I miss mullets

Continuing my hair theme: The other day I saw a really strong mullet. This was a young Arab guy. It was classic, a sort of jerry-curled billy-ray cyrus thing. The guy sporting it looked pretty tough and even if I had had a camera there was no way I was going to snap his picture. I have only seen two mullets here in Israel. The other one was a few months ago and on a Russian-looking guy. What's Russia- looking? Well it was old-style Russian, like the guys I knew twenty years ago when I was on kibbutz. He was wearing a lot of acid-washed denim for one thing. He was blond and pale and he had a whispy blond moustache which completes the mullet well.
Israel is a society of short hair and long hair. Israel likes dualisms, clear dichotomies. Arab/Jew Secular/Religious, Sabra/Immigrant short hair/long hair. Short hair says neat, organized, tough and military. Long hair says hippy, rebel, soft, hiding. Those are the choices and guys go with them. Arab guys, too, while sporting lots of styles are not really adventurous; they adhere to the two basic styles rule, long or short. Mullets blow up dichotomies like that. They are anti-hippie, small-town, conservative but rebellion. Business up front, party at the back. At least that's what I always see when I see a mullet (at least on a guy). Debbie's friend Matt Bissonnette's book Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock has a classic mullet scene when some anglo kids go on an exchange trip up in Point-au-pique and meet a French Canadian guy who is like the coolest thing in his small town and the narrator calls him "the lord, high King Pepper". It is a pretty funny scene in a funny book. The narrator ends up getting worked over by the lord, high King Pepper for messing with his girlfriend.
It is noteworthy that both the mullets I have seen were solitary. I think of the mullet as needing at least one mullet-follower, somebody sporting a less committed mullet, a mullet fellow-traveller. It must be lonely wearing a mullet here.
The guy I saw this week had seriously luxurious looking curls in back, and some wet-look product on. In addition to making me think of Absalom, who I had on the brain anyway, it reminded me of a theme in the Illiad -- the ultimate West versus East book --- about the Trojans and their curled and scented hair, how the Greeks disdain them for it. But, of course, Paris woos away Helen with that hair. I'll have to ask David -- a classicist -- about it when I see him this weekend if he remembers what I'm talking about. My guess is the Trojans had the pretty-boy long hair, the Greeks had the short hair. Not a lot of room for in-between or stylistic equivocation when you are on the battlefront of the clash of civilizations.

Absalom, Absalom Hairstylists

I got my hair cut by a guy named Eitan Avshalom (the Hebrew of Absalom). I commented on the irony of someone named Avshalom cutting hair. He said, “Why? Because he and his father fought?” It is one of my favourite stories from the bible and one of the saddest. This Avshalom didn't know the end of it. I'm doing this from memory so excuse me if I get the details wrong (as I pointed out in a previous post my memory is such that I could be making this whole thing up so better go check your bibles). King David loves Avshalom who is very handsome and has beautiful long hair. Avshalom ends up rebelling against the rule of his father (he has good reasons; David is ignoring a lot of awful stuff going on in his family). Things are touch and go for David for a while but eventually Avshalom and his forces are on the run, about to be defeated. There is a final battle and David tells his men, don't kill my son because I still love him. But Yoav– the King's trusted military man -- finds Avshalom. Avshalom's chariot ran under a thorn tree and his beautiful long hair has tangled in the tree, lifting him out of his chariot leaving him suspended in the air and helpless. Yoav doesn't hesitate. He stabs Avshalom “under the fifth rib” (Yoav is David's heavy, a wetwork specialist, and he does a couple of people “under the fifth rib,” as I recall). David finds out and cries, “But I told you to leave him alive.” Yoav tells him, in effect, you aren't just a dad fighting with a son, you are king and when someone rebels against the king, even the king can't forgive that. Raison d'etat. The haircut – to give Eitan Avshalom his due -- is pretty good.

In related news, the Israeli Labour Party, in a panic at polls predicting that they are going to be reduced to a sliver of their former power, have decided to go negative with their election advertising. In Israel this isn't big news. Kadima has giant ads saying “Bibi (Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud and the acknowledged front runner) I don't trust him.”

The amazing thing about Labour's campaign is that they've gone negative against THEMSELVES. The ad on the bus I saw yesterday had a big picture of Labour Party leader Ehud Barak and the text said “Lo simpati. Manhig” which might roughly be translated as “Not likeable. A Leader.” Obviously some bright light decided that Labour couldn't hide its considerable liabilities – principally the fact that Israelis don't like Barak – so they might as well put them front and centre. There's going to be a whole series of ads saying thing like "He's not nice. A leader." "He's got cooties. He's a leader. "

It seems that there is nobody left in the back rooms of these parties who can say goodbye to these guys. In Canada, if you loose an election your party's backroom boys tell you thanks very much and go away now. Everyone was appalled that Stephane Dion didn't know this, until eventually someone pricked him gently under his fifth rib and indicated the door.

In Israel, the backroom guys, the ones who in Canada would be considered too soaked in blood for party leadership aren't in the backrooms (That's both figurative and literal blood, Barak and Netanyahu were in the Israeli equivalent of the green berets and Barak, at least, spent a fair amount of his military career parachuting into Lebanon and other resort locations at night and killing enemies, eventually becoming Israel's most decorated soldier). Somehow they end up leaders of their parties and no one is left in the smoky closed-door meetings who can say, “Step aside or we're going to dump your body in the Yarkon River”. There's no line-up of talented, charismatic, bright up-and-comers who want to take the poisoned chalice of Labour leadership, whoever gives the party its money is asleep at the switch and I guess what is left of the party base is scared that if Barak goes, they'll end up back with Amir Peretz (famous for watching military manoeuvres through binoculars with the lens-caps still on, a definite no-no for Israel's Praetorian political class) or someone worse as leader, so Barak will continue to steer the Labour Party over cliff after cliff.

What do you do when you need an Yoav for your Yoav?

Playing hookie at the deepest hypersaline lake in the world

Took the kids out of school and went to the Dead Sea today. Here's what I learned from wikipedia about the Dead Sea. There are no macroscopic organisms living there; It's dead. And its a lake. Hence the name.
We went to the national park at Einot Tsukim. I saw two beautiful birds there, neither I can identify with confidence but one was a little green guy travelling with a buddy who was shy to let me get near. I think it was a little green bee eater (none other than the shrakrak gamadi) and a white-throated kingfisher (again I wouldn't put money on it). I'm pretty sure it was some kind of kingfisher but it was big, bigger than the 25 cm my guidebook gives the Shaldag Hazeh Lavan. I read in an etymological dictionary that the great hebrew poet Haim Nachman Bialik gave the shaldag its name, just made it up from two hebrew words but it didn't give a reference. In another piece of funny hebrew trivia, the car rental guy today asked me for my "hozeh." Hozeh means prophecy in Biblical Hebrew. Sure, I said and I told him that Israel was going to be lead by a generation of corrupt fools and would continue to be at war with its neighbours until the Jewish people resolved to treat one another and the stranger in their midst with greater kindness. He just held out his hand and said "Okay but give me your hozeh," and that's when I remembered that hozeh in modern hebrew means contract. I actually learned that from Dudu Busi. In his book he tells a story about one South Tel Aviv bad guy taking out a hozeh on another one. Bialik -- who named the shaldag -- said he hoped that in Israel one day there would be Jewish prostitutes and Jewish gangsters, all the normal features of a nation. He has his wish.

I mentioned the Mamilla Cemetery in a previous post. I have started an online petition asking the Simon Wiesenthal Center to stop digging at Mamilla Cemetery. If you are interested in reading it you can check it out at A True Monument to Tolerance Petition.

Finally, I have to say I never thought I'd see the day when Canada's turbulent and arcane politics made Israel's look tame and easy to understand, but its happened. A party leader who resigned but refuses to leave, who may end up being prime minister in a jurryrigged coalition, it could be ripped from HaAretz. Stephane Dion should consider coming here if he ever actually does leave the liberals. He'd be right at home. I know one thing that the looming constitutional crisis has given me; I am going to start proroguing random stuff left and right just to celebrate my Canadian-ness.
This blog post is formally prorogued, by order of his excellency, the right honourable Ornotholgist Plenipotentiary.