History Hyenas with Chris Distefano and Yannis Pappas - 145 - Nemr is WILD!

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

The Cuzzies are joined by Lebanese comedy superstar Nemr to get our facts straight about what going on in his country! From the screwed in comedy to franks and beans government tactics, it's a roller coaster of intrigue we had to get to the bottom of!Want more Hyena content? Check out www.patreon.com/bayridgeboys where things get really WILD!Follow us!: 🙆🏼‍♂️🐕🙆🏻‍♂️🙆🏼‍♂️Chris Distefano on Instagram, Twitter, website🙆🏻‍♂️Yannis Pappas on Instagram, Twitter, website🐕History Hyenas on Instagram, Twitter, website Subscribe to the poddy woddy on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, and HH Clips

ស្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែលាប់ប្រូវតែល What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of History Hyenas. We got a special one. We got a special guest, my good friend, comedian Nimmer. He just goes by one name. You know, I don't too do you go by one name too like is that like because people can't pronounce the last name or are you just a fucking superstar no dude you want the honest answer my last name takes up too much real estate on posters i just dropped it because my first name Nimr is four letters. Right. And then the last is Abu Nisar. So when I, when I would put that, and if I had a show name,

like love isn't the answer or the future is now, and then there's Abu Nisar, it's just like the whole thing's text and Facebook blocks that when I want to advertise. So I just, it's Nimr and it's easy. And it's easy. And to be honest with you, yeah. Like I feel like, you know, you going by one name, it's just a real Nimr thing to do. So it's easy and to be honest with you yeah like i feel like you know you going by one name it's just a real nimmer thing to do so it's fine nimmer nimmer means tiger so in in arabic in the middle east people used to just use my name anyway like they wouldn't they drop the last name anyways because it's like it's it's you know you're you're a tiger that would get well i'd be getting all the time now let me ask you a question because i can't see on the screen i could see your full government name nimmer abu nassar So I just have to answer you a valid

US citizen? Yeah, I am. Okay, great. All right, good. I didn't come here. I didn't come here illegally. Yeah, if you want to just flash your passport up, that would make me more comfortable. I actually could do that if you want that. Nimmer's a very funny comedian Great comedian Originally from Lebanon By way of San Diego Today we're going to talk about Lebanon

The history of Lebanon The you know Specifically the protests That were currently going on I assume everyone's indoors now Because of the Yeah the government The government is like This coronavirus is the best thing that ever happened to us right now.

Wait, Nimr, are you in San Diego right now or are you actually in Lebanon right now? No, I'm in Los Angeles right now. I grew up in San Diego, but I live in Los Angeles now. Oh, perfect. Yeah, he's an LA comic, but he grew up in San Diego. Did you start comedy in San Diego? No, dude. I moved back to Beirut when I was 10 years old. So I started stand up. I started doing stand up in the Middle East. And I started the industry of stand up in the Middle East back in 1999. And I built it pretty much single handedly for about 15 years before I came here. And, and I was like a household name there. I do shows for 10s of 1000s of people. And then I

came here and people are like, Who the fuck are you? Right? And can I get five minutes on a on a Tuesday? We'll see. Work your way up, buddy. So it was, it was that kind of thing. I came here and people are like, who the fuck are you? Right. And can I get five minutes on a, on a Tuesday? We'll see. Work your way up, buddy. So it was, uh, it was that kind of thing. I came here in 2015. Yeah. It's like, it's like where you were in Lebanon.

You were doing arenas and stuff. And then when you came to America, you had to have, Hey Bert, James Manor and open shows. Exactly. You did a good job, right? Did James do a good job? Yeah. Killed it. Oh, he's the best.

James is our boy, good friend of the show. We call him Hey Bert. He's the best. He was the absolute best. I mean, that guy just lit the place on fire. Any chance I get, I'm going to work with him, share a stage with him. Yeah, well, he's probably going to be texting you soon because he's got no work coming up. Yeah, we all need to work.

We all need to work. None of us do. That's what I mean. Now, you do those shows in English, right? Which I was surprised to know that comedy in English flourishes so much in Lebanon and the Middle East. I mean, dude, there's been so much war in the Middle East. Everybody's left and come back. And when you leave, you go to places that are safe.

And those safe places speak English. So everybody came back speaking English. It's pretty much, I wouldn't say it's the dominant language in the Middle East, but the fact is I have an incredible career and I only do standup comedy in English. And, you know, we're doing shows for insane numbers of people. There's no, there's no translation gap. There's not, it's fluent, fluent as hell. It's an official in Lebanon. It's one of the three official languages. Yeah. Cause even Lebanon, even Lebanon knows who's in charge, you know, the United the United States exactly everybody's like you know

what well you know what is it just a language because we were occupied by the French uh back in the day and then the French kind of gave us our independence just kind of like but do you mind keeping the language we were like yeah sure dope so we kept the French and we speak Arabic and then we were like these American overlords we know how we can get them to like us. So we started speaking English. Now everybody likes us. Love you. Dude. And the food is fantastic.

And I live in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, which sometimes they call fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. They call it Beirut. And they have all, yeah, because there's such a huge Lebanese population and the food, the desserts.

Um, it's kind of like a baklava. I don't know what it is. I, it's so good. I, I, I stick it in my face and my ass I forgot what it was

What it's actually called but there's a Lebanese bakery That I go in with That I go in to And it's so good And you know what the silver lining with the coronavirus Is I used to go in and stick out like a sore thumb But now when I go in because I got to keep my face covered I look like everybody else

You know what's great about nimmer he's just like us like you could tell the kid's about six five he's big you can tell he comes from like a long line of like levantine and anatolian warriors or whatever that killed a lot of robin we gotta fight isis and shit like you know what i'm saying like we're we're i'm a comedian but we gotta you gotta be a warrior first you understand you come from a long line of warriors just genetically but then somewhere in your genetic line there was somebody who wanted to dance and sing just like me and chris like us no nimmer nimmer's a big kid he's jacked he's a big kid he looks imposing but the only reason why i'm not scared to fight him is because i know i have jesus christ on my shoulder and he does it are you ready for this are you ready for this

i gave you jesus christ i'm christian he comes from my lands my friend what do you think you have jesus christ on your side he turned water into wine in lebanon that's how you know the lebanese people know how to party brothers you know what it's funny you say that because mike or benetio will put it up on the patreon and with this episode google the real face of jesus it was a show that came out on the history channel what they actually think jesus looked like and it looks right it looks exactly like my man emmer abu nassar 100 i have a whole i have a whole set about the way that here in america like when you see pictures of jesus he looks like larry from omaha like he's like white skin and i'm like dude it was Palestine like 2000 years

ago. You had, there was no, you could, you get burnt. It's hot. Like you can't have that complexion. Right. He was hairy and probably short. You know, it was just, it is what it is, you know? Yeah. A lot of Americans don't even know that there's Christians in the Middle East, but there are a lot, right? I mean, that's where it comes from. It's funny. I always tell people, I'm like, they're like, oh, there are Christians in the Middle East. I'm like, yeah, there was actually a very famous one. I don't know if you ever heard of Jesus. If you ever heard of him, like it comes from there. And it's definitely, it is no longer the dominant religion. Islam is, but it started there. And Lebanon is probably one of the most densely Christian populated areas,

but you got Christians in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt. I mean, all over. Right. How do you have that? But you have an Arabic last name. So how did that happen that you're a Christian, but you have an Arabic last name? Dude, Christians are Arabs.

That's a good point. The question is, how does Chris not have an Arabic last name is the Christianity question. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, buddy, I would like to have a fucking Arabic last name. If you want to marry me right now, I'll get down to one of your cutie patootie. I can actually, do you want to know what your names in Arabic would be? Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. But if my dad's listening, shut the camera off and mom shut the computer off right now. So Chris, Chris basically is short for Christopher right yes I'm Christopher yeah

okay so I mean Christopher doesn't really you'd still keep the Christopher in Lebanon okay you just be Christopher okay Christopher Christopher is Finn would be your last name Wow it's not Swedish that's the fun so basically if you wanted to write it down, but it would be, I'll tell you what it would be. Christopher Alistfin. Alistfin. Estefan. Al would be D and Istfin would be Stefano.

That's what I'm going by. That's going to be my new ground, your name. Yeah, there you go. And we keep Yannis Papachuk. He's Greek. We have an alliance. We're like 40 minutes apart. So you stay.

You're one of, you're already in the crowd. He's Turkish. He's 25% Turkish. We did the Ancestry.com, and he's actually mostly Middle Eastern. Yeah. You're a 25% trader? That's terrible, dude. Yeah, well, it's Anatolian, Levantine.

So I guess Anatolian is like the ancestors of the Turks, but also Lebanon and all that. So my genes actually – I got Turk in me. We're all – yeah, we mixed. The Ottoman Empire just took that whole region. Right. I'm 100% German so. Yeah.

Your people took over a lot of stuff too. Yeah. My people are a little pushy. Yeah. They're short tempered slightly. Yeah. The Franks, so the Franks in Lebanon, the Franks came over right during the crusade and they made an alliance with what? Tell us about the just a little background on Lebanon. Who are the Druze and the Maronites?

than San Diego County, the entire country. And it's a population of, we presume, 4 million. We haven't had a census in decades because the government is set up based on balance of religion. And everybody's terrified that if you do a census, you find out that you have, let's say, way more Shiite Muslims than Christians. So why is the president? And then it just, it changes everything because roles on government there are assigned to specific sects. And in terms of number of sects, we have 19 different religious sects in the country. Christianity is split. Islam is split. The Druze are sometimes classified as Muslims, but they're in fact their own kind of religion. So in Christianity, you have, you know, the Maronite Christians, the Roman Catholic Christians, or like myself, the Latine Christians, and then the Druze are their own thing. And the Muslims, you got the Shiites, the Sunnis. And of course, you have the

Jews, which a lot of people are shocked to find out is actually one official religion has representation in the government, although there's nobody sitting in those chairs. And there's many more. I have to go online and see them. But that's pretty much the major sectarian breakdown. Wow, that is a lot of religion. So the Maronites and the Franks kind of, they stayed in touch, right? The Maronites were like the dominant Christian religion back in the day. Like they were the, they were in power. They were a lot of people blame the up, like the civil war originally happening because they had too much power and they weren't taking care of the other religions. And that was exploited by, you know, Palestinian other outside forces that came in and said,

hey, you know, let us help you take the power back. And that's kind of what we see in Iraq happening today when, you know, you have a Shiite controlled government and a Sunni majority. That's when ISIS came in with like, hey, we're good guys, give us weapons and give us your stuff and we'll help you fight. And then it turned out to be a complete, you know, shit show.

But that inequality is what gave rise to the way Lebanon's government is now where the president has to be a Maronite Christian. The speaker of the house has to be a Shiite Muslim. The prime minister has to be a Sunni Muslim. The general in the army has to be a Maronite. It's like, it's all split up that way. So that to ensure there's equal distribution. Now, how extreme, how extreme is Lebanon as compared to other Middle Eastern countries? Like, like in some Middle Eastern countries, you know, if you're, you know, listening to Barbra Streisand, deep throat in a lollipop, they'll throw you off a roof. Is it like that in Lebanon? Lebanon's more progressive than America. Wow. So that's where I

need to go then. A guy like me, cause I fall in love with men, but I have sex with women. I'm a fucking gay guy. You will love it there, man. First everybody's gay i'm kidding uh we what we're french educated so there's a good healthy gay population in lebanon you'll love here's the thing um in lebanon uh i as a comedian am much more comfortable on stage there than i am here i'm not i'm not gonna ride the i don't have a problem with political correctness anywhere i I'm not necessarily a very controversial comedian, but I have bits like, you know, how we fought ISIS with comedy. And it starts off the opening sentences, when three ISIS suicide bombers blew themselves up in Lebanon killed 67 people. So I do dive into some very controversial stuff. In America, I've had people come up to me after shows, you know, I don't know how that is. I don't

know if you should say that, you know, the word retard isn't whatever and stuff. And they take my words out of context. In, in Lebanon, it's about the meaning. So you can say anything in Lebanon. It just, the caveat is it has to be clever and it has to be funny. You know what I'm saying? Like it's, it's judged on that merit. Did you let you want to make a religious joke? Go ahead. We better be clever and funny or nobody's going to laugh. And you know, upsetting the wrong religion, it might be even worse. So I love it. There is a mixture of extremism and stuff, but at the same time, it's, it's, it's a party capital of the world. I have, when I first came to LA in 2015, I remember I'm like, oh man, Los Angeles, go fucking party. Uh, I, I went, I took a nap in the evening. I did the

Lebanese thing. It was like 7.00 PM. I took a nice nap. I woke up at around 10.00 PM. You know, I showered, I got dressed around midnight. I was like, all right, let's go. I turn on the car. I head out. Everything's fucking closed. Um, in, in Lebanon, you know, you start partying 10, 11 in the evening, you go till the, till dawn. And then we party in a place like BL 18, which is shaped like a coffin on purpose designed that way. And at dawn they open up the roof and it's like a symbolic thing. The sun comes in, people go wild and then they go grab breakfast. And it's just, it's a, it's a place of people who've been so oppressed for so long that all they want to do is just live and live passionately. So they really live like every day is their last. So that opens up as Ronnie Cycli on the wheels of steel. Ronnie Cycli is a,

is an, is the most Lebanese celebrity I think I could point to because he's an NBA player who's now a DJ, and I can't think of a more Lebanese transition to go from NBA player to DJ in Miami. It's like the most DJ Khaled-esque, who's DJ Khaled's Palestinian. It's such an Arab thing to do, to become a DJ. Did you hoop at all? Because you're 6'5". You're a tall drink of water. Dude, you can't be 6'5 and not hoop. Especially in Lebanon, my height is like abnormally huge. The Lebanese, I always joke that Arabs are short because we're always dodging bombs and bullets and shit.

So we evolved to be shorter over time because it's better on our knees. And everywhere I go, people are like, you got to play basketball. So yeah, I played ball, but I'm not, I'm obviously a comedian for a good reason so do the more militant nations or whatever you hear about in the media because i know like obviously like you know i joke around a lot but obviously like i know like yeah like you know i

remember watching the anthony bourdain episode when he went to beirut and it's like oh my god like you would some idiot you know in new york city would think oh the lebanon's the middle east you can't say anything there or do anything there but then it's like he walks the tv like no this place looks great but some of the more militant truly militant countries do they not like lebanon or does everybody get along there because here's the interesting thing in the middle east i think the biggest misconception is that there are militant countries first of all iran isn't part of the middle east it's technically africa so i'm just going to remove it when i'm saying middle east so people don't say well what about li about Libya? What about Iran? What about these

are countries that are different discussions. If I'm talking about the Arab countries, you're talking about Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Lebanon, Syria. They're not militant countries per se, but they may have militant presences. What I think a lot of people don't understand is that the people of these countries are some of the nicest, most beautiful people ever. But then you have militant presences that oppress them. So from an American perspective, we look at it and we're like, look at those disgusting extremists. But the fact of the matter is those disgusting extremists are our problem. Like they're not America's problem. They're what we suffer from. So you don't go to Lebanon right now and find like, you'll go find neighborhoods with extremists in them, 100%.

You'll find neighborhoods with people who sympathize with ISIS, 100%. And these neighborhoods, they don't represent Lebanon. These are the neighborhoods that represent the shit of Lebanon that we basically have completely ostracized from our community. Well, yeah. Well, even today on the episode we were doing this morning,

Giannis and I, we figured out, Giannis figured out today, March 20, March of 2020 was the first month since 2002, where the United States hasn't had a school shooting. So it's like somebody in the United States would be like, the Middle East is so bad when it's like,

we literally every month school, you are getting killed in our schools this is what's bizarre so as an american and i'm not shitting on america clearly had i not been better fucking not be dude i'm so proud had i not grown up to be an american i wouldn't be the man i am today i wouldn't have the love for stand-up and stand-up has transformed the middle east in a way that is unbelievable and that wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for everything i pulled from this country whether it was my love for stand-up or uh calvin and hobbs growing up or whatever it may be um but what's what surprises me is nobody talks about the strengths of america and nobody talks about the weaknesses of america everybody has them confused so we talk about america as being this stable beautiful strong

place right and it's safe and everything. It's not true. It's not safe. The fact that in Beirut, you can walk around at three, four in the morning, you got girls walking around four or five in the morning, not getting harassed. If a girl speaks up and says, you know, she was assaulted or she was harassed, people believe her because nobody fucks with that shit. If a girl comes up to you and says, hey, this guy like assaulted me, you're like, all right, you call your family and you go and murder half of their family. So you don't fuck around with that kind of shit. And at the same time, like we don't have crime, we don't have murder, there isn't rape, because when it happens, and of course it happens

once every year or two, it's like headline national news. It spreads across the Middle East, people are talking about it. And a lot of places in the Middle East are like that. You come to some places in Chicago and Los Angeles. And I mean, you can't say it's safer than the Middle East, but I always joke that the only danger is war. But my dad told me this when I was young, he was like, well, you can hear war coming. It makes sound. You hear bombs. You can hide. No no problem it's okay but you're right rape you don't know you don't know you're being raped until you're getting raped that was something my dad told me and i said that here on stage once and dude that was a it was bad you shouldn't make rape jokes and i'm like that's not a that's not a rape joke that's what my dad told me that's

that's like that's how it is. It's very real over there. Yeah. Well, we're going to make a t-shirt out of that. Out of your dad's set. Yeah. Yeah. Every place has good areas,

bad areas and different people. Everything's very, very agated. Yeah. Now, now Lebanon. Cause you put the gay and very agated. The fact that you just said that word.

Yeah. You're an FF. Lebanon. Lebanon is specifically very fascinating because it's gone through so many different wars and so many periods of peace and then war. At one time, it was considered the Paris of the Middle East because Beirut is such a tourist attraction. But then the revolution happened. I'm sorry, the civil war happened. So what the fuck is going on in Lebanon that it's sort of this,

it's so bipolar from war. It goes from war to like absolute party. The way I've always. It sounds Puerto Rican. Sorry, go ahead. It does. It's like a pregnant woman. It's basically, if I want to put it out this way,

it's the battlefield of the Middle East. So when America and Russia want to tussle over territory in the Middle East, it's done by proxy in Lebanon. Of course, America isn't going to fight Russia and Russia and Russia isn't going to fight America and America. So what they do is they'll shift their assets. So Saudi Arabia is America in the Middle East, and then Syria would be Russia in the Middle East, Syria and Iran, and then Saudi Arabia and the Emirates would be America. And of course, they're not going to fight in Saudi Arabia. There's oil there and they're not going to fight in Syria. I mean, there's resources there. So where can you fight? In Lebanon, we don't have anything. It's a tourism-based industry. It's a beautiful Mediterranean. It's basically Greece

in its geography and topography. And it's a beautiful Mediterranean, mountains, skiing, swimming, beaches kind of place, but no resources that could upset a supply. And it's on the border with Israel. So it's a very popular fighting area for everybody because then, you know, the Russians will say, hey, we can upset the security of Israel by moving Iranian assets within the country. And then the Americans are like, well, we can cut funding with the Saudi Arabians and then we'll introduce guns with this. And then all of a sudden you have an outbreak of war. What happened in Lebanon is that this happened so many times with the civil war and so many that the Lebanese people basically got the shit beaten out of them. And they got a lesson learned that nobody gives a shit about the Lebanese people. And every time

this stuff is happening, we're being used. So over and over again, it was like we were beaten down like a blade. When you're forging a blade, you just keep beating on it. It ends up becoming really strong. So what ended up happening is you now have a Lebanon that is insanely united. And when the Arab Spring happened, what happened in Syria was supposed to be Beirut, was supposed to be Lebanon. It started there. But we were ironclad. ISIS tried to get into the country.

We were united. Stand-up comedy had brought people together. Other popular figures had brought people together. We had done so many incredible things that they couldn't find a foothold in Lebanon. So it spilled and focused into Syria. Now Syria is learning the lessons that we've learned as is Iraq, as is other places. So Lebanon now is super, super united. So the natural next step in Lebanon after being united and not suffering from these external problems is to get rid of the old regime, which continues

to govern by splitting and dividing the people so that they can maintain their stranglehold on all of the stuff that gives them power, their land, all of that good stuff. They can't keep that if they're not having a divided people. So we're trying to get rid of the government. We're trying to get rid of their ways. We're trying to get rid of that ideology. And that's our revolution that's happening right now. And it started on October 17th.

And the coronavirus came to really save. We were the first Arab population to drop a government. We forced the government to resign through peaceful protest. We remained peaceful. They attacked us. They killed people from the revolution. They tried to silence the revolution. And at all points in time, it stayed peaceful.

It's still peaceful to this day. And a new government came in power via Syrian, Russian, Iranian proxy, and American Trump pretty much failed leadership in every case of the, you know, the whole region has just been completely messed up with. Not to say Barack Obama did a better job. He did an equally terrible job just on a different side of the coin. And we, the people, are alone facing unbelievable forces, and we're being able to hold our ground just because we're united and peaceful. So we stay on that track. And at the same time, right now, Lebanon is suffering from a complete bankruptcy. So the government, in an attempt to bring the Lebanese people to its knees,

shut down the banking sector, bankrupt the country, missed bond payments so that no money could come into the country anymore because they just wanted to stop the people and it still didn't work. And now the coronavirus came to help them. So now we're doing the responsible thing because we can't rely on the government. We don't have the infrastructure. We're staying home. As soon as this passes, no matter how long it takes, we're going to be back and we're going to crush them. We're going to finish. The final blow is coming. Just to give people context about Lebanon, just Lebanon became independent in 1943 from France, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Because France came in and occupied it for a little while. Since then, since 1943, this is the list of armed conflicts that have happened in Lebanon. 48, the Arab-Israeli war. Then there was the Lebanese Civil War from 75 to 90. That's when you came to San Diego, right? Yeah, we came into San Diego in 84, and I went back to Beirut in 92, 93. Then we had the Sina revolution in 2005, 2006, Lebanon war, 2007, Lebanon conflict, 2006 through 2008, Lebanese protests, 2008 conflict in Lebanon, 2011, the Syrian civil war spillover. And now here we are, 2020, Lebanese protests.

And you missed a bunch over there. You missed about six and I'm not exaggerating. I probably missed a few when you were with your ex-girlfriends, but those weren't in there. We were, no, I'm serious. We, I'm serious. We were under a Syrian dictatorship in the 90s, and we forcefully pushed out Syria after they assassinated our prime minister, allegedly, I have to add that, although everybody knows it, in 2005. And that was the Cedar Revolution. And then when we pushed out the Syrian forces and we regained control of our country,

the government in power was assassinated one by one over a period from 2008 or 2006 to 2014, roughly. Car bombings, murder in the streets, and they basically just murdered all the opposition to Syria and then weaseled their way back into power. and then weaseled their way back into power. These are the people that we're fighting against right now in the revolution, like me with a camera, friends of mine, I'll name drop right now just to give them recognition,

like Gina Reidy, influencers, if you want to call them that, but actual influencers from just Instagram models to just like very powerful speakers and orators to comedians in Lebanon right now using all of their platforms to make sure that we get correct information out. We don't allow propaganda to go down

and joining on the streets in the protest, something I wasn't able to do and I don't take credit for because I was traveling, but I did what I could. And they're fighting against tear gas and just the most despicable, disgusting human beings you can think of

who are murderers and rapists and thugs and warlords. And it's an incredible thing that we're taking these people on and destroying them using like an Instagram account or a Twitter, and they have guns. It started out, if you Google Lebanese woman kicks security guy in the balls, that's how the revolution started.

That's one of the most pertinent images. When the people all rose up, this thug went to the street with a machine gun. He was a bodyguard for one of the politicians and this lebanese woman grabs his gun and just kicks some sidekicks flawlessly in the balls and it's one of the most inspirational things and it became a still image for the revolution and it was uh is that true did the security guard come yes i'm pretty sure actually i we all came is what happened really i had a let me tell you i was turned on like a motherfucker and the revolution raged on like an incredible incredible boner dude you what about fucking me i mean look at you're so hilarious

smart handsome i'm gonna be fully erect in the front row of your shows when there's a fucking band let me tell you something i'm coming in the only handsome person right here is you let me tell you and janice you're doing a good job socially. Benatia, who do you give it to? Benatia will tell us the truth. Chris. It's Chris. Yeah, no.

Everybody's gorgeous on this call right now. Benatia. She's diplomatic like an errand. No, Benatia. Benatia went to Bayreel. I want to see that guy. I want to see that woman kicking that guy in the butt, in the nuts. Do you want me to send you a link right now?

Yeah. I'm going to, just to make sure, because there's actually more than one instance of a woman kicking a dude in the balls. While you Google it, let me ask you. So who is the revolution against? If the government is made up of all these ethnicities, I assume to kind of keep the peace and everything, like you said, 19 or whatever. Yeah, your government set up like a community college.

It's like a community college. It's so diverse. These people do not represent their ethnicities. They're people who are powerful in their ethnicities. So the people who are ruling either have a lot of firepower behind them. So the people ruling the Shiite Muslims are Hezbollah, and they're basically the strongest military in the Middle East. They even defeated Israel, so you can't mess with them. And they're backed by Syria.

When did Hezbollah defeat Israel? In 2006. Defeated Israel is an interesting way to say it. Sorry, I just saw you switch the screen share. Basically, Israel in 2006 launched a war to destroy Hezbollah, and they ended up strengthening them because Hezbollah was able to cause them to retreat, to not surrender because they just went back to Israel. But they ended up with more weapons, more ammunition and popularity after that war

because Israel thought that by indiscriminately killing civilians all across the country, that we would suddenly unite against Hezbollah as a result, because we'd see them as a thorn in our side. And the opposite ended up happening. So I'm not defending Hezbollah, I'm just telling you what the facts happened on the ground. And it basically backfired entirely. So they're a very powerful military, because they're not like a terrorist organization, they are a military, they have assets, generals, commanders, missiles, stockpiles, they're a force to be reckoned with. And it's basically, they will represent the Shiites. On the Sunni side, you have the Hariri family who represent the Sunni Muslims. They're backed by money and America and Saudi Arabia.

So they have their power through influence and money and opportunities and stuff like that. In the Christians, it's kind of the same thing. But these people have lost their hold on the people because it's no longer profitable to fight for Hezbollah. It's no longer profitable to ally with the Christian force or with the Sunni force anymore. And you now don't have representatives, you have warlords clinging on to power. And we've managed to get all of them out except for the Syrian Russian side, which is Hezbollah and the Christian Aouni party. And when I say out, I don't mean we want them murdered or we want them killed. We basically want, we're asking for the demand of the revolution is free early elections so that we may elect people who

actually represent us and a rewriting of the Lebanese voting law, because the voting law is set up in a way that basically it ensures the same people are going to get elected. It's gerrymandering on steroids. I got a request. So is, so this is not an ethnic group versus are all the ethnic groups all united? Like when the protests were happening, it was, everybody was in the streets and there was a popular saying in Arabic, it was which means everyone meaning everyone. So everybody was kill on, which means everyone, meaning everyone. So everybody United to say, even my people, right? I'm Sunni. Get that guy out. I'm Christian. Get that guy out. And it was all like, we want them out and we're going to, and we'll vote. And listen, if we vote and we bring the same people into power, then do what you may, but, but you failed

us. You've bankrupt the country. You've destroyed all of the industries. You've completely destabilized that we had one of the strongest banking sectors in the world. It is now gone. We had some of the most incredible investments in the country. Those are gone. We do not have internet. We do not have proper internet. We do not have electricity 24 hours a day. We still rely on generators and it's 2020 and you are stealing from the people. And the last straw was when they wanted to introduce a WhatsApp tax. So every time you make a free phone call on your phone, on WhatsApp, they wanted to take 20 cents per call to siphon more money from the people. And we are taxed to death. We pay 100% tax on cars. So if you want to buy a Mazda three, it'll cost you about $50,000 in Lebanon to buy a new one. It's just

absurd. We pay a 11% value added tax. It's just, they were just bludgeoning the people for everything they had. And we had nothing to show for it. Crumbling roads, no infrastructure. So the people were like, you know what? Fuck you is basically how you would summarize it. And I, by the way, I'm emailing you this link now, where should I, or if you want to pull it up on YouTube, the video is called Lebanese woman delivers swift kick to minister's bodyguard. But still, even with all those problems that you mentioned, still throughout this all, Beirut has been fucking lit.

The revolution started October 17. This past summer was the greatest summer of my life in Lebanon. I sold out six shows in the country to massive audiences. We had so many people in the country that you couldn't go to the airport and leave. If you didn't go to the, uh, to the airport five hours before your flight left, you would lose, you would miss your flight. It was, it was popping. It was partying. It was crazy. And even during the revolution, the revolution was a party. That's why it stayed party, uh, stayed peaceful. People were in the streets partying.

You had DJs setting up entire concerts to keep the people dancing in the streets against the government. It was absolutely inspirational and it stayed peaceful. And you had people doing art, giving lessons. So when we occupied squares to protest, we had people who were down there teaching people about the law, holding classes. Schools were canceled. So they were teaching students.

It was unbelievable. Women would stand on the front line to separate the protesters from the army because nothing is scarier than laying your hands on a woman in Lebanon. So whenever the army would try to come in and the army didn't want to, but they were following orders, the women would push forward in a united front. There's images that will blow your mind that just give you goosebumps to see all these Lebanese women just holding hands and the army just basically saying, well, thank you for giving us this way out so that we don't have to turn on our own people.

Like there were people who stood up and did the brave thing to keep that revolution peaceful. The only revolution in the Middle East that has happened that started peaceful and stayed peaceful in the past 10 years. The most violent thing that happened is the security guard got kicked in the nuts yeah yeah take a look mikey let's check it out and there you go

wow yeah wow that takes that takes that takes courage a guy has a gun and she kicked him right in the nuts dude she she he's he's threatening her with a gun and she's like, go fuck yourself. And that woman ended up getting married in the protest square. Wow. Like a few weeks later, they had the wedding there and they got like a minister. I don't know if it was a, I can't remember if she's Muslim or Christian, to come and wed them. It was the most beautiful time and remains.

This is now the most beautiful era in Lebanon's history because no matter where you're from, everybody is suffering equally. So everybody's united right now. It's actually, there's no drama at all between the Muslims and the Christians in Beirut. We intermarry, we date one another. When you're 4 million people crammed into a country smaller than San Diego County, you get along and you realize there's no differentiate, there's nothing that differentiates a Muslim from a Christian. However, yes, Christian fundamentalist, Muslim fundamentalist, or just somebody who's super, super Christian, like it's the centerpiece of their entire life. You're not going to get along with a person who's Muslim and it's the centerpiece of their life for marriage because you're going to have this on how to raise kids and what you're gonna name them and all that but you're gonna get along

in a society just fine so circumcised are you circumcised yes I am same yeah I could tell man you got you got circumcised energy you know what I'm saying yeah dude I'm free I'm free the beautiful thing would you circumcise your kids now? That's the big debate. Well, I have a daughter, so I know in the Middle East I would, but I would not. I wouldn't. I know you people would in Lebanon. We don't circumcise the women in the Middle East, but yes.

No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. If I had a son, yes, I would circumcise him. I want to have a fresh cut of beef. Yeah, I would. That's what I would do, too. People say I'm an animal, and it should be his choice. I'm like, this shit's going to hurt. What about Yanni?

Yanni's wife is pregnant. Yanni, what about if it's a boy? Are you going to cut the beef? It's a tough situation. It's sort of like this Corona situation. We got to stay social distancing so we save people's lives. But if we social distance, the economy is going to crash. Because here's the deal. If you cut it, kid's got a clean piece, nice looking piece. But if we social distance, the economy is going to crash because here's the deal. If you cut, if you cut, if you cut it, kids got a clean piece, nice looking piece. But if you do cut it, also it gets desensitized. And, you know, eventually the kids got to look at tranny point to get off. So that's not true. You get to, you get desensitized.

I mean, the amount of times I've jerked off, I can't feel my penis anymore. He's circumcised. The honest is circumcised. If it's desensitized, you last longer. You're doing your kid a favor, man. You're setting him up for success. It's too numb. It's too numb.

Then you got to like go down this slippery slope of things that you need to watch to turn you on just because you're numbed out. It's too much. Nature wants us to have a hood. Nature wants it to have a hood. Yeah. Giannis used to put on his mother's fishnet stockings and jerk off the training point and he thinks it's all because he got circumcised that's what he said it sounds like you're the one it sounds like your head that's fucked up not not your dick i think you got it i think you make a good point i think you make a very good point so it's a pretty

secular place lebanon then overall the people are secular dude yeah because you go to school you're you grow up with muslim and christian kid i mean they're they're there you become best friends you know you go to the i went to the american university of beirut aub you can't walk five feet without going into somebody of a different background race religion they're all there so yeah i mean and you realize there's no difference in dc by the way what's that i went to american to American in D.C. For real? Yeah, I went to the American University in D.C. I think they were, are they affiliated?

I am not sure, but I think so. Yeah. I think so. American University of Beirut's the oldest university in the Middle East. Like, it was there from 18, I think it was 1897 or 67, something like that. Wow. Last question here about that, and then we'll talk about the comedy scene and comedy stuff but so the whatsapp that's a very funny thing so that's what finally galvanized the people in this uprising was attacks on whatsapp was the one thing we had that was for

free that that remained that worked in the country. We paid for everything else. We don't have good internet. So like, if you want to watch Netflix, you barely can, if at all. You can't download stuff. You can't work effectively because the playing field isn't level. If you want to do a video edit, it'll take you six days to upload a goddamn video. That's if it doesn't cut. So the one thing we had, the one pleasure was this WhatsApp thing. And oh, our mobile phone bills are astronomically high. I'll pay two, $300 a month for my mobile phone and barely make any calls on it. And it's not like a family plan or any shit like that. That's it. So to take away the WhatsApp and tax that too, was just like, that was the final goddamn straw where people were like, it set off two triggers. Once, one just like, that was the final goddamn straw where people were like, it set off two triggers. One was like, seriously back off. And the second one was like, is it that bad? Have you

mismanaged the situation so bad that you need to illegally bring in a company from abroad to be able to install software to monitor when we use our phones so you can take money from that too? Is it that desperate? And at the same time, we knew that that money wasn't going to go to the government. We knew that money was going to go to whoever set up that deal. And maybe 10% of it, if even 5% would go to the actual funding of paying back debt and funding and financing projects and stuff like that. Wow. If you weren't doing comedy, would you be living in Beirut, you think? Yeah. If you weren't doing standup? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, would I be living in Beirut, you think? Yeah. If you weren't doing stand-up? Yeah. I mean, would I be living in Beirut is a very interesting question.

I don't know, because Lebanese people, by their very nature, they live everywhere. So I'm sure that I would have the same setup. I'd probably be living here, and I have my house there, and I fly in between. It would just be the frequency would be a lot less.

Got it. Cool. So what's the comedy scene like? You told me you think it's not very politically correct, because people have been through so much shit that, you know, they just want to laugh. So you have an interesting perspective looking at American culture being an insider and an outsider. So do you think Americans are just too spoiled and that's why we're politically correct

and now we've got a good dose of corona and now we're going to be able to drop some racial slurs again? Dude, America needed a slap to the face. And that's what I'll say. I don't want to ever wish anything worse, but I can tell you that we grew through war and that's a terrible thing to say, but it was an inevitable truth. The problem with what happened in America is the priorities are all messed up, right? And that's a good thing. And in a way, the political correctness of America was a nice thing because it meant that you had

a very stable country. When you can take time out of your day to get infuriated over very very stupid stuff that means that you're living a good life so in a way it was a nice reflection of of a good quality of life that you had time to dedicate to getting pissed off because somebody uh mis misgendered you or something yeah yeah i was saying that before a couple of weeks ago. It's like, I've noticed now on social media and everything in America, nobody cares about the straws anymore.

Nobody's getting mad if they misgender you. It's just like, Hey, my father just died from Corona virus. That's what fucking matters now. And I feel like you just hit it on the head. It's like, I would always say that on stage.

I'm like, you know, I would use Syria probably wrong, but like, you know, a 19 year old kid in Syria doesn't care what bathroom you use. No, you're not using it wrong. That's the thing. Like the 19 year old kid in Syria, you'd be like, I want this bathroom.

I want that bathroom. And the 19 kid in Syria is like, can we just go in the bathroom? Cause the bomb's about to drop. That's what I said. I was like, they're worried about getting chemical acid thrown at them. But some 19 year old college kid that has no real fucking problems in the United States is going to get mad about straws and clits.

It's like you have no real fucking problems, but now we've got a real problem. And what's interesting is that I'm not against getting mad about straws and clits, as you put it. I think that's a great thing, get mad about it and active. But the fact that you have to get mad about it and there isn't a space for you to deal with other shit and in its own contained kind of thing is a very weird concept to me i don't understand why i can't be having one debate and the other so to speak at the same time i i don't know why what perplexed me about america is that the free speech here is

unparalleled um but the self-policing of the free speech here is unparalleled. But the self policing of the free speech here is unparalleled. It's weird. The American people do hear what the governments do in some totalitarian countries. So it was it was a very strange thing. Like, is this what we're meant to be as human beings one way or another, we're going to try to police one another. And what we say, at the same time, I mean, I love the Me Too movement, what happened with it, like, that's an incredible, incredible thing that happened. Definitely. So sometimes I get the feeling that even when I talk like I'm talking, people are like,

oh, so you're anti-Me Too? And I'm like, that's not what I'm saying. Not what I'm saying at all. No. No, I know. Mike, also, just make a note, new t-shirts, straws, and clips. So we got two t-shirts. I want a cut, guys.

You got two t-shirts for me, and you don't know you're getting raped until you're getting raped. America is safe. You know, something like that. Yeah that yeah we're gonna give it to the campaign to help off fucking beirut now you probably make some serious cake when you go do comedy shows in like some of these oil countries they they pay you pretty handsomely right no no here's the thing i do my own shows uh if i want to get the big, then my tickets become expensive and there are people who can afford them, but I'm a staunch believer, especially since I come from a poor background. I was never wealthy and I really built myself up from nothing. I don't think that there should be a barrier entry

to entry to comedy. So I will always have $20 tickets in my shows. And I usually cap my tickets at $70. Um, and it's kind of like, and the $20 tickets in my shows and I usually cap my tickets at $70. Um, and it's kind of like, and the $20 tickets in my shows are fucking outstanding. You could sell those for 70 bucks and it's, it's important to me to do that. And I produce all of my shows in the middle East with very few exceptions because I do a better job because nobody under, like I started the industry there. So when I would go to do a standup comedy show, I I'm talking from the ground up. My last show in Beirut was in a, in a hangar, not the last one, the one before it was in a huge like airline. You could put an airplane in it. We built the stage, the podiums, the sound, all of that from the ground up. And I'll be there for like two weeks in advance,

you know, overseeing all of the construction, making sure everything is, is on point. And, uh, the cost of that, everything, it's a burden that I carry. And basically at the end, I don't make that much money. So you don't do any other shows that you don't produce in the Middle East? I do a few in Saudi Arabia. I can't produce a show there. It's a kingdom. You got to make sure you do it with the right people and that kind of stuff. But in Jordan, Dubai, Lebanon, and Abu Dhabi, I produce my own shows. And and i co-produce meaning like i partner up with other people in other countries uh such as kuwait or or or oman or whatever and and i love doing that

you know because i can make sure that we're doing because because the the the person in the crowd and i'm a staunch believer of this is the most important person in the show it's not me i don't care what difficulties i have to deal with. They have to have a fucking fantastic experience. And, um, you can't have control over that. If you're handing that over to somebody whose only concern is the bottom line, and they want to basically, I pay Nimmer and I want to make as much money as I can. I don't give a shit if the lighting isn't too good. I don't give it. I've done many shows at a loss. My last show in Jordan was a massive success. It was 3,500 people sold out in the cultural palace. It was incredible. I lost a ton of money on that gig. And I was very happy to do

that because I wanted to give the Jordanian people a thank you show. How did you lose money on it when you sold out and everything like that? The costs are high, man. You pay a lot in taxes. You pay a lot on the venue. And the ticket cost is low. I kept the ticket. I just didn't, I was like, I kept it super low. And if I was going to increase them, you know, the only way to make the difference is to get a sponsor. And when we talked to some sponsors, their demands would hurt the show. So I said, no, we'll take a loss and invite the sponsors. And that's what we did. And now the sponsors are like, okay, next time, whatever you guys want to do, we're in.

Just, we don't care, just involve us. So it's a, you got a long-term kind of plan. That's the business side of what I do is, you know, you'll take a loss here and then you'll get the money back over there. Which by the way, by the way, anybody listening, speaking, you know, patreon.com slash Bay Ridge boys, you know, we're going to squeeze every fucking dollar out of you. Cause we got more content on there.

If you fucking freaks want, this is all free shit. So patreon.com slash Bay Ridge boys. Cause we need your money. Yeah. And let me, let me plug my podcast, which we're going to have Giannis on.

And I, Chris, I'm going to use the fact that I got to know you to, to book, to pressuring you into coming as a guest one day too. Cause I'd love to be able to have you on the show. It's called the very funny podcast. And we're having special guests. We just started it a couple

weeks ago. Join us, please. No Patreon yet. Support their Patreon. Just watch my show. Absolutely. The only truth in this, the only truth is Allah. You make a better Muslim than anybody in the Middle East, dude. Let me tell you. Good. I'm full Muzzy cuz.

I'm Chrissy Caliphate. You have a couple specials, right Never. You got a couple of specials. I do. Uh, you can watch my, my Showtime special. It's called no bombing in Beirut. And, uh, it's for free on Amazon prime. You can watch it on the, you know, get it on the Apple store, just Google it. It's everywhere. Um, and I'm going to be releasing my next special love. Isn't the answer online for free in clips or you can buy it from my website for five bucks next month that's in march for anybody watching this and my website's nimmercomedy.com i have a bunch of other specials but

they got arabic in them and uh yeah so i'm not going to plug those here so if me and chris went to the middle east and did comedy would they get it you and chris will go to the middle east and do comedy because i'm going to take you to the Middle East and do comedy. It's been something I've been doing for a very long time. Yella, yella, yella, yella, yella. I'm taking you guys and I'm taking Brian Callen. Those are my top three picks because Brian lived in Lebanon for about seven, eight years. And I had him as a guest on the podcast and he revealed some really interesting truths

he's never talked about. And the fact that his character in The Hangover is based over people he knows who are Lebanese. And then, so I want to bring him back and have him reconnect with the country. And I want to bring you guys there for two reasons. If you're Italian in your background, or if you're Greek, you're basically Lebanese. So the two of you are more Lebanese than most Lebanese people are. And not only would they get you, but there's a severe chance that my popularity would decrease as a result of sharing a stage with you over there. Cause they're like, Oh, this is, this is what we wanted the whole time. We just didn't know it. So that's going to happen as soon as the revolution's over. I doubt that, but that's very, dude, we will go with you in a second. That would be a hundred percent. Yeah, man. You got to bring

your families too absolutely absolutely we would love to do it i i didn't know bryant town lived in uh lived in lebanon that guy's been all over the world he's got such an interesting life unbelievable he he was talking about like in his youth because he was there during the civil war so in the 70s and he he said he's like i've never talked about this before and he got a bit emotional when he mentioned that he grew up feeling safe in lebanon in this building because the walls were around him. And then they left for a minute. And when they came back, the war had happened and there were holes in the walls that he had felt safe in. And he said that ever since then, he's never

been able to relax. He's never felt safe. And a lot of the reason why his comedy centers around, you know, manliness and power and all of that stuff is because he's always felt the need to be on the defensive and to be in attack mode. Ever since then, it was it was some, like it was, it was interesting to hear an American person speak like he was Lebanese, because that's the experience that we all have. We're tough as a result of these kind of things. And Brian basically had the identical experience. So it influences comedy in an incredibly powerful way. What's the official language of Lebanon? Is it Arabic? Technically, yeah. But you have to learn. So when you go to kindergarten, you're learning Arabic,

English, and French. So it's a three-language official country. And when you take the official exams, you're going to take them in either Arabic, French, or you're going to have Arabic, French, and English in the official state exam. So really, technically, yes, it's Arabic, but I mean, practically, it's the three. I love just the difference between Lebanese and Americans. I mean, you just said a kindergarten kid in Lebanon will know Arabic, English, and French, and I'm now teaching my preschool level daughter the difference between plants and vegetables, the difference between fruits and vegetables and getting most answers wrong. So it's like your kids are, they're like fucking spies. They're like in the CIA, all these languages.

And I genuinely, I didn't know a pumpkin was a fucking fruit. I thought it was a vegetable this whole time. Dude, it's crazy. I wouldn't advocate for it necessarily though. What I've taken from America is what America specializes in and does amazingly well. And I think the world needs to learn a lesson from it. Is America will give you just the amount of information you need to get by. But it will focus a lot on what you can do with that information, right?

Sky's the limit. You can do anything. Imagination, entrepreneurial kind of attitude, even sciences, the whole thing. So when you get to college, university, and you're studying your higher education, you tend to be, if you compare a student out of the Middle East with a student from the US at the college entry level, it's as if you're talking to a mentally challenged kid in America. That's the, the difference is unbelievable academically, right? Our mathematics, our science, all off the charts, take the same two people and give them a hundred thousand dollars. Tell them what to do, like do something with it. That's where the American will excel. And that is a very, uh, that is a very

lacking thing that we have in the Middle East. Even though the Lebanese people are shockingly entrepreneurial, it's not because of the education. It's because we have to get up and start over and over again. So it's been built into our culture because of war. But academically, America excels in this. And if we could take that, tone down the pressure on the children with like shoving all this information they're never going to really need in and kind of minimalizing that and bringing in a bit of the American side. I think that would be the ultimate balance. Yeah. My friend Mo Amir, the great comedian Mo Amir from Palestine. Yeah. He put his Netflix special on him and I are very, very good friends. He put his Netflix special out, gets to check and buys gold-plated teeth.

What a fucking idiot. I love that you just ripped on mo armor mo is such a good friend mo is such an incredible fucking comic his story is insane and i actually just shared a stage with him in qatar i think like four months ago yeah you guys didn't make money in that one i mean you gotta make money in some of these shows oh i make money in some of those shows when it's a show when it's a show that i'm in, I'm actually making a lot more money than the show that is my show. So if you're going to see Nimmer and Mo Amr and I'll make a lot more than if you go to see Nimmer and his brand new show, The Future Is Now. Right, right. So what does the scene look like now in Lebanon? Now that you started,

what year did you start it? What does it look like now? I started in 1999. And for the first 10 years, it was pretty much me. Uh, and that's it at the moment you have all over the middle East due to the work that I did. And I would go to different countries and set up, like help people set up, whether it was a club or set up my own competition, basically teach them how to bring in comics, set up the stage. I wouldn't even be involved. Not take any money, no booking fees, nothing. Just build the industry. You got comics all over the region. And I mean all over. You got comedy clubs popping up everywhere in Kuwait, et cetera. In Lebanon, it's definitely the most advanced comedy scene. I think just because I've

been there the longest and before I started going abroad, it was already manifesting in Lebanon for five, six years. You got comedy clubs now in Lebanon. You got pop-up clubs. There's a place called Awkward, A-W-K dot word, W-O-R-D. And they bring a lot of comics together. They enforce like, you know, no phone rules, stuff like, it's like a proper comedy club. What we're lacking right now is nobody has yet to release a comedy special. I'm on my eighth, and nobody has released one yet. So you know that like one hour and a half comedy special, put it out there?

But we're shockingly close. They're starting to release clips. So it's really good right now. It's great. It's great. It's very guerrilla. It has that kind of like underground romantic vibe to it right now. Very cool.

Now, I'd be very remiss if we didn't talk about this because this is interesting chrissy you're gonna love this this is wild so so you're a very visible person in this revolution that's happening right now um because of comedy uh in lebanon and he's fucking stone cold handsome don't call him don't call cutie. Yeah, that's why. Sure. And so you're kind of in this vendetta with, uh, the head of ISIL, right? In Lebanon or Hezbollah, which one was it? I wasn't in a vendetta. What I, what I did is I, I think I was, I used my platform to put a video forward where I called out Hezbollah on their bullshit. And it really gave people, got so many views and went so viral that it gave people an understanding that they truly are not as strong

as we believe them to be. Because I wasn't, not because I was able to say it and survive, it was because I said what I said and it was in Arabic. So it wasn't like because I was speaking English like their followers. There was no excuse. It was my first video in Arabic. And it was following the resignation of the prime minister in Lebanon

due to the revolution. And there was so much attention on that video and it went so viral and got millions and millions of views. And the comment section didn't have like more than one or two people saying, how dare you say that about, you know, Hezbollah and Nasrallah.

And whereas in the past, if you so much as mentioned their name, there was a comedy show in the early 2000s that did a sketch where they impersonated him. And like an army arrived at the TV station was about to just destroy it. You couldn't even, you couldn't even mention it. And here we are basically like publicly saying it. I wasn't the first, but that was like, that was a big, big video because what I did is I played them at their own game. Nasrallah was coming out and saying, listen, this isn't a people's revolution. This is a American Zionist revolution. That's basically what happens. Whenever the

Russian side wants to discredit something in Lebanon, it's the Zionist American doing conspiracy. And whenever the American side wants to discredit the Russian side, it's the Iranian Syrian thing doing conspiracy. And the bottom line is there is no conspiracy. We don't have electricity 24 hours a day. We don't have opportunities. We have the biggest mass exodus of a population, young population out of the country in the world. We have the highest debt to GDP ratio in the world. We have the most corrupt officials in the fucking world. And we don't have internet. We don't have electricity.

Our infrastructure is crumbling. And we have the most beautiful people and so much to offer. So there's no excuse. Highest tax rates. So it's not a conspiracy. You just failed epically as a government. So he came out and said, it's a conspiracy. So we know information you don't know.

Trust us. It's a conspiracy. So I came out with a video saying, okay, I do trust you. I'm here in America right now as an American letting you know, I don't want you to stay out of this revolution. He was saying we would have told our people to join the revolution, but we know this isn't a people's revolution because what the people are asking for, we want because Hezbollah has a reputation of despite their warmongering, is what the people are asking for, we want.

Because Hezbollah has a reputation of, despite their warmongering, not stealing money. They're not one of the corrupt forces, right? It's very, very interesting. So they said we would go and fight for the same thing. So I came out and I said, all right, you know, why I'm asking you, since you have the intelligence and since you have the militant might, I don't want you to die for Lebanon.

You keep saying that you give blood for the country. Every time there's a war, you defend our borders and you give blood for the country against Israel and against all these other things. Great. Fantastic. Nobody's saying you don't, but why do you have to give blood? I don't want you to give blood. Why don't you, since you have this information, I'm in my kitchen.

I was filming it in this very seat. I'm like, I'm in my kitchen right now in Los Angeles, filming a video on my phone, this phone. That's my resource. You're saying you have information nobody else has. Take Hezbollah and bring them down to the streets to protect the people from the American Zionist regime. If indeed it's an American Zionist conspiracy, the only thing to make the American Zionist plot fail is that the protests remain peaceful. You're saying they're going to break out into violence. Go down to the streets and make sure that if anybody so much as slaps somebody, your people are there to make sure it stays peaceful. And that was a shocking reversal

for their argument. You M&M'd him a little bit. You 8-miled him a little bit. I talked him over because we're basically saying if you're sincere, and we know he's not, and this guy isn't in control of his own decisions either. Hezbollah isn't a Lebanese controlled force. It's Iran and Iran is controlled by Russia. And it's that simple. We know that. So I don't have animosity to anybody in Lebanon who actually sympathizes with Hezbollah because these are Lebanese people just as much as nobody should have animosity towards anybody who sympathizes with Trump if they're anti-Trump or with the Democrats if they're anti-Democrat. The bottom line is these are fellow citizens. I believe they've been used, abused, and misled. So I actually care about them. And I hate the

fact that they're being used. And I'm trying to do what I can to tell them there is an alternative. You don't have to be pro-Iran. You don't have to be pro-America. You can be pro-Lebanon and just join us. Give it a shot. We've been pro-something for so many years. We've been the battleground of the Middle East for so many years. How about you try to fight for yourself? Because we don't have anything. What did he and they do? What did they do? What did he do after that? Basically, a lot of voices started to echo that sentiment. A lot of people started to become very brave to calling out the Shiites who were going in Hezbollah's name, screaming Shiite, Shiite, Shiite, like we're here. The

Shiite Muslims are here. Shiite Muslims rose up and said, shut the fuck up. Go home. Shiite Muslim mothers went to the streets and grabbed these fucking thugs by their ears and like whipped them on the ass to send them back home because they're like, you don't represent the Shiites. You're like 200 thugs on fucking motor scooters. So go back. And it just basically just, it's the most powerful weapon in the world is narrative. I've said this in my comedy specials.

It sounds like it could be a Lebanese mother too. And here's the thing. I have a clip. I have a clip called fighting ISIS with comedy. And in that seven minute clip, I say the most powerful weapon in the world is narrative. And the backbone of our military might is Lebanese mothers. And there are no truer two things you could say. And that's the bottom line, man. It's narrative. You have to be able to control the narrative. Hezbollah is out there

saying it's a conspiracy and that becomes the narrative. The revolution doesn't go down to the streets. But if you come back and you say something and nobody's able to push back effectively against you, you give an ironclad argument, then it becomes fuel for the real people to do the work, the ones who put their lives at risk and go down into the streets and actually get the tear gas in their face, lose their eyes, lose their lives, get shot by corrupt people who fight against violence by staying peaceful. Those are the true heroes. I'm just kind of doing what I can to help control the narrative. So in that particular instance, that was one instance and multiple videos before that, that really influenced

just the spirit of the revolution. And I wasn't alone. It was just, I was doing a really big part. Also, I speak in English and we have 18 to 20 million Lebanese people abroad who speak English. So we have more Lebanese people outside of the country. So I was able to unite the diaspora, which really fueled the revolution by sending in money into the country and supporting them with food and all of that stuff when the government was initially trying to crack down things. That's why they ended up shutting down the banks for weeks and then limiting withdrawals to $100 a week to now.

Basically, you can't get any money out of your bank because they're like, we can't stop it. These people keep getting money from somewhere. And the money was like, you know, for my cousin, I would send to my family from here. So then when they did that, we basically started boarding flights with large amounts of cash going into the airport to hand them to our families. And people who couldn't take cash. with large amounts of cash going into the airport to hand them to our families and, uh, and people who couldn't take cash. I was on a flight from Dubai to Lebanon. And this guy was like, I got $480 in cash, uh, which is like now a million Lebanese pounds because of what they did with our economy. I got $480 in us dollars and I got an espresso pods for my mom. Cause she loves

an espresso. So she doesn't have to waste the cash buying stuff. So everybody would do what little or what large amount they could and it was it was just fucking the government over in such an incredible way then the coronavirus came and they were like thank you Jesus and and Muhammad and and Moses and every god out there for looking out for us because this was a godsend for them but we're we're we're waiting we're coming when the coronavirus is over and you go back to live performing since you've had that tiff can you go perform in beirut would be a big problem if they they would never do anything to me because it would make me infinitely stronger like they

can't if they tried to silence me i would no longer be nimmer the comic i would be nimmer the anti-government power monger you get what i'm'm saying? Like they, that's why they, they just basically, every time I put forth an argument, they just kind of like sink back into the bushes like Homer Simpson. There's, there's no, there's nothing they can do because you control a weapon such so powerful as narrative. And I have recognition. If I didn't have recognition and the ability to control narrative and I knew

how to speak, I wouldn't, I would have been, I would have disappeared a while ago. Well, I hope that the government in that country doesn't associate us with you because I don't need any of them looking through my fucking computer. Dude, if anything, the government is going to be like, we want to come on the podcast to tell you our side of the story. We are very nice people. And this big misunderstanding between everybody and God willing,

we will do the right thing. And Christopher, Istvan, fine you are beautiful man we think more than number is what if you want to hear if you want to hear the Bay Ridge boys and his Chinese with Hezbollah go to patreon.com slash Bay Ridge boys we already got that interview do you make jokes about ISIL and and Hezbollah in your act? I make jokes about ISIS all the time. I have one of my most viral clips is called Fighting ISIS with Comedy, and I completely decimate them in that clip.

I do not make fun of Hezbollah because that becomes political humor, and I don't do political humor as a Lebanese guy. So that would be like the equivalent of you doing, I'm not, this is going to sound very wrong. So let me phrase it very carefully. So get ready to record it and clip it. Go ahead. This is, this is like you doing jokes about Trump or about Republicans or Democrats, but it, that means you're getting political, not to be analogized with saying that Hezbollah is like

the Republicans or the Democrats. Obviously not. I'm just going to stay neutral is what you're saying. You're more, Hezbollah is also in the government. They are a political party. They are actually elected into the political party. So I can't address them as if they're an army or a militia or based on however I may view them. They are literally the speaker of the house is with Amal, which is an ally of Hezbollah. So you can't bring up Hezbollah without getting political.

I am a uniter. I break down barriers by putting everybody of every background into a room. I'm the only person that does that for the most part on a huge scale, six, seven, eight, 10,000 people in one area from all different religious backgrounds, all different political leanings. And I get them to laugh at the same thing together. And what I'm doing in my comedy, if you see my clips online, you'll see I'm addressing incredibly controversial topics by skirting the political things that make you have your own opinion in the discussion. So if I'm going to destroy ISIS, I will talk about it in a way that gets everybody laughing.

The people who have different approaches to how you should have fought ISIS, they're all in agreement over certain points. And when you do that, you start to control, to introduce a third narrative. And it's a very powerful one do you get threats ever have you gotten any threats from no what i get and this is very funny is all of these people come to my shows so it's a safe place for anybody who sympathizes with uh um you know the hound party the hezbollah party the wit party the uh uh the the nabiyah party the future party these people a lot of their politicians will actually come to my shows to be like, we support the speech of this man.

And this is because I'm not doing political jokes, right? So I'm not naming them per se. And I have footage of them like clapping, like when I say, you know, we should, whenever somebody tells you, are you with this person or with that person? You say, fuck you, I'm Lebanese. There's a clip online where I'm in front of like 5,000 people

and I put my middle finger in the air and everybody puts their middle finger in the air. And I say, if they ask you this, you say, and everybody goes, fuck you, I'm Lebanese. There's a, there's a clip online where I'm in front of like 5,000 people. And I, and I put my middle finger in the air and everybody puts their middle finger in the air. And I say, if they ask you this, you say, and everybody goes, fuck you. I'm Lebanese. And you have politicians there. They're like, fuck you. I'm like, I'm talking about you. Like, I'm talking about you. You're joining in on this. Like you're one of the people you're not, you know? So, yeah. Cause like, so you're saying like some members of ISIS who are in Lebanon or whatever. No, ISIS is not, ISIS is completely out of the country and they're not even politically represented. Anyone who sympathizes, but even in the diaspora, someone outside who's in ISIS, they secretly are laughing at your show. They probably won't come.

Yeah. I mean, that's a hundred percent true. ISIS never had any sympathizers, even in the Lebanese people. Like that's why I never took any foothold because ISIS went to Iraq and said like, hey, you know, the Shiite Muslim are controlling you. We're Sunni Muslim. We'll help you get your control back in Lebanon. They're like the Sunni. We're like, no, nobody's controlling anybody here. We're all fucked equally. And plus we want to party here. So go fuck off with your, like no drinking, covering women up rules that are mandatory for everybody. That's not what we want. You can cover yourself up. That's up to you. And that's a choice. You never take the choice away. I'm not advocating you shouldn't. So it was like that. So we never

had ISIS sympathizers. In fact, we did have a few ISIS sympathizers. There was a Lebanese singer who was an ISIS sympathizer. They fucked him up. They fucked up all of his properties in the country. They completely decimated them. So we don't, thankfully we don't have them, but if they were, and they were in my shows, I would identify them and have everybody, including myself, starting it off, beat the living ever shit out of them is basically. Well, against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand. Mark Twain said that. So there is no bigger uniter than, uh, than comedy because, uh, it unites us in our humanity. Um, because you know, it, it, it, it makes us all recognize that life is tough for all of us

and we all need to fucking laugh. Yeah, dude, because if I put you and your arch nemesis in a room and I say a joke and you both laugh together, I've just done more work in bringing you guys together than a lifetime of debate. I don't know, we're going to have to try it. Let's get Giannis and Nate Bargatze in a room. try it let's get yannis and nate bargazza in a room do you think if there's hope for united middle east it's through comedy it's the only hope it's the only hope the middle east is if

the middle east the only difference between a united middle east and a current middle east is the is foreign power if it was the in control, there would have been unity all over the region long ago. But the people aren't in control. And I think what America doesn't understand is that the things that America suffers from, Al Qaeda comes from Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not part of the Middle East. We fought off Al Qaeda in the Middle East. We fought off Al Qaeda in Lebanon, and we lost a lot of people doing it. Al Qaeda is an American trained force that in Rambo three was thanked in the credits of Rambo three for the brave Mujahideen of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the credit scenes. It's now been changed,

but you can find it online. So we suffer from these things that people associate with us. In fact, these things, when ISIS came on, we had a Jihadi John and all of these foreign people in ISIS. And they came in with a logo and an abbreviation. That wasn't Arab. We don't abbreviate. The American University of Beirut isn't AUB in Arabic.

It's Ajama al-Amerikiya fi Beirut. It's the full word. ISIS is an abbreviation. It stands for the Islamic State of etc. etc. In Arabic, it was al-Dawla al-Islamiyya al-Da'ashi. You would have the full name. They came in with a fucking logo, marketing they had videos edits when we fought them in lebanon they're wearing american uniforms the whole thing isn't an arab it's not an arab thing it's a foreign

interference to galvanize an oppressed certain segment of the society that is inevitable because they're under dictator dictatorial rule to end up arming them and as soon as there's an imbalance you have one group of people armed and the other aren't conflict it's that simple it's not complex lebanon doesn't suffer from that anymore because we've been through that rodeo but everywhere else right now is learning our lessons well nimr go check out his specials listen to his. I'm about to be a guest on it. Yes, sir. Follow him. What are all your social medias? It's Nimmer Comedy on all social medias. So N-E-M-R, four letters, comedy. That's my website,

nimmercomedy.com, and Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook are Nimmer Comedy. Now, if Chris goes to Lebanon to do comedy, falls in love with a guy and wants to get married, can he do that in Beirut? Is it legal? Gay marriage is not legal, but we will celebrate your unity. Appreciate it, brother. Just a couple of circumcised kids that want to bang out. Dude, you know what? I'll even, I'll make sure that you meet the right person. I got some people in mind.

Appreciate it, brother. I got you. Thank you very much. ប្រូវាប់ប់ប្រូវាប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប Bye.