Saturday Night Live pokes fun at Hawaiian tourism: Some thoughts

by Jamie Rhein on

Back when Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show poked fun at Butte, Montana because of the Berkeley Pit, the shut-down copper mine that’s almost filled to the brim with toxic water, and is a tourist site anyway, I felt bad. I love Butte, Montana and visit every summer. It was one of my budget travel options back in January. The Daily Show’s version of Butte did not do it justice.

Now Hawaii is in the fray of popular culture tomfoolery. Saturday Night Live poked fun at Hawaiian tourism last week with a skit of fake hula dancers in a restaurant filled with tourists. Within the skit, issues of authenticity, lack of a working wage by those working in the tourist industry, race and other issues that highlight the clash between those looking for a dream vacation and those hired to make the dream happen were mixed together.

Linda Lingle, the governor of Hawaii, is mad about the skit because she feels that it sheds an unfair light on an industry upon which Hawaii depends to a large degree. Because of the economy, Hawaiian tourism is suffering. Bad publicity could do more damage. I’m not too sure about that — particularly if Hawaii uses the skit as a stepping off point to show just how much Hawaii has to offer besides hula dancers. [Saturday Night video after the jump.]

Before I went to Hawaii several years ago, I had Tiki statues and big wooden fork and spoon wall hanging sets in mind. What I found is a lush, culturally rich, gorgeous place that I was enthralled by. We didn’t stay in Waikiki, but with relatives who live on the other side of Oahu. What the governor needs to do is point out how Hawaii is a fascinating state with a history unlike any other.

I’m always amazed when I find out that people went there without going to The Bishop Museum or the Mission Houses Museum or the palace. The role of Hawaii during World War II is also important. A trip to Pearl Harbor and the Punch Bowl shows that. As part of our trip, we went to the Big Island where at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park learned more about volcanoes and Hawaii’s geological make up. These are just a few places that highlight Hawaii’s uniqueness.

I think what the skit did is point out the dissonance between people who head to a place with an idea in their minds about what the location is about without considering the darker side. Any place that tries to bring in tourist dollars could do a similar skit. Saturday Night Live just happened to pick Hawaii. So what if paradise has a darker side? Isn’t that true about anything? It’s the ying and the yang.

On the other side of the dark side is the light which is the reason why Hawaii is such a great place to go on a vacation–just don’t stop at the hula skirts. Have fun with the schlock, notice the disparity, but get out of the places that are geared for the cliche and explore. See what else Hawaii has to offer. It’s plenty, and these days Hawaii is a terrific vacation value.

Admittedly, I think the Saturday Night Live skit is funny. I didn’t watch the episode, but I headed to You Tube as soon as I read about the controversy. The reason I think it’s funny is because I loved watching Dwayne Johnson hula dance. His legs and arm movements just cracked me up. Plus, he looked like he was having a great time.

In case you didn’t see it, here it is. The copy isn’t the best, but you’ll get the idea.

The inaugural Competitours starts Monday and Team Gadling will be there!

by Kent Wien on

Ok, I think I’m man enough to admit it. My wife and I watch The Amazing Race religiously. Haven’t missed an episode, in fact. I think we both enjoy sitting on the couch while second guessing the strategic choices each team makes as we watch some of their relationships disintegrate while they work their way around the world.

After nearly every episode, I’ve realized two things:

1) I’m incredibly lucky to be married to a non-psychopathic, intelligent and sweet woman who has the ability to see both sides of any argument.

and,

2) I know we could get through the Amazing Race together without destroying our 16-year marriage.

It’s impossible NOT to watch The Amazing Race without imagining how you and your partner, whether it’s your wife, brother, friend, parent or child, would accomplish the tasks and handle the challenges associated with traveling around the world.

Unfortunately, my wife has zero interest in testing our travel skills and marriage on television, and as much as I’d like to do it, I’d never be able to get a month off to fly around the world with her. Not to mention the trouble with finding someone to look after our kids while we’re gallivanting around the globe.

But the day before my 40th birthday in January, the Gadling team received an e-mail from Grant Martin, our editor, telling us about Competitours, an “Amazing Race like” tour of Europe. Close to a dozen teams would be competing for 7 nights at any Starwood hotel (Sheraton, Westin or Le Meridian) worldwide and $700 cash.

Grant wondered if anyone would like to go on the inaugural Competitours trip and write about the experience? Whoever went would have to pay their way, of course – this was no freebie.

I decided to wait until the next day to spring it on my wife.

“Come on, honey! It’d be a blast. And it’s only for a week!”

In a moment of weakness, she caved, probably because it was, in fact my birthday after all. She also gave in to my incessant whining about how I needed the latest Canon digital SLR.

I ran the kiddy-care plan past my sister who lives in Seattle. Could she come to New Hampshire to take care of our girls?

Again, milking the birthday, I was able to convince her that this would be a fun thing to do. I mean, how often do you get to take care of a seven and three-year old, big sis? Shockingly, she agreed.

The event starts on March 15th, when we’ll meet up with ten other teams of two in Newark before heading to our first destination, which has just been revealed. We’re going to Frankfurt, Germany, but we still don’t know the two cities after that.

For us, not knowing the destinations is a big reason to take this trip. While Competitours is a tour operator, they’ve managed to put together a compelling reason to travel, key at a time when many are closely evaluating their expenses.

Each day teams will choose up to 6 of the 9 to 12 tasks in and around a city to accomplish. Bonus points will be given for teams that take on the risk/reward task portion of each challenge. Each task has to be documented with a Flip Mino camera. We’ve chosen the Mino HD version to use.

So my wife and I are excited to report on the launch of this innovative tour here at Gadling, and I’ll enjoy a break from my day job, and the first vacation my wife and I have taken in this decade that didn’t include the kids.

The other teams are coming from all over the country. Five of these teams have been sponsored by FlyerTalk, a forum for frequent flyers that take great pride in racking up miles in rather creative ways. They competed and won the honor of traveling on behalf of FlyerTalk, and some of them have already proven adept at finding out what the third city will be.

So we’ve written off in our minds any chance that we’ll beat these type-A travelers, but we hope to have a great time along the way.

Competitours offers much larger prizes after our inaugural, with one prize that includes 40 nights at a Starwood hotel and $5,000 cash along with a pair of airline tickets. I can’t think of too many travel packages where you can win something so significant.

Follow along with us each day starting on March 16th. We’ll be uploading video of some of the challenges without giving too much of the Competitour secrets away, and introducing you to the other teams.

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, take a look at the 8, 10 and 14-day trips Competitours is offering for June, July and August of this year. If you go, please let us know, as we’d love to hear how Competitours evolves from our inaugural/trial/test run that starts this Sunday. Of course, I’ll be using updating everything as it happens via Twitter as well.

For more information, the Chicago Sun Times has written up a nice piece and GoNomad.com that details some examples of the tasks we’ll be given each day. And finally, each team has been encouraged to post about the race from their perspective at BoardingArea.com, so check out our competition. There are some amazing teams competing!

Be sure to follow all of Kent’s posts about the Competitours race.

Kent Wien is a regular here at Gadling with his Cockpit Chronicles and Plane Answers features.

Read what happened for the rest of the week: Pre-departure, departure, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5.

Maple syrup festivals: Hit one now through May

by Jamie Rhein on

Depending upon where you live, when the temperatures are just right, it’s maple syrup time. In Ohio, maple syrup events are scattered across the state from the beginning of March until May. In Canada and elsewhere, there are maple events a plenty. Each offers something different, although syrup and syrup making is the main highlight. I’ve been to four of them. Each time I go to one of these festivals, thoughts of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Little House in the Big Woods come to mind.

The last festival I went to was last Saturday when we headed to Malabar Farms, former home of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and environmentalist Louis Bromfield. There we found a draft horse drawn wagon ride up a maple tree-lined-road to the sugar shack and a taste of the good stuff. On the way up the dirt road to Pugh Cabin, the site of the festival, we passed by metal bucket after metal bucket hung from the trees collecting sap–a sign of the season.

The farm, now a state park, is an easy drive about halfway between Cleveland and Cincinnati. This particular festival ties in the history of maple syrup making from Native Americans to modern day. While inside the sugar shack syrup is made with a more modern approach, nearby, set back in the woods along a trail, the sap is cooked down in a hollowed out log by hot rocks continually transferred from a fire to the sap like the Native Americans first cooked it. Down the trail from that station, there’s the pioneer version of maple syrup making using huge cast iron kettles hung over the flames. Wooden signs affixed to trees tell about the history of syrup and provide various facts.

This festival includes a tractor ride to where the draft horses head up the road. For anyone who wants to take maple products home, there’s a shop near the sugar shack, and also in the visitor’s center where other Malabar Farm products are sold and the hop on the tractor location..

We made a feast of the day by eating lunch at the Malabar Farm Restaurant that features food made from the farm’s produce and meats whenever possible. In an ode to maple syrup, I ate the maple syrup crème brûlée for dessert and enjoyed the crunch of the hardened syrup that formed a crust over the creaminess.

Although, most of the maple sap gathering process is explained through signage at Malabar Farms, at Slate Run MetroPark and Slate Run farm near Canal Winchester, Ohio, about thirty minutes from Columbus, park employees dressed in period garb take visitors on a walk through the sugar bush tour to see how a tree is actually tapped.

After the sugar bush, the next stop is Slate Run Farm, a living history working farm set in the 1880s where during maple syrup season, sap is cooked over a fire the way Ohio settlers did it. Inside the kitchen, women dressed in period attire lead visitors–mostly children, through a baking experience where they can taste maple products and be part of making food themselves.

In the southern part of Ohio at Hueston Woods, another Ohio State Park, the Maple Syrup Festival is also happening this weekend. This is a lovely area for hiking as well.

In the northern part of Ohio, Geauga County is one place that goes all out for maple syrup season. In Burton, there’s the pancake breakfast each Saturday in March. The finale is the Maple Festival April 30–May 3. Starting this weekend, there’s the March Maple Madness Driving Tour in Northeast Ohio, a self-driving venture that swings by twenty maple syrup producers in seven counties.

Along with Malabar Farms, there are other Ohio Department of Natural Resources maple festival events.

Here are 10 other maple syrup festivals and maple syrup production sites in other parts of the U.S. and Canada.

Bury a sardine for Lent: A tradition across Spain

by Jamie Rhein on

Before today, I knew of only one other celebration centered on a fish. During the Walleye Drop on New Year’s Eve in Port Clinton, Ohio, townsfolk drop a walleye. Not a real walleye–one made out of some sort of fiberglass material. Here’s another case of fish frivolity. This Mad Culture video depicts the Burial of the Sardine in Madrid. The celebration, attended by folks of all ages, is connected to the end of Mardi Gras. The mood is fun and festive complete with people dressed in costumes, some carrying images of sardines.


Burial Of The Sardine Madrid from Phillip Stark, Ben Dornan, Justin Metz, and Karina Stenquist of RedHill Media (a new production house in Madrid, Spain specializing in travel videos) on Vimeo.

The sardine burying tradition, according to what I found out here, came about in 19th century when some students in Madrid wanted to recreate a pagan holiday connected to the allegorical characters Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma. The symbolism has something to do with carnal pleasures over moderation. The festival has since spread throughout Spain, and does indeed involve burying a sardine. The video explains it all.

Travel Read: The Lost City of Z

by Brenda Yun on

If you’ve ever wondered whether an ancient civilization existed in the depths of the Amazon jungle in Brazil, then David Grann’s quest to uncover the truth behind the deathly fascination over “The Lost City of Z” will captivate you and leave readers completely stunned by his discovery.

Part memoir and part non-fiction, this book has several interesting layers — the most important of which is the unsolved, mysterious disappearance of famous explorer, Percy Fawcett. Having led several expeditions in the Bolivian and Brazilian Amazons, Fawcett was dead-set on being the first to discover Z. Several of his expeditions ended in death, and when he disappeared in 1927, rescue expeditions to find his three-person team also met similar, dangerous fates.

Grann himself became so fascinated by the story that he — a self-described urbanite — journeyed from his comfortable Manhattan dwelling to the U.K. and then to the Amazons himself to set the story straight.

While at times I would have preferred to read a detailed story of Fawcett’s expeditions (through Grann’s well-researched notes from Fawcett’s and expedition mates’ journals and dispatches), Grann instead weaves a complicated but gripping tale of the events and relations that led to Fawcett’s disappearance. The story is told from several points of view: from Grann himself as he embarks on his own quest, Fawcett via his journals, his son Frank (who was part of threesome that disappeared), and Fawcett’s wife Nina to name a few. These various perspectives and voices help to clarify the real truth from the myth, but also keep readers bouncing between storylines. The two most important characters are Fawcett and Grann himself, but it might have been more fitting for Grann to tell Fawcett’s story rather than his own.

The mythic proportions that became Fawcett’s story, though, are tough to tie together in the end, and the end of Grann’s book falls just a tad flat. Grann does solve the mystery behind Fawcett’s disappearance, but after all the build-up and Fawcett tall tales (some of which involve Fawcett being nearly bulletproof and fighting off enormous anacondas), there’s really no satisfying end to this story that will live up to Fawcett’s reputation as one of the greatest explorers of our time.

David Grann has agreed to be interviewed within the next week for Gadling. If you have questions you’d like me to include in the Q & A with the author, add it in a comment to this article.