Travel Blog: News and Briefs
What Do Audiences Think of the Cruise-Ship-Disaster Movie ‘Poseidon’?
by Jim Benning | 05.17.06 | 11:54 AM ET
“Total concept rejection”—that’s the phrase used in an internal marketing memo from Warner Bros., according to FishbowlLA. “It’s an amusing turn of phrase, and thus far, the best one we’ve seen to describe what’s going on with the film,” the site reports. Wow. That sounds like a marketing disaster of, uh, Titanic proportions.
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Yahoo! BuzzTalking Immigration Reform on NPR
by Jim Benning | 05.16.06 | 6:09 PM ET
If you caught it, that was World Hum contributor (and my better half) Leslie Berestein discussing immigration-related issues on NPR’s Talk of the Nation today.
Magic Johnson Helps Launch Travel Agency
by Michael Yessis | 05.16.06 | 10:01 AM ET
Basketball star turned business mogul Magic Johnson announced yesterday that he’s leading a “joint venture that aims to bring more minorities into the rapidly growing business of selling travel from home,” according to Tom Stieghorst’s story in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. It’s an effort to capture America’s rapidly growing “minority travel segment.”
The Lust for Travel: Literature as Inspiration
by Michael Yessis | 05.15.06 | 8:33 AM ET
The Unlikely International Ambassador of Baseball
by Jim Benning | 05.04.06 | 11:18 PM ET
Kelsey Timmerman is not the first to write about travel and baseball in Latin America—the sport often pops up in stories about Cuba and the Dominican Republic, among other countries—but his essay in the Christian Science Monitor is the first I’ve seen about baseball on the small Honduran island of Kokota. That’s where, on a recent visit, he tried to teach a group of villagers how to play the game—a game, he admits, he never did like to play. As he writes near the top of the story, “I speak a little Spanish; most of the villagers do not. They speak Miskito. Let the charades begin.”
Hippies Gone? Yes. Inaccessible Via EasyJet? Yup. Welcome to the Latest Hipster Travel Destination.
by Michael Yessis | 05.04.06 | 7:00 PM ET
For the hipster, travel is merely an accessory. “The exclusivity of his cultural and geographical selection defines his personality, in much the same way that the suit he wears, the wristwatch he brandishes, or the car he drives defines him,” writes Simon Mills in an amusing story in the Guardian. Mills examines how a place becomes a hipster destination, and just how slippery that title can be in an age when information travels fast. He also gets inside a hipster traveler’s head and riffs.
Binyavang A Wainaina and the Cost of Internet Cafes
by Michael Yessis | 05.04.06 | 3:24 PM ET
World Hum books editor Frank Bures has a couple of interesting pieces in other publications this month. He interviewed Binyavang A Wainaina, founder of the magazine Kwani?, about the Kenyan literary scene and other topics for Tin House’s international issue, and looked at the cost of staying connected at Internet cafes around the world for Wired. Unfortunately, both are unavailable online.
“United 93” Finds an Audience
by Michael Yessis | 05.01.06 | 10:25 AM ET
It turns out a lot of people are ready to see the tragic events of 9/11 played out on the big screen. United 93, which recounts the last moments on the hijacked flight that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, finished second at the box office this weekend. “The doggedly fact-based drama grossed $11.6 million in its Friday-Sunday debut, per estimates from the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations,” writes E!Online’s Joal Ryan. “Its per-screen average was even more impressive: $6,462—average-wise, no other major movie played to bigger crowds.”
Library Card Tourism Hooks California Teen
by Michael Yessis | 04.28.06 | 2:23 PM ET
Every summer for the past six years, Cory Peterson and his mother embark on a road trip to visit libraries around the country and sign up for library cards. So far the 13-year-old library lover has accumulated 1,678 cards, and stands to gain more when he makes a planned trek through Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Idaho and Nebraska this July. “I hope to grow it into the greatest collection of library cards in the world!” Peterson writes on his Web site, which features scans of all his cards. As with Bookstore Tourism, where I found out about Cory, this is a concept I can get behind.
Blogger Sued for Posts Criticizing Maine’s Department of Tourism
by Michael Yessis | 04.28.06 | 1:54 PM ET
Lance Dutson, who posts about Maine tourism at the Maine Web Report, has been sued for defaming the Maine Department of Tourism and violating its advertising agency’s copyright, according to a story in the Boston Globe. “He has written commentaries ridiculing the state’s tourism efforts and, last month, he posted a ‘rough draft’ advertisement pulled from Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development website showing a collage of iconic images of the Maine seacoast, woodlands, and ski slopes, with a dummy phone number that turned out to connect to a line promoting a phone sex service,” the Globe’s Robert Weisman writes. “The agency had inadvertently placed the phone number on the draft advertisement for a presentation made to state tourism officials.”
Kili’s Woes, Our Woes
by Jim Benning | 04.28.06 | 12:47 AM ET
Salon reports on the melting snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which are expected to disappear completely in 15 years. According to the site, “It’s another unbearable loss on an overheating planet.”
Anthony Lane in Europe: “What Country, Friends, is This?”
by Michael Yessis | 04.26.06 | 1:19 PM ET
He’s got a pretty good day job as a film critic for The New Yorker, but in the magazine’s current Journeys issue, Anthony Lane focuses his considerable talents on a story about traveling via Europe’s low-cost airlines. As usual, the London-based Lane is hilarious. “[T]he best thing to happen to Great Britain in the past decade is the increasing profusion of ways to get the hell out of the place,” he writes. And so he does, recapping a few of his excursions on the Continent, including a great opening sequence about flying to Vitoria-Gasteiz, a place he’d never heard of and had no idea where it was located. He did know, though, that he could pay for things with euros.
California Woman Plans to Turn a 747 Into a House
by Michael Yessis | 04.26.06 | 12:16 PM ET
Francie Rehwald has hired architect David Hertz to build her an environmentally friendly and “feminine” house out of an old 747. “The wings will be the main house,” according to an Agence France-Presse report. “The cockpit will become a meditation temple, the jet’s trademark hump will become a loft and the remaining scrap will be used for more buildings.” A computer rendering of the house is pictured here.
Plane Maker Pitches Standing-Room Space for Passengers*
by Michael Yessis | 04.25.06 | 11:43 AM ET
If the graphic accompanying Christopher Elliott’s story in today’s New York Times is accurate, the standing-room “seats” look a bit like something used to transport Hannibal Lecter. Writes Elliott: “Passengers in the standing section would be propped against a padded backboard, held in place with a harness, according to experts who have seen a proposal.”
Update: Airbus, the plane maker in question, has issued a statement denying any plans for standing-room “seats.” According to a CNNMoney.com report, a spokeswoman called the New York Times report “crap.”
Exploring the “Hungry Planet”
by Jim Benning | 04.24.06 | 5:49 PM ET
Our favorite Washington Post travel book critic, Jerry V. Haines, reviewed an intriguing new title Sunday, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. It’s a collection of coffee-table-quality photos and writing about what families eat and drink in 24 countries. Writes Haines: “We watch them cook and learn how they shop or forage: hunting seals, traveling three hours down a mountain to buy fresh fruit, braving a crowded Chinese supermarket as loud as ‘a football stadium in overtime.’ We encounter puzzles, such as why we’re getting fatter as we get unhealthier. Or why Okinawa has so many centenarians: Could it be their dictum, ‘Eat only until 80 percent full’?” It’s a great idea for a book.
