So I googled my name recently, just for the hell of it. Oh like you've never done it. There were lots of listings, but distressingly few of them were me. The first one that WAS me was for a performance at CBGB's four years ago, a one night event that I was actually unable to do. Rules about public nudity and alcohol, you know how it is. Farther down the list there was a review for a show I did at PS 122 back in 2003, then on the second page there was a listing for this blog. Then I realized it wasn't actually for the blog, but for one entry on it, the one about my debut as a Dutch journalist, and the only reason it was there was because I had written my full name. Patrick Lacey. Right. Just that entry showed up. So, I wondered if I could artificially up my status on google, maybe even make it into the first ten, if I wrote my name, that being Patrick Lacey, lots. Google probably doesn't go for quantity, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway.
To be clear, I am not the Patrick Lacey who plays basketball. I'm not the Patrick Lacey who is a published author (no, we really can't count the Dutch article). I'm not the Patrick Lacey who is an animal trainer and already has a listing on imdb.com because he trained the pig for those Babe movies. I'm not even one of the 493 billion Patrick Laceys presently living in Limerick, Eire which is doubly impressive, since the entire population of Eire is about 5 millon. As far as I can tell, I'm not even related to any of those Patrick Laceys. Nope, I'm the Indiana-raised, Earlham College-educated, New York by way of Seattle residing actor and occasional dancer, writer, mask-maker, and art model. Or dilettante, if you prefer. Also go to hell. That photo above? That's me. If you've ever taken a figure drawing or painting class at the Pratt Institute, Columbia University, Seattle Community College, The Academy of Realist art, Cornish School of the Arts, and any number of small private studios, then you've probably seen me naked. Quite a few of you probably have several nudes of me kicking around in your portfolios. Hell, if you saw productions of The Incubus (NY), Innocence, or The Swan (both Seattle) then you saw me naked as well, and were probably much less prepared for it. Sorry about that, it was in the script. Really. Oh yeah, if you ever attended a Searchlight; An Evening of New Works (fundraiser for the company Ghostlight) you might have seen me naked there as well. The only time I've been arrested, the charge was for public lewdness, but all I did was go skinny dipping in Lake Washington in the middle of the night. You might assume all this public nudity is due to either great vanity or maybe really high self-esteem, but nothing could be further from the truth. I guess once you've been naked in front of strangers a few times, it just ceases being a big deal.
This experiment in shameless self-promotion would be more interesting if I had something I wanted to promote other than my name (or nudity, apparently), but at the moment that's all I got. But maybe YOU have something you'd like me to do? Just for the record I was born to play Puck, am desperate to work with Joss Whedon (Joss, are you reading this? Did you google your name? Call me!), John Barrowman (sorry- I mean glad to hear about your wedding, Handsome), Sir Ian MacKellan, Helen Mirren, Julianne Moore, Neil Gaiman, Tom Stoppard, Douglas Hughes, Daniel Sullivan, Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, Neil Jordan, Patrick Stewart, Merchant/Ivory (well, the living one) and more names as they come to me. I've been offering Brad Pitt a lot of advice on his search for a 'gay' project, but that seems to have stalled. I also would love to travel more, perhaps living for a time in places like Scotland, Eire (again), lots of little islands, New Zealand (oh, would love to work with Peter Jackson too, and wouldn't say no that motion capture thingy), Bali, Spain, New Mexico, Maine, and the San Juan Islands. Again, more places as inspiration hits. At this point, just getting out of New York City before the Summer is my main goal.
I think that pretty much covers things. If you came here looking for me as opposed to one of the other Patrick Laceys, drop me a line. I'd love to get back in touch with old friends. Again, that's Patrick Lacey.
Kisses,
Patrick Lacey.
7 comments:
I hate to burst your bubble Patrick (Lacey!), but Google bases its results on popularity, meaning, that the sites that are visited most often are ranked highest on the results page. Or, you can pay Google for keyword tags (or "ad" words) and then buy your way to the top.
Kind of we are the cyber hookers and the Google is our pimp. He sends out crawlers fairly often to see how we are doing and if we've done more business than last check in. If so, boom, you are ranked higher and get a new silk bra. If your site has not been hit so much and business has declined, you are bumped off and given a black eye and warning, bitch.
Other search engines work differently though. Try it again with Yahoo, Ask, Clusty, Dogpile, and see what happens.
I learned this in school. For reals. Ok, maybe not with the hooker analogy, but I had to think of something that everyone could relate to (which is probably a good example of why my decision to switch away from working with little kiddies was a good one!).
Oh. Right. I knew that. Forgot it, but I did know it at one point. Oh well. Makes me really curious as to why that last blog entry was so damn popular though. Maybe it was the quotation in Dutch.
And yes, it's a very good thing you've decided to avoid the kiddies. Tramp. I'm still gonna work for that silk bra.
Clusty? Seriously?
you're pretty cute
Why thank you, George. Have we met? Do you have a blog I should be reading?
I know this isn't how google finds us all - but I really enjoyed reading the attempt...
Moheggie - question - if it isn't the amount of times aname is listed and its based on hits...then why do tags and meta matter so much to the launching of an, um, anything on the the web?
if its a long answer, no worries, you can tell me another time -
take care Patrick Lacey
xoxox
Good question Melissa! Here's the short answer:
Google is a popularity-based search engine, but many others are not and use different methods for retrieving their data. For instance, your page titles come up huge. The more descriptive they are, the more keywords they provide, and therefore become easier to find and are more retrievable.
Meta tags provide information on your page. The most important is the "description" tag. This is what the search engine will display as the summary of your site.
Basically, you add the meta data in order to make your web site searchable and retrievable. How many times it is searched and viewed is all dependent on how accessible you make your website!
Hm, did I answer what you were asking?? The web is such ridonkulous entity.
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