Abu Dhabi to host camel beauty contest

by Anna Brones on

As part of the Mazayin Festival, which starts on Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates will welcome over 10,000 camels to an international beauty pageant. Before the oil industry, the Bedou tribes prized the camel, and the animal was a main measurement of wealth. This could still be said for today as the pageant is one of the richest events of its kinds; over $9 million and 100 cars are ready to be given away to the best and most beautiful of camels.

Do you own a camel that can bat its eyes and impress the crowds? Anyone can enter their camel as long as they can provide proof of ownership and that the animal is free of diseases. The first camel beauty pageant in the United Arab Emirates too place six years ago. I wonder how young the camels start on their beauty pageant careers? And more importantly, is there a talent section?

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi on life as an expat

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Like so many expats, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi moved abroad right out of college. But since that time, he’s had about the most atypical expat experience you can imagine.

He played baseball in Uzbekistan for their national team, and was kicked out of the country by the KGB for criticizing the government in an AP piece he wrote. He moved to Mongolia and become the leading rebounder in the Mongolian Basketball League, where he was nicknamed the “Mongolian Rodman.” He then lived in Russia for ten years, where he helped found the deviously entertaining expat rag, the eXile, a bi-weekly which specializes in spewing vitriol at the deserving, and– take note– it is not for the faint of heart.

Personally, I’ve read almost everything he’s written for the last ten years, and what I love as much as anything are his descriptions of his life abroad. Realistic verging on depressing, Taibbi discusses the highs– in every sense of the word– as well as the lows, of life as an expatriate:

“The expatriate mentality is a tough thing to explain easily. Any affluent or even middle-class American who renounces the good life of sushi delivery and 50-channel cable television to relocate permanently to some third-world hole usually has to be motivated by a highly destructive personality defect. Either that, or something about home creates psychological demons that in turn create the urge for radical escape.

“I’d moved overseas straight out of college and been a classic expatriate ever since. I had all the symptoms: periodic unsuccessful attempts to repatriate, a tendency to try to make grandiose foreign adventures compensate for a total inability to accumulate money; bad teeth; unhealthy personal relationships, etc. I’d been aware for years that my passion for uprooting and completely changing my lifestyle and even my career was like a drug addiction– not only did I get off on it, but I needed to do it fairly regularly just to keep from getting the shakes.”

-from his 2000 book The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia.

After moving back to the US, Taibbi covered the 2004 presidential election, but, as with everything, he did it his way. He followed around John Kerry while wearing a gorilla suit, interviewed the former US drug czar while tripping on acid, and wrote a fantastic book about the whole sordid, depressing affair.

For more, watch Matt on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Here‘s an archive of some of his columns.

Photo of the Day (4-02-08)

by Jamie Rhein on

A spring flower and a tombstone–two images of life’s circle. The face of the soldier makes me wonder what he is thinking? I’m reminded of Inman, the Confederate soldier in the novel, Cold Mountain, whose Civil War experience was mostly spent finding his way back home. There are subtle aspects of this shot by mce323 that are quite lovely. Notice the soft moss on the ledge and the patina of the bronze. According to the tags, this fellow is at Cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris.

Send your lovely shots our way at Gadling’s Flickr Photo Pool.

Race and the ties that bind at Monticello

by Jamie Rhein on

There is an article in today’s New York Times about Monticello. Not so much about Monticello, but about how the decedents of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, and Sally Hemings, Jefferson’s slave who he supposedly had children with, have come to see the house as a place that binds them together. Jefferson, however, is buried in the graveyard, but Hemings is not. No one knows where Hemings is buried. Still, Jefferson’s grave holds importance, and like many places with historic value, people aren’t allowed to go near it. It has something to do with messing up the grass.

Monticello, according to the essay, is an indication of the complexity of United States history and the relationship between the people whose lives have been affected. It has become a place where healing can take place. One of the people mentioned in the article is from Gahanna, Ohio, not far from Columbus. She is a descendant of Hemings, and thus, possibly of Jefferson. For her, Monticello is a place that fosters the idea that folks ought to learn to get along since they may be related to each other after all.

The essay brought to mind the idea that places have meaning when the people who go there understand its importance. Otherwise, one might be walking through just another fancy house with gleaming wood furniture and fine china.

Minor league baseball teams and their mascots aim to please

by Jamie Rhein on

As Aaron wrote in a post today, baseball season has officially started. I was reminded of this also while listening to an NPR story on minor league teams and how they got their their names and mascots. The Albuquerque Isotopes was one of the teams featured. The Simpson’s cartoon show is responsible for the Isotopes name after Homer said something about the baseball team being called the Isotopes during an episode. Fans named it.

I went to an Isotopes game when I visited friends a few years back. Even though the stadium has been gussied up since I lived in Albuquerque and favored the Dukes, there’s still that minor league team feel. I am a minor league fan, particularly because I go to games to watch crowds. There’s much more interaction between the game and the crowd in minor league teams. One gets the feeling that the players and the fans belong together. Plus, there are the cheap hot dog nights, the free bobble head nights and the free tickets that get passed out through local parks and recreation centers for kids. My son is always getting tickets to the Columbus Clippers from somewhere. Minor league teams seem to want to build a relationship with fans.

To me, major league teams aren’t about building relationships with a city and its people. Their games are just not as much fun. They aren’t a yawn, but crowd pleasing is more difficult when some fans are several benches up from the action. That’s my impression anyway. I do admit, I love Jacobs Field where the Cleveland Indians play, even though, the ball park is not called that anymore. There is some other corporate sponsor name that I can’t recall. The view of Cleveland is still terrific from the top bleachers. I like how you can see the seagulls from there.