Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Extra feathers part (or pas de) deux

As some of you know, when the Sand Warlock is not piloting the broomstick or magic carpet or selling sand to the Arabs, he sells extremely posh wine. My post from yesterday reminded him of an amusing tale relating to some wine that arrived in his store recently which shows that it is not just Islamic states that worry about public morals being corrupted by the flashing of a bit of flesh.

Quite a few of us here in the UAE roared with laughter when at cinema screenings, a statue's nude bottom was blurred out of Quentin Tarantino's characteristically violence and blood-splattered film Django Unchained, because it was considered too rude, when, meanwhile, viewers were treated to graphic scenes of a slave being savaged to death by dogs and another slave being beaten to death with a hammer for the amusement of Leonardo DiCaprio's character Calvin Candie. Horrific violence is fine, a nude porcelain bottom is not, it would appear.

It's not just in the Gulf where an artistically rendered nude is a problem, it seems. Mouton Rothschild has a label each year designed by an artist, with Bacon and Picasso being among the famous names who have had their work immortalised on a bottle. In 1993, an artist called Balthus stepped up to the mark and produced a charcoal reclining nude. It is artistic, it's a fairly vague drawing of a nude, it's on a bottle of wine which is, let's face it, only meant to be drunk by adults, so few are going to see it. Who could possibly have a problem with it? Step forward USA, where it was considered an "inappopriate" way to market alcohol. Could Mouton possibly come up with another label because it's just too naughty? The answer is, yes, they could, and here it is:

 
Those cheese-eating surrender monkeys seem to have done a rather comprehensive (**insert rude french word here***) vous to the Americans by simply producing a blank label for the Yanks, lest they be corrupted by the charcoal drawing on an exclusive bottle of wine. FYI, both versions of the bottle are available in the store. Presumably staff have to ask for passports and only sell the one featuring the reclining nude to non-Americans.

The story is disputed here, but whoever it was that originally made the fuss about the nudey naked lady, it just shows that certain people have a lot more in common than they may think.

I've chosen not to include the nudey naked lady picture, because, and I may be going slightly native here, I could get some bother for publishing a provocative picture on a blog that is partially intended for a UAE audience. If you want to see her, you will just have to visit the shop, won't you?  

Monday, April 29, 2013

Swan Lake with extra feathers

I realise that Dubai is in the news for somewhat more serious reasons today but I wanted to share this picture that I made him indoors take out of the car window on the way to work last week:


There's a similar poster on Sheikh Zayed Road, advertising Swan Lake, the ballet that's inspired generations of small girls to don white tutus and torture their feet in the hope of one day dancing the lead role.
You'll notice that there's something rather different about the picture above and the picture on my link. That's right, they've photoshopped t-shirts on to the ballerinas on the large billboard along Al Khail Road, ditto the poster on Sheikh Z.

As a resident of Dubai, you get used to this sort of thing - seeing a friend who was wearing a mildly revealing dress with a polo neck photoshopped on to them when their picture appears in one of the social pages of a local magazine, seeing written complaints in the newspapers from people who think pictures of various Hollywood stars were too provocative, reports that bikinis may or may not have been banned on public beaches in the Northern Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah (an hour or so's drive from Dubai).

But, it's a signifier of why you have to get used to thinking carefully, particularly in my line of work, about what you're printing and publishing, because, while generally speaking, you can go about your business as normal, there's always a possibility that you could offend someone. It's tempting to laugh at the slightly dodgy photoshopping, but it's a reminder that in the UAE, one person's ballerina is another's immoral imagery.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

If you're fond of sand dunes...

If you're fond of sand dunes, as the song goes, you have come to the right place because sand is a thing we've got rather a lot of. That's why Beach Polo, a slightly smaller version of the game that's played on sand rather than grass, preferably by the sea, was invented in Dubai.

There has been a bit of a hiatus in recent years, as director Sam Katiela put it at the opening press conference, "a commercial break" because sponsors "hung up the phone" when you called them during the financial crisis that had a profound effect on Dubai. But the sport continued to grow while the polo fans of Dubai were on a break from it, and this year was the year when it returned to the Emirate, and was held at Mina A'Salam Hotel, right next to the Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach Hotel.

We had a bit more interest in polo than usual as him indoors' shop, Le Clos, sponsored a team in the two-day tournament and also had a promotional stand giving out free samples, which it's safe to say were pretty well-received by the spectators.

Here's a pic of the Le Clos team in action:


In the number three shirt on the left for Le Clos is Argentine professional Lucas Labat, on the right with his mallet down having just hit the ball is Dr Thomas Rinderknecht, and at the back in the number one shirt for Le Clos, Patron Piero Dillier who is also a big cheese in European polo, including in the San Moritz Polo World Cup on Snow.

Le Clos was placed four out of four teams, with victory going to title sponsors Julius Baer, but it was by no means a poor performance. Coming last is pretty standard for first time sponsors and they took an early lead in their subsidiary final game against Aston Martin, only to be beaten 6-5 in the final chukka. Le Clos were the only team who did not have their own ponies to ride, having to borrow them from rival team members, so they were on unfamiliar mounts. The previous day, they were beaten 7-5, again, a pretty decent score, by eventual winners Julius Baer.

Here's another pic of them in action:


And a shot of Lionel Ritchie (on big screen because I was on the wrong side of the pitch to see him) throwing the ball in for the third chukka of the final between Julius Baer and Maradiva, with the Burj Al Arab in the background.


And here's a shot of the final game with Nacho Gonzales, in the number three shirt for Julius Baer, who was named Most Valuable Player:


That's the Jumeirah Beach Hotel and the Wild Wadi water park in the background.

It was stinking hot, as it tends to be in Dubai towards the end of April, but a grand day out. It's interesting, for someone like me, for whom polo has accidentally become rather a large part of their life, to see it played three-a-side on sand instead of four-a-side on grass. And with a large, orange, lightweight ball that is more visible and skips more easily over sand, instead of a small white ball. Most people don't believe me when I tell them that polo is an evolving sport. It's played traditionally on grass and on horses (called ponies for reasons I still haven't established) but it's played on camels in Dubai, on elephants in Nepal and Thailand, and, I learned recently, on tuk-tuks in Sri Lanka, and, I shudder to learn, Segueways elsewhere. And of course there's on sand in 30 cities in the form of beach polo, and on snow in Switzerland and more recently, China.
Putting on a beach polo tournament is no mean feat. It's not simply a case of putting some jumpers down for goalposts on the beach. We have, I am told, the wrong kind of sand in Dubai, it is too slippery, making it dangerous to the horses and the players, so truckloads of sweet sand had to be brought in, layered, watered and carefully ploughed to make a suitable surface. There's a joke in there about selling sand to the Arabs, I'm sure.