Travel Blog
Falling in Love with America
by Sophia Dembling | 01.12.09 | 1:58 PM ET
Growing up in New York City, I was deeply indoctrinated with the view of the world that Saul Steinberg summed up in his famous 1976 New Yorker magazine cover. As far as I was concerned, if you headed west, there was 10th Ave. and there was New Jersey (which you avoided as much as possible) and then there was a whole bunch of nothing worth mentioning until you hit the Pacific Ocean.
When I was 19 years old, I tagged along with a friend on a cross-country drive to deliver a baby-blue Plymouth Duster to her brother in Los Angeles. On that trip, I saw my first cornfields. My first hay rolls. I saw Chicago. The Great Salt Lake. (Yuck.) Cows. The Rockies. For real? I thought this stuff was just rumor and legend. We drove from New York to San Francisco and then down the jagged coastline to Los Angeles, where I dipped my toes in the Pacific Ocean and fell madly in love with America.
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Yahoo! BuzzRambo Goes To Burma: Worst Movie of 2008?
by Eva Holland | 01.12.09 | 12:19 PM ET
You remember the latest Rambo flick, right? Sylvester Stallone’s gory expose on the plight of Burma/Myanmar’s ethnic minorities? (Don’t worry, I had forgotten, too.) When it came out last year, the critics were less than wowed. Now, the movie looks to be in the running for Hollywood’s greatest indignity: a Golden Raspberry award for the worst of the worst in filmmaking.
According to a little bird at the MTV Movies blog (the list hasn’t been formally announced yet), ‘Rambo’ has landed Razzie nominations for Worst Picture; Worst Director (Sylvester Stallone); Worst Actor (Sylvester Stallone); Worst Career Achievement (Sylvester Stallone); Worst Prequel, Sequel, Remake or Rip-Off, and Worst On-Screen Couple (Sylvester Stallone and His Ego).
Hey, at least the folks in Yangon liked it.
Are Travel Writers the Next Great Competitive Eaters?
by David Farley | 01.12.09 | 10:54 AM ET
Matt Gross. Photo by Jean Liu. I once wrote a story about taking a competitive eater out to three buffet lunches in as many days to see how much he could eat. At the Indian buffet, 400-pound Eric “Badlands” Booker (then the third-ranked competitive eater in the world) proved he was born to indulge. By the 12th trip up to the buffet (I’m not kidding), the restaurant manager pointed out the dessert options, a subtle suggestion that it was time to retire his fork for the day. “Just for that,” Badlands said to me, “I’m going up for more after I finish this plate!”
At the all-you-can-eat sushi the next day, he consumed so much food we had a crowd around our table watching as he put the plate to his mouth and scooped the fish with his chopsticks right down his throat. At the Brazilian steakhouse the final day, Badlands received handshakes form the waiters for his eating prowess.
But I didn’t really know gluttony until a recent outing with writer Matt Gross.
‘Slumdog Millionaire’: Hollywood, Meet India
by Eva Holland | 01.12.09 | 10:07 AM ET
Publicity still via IGN.com I remember reading, when the Bollywoodized Jane Austen adaptation Bride and Prejudice came out a few years ago, that this would be North America’s introduction to India’s powerful film industry. The film certainly brought mega star Aishwarya Rai on to our radar, but any broader, longer-lasting crossover potential seemed to fizzle. Sure, The Darjeeling Limited gave us a taste of the country, and The Namesake touched on the experiences of the Indian diaspora, but for the most part we remained unexposed to the subcontinent’s endless cinematic possibilities.
Last night, watching “Slumdog Millionaire” sweep all four of the categories in which it had landed nominees at the Golden Globes—Best Screenplay, Best Score, Best Director and Best Drama—I wondered if that might finally change.
Morning Links: Museum of Broken Relationships, GlobalPost and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.09 | 8:27 AM ET
- GlobalPost begins its “bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.”
- Two Japanese restaurants split the $100,000 bill on a bluefin tuna. Yumiko Ono says it tasted “smooth, succulent and a little on the light side.”
- Turns out cities impair our brains.
- More than 200 people are feared dead after a ferry sank off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
- During the last two years an estimated 1.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. airlines. Not one of them died as a result of a crash.
- The Los Angeles Times tried out Row44, “a soon-to-debut satellite Wi-Fi system” for airlines.
- Daisann McLaine tells why she always visits supermarkets when she travels.
- Kristen Wiig and Neil Patrick Harris played long-nailed air traffic controllers on Saturday Night Live.
- Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister, says “art is to arouse emotions.” A map of European cliches and stereotypes commissioned by the Czech Republic is succeeding on that count.
- The Las Vegas Mob museum is stirring up controversy in Washington, D.C.
- The Museum of Broken Relationships—“an exhibition of the relics of failed love”—opened in Singapore last week. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to see “an axe used by a woman to break up her ex-girlfriend’s furniture, along with the broken furniture.”
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World Hum’s Most Read: Jan. 3-9
by World Hum | 01.09.09 | 7:12 PM ET
Our five most popular features and blog posts for the week:
1) Subcontinental Homesick Blues
2) World Hum’s Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time
3) Plato Was a Backpacker (pictured)
4) The Songlines of Key West: Doing the Duval Crawl
5) Lisa Ling: Globetrotting Journalist, ‘Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol’
World Hum Travel Movie Club: ‘Mamma Mia!’
by Eva Holland, Eli Ellison | 01.09.09 | 5:18 PM ET
Here’s the set-up: Bride-to-be Sophie has three possible biological fathers, and all three have come from around the world—along with an international cast of oddball friends—to her destination wedding on a tiny Greek Island. The result? The year’s biggest travel-musical-comedy.
Since it sashayed onto the big screen this past summer, “Mamma Mia!”—the movie adaptation of the hit ABBA-themed musical—has smashed sales records and garnered some award nominations, too. World Hum Travel Movie Clubbers Eli Ellison and Eva Holland took the disc for a spin.
What We Loved This Week: Barack Obama, George W. Bush and More
by World Hum | 01.09.09 | 5:16 PM ET
Photo by Micah Clark The Remedy for America’s Woes: Eat More Hamburgers!
by David Farley | 01.09.09 | 2:20 PM ET
“Nightline” recently took a break from covering important stories like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Barack Obama’s cabinet appointees and the Bush Administration’s quiet attempt to roll back a legion of environmental laws. Instead, they gave some quality airtime to the hamburger. Yes, the hamburger. More specifically, “Nightline”—one of America’s most august news shows—did a “news” segment based on this hypothesis: in correspondent John Berman’s words, “everything seems to be failing in America right now ... except for the burger.” The hamburger, apparently, is the recession’s filet mignon. Everyone’s eating hamburgers now. And to get to the bottom of this mystery, they turned to Josh “the feedbag” Ozersky, citysearch.com restaurant editor, professional hamburger eater and future candidate for coronary bypass surgery.
Environmental Responsibility Should Be ‘Part of Every Travel Company’s DNA’
by Joanna Kakissis | 01.09.09 | 11:17 AM ET
So says Christopher Elliot in a great MSNBC column on the end of green travel (at least in its current, rather poseurish form). For instance a hotel chain can tout itself as green simply by using energy-efficient fluorescent lightbulbs in their rooms. But one small agreeable change does not absolve an industry known for profligate use (and abuse) of natural resources. Elliot’s calling for a paradigm shift that would make travel operators—airlines, hotels, tour companies, and others—quiet but durable environmentalists, and compel travelers to give them (not the polluters) their business.
Headline of the Day: ‘GuGu the Panda Strikes Again’
by Michael Yessis | 01.09.09 | 10:34 AM ET
The New York Daily News is one of many writing about the latest attack on a tourist by GuGu, a panda at Beijing Zoo. Can’t really blame GuGu, though. The victim climbed into the panda’s lair. The man was apparently trying to rescue his kid’s toy, but, really, what did he expect from GuGu?
Morning Links: Mexico City’s War on Gum, South Pole Trek and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.09.09 | 9:15 AM ET
- Deep-fried bacon and butter powered three Canadians in the fastest-ever trek to the South Pole.
- Mexico City has had it with all the gum.
- Another amusing story about how it is no longer 1967 in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury—except the parts of Haight-Ashbury that recall 1967.
- Interesting piece on 2008’s “cartography boom” and the way maps are changing the way we organize and look at the world.
- Can you get better travel deals by deleting your cookies? A case study.
- This Just In asks what the economic downturn means for coverage in high-end travel magazines.
- Travel book publishers are having problems in this financial climate, too. (Via Eoin Purcell)
- Fewer people live in Montpelier, Vermont (7,495) than any other U.S. capital, yet it supports four independent bookstores. Go Montpelier.
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Welcome to Flyover America
by Sophia Dembling, Jenna Schnuer | 01.08.09 | 4:41 PM ET
Hi. We are Sophia Dembling and Jenna Schnuer. Sophia lives in Dallas, Texas (but was Manhattan born and reared), and Jenna in Queens, NY (aka “not Manhattan”), and we are both writers who are in love with America. Every diner and prairie and highway of it. The places that many people consider flyover territory—Lincoln, Nebraska; Lubbock Texas; Bayonne, New Jersey, and the like—grab hold of us. Flyover America is as much a state of mind as a place. We like to think of it as anywhere in America that isn’t Manhattan or L.A. Flyover America is packed with stories, discoveries and soul. And it’s got some great malls, too.
For Inauguration Travelers, Saner Options
by Julia Ross | 01.08.09 | 4:22 PM ET
As a Washington, DC, native, I’ve attended my share of inauguration ceremonies, usually braving a bitter cold to catch a fleeting view of the proceedings. My earliest inaugural memory dates to Jimmy Carter’s swearing-in in 1977. Despite my parents’ determination that I witness history, all I remember are the reams of red-white-and-blue bunting draped across the Capitol and a very distant Rosalynn Carter standing next to her husband in a blue coat.
This time around, I’m opting out. Today’s Washington Post warns of up to 3 million visitors on January 20, and I’d prefer to avoid the chaos. For inauguration travelers who are of like mind, the Washington Post’s Inauguration Watch blog plans to post a listing of venues that will screen the event live. I’ve already stumbled across one that might tempt me off the couch: the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland, will show a big-screen broadcast beginning at 10 a.m., free of charge. Access to popcorn and no metal detectors: hard to beat.
My Big Fat Greek Bus Tour
by Eva Holland | 01.08.09 | 1:39 PM ET
Here comes the latest Hollywood Euro-romance. Nia Vardalos, the writer/star of the surprise hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is returning to the big screen—and this time, instead of an awkward, unhappy Greek-American travel agent, she’s playing an awkward, unhappy Greek-American tour guide.
My Life in Ruins is set to hit theaters in early May, and stars Vardalos as Georgia, a dissatisfied tour guide who has to re-discover her mojo on the antiquities bus tour from hell. (Richard Dreyfuss co-stars as Irv, the wise and supportive tourist.) Sure, it looks to be a re-tread of the last flick—albeit with more Ugly American jokes this time around—but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was an unexpected bit of magic a few years back. If Vardalos can channel some of that wit, heart and self-deprecation again, she’ll already be two steps ahead of most romantic comedies.
Check out the trailer after the jump.
