IVIV: More Golden Fang

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I was traveling to Nairobi a few years ago with my sister-in-law and we had an 8 hour stopover in Dubai, so we decided to have dinner at the famed hotel.  We entered the lobby and found ourselves in the midst of a photo shoot -- some sort of gay extravaganza involving a hundred or so young, good-looking men in tuxedos.  The seafood restaurant was accessed via a faux "submarine" ride. It seemed to be patronized exclusively by wealthy European and Arabic businessmen, served by Filipina waitresses.  After dinner, we took a strobe-lit elevator up to the roof-level lounge, which was similarly populated by European and Middle Eastern businessmen, this time in the company of various Asian hookers.  Outside of this hotel/Fang outpost was a virtual police state as far as "guest" workers were concerned -- the local paper had blacklists of Nepalese and Filipino workers who had "left" [escaped] their employment, the local women were shrouded in veils, and every corporation (and I really mean every) corporation in the world had a tax-free corporate skyscraper/HQ.

Does Dubai translate as Fang?  Any grievance al-Qaeda might have against the West seems to be extravagantly present there, so you have to wonder if al-Qaeda (whatever that might be) is just as cozy with the Fang as the US, Haliburton, et alia are.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
>Sent: Dec 2, 2009 12:50 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: IVIV: More Golden Fang
>
>On Dec 2, 2009, at 9:22 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>
>> On Dec 2, 2009, at 9:08 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>
>>>> It's the Golden Fang, again—still.
>>>>
>>> Almost literally. Kharzi's brother, Head of the Opium trade.......
>
>Saw this hotel while watching the Daily Show of 12/1/09:
>
>http://tinyurl.com/yfde3gu
>
>	"This extraordinary investment in state-of-the-art construction
>	technology stretches the limits of the ambitious urban
>	imagination in an exercise that is largely due to the power of
>	excessive wealth."
>
>	The Burj Al Arab (Arabic: "Tower of the Arabs", also
>	known as "Arab Sail") is a luxury hotel located in Dubai, United
>	Arab Emirates. At 321 m (1,050 ft), it is the second tallest
>	building in the world used exclusively as a hotel. The Burj Al
>	Arab stands on an artificial island 280 m (920 ft) out from
>	Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private
>	curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, designed to symbolize
>	Dubai's urban transformation and to mimic the sail of a boat.
>
>	Sam Wollaston writing in The Guardian described the hotel as
>	"...fabulous, hideous, and the very pinnacle of tackiness - like
>	Vegas after a serious, no-expense-spared, sheik-over".
>	
>	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Al_Arab
>
>While it looks like a sail, it also looks like a fang. The Burj Al  
>Arab was completed in 2000.