Searching for Gotti in the Brave New JackassWorld

So I was reading Techmeme, clicked thru to the Times of London story on Apax Partners bidding on Reed Business Information (£1.25 billion publisher of Variety, New Scientist, Computer Weekly et.al.) to merge with eMap (bought for a cool £1 billion) and Incisive Media (that would be us).

Then I noticed another TL story on the power of search in the jackass world: “Microtrends: gangsta spray tans.”

U.S.-based sports blog (more of an online lad mag) barstoolsports.com posted pix of spray-tanned Guidos. If only the barstool blogger had googled the Gotti-wannabes before labeling them “New Jersey Freakshows.”

The London Times reporter Tom Whitwell asked, “What makes a young man paint himself orange, put on a skin-tight T-shirt and pose like a supermodel?”

Whitwell called the pix “a window on a bizarre and unexpected underworld.” (Not if you had mobsters in your extended family, as I did. Or grew up in my neighborhood, as I did.)

The barstoolsports blogger thought the pix were taken in Jersey clubs. Jersey guys said no way, “Long Island.” (I would’ve guessed Staten Island.)

The truth? Europe. The Old Country. One more reason theworld needs Google Universal Search.

The pix were from PartyPhoto.hu a Hungarian Website showing musclehead, spray-tanned club kids in Vienna, home of Sigmund Freud and more tellingly, erstwhile home of Governor Schwarzenegger. Ahh-nuld. That explains it.

Of course barstoolsports might’ve been tipped off by the .hu domain in the big red PartyPhoto.hu letters imprinted on one jpg they published.

As the astute Times reporter noted, the club kids were no doubt inspired by the grandchildren of the late (reputed) Mafia boss John Gotti.

(Like Michael Corleone and the Italian American Anti Defamation League we deny the existence of any organization by the name of Mafia or La Cosa Nostra.)

We do believe in the 24 hour takeover of MTV Studios today by Jackassworld.com, the just-hardlaunched Johnny Knoxville blog Frederick Marckini tipped us off to at SES London (at the cocktail reception, not during his SEO keynote address, natch).

But that’s another bizarro world search story …