White House glows aloha purple at luau
The White House hosted a luau yesterday for Congress, which would have gotten a great deal more attention in the media if it hadn’t been for the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. The event was still largely documented, and the photographers out there didn’t fail to capture some of the island spirit in their photos. In this one, for example, they have the White House glowing a nice shade of purply pink:
You can’t miss that tropical monocot nicely placed off to the left in the photo as well. You would barely know that this was Washington, D.C. if it weren’t for the columns. They know how to present a political event disguised as a tropical gathering at the AP/HuffingtonPost.
From the rest of the article with more photos, People appeared to have had a good time with just the dunk tank alone. It’s not clear what political advantage this gives to Obama. On the one side, it’s an event that most people can appreciate and enjoy. No one hates a luau unless it’s PETA protesting a pig roast. On the other, if Obama looks like he’s partying too much it could open him to criticism from the other side.
Maybe that’s why they added the dunk tank There’s nothing more humanizing in American culture than being tipped off a board into a vat of water from the impact of a baseball. You’re the underdog hovering above the water even when a four-year-old is staring through the target.
The event had hula ancers, good food, and tons of people. If nothing else, Obama managed to drive home the fact that he’s from Hawaii and not the “Chicago machine,” the term his enemies have been using against him. I’m going to guess that this is not the first luau they’ll hold during his administration’s time in the Purply Pink White House.
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Posted on June 26, 2009
Filed Under Current Affairs, Hula, Politics | Leave a Comment
Ponyo US Trailer Released
Ponyo, not to be confused with понял the Russian word for “understood” or the rhyming Spanish interjection, is a film by Studio Ghibli appropriated by Disney and remixed with the voices of Cate Blanchett, Frankie Jonas, Noah Cyrus, Cloris Leachman, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White. It arrives stateside on August 14, 2009. Here’s the trailer:
If you’re thinking that it looks a lot like the animated adventure Spirited Away, it’s because they had the same director: Hayao Miyazaki. Yes, the award-winning one.
Disney has been making good money off of environmentally significant films for some time now. This particular movie was a mega-release in Japan. It stands to be immensely popular in the U.S. too. They’ll get my money.
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Posted on June 24, 2009
Filed Under Film, Global Warming, Sea and Oceans | Leave a Comment
The most unsustainable best job in the world
With fewer entries at the 56th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this year, one seemingly successful campaign is continuing to garner more attention even after its big push earlier this year: The Best Job in the World by Tourism Queensland. It just won two major Grand Prix awards at Cannes. However, is it too early to judge its real success in terms of drawing visitors to the Great Barrier Reef while still somehow protecting the world wonder?
While the success of generating heaps of publicity on the (relative) cheap is undeniable, it remains to be seen if the campaign can actually draw tourists to the islands once the winner, Ben Southall, begins six months of work on July 1, 2009. The campaign got attention because it mixed the universal desire to escape to paradise with an actual opportunity to do so…with the perfect storm of financial tsu-nomics to propel people to reach for a video camera to begin their YouTube application. Who wouldn’t be interested? Who wouldn’t be happy that a campaign could be so successful in an otherwise difficult time?
The uglier side of the competition is that it was a real job, and Tourism Queensland (TQ) had a very clear agenda. They were probably shocked by their own success early on and did not hesitate to run with the viral publicity (although I could be wrong because they mentioned that they reserved the right to limit the number of entrants if demand was too high).
Perhaps what they underestimated was the draw of paradise to a global society bombarded by daily images of sunny beaches. Because of this attraction, the selection committee went so far as bend their own rules to expand the number of possible finalists who would head Down Under to Queensland to duke it out.
TQ had originally said that they would allow 10 finalists plus one possible viewer-chosen “wild card” participant, but they later added an additional five people. They seem to have chosen by country instead of participant qualifications, as the group was made up of representatives of the U.K., Germany, the U.S., India, China, France, Taiwan (the wild card applicant), New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, Australia (two people), Korea, Netherlands, and Japan. It’s clear that the finalists were used as tools to drum up additional publicity in practically every wealthy corner of the world. You can read the headlines in each proud country: “SOANDSO won one of 16 tickets to paradise!”
I speculated early on in the competition that ultimately they were going after the anglo scuba diving adventurists. Sadly, the Australians all but knew that they were out of the running because Tourism Queensland made few efforts to hide that they were really looking for someone from abroad, yet two Australians made it to the finals in an attempt to stir up a bit of national pride equal opportunity and perhaps a spirit of provincial competition. But ultimately TQ knew their target market, and they chose a native English-speaking human fish, a friendly someone whom the world would not chastise for beating so many other seemingly worthy competitors.
While rabid seas on the world economic horizon were probably the single biggest contributor to the success of the publicity campaign for those needing to escape, they could also capsize the tourist turnout drive. How can people afford the thousands of dollars that it costs to get to Australia? In fact, the people who seemed most excited about the job were those who were probably least likely to be able to actually get there any other way? So that leaves many of them out of the eventual conversion to actual visitors.
One of the real problems behind promoting tourism for Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef is that it’s not a sustainable economic growth model in the long term. It’s a game of getting “heads in beds” if you want economic development from tourism.
How many millions of tons of pollutants are jetted into the air on the long-haul flights to Australia from places like Europe every year? If you believe that greenhouses gases are leading to the demise of vast areas of coral reef, why on earth would you want to add to them let alone send millions of people swimming among the world treasure?
In the end, it might be best to have somebody on the ground telling the story of the Reef during a period in which the world doesn’t have the economic means to come en masse to see the place. At least then people can experience the adventures from behind their computer screens without adding a few thousand tons of CO2 to the air we’re all breathing.
Living vicariously through others is often the best way to travel. I have personally often been saddened after visiting a new place because I can never again smile inside with anticipation and say, “I’ve never been there.”
Ben Southall has his work cut out for him, and I sincerely hope that he can find a way to actually bring fewer people to the Great Barrier Reef by exposing them to its wonders and helping demystify some of the fake aspects of paradise that we often go jetting off in search of on our tropical vacations.
Congrats, Ben and Tourism Queensland. Do what’s right for the reef. You have an actual paradise, and it’s up to you to go beyond taking pictures of clownfish and palm trees to reveal its true nature to the world. Show us why it’s worth fighting for. The worst possible out come of the next six months would be a blog that reads like a slideshow of holiday photos of people we don’t even know. It is a real job. Best of luck, Mr. Caretaker.
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Posted on June 22, 2009
Filed Under Advertising, Coral, Cultural Symbols, Current Affairs | Leave a Comment
Dads at the beach with Google
Google has dad at the beach today with a special logo sandcastle. Too bad the past 24 hours have been one of the rainiest non-beach days for much of the country.
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Posted on June 21, 2009
Filed Under Beaches | Leave a Comment
Great Barrier Bing
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef made yet another media cameo this month with Bing’s inclusion of an aerial image of the world wonder as its photo of the day today June 11, 2009:
Have you used the new service yet? It’s actually pretty decent. I’m trying to give it a fair chance, but it’s hard to break the Google habit.
This image accompanies others of a paradisiacal or marine nature since Bing launched, including the Cinque Terre in Italy, the beaches of Normandy, a toasty Thailand, and a bit of Portugal.
There were also a series of city images from Europe and even one from San Antonio, Texas. The latter is notable because it shows the River Walk, which is a successful urban planning project for the US and especially for Texas.
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Posted on June 11, 2009
Filed Under Coral, Technology | Leave a Comment
I <3 “Home” ~ the film by Yann Arthus-Betrand
June 5, 2009, marks the opening of the film Home by Yann Arthus-Betrand. The film focuses on bringing beautiful aerial images of all things earth to the masses in an attempt to further rattle our souls into doing something about the massive destruction we have caused in recent decades.
Interestingly enough, the still that was chosen (probably perfectly crafted so that YouTube would offer it up as one of the three possible frames for the opening still to represent the whole movie) is of Heart Reef in Queensland, Australia – part of the Great Barrier Reef of the Whitsunday Islands. This reef gained a significant amount of world exposure during the recent “Best Job in the World” contest hosted by Tourism Queensland on their website, in which a UK citizen was chosen to head to Hamilton Island for a July 1st start date.
As the shot rolls onto the screen, the narrator says, “We know that the solutions are there today. We all have the power to change. So what are we waiting for?” Then the heart is morphed into a shot of the whole earth. If you already clicked on play to watch the video, here’s the still again:
The effort to bring this to a large number of people is commendable. I only hope that the global warming deniers won’t overpower the conversation with that topic alone when there are so many other reasons to act to stop the destruction of natural systems and the creation of all the pollutants we each release on a daily basis.
The PPR Group, the mega-luxury firm, has sponsored the film. You can follow the film at this YouTube channel.
Conclusive evidence that crop circles are not alien renderings
Either the ocean obsession has spilled over into alien life interacting with earth or crop circles are made by sea-possessed humans. The latest jellyfish crop “circle” in Britain provides 600 feet of near-conclusive evidence of the latter. We love our ocean creatures.
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Posted on June 2, 2009
Filed Under Animals and Pets, Architecture, Art, Cultural Symbols, Jellyfish | Leave a Comment
Wynn Encore ~ a little XS and never again
Be forewarned that the Wynn Encore’s XS night club, which is apparently one of the best nightclubs in Las Vegas at the moment, is a horrible place to host a party. Do NOT choose this venue for an important event such as a big birthday, upscale bachelor/bachelorette party, or after-wedding event. You will be disappointed and probably treated worse than if you pulled up your stretch Hummer to a McDonald’s drive-thru and knocked down their speaker box. To have a good time here, you better have the money (REAL money, like more than a god-like Vegas developer) to command attention (try buying their $10,000 cocktail/jewelry). Otherwise, get in line. This line:
This is actually near the front of the “Guest List and Table Reservations” line. You don’t want to know what was behind us. Clearly they’ve heard of velvet ropes, but they seemed to have only about 20 linear feet of them. So, when they tell you that you should be there by 10:15 to get your table that you reserved months in advance for your large party, they mean that you should show up around 9:00. By 10:00 PM, the lines were so long that the General Admissions people were getting in ahead of those in the “guest” line.
To make it worse for those without table reservations, you may hear them say that there is no guest list for men, so if you’re not with a table reservation, just merge into the GA section, guys. It’s not a good sign if a place has to have a policy to keep men away. It makes the place feel more like a “European” pool than an upscale nightclub with “European” (their term, not mine) table service.
If you’re not the type who can tell someone to get to the back of the line when they cut in front of you, you are going to be uncomfortable watching hoards of half-drunk sameness flowing sideways past you and floating in because they think that they’re on some special list. The crowd of special people is so intense that at one point I sincerely considered calling the Fire Department to have them clear the area because it was becoming dangerous. At least security finally seemed to realize that the mob blocking the exits were a real problem.
By the time we were at the front ready to be let in, the place turned into GA, and our party’s hostess (as in our friend who planned the weekend) had to make a small scene to get us in. As we walked into the club, we were accused of trying to sneak in and had to prove that we were part of our group. They wanted to know where our table host was. So did we. They eventually led us to a table that was big enough for five people max (for 11 people), next to one of the main doors. So much for making a reservation.
I know of no other business that you can practically wave thousands in cash in front of them (for an event that is extremely important to you) and have them not know what to do with it. They seemed really surprised when we got up and left. They were never rude, but not a single staff member seemed to have any clue what to do with all the people around them. It was grotesque. The Circus Circus arcade staff could host a better party.
Too bad the pictures of the place look so nice because my fondest memory was of the headache from the minutes of heat-lamp fumes that I inhaled as we all stared appallingly at the table we were renting for more than a Manhattan Penthouse (per square foot). Let’s just say that this website photo was not our view:
In the end, we parked ourselves at a lounge in the hotel and pulled up tables to make room for us all. The people on the wait staff were the slowest ever, which I can understand somewhat when you don’t expect a party of 10+ to show up, which explains why we would never have chosen this route in the first place.
This area was ugly too. They attempted (and failed) to match mosaic tiles on the walls with tiles on the tables. Were we walking down a Lisbon sidewalk? The tables ended up looking like a round concrete patio table your grandmother picked up at Costco, not something you want to stare at while enjoying what is dubbed as one of the most exclusive resorts in the country. Then the best song ever dropped to our ears: “Two Tickets to Paradise” started playing overhead. Indeed, at least two taxis out of the Encore at that point were the way to go because the place was the farthest from any paradise.
Beyond XS, the Wynn Encore is a pretty bad hotel in general, at least on the surface. In trying to pay attention to every detail, they have failed to come up with a sense of any sort of place. They had enough money to hire a ton of people, but seemed to skimp on training them in the everyday operations of a hotel. People were running around with no clear structure. I literally felt sorry for them because they looked so frazzled, everyone from security to the waitresses. This place was a mess. And then there was the decor.
Wynn designers seemingly bought every nice object they could find and tried to blend them all together into a cohesive nothingness. The Wynn decor and landscaping in general is a trans-spectrum emetic. It’s the most schizophrenic two-hotel mega-resort in Vegas. The streetscape wants to be Yosemite National Park, the front door Cape Town, and the casino New Orleans.
The wall drapings in the latter felt like some old-Dallas, oil-money diva hired an interior design firm so that she could tell them what her fairy-tale bedroom would look like. But, no, they actually have an Executive Vice President of Design who seems fond of the 200-year-old Indonesian driftwood that he bought in Paris to place next to a Chinese Buddha and a Brazilian amethyst geode. I’m sure he’s a talented guy, but this place is all over the desert.
Even the Encore’s website is a wreck. If you can chase down the menu option you want, you might make it to their spa page:
Hint to the Wynn: cachez your cliché and fix this wording: “A sanctuary of surpassing beauty.” Do you really want to be in a spa where beauty is surpassing you for the next girl? And why has Buddha become the symbol for calm place? Is there no other calming icon in the entire world?
So, I suppose that this post is technically not an endorsement of the place. It’s subjective, so please leave positive comments if you disagree. More than anything, the Wynn Encore ruined an important part of what was, overall, a great weekend. Because of that, our group is now spreading the word for others to avoid XS.
If you’re thinking of dropping several thousand dollars on bottle service at XS, skip that idea and get your party a suite at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay. At least when they screw up there they make it right. And the views are amazing, with the Wynn far in the distance.
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Posted on April 30, 2009
Filed Under Architecture, Deserts, Food and Drink, Gambling, Oasis, Travel | Leave a Comment
Environmental Graffiti partial to volcanism
It’s always good to know what gets a media company such as a popular blog up in the mornings, and Environmental Graffiti revealed a bit about themselves in a post with tons of photos of volcanoes with lightning. They write:
At Environmental Graffiti, we’re a bit partial towards all things volcanic. Smouldering fumaroles, bubbling mud volcanoes, sizzling lava lakes…. Little surprise then, that the idea of volcanoes combined with another extreme and volatile natural phenomenon – lightning – really got us rubbing our hands together. Prepare for fire and brimstone clashes of epic proportions as two of Mother Earth’s most powerful forces go head to head….
These photos appear to be bouncing around a couple of blogs, having come to Environmental Graffiti by way of BLDGBLOG. They have pulled others from elsewhere on the net, including Wikipedia.
Here’s a preview sliver of one the stunning photos (this one from Chile by Carlos Gutierrez, apparently for United Press International):
“Volcanoes and lightning!” sounds like an 18th-century replacement for “zounds!” Everybody loves a huge earthen force to make you feel alive. It’s good to see what we would normally consider a paradisiacal scene shaken up by reality.
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Posted on April 24, 2009
Filed Under Volcanoes and Lava | Leave a Comment
Get Lost ~ the island doesn’t want you here
Remember the story about the new volcanic island Hunga Ha’apai forming near Tonga in March 2009? Here’s the video:
The strange part is that one man decided to be (perhaps?) the first person to take a step on it. His story is crazy enough that you would think he would get the hint that the island wants him to go away. It reads like an episode of Lost. The whole event makes you wonder why anybody would risk their life just to be a part of airborne mud. Ahh, our great love of tropical islands.
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Posted on April 24, 2009
Filed Under Islands, Travel, Volcanoes and Lava | Leave a Comment
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