Tag: Audio Video

The Quiet Traveler

flowers window Sophia Dembling

Sophia Dembling doesn't travel to meet people. She finds other rewards.

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Beauty Amid Ugliness

What the simple act of taking lots of photos in Sao Paulo revealed to Rob Verger

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Cosette and Me: A Dog and Traveler Love Story

dog travel Photo by Allison Otto

Allison Otto longed for the perfect travel companion. She just never thought hers would be so hairy.

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Cartography: A ‘Nether Region Between Science and Art’

More to love from the world of strange maps: Slate has a slideshow and essay about “cartographic curiosities,” courtesy of author Frank Jacobs, whose book of strange maps we blogged awhile back.


Gangs and the New Yorker in Rio’s Favelas

Jon Lee Anderson’s story Gangland from the latest issue of the New Yorker isn’t online, but the magazine did post a stunning audio slideshow with photos by Joao Pina.

We posted Rob Verger’s slideshow about tourism in Rio’s favelas last June.


The Colony of LAX Parking Lot B

Great story in the Los Angeles Times about a community of pilots and other airline workers that lives in trailers and motor homes in a parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport. Dan Weikel writes:

For several years, clusters of RVs were scattered around the airport’s parking lots until LAX officials decided to consolidate them in Lot B. Now operating as an organized camp overseen by the airport, it has an unofficial mayor, a code of conduct and residency requirements, including background checks, regular vehicle inspections and proof of employment at an air carrier.

The constant noise of the airplanes flying overhead would drive me nuts, but the residents of the colony don’t seem to mind. Or maybe they just have good white noise machines, like one of the three residents profiled in the terrific accompanying audio slideshow.


James Franco Reads Jack Kerouac

He bites off an excerpt from “On the Road,” which will appear in Lapham’s Quarterly’s summer issue simply titled, “Travel.” It’s a solid reading, but, alas, as you can hear below, he’s no Jack.

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Goodbye to my Mickey Mouse, Wayne Allwine

Goodbye to my Mickey Mouse, Wayne Allwine Photo by dawnzy58 via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by dawnzy58 via Flickr (Creative Commons)

For so many, the first true travel excitement comes compliments of Mickey Mouse and co.

A few years ago, I talked to my nieces on the phone just before their first trip to Disney World. The little one, just shy of four, didn’t usually have much patience for phone conversations. That day, she just kept talking and talking, offering excited (and rather detailed) explanations of all the things she wanted to see. Both girls were delighted when I told them about my own visits to Disney World as a kid. We all got kind of giddy thinking that, just maybe, there was some slight chance they would end up riding in the same It’s a Small World boat I sat in 30+ years ago.

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Hunter S. Thompson’s Puerto Rico

Hunter S. Thompson’s Puerto Rico Photo by Oquendo via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by Oquendo via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Johnny Depp’s been on the Puerto Rico set of “The Rum Diary” for about a month now, and interest is building in the film, an adaptation of an early Hunter S. Thompson novel. The story follows journalist Paul Kemp (played by Depp) as he flees New York City for a small newspaper on the island, where hard drinking and treacherous expat intrigues ensue.

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Ka’iulani:  the Activist Princess

Photo by clliff1066 via Flickr (Creative Commons).

The Hawaiian Hall at the Bishop Museum is still closed for renovations (we got a sneak peak on our visit—it’s going to be stunning when it opens in August) so there is only a limited amount of Hawaiian artifacts currently on view. The Kāhili Room at the museum is open, though—it’s in a different building—and it displays portraits of the Hawaiian monarchy and their feathered standards. These torch-like staffs were carried in front of royalty to visually announce their arrival.

Two of the portraits really stuck with me: the photo of Princess Ruth, a frowning, broad woman contained in severe Victorian dress, and the portrait of Princess Ka’iulani, also in Victorian attire but looking less awkward. Princess Ka’iulani cemented her place in the hearts of Native Hawaiians by traveling to the mainland to plead with Congress and two US Presidents for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy.

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Flyover America: 10 (More) Songs for an American Road Trip

Flyover America: 10 (More) Songs for an American Road Trip Photo by Anonymous Account via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Photo by Anonymous Account via Flickr (Creative Commons)

While the invention of iTunes has made things far easier than the days when we had to go through stack and stacks of cassettes to create the perfect on-the-road mix tapes, there’s still an art to creating the perfect road-trip playlist.

It takes time, thought, a sense of humor, and a wide-ranging music collection in whatever digital format you prefer. It also needs a theme. It can be about a mood, a time of day, your love for hot dogs, or whatever. You don’t even have to announce the theme. You don’t have to name the playlist “hot dog music” but, to make it all hang together, the theme must at least be in your mind during the song selection process.

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World Hum’s Eighth Anniversary

Michael Yessis and Jim Benning on eight years of publishing travel stories online.

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What Can You Still See in Paris on $5 a Day?

What Can You Still See in Paris on $5 a Day? iStockPhoto

Doug Mack explores the City of Light with a classic 1960s Frommer's guidebook -- and a little willful ignorance

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Postcards From the Real World

I like buying postcards when I travel, partly because I’m cheap, but also because they’re fun to collect and to mail to friends anytime.

But my favorite postcards, the ones I cherish and don’t send to anyone, don’t have postcard-perfect images. Watch my slideshow and see what I mean.

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Matt Harding’s 2008 Dancing Video

The video that made Matt Harding a shoe-in for World Hum's 2008 Traveler of the Year

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Video: ‘Airplane!’ Cast Reunited

Well, five of the actors. Leslie Nielsen, Robert Hays, Peter Graves, Jill Whelan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke on the Today Show about being part of the travel-comedy classic. They’ve got some great stories. Turns out, pilots have actually invited Kareem into the cockpit for takeoff. They wanted to fly with Murdock. Who can blame them? Video below.

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Fake Sarah Palin: I Was an Extra in ‘Into the Wild’

She says she played a grizzly bear in Sean Penn’s movie. Her riff about it begins a minute into the video below.

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The Long Descent: The Musical Parody

Indeed, the tales of airline woe and aggravation have reached the point where they're the subject of musical comedy.

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Dead Sea Scrolls Go Digital

Photo of Dead Sea caves by LollyKnit via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A team of expert preservationists is hard at work in Jerusalem this week, aiming to make the Dead Sea Scrolls—all 15,000 fragments of them—available online as digital images. “The project began as a conservation necessity,” one interviewee told the New York Times. “We wanted to monitor the deterioration of the scrolls and realized we needed to take precise photographs to watch the process ... We realized then that we could make the entire set of pictures available online to everyone, meaning that anyone will be able to see the scrolls in the kind of detail that no one has until now.”

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Images From the End of the (New York City Subway) Lines

The New York Times just posted an interactive and incredibly absorbing photo and video chronicle of the “mystery, lonesomeness and beauty” to be found at the end of New York City subway lines. Andy Newman’s accompanying essay is a great read, too.