As Time Goes Dubai
I am currently blogging to you from a hotel room in the Middle East, listening to all the songs on my iPod that begin with "H," and enjoying a
tarte tatin I just transported from Paris. This is the glamorous half of my winter vacation - the second half will be spent sleeping on an air mattress in an Ohio basement with my boyfriend and his two brothers. But for now I'm in a city called Dubai, which is located in the United Arab Emirates, next to Saudi Arabia and just across the Gulf from Iran. It is also the current residence of my grandmother, and my parents and I have traveled here for some much-needed grandma face time. As to why my grandmother is in the Middle East, I don't think I can really explain the whole story of my crazy family without going all the way back to the Russian Revolution, and part of that explanation could lead to the indictment of certain family members, so I'll leave that one for my memoir.
Right now I'm sitting in a Marriott in the middle of the desert, looking out upon a completely manmade lake and an Arabian-style village. Clouds of apple-scented tobacco are wafting up to my balcony, making their way up from the hookahs of robed men on the hotel patio. Dubai is a fascinating city - it's Las Vegas meets the Middle East. The economic growth here is so rapid that 25 percent of all the cranes in the world are in use here. My uncle was driving us along Sheikh Zayed Road yesterday and got lost because "those buildings weren't there three months ago." I've seen the world's soon-to-be tallest building, an indoor ski slope, robot camel jockeys, the world's only seven-star hotel, and the most unusual sight of all: what has to be the only dry Irish bar in the universe.
From the heat of the Middle Eastern desert, I shall somehow transition to the chill of the Alaskan wilderness. It feels like so long since we've had a new episode, I can't remember what's happened, so I'll be just as surprised as all of you will be tonight. I guess my family doesn't watch much TV, because the whole concept of reruns was somewhat unfamiliar to them. I got a call from my parents saying, "There's been a mistake in Chicago! There's an old episode on this week!" They're very happy that we have a brand-new episode of
Men in Trees this week, "The Darkest Day." Our writer for this one is fellow redhead Cara DiPaolo, author of everyone's favorite episode, "Talk for Tat," or as we like to call it, the sexisode. Unfortunately for Annie, she and Patrick (
Derek Richardson) are still broken up, so she won't be getting any this week, but this week has one of the funniest love scenes I've watched in a long time. I can't say which characters are involved, but I think I can safely say that you won't see it coming, and that you will laugh your ass off.
During this episode I learned about the magic of Elmo snow. Up here in Vancouver, we don't have the advantage of a steady Alaskan snowfall. Even when it does blizzard here, for some reason we don't shoot outside - you learn after working on TV for a while that things just aren't supposed to make sense most of the time. There's a scene this week, a scene that I should warn you is quite sad, in which Annie brings some of Patrick's things to Chief Celia's house. Most of our locations on
Men in Trees, like the Elmo Inn and the Chieftan, are real places that we have built replicas of on a soundstage, but Chief Celia's home is a real house in North Vancouver where we sometimes film. It was easy to pick out that day because it was the only house on the block enrobed in a perfect blanket of the whitest snow. I'll never tire of the magic of TV. That day I met some of our wacky special-effects guys at the craft-service tent (everything happens over the snack table in this business), and they told me that our snow comes from a Vancouver fish-packing company. They haul in a big truck of what is, essentially, tiny pieces of chipped ice, and just start spraying it all over. I guess the same substance that keeps our salmon fresh also makes for highly effective television trickery.
The weather theme continued in this episode as we experienced the full potential of all the rain Vancouver has to offer. As an honorary Canadian, I will say that we really got hosed. The scene where Lynn (
Justine Bateman) is photographing Marin (
Anne Heche) in the beautiful Alaskan wilderness? Pouring! But that storm was nothing compared to the deluge we received while shooting our big exterior scenes at the New Moon Festival. Elmo's annual festival takes place on the town dock, and the water level was so high that if too many people stood at one end of the dock, it started flooding. I think I spent the entire evening either standing out in the pouring rain or standing in a tent under a blow-dryer. (Unlike Anne Heche, I do not possess magical hair that looks good under any circumstance.) The weather did lead to a payoff at the end, though: When Patrick sets his model boat on fire, they really had to douse it with lighter fluid to keep it lit, so we ended the evening my favorite way: a nice big ball o' fire.
I hope you enjoy the festivities this week. In the meantime, I think I've hit on something here in the desert with the songs beginning with "H." You'd be surprised how almost every song in my iPod that begins with this letter rocks! In fact, I must say goodbye because Outkast's "Hey Ya" just came on, and I find it impossible not to get up and dance when it comes on.
See you on the TV!
ABC's Men in Trees
airs Thursdays at 10 pm/ET.
