Yet Another Travel Meme

Come up with more questions of your own, because these are rather lame.

Home Is: Los Angeles, CA (although I grew up on Long Island and lived throughout the Tri-State area before moving out West)

The One Place I Haven’t Been But Want to Visit Before I Die: Only one? If that's the case, then I'd have to say Australia. It's been my number-one destination since I did a report in sixth grade, yet somehow I've been to more than 20 other countries first. Go figure.

The Weirdest Place I’ve Been: Weird? Long Island ain't normal. Vegas is delightfully dysfunctional. But weird? Ohio is up there. I might have to vote for Reno, just because I've teased my friend Michelle about her hometown since the day I met her (and before I'd even been there). I was disappointed when I finally visited and there weren't midgets and clowns walking on the streets. I don't know how I got that impression, but I suppose I was disappointed at how un-weird Reno is. Still, it isn't normal.

How I Feel About Flying: Much better about it now. I've had several worse-than-bad flying experiences, including my first flight ever, where my brother had to land the plane. I no longer panic like I once did, but I still like picking up/dropping off people at airports better than going myself. Of course, if I knew how to fly, I'd probably feel even better about the whole experience.

My Last Road Trip: Drove up north in my new Prius to see my ol' pal Dimi, whose belly is now the size of a volleyball. Marin is so bucolic that my paltry 36 hours up there felt quite relaxing and longer than it was. On the way back down, I stopped in Santa Cruz to see Julie, my roommate from UCLA, who I hadn't seen in roughly 14 years. (Note to self: Must spend more time in Santa Cruz. Why have I not done that yet?) After that, I hit the Monterey Bay Aquarium, thus checking off one more item on my California to-do list. Another six hours down a pitch-black PCH and I was back home.

My Last Train or Boat Adventure: Well, since it's technically a ship, I can't count my Bahamas trip. So I guess I'd have to say my shark-diving excursion to Isla Guadalupe.

Best Music for a Road Trip: My self-made "Road-Trip" playlist on my iPod. One hundred fifty songs makes most any ride just fly by.

My Favorite Travel Item Is: iPod, baby. Unfortunately, mine is on its last legs. I shall mourn Dirk when he finally passes and blurts his last digital note.

I Think That I Am A _____ Sort of a Traveler: Laidback? Adventurous? Sarcastic? Person-who-thinks-this-question-sucks?

The Farthest I've Traveled: Circumnavigated the globe during Semester at Sea. Get me back on that ship, please.

Taken From: How to Spell Stoopit

Au Revoir, AOL CityGuide (aka AOL Local, Digitalcity, etc.)

We all could sense the ship taking on water even as early as last year. One by one, the employees departed, and their empty cubes (valued at about $10k a pop) remained ominously unfilled.

Then last week, the iceberg hit. I broke the news to a colleague, who was on vacation at the time and who had called me to boast he had an interview lined up elsewhere for the next morning. "Good," I told him, "because tomorrow you'll be unemployed." So much for breaking the news softly.

I could expound on this subject for hours -- and, in fact, I have -- but I'll refrain here since my name is clearly on the page, and I'm not in the mood these days for subpoenas and libel charges.

To sum it up, my friends and former co-workers are now out of work, but at least they have a decent severance package.

What I find most amusing is the dearth of news on the subject. Local is only getting bigger in the Internet business, and the demise of one of its most prominent players has warranted nary a news inquiry. The only article of note to be found was a poorly researched bit that reads more like a PR cover-up than actual reporting.

Although I haven't worked at AOL for several months (I'm quite happy at my current job, thank you), the news still saddens me. Even though we could all clearly see the glint of the iceberg in the distance, we all refused to believe it would hit. I can't think of a single person I worked with who didn't enjoy the content they worked on. Even when management and morale were at their lowest, we steamed ahead, commisserating among ourselves in steerage and having a helluva lot more fun.

Now all our hard, "evergreen" work will flounder. It'll stagnate, but users will still be able to find it. Long after your favorite neighborhood bistro has shut down, you'll be able to find the listing alive and well on CityGuide, like an ant preserved in amber, with some poor freelancer's name attached to this ancient piece of Internet detritus and no sympathetic editor to help remove the shame from the database.

And so, as the guard rails sink below the icy surface, I bid a final adieu to the "granddaddy of local guides." Perhaps if the company had paid a little less on cubes and a little more on foresight, we'd still be enjoying the journey. Instead, enjoy this final news retrospective (don't miss #5, a long-time in-house favorite).

Rave Review for the Nascent Digital City (August 1997)

Digital City Becomes AOL Local (June 2002)

AOL CityGuide closes San Jose office (July 2003)

Austin Freelance Job Posting With Mark Gozonsky (!) as Contact (2003)

Elegy for a Temp Job (May 2004 -- My personal fave. Don't miss the part about the jheri-curl mullet.)

Blogger Mourning the Loss of Digitalcity (scroll down) (January 2007)

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/13/HNaollocalsearch_1.html (March 2007)

I realize this post interests only a handful of people, most of whom lived the above events, but I wanted to put it in writing. For posterity, people.

Where I've Been: The World

Not too shabby a round-up, although I'd hoped to have lived abroad a bit more by this point. Anyone know how I can wrangle up a U.K. or New Zealand visa?



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Houston, We Have Lift-Off

I only started my new gig a week before Christmas, but already it feels as I've been there for years -- in a good way. The people are phenomenal and the work has been well worth it. And yesterday we finally launched the site that so many people have toiled over for way longer than I've been there.

Already it's been a rewarding experience, so much more so than my previous gig. (Condolences -- congratulations, really -- to all my ex-co-workers who are now unemployed, or who are on their way to being so.) And I have all my pals at work to thank for it. I've enjoyed coming into work (despite the commute, which I knew about when I accepted this position, even though I'd previously promised myself I'd never work more than half an hour away again) and it feels great to show my friends and family the site I've been working on. The 13-hour days have paid off.

Check out my labor of love: http://www.family.com. If you don't, that's okay. I work there, so I can find your IP address and hunt down you slackers who call yourselves friends. Then I'll break into your homes and log on to your computers just to get the extra unique page views. And I'll eat all the cheese in your fridge while I do so.

Carry on, now.

I'll Dive With Sharks, But Not With This Freak of Nature

Yeah, I've gone overboard (pun intended) on the whole shark thang, but I've recently gone eyeball to eyeball with an even freakier ocean denizen. Seriously, this abnormality has given me nightmares in recent weeks.

After living in Cali nearly 10 years (well past my personal deadline), I finally made the trek to the world-renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium. At last count, I've been to more than 10 aquariums around the globe (including my all-time fave, the Ring of Fire Aquarium in Osaka, which had a whale shark when I visited), and the Monterey promised to deliver more splash than any I'd previously visited. Unfortunately, my visit came after the release of the aquarium's most recently captive great white, but I was still lured by the promise of a state-of-the-art institution that refiltered salt water from the neighboring bay.

Because I got a late start out of Marin County, I had about an hour to view all the exhibits, so I made sure to devote the bulk of my time to the Outer Bay, which boasts a million gallons of free-floating marine amusement behind 13 inches of acrylic window space. Sure, the hammerheads and turtles were mesmerizing, but it was the ocean sunfish -- the first I'd ever viewed in real life -- that startled me to the point of transfixion.

These creatures never should have made it this far through evolution. Their poorly designed, flattened bodies are so hydrodynamically inept that they seem to drift helplessly with the current more so than any oceanic invertebrate (See: jellies). As young'uns, they appear normal enough, with the requisite fins and gills in all the right places, but once they get bigger, Mola mola takes on a grotesque form normally reserved for burn victims. Its tail takes on cauliflower characteristics, to the point of serving little purpose. Its "facial" features seem almost amorphous, with only a small orifice for a mouth. And its dorsal and anal fins seem ineffective when the current assumes strengths stronger than that of a bath tap.

I lingered at the Outer Bay exhibit longer than usual solely because of the two ocean sunfish specimens (six and ten feet tall, by the docent's estimates; Wikipedia has a good shot of their freakish size). Through the blue-gray gloom, one made its way towards the window at an awkward angle, as if emulating some inanimate piece of flotsam, until it was only feet away. Its eye looked cartoonish, as if it had been dreamed up by some freebaser in the basement of Henson Creature Studios, a sliced ping-pong ball granted the wish of orbital movement. It was ghastly, ghostly, too much for me to handle, and I backed away into the crowd until I was safely behind the docent and a maraudering band of Japanese tourists.

The hammerheads continued to circle the tank. My pals, the sea turtles, flitted by and high-fived me with their flippers after each circuit. The 300-pound tuna -- confined to below-average temperatures due to their need to breed at NASCAR speeds when the mercury rises to the mid-70s -- lapped the tank as if making for the next Guinness record. But they all sped by in comparison to the sunfish, who, like some gelatinous monster from the '50s, glided amiably by as if they had all the time in the world. If the meek shall indeed inherit the Earth, then the sunfish is going to be signing your timesheets come the next stock plunge. Stick me in a tank with carniverous sharks anyday. I'm certain these freakazoids would gum you to death, if given the chance.

Oh, and if you get the chance when in Monterey, stop by For Garlic Lovers in the nearby arcade. Decadent halitosis-inducing edibles await.

Good News for Sharks!

Who'da thunk that Mexico would lead the way in environmentalism? In an email sent to me by Patric Douglas, the CEO of Shark Diver (the outfitter who ran my great white shark diving adventure), I learned that our friends south of the border recently passed landmark regulations protecting the most feared of ocean denizens. Granted, Mexico stands to earn some top tourism dollars from this feat of altruism, but if all other countries heeded this lesson, think of all the species that would reap the benefits -- not to mention the locals who could make a buck (or two) on us eco-loving tourists.

¡Viva México!

Atom XML Feed Fixed

Atom feed and link to adding to My Yahoo! now work. Rejoice.

The Atom link had been killing me for some time. I just couldn't figure out why I was getting an error message every time I tried to subscribe to my own blog. Finally, I had to resort to asking for help (thank you again, Todd), which I try not to do, if only because I enjoy figuring things out on my own. Same reason I own a power drill: I love figuring out Ikea's wordless instructions and putting together some monstrosity of a bookcase for five hours. It's fun. Really. I'll come put yours together, if you like. All I ask in return is a cold beer. Or three.

Subscribe now, dammit!