Hulk Hogan, Osama Bin Laden and a pair of Red Wings

by Jamie Rhein on

I heard part of an interview with Morgan Spurlock, the creator of the documentary, “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden” yesterday. The film, which opens today, sounds as if it might be more travelogue with a twist of the Middle East. Spurlock visits places as varied as Morocco, Pakistan, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and chats with a variety of those countries’ citizens along the way in order to sort of find Osama bin Laden and take a look-see in the countries where he has been.

Spurlock’s interview comments about wresting reminded me of one of my husband’s encounters with Tibetan monks in Nepal. The interviewer and Spurlock talked about how people everywhere, no matter which country, know that championship wrestling is serious business. My husband, who wrestled in high school, attracts wrestling type fans wherever he travels.

As a rather large man with huge feet–size 14, he is unable to escape notice. People, particularly in countries like Vietnam, like to poke and prod him. Because he wears Red Wing work boots, his shoes gain notice. Fill one with cement and you’d have quite the doorstop. Even without the cement, it’s a doorstop. Anyway, when we were in Nepal and stopped by a Tibetan monastery outside of Pokhara, like always, my husband left his shoes outside the door while we went inside. When he came out, he saw a group of monks gathered around his boots.

One of the monks reached down to pick one up and seemed to be testing its weight, marveling. Another, who knew English, said, “Can we ask you a question?”

My husband leaned in thinking he might learn a bit about enlightenment,”Yes?” He waited for the pearl.

“Hulk Hogan? Is he real?”

“Sure,” said my husband, which produced a round of beaming smiles, nods and back slapping, as if my husband and Hulk are best buds. As for the pearl of wisdom? Here’s what I think. Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to please.

Prince Harry withdrawn from Afghanistan, says “I don’t like England much”

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Though it’s been kept a secret by the British media, Prince Harry has been on active duty in Afghanistan since December. The news finally leaked out yesterday on the Drudge Report, and British officials have decided that, due to security concerns, the 23-year-old prince will have to come back to England.

Prince Harry was not pleased with the news. When asked if he’d ever want to return to Afghanistan, he said, “I don’t want to sit around in Windsor.”

He added: “I generally don’t like England that much and, you know, it’s nice to be away from all the press and the papers and all the general shite that they write.”

That’s an attitude I can’t help but love.

More here.

World’s oldest oil paintings found in Afghanistan

by Anna Brones on

Forget Europe, the world’s oldest oil painting was just recently found in the caves of the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan. The Bamiyan Valley was originally famous for its 1,500 year old Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, but a team of scientists from the US, Japan and Europe declared this week that they some of the cave oil paintings date back to 650 A.D.

The oil paintings have not fared well. Years of the severe Afghan natural environment as well as dynamite explosions from the Taliban have damaged the paintings. In attempting to preserve the intact portions, a team of researchers from the National Research for Cultural in Tokyo — they were working under a Japanese/UNESCO Fun-in-Trust program — discovered oily residues in a group of one of the wall paintings. Further research with different microscopic, x-ray and chemical tests showed that the paintings may have been made using poppy seed and walnut oils.

The paintings are most likely the work of artists who once traveled the Silk Road, East and Central Asia’s historic trade route, but the most important aspect about the discovery is that it reverses the standard assumption that oil painting originated in Europe. To learn more about the discovery go here.

A thousand splendid “truths” about Afghanistan

by Iva Skoch on

This weekend, I was talking to some friends about the increasing popularity of all those fiction bestsellers from other countries, namely Khaled Hosseini’s “Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns“. People like reading them in part because Hosseini is a good writer, but they also like reading them because they feel like they are learning about life in Afghanistan.

The conversation turned to whether or not it is a good idea for the “American masses” to get their ideas about what life in Afghanistan is like from fiction. Imagine what everyone in Afghanistan would think about the US if they only read, say, Toni Morrison’s abuse-filled books. Yes, that type of abuse certainly exists here, but that’s not all there is in the US.

On one hand, Hosseini was born in Afghanistan and is clearly familiar with the life there. I don’t doubt that the kind of abuse he describes so vividly in his books actually happens in Afghanistan. At the same time, the characters are fictional and the situations made up. Can people actually separate truth from fiction when it comes to Afghanistan, a country we know so little about?

New, tasteful hit in China: Osama bin Laden-shaped candy

by Iva Skoch on

The things people make money on in this world are quite amazing. I especially wonder about the Osama-inspired merchandise that people seem to keep producing for some reason.

A friend sent me a link to Wired’s defense blog. The author, Noah Shachtman, seems to know a thing or two about this topic. Sick of eating “baked scorpion on sticks” and “rat-shaped lollipops” in China, he is marveling over yet another culinary treat of Beijing: sugared Osama Bin Laden-shaped candies.

Shachtman says that in Afghanistan, they sell “Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls“, or coconut candy manufactured in Pakistan and packaged in pink-and-purple boxes covered with images of bin Laden surrounded by tanks, cruise missiles, and jet fighters.” Yum!

While the world likes to get their daily dose of Osama orally, Americans clearly don’t find this intimate enough. Here, you could buy “Al Qaeda condoms” and “bin Laden toilet paper“. People are weird.