WHERE GOOGLE FALLS SHORT, MEMORIES STEP IN
The two people were locked in heavy conversation. Few kind words were being exchanged, and there was little attempt to temper the volume or antagonism of their argument. It was a good thing there were no weapons on the table, or it could have gotten really ugly.
I'm not sure how the fiasco began, but by the time I arrived at the waterfront Hogfish Bar on Stock Island and found my seat at a nearby table, they were going at it pretty strong.
The adjacent working marinas, filled with an eclectic array of live-aboards, commercial fishing vessels, sailboats and sports fisherman, usually offer up a ``close your eyes and you're in the 1950s'' ambience. The air is alive with the pungent bouquet of dead fish and diesel fuel and filled with the clang of halyards slapping at masts, the grinding of gears, the creaking of boat against dock, the chug-chug-chugging of ships' engines set to slow ahead.
TOUGH CROWD
It was not so this day. The pair's dispute was like chalk on a blackboard and a reminder of days past, prior to the gentrification of the Florida Keys, when this restaurant was an offshoot of the rough-and-tumble Red's, an infamous Key West watering hole on Caroline Street that sold cheap booze to drunken sailors and angry bikers. ``Red'' opened this bar after he had to vacate his downtown Key West location but has since moved along to the great biker bar in the sky.
MEET THE CONTESTANTS
The participants in this particular verbal prize-fight were not from the usual cast of Key West characters. Contestant No. 1, angry and unsightly, weighed in at approximately 200 pounds, wore plaid shorts and flip-flops and wagged his finger in the face of contestant No. 2.
She was a petite, well-dressed woman who couldn't weigh much more than 100 pounds dripping wet, an Audrey Hepburn look-alike who wore thick, black rhinestone-studded eyeglasses, her hair in a ponytail. She was angry, too, but cute, like a pixie up to some mischief.
They were fighting, hot and heavy, about who had more Google hits, each staking their claim to fame by the number of times their name appears on that Internet site, and the importance that that fact holds. The argument was beyond ludicrous even before she told him that his arrest record shouldn't count. They niggled back and forth and thankfully ran out of steam before a punch could be thrown.
After the couple left, I struck up a conversation with a tired-looking gentleman sitting nearby who had been shaking his head throughout the couple's fight.
``Pretty pathetic,'' the man said, pointing toward the parking lot where the couple, now holding hands, headed toward their car. ``They think they're so important.''
I assumed he thought the argument as silly as I did, but when he added, ``I've probably got more Google hits than the both of them put together,'' I kept my opinion to myself.
THE GOOGLE TEST
I had never thought about Google as a barometer of one's importance or worth. When I arrived home, I Googled several important people in my life, people I hold close in my heart and mind: my fourth-grade teacher, Doris Smith, who taught me humor. Not one Google hit. Then I tried my eighth-grade teacher, Paris Amico, who passed along reasoning and dignity. Not a line. Next, I entered my father, George Suib, who taught me to value each word as a prize, and who, while I was growing up, never gave me the answer to a question free of charge, instead pointing me in the right direction, allowing me to figure it out myself. Not one solitary hit. It's impossible, I thought. Google, with its vast and complex memory system of numbers and codes, hadn't the foggiest idea who these important people were.
I shut my computer down and switched to a far more accurate search engine, the search engine of my heart and mind. And the hits keep coming.
The two people were locked in heavy conversation. Few kind words were being exchanged, and there was little attempt to temper the volume or antagonism of their argument. It was a good thing there were no weapons on the table, or it could have gotten really ugly.
I'm not sure how the fiasco began, but by the time I arrived at the waterfront Hogfish Bar on Stock Island and found my seat at a nearby table, they were going at it pretty strong.
The adjacent working marinas, filled with an eclectic array of live-aboards, commercial fishing vessels, sailboats and sports fisherman, usually offer up a ``close your eyes and you're in the 1950s'' ambience. The air is alive with the pungent bouquet of dead fish and diesel fuel and filled with the clang of halyards slapping at masts, the grinding of gears, the creaking of boat against dock, the chug-chug-chugging of ships' engines set to slow ahead.
TOUGH CROWD
It was not so this day. The pair's dispute was like chalk on a blackboard and a reminder of days past, prior to the gentrification of the Florida Keys, when this restaurant was an offshoot of the rough-and-tumble Red's, an infamous Key West watering hole on Caroline Street that sold cheap booze to drunken sailors and angry bikers. ``Red'' opened this bar after he had to vacate his downtown Key West location but has since moved along to the great biker bar in the sky.
MEET THE CONTESTANTS
The participants in this particular verbal prize-fight were not from the usual cast of Key West characters. Contestant No. 1, angry and unsightly, weighed in at approximately 200 pounds, wore plaid shorts and flip-flops and wagged his finger in the face of contestant No. 2.
She was a petite, well-dressed woman who couldn't weigh much more than 100 pounds dripping wet, an Audrey Hepburn look-alike who wore thick, black rhinestone-studded eyeglasses, her hair in a ponytail. She was angry, too, but cute, like a pixie up to some mischief.
They were fighting, hot and heavy, about who had more Google hits, each staking their claim to fame by the number of times their name appears on that Internet site, and the importance that that fact holds. The argument was beyond ludicrous even before she told him that his arrest record shouldn't count. They niggled back and forth and thankfully ran out of steam before a punch could be thrown.
After the couple left, I struck up a conversation with a tired-looking gentleman sitting nearby who had been shaking his head throughout the couple's fight.
``Pretty pathetic,'' the man said, pointing toward the parking lot where the couple, now holding hands, headed toward their car. ``They think they're so important.''
I assumed he thought the argument as silly as I did, but when he added, ``I've probably got more Google hits than the both of them put together,'' I kept my opinion to myself.
THE GOOGLE TEST
I had never thought about Google as a barometer of one's importance or worth. When I arrived home, I Googled several important people in my life, people I hold close in my heart and mind: my fourth-grade teacher, Doris Smith, who taught me humor. Not one Google hit. Then I tried my eighth-grade teacher, Paris Amico, who passed along reasoning and dignity. Not a line. Next, I entered my father, George Suib, who taught me to value each word as a prize, and who, while I was growing up, never gave me the answer to a question free of charge, instead pointing me in the right direction, allowing me to figure it out myself. Not one solitary hit. It's impossible, I thought. Google, with its vast and complex memory system of numbers and codes, hadn't the foggiest idea who these important people were.
I shut my computer down and switched to a far more accurate search engine, the search engine of my heart and mind. And the hits keep coming.
posted by Michael Suib at 11:39 AM
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