Two-Channel Surfin': A Rankings Rundown of my Either/Or American TV Preferences Based on Abu Dhabi Availability

I'm a TV-watchin' guy, and Ramadan is a TV-watchin' time.

Food and drink, as you probably have ascertained by now, are a huge part of the social culture here. Our weekly plans are basically anchored by eating out and nightlife. For its observers, Ramadan is removing alcohol beverages from the equation throughout the month, while daylight is foodless. Except in home settings, adult drink is basically off limits for the rest of us as is food during daylight, leaving everybody with a lot of new time on their hands to work with. Given the 110-degree heat (give or take 8 degrees), TV is a solution for many.

The rest of this entry is for regular-to-highly-avid American TV watchers who wonder what TV life is like in a country with round-the-clock access to quite limited and random American shows from the last 25 years...plus anyone who might find the creature in the former sentence strangely fascinating.

This list is a pecking order of a smattering of television shows likely to appear on our two OSN (overlorded by Showtime) comedy channels - which earn the grand majority of my TV viewing, despite the fact that we have hundreds of other channels (more than 2/3 in foreign languages) - rated from "I'd Rather Be Outside Fasting With The Mistreated Pakistani Construction Workers" to "You Just Made My Ramadan." Also, it should be noted that there's a lot more griping than exalting to follow.

While I write this post, I don't even have to think too hard about the rankings - I watch a ton of TV, the shows that OSN seems to own the rights to is relatively limited, the programming order is completely random and there are two stations...meaning I have probably already made a Channel 398 or 399 head-to-head decision for every two of these shows.

20 Just Shoot Me - The concept was bad, the scripts were bad, David Spade killed any credibility he built during Saturday Night Live, and for the 45 seconds or less that I watch Just Shoot Me as it plays constantly in the UAE, I think: This should have been the last program ever with a laugh track. What kind of group think/old-guard mentality bullshit leads executives to think a laugh track still augments a show? It's like they're worried it doesn't shout "This Is Contrived!" loudly enough.

19 The New Adventures Of Old Christine - I think CBS has drawn a line in the sand between blue state elitests and red state mayonaisse-sandwich eaters better than any political issue over the last 11 years.

18 Hot In Cleveland - I haven't watched closely enough to know what this show is - if my choices are this or No. 19 or No. 20, then that's when I'm going to wash dishes - but if I had to guess, I'd say the pitch was Designing Women meets The Drew Carey Show combined with She's The Sheriff.

17 The Jay Leno Show - I find myself tuning in for 2-3 minutes because of its day-to-day topical nature (this type of program usually airs 1-2 days behind in the UAE), but then the total lack of cleverness in Leno's humor makes me red with anger, and I change it to The World According To Jim dubbed in Arabic or, God, anything. Leno is the show on this list that makes me the most physically angry at its popularity for the small duration that I watch it, way more so than No. 15 or No. 13. If you've ever seen the 1990 Lord Of The Flies movie, I sometimes fantasize about going Roger on Leno like he's Piggy.

16 Melissa And Joey - I change the channel after watching for a few minutes...but I'm not pissed off like I am with Leno. I'm more nostalgic for Gimme A Break and Clarissa Explains It All and, to a far lesser extent, Blossom and Sabrina The Teenage Witch.

15 Two And A Half Men - I was following the Charlie Sheen 2.5 Men fallout closely for a while, then I instantaneously got sick of it, started avoiding it and forgot whatever I learned. I assume it all boiled down to the anguish of working with John Cryer, right? Also, as much as I hate this show, I will illegally download the first episode of the next season and put my Samsung at risk for viruses, because I'm fascinated to see how they write derp Ashton Kutcher into it.

14 The Drew Carey Show - I think the only time I watched a full episode of this show in The States was in the Toyota Dealership waiting room when Lavar The Car was getting new tires, but I've probably watched all or part of 70 episodes or so here. It got pretty experimental towards the end of its run, but the fact that Drew continued to find decent looking 35-plus-year-old single women in Cleveland to date him was beyond suspension of disbelief.

13 Curb Your Enthusiasm - This is on a long list of pop culture items everyone loves but I dislike, along with Abbey Road, A History Of Violence and Lee Corso, to the point where it makes me sour which causes my buddy Schwartz to lash out at my contrarianism. If Larry David's character was staging a war with Ashton Kutcher's character from That 70s Show, I would side with the latter. Larry David is NO George Costanza, damnit.

12 Traffic Light - There are a few shows that we get here that are not fresh or particularly funny, but I watch for a while pondering their American origin. This is one of them. This show was canceled by the time it got to us (or I could be completely wrong), as I think some of the actors are now on current, more successful shows. Working in entertainment the last five years, I had a pretty good idea what was on the dial and where and when. So curious. Was it a short-lived show on Fox in 2007 that slipped out of my memory? Is possible were getting shows that were too generic/forgettable to ever get picked up? So curious.

11 The Simpsons - Of course it's all very late season Simpsons, and yes that ranking is valid...I would choo choo choose The Simpsons Season 20 over Traffic Light, but I regularly pick the next five shows all ahead of Season 20 Simpsons. Sigh.

10 The League - I still think this show sucks. I love toilet, sex and drug humor as much as the next guy, but The League's implementation of it hardly ever catches me off guard. Even worse, they have a fuggin 6-team fantasy football league. The Wire had like 50 characters in the first season and they grew the cast from there...these guys don't even have the confidence to write in at least 2 or 4 side characters and round out the league at 8 or 10 guys? Their portrayal of fantasy football is too far beneath the brand that I'm used to for this show to ever be relevant, satisfying.

9 How I Met Your Mother - I do laugh at this show, but the male characters are lamer than late-period Friends. I am dreaming of a How I Met Your Mother/Always Sunny crossover episode, the latter calling out the pervasive effeminacy of the former. Barney being held up as a man's man...get bent, Barney.

8 Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - I still think Jimmy Fallon is pretty hacky - not quite a Leno in training, but not that far removed, either. But whether it's him or creative talent behind the scenes, whoever keeps coming up with ideas like Jason Bateman re-enacting a scene from Teenwolf 2 is giving us comedy gold.

7 My Boys - Fine make fun of me, but the characters are drawn fairly atypically, fairly realistically. Not much happens in it and the show probably skews female, but when My Boys takes the screen in Abu Dhabi, I happily watch if Leslie doesn't make me change it to The Food Network. I promise you if I could figure out the league formats and the airing times for rugby, I'd choose that at 11 am on a Sunday over My Boys.

6 Community - I'm even fonder of this program now that each viewing spurs consideration of the strange genius of creator Dan Harmon, after reading this excellent AV Club series on the process for each episode of Season 2.

5 Seinfeld - A year ago, I could rarely stay tuned for a full 30 minutes of a Seinfeld rerun - I had finally reached my Seinfeld saturation point. Now when it comes on in Abu Dhabi, it satisfies again like a classic rock station playing "Naive Melody."

4 30 Rock - Okay, this is one of those pop cultures items I once pooh-poohed with my arms folded, only to do a 180 years later (like with the band Grizzly Bear). I can no longer manufacture excuses about how my initial negative impressions were reasonable. I now realize that 30 Rock was always quite clever. My bad. However, I still despise Jack McBrayer - I would like to see his character traded to 2.5 Men for the kid, who now is ripe for humor, demonstrating how comically strange puberty is.

3 It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - He's a small man, but I think Charlie Day's cleverness, apparent in both his mental and physical comedy, is a reminiscent of John Candy.

2 The Daily Show - In the U.S. or in the U.A.E., watching the first 10 minutes of The Daily Show remains the closest feeling I'll ever get to the satisfaction of punching power brokers in the gut for their moronic, backwards or deceitful actions. We typically get the week's new Daily Shows late night Tuesday through late night Friday, and I'm excited about its return by the time we get to Tuesday.

1 Southpark - Southpark takes the most coveted spot on this list because I love the show AND I haven't over-watched the reruns, but don't discount the smokin-in-the-boys-room-like thrill of watching an unedited show that features the likes of Mr. Slave and the boy band Fingerbang, in your family room in a conservative religious state.

Ramadan Kareem from the Good People at Baskin Robbins or Showtime or Fairmont Hotels

Four days into Ramadan, and I figured it was worth documenting that the commercialization of cherished holidays is alive and well here.

I've never had any real issue with the profiteering around Christmas, and I don't really have a negative reaction to the explosion of Ramadan-related advertising we've had over the last few weeks in the UAE, either. I know many Americans who disagree, finding the annual inundation of Christmas ads exploitative, soulless.

My feeling: Sure they're competing for our business foremost, but that happens year round. The optimist in me thinks that holiday advertising usually comes from a genuine place, IE the Post creative leads felt a childlike glee when they were writing the script for Fred to share his Fruity Pebbles with Barney in the spirit of Christmas. I think we get some of our best ads around the holidays.

The Ramadan hype is inescapable here like Christmas in the U.S. - in the mall eateries, on television where they're wishing you a Ramadan Kareem and promising extra-compelling programming to keep your mind off fasting, and at every hotel competing to have you celebrate Iftar in their lavish tents (like the one outside our apartment). Come enjoy the buffet filled with traditional Arabic foods (I tried Syrian Oozie on Monday) and smoke some sheesha for between 30-60 U.S. dollars per person.

So if you're the type who frets over the commercialization of Christmas or Ramadan, I'm pretty sure it's an Earth-wide phenomenon. In my opinion, you might as well let it roll off your back and enjoy the holidays, ya fuddy duddy!

Here Comes Ramadan

The non-nuanced view I used to have of "the Arab of the Middle East" is fading away.

I don't feel particularly guilty that I used to have basically 1-3 pictures in my head of what a Gulf Coast Arab would look and act like, just like I don't feel guilty that my imagination envisions every Uruguayan as a male or female version of Diego Forlan or Luis Suarez - I've never been near "Uruguay," so if you say that word, I'm going to associate it with the few people, mannerisms, history-class notes, etc. that stuck in my memory.

I am pleased to be gaining depth to my understanding of people and customs in this region, and it would be pretty sweet if I can get to Uruguay one day soon and hammer away at my ignorance there.

My concept of the holy month of Ramadan, like so many things from Earth including the Yakuza and Robert Mosbacher, has long been shaped by one line from The Simpsons:

"Have a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, kwazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan," Krusty the Clown tells his viewers, during an American holiday-season broadcast.

A solemn, dignified Ramadan...sounds a little austere for my holiday preferences.

Above is a picture of our apartment building to the right, and in the middle, the tent they have been setting up for weeks now, which I believe will serve as a festive eating and socializing place during Ramadan. Normally, that area would all be a walkway, where kids from our building often congregate to play soccer in the late afternoon (I haven't invited myself to join yet). It is quite the structure for a tent - it winds in the back and I'm sure it's more than 100 feet long in total - plus new items are set up inside it every day, such as that gigantic air-conditioning system you see in the bottom left corner.

Although I know qualities like self-control, humility and purity are connected with the essence of Ramadan, our tent does not look like a place people will visit simply to be solemn, dignified.

Ramadan begins on August 1 this year and ends on August 29 (it changes from year to year based on the moon), with Muslims fasting during sunlight hours. In the evening, there is a fast-breaking meal called Iftar. From what I gather from our Muslim friends, Iftar can be a very social meal, very family- and group-oriented.

For a guy whose favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, it's pretty appealing to imagine the type of food set-up that could fit inside that tent, but believe it or not, it's the socializing that interests me most.

One of my largest disappointments about my UAE experience so far is that people tend to be more distant and less inviting, but I'm also kind of a passive extravert, so I have to shoulder some of the blame. Still I was hoping that with a country of people from everywhere - most relocated to the UAE within the last several years - we would constantly be hanging out with new people from new places without having to try.

Maybe Ramadan will jump-start such experiences. I'll probably be shy about barging into someone's cultural experience, so I'll likely wait for a sign or an invitation to get in the tent.

But even if I don't end up in it, standing on a bench speaking to a circle of Brits and Filipinos and Arabs about the experiences of tailgating at Penn State or visiting movie studios in LA and then hearing about their backgrounds, all while a sweet old lady in an abaya tries to serve me more Ghraybeh cookies...I'm quite excited to at least learn about Ramadan through observation, and hopefully gain a slightly richer understanding of my surroundings.

Road Trip Results: They Can't All Be As Rewarding As Kerouac's Des Moines

Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac are the men who most inspired me to be the type of 24-year-old who barhopped by himself around Jackson, Tennessee after covering a Birmingham Barons/West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx Double-A baseball game - the type of guy who, when sensing late in the night that nothing interesting was developing beyond a nice drunk and August MLB played soundlessly on a TV in the background, decided to provoke a polo-tucked-in-his-jeans southern college kid who kept playing John Mayer's first album on the jukebox.

As far as road trip idols go, this pair of authors is an unoriginal choice, probably about like a guitar player declaring that the riffs of Elvis and Paul McCartney inspirited them to take up the instrument. But if there are bigger or better giants than Thompson and Kerouac, as far as Making A Good Story Wherever You Go goes, I still haven't discovered them.

While I still smile at the adventures of Thompson, Kerouac and even early-20s Williams, my days of seeking to amuse myself by challenging the conventions and patience of blond frat boys, bartenders, uptight pool-hall dwellers and any other type of local are over. My bear-, monkey- and shrew-poking stick is all but retired.

Therefore, yesterday's soccer road trip to Al Ain was going to have to manufacture its own satisfying plot, and quite frankly that never happened.

The 105-minute drive along Abu Dhabi/Al Ain road was interesting in the same way that driving in UAE is always interesting (which deserves its own entry at some point), with Porsches and Lexuses going 200 kilometers per hour in the hammer lane, wobbly worker buses going 65 kph in the right, and the rest of us fending against both of them with a nebulous speed limit of around 120-140 kph and radar cameras looming.

Al Ain was kind of an interesting town, a hilly suburb that appeared more Arab than Abu Dhabi or Dubai, and I enjoyed how the stadium was set against a craggy horizon. Al Ain is near Oman, and it reminded me of it.

But the atmosphere for the game was lackluster. There were probably over 1,000 fans in a stadium that supposedly seats 12,000, with neither the Indians or the Emirati turning out in full force for the game.

The host-country fans, congregated around midfield along the opposite sideline from me, slightly outnumbered the visitors. They sang the same songs that I heard at the two UAE Pro League games I attended previously, and they certainly cheered for their team, but the mood seemed more like complacency than intensity. My perspective: It's your national team which you don't get to watch play very often, your country's most beloved sport, and what was practically an elimination game on the road to the biggest sporting event in the world - you should have a lot more fans, and the ones that show up should be in a frenzy.

I really think this country needs a marketing overhaul on its brand of soccer. National pride seems to be important to the Emirati - at least the country's brass - and the level of interest in native-land soccer seems embarrassing. Yes, I would love a job market researching and proposing a strategic overhaul of the "selling" of soccer in the UAE (in quotes because entrance to all games are free, another reason it's absurd there aren't more fans attending).

The Indians, who I thought might show up in droves like Mexicans at a U.S./Mexico match in LA, were a compact group confined to two sections in a corner of the stadium. I would say they were more passionately engaged than the UAE fans, but their determination was weakened when their team lost hope in the match rather quickly.

The match itself was bizarre but not compelling, as UAE basically cruised to a 3-0 victory despite a lack of quality finishing. A ref from Qatar awarded UAE two penalty kicks in a matter of two minutes -at about the 19- and 21-minute marks, and neither time did the UAE actually possess the ball in the box...taken altogether, a highly unusual string of occurrences. In a section with a very good view but practically no one around me (I was at about the 30 yard line), I was able to move beside the outdoor press box when the penalties were awarded and catch the replays on a 20-inch tv.

The first penalty/red card was called when a UAE player was running onto a nice chip in the box that would have resulted in a solid scoring opportunity, but as the beaten Indian player used his arms to try to regain defending position, the UAE player fell to the ground with emphasis. A 50-50 call in my book, as the official could have overlooked the foul to penalize the striker for going down so easily.

The second penalty was far worse, as the UAE sent another ball into the box that was handled fairly easily by the Indian goalkeeper. But an Emirati striker charged the goalie anyways, who put his knee up and grazed the UAE player (again, performing the familiar soccer go-down-and-grab-your-ankle act that makes it hard to defend the sport), and somehow that resulted in another penalty kick and the expulsion of India's starting goalie. Of course the Indian fans were livid, and if they actually had filled the stands, the atmosphere would have become hair-raising (especially for the Qatari ref) at that point.

But the majority of the stadium was empty, and I considered a 9 p.m. escape back to Abu Dhabi before the first half ended. I stuck it out though. The fear of the road trip gods punishing me by causing me to miss something memorable is always too great.

Unfortunately, the best story after that point was India, playing 9 against 11 after the two red cards, lasting about 60 minutes of game time before surrendering another goal. Indian back-up goalie Karanjit Singh, who came on to be beaten by UAE's second penalty kick, was the closest thing the game had to a hero, making more on-goal saves than I believe I've ever seen in the pros. Still, even the moral victory didn't end up making much of a story, as UAE scored in the 81st minute, effectively taking it from highly unlikely to nearly impossible for India to come back in Thursday's return game in Delhi. India would need to win by four goals to advance to the next stage of qualifying.

And really that's good for me, because although yesterday's trip lacked indelible stimuli, I still enjoyed the soccer. The UAE isn't as good as Spain or even the U.S., but it's still a pretty high level of play, and at least I can get a front row seat.

Assuming the UAE takes care of business in Delhi, they'll advance to the group stage of qualifying, beginning in September. There will be more opportunities to see home games in UAE, and maybe a match against Australia or China or Iran will bring about the type of high-stakes-soccer culture-on-culture event that I seek, or maybe the road trip gods will just reward my persistence.

(Outside the stadium an hour before game time...you can see our gorgeous Nissan Tiida in front of those buses)

(UAE plays most of the second half taking target practice at India's back-up goalie, but not scoring much)

(Low key post-game congratulations amongst UAE teammates after a low key affair)

A Bolder Move: Solo Soccer Road Trip to Al Ain Begins...Now...

Today is a UAE live sports day I've had circled on the calendar almost since arriving in early April – UAE vs. India in mens soccer, a second-round qualifying match for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. It's the first of a two-game home and home series, with the return trip happening in Delhi July 28 and the winner (on aggregate goals) advancing to the next round of qualifying, the first group stage.

I'm excited enough about it to road trip approximately two hours on my own (I couldn't sell the event to any takers amongst our hangout group) to Al Ain, an apparently mountainous city of about 350,000 people due east of Abu Dhabi. I'm not certain because I've never been. Adventure! Meanwhile Leslie is cooking for a dinner party at our apartment. Here's hoping our rental Nissan Tiida holds up and I don't have to interrupt to ask to be rescued.

Part of the excitement comes from the opportunity to attend a match in a far-off corner of the sporting universe that I never thought I'd reach. Part of it is the journey itself - a return to the road-trip thrill-seeking I sought in driving to sporting events across the midwest/east/south in my late teens and early 20s.

Conceptually this trip reminds me very much of driving solo from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Madison, Wisconsin to watch Penn State play at Wisconsin in 1998 (early turnovers did in Penn State 24-3 in what should have been a very close game, clenching a Rose Bowl berth for Badgers).

That was when I started seeing myself as a risk taker after years of being afraid of roller coasters and asking girls to dances. I started to realize that eating at a bar in a strange town and people-watching provides its own kind of thrill, as does driving on dimly-lit highways at 3 a.m. with the truckers. About to mimic those journeys internationally, it makes me feel younger and bolder than I usually do, these days.

Now if you know a little about international soccer, you know this match has minimal significance as far as the ultimate World Cup is concerned – probably analogous to the likelihood the 4/5 game in the Atlantic Sun conference tournament ends up affecting the Sweet 16 in NCAA mens basketball. There are only 32 teams that will earn a trip to Brazil, and a maximum of five of them will be from Asia. Both India and the UAE appear to be long shots to make it.

But I love international soccer, and I also love off-the-beaten-path sporting events that are nonetheless important to the locals and therefore come up with a unique, vivid slice of color. This game fits the bill.

The native population (again, only 20% of the country) of the UAE loves the sport, and the power-wielders in this country love spending toward the pursuit of national glory. See: Burj Khalifa. They've already started to take the same approach to soccer, like the signing of legendary Argetenian soccer hero and sideshow Diego Maradona to coach club Al Wasl in the UAE national league next season, and its only a matter of time until this philosophy starts benefiting their World Cup qualifying chances. The UAE has qualified once, in 1990.

This UAE squad is deemed young, talented (possibly a little brash, as demonstrated by this crazy back-heeled penalty kick in a "Friendly" match against Lebanon last week that got tons of international media and online attention), and ready to make a leap forward in their international soccer relevance, and my bet is there will be many Emirati in attendance with greater-than-in-the-past expectations. I believe those lofty expectations will be palpable in the stands.

For India, cricket and (to the best of my knowledge) mens field hockey capture the greatest portion of their sports attention, while those who enjoy soccer probably ally themselves with European and South American teams. I don't believe soccer is viewed as a major Indian sport, but if I'm wrong, I'll learn so tonight.

India qualified for the 1950 World Cup (also in Brazil), apparently because all their Asian opponents forfeited in qualifying, but they did not make the trip to South America, because the event wasn't deemed important enough. Very different times indeed.

While India is much more of a long shot than the UAE to qualify - they are ranked No. 27 amongst AFC teams while the UAE is ranked 1- there are a ton of Indians in this country, and it's likely a significant chunk of that fans tonight will be for India. In fact, the reason the game is in Al Ain, in my non-expert opinion, is because they don't want to make it easy for all the Indian workers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi to get to the game (like when the U.S. soccer team schedules games against Latin countries in Salt Lake City).

I have little idea what to expect out of this trip, but I look forward to reporting back...the place, the people, the excitement of intense competition. Forget about dabbling in fast food from around the world, this was the kind of experience that got my blood flowing when I envisioned The Easy Outsider blog.

Tom Cruise Goes Down Da Burj; We Go Up It

The days of men moving to Abu Dhabi without the slightest idea of the difference between UAE and Qatar, dishdasha and sherwani, Purple Supremes and Veg McPuffs, will soon be past, my friends. The UAE is surging into your homes in news, sports and entertainment programming via newspapers, tv and radio.

Seriously, when Leslie told me she was on the verge of getting a job offer in "Abu Dhabi," the only data on the city I could retrieve from my brain was the Garfield/Normal reoccurring bit. I'm obviously more cognizant of western media attention on UAE now that I live here, but during my recent three-week U.S. sojourn, I felt like coverage of the UAE was inescapable.

The single-most interesting example is the Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol trailer release, featuring Tom Cruise back as Ethan Hunt and moving with a purpose in and around Dubai. The trailer highlight is Cruise repelling down the Burj Khalifa (starting at the 1:51 mark), the world's tallest building (for now).

The scenes on Da Burj (George Wendt voice) compelled by attention far more than the non-memorable plot and character set-up that precedes it. It's a nice stylized look at the structure, with more shininess and air clarity than I believe you'll ever see in person. And I have no taken in Da Burg from most angles.

Approaching Dubai on the road from Abu Dhabi (approximately 12o kilometers between), the city starts coming at you in waves of skycrapers out of the open desert - waves because there are 3-4 clumps of skyscrapers with less-developed areas for a few miles in between. The effect is that you have no real scale for the skyline as you approach it - with almost everything being massive or at sand level. So nothing tall looks as tall as it actually is, especially Da Burj. From a couple of miles out, you could probably convince yourself that it's a 70-story building surrounded by 30-story buildings.

Then as you get closer you realize the buildings around it are all probably around the size of the Empire State Building, and they only go about halfway up Da Burj. And when you stand next to the Burj and look up it, with the four-level Mall of Dubai connected to it on the side, you fully believe your by the world's tallest building.

From the Mall of Dubai outdoor area:


From 124 floors up Da Burj (featuring my thumb):



We've been around Da Burj numerous times during our must-visit stops at Potbelly and Taco Bell in the Dubai Mall, but this past weekend with friends in town, we splurged and paid to go as far up it as they'd take us. Unfortunately that's only to the 124th floor - no where close to the needle-like top - and the experience of going 55% of the way up the world's tallest building does not seem worth $30. For viewers of the above picture trying to grasp the entire scope of Da Burj, here is what you should deduce - those are very tall buildings in the background, very far below the outdoor observation deck where we stood, and that thumb is still a long way from the top.

To compare:

The whole Burj is 2,717 feet high.
The thumb picture is from 1,483 feet high.
The Empire State Building is 1,25o feet high.

The whole Burj is 160 stories.
The thumb picture is from the 124th story.
The Empire State Building has 102 stories.

You can get more background on Burj Khalifa on its Wikipedia page, including all of its records and the costs of such an undertaking. The point here is that its a pretty amazing structure, but the tourist visit to the 124th trip is a jip. Hopefully Tom Cruise's endeavors will take us closer to the top.

As for the movie, the filming in Dubai stirred up a lot of excitement round these parts. The trailer was posted on all my favorite English-speaking UAE sites, including The National, Gulf News and Emirates247.

I believe the most notable UAE portrayal in Hollywood to date was the less-than-favorable look at Abu Dhabi as the setting of Sex And The City 2 (although it was actually filmed in Morocco). The film was viewed by many critics as a lampoon of the UAE. (I need to watch SATC2 and provide commentary as a separate blog entry at some point, but of course the movie is banned here, so I'll have to figure out a cheap way to watch it).

I bet a lot of the natives here view Mission: Impossilbe - Ghost Protocol as a chance to overtake SATC2 as the UAE's most noteworthy splash in western entertainment. The UAE wants to be seen as a spectacular country, and getting Da Burj front and center in a worldwide blockbuster action adventure would make up for being mocked by the world's foremost chick flick franchise.

(A commemoration to the filming of Ghost Protocol on the ground floor of Da Burj, featuring a director's chair made for Sheikh Mahammed bin Rashad al Maktoum, the prime minister and vice president of UAE)


Personally, I'm interested in the movie to see how Dubai and Da Burj are portrayed visually and culturally, and because Brad Bird of Ratatouille/Pixar is directing. If he can make me care about a cooking cartoon rat, he can definitely get me re-engaged in the MI franchise.

Taking Stock of my American-Sports Ethnocentrism

The U.S. is influential here, but it's not the center of the Earth. It's probably most-closely analogous to a central generator in regards to the entertainment industry, where American pop and Hollywood blockbusters are generally regarded as “the biggest deal” amongst music and movies, respectively, in the UAE. Politically and financially, the U.S. is seen as important, but not necessarily driving the world.

That assessment might not be the least bit shocking to people back in the U.S. Why would anyone think that a small country in a different hemisphere would view U.S. culture with unparalleled significance? Well I did before I moved here – that's just always been my take on the world. And that perception hasn't necessarily changed.

At the same time, I came to this country with self-aware ownership of this belief, and highly sensitive to that when it's expressed, it will probably offend or disgust everyone else. And I've been keeping my eyes and ears peeled for signs of repulsion towards American ethnocentrism.

Like when my buddy the Indian employee at Starbucks asked where I was from, and I mindlessly told him “Baltimore,” which assumes 15-to-40-deep knowledge of American cities – a lot deeper than I could go in India.

Or when I sat at a bar with friends trumpeting the latest seasons of Community and Parks and Recreation (which Leslie and I joyously watched on Hulu) with the faint suggestion that other customers might want to eavesdrop, so that they could mentally note the programs and check them out later.

And when I read the review of Snoop Dogg's May concert in Abu Dhabi, I was expecting a more critical take on his brazen, “I will do whatever I want, including rap about getting laid while wearing traditional Emirati clothes” attitude.

Subtly or overtly, toward me or toward others, I haven't yet perceived much irritation about “the ugly American(s).”

The exception is in the sports sphere. Not only can I find no topic where the American world is more Pluto-like to the collective conscious of the UAE than sports, everyone seems to be touchy about the American viewpoint. We are seen as glib. Two recent articles I stumbled upon really got me thinking about this.

The first was a U.S. Open column in The National by Chuck Culpepper, who I believe is the same American who wrote this book. Now a columnist in the UAE, Chuck feels that it no longer makes sense to have three of the four golf majors within the U.S., and that there should be another to accompany the British Open. I believe there's an undercurrent in this article – the idea that Americans will fuss about the idea of relinquishing our stranglehold on major golf.

“Tennis, for one, lucked into something superior,” Culpepper writes. “Its majors came along organically in a four-country sprinkling across the world. Maybe golf approaches a time when the United States could take the creation it borrowed and perfected and magnified, and share it further. Parents always did say it was good to share.”

The second piece that caught my attention was on the new ESPN sub-site Grantland, the baby of sports-/pop culture-everyman columnist Bill Simmons. (Here's my elevator take on Grantland so far: It's striving to be something fresh in the sports blog world – a familiar new media style in that it's uninhibited by old-school journalism's self-imposed boundaries, but Grantland emphasizes storytelling and compelling writing more than other blogs. It doesn't have the anti-establishment tone or the tabloid-style gotchas, and it runs on the 24-hour news cycle moreso than the 30-second one. Most importantly to me, it's about loving sports way more than it's about hating them. I think it fills a nice niche, and I'm enjoying it immensely).

Given my new-found sensitivity to ugly American syndrome, this Grantland article written by Michael Schur and Nate DiMeo made me cringe a little, “a pair of red-blooded Americans” doing a stream-of-conscious observation about their first experience viewing critic. Prior to writing it, they did not know any of the rules or customs of cricket, and the intended audience is Americans in the same boat. These two find the game to be plodding and anti-climatic, with most of the entertainment stemming from its campiness.

The writers are completely upfront that the piece will offend cricket aficionados, but I would probably go further than that and say that it would reinforce perceptions of the dopey, parochial American sports fan. I really wanted to hate this article, but I ended up enjoying all 12,000 words of it. I've never thought that cricket was a well-conceived game compared to my favorites, and nothing I read in that article (or have seen in cricket-crazy UAE) changed my mind.

As for golf, Culpepper is correct - I would be upset if a major moved out of the country, even the PGA Championship. Certainly I see the issue with having 75% of the biggest events in a world sport in one country, but I think the U.S. does an incredible job of putting on these events, and I'd be suspicious about the quality of a new major springing up in Australia, or somewhere else.

I don't love fitting their idea of the ugly American sports fan, but I think that's just the way it is. I don't think our sports universe is perfect (the NBA's 24-second shot clock disfigures basketball, the MLB season has always been absurdly long, etc.). I also want to continue to give “non-American” sports a chance. Like, I'm starting to find rugby more compelling than I've ever given it credit.

But I do think the U.S. does sports the best in the world, by far, and I think I can make good arguments in support of this. The difficult question is which road I take when I get into sports conversations in the UAE...Which shows less character – perpetuating negative perceptions about American sports fans, like Schur and DiMeo probably did, or withholding sincere thoughts to avoid disharmony (not keepin' it real)?