Travel Blog
‘Mongolia Loves Puff Daddy’
by Michael Yessis | 09.27.05 | 4:30 AM ET
Michael Wolgelenter has a terrific, laugh-out-loud essay about music as a travel touchstone in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzPalms Hosts “The Amazing Race” Premiere Party Tuesday in Las Vegas
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.05 | 10:36 PM ET
The latest edition of The Amazing Race reality television travel show begins tomorrow night at 9 p.m., and if you’re in Las Vegas you can watch it at the Palms Resort side-by-side with contestants from seasons 1 to 7. The party begins at 6 p.m. with autograph signings.
Who is the World’s Most Traveled Man?
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.05 | 4:13 AM ET
John Flinn tries to get to the bottom of the question in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, and he emerges with a bit of a Clintonian take on the matter. “It all comes down to whether you consider an ice-covered rock in the middle of the South Atlantic a country,” he writes. “Or whether the Cook Islands are one island group or two. Or whether Mustang is a unique and distinct place, rather than just another region of Nepal.”
A Drive Through Kentucky Inspires Cameron Crowe, ‘Elizabethtown’
by Michael Yessis | 09.26.05 | 12:28 AM ET
The promotional onslaught for Cameron Crowe’s new movie, Elizabethtown, is underway. I hadn’t been paying much attention to any of it—I’m a fan of all his movies and I already plan to see “Elizabethtown” no matter what—so I didn’t realize it was a road movie of sorts until I saw this morning’s Los Angeles Times, which features a self-promotional but still terrific piece by Crowe himself about how he selects the music for his films.
Airplane Lands. Nation Rejoices.
by Michael Yessis | 09.22.05 | 4:30 AM ET
Yesterday’s emergency landing of a New York-bound JetBlue airliner in Los Angeles was a post-post-modern experience, passenger and New York Observer editor Alexandra Jacobs told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Translation: Passengers watched the live national television coverage of their crippled jet circling the skies over Southern California on their personal TV screens within the plane. The good news of the landing caused Cooper, who has been covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, to smile for possibly the first time in weeks. If you haven’t seen the video of the amazing landing, Crooks and Liars has it.
NYC Gets the Stews. LA and DC Welcome Travel Movies.
by Michael Yessis | 09.22.05 | 4:20 AM ET
Plane Crazy, a play about “stew life” in the ‘60s, is in the middle of a nine show run in the New York Musical Theater Festival. New York Times writer Miriam Horn gave it a mixed review, but the show appears to have sold out every performance. I wonder: Is it a good play that does justice to the life of stewardesses in the early jet age, or do people just like the songs and the outfits?
“Funky Food Courts” With Rachael Ray
by Michael Yessis | 09.22.05 | 4:10 AM ET
Is it another new show from one of our favorite television travel personalities, the ubiquitous and oft-ridiculed Rachael Ray? Not quite. Arnold Roth and Mike Albo have a funny cartoon spoof of Ray on page 66 of the Sept. 19 issue of The New Yorker, billing her as the host of a new television show, “Funky Food Courts,” wherein she explores the food options “at the rest stop off I-95 near Wilmington.”
Tom Haines Wins Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year
by Michael Yessis | 09.21.05 | 4:20 AM ET
“Lost” Wins Emmy, Inspires Travel
by Michael Yessis | 09.21.05 | 4:10 AM ET
The second season of the ABC television show Lost begins tonight, and with it comes a new round of travel stories about folks “set-jetting” to where the show is filmed: Hawaii. It’s the latest in a string of filming locations/destinations to see an influx of travelers and travel writers, and perhaps the strangest considering the show revolves around a group of plane crash survivors. Jaunted has more on the phenomenon, and links to some “Lost”-themed travel stories that explore the ramifications of travel driven by successful movies and TV shows.
‘Amazing Adventures of a Nobody’: Seeing America On $5 a Day
by Michael Yessis | 09.20.05 | 4:21 AM ET
Two days ago, Leon Logothetis set out from New York City to travel across the United States on a mere $5 a day. He’s being followed by a film crew, which is tormenting Logothetis by staying in luxury hotels and eating gourmet food. Logothetis calls himself a “nobody,” and is counting on the goodness of strangers to help him find food and places to sleep. I don’t think he’s going to have much of a problem. As Ramon Stoppelenburg proved a couple years back, people will bend over backwards to help out a traveler on an extremely limited budget, particularly one with a gimmick and a well-crafted Web site.
The World’s Best Driving Roads
by Michael Yessis | 09.20.05 | 4:05 AM ET
The Critics: AARP Recommends Armchair Travel Books
by Michael Yessis | 09.19.05 | 11:47 PM ET
Dennis Boyles selected seven books for the September/October issue of AARP magazine, including “The Station” by Robert Byron and “A Traveller’s Alphabet” by Sir Steven Runciman.
World Hum Does Fort Worth
by Jim Benning | 09.17.05 | 6:20 PM ET
“Travel, Travel Writing, and the Literature of Travel”
by Michael Yessis | 09.16.05 | 9:46 AM ET
A few weeks ago, Erin over at BellaOnline recommended to me “Travel, Travel Writing, and the Literature of Travel,” a piece by Michael Mewshaw in the Summer issue of the South Central Review. It’s actually a transcript of a paper Mewshaw gave at a Modern Language Association meeting in New Orleans in October 2004, and it’s a terrific defense of travel and travel writing against critics who dismiss the former as a frivolous diversion and the latter as the work of hacks.
Germany Bans Smiling in Passport Photos
by Michael Yessis | 09.16.05 | 12:22 AM ET
It’s a security thing, according to the Associated Press story about German Interior Minister Otto Schily’s announcement: “Facial recognition systems match key features on the holder’s face and work best when the face has a neutral expression with the mouth closed.” Boing Boing reports that Canada and Britain have already made the same ban.
