Eclectic Echoes

Social Implications of Mystic Pizza

You find some strange things trolling through access and referrer logs.

• 60% of this months page view (as opposed to hits) traffic is from bookmarks and direct address-bar entries
• 17% is from search engines (with Google being 65% of that traffic and MSN taking another 18% (!) –whatever happened to Yahoo! and Alta Vista and who is “Mamma” ?)
• 15% is from other weblog aggregators such as Technorati and Weblogs.com
• More visitors are using Safari than Firebird (my personal browser of choice)
• according to my corner of the web, Mac’s make up almost 30% of the world(!)

The search phrases this month are a bit odd

• the most popular search phrases to bring people here were various permutations of ”ping pong matrix”. Almost a third of the search traffic came on that subject, which is odd as at google Eclectic Echoes is way down there on the list–like #29–third page with normal google pref’s.
• for some reason “cubs jokes” and “cubs last pennant” were very popular as well. Don’t worry ya’ll spring training is right around the corner ;)
• kopi luwak brought about 7% of the search visitors–I’ve got to see if he has any more.
• there were of course the occasional pirate searches, such as a number of searches for “exceleverywhere crack” (11 separate searches) and “Mystic River bit torrent” (7 of those)
• one determined person managed to find a link to Eclectic Echoes from the search phrase “october 2003 thunderbird for sale by owner in usa” supposedly he found this on google–don’t ask me how as a “site:heupel.com” failed miserably

Most of the odd ball searches are a result of the monthly archive pages where a large number of diverse entry titles get indexed by google as one page, leading to google, and searchers, finding this site as a place to get their pirate copy of Mystic River or a “sexy photo of Lawrence Lessig.”

The weirdest search however, yet one that was interesting–not that Lawrence Lessig isn’t; he has my deepest respect and admiration, but I don’t need to see a photo of his brain or principles to know how sexy, well you know what I mean–is a google for the phrase “Social Implications of Mystic Pizza” which scored against the September archives in which I discussed (amongst others) …”Baby Boomers are starting onto Social security…IAB report on implications of SiteFinder…map centered on Mystic Pizza…” I’m sure this searcher was disappointed to find no deep social implications of Mystic Pizza–either here or in the movie–but I would like to know what type of Social Implications they were expecting to find? Don’t get me wrong, I really do like the movie–even before I liked the pizza–but I doubt that much more could be gleaned about the “social Implications” on the web than is available from watching the movie a couple of times. Or was this maybe an attempt to short cut a college sociology assignment?

Mystic Pizza is a great place, with or without the movie of the same name. The pizza is great (especially try their “Grecian”–my personal favorite), as are the grinders (“subs” to those not from New England, like myself.) It is the only pizza that our 3 year old son will eat every bite of. When he says pizza, he means Mystic Pizza. He takes a lot of pride in ordering it himself from the patient and excellent staff, I also think he’s taken a liking to one of the ladies who usually takes the food orders at the bar. They have both a sit down restaurant section and a bar / carry-out area. A lot of locals will lunch in the carry-out area (always a strong indicator of how good a place is–locals eat there despite it being popular with tourists) and there are always a couple of locals having a beer or two at the bar in the evenings. 

We live right across from the original Mystic Pizza–there is a new branch store in North Stonington now. Everyday tourists from around the world stop in front of Mystic Pizza, many with just one goal–getting a picture of themselves under the Mystic Pizza sign. Just the other day I watched as the husband of what had moments before appeared to be an entirely rational and calm woman in her late 30’s early 40’s–I say “moments before” as she was now bouncing up and down and speaking in tongues much like a hyperactive toddler would on Christmas morning after having 30 bowls of “Sugar Choco Crunchies.”–almost get run over as he found the optimum position to take a picture of her under the signage with their little point and shoot camera. The perfect spot to get her and all of the front of the Mystic Pizza was right in the middle of the east bound lane of Main Street, which just happens to come around a blind curve at our parking lot, about 15 yards uphill from Mystic Pizza. Social Implications…