This site details the creation of the Tim Burton-era Batmobile - originally designed by legendary Hollywood production designer Anton Hurst - by some uber-geeks in the States. The Batmobile replicas that star in my book look pretty similar, except for the fact that they’re rocket powered. Yup - rocket powered. No word on the city/highway gas mileage these bad boys get.

Had a great online chat with the very insightful Sarah Liss of CBC Arts Online yesterday. We used this fancy new technology that acts as a blog/file-share/civilization game hybrid. It has all the spontaneity of a live interview, with some other bells and whistles. Nice stuff, available here.

In terms of Celebrity Death Watch rankings, Bea Arthur – age 86 – had to be up there with the variegated likes of Kirk Douglas, Cloris Leachman and Lindsay Lohan. That said, her passing did sting a little. I’ve been talking a lot about The Golden Girls lately, mostly because the show forms an integral part of one of the chapters in The Sheikh’s Batmobile: A young Emirati animator named Mohammed Harib used the show as the inspiration for his sitcom Freej, which debuted on Dubai TV in 2006, destroying the Ramadan sweeps competition en route to becoming a local staple.

Growing up in Dubai, Harib loved The Golden Girls as much as I loved the show growing up in South Africa. This speaks, I suppose, to the unfathomable power of perfectly made pop culture. To the legions of TGG doubters out there, may I suggest some You Tubeage? Note the snappy writing, the fiercely tight characterization, the courage it took to develop a sitcom about a cohort usually swept under the global societal throw rug. Also, it’s some funny shit.

Bea and friends reminded Harib of his own womenfolk, fussing around his Dubai compound when he was young enough to flit through their abeyas and listen to their caustic badinage. He decided to channel the affection he felt for them through the vector of American pop, and came up with a show that has, to no small degree, revolutionized television in the Middle East. That’s a pretty impressive legacy. Fifty per cent of The Golden Girls cast ain’t so golden any more – Estelle Getty also passed away recently. But they live on, encoded into a TV show produced and broadcast a world away. As Freej’s ersatz Dorothy, Um Khammas, would say: Aaaeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! (And send, if you must, your own “Thank you for being a friend” CNN-style death montage clip here. It’s the only place online sappy enough to contain them.)