Want to relax in the sand on Billionaire's Beach in Malibu?

Good luck with that. Carbon Beach is a beautiful 2.4-km beach with the deepest, driest, and possibly prettiest sand in L.A. For decades, it's been a secluded enclave that's extremely difficult for outsiders to find and enjoy.

No Trespassing sign at Carbon Beach, California   (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

 Malibu's wealthy residents have gone to great lengths to keep out miscreants and ne'er-do-wells like you and me. To discourage the masses, locals have dropped orange 'no parking' cones, hung illegal No Trespassing and No Parking signs, built restraining walls and fake garage doors, hired gruff security guards, padlocked gates, and concealed other gates behind tall hedges. And they will tow your car at the drop of a top hat.

According to a great story in the New York Times, the tactics are working: 32 out of the 43 kilometers of stunning Malibu coastline are inaccessible to the Great Unwashed.

Carbon Beach is a perfect example of beach inequality. In the 1930s, the area was subdivided by Malibu's founding family, the Rindges, and there are now 70 beachfront properties. Used to be cheap-ish to live here (I distinctly remember a '70s private eye who lived in a rusty trailer by the Malibu sand), but realtors are now commanding $200,000 per foot of beachfront. Enter the very, very rich.

"Carbon Beach is home to the people who write the checks in Hollywood," realtor Stephen Shapiro told Forbes. Current residents of this expensive, tight-knit sandbox include Hollywood megaproducer Joel Silver, Pretty Woman producer Arnon Milchan, retired 007 Pierce Brosnan, DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, music/film mogul David Geffen, Microsoft owner Paul Allen, Hard Rock Cafe co-founder Peter Morton, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison who owns 10 (!) beachfront homes and lots.

Imagine you were grounded on a runway for hours in the scorching Nevada sun. Would you freak out? Mutiny? Or break into song?

This happened on Sunday at McCarran International Airport. Passengers were stuck on two consecutive planes on the Las Vegas tarmac for hours without air conditioning or water. The temperature outside the plane reached a vicious 42°Celsius (108°F).

Allegiant Air flight 592 was supposed to depart for Phoenix, but apparently a medical emergency grounded it. The passengers switched planes but mechanical issues kept passengers grounded on the desert tarmac for even longer.

“With no water, I just honestly didn’t think they cared about the well-being of the customers,” passenger Jenisis Altamirano said to ABC News affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix. Passengers sufffered bloody noses, vomiting, and passing out.

Sounds about as much fun as a Carnival hell cruise.

There were two remarkable recent pilot stories.

The first happened on a JetBlue flight from Pittsburgh to Boston on Monday night. The flight took off shortly after the visiting Boston Bruins upset the heavily-favoured Pittsburgh Penguins, destroying the flightless fowl by a whopping 6-1 in the Penguins' home rink. Brutal.

Seems the JetBlue pilot was a Bruins fan...and the plane was full of Boston media. So the pilot took a playful jab at Penguins' superstar Sidney Crosby. According to CBS Boston, there was a crying baby on the plane, so the pilot went on the loudspeaker and asked, "Is that Sidney Crosby in back of our plane!”

[Note: Crosby is having a wretched series against Boston so far. Zero points in two games, lots of giveaways, and critics accuse Crosby of complaining too much to referees.]

In the nick of time, I've discovered that May is Zombie Appreciation Month.

Why May? According to the Zombie Research Society, "many films important to the evolution of the modern zombie are set in the month of May, most notably George Romero’s original 1968 zombie classic NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD."

We're also a few weeks away from the release of the big-budget horror film, WORLD WAR Z featuring Brad Pitt running for his life from superfast zombies that can swarm like ants and crawl on top of each other to scale huge walls (!).

So it's the perfect time to discuss zombie preparation. Earlier this week I revealed the World's Worst Airports for a Zombie Outbreak (#1 is Frankfurt and #2 is Atlanta). So today let's focus on the positive.

The Zombie Research Society (which boasts over 200,000 living members) has created a helpful list of the ten most zombie-proof countries. Did your country make the list? Read on!

Bah, it was only a matter of time.

Airbnb, that great gift to thrifty travellers, has been ruled illegal in New York City.

Airbnb is a crowdsourcing hospitality site that lets you rent (or rent out) a private home for the night. It's a great way to avoid the nightmare of finding a reasonably priced Manhattan hotel room.

Unfortunately, New York wants to ban Airbnb like it's a bucket-sized soda container.

According to CNET, New York officials are fining local guy Nigel Warren $2,400 for "violating a law that makes it illegal for property owners to rent out homes temporarily -- essentially mimicking hotel stays." The 2010 law prevents New York residents from renting their property out for fewer than 29 days.

Warren rents an East Village condo that no doubt costs a small fortune. The median rent in Manhattan is $3,200 a month. So last year Warren started using Airbnb to help cover his own rent. He rented his place out 3 times before his landlord caught wind and the city shut down his side business.

Flashback to Jan. 21, 2002: The Canadian dollar closes at 61.79 cents U.S., an all-time low. Just five years later, however, the loonie reaches parity with the greenback for the first time in more than three decades.

Maybe it'll be another 30 years before we see a 60-cent Canadian dollar. Maybe it'll be three years. Back in 2002 -- not so long ago, really -- many Canadians would have scoffed at the idea of parity in so short a time.

My point: The Canadian Tourism Commission's recent move to curtail its marketing efforts in the United States -- revealed in its 2012 annual report, released last week -- is short-sighted at best.

To be sure, the CTC -- a Crown corporation that acts as a national tourism marketing board -- faces an uphill battle when it comes to luring Americans north of the border. For one thing, its operating budget for 2012 was slashed from $72 million to $58.5 million. But the most obvious hurdle facing the CTC is the relatively strong loonie.

It's hardly surprising that many Americans aren't venturing north, as most of the trappings of travel -- hotels, rental cars, dining and especially drinking -- end up being considerably more expensive in Canada than in the U.S. 

Don't get me wrong: Exploring Canada is worth every penny. But American holidaymakers surely perceive it as being similar to the U.S. This could be seen as a positive attribute, given many Americans' skittishness abroad, but why would they visit Banff National Park (pictured below), say, when she could explore Montana's nearby Glacier National Park for considerably less? Why visit Toronto when there's Chicago? Why visit Whistler when there's Vail?

Photo by Kevin McNeal/Bournemouth News/Rex Features

How many more Air Canada passengers will feel like this as a result of the airline's new check-in deadline? Photo credit: KAI PFAFFENBACH/Newscom/RTR

When I heard the sad tale of Newfoundland's Cumben family -- who, on Sunday, became the first widely-reported "victims" of Air Canada's new domestic check-in policy -- I initially felt some sympathy for them.

According to the CBC, the Cumbens' two daughters, aged 13 and 15, were barred from a flight from St. John's to Halifax because they were 120 seconds late for check-in, arriving 43 minutes before the scheduled departure time. (It apparently cost $349 to rebook a later flight, said their dad, Michael Cumben, who went on to request reimbursement, and even a free flight, as compensation.)

Cumben and his wife (whose name was not reported) wanted to accompany their daughters to the gate, he explained, and were told by Air Canada staff that they shouldn't bother checking in online as the parents would need security passes from the ticket counter, where the teens could also check in.

"If you give back, you'll get back."

That, in a nutshell, is the message Céline Cousteau aims to convey through her marine conservation partnership with Contiki Tours.

The international tour operator, which caters to 18- to 35-year-olds, is one of the founders of TreadRight, a not-for-profit group that oversees various sustainable tourism projects and fosters the preservation of popular tourist sites such as the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and the Grand Canyon. You may recognize Cousteau's last name -- she's the granddaughter of legendary French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau -- but she's also an accomplished environmental activist in her own right, having founded, among other projects, CauseCentric Productions, a non-profit that aims to help other organizations communicate their messages through film.

"With the experiences I have," Cousteau, 39, explains -- visiting remote tribes in the Amazon rainforest (pictured above), diving with manatees and humpback whales, the list goes on -- "I play a role in helping Contiki tell the story they want to tell. They have the means" -- thousands of young, energetic, eco-minded customers, as well as access to funding -- "and I have the content."

I had a chance to chat with Cousteau about sustainable tourism leading up to her speaking engagement at last weekend's Green Living Show in Toronto:

Wow, you sure are attractive. I can tell that from here.

But are you so devastatingly good looking that you've been tossed out of a country?

That happened to three men from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The men had travelled to the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh to attend the 28th annual Jenadrivah Heritage & Culture Festival. Its a 2-week celebration of traditional Saudi Arabian culture that's run by the National Guard.

The festival opened with a camel race on April 4th, and features traditional Saudi Arabian arts, crafts, poetry competitions, dancing, singing, and blacksmithing.

Now, you should know that the three handsome men weren't random faces in the crowd of 300,000. They were delegates from the UAE, which makes the next part of the story so strange.

This man is too handsome. Kick him out.    ----->

Whoa, it's a giant, fire breathing sea serpent bridge!

To celebrate the 38th anniversary of its liberation at the end of the Vietnam War (a.k.a. its capture by North Vietnamese communists), the city of Da Nang, Vietnam has unveiled Dragon Bridge which features a huge dragon breathing great balls of fire.

Well, maybe they didn't unveil the dragon...more like they unleashed it on a terrified public.