PETA: $1 Million for Artificial Chicken

Eager to see the demise of animal killing in the name of dinner, PETA is offering a $1 million prize to anyone who can create a commercially viable lab-grown meat substitute.

The meat should be indistinguishable in flavor, texture, and cost from real chicken, and must be created in sufficient quantities to sell 100 pounds in 10 states. The winning product needs to be ready for sale to the public by June 30, 2012.

"We have overcome our own revulsion at flesh-eating to champion a breakthrough that will mean a far kinder world for animals," said PETA President Igrid Newkirk in the LA Times.

While this is sure to raise of chorus of "Down with Frankenfoods!" from some, I'm game to try it, so long as it comes with mashed potatoes and gravy on the side. Oh, and if it's a foul substitute, I'll join the chorus.

Now it just needs a name. Fauxltry? Arti-fowl?

--Emily Matchar

The Surf Family: A Camper, Nine Children, and No School

Leaving a successful medical practice to roam the country with a wife and nine children in a 24-foot camper is not most people's idea of the American Dream, but for Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, surfing across the country while raising his (rather large) family was a dream come true.

Now the Paskowitz’s bizarre odyssey is hitting the silver screen in Doug Pray’s new film, Surfwise, a documentary chronicling the itinerant upbringing of the Paskowitz clan  which opens May 9.

Through interviews and home video, the Paskowitzes’ nomadic life comes into sharp focus—a life of deliberate vagrancy led by Doc Paskowitz, a man who found enlightenment through clean-living, surfing, and a focus on physical and spiritual well-being.

It was this vagabond life that led Doc—Kelly Slater in tow—to Tel Aviv last October for his Surfing for Peace concert, a slightly bungled attempt to bring peace to the Middle East through surfing and music, which Jimmie Briggs chronicled for Outside in February. The concert is one example of a life full of off-beat ideas—and painfully original ideals—that is sure to light up the movie screen.   

“Most parents say ‘Go to school. Don’t go swimming with sharks, that’s dangerous,’” says Salvador Paskowitz, Doc’s 7th son, in Surfwise. “Our parents said ‘You can go swimming with sharks, but you’re not *#^%ing going to school—that %^#*’s dangerous.’”

Need we say more?

—Ryan Krogh

Surfers Provide Home For Orphans

Though they'd lived their entire lives in Costa Rica, land of sugar-white sands and ethereal turquoise surf, many of the kids at San Jose's Hospicio de Huerfanos orphanage had never seen the ocean.

In 2002, a group of American surfers looking to give back to the community decided to change that. Buddies Tim McManus, Steve Sanchez, and John O’Toole took some orphans surfing, spending the day teaching them basic skills and generally just hanging out.

Six years later, that day at the beach has grown into a project called Pura Vida No Pro, attracting both American and Costa Rican volunteers, including several pro surfers. About 100 volunteers and 60 kids hit the beach in 2007, and the event is expected to be big again this November.

McManus has seen his surf buddy, Jose, grow from a shy 11-year-old scared of the water to a confident 16-year old dude in a Quiksilver shirt.

"It's kind of fun to see him emerging into the surf culture," said McManus, a 31-year-old publishing company employee from Charleston, SC.

With money raised from the American surf community, Pura Vida No Pro has bought a house in San Jose to serve as a transitional living home for boys aging out of the orphanage. Pura Vida also sells t-shirts emblazoned with the kids artwork.

You should be able to buy one around May 15 on their Web Site.

They will soon have a photo book about the project, and a documentary, "Finding Pura Vida," premieres at the Charleston International Film Festival early next month. The group hopes to share the love of surfing with kids from other Central American countries in coming years.

"Once you work with them you realize that you want to be able to do more," McManus said.

--Emily Matchar

Q&A with Hiking Phenom Andrew Skurka

In 2005, Andrew Skurka became the first person to hike the entire Sea-to-Sea Route, a nearly 7,800-mile trek from Cape Gaspe, Quebec, to the Olympic Peninsula that took him 339 days to complete. The following summer he cooked up his next big trip: a 6,875-mile journey through the American West linking the Pacific Crest Trail, Pacific Northwest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Grand Enchantment Trail, and Arizona Trail, plus a trail-less segment through the Sonoran and Mojave deserts. Demetri Coupounas, president of GoLite, Skurka’s lead sponsor, later dubbed this hike the Great Western Loop. Skurka finished the Great Western Loop on November 3, 2007, after 208 days of hiking.

Here he talks about the most indispensible gear he used (it involves a can of cat food), how he put back 11 energy bars a day, and where he’s off to next.

On the Set: Last One Standing

In its latest crack at fusing white-knuckle adventure with cultural immersion, the Discovery Channel's Last One Standing premieres tonight (9 p.m. EST), and back in July we got a chance to preview the show and meet the cast and crew as they rolled through Denver, Colorado, for some promotional shoots.

In a Survivor-is-for-wusses platform, three American and three British athletes go toe-to-toe with local tribesman—and each other—in sports like Trobriand Cricket, Vanuatu Canoe Racing, Sumi Kick Fighting, and Zulu Stick Fighting. Blood flies, bones crunch, faces are painted, and even though each athlete comes from different fitness and sporting backgrounds—strong-man, BMX, kick-boxing, resistance training, mountaineering, and even cricket, polo, and rugby—they get pummeled, flattened, and basically humbled into the ground.

There’s an authenticity that works well in this kind of television. The outsiders aren’t coming in and dominating—more often than not, it's  completely the opposite. “This experience has blown the roof off the comfort zone,” said cast member Corey Rennell a mountaineer born on Kodiak Island.

Sure, Last One Standing’s flush with some slightly over-dramatic shots, montages, narration, etc.—but it’s also educational in a behind-the-culture “You tricked me into learning” style, and there are genuine, Hail-Mary moments of suspense that should appeal to not only the sporting set but the documentary crowd as well, especially since part of the experience is having the guys not only compete with—and against—the locals, but also live, work, and eat with them, participating in local customs like healing rituals, rites of passage, and more. There’s no trailer for the cast to go back to and recoup on protein shakes and Gu—they’ve got to prepare, and sometimes kill, what they’re eating.

“It was more of an emotional thing when I had to kill a pig in Papua New Guinea,” said Richard Massey, a rugby and cricket player from Oxford.  “If you were going to eat meat, it’s something you had to confront.”

“Everything we do is traditional,” added Jason Bennett, a BMX champ who makes his living as a high-climber for tree cutting companies in Florida. “Live with them, sleep with them.” And that includes the wilder culinary experience. “We had to castrate a sheep—with our bare hands!”

Tonight the cast throws down in Kalapalo wrestling in Brazil, a sport where the goal is to take your opponent down with a leg grab, flatting him on his back, or spinning him around.  The guys get smacked around, hurtled through the air, have sand thrown in their eyes, and pretty much get destroyed by the locals before earning their stripes, which also entails them participating in a “test of manhood,” involving snake teeth (use your imagination) before representing the tribe and competing against others. 

Later in the season, the show heads off to South Africa for Zulu Stick Fighting, Mexico for the Tarahumara Endurance Race, Nagaland for Sumi Kick Fighting, Mongolia for traditional wrestling, Kiriwina for Trobriand Cricket, Senegal for Sebegalese Wrestling, Papau New Guinea for Sepik Canoe Racing, Brazil for Kraho Log Running, Paqchanta for the Andean Ice Race, Java for Martial Arts, and Vanatau for a Canoe Race.

At the end of the day, the show works as is an inside—and sometimes violent— look at the roll sports and sporting culture play all over the world and at the very least, it should be interesting to see which athlete lands on the top of the heap. But, if the show can improve upon and keep up the pace of the first episode, the network could have a hit on it hands.

Of course, there’s one opponent it may not have the training to survive: CSI has the same time- slot. —Anthony Cerretani

For more on the show,  click here and watch a preview below:

Paddle for the People

On Monday, New York City got a little taste of wave culture when surfers like Joel Tudor, Darrick Doerner, and Gerry Lopez and took to the Hudson with over 30 others for an organized paddle race circumnavigation of Manhattan for Sea Paddle NYC .
    The event was put together by the Surfers’ Environmental Alliance (SEA) to benefit both SEA and Autism Awareness.    

“Surfing and being in the ocean has also proven to provide autistic kids a rare sense of calm and tranquility,” Andrew Mencinsky, Executive Director of SEA. 
    Either as individuals or in relay teams, stand-up paddle boarders and surfers stroking on their stomachs worked their way 28 miles around Manhattan from the East River off South Street seaport, into the Harlem River and down the Hudson. Tudor ended up winning the event.

Photos by Andrew Brusso

Movie Review: God Grew Tired of Us

You've heard, no doubt, of the group of African refugees known as "The Lost Boys of the Sudan." To escape their country’s savage civil war, which took more than 500,000 lives between 1983 and 2005 and displaced millions, some 25,000 kids—mostly male, ages three to 13—left their families and villages and spent years trekking hundreds of miles, barefoot, across the sub-Saharan desert. While many died along the way, thousands eventually found safety in refugee camps in Kenya and Uganda.

The statistics are sad and shocking. But they tend to get lost in the shuffle in a world where war and suffering are so common they’re no longer necessarily front-page news. I can pretty much promise that if you watch God Grew Tired of Us ($25; www.godgrewtiredofus.com) the Sundance-award-winning documentary which hits DVD today from Sony Pictures, the Lost Boys and their story will stick in your head. (Watch a preview of the film below).

God Grew Tired of Us follows three Sudanese boys—now 20- and 30-somethings, actually—who spent ten years in the U.N.’s Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, until a relocation program sponsored by the U.S. government, the U.N., and various aid groups helped them start new lives in the United States in 2001. John Bul Dau was sent to Syracuse, New York, while Daniel Pach and Panther Bior moved to Pittsburgh; we watch as they leave their friends in Kenya, bravely board a plane for America, and experience such wonders as hot-water showers, electricity on demand, and store aisles filled with fresh produce and packaged junk food. We also watch as, over the next four years, they work double-shift jobs, struggle to understand and fit into American culture, and worry about the fate of the families they left behind in Sudan. Food is more plentiful, they have roofs over the heads, and they’re living in a peaceful society. But it’s clear that life isn’t easy now for the Sudanese refugees; it’s just different.

Nicole Kidman narrates—an attempt, obviously, to lend some Hollywood appeal to the production—and Brad Pitt is listed as an executive producer, but the stars here are the Sudanese men who persevere after years of unfathomable hardship. Their reactions to the novelties of American life (flushable toilets, with seats that close!) lend some lightness to the film, which is serious but somehow never a complete downer. A few critics, in fact, have bashed it for glossing over the atrocities that took place in Sudan 20 years ago. But this compelling film explains more, I’m guessing, than most Americans (myself included) ever knew about the Sudanese people who came to America in the early 2000s—and it sheds light on what Sudan's latest refugees, fleeing violence in the country's Darfur region, are going through today.—Dianna Delling

Q&A with Into the Wild Stunt Double

Last year, professional kayaker Marlow Long, a producer with Young Guns Productions, got a call from Hollywood. A film crew was looking for a stunt double for some kayak scenes and Long, a 23-year-old with shaggy blond hair and a fit build, looked the part. The film, he would find out, was being directed by Sean Penn. It was a remake of the 1996 book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which began as a story in Outside’s January 1993 issue. The story, as we all know now, was about 22-year-old Christopher McCandless, who, in 1992, walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never returned. In the film, Sean Penn wanted to include kayak footage from the Grand Canyon, since McCandless had once paddled nearly 400 miles on the Colorado River. They brought in North Carolina-based Long as their expert, and for 14 days in June 2006, he gave kayak lessons to Emile Hirsch, the actor playing the part of McCandless, and posed as McCandless on the bigger rapids. Look for a behind-the-scenes interview with the cast and crew of Into the Wild in Outside’s September issue, on stands August 14, by Outside editor Christopher Keyes (Watch a preview for the film and hear a podcast interview with Keyes on his experience reporting the story here). But for now, we caught up with Long to find out what it’s like when Hollywood pays you to kayak.

Outside: So they must have paid you the big bucks.
Marlow Long: Let’s just say I made the same amount in two weeks working with the film crew as I normally do in an entire year as a pro paddler, earning a salary from my sponsors.

Outside: What exactly did they have you doing?
Long: I taught Emile kayak techniques, everything from how to roll, to how to read water and how to maneuver his boat. We were using really long, old boats, so mainly I was showing him how to be comfortable in the boat. And then for the big wave trains, they shot me to be his double.

Outside: So when we watch the movie, can we tell it’s you and not Emile?
Long: If you slow down the clips on the big rapids, you can tell it’s me. But they even put makeup on me to make me look more like him.

Outside: How did the actor hold up when he was on the river?
Long: Emile had been in a kayak a long time ago, and he’s a pretty athletic kid, so he picked things up easily. The first time he tried to roll his kayak, he actually did it. It was crazy. But then he couldn’t do it again. He was fine in the flat water, but he was super timid in the whitewater.

Outside: What about Sean Penn?
Long: He’s a bit of surfer, so he was pretty comfortable in the water, too, but not really in the whitewater. At one point, Sean and I took a two-person kayak down. He sat in the front, holding a 15mm camera, and I was in the back, steering and paddling. The waves were huge and we totally submerged the boat.

Outside: Where did you guys sleep while you were in the canyon?
Long: We camped along the river. The funniest thing was seeing the Hollywood people hanging out in the wilderness. Some of them had never camped before.

Outside: Wow, so you were really re-living McCandless' adventure.
Long: It was fully catered. We hardly starved.

This Dirtbag's Life

Now that Ira Glass has revitalized radio with his This American Life experiment, some people have started thinking of pictureless sound as a hip medium again. Climber Fitz Cahall is one of those people. His spin on audible art: The Dirtbag Diaries. The free once-a-week podcast chronicles wild adventures in far off places, featuring interviews with the adventurers themselves. Most of the stories could start with "So there I was," but some also wax poetic, like Cahall's own tale of loving and, ultimately, Thelma-and-Louising a jalopy he'd driven across Australia. The show is young, only in its seventh episode, but already has attracted a loyal following. As people look to their morning commute for entertainment, the Diaries are only bound to grow in popularity.

Here's the YouTube version of Fitz's latest episode. Subscribe at http://thedirtbag.libsyn.com/

Summer Solstice Brings Thousands to Stonehenge

As the sun slowly rose this morning above Stonehenge, some 20,000 modern-day druids, pagans and party goers converged below to welcome the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Attendees showed up clad in black cloaks, oak leaves and antlers and many of them danced to drums during the annual gathering near the prehistoric stone circle in Wiltshire, England.

Solstice celebrations were a mainstay of pre-Christian times and people around the world still celebrate with various rituals. In recent years, however, police have also become a staple of such celebrations as they are often deployed now to make sure such rituals don't get too out of hand. More...

MEDIA TUESDAY: Hurricane on the Bayou, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and More.

Fire up the DVD player. Imax guru Greg MacGillivray's Hurricane on the Bayou is finally hits stores today. In August 2005, MacGillivray, the director of films like Everest and Coral Reef Adventure was finishing off a film he shot in the wetlands outside New Orleans he was tentatively titling Hurricane Warning. When Katrina hit, he shifted his focus to document the devastation that took place. Read an interview with MacGillivray on the making of the film here and listen to him discuss his water conservation efforts in a podcast interview.

    On the schlocky side of things, check out 1961's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (The Global Warming Edition) which rolls into stores today as well. Think The Day After Tomorrow—in hell. The Van Allen Radiation Belt has ignited, kicking global warming into overdrive and it's up to Franky Avalon and Peter Lorre (!!) to figure out a way to stop it with the aid of a "atom-powered" supersub. (We couldn't resist—watch a preview below.)
    Not enough schlock you say? It's your lucky day. Before everyone wanted to compete in the X-Games, they wanted to be stunt men, thanks to The Fall Guy . Season 1 is on DVD today too. Enjoy.—Anthony Cerretani

Do or Die Windsurfing

The world's first steel-reinforced hull for a windsurfer or a clown out of his element?

MEDIA TUESDAY: Stealing the Wave

The rivalry and friendship between big wave surfers Mark Foo and Ken Bradshaw is getting the full-length book treatment in Andy Martin's latest, "Stealing the Wave"  released today. Foo was killed in December of 1994 when surfing Mavericks on the California coast. For more on Foo, Read Jon Krakauer's May 1995 feature story, "Mark Foo's Last Ride" here.

Travel Advice...From Borat?

Yes, Borat has a book deal. On Wednesday, Flying Dolphin Press announced that the Kazakh character made famous by Sacha Baron Cohen will be dishing travel advice in a two-sided book; the first half, a guide for Kazakhs traveling to the U.S., Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and the other for Westerners traveling to Kazakhstan, Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Look for it on stands on November 6.
    "There is one and only Borat and we are honored to have him join our pantheon of international writers," said Suzanne Herz, Publisher of Flying Dolphin Press in a statement.  "There is no doubt he will deliver a brilliant book."
    Whether or not Cohen will actually be writing the book is still unclear (as the deal was inked by Borat, and there's no mention of Cohen in the press release) but the book will include text, illustrations, and four color photographs.
    Borat first appeared on Cohen's "Da Ali G Show" on HBO and the film version Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit of Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan a pseudo-documentary about his trip to the United States (now on DVD), grossed over $265 million worldwide, and garnered a best screenplay nomination at this year's Oscars and a Golden Globe Award for Cohen.

   

For Only the Price of a Cup of Coffee A Day, You Too Can Achieve Enlightenment

By Grayson Schaffer

Photo of someone's commute by Kellogg

Like a lot of people this week, I rode my bike to work, but also before work. And like a lot of nerds, I use NPR for workout music (Ira Glass when it's time to really feel the burn). Morning Edition ran a story about a $20 million federal grant received by Marin County, California as part of a pilot program to promote cycling as antidote to global warming. They'll be using the cash to build more bike paths and sidewalks.

The interesting part of listening, on a bike, on a busy highway, burning nothing but oatmeal and too much butter, was the part that seemed crass—a bit of rationalization. Marjorie Sun was interviewing the Marin County Bicycle Coalition's well-named Deb Hubsmith who gave the old Sally Struthers standby: "Even if you changed your behavior for one trip a week you'd be making a difference...in the health of the planet."

True as it may be, it's also irrational. So let me offer this additional observation. Turning the cranks on breakfast alone makes very real just how much energy a car uses. Economically speaking, that sliver of energy I save is also making gas prices microscopically cheaper for every driver on the road. The important thing isn't the savings, it's the perspective shift.

Mostly, I still drive my car the one mile to work after riding—don't even ask what kind it is—but when it comes time to make those group choices that require voting, you won't hear me whining about giving up cars. When you raise CAFE standards, make gas cost what it should, and put a real emphasis on public transportation, I'll sell my...OK, it's a Suburban.

Point Break 2?

Could it be? Is Patrick Swayze wet-suiting up for another crack at Bodhi, the soul-searching, crime-spree-leading surfer from 1991's Point Break.

Original screenwriter Peter Iliff, also responsible for Patriot Games and Varsity Blues is telling Variety it's so. Apparently, the sequel will take place in Southeast Asia and will center on a Navy Seal (and, of course, surfer) who's tracking a criminal gang a la Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) in the original. It's a good thing too. We could only see the stage version, Point Break Live! so many times.