Study abroad, major in getting drunk

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Your kids are getting wasted on your dime. Forget about the new cultures, unusual experiences and memories and lessons that will last well into a young person’s life. Instead, shots off some hottie’s very tight stomach are far more likely.

Researchers at the University of Washington found that students who study abroad are more likely to increase how much alcohol they drink – more than doubling their intake, on average College kids studying in Europe, Australia and New Zealand are the spots where imbibing increased most.

So, how could this possibly happen? According to the Associated Press, “Students reported drinking more when they perceived their fellow travelers were drinking more heavily, and those who planned to make drinking part of their cultural immersion did so.”

Of course, these programs provide a real opportunity for underage drinkers, which is why this group’s intake grew by 170 percent, compared to the average of 105 percent.

Fortunately, the study abroad experience is not transformative … at least not in this regard. On average, the students doubling their drinking while away from home came back and settled into a routine of three to five drinks a week.

[Via Gawker, photo by Mike Burns via Flickr]

Fallen American Airlines could be next to merge … with JetBlue?

by Tom Johansmeyer on

American Airlines used to be the largest airline in the industry – now it’s third. Merger activity has narrowed the field, with Southwest–AirTran and United-Continental the latest deals that hit the sector. So, all eyes are on who will succumb to the urge to merge next, and American is being eyed as the next player.

According to a Forbes blog post, analysts from Morningstar believe that American Airlines “needs to make a big splash” to remain a player in an increasingly competitive market. The post continues:

“Once the industry’s largest carrier, [American Airlines] is now the third-largest…and any scale advantage it may have garnered is gone,” the Morningstar analysts write. “Ironically, AMR is at a substantial disadvantage, given that it steered clear of bankruptcy during the recession,” [Basili] Alukos and [Adam] Fleck say, pointing out that American’s labor rate is the industry’s highest on an equivalent basis.

So, who’s the right partner for American? The analysts at Morningstar are looking at JetBlue, especially given the latter’s “lighter cost structure.” Notes founder of Training the Street and former M&A investment banker Scott Rostan, “Three dominoes have fallen – Delta/Northwest, UAL/Continental and Southwest/AirTran.” He sees Alaska, Frontier and JetBlue as likely to make some noise.

[photo by Andrew Morrell Photography via Flickr]

Pondering the Persistence of Pork on New York’s Pig Island

by David Farley on

I once witnessed a pig creep out of an open barn door, into the robust morning sunlight, only to get stabbed in the back of its neck by an electric cattle prod. The sow didn’t go down easy, though, as the prod was unplugged and the beast was back up on its feet, its ear-piercing squeals of imminent death ringing out in the Czech countryside. Eventually, porky succumbed and, between forced shots of slivovice (a plum brandy), I watched my friend Libor and his family and friends dismantle the hog. And then, of course, I participated in consuming it. The day-long porcine feast started with the pig’s brains on toast, then a blood soup, then sausages and deep-fried fat, followed by so much more meat and slivovice that it all became one porklicious blur. When I wrote an article about the experience and sent it out to travel publications, the only responses I received were angry rants from editors asking rhetorical questions about my sanity. (I eventually did get a positive response and the article was published and went on to win a Lowell Thomas travel writing award.)

The reason, I think, it was met with so much initial hostility was that it touched on a subject most Americans were not comfortable with: where our food comes from (literally watching how our sausages get made). The pig killers in question, my friend Libor and his family, partook in this particular swine slaughter every November, as dictated by Czech tradition. They would raise the beast in the barn, from piglet to plus-sized swine, and then kill it and eat it. One take away from witnessing this time-honored Central European ritual was how far American eaters had moved away from this realistic, get-your-hands-dirty approach to our food.

But something has happened between then and now. Case in point: I recently visited Pig Island, a pork fest of beastly proportions that took place on New York’s Governor’s Island. They weren’t slaughtering pigs there, but the place was packed with hungry hog eaters, as almost two dozen New York chefs were there to serve up variations on the theme of sow, with ingredients listed by local farms. I’m in favor of this movement, but I wondered: why has pork been elevated to the foodie farm animal of choice in the last few years?For starters, let’s take a broad view of recent eating history. Besides a handful of books and documentaries focused on where our food comes from, we’ve finally embraced locavore-ism, a food movement that advocates using local ingredients and paying more attention to its provenance. It’s been part of the Bay Area dining landscape for decades — thanks, in part, to Alice Waters – and it just took hold in New York City.

Which is where pork comes in. Pigs have become the main ingredient — the poster pig, if you will — of the locavore movement. Hipsters have embraced bacon as their breakfast (or lunch or diner) of champions. Pig parts like brains, heart, tongue and offal — real Czech pig-killing fare — have popped up on menus from Manhattan to the Mission District. Some chefs, such as April Bloomfield of the Spotted Pig and the Breslin in New York and Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City, CA. have been especially prolific in their use of pork.

Another is Sara Jenkins, the chef behind beloved Porchetta, located in the New York’s East Village, and soon-to-open Porsena. Fittingly enough, she was the first chef I encountered at Pig Island. “Pork was marketed wrong – remember ‘The Other White Meat?’ – and we really stopped caring about it,” she said, handing out tinfoil-wrapped porchetta sandwiches to the crowd. “But about 15 years ago farmers started taking interest in it again.”

Adam Schop, chef at the new pan-Latin eatery Nuela, who was serving up a pig terrine, expanded on Jenkins’ thoughts when I asked him later in the day about pork’s popularity. For him, it was all about one word: heritage. “Finally pigs are heritage and that’s important because now we can cultivate certain breeds.” And by heritage, he means that pigs went from being only factory farmed where they were bred to produce lean meat with a result that was often dry and bland and just plain not good to farmers trying to revive different breeds of pigs, swine that has a different taste and texture and are treated better.

“But,” added Schop, “this whole trend might be chef driven. We’re on the front lines and we often cook what we like.”

If that’s the case, are we starting to see a pork backlash? After all, I saw zero amounts of bacon at Pig Island. Jimmy Carbone, Pig Island’s organizer and owner of the East Village gastropub, Jimmy’s no. 43, doesn’t think so. Besides, he told me, the chefs at Pig Island had no time to cure bacon, putting to rest any trepidation of a bacon or pork backlash. Super chef Daniel Boulud, though, could be the canary: he recently went on record saying he hopes to open a restaurant next year in which there will be no pork on the menu.

I spent the rest of the day munching my way through Pork Island, snacking on pork tacos, pork buns, pork stew, pork sausages, pork and kimchi tacos, root beer-glazed pork, jerk pork, roasted pork, slow-cooked pork, and various pork pates. If the frenzy for all things swine dies down, I certainly got my fill in one day.

Gadling Exclusive: Downtown Vegas zipline to open Friday

by Steve Friess on

They’ve made it possible for you to fly over the ocean off the Haitian coast, through the scenic Pacific Ranges of Canada and the the Wild Animal Park in San Diego. And this Friday, Greenheart LLC opens its latest zipline above a different sort of native habitat, that of the Vegas Party Animals.

By the end of this week, tourists are expected to able to shoot across steel lines above the crowds milling about at the Fremont Street Experience, the five-block-long pedestrian plaza in the downtown section that is capped by a metal canopy. The underside of that canopy is the world’s largest outdoor LED screen projects light shows at the top of each hour.

The Fremont Street Experience

At the Fremont Street Flightline, passengers will leap from a platform 60 feet high and glide 800 feet down one of four lines at speeds of up to 25 mph to a 14-foot-high landing near the performance stage. As with other ziplines, including the ones Greenheart has built in Haiti, Whistler, Canada, San Diego and 30 miles away in rural Boulder City, Nev., riders hang from the steel line in a harness and can speed up or slow down depending on their body position. Precautions are being devised to keep riders from dropping loose items on revelers below.

“The reality is, the world’s most spectacular trails are all in the air,” said Ian Green, co-owner of Greenheart, which also opens a series of four 100-foot-high bridges in the Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda. “They’re trails that give you a very different experience. The experience of flying through something is a lot different.”

Fremont Zipline plans to charge $20 per rider from 6 p.m. to midnight, $15 from 2 to 6 p.m., and $10 per re-ride, although that structure could change.

The zipline landed a 90-day permit on Monday from the city’s building department and must get Las Vegas City Council approval to build a permanent structure after that. Green, who has plunged $150,000 into the temporary towers and lines, hopes to elongate the attraction to the entire length of the Fremont Street Experience – more than doubling the length – if that comes to pass.

The world’s most spectacular trails are all in the air. The experience of flying through something is a lot different.

“If it works the way we think it’s going to work, then we would absolutely consider making it bigger and better and longer and permanent,” said Fremont Street Experience president Jeff Victor, who was approached just one month ago by Gree about the idea.

Downtown Las Vegas has been particularly depressed by the lousy economy and competition with the flashier Strip, so the addition of an exciting new offering may be a significant shot in the arm. Green said he expects to hire a dozen workers, which is good news for a city facing more than 14 percent unemployment.

“A lot of people in this town really love this area because it’s historic, so what we’re doing is providing a fantastic attraction to an entire area and try to bring money in to keep this place going,” said general manager Max Margolis.

Green rushed to get this up and running this week because he’s already got his first promotion in mind: The International Broom Racing Championships. Details are sketchy so far, but the plan is to have contests for best broom, fastest zipline time and most creative contest and to time it with October Frightfest, the FSE’s Halloween events.

The Fremont Street Flightline will be a bit more genteel than Greenheart’s others, which have longer lines and go at faster speeds with steeper drops. But Green hopes the location will increase his company’s visibility and pique interest in their four-line system in Boulder City, the town on the way to the Hoover Dam where riders can get up to 50 mph and see the Vegas skyline.

And speaking of the Vegas skyline, that’s his next target. Greenheart has been in talks for more than a year with the Excalibur casino on the Strip about a zipline that would scale the famous themed casino’s castle towers.

“The good thing with Fremont is we’re still a small company, we are still unknown,” he said. “So the opportunity to do Fremont is the opportunity to be known. The great thing about Vegas is anything’s possible.”

Halloween Horror Nights XX: Becoming a scareactor

by Leigh Caldwell on


Creepiness is all about eye contact.

That’s what I learned after a night spent as a Halloween Horror Nights “scareactor” (rhymes with character). Universal Orlando invited me behind the scenes to see what it is like to be one of the nearly 1,000 employees hired each year to scare up guests during the theme park’s Halloween festivities.

And what I found after two shifts on the streets of the park is that the best way to scare is to get close, and look ’em in the eye. It seemed to be natural instinct for people to try to avoid looking at my face.

Of course, this was the face I was showing them, so I can’t really blame them for looking away. (Another life lesson learned: There are no pretty zombies.)

But when I looked them in the eyes, I got inside their heads. They shielded their faces, turned and walked the other way, or, in the best cases, shrieked and screamed.

I would not describe myself as a horror afficionado, but eliciting those screams was surprisingly satisfying. I guess that’s what keeps hundreds of the same scareactors coming back to work the event year after year.

The scareactor experience (which Universal has cleverly named “Boo Camp”) started in wardrobe, where I was assigned a garishly colored, blood-stained Mardi Gras costume.

Then it was on to the makeup chair. My makeup artist, Tabitha, mixed up a blood-colored epoxy to attach a prosthetic wound to my face.

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My face and hands were airbrushed in purple, black and red with white highlights, which Tabitha said would make everything pop on the dark streets.

Voila! I was officially Zombie-fied. The whole process took about 20 minutes.

I was given a bloodied rubber brain from the bucket of body parts, and then an acting coach came in to help us find our inner zombies.

The back story in the scare zone I was going to work is that my Mardi Gras parade float had been attacked by zombies, and I was infected.

“Your brain is only working on eating flesh,” he said, and I raised the prop brain in my hands to my lips.

We were also told two cardinal rules from the scareactor playbook, designed to minimize the chance of guests’ instincts to fight kicking in:

  • Get in guests faces, but back away quickly.
  • And never, ever touch a guest.

With an inspiring cry of “Let’s go scare the hell out of ’em,” it was time to hit the streets for a 30-minute shift.

It is hard work. Scareactors are constantly in motion, gliding through their assigned theme park scare zone, sneaking up on people and working for those screams.

I lumbered. I grunted. I posed for dozens of pictures with park guests who leaned over to pretend that they, too, were eating the brain in my hands.

And, after some experimentation, I found my preferred technique — walking straight into a crowd of people to get in the face of an unsuspecting person somewhere in the middle of the group.

In what seemed like about 15 minutes, my 30-minute shift was over and it was break time. Then we headed back to the streets.

At the end of the night, it was time to remove the makeup. (I couldn’t stop for gas on the way home with that face, could I?) With a big assist from a container of baby wipes, it took about 10 minutes to scrub off the airbrushing and peel off my prosthetic wound.

My fun but exhausting zombie day was done. I fell into bed that night and dreamed of…

Wouldn’t it be cool if I dreamed of zombies? But alas, I was so tired I don’t remember.

Here’s my video look at the experience:


Halloween Horror Nights continues through Oct. 31 on select nights at Universal Orlando Resort. Check out the event Web site for ticketing information.