Adel Karam: Live from Beirut

A NETFLIX COMEDY SPECIAL

CASINO LEBANON

Hello.

Wow, this is great!

This is great! Good evening.

Good evening!

God rest his soul!

Hello there. "Hello."

So bored! How are you all?

This is so cool. That much!

Hello up there. Good evening!

Yeah, I see you.

It's like you've arrived from outer space!

I want to say thank you for being here.

Thank you for traveling all the way from Beirut to be here.

Quite a distance. I came on Thursday

so I wouldn't be late. I usually don't travel for anyone.

See how important you are to me? I came on Thursday.

Can I come down and kiss you all?

Will this make you late for anything if I come down to kiss you all?

We love to kiss.

It's amazing how much we love it! We Lebanese just adore kissing each other.

Is anyone here not Lebanese?

Yeah? Where are you from?

- Where are you from? - Jordan.

Jordan? You arrived from Jordan just now? Welcome.

I have a real issue with Jordanians.

You know why? Because you kiss three times, just like us.

We kiss three times.

And I didn't know that in Jordan, you kiss...

Some time ago, I was in Jordan and met someone.

We were about to greet each other with a kiss.

I started my... and he also started his...

and we kept on going sideways like that.

It was dramatic!

His tongue touched my tonsils!

I looked at him and said, "That's it! What are you doing tonight?"

What?

We really should stop this kissing!

Who in the audience is not Lebanese?

- Where are you from? - Syria.

I said not Lebanese!

With all confidence, Syria.

We're your guests now, God bless you!

I welcome us over here in your country.

We're almost competing with them here.

Glad that you're here with us.

The Syrians and us kiss in the same way.

Or do you have a different way?

Two kisses, like Europeans. Perfect.

Not like us Lebanese and Jordanians.

Who else is not Lebanese?

There's a crowd here from abroad! Where are you from?

Egypt? Great.

In Egypt too it's just two kisses, right? Two kisses, nice!

Now this is culture, not like us!

We are a horny people!

The minute we see each other, we kiss! Jesus!

But with all due respect to all your nationalities,

we Lebanese are super kissers.

You see how the minute we meet, we start kissing?

You've only left him for five minutes, but when he sees you again, he goes...

Come!

Come!

Not like this. Like this!

In whatever situation, we kiss. Whatever, we kiss.

Even if a guy is sick, you kiss him. He sneezes.

So what? If one guy is sick, he infects half of Lebanon!

When we meet, we kiss. We say farewell, we kiss.

And those guys with a bushy beard! It's a new trend.

Now what is that? A new trend, that! He comes to kiss you, no chance he won't.

The minute he hugs you, you feel his fur!

It's like you're kissing a bear! Totally drowned by it!

If the beard is sharp like steel,

it's like being on an emery board!

But that's not the guy I usually meet. I only get the guy

who, just as you enter the men's room, you hear the flush,

then the door opens and out he comes, barely finished his business.

And there we are. "Hello!

Come here, you." And you go, "Hello. Hello!"

He says, "Come here, you."

And you start thinking of what he's been up to in there.

Didn't wipe it.

And he sees you. "Hello." He touches your face.

"Who's my best friend? Who's the guy I love, man?"

I wish we would learn from women... how they kiss.

They kiss from a distance.

There's always a space.

You'd think they were disgusted by each other!

"Hi!"

We could be sweaty, and still kiss.

It's like kissing someone in the rain at the Roucha.

Some guys are born kissers.

Like the guy who sells clothes on Haamra Street at 1 p. m.

Just eaten falafel,

and has his falafel sandwich in his hand, a chilli pepper in the other,

and holding it out so it wouldn't drip on him.

You know that guy? Standing there munching on the sandwich,

his moustache full of falafel crumbs,

tahini and chilli pepper,

and chilli pepper seeds dangling from his nose hair!

You look at his face and he goes, "Hello! Come here, you.

Come here, you."

He hugs you and you get one side with tahini and the other, red turnips!

But the worst is the guy who's eaten chicken,

then had a breath mint.

He comes over, close to your ear...

"Hey, dear!"

He blows it all in your ear. And the smell of garlic is everywhere!

You say, "You smell like garlic." He says, "I had a breath mint!" What mint?

You need a stomach pump, damn you!

If you decide to add up all the kisses you get in a day,

mathematically, it's like you've had sex.

All day long, kiss, kiss, kiss. You should be up here...come on!

Speaking of food and falafel,

we Lebanese,

for those who don't know us, and this is just my personal opinion,

our stomachs are like garbage cans!

Whatever you dump in, we eat it. Everything.

I mean, have you ever thought about the sheep that falls into our hands?

Poor thing!

When a Lebanese gets his hands on a sheep, he's worse than ISIS!

We make it disappear! We eat every bit of it.

We leave nothing out! The head is made into nifa.

You're invited to a nifa meal, the best thing they offer is the eyeball.

"Here, try it, it's tasty and crunchy. But juicy!"

The tongue we cook with lime and garlic,

and they say, "Wow! Delicious."

The liver we make into sawda.

Is anything more delicious than having raw sawda for breakfast

with onion and mint? Delicious!

What else? The intestines. We don't throw them out!

For those of you who are not familiar with how the Lebanese do it,

we don't throw out the intestines. We make them into sausages.

We stuff them with rice and meat.

You could say, "Ew! There used to be shit in there!"

And I'd say, "That's OK. We wash them first."

Even if there's still a bit of shit, we douse them in lime and garlic, no problem.

No big deal. Now, is there anything tastier than the sheep's balls?

They're delicious.

But my favorite is the fatty tail.

That's really something, if you think about it, though.

The sheep grazes all day long, eating greens.

So his tail is right over his asshole.

All day long, he grazes then...

You'll be totally grossed out by sheep, just you wait!

You know that we eat every bit of the sheep except his penis!

I never got that! Why not? Suck on it!

Suck on it and see where that'll get you.

The fleece? We never throw out the fleece. We make it into a rug.

Not right to waste any part of the sheep. You have a friend who's a taxi driver,

he'll think the world of you if you give him the fleece.

He'd put it on the dashboard, with that waving-hand thing.

And what's hot now is that toy dog.

You stick it on the dashboard and he goes...

You just press the brakes and...

Then with all that, they tell you you'll be fine.

When you eat sheep meat, drink Araak with it.

It kills the microbes.

What microbes?

Do you see what crap you're eating? You need to drink acid to clear that!

A while ago, I was invited to a friend's. They had slaughtered a sheep.

I ate so much! I pigged out.

I sucked the bones, legs, intestines.

I was going to burst! I was suffering!

That's normal. No way you won't suffer after eating like that.

All kinds of microbes were floating in my stomach.

They immediately took me to the ER.

Now, our Lebanese hospitals are odd.

If you go there in an ambulance, the minute they reach the ER,

they press the brakes and open the door

and they dump you on a wheelchair like you were a pizza ready for the oven.

The minute I got there, they put me on a wheelchair, and I'm dying here!

And what can I do? Whenever I go to the hospital, no one believes I'm sick!

Weird! What? Can't I get sick? The minute I got there...

You know, once you get to the ER, before they ask what's wrong with you,

their first question is, insurance or no insurance?

They want to make sure they're getting paid!

They want to know how to handle you.

They wouldn't believe I was sick. A woman came over.

They're all venomous.

They can really choose them.

She walked over, and I was sprawled on the chair.

She came over...

"Oh, it's you.

You've come to make fun of us?"

Dripping venom!

Then another one...a question they always ask me. "Where's Abbas?"

Abbas and I should be sick together!

They put me on the stretcher, dumped me there.

The third venomous lady came, trying to insert the drip.

I'm in agony! My screams are going up to God. She kept jabbing and jabbing.

She needed a hammer to push in whatever the heck that was!

She drilled my bones and finally it got in.

I screamed in pain! She said, "Enough.

Are you the only one who gets to hurt people?"

After they examined me, that's where the problem started.

They said, "You need a colonoscopy."

You laughed because you went through that too.

I saw you flinch.