Dubai Part 2

So I recently went back to Dubai for a job. OK it was strange but then how it could be anything but. Folks it ain't supposed to be there. It's a modern end game construct built by Pakistani slaves, funded by trafficking in ever increasingly rare SUV and jumbo jet juice and ignored and exploited by a growing list of multinational corporations and celebs. Tiger Woods and Gordon Ramsey are there and Rod Stewart owns the Scottish replica of an earth shaped man made archipelago called not surprisingly called The World. There is the world's largest indoor ski area and the world's tallest building. If you could build your dream world from scratch would it resemble Dubai? Hmmmm... not in a million years...

After the shoot I spent a day taking pictures of buildings and Pakistani and Indian workers and as soon as I get them scanned... yep I be shooting film... I will let you know. Mas tarde.

Out-there-a-stan

The Beirut story is long and complicated. Yes there were bombs going off... in the suburbs. Yes I was pretty much required to go back to my hotel every night and stay there and watch the Discovery channel and eat Fatoush. Yes the lovely folks at the production company did have an office pool regarding which neighborhood would be bombed next. Yes Moneer the Egyptian creative director who is based in Dubai with the agency refused to shoot in Beirut. At one point the shoot was cancelled, then was to be moved to Kuala Lampur (?!) then Moneer was instructed to not be such a wussy by his boss, strap himself into his flack jacket and get his hiney over to Lebanon. Yes I saw Dubai and was completely freaked out. Beirut is on the radar but Dubai... what hath Allah wrought?

The big questions is why? Why did I do it? Why is there Dubai? Why are people seemingly so intent on screwing up things?

Answers:

1. Well it just happened. I got these really strange boards via email and the next thing you know I was booked. And I needed the job. And I think I have this strange desire to see odd places in the world and in general I like people and am fascinated by other cultures. It is probably related to eating camel and living with the Saharawi.

2. You got me. But I think it has something to do with pure unfettered evil. Greed. Exploitation. Insanity. All the big corporations are there. There is the world's biggest indoor ski area. The biggest market in the world for private submarines. It is usually 50 degrees. The sun is eternally behind this wall of white that is in fact the sea boiling away. Inside buildings, cars... it's proudly 15 degrees. The brown skinned people who are building Dubai are for the most part slaves. They hold their passports. They do not have the benefit of air conditioned Mercedes SUVs. Its like working on Mercury. Why? Tax free zones? No workers rights? Big bucks? Swank restaurants? Starbucks? Ample cheap big screens?

3. In general I don't see this in kids... well most kids... It seems to be a something we think is required of as adults. Table alignment and fork placement. Believing in a concrete definition of God. Killing people because they think that eating with your left hand is the sign of the devil or that the holy ghost did or did not impregnate the mother of God's son... which is a conceptual problem because I count 3 separate deities and what is supposed to set the world's largest religion apart from tree fornicating pagans is that it's monotheistic.

Being waste deep in advertising I have come to see that most of these big international mega-corporations do not care squat about anything other than the quarterly returns. It's not like everybody who works for them are blood thirsty capitalist with horns and tails. Its just people with families and responsibilities who need a job and have been conned into thinking that this is the right path. Heck I have derived my income for longer than I care to admit on these various entities. (See the answer to question one for a clearer description.)

We have got to carve out a different path for our kids. My 7 year old daughter's school has offered her Chinese lessons. She is taking them because she wants to learn another language but the school is not offering them so she can hang out with Chinese folks and better understand dim sum, the school is offering them because "its' the future". Well it's a future that I don't want to go to. Sweat shops cranking out more and more crap for Wall Mart. Phony pharmaceuticals that kill people. Zilch environmental concerns. Human rights? What's that compared to a DVD player for 20 bucks? Why are we turning a blind eye to this stuff. Why is the world not looking at Dubai and cringing?

It's taken a while for the Beirut job to sink in. While I was there I never had one moment that I felt unsafe. I had grave doubts about doing a spot for a powdered soft drink for the Saudi's because the agency and client think it would be just the thing to compliment the pre and post daylight gorging that goes on during Ramadan there. But I felt like I was on adventure. I felt lucky to be seeing a place like Beirut up close and personal. I loved the crew and still miss them. The Lebanese are absolutely amazing and lovely people. But now a couple of month's later I really don't know what the hell I was doing. It was dangerous. There were really bombs. The army was on seemingly every street corner. I got frisked on the hood of car by a young soldier with a machine gun.

What's odd though is that I'd go back to Beirut in a heartbeat. There is something about the place and the people. It's a dark and perhaps dangerous intoxication. Here are links to my flickr accounts and some pictures I shot on my cel phone or DV camera.
Beirut
Dubai

Tang in the desert part 2

Well Lebanon is in no way in the desert. It´s lush and truly beautiful which only makes the "situation" there even more ironic.

Since I have returned the "situation" has only gotten worse. I picked up the paper yesterday to see front page photos of UN "peacekeepers" all of them from my adopted country frantically dragging a wounded or dead comrade away from out of focus flaming rubble. Yeah "the situation" is mostly "in the south" but considering that the country is, accordng to the CIA fact book, 4/5th the size of Connecticut, that's sort of like saying that it´s over there just past Ikea or Walmart. And considering that a few bombs went off "in the suburbs" of Beirut while I was there I guess the notion of down there "in the south" had moved a pretty close to home.

Mas tarde...

This just in... Breakfast drink commercial director held hostage by HezBullah...

Folks. A strange turn of events. I thought I was going to Lebanon, Oregon, not Lebanon... Lebanon. So I am in Beirut. Staying at a hotel, listening to somebody saw concrete in the next building which sounds exactly like somebody sawing concrete in the next building back home in Barcelona. The big news is that first day here featured according to CNN, "The Worst day of urban warfare in the last 30 years." remember... Beirut... the 70s... Civil War? Ouch.

Why am I in Beirut? Well I met a girl... no seriously... I met a boy. A boy named Gary. Gary reps me for places other than Germany and Spain and Belgium. Belgium... No that's not right, Belgium is available again. Gary is a great guy. Gary is a Scot. Which usually, in my book, automatically means great guy.

So I get on of Gary's calls. let me be clear about this, in a business seemingly teaming with scoundrels, nare-do-wells, charlatans and posers Gary is a true gentleman. OK he's not one of those prissy kind of gentlemen with lacquered nails and an extended pinky finger he's a Scottish gentleman. Which means that he waxes poetic, tells great stories, turns a phrase with exquisite delicacy is straight as a ruler and I suspect, drinks.

So he says he has some boards. Great! I say as slunk around trying to be a proper father, husband, adult white male and not freak out as the old financial gas tank hovers just slightly above reserve. May I send you an animatic? Sure I say. An animatic is this thing that agencies use to work out exactly how they will steal an idea they got from a Argentinean spot from 1982. But seriously an animatic is sort of an crudely animated series of drawings that the agency uses to convince the "Client" the guys who make the stuff and want to sell the stuff that their idea is sound and has a high enough percentage of frames in it that include the label of the stuff (roughly 97.672). Gary has always had huge problems with the Internet. I have no idea why but things like the provider's server suddenly goes down for 3 weeks because somebody plugged in the salad spinner and the hairdryer at the same time or some balkan trojan horse viral CPU suckering worm has run rampant through deepest reaches of their backplane, bootstrap, USB, ISO 12-0067(a) and caused a CRT, CPR, EEG heap panic. All I know is that it takes awhile to get things and that Gary has on occasion sent me screen shots proving that he indeed did send me a note telling me that the Latvian spot for a combination douche and hair removing product has gone to a Chilean Porn director solely because he said he would fly economy and promised not raid the mini-bar.

So days pass, Gary's ISP gets another hamster for the server and I get this really weird little movie. It has guys wearing funny clothes and speaking this strange language. I don't know what the hell it is. So it turns out it's a spot from an production company from Lebanon and their client and agency in Dubai and there stuff to sell... "Tang." To be continued...