Broadway in Egypt?! Are You Kidding Me!

I have a very special play in my heart for both “Grease” and “West Side Story”, being two of the first Broadway musical adaptations to the big screen I’ve ever seen in my life, so when I was passing by the Opera House couple of weeks ago and saw that big fat ad about “Broadway comes to Egypt!” featuring songs from both plays, I simply couldn’t believe my eyes.

Now, I’ve never been to New York, let alone Broadway, but I consider myself well educated in the musicals, as I follow up with the latest and greatest of the Broadway shows, I don’t miss a single screen adaptation, and I – secretly and shamefully – know all famous Broadway songs by heart.


Thinking that the tickets are going to be super expansive, I didn’t even bother going to the Opera House to ask about it, but my well-informed network of friends told me that the tickets actually are in the range between 25LE and 10LE, and I thought to myself: Hell Yeah, and went to buy couple of tickets, still not totally believing that I’m actually going to see a Broadway production, and I considered myself lucky when the guy at the Opera ticket booth told me that I got the last two tickets for the Saturday show, while the Sunday show was fully booked.

Going there all dressed up was a pain, but I kept my spirit up by singing “You’re The One I Want” from “Grease” with my date, and got in the Opera House feeling slightly bad because of the bad seats I got, but who cares! I’m watching B’way.

At the door, they gave us a booklet with the names of people working on the show, and I was kinda relieved when I saw the name “Michael Parks Masterson” as the choreographer and stage director of the show, knowing that the guy worked in Broadway before, and played some major roles in different plays in the United States and Japan, I had the feeling that the show is not going to disappoint me, now that was a mistake, and the show did disappoint me.

The show turned out to be an end-of-the-year production for some drama club in AUC, expect for the times when this Michael guy and the Opera dancers were on stage, the rest of the show was a major Blah in the world of Broadway.

Most of the songs they choose to play from both “West Side Story” and “Grease” were the ballads, sang by the Opera singers, admitingly, some of them have incredible rage of voices, but Broadway is not about singing, Broadway is about the Showbiz, who cares if WSS’s Tony has an amazing voice if he can’t pull three dancing steps together, who gives a damn if Grease’s Danny can sing “Summer Nights” if he doesn’t have the ability to do some basic dancing steps.

Knowing what in his hands, the director of the show had to cancel some of the most amazing songs from both shows, and working by himself on the stage to give the Broadway show to one of the songs only, as he played the DJ Kenicke character, giving an amazing performance to the song “Greased Lightening”, but his efforts were lost in the long boring ballads and nonstop silly semi-dancing movements of his team.

The shocker was that some of the singers can’t actually pronounce English properly , giving the whole show a feeling of unprofessionalism to it, forcing you to disregard the big names on the cover of the booklet; American Embassy in Cairo, American Voices, Cairo Opera Company and – of course – Broadway.

A problem you can always put your fingers on whenever you see such a show in Egypt, they always seems like they ran out of time, they always work like they started preparing for this show the day before yesterday, and this show didn’t take enough time to prepare, giving it a feeling of a high school production rather than a Broadway show.

Let’s be honest here, having a Broadway show in Egypt is a dream long awaited, but to pull such a good idea you need to organize it, to work on it and sweat for it, to bring actual production to Egypt, not just have the logo of Broadway on your booklet.

I expect to be uplifted and entertained, which I had whenever real professionals took the stage, referring to the Opera House dancers and the American director, but whenever the show falls in the hands of the AUC kids, I just felt like falling asleep in my seat.

Funky Arabs

The name is Jad Chouiri, famously known for his slut-y ways directing female singers in a sexual videos that looks like 80s soft porn movies, and sharing the fun with couple of videos for himself, showing the "true" Lebanese in him.


The title is "Funky Arab" a new song by Jad Chouiri, and it's the talk-about nowadays in the office and in front of the coffee machines.


In the video, you can watch it by clicking here, Chouiri is raping his way inside a nightclub, a Lebanese one by the look of it, with his friends, they all look extremely glamorous, wearing Prada and D&G, and the new collection of the gay blogger/designer/celebrity Perez Hilton, with flashes of people from both sexes flirting, man-on-woman flirting, man-on-man flirting, and orgy-flirting, if there's such a thing.


as he goes in the club, full of people wearing Shirts with slogans like "FUCK REHAB" or "TEAM PEREZ", he sings about the fact they we (Arab boys and girls) are not what you (Non-Arab boys and girls) see on CNN and BBC, we can be funky and we got guts, we know how to turn you on, and dance with you till the break of down.


We're sexy, we have color and we know how to party.


The song is actually nice, the beat is quite interesting and goes with the flow, and the cinematography is superb, but I just can't make my mind up about it.

I like it, I seriously do, Do I agree that all Arab are like the people he point to in the video?! of course not! I can't name three people other than myself who're into the dancing scene and who doesn't give a crap about anything but to live and let live.

Is this song a good way to communicate with non-Arab people and deliver the message that we're not riding camels anymore, and that we actually can pronounce two words other than "Come buy"?! I dunno, but I guess that it's a way!


There are two kind of people in the world, who study for themselves, and those would know how we're living and understand us, they might have a different or oppose view on us and our life but they know us.

and there's the other kind, the people who doesn't know us at all, and if Jad Chouiri is the one who's going to show them the Arab world, even through Club music and semi-naked Arabs, they be it!

GAYraini ..

Abdul-Fatah Graini raise to fame last year, with an album the blow minds and a style of hair more likely that you'll see it in the fabulous 60s rather than an Arab popstar.
Graini gained so much fame as the hip new singer, who really connect with young girls and hash smoking boys, he looked like one of them really, and made sense to them.
couple of days ago, Graini was throwing a concert in one of the Cairo downtown cafes, he did some OK job, and some people actually stoped him in the street asking him for photos.


Not that I disapprove or anything, it's always cute to see the love in the eyes of people, but, don't you find it really weird that Graini couldn't let go of the hand of his "friend" to take a photo, let's take a second look.


How lovely, another piccture just for you to get the "picture".


Oh Graini, darling, love is really in the air, and all this love songs you write and sing to impress young girls are just really true.
Doesn't that interview that Graini took couple of weeks ago, and talked about the "girl" of his dreams just has a whole different feeling to it now.

I kinda understand why some people in Cairo can be double faced, sometimes they're being themselves not expecting someone to see, but when they know someone is looking they take that "persona" they have created for themselves, it's really fine to decide to hide who you're from the eyes of the puplic specially in a city like Cairo.
I wish that someday people who're hiding behind a mask to be able to work in a certin carrer or have a semi-normal life style in Egypt to just drop that mask, but till then, Graini, sweetie, let the fuck go of your boyfriend hand, and try not to get killed, both carrer wise and actual wise.

Photos of Mr. AKON Shitous night!

AKON, Sweetheart, You SUCK!

When I first saw the "AKON" ad on yallabina.com I was like "are you fucking kiddin' me ?!".
I like the guy since he first started, he has some nice music and one of my favorite remixes for my step class is actually to that "Belly-Dancer" of his ..

I so wanted to go, I actually started advising people to go, talking about how "easy" it is to buy the tickets online from the same website (which turned out to be a problem and I eventually went to buy the tickets from a restaurant - huh?! - then I had to go exchange them before the concert - double huh?! - to be able to go to the concert).

so, needless to say, I convinced 6 other people to come with me to that concert looking for some fun in a weekend!

OK, here's a list of what went wrong:
1 - there's no such a thing as organized entry, you need to fight, and you need to fight low and dirty to get in.

2 - the metal detector was going nuts every time someone passes, but of course, no one cared less, it's less than a week after the Khan El-Khalili explosion, and AKON is not so Islamic-Friendly singer, let's say.

3 - the music was NEVER loud enough, I could carry a normal conversation between me and my friends like we're in a bar, all what we were missing is the beer, which we were not allowed to bring in.

4 - the VIP stage fell down under the people who paid a 1000 LE to get there, some people were send to the hospital.

5 - we were there at 7.30, Mr. AKON was suppose to be on stage at 8.30, he showed up at 12.40 am, FOUR FUCKING HOURS LATE.

6 - one of the so-called-DJs who filled the gap actually played a 1998 Will Smith song, cool, right ?! (Yeah, 11 years ago).

7 - DJ Feedoo decided to show us how great of DJ he's, went on lip-syncing couple of songs he wrote, one of them called "Cairo" you know, the cute thing was actually that his mic wasn't working, he noticed that after the end of his act. (he looked like a jerk).

8 - Melissa, who's a nobody, showed up to sing two songs, one of them was a summer hit, two summers ago.

9 - Mr. AKON's show lasted for 25 minutes.

10 - After taking his clothes off, Mr.Akon started building a bridge of Peace (he calls it) to carwd surf the people to the end of the place (why?! God Knows), had such a butterfly effect that you cannot imagine:

• Mr.AKON screaming like a girl "HELP ME!! HELP ME!" in the mic, it seems to me that Egyptian "fans" are more scary than prison inmates.
• two small light stages fall down on the crowds, later on, the wood that those stages are made of was used by AKON bodyguards to push the "fans" away. (with nails and all).
• Mr.AKON started punching people in the face and in the arms after some people tried to pull down his underwear.
• 2 smashed cars, AKON used as a final way to run from "fans" who kept trying to reach him, resulting in a very interesting pumps in the cars.

• a final song from Mr.AKON and then he went to the after-party somewhere else, where - I'm sure - he'll get more drunk and high.

so, licking our wounds and cursing the day we thought to go to such a shitous party, we walked our way home, and first thing I did when I reached home, was deleting all the illegally downloaded music I have for Mr.AKON from my Ipod and my laptop.

it actually made me feel better.
you can find more about this subject on this link, this link, and this link.