You know what’s really fun? Checking out the search engine terms people use that land them, perhaps to their chagrin, on your site. Last month, I wrote a piece about the BBC crime drama series Luther entitled “Sophia Loren’s face.” It was accompanied by a 1960 photo of the actress, which had appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and if you read the article you’d understand that anyone looking for information about her would be sorely disappointed.

So, it tickles me a little that the majority of recent searches showing up on my “Stats” pages have been by those looking for dirt on the buxom beauty, or so I imagine. Imagining, in fact, is what makes this little game so appealing. I try to envision the people driving these searches, and I can take myself to places far, far away. Perhaps the one who wanted more information about “sophia loren eyes” is an ophthalmologist to the stars who’s on the lookout for new celebrity patients from Italy or is herself a wanna-be star from Italy checking out the ophthalmologists real Italian stars use. Ditto for the one who googled “sophia loren plastic surgery,” if you replace “ophthalmologist” with “plastic surgeon.” The person who really got me to wondering, though, was the one who wanted to know something about “sophia loren eel.” I can’t help but think along these lines: Freud, mother/movie star complex and/or penis envy. But, as Freud was said to have said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” so maybe Loren played an eel factory worker in one of her films. And the nosey parker wanted to see how well she handled the slippery things.

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