The music of the Empire

Americans, be proud: Our music is swashbuckling its way through the far corners of the earth. I thought one side benefit to moving near the heart of Islam would be a break from constant elevator Christmas music, but in the airport, the Indian markets, everywhere, it's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." At this moment, in the tiny Internet cafe where I'm working, it's that Whitney Houston song from "The Bodyguard" -- I will always love youuuuuuuuuuuu...

Rain and snow

The day after I arrived, it rained here for the first time in over a year. Then it kept on raining for three days. The locals seem only slightly less astonished than if the sky had opened up and rained frogs for three days. Personally, I would be grateful to see a storm if my town had gone a year without rain, but these folks shake their heads in wonder, then seem annoyed.

You’ve got to give them credit, though: Even in this freak rainstorm, people seem calmer than the hysterical Washingtonians who run around flapping their hands and wailing every time in snows. And it snows in Washington every winter. Ras al-Khaimah, one of the northern Emirates in the mountains, got snow yesterday for the first time in at least 40 years. Keep in mind: That doesn’t mean it snowed 40 years ago – it means that nobody can remember back any further than that. This may be the first snow in Emirati history, for all anyone knows. And you didn’t see them getting their knickers all in a twist.

On the topic of weather: Thunder sounds different here. You would think that thunder is one of those things which is exactly the same no matter where you go in the world, like the moon, or Burger King. But thunder here – or at least last night’s thunder – lacks the percussive thump of good American thunder. A feisty storm of American thunder is like a Hell’s Angel yelling and pounding his meaty fist on a table. It thuds. It can be scary. The china rattles. Middle Eastern thunder is like a nervous guy clearing his throat. I saw strokes of lightning that flashed brightly even underneath my bed covers with my eyes closed, and even these monster strokes produced thunder that seemed oddly tentative and polite, like it didn’t want to bother anybody.

I was awfully pleased with myself when, after puzzling for a couple days over the question of how to dry my washed clothes, I realized that my little window has hooks underneath it on the outside, and that everybody here just hangs their clothes out the window to dry. It was very satisfying to hang my first load of clothes out the window; I felt like a part of the scene. Then, after the intermittent drizzle of the last two days turned into a real downpour overnight, I woke up this morning to shirts that were even wetter than the washing machine managed to get them.

Everybody else in my little courtyard evidently was able to anticipate that clothes hanging in a downpour will not dry, and had removed their clothes in the night. I’m obviously not ready to be part of the scene yet.

Update: Snow in the Middle East

My friend Tara tells me that she lived in Dubai as a girl and learned to ice-skate here. To me that sounds like learning to surf while growing up in Overland Park, Kansas. Hopefully Tara will enlighten us more on this amazing fact. Maybe I can get a picture up here of a middle-eastern ice skating rink.

Important things still happening in the U.S.

Oh, man, if these guys thought I wasn't going to post this picture, they were sorely mistaken. Left to right: Scott K., Jim K. and Rummell, three of the finest card players ever to draw an ace on the river. Scott won the evening going away, I'm told. Jim looks deep in thought -- did you win that hand? And Rummell, how did you do at Casino Night? Come on, the people want to know.

Also, please note that the beers these gentlemen are drinking are a solid step up in quality from the swill we proudly drink at Rummell's Horseshoe.

This table looks like trouble. What's the story here, Melissa and Tiffany?

It's a long way

I tracked my progress to the Middle East by the cities that drifted by far beneath the plane, cities whose names were beamed up to us via the plane's onboard tracking map. I started feeling far from home when the balance of vowels to consonants in the city names began to fall out of whack. Munich and Berlin I recognized. But then the cute flight attendants passed out a snack and when I looked at the map again, we were passing over places called Brno and Plzen and Iasi.



The flight from New York to London traced a lovely straight arc across the Atlantic, then wheeled south over Europe. People have been asking me for months whether I was nervous about my trip, and the truth is I never was. I kept waiting for my nerves to make themselves felt, but they stayed quiet all through November and December. It was the moment that the last recognizable city name -- it was Prague, actually -- finally disappeared off the little map screen in the back of the headrest. That was the moment I got nervous. I looked down and saw the lights far below in eastern Europe and realized I'd never been farther away from a single person I knew.

Watching "The Bourne Supremacy" instead of the scrolling map took the edge off somewhat. When the movie ended, I checked the map again and was relieved to once again see a city I recognized. The relief didn't last long. The city was Baghdad.

You can see on the map above that our flight path only deviated from its smooth curve one time, towards the end. That little zig was Iraq, and I think we can all agree that the pilot showed wisdom in that particular move. When we zagged back, we were over Saudi Arabia and the sun was coming up. I stretched my neck to see the sand but the desert was covered by clouds. When the clouds finally broke, we were over the Persian Gulf -- Emirati locals call it the Arabian Gulf, because Arabs despise Persians -- and the plane was low to the water. I saw oil derricks and one giant boat that seemed to be leaking a huge amount of green sludge into the water. When Dubai appeared on the coast, the one thing that struck me about the aerial view was the sand. It's a city built entirely into sand.

Airport

As I mentioned, my flight connected through London on Christmas Eve. Heathrow airport is fine, but given that it is Britain's largest air hub, I was stunned and disappointed that I did not see Santa as I expected. I was also put off a bit that so much wall space in the airport was simply empty, with only a half-hearted attempt to fill the blankness with advertisements. Not being assaulted by an unending stream of vulgar airport ads was my first bit of culture shock.

Here's a photo:



And here's another one. It was Christmas, after all:



Lovely pictures, aren't they? They really capture the essence of the London airport on Christmas, don't they?

Except that they weren't taken in London. Those are the third and fourth pictures I took from Dubai. This is a cafe under the arrivals gate in Dubai International Airport. That London Dairy was a little ice cream shop, just across from that giant Christmas tree. Any thought that I might be moving into some Islamic tent city in the desert was put to rest at that moment.

Well, that's a lie. That notion was put to rest the instant I stepped off the plane into the terminal. The first sight to greet me was a giant blinking spaceship hanging from the ceiling. Yeah, that's right. Feast your eyes:



The image is a little blurry because I was trying not to faint from the shock. I turned around and was greeted with this sight:



Again, the blurriness as I struggle to control my slack-jawed drooling. Also, I'm a shit photographer. But believe me when I say: Dubai airport is the most glitteringly modern thing I've ever seen. They were auctioning off a Rolls-Royce outside the duty-free shops where rich Arabs -- and everyone else -- buy their dirt-cheap liquor.

One of the themes of this website will be the odd and hilarious way the western world and the Middle East have collided here in Dubai. My first inkling of that came as I walked toward passport control. Unlike in London, the Dubai airport is littered with wall ads -- just like home sweet home. At the welcome port of this Muslim country, I saw a enormous ad for Chivas Regal, I saw the familiar little M&M characters saying "Experience the Fun!" and I saw a spot for some Dubai resort featuring a grinning Arab guy holding up a surfboard in one hand and a giant thumbs-up sign in the other. As the nervousness of the flight gave way, my first impression of Dubai was, "What in the HELL is this place?"

Arrived

I made it to Dubai. I meant to have done much more posting on this website by now, but I haven't yet achieved a reliable Internet connection. Soon, I hope.

So all is well with me, though I've been sorry to miss my favorite time of the year in the U.S. I'm jetlagged and I miss all my friends and family. But this place really is pretty fascinating, which I notice when I'm awake enough to look around. Check here again soon for some interesting photos and my own inane commentary.

WARNING!!!

Past this point is all junk from before I left the country. Please feel free to skip it, for your own mental health.

Now maybe this website will get interesting

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. I'm outta here...

Introducing the elktown 10-second movie review

House of Flying Daggers: Like Romeo and Juliet, only way, way stupider. And with a lot more kung fu.

Please feel free to email me your own 10-second movie reviews and I will post them.

Fareed likes Dubai

From Fareed Zakaria's article:

"Arab elites remain enormously resistant to reform and will try to scuttle plans for change. But I sense that the dinosaurs are on the defensive. For the first time, other views are being aired. Consider the contrast between two conferences on reform held in the past 10 days. The first, the official "Forum for the Future," held in Morocco, ended with the foreign ministers of the region endorsing reform but adding that it couldn't happen until a Palestinian state was established. Some also insisted that Iraq be free of foreign troops. These are the usual strange excuses for repression and oligarchy in the Arab world. "Until foreign policy problems are solved," the governments seem to be saying, "we have no choice but to keep punishing our people."

But now there are Arab voices saying "Enough." At Dubai's Arab Strategy Forum a few days later, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Maktum, Dubai's ruler, said pointedly in his opening address, "I cannot see why a crisis, no matter how severe, should delay economic reform or plans to eradicate illiteracy. . . .What is the relation between foreign affairs and corruption?"

Interestingly, these voices are mainly being heard from the Persian Gulf, which has become the center of reform in the Arab world. Dubai is far ahead of all others in terms of economic openness and efficiency. But Qatar and Bahrain are moving in the same direction with radical plans. It is a strange reversal. In the 1950s and 1960s, the large Arab states, led by Egypt, were seen as the modernizing forces in the region. The gulf monarchies were backward Bedouin societies. Now progress, at least economic progress, is coming from the gulf, while countries such as Syria appear to be stuck in the Stone Age."

Full article at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15132-2004Dec20.html.

We take cash or credit, Scott

I think most of us understand that everything Scott learned about gambling, he learned from myself and Rummell during a series of drunken nights at Rummell's Horseshoe. So of course, it's only fair that after such a big night at the DecisionHealth casino party, Scott should remunerate his old friends and mentors to the tune of say, 40% of his winnings for each of us.

I don't know about Rummell, but I don't accept personal checks. Cash or credit, please. (Soon elktown will be outfitted to take all major credit cards).

Really explore the studio space this time

I mean, really -- explore the space.



You asked for it, so here it is -- more cowbell. Turn down the volume and make sure Rahul isn't walking by:

I make gold records
I coulda used more cowbell
I gotta have more cowbell!
You're gonna want that cowbell!
I gotta have more cowbell, baby
I'm the cock of the walk, baby!
I got a fever...
Never question Bruce Dickenson

I gotta have more cowbell!

The video of one of the great skits in SNL history is available at http://www.emlyn.net/archives/000139.html.

The greatest movie ever made was on TV this morning. Unbelievably, my sister had not seen it since toddlerhood...! Our lives are both richer for having seen it again.

Attention Tim

You know what this means, partner.

Westie Watch Day III

Inside the westie house.

Gracie approaches the camera as George watches.

Gracie

Why I like Ebert

Ebert is the kind of writer who finds a way to say what he wants to say, regardless of what his editors might consider too risque. Take a look at this paragraph from his review of the Adam Sandler movie "Spanglish":

"There's also ironic dialogue in a sequence involving the Times review of John's restaurant, which to John is a catastrophe. Restaurants are ruined by four-star reviews, he explains: A line of @$$#o!>s immediately forms out in front."

Westie Watch Day II

Thursday morning. The Westies are at their posts.

My cousin

Pam and Ruthann attend to important matters.

Yow.

Westie Watch

Westie keeps an eye on the neighborhood across the street from my mom's condo. Hard to tell if it's George or Gracie.

Kermit crashes my going-away party

Kermit has that "Hi ho, Kermit the Frog HERE!" look on his face.

Frightening the children and it's not even Halloween.