09/18/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
The problem: I’m off to Morocco for three weeks, a country where the predominant languages are French and Arabic. I needed somehow to relocate my high school French, which had faded significantly after several decades and about a million trips to Mexico. What to do? I bought a cheapie CD kit at a bookstore, but the course what it offered had nothing to do with travel—it was great if you wanted to recite a recipe for tomato soup. I’m not kidding.
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09/15/2009 by Jane Di Leo
Our deputy editor, Sarah Elbert, just got back from running her first half marathon (she killed it, by the way), which was in Montreal this past weekend. Her adventure reminded me of what I love to do most when landing in a new city: run.
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09/08/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Season Five of Tyra Banks’ talk show kicked off this week on the CW, and her online magazine, Tyra, also debuted this week, though she was already hard at it when I visited with her in New York in July. If past shows have been any indication, we can expect to see her interview more big-name “gets” this year, although, surprisingly, she confessed to not being particularly fierce when it comes to stalking celebrity interviews.
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08/25/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
AMC’s critical smash Mad Men glided smoothly into its third season over a week ago with its suave noir look at the early ‘60s through the smokey lens of a Madison Avenue advertising agency. Last year, the show took the Emmy for best drama, becoming the first basic cable show ever to do so. This year it’s nominated for another 16 Emmys, including best drama and best actress for Elisabeth Moss, who plays the ambitious Peggy Olson, who has bravely scaled the employment wall separating the men from the secretaries.
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08/13/2009 by Liz Doyle
I'll admit it: Professional athletes have always fascinated me. Whether tennis stars, swimmers or marathon runners, they are all finely tuned machines designed for optimum performance. So what goes into getting these athletes to the highest level? Is it all in the training, or is it just part of their DNA?
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08/05/2009 by Sarah Elbert
Our editor maintains that, in general, a third of a magazine’s readers know less than its editors, a third know just about the same amount and a third know more than they (OK, we) do. Of course, some know more about certain fields than others, and our sources and writers come almost exclusively from the last, smarty-pants category. Occasionally (though not often), we also happen upon readers who also fall into this last category, finding nuggets that escaped even our tenacious fact-checkers.
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08/03/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Here’s one for our “You never know who might be reading” file. In June’s issue, comedian Robert Klein pleaded guilty to a 30-year-old crime: He’d stolen a towel from the Holiday Inn during one of his tours. It wasn’t just an idle confession either; Klein’s people had actually checked with us beforehand to see if we saw any legal ramifications to him making such a statement. "Sure, go ahead," we said cavalierly. I mean, how long could the statute of limitations be on Grand Theft Towel?
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07/22/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Part of the fun of going along on the "Fame Exchange" shoot with Quiksilver’s Bob McKnight and IMAX film director Greg MacGillivray (see this month’s issue) was the chance to visit one of my favorite seaside towns in all the world: Laguna Beach, California.
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07/17/2009 by Sarah Elbert
I wouldn’t call myself a runner. I can comfortably run three miles
several times a week and feel good that I’m doing something to work off
my addiction to animal crackers from the office vending machine (low in
fat, a little sugar, quite filling . . . perhaps a slight hint of
cardboard, but otherwise a good snack).
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07/06/2009 by Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Our fantasy abut the actors we see on screens big and small is that they lead lives exotically different from our own. When it comes to Jerry Ferrara, who plays Turtle on HBO's hit series Entourage (and appears in this month's Sky), one would suspect that his real life involves a lot of the perks enjoyed by his alter ego, such as spur-of-the-moment trips to Vegas or Hawaii on private jets. That's why I was so amused when Jerry mentioned during our interview that he wasn't really a big vacation guy. In fact, he said, until recently, "I hadn't been anywhere except to Florida to visit my grandma."
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About Sarah Elbert
As executive editor of Delta Sky, Sarah Elbert lassos the best writers she can find to cover the world—as well as contributing some prose of her own. Before coming to Sky, Sarah was editorial director of magazines including Northwest WorldTraveler and Carlson Wagonlit Travel's Postcards. She has been a newspaper editor, a freelance writer and an Associated Press reporter, riding with the White House travel pool (back in the Clinton days) and covering everything from natural disasters to a cat kidney transplant. Sarah has written for The New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Sun—but not the NY Daily News. She now lives in Minneapolis, which she finds lovely and underrated, but does occasionally miss Manhattan and the Staten Island Ferry. Sarah would like to think she could again go backpacking across Europe, and she still loves to travel, but she knows that train has left the station. It's just so much quicker to fly.
About Deborah Caulfield Rybak
Senior editor Deborah Caulfield Rybak interviewed the Who’s Who of Hollywood during her years as an entertainment industry reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She still prefers writing about the arts to almost any other journalistic activity, so it’s a good thing we’ve got her on that beat at Sky. She’s pocketed numerous journalism awards and co-written three books.
But that’s just her journalistic cred: she’s also worked as an FM deejay in Aspen, a speechwriter in Washington and an environmental film festival director in Colorado. She considers herself happiest when she’s out of town—and out of cellphone range. She’s hitchhiked across Kenya, spent the night atop a pyramid in Central America, hovered face-to-mandible with giant manta rays during a night dive in Hawaii and hiked the High Atlas mountains in Morocco. Still left on her to do list: Bhutan and marlin fishing.
About Liz Doyle
After a few years navigating the trenches of New York's fashion scene as a stylist assistant at Harpers Bazaar, associate editor Liz Doyle is excited to be back in her childhood hometown of Minneapolis. When she isn't scouting the latest trends in fashion and travel, she moonlights at a local Parisian brasserie where she says "welcome" and "enjoy" a lot and occasionally tries to improve her French. Though her foray to the editorial side of the magazine industry is a new one, she welcomes the challenge and can't wait to see what this new adventure holds.
About Amanda Hoffstrom
Associate online editor Amanda Hoffstrom maintains the web and social media presence of Delta Sky. She enjoys using new media and exploring how different platforms enhance the reader experience. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Amanda lives in Minneapolis and has several destinations on her bucket list including Paris and Sydney. Future trips include St. Lucia, Seattle, Vancouver, London and New York. When she’s not in the office, she's a pop culture junkie, soaking up as many movies, television shows and magazines as possible.