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PrintA saucy 1331 B.C. Nile Valley pinot noir?
We found out last week that King Tutankhamen drank red wine, which, with its proven longevity benefits, could help explain his long, prosperous death. It wasn't news that King Tut hit the bottle. We just didn't know whether he was a white or red man, or, for that matter, whether he favored Grey Goose straight up. Ironically, Tut died well before he was legal, at age 17 or 18, after nine years on the throne. He wasn't much of a leader, but you try being an effective king at 8. However, death proved to be an excellent career move, making him a household name the world over and driving home the efficacy of getting a decent mortician.
But back to the research. "This is the first time someone has found an ancient red wine," Maria Rosa Guasch-Jane told the Associated Press in London, completely overlooking my Italian grandfather's homemade "Dago red," which was ancient right out of the barrel, North Bergen, N.J., circa 1954. Wine labels in Tut's time had the brand name, harvest year (they had to remember to count down in the B.C. days) and the vine grower, but not the color of the wine, figuring, we suppose, why state the obvious. Research shows that while the royals and their pals drank regularly, commoners tippled only on special occasions, presumably including tailgating before Egypt Fightin' Pharoahs games.
In the Post-Gazete, he's "Mr. Tut"
"Dead Egyptian Blues"
Oh, Mister Tut, they love the mask
But do they love you honey sweetheart don't ask
Where's those baby browns and that pearly smile
That smile that drove 'em wild by the early Nile
You make one terrific hieroglyphic don't you bro'
Centuries of standing sideways turned you to a pro
Those girls from Cairo who filled your heart with lust
They've all turned to dust yesterday, yesterday
And those bandages didn't do that much for you
Man you're all wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues
Oh, Mister Tut, they dig the tomb
All that gold leaf brightens up a room
But what's the diff when you're stiff what riff they're playing
When your ears have spent five thousand years decaying
What does it matter what possessions you may boast
When you're just a ghost it's only jive Clive
Your sarcophagus is glowing but your esophagus is showing
Who cares how rich you are love
When you look like Boris Karloff
Call Nautilus, they might even refund your dues
Man, you're all wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues
Oh, Mister Tut, you wait and see
Another few thousand years they're gonna dig up me
And I'll have all my little treasures near at hand
A CD of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
A little dried out Maui wowee crumbled in a bong
A letter from my honey, saying, "Love you kid, so long"
Some peanut butter sandwiches long returned to sand
Not much gold or silver but, Tut, I think you'll understand
That in my way I'll be just like you
All wrapped up in them dead Egyptian blues.
Not St. Peter O'Toole
Veteran Egyptian actor Omar Sharif may well have the Live Egyptian Blues. Sharif, a convert to Islam, played the title role in the film "St. Peter," shown on Italian TV last week. "Playing Peter was so important for me that even now I can only speak about it with difficulty," Sharif told Italian reporters. "It will be difficult for me to play other roles from now on." A message on a Web site linked to al-Qaida, which has all the earmarks of the familiar al-Qaida sense of humor, called the 73-year-old actor "a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him." This was reported from Rome yesterday by the Guardian. Sharif, who was brought up a Christian, converted to Islam in the 1950s and shot to international stardom in the 1962 classic, "Lawrence of Arabia." But he has repeatedly upset fans in the Muslim world, notably in 1968, when he caused a furor by kissing Barbra Streisand, who is Jewish, in "Funny Girl." His films were banned in Egypt as a result. Interviewed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation earlier this year, Sharif said: "I believe in everything and in nothing ... the first thing I was taught ... at catechism was that God is justice, and I don't see justice in the world."
Is there a radical Islamic ONION?
The legal opinions proclaimed by Islamic scholars, known as fatwas, have proliferated in the Muslim world since the 1980s. As part of a government drive to eliminate frivolous fatwas, the Saudi newspaper Al Watan recently published one such edict setting out new rules for football, soccer to us. The New York Times and the Guardian published versions. Here are excerpts from the Guardian's edited translation.
1. International terminology that heretics use, such as "foul," "penalty," "goal," "out," should be abandoned. Whoever says them should be punished and ejected from the game.
2. Do not call "foul" and stop the game if someone falls and sprains a foot or the ball touches his hand, and do not give a yellow or red card to whomever was responsible. Instead, it should be adjudicated according to Sharia rulings concerning broken bones and injuries.
3. Do not follow the heretics, the Jews, the Christians and especially evil America regarding the number of players. Do not play with 11 people. Add to this number or decrease it.
4. Play in your regular clothes or your pajamas or something like that, but not colored shorts and numbered T-shirts, because they are not Muslim clothing. Rather, they are heretical and western clothing.
5. Play to strengthen the body in order better to struggle in the way of God and to prepare the body for when it is called to jihad. Soccer is not for passing time or the thrill of so-called victory.
6. Do not play in two halves. Play in one half or three halves to differentiate yourselves from the heretics, the corrupted and the disobedient.
7. If neither of you beats the other, or "wins," as it is called, and neither puts the leather between the posts, do not add extra time or penalties. Instead leave the field, because winning with extra time and penalty kicks is the pinnacle of imitating heretics and international rules.
8. Young crowds should not gather to watch you play because if you are there for the sake of sports and strengthening your bodies, why would people watch you? You should make them join your physical fitness and jihad preparation, or you should say: "Go proselytize and seek out morally reprehensible acts in the markets and the press and leave us to our physical fitness."
9. You should spit in the face of whoever puts the ball between the posts or uprights and then runs in order to get his friends to follow him and hug him like players in America or France do, and you should punish him, for what is the relationship between celebrating, hugging and kissing and the sports that you are practicing?
