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This evening Israeli Channel 10 News covered Brad Pitt’s microphone malfunctioning on Fox’s Idol Gives Back and stage manager Debbie McVickers shining as she came to the rescue. Channel 10’s fluffy-issues correspondent Haim Etgar dubbed the incident ‘a huge screw-up’, right before using a caption that seemed like it was spelled by an 11 years old ‘Idol’ fan:

Huge screw-up indeed! Thanks for attending mandatory English class in school, Haim.

Avid readers of my blog know all about my disdain for Engbrew, the English/Hebrew language that threatens to replace the holy tongue. Based on a child-like fascination with the American culture, many Israelis think speaking English-peppered Hebrew makes them seem more intelligent. Yes, just like the people who think wearing glasses makes you look smarter, many Israelis think that the more English words, terms and idioms they use while talking to their peers, the more cool they seem.

Last night, as I was watching a news report about the new Israeli cell phone company modu, my jaw dropped when one of the executives started speaking Engbrew:

In the last couple of years it became common practice for Israeli newspapers to stuff themselves with supplements which look at first like genuine newspaper addition, but are actually just advertisements posing as articles. This is an effort, I assume, to give the inherit deceitful nature of advertising an air of objective news coverage.

There is one such monthly supplement about cell phone models, one about office equipment, and a few that feature an array of products, linking fashion trends with things you can purchase. A new supplement which fits the latter is titled: URBAN – GET A LIFE STYLE [sic].
When I first laid my hands on it I thought I was reading it wrong, as I myself often feel the uncontrollable urge to tell people searching for style to get a life – and so having the very source of evil inadvertently tell the same to its readers, thinking it is a clever play on words – well, that just brightened up my day.

I started flipping through the magazine and had to really fight my gag reflex. The pages were filled with pseudo-new-age mantras, one nauseating mantra before each of the magazine sections [emphasis and capitals theirs]: It’s not who you’re sleeping with BUT where in the lodging section, Food is like desire. It’s much better in a PRETTY package! in the dining section, It’s not who you’re talking to BUT what you’re talking with in the cell phones section, There are two ways to achieve HAPPINESS: Be in love or drink fine wine in the wine section, There’s electricity in the air GET IT! – yes, you guessed it - in the electrical appliances section.

And then I hit the mother lode in the accessories section:

You see, it is quite rare to be able to summarize a critique into a single sentence, much rarer to be able to summarize it to a single word – but to find one such word published by the very people the critique speaks against, well that is as close to force majeure as you can find.

Yes, excessories is exactly how I would spell the unnecessary daily purchases done by people trying to fill the void in their soul, and here it comes from the advertiser’s mouth. Oh! The humanity…

Epilogue:
When I first stumbled upon the website Engrish.com which meticulously documents the Japanese’s futile attempt at mastering the English language, I laughed so hard at ‘those stupid Japanese’. I assume this is exactly what non-Israelis do when they look at us, as we also show the same negative correlation between how cool the natives revere the English language and how poor their actual English-language skills are.