Cheney ski vacation interrupted by Holocaust memorial ceremony

Sorry, this isn't a political website, but this just jumped out at me. Couldn't the vice president dress his troll ass up a little bit when he represents the U.S. at Auschwitz?

Photo from Washington Post.

'Hooker's Ball'

Mom – and anybody who shares Mom's delicate sensibilities (I'm thinking of you here, Carol) – please skip this post. Ditto for any of my younger cousins who might be surfing.

The bar at the York International Hotel in Dubai seems like any old-fashioned American bar. Boxing on TV. Heineken on tap. Terrible cover band.

Men and women mill about. You talk to your friends, sip your beer. You nod your head to the music. An arm snakes around your waist. Someone's leaning against your hip. A hand falls on your shoulder and tugs you around. What the hell is going on here? You're a white man at Dubai's skankiest meat market, and you've just been accosted by a prostitute.

This greasy little place happens to be the Mecca of Dubai prostitution. (This is an analogy I don't recommend using publicly here in this part of the world.) Quite literally, every woman in the place is a prostitute. The moment you step into the place, they swarm on you like sharks that smell blood in the water.

Like hungry sharks, they have no shame. No sense of decorum prevents them from running their fingers along your ear before you've so much as made eye contact. And those are the subtle ones – the aggressive ones simply clutch at you, clawlike. After a few of these wraiths had jumped at me from the shadows, I started reliving the mixed feelings of alarm and sympathy I used to feel when the chainsaw man and the hockey mask guy would jump out and shout 'boo' at Kansas City's silly little Halloween haunted houses every October when I was a kid.

The prostitutes at the York work in pairs. They cruise the floor holding hands and double-teaming their marks. These women are from all over the world – China, Africa, Russia – but they've absorbed the business savvy of the Middle East: two women can charge a guy more, or they can convince him to bring a friend (and his money) into the deal for a foursome. Only if these deals fall through will the women turn on their partners and make separate plays.

Believe me, I didn't know any of this shit before I came to the York. I was just following my friends, who brought me there thinking it would be funny to watch my unvarnished reaction to the shark attack. I just thought we were going for a beer. All this knowledge of the Dubai prostitute biz comes by way of a guy I met at the bar. He's been in Dubai for two years and once had a roommate who was obsessed with prostitutes and their world. He himself has happily dipped his toe in these waters, he told me – "to see what it would be like to be in control." He came away satisfied, feeling his money was well spent. I find that thought revolting.

The other amazing thing about the York is the degree to which racism is entrenched. White guys are shark food, literally forced to swat women away in droves. Indian guys are ignored. An Indian friend of mine was basically snubbed, though he's plenty good-looking, if I may say so. White guys get in free. Indian guys pay at the door. Can you imagine the uproar in America if only one race was charged a cover? At any place, let alone at what is essentially a whorehouse? Here, people don't even blink about such things.

Even the waitresses here start pinching you when they want your attention. It was a hellish place, though kind of fascinating in its own way. My friend Brian called it "the most dispiriting place in the world." That was the same night he got deported from the UAE, though that's a story for another time.

Al Manama

The supermarket in my apartment building has everything, including lamb's brains. One day I pointed at the brains in the case, wrapped neatly in their little plastic like any other meat product, and asked the butcher what they were. "Brains," he said.

Next to the brains were entire lambs' heads, skull and all. I pointed at those and inquired. "Lambs' heads," the guy said in his very thick Indian accent. I actually couldn't really understand him, but it was clear enough what he said. You don't have to be an Indian grocer to recognize a skull when you see one. Lambs have serious underbite, by the way.

Then I pointed at the shapeless meat on the other side of the brains. What are those? I asked the butcher. I didn't understand what he said, because I know he couldn't have said what I thought I heard. I thought he said "booty."

I left before he could see me snickering. By the way, let's take a vote: Do you want a photo of what little brains look like, wrapped up in meat packaging? Comment below.

Speaking of

I had an Arab student named "Butty." It was pronounced "booty." I hope he thought my grinning whenever I called on him was because he was a great student, even though that thought would have been incorrect.

I put my pants on one leg at a time, like you

But once my pants are on, I make gold records.

The Washington Post finally catches up on the story I've been shouting about for months now. Read it, and then get the real story on elktown.

PS Thanks Scott for sending the story. If you're not registered for the Post, don't worry, everything you need can be found here.

Elephants and America

I was giving a talk about applying to college in America tonight, and a girl asked me why so many people wanted to go to school in the U.S. One of the Indian fathers raised his hand and said this:

"Four writers -- an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Indian and an American -- each write a book about elephants.

The Englishman calls his "Hunting for Elephants in the Wild".

The Frenchman calls his "The Beauty of Cooking Elephant".

The Indian calls his "Elephants in Indian Mythology".

The American calls his "How to Breed a Bigger Elephant".

That's the attitude in America, and that's why everyone wants to go to school there."

Bootlegs

Dubai is floating in bootleg movies. Guys come door-to-door peddling them. My favorite thing about bootleg movies is that the FBI warning against bootlegging is still prominently included, as if to say, "Screw you FBI."

The better ones are just copies of existing DVDs, so the quality is good – "Mean Girls" fell into this category. The bad ones are movies that are playing in theaters right now in the U.S., like "Coach Carter," which I watched recently. These are obviously created with video cameras in movie theaters. In the climactic basketball scene in "Coach Carter," I could never see the game's score, because the idiot bootlegger didn't center the screen right.

By the way, I want to apologize to Tina Fey, whom I love love love, for watching a bootleg copy of her movie. I didn't mean to take money out of your pocket Tina! I just had to get to sleep somehow after Pet Sematary! I still love you!!

Pet Sematary

Please do not read this book. I finished it last night around midnight and it kept me up most of the night with the lights on in my tiny apartment. My towel fell off its hook in the bathroom with a rustle and I nearly had a heart attack. I only finally relaxed by watching a bootleg copy of "Mean Girls" at 3 a.m.

The brilliant marketing of 'Closer'

For those of you out there in the PR biz, I want to pass along an example of marketing at its most refined. This is the blurb on the back of the bootleg DVD of "Closer":

"The film reorganizes from the satge play, thehonesty examined modern all meeting men and women love relates to, from meet, intense emoti on mutually the arrives to have illic it love to derail.An inside the play two rightnesses of husband and wife with gram benefit man text respec tively with virtuous in, tower wave with the , to spouse of unfaithful to ruler with rebels against to make the irrelation broken."

Also, if I may add: Jude Law is so hot.

Follow follow follow

I was talking to a Ukranian woman at Starbucks the other day -- Starbucks, by the way, is exactly, and I mean exactly, like it is in America -- I mean, the fidelity of that place to the mothership in Seattle makes McDonalds' franchises look like outrageous renegade outfits by comparison -- anyway, what the hell was I saying? Oh yeah, I was talking to a Ukranian woman and she asked me where I was from in the U.S. I asked her if she ever heard of Kansas. "Oh, of course!" she says. "I read a story about Kansas City."

That's where I'm from! I said. What was the story?

"There was a girl and her family," she said. "Then a... how do you say it... a big storm came, and blew the girl away! With her dog!"

Oh, good Lord.

I thought if there was anywhere in the world I could go where people wouldn't associate my home with the Wizard of Oz, it would be here. When I first got to Washington, 500 people thought they were the first to make those jokes. When I went to France, my host family grilled me with questions about Auntie Em and her barn. Now, here. God help me.

The amazing and redeeming part about this story is that my Ukranian friend actually had never seen the movie, nor even heard of it. She read the actual stories by L. Frank Baum as a girl, and associates Kansas with an almost fairy-tale storybook quality. That charms me.