resemblance of Ehud Olmert to himself. That’s like the story of Charlie Chaplain placing third in a Charlie Chaplain look-alike contest. There must be some kind of political joke to make about the "Olmert twins"; I’ll leave it to the commenters. Whatever, I don’t think I want either one of them leading my country.

Next, coming in at 75%, is Ibrahim Tatlises. Who is he? According to Wikipedia, he’s a Turkish singer of Kurish and Arab origins. James Gandolfini? Danny DeVito? Fuggedaboutit! What would these guys have done during the Lebanon War? Forget sending in the troops; one phone call and Nasrallah would be sleeping with the fishes.

Al-Assad? CHIRAC??? What, was one woman bouncing around from country to country, sleeping with powerful men? And couldn’t she have chosen more attractive ones? Ech omrim “combover?”

Fine, let’s move on.

Abbas most closely resembles himself. Thanks, MyHeritage. I’ll be buying your stock never.

Ibrahim Tatlises again???? What the hell??? What does this mean??? Could he be the key to Middle East peace, a unifying figure to both peoples, like Abraham is to the Jews and Muslims? Like Elizabeth in the classic mini-series "V", the half-human, half-alien baby? WHO IS THIS MAN???

And more importantly, who’s excited for the 2008 release of “V: The Second Generation?” Between this and the upcoming Indiana Jones movie, 2008 is going to be an incredible year. If Wham! decides to get back together, please don’t wake me (up before you go go.)

Even the prospects of this reunion didn't justify that last joke.

Sigh…try as I might, I can’t seem to come up with any more significant meaning. What will this upcoming year bring in terms of peace? Who does George Bush look like? And what I need to do to get George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley into the studio?

I have more important things to worry about. After all, there’s a 64% chance I look like Stephanie Tanner. Time to grow back the beard.

****************
How the MyHeritage application works: http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Company/how-face-recognition-works.php