| Jacquielynn Floyd: Cause made Web contest worthwhile 12/14/2000 By Jacquielynn Floyd / The Dallas Morning News There's an awful lot of junk on the Internet, but that includes a kind of junk-shop appeal.
Web surfing, as an idle pastime, can be as appealing as rooting around at a rummage sale. Most of what you find will be rusted skillets and ugly lamps, but there are little treasures, too: obscure music you thought nobody else liked, study guides for books you haven't thought about since high school, odd and useless bits of history. There's a soothing pleasure in the mindless grasshopper odyssey from one arcane site to the next.
Still, I'm not an expert and I'm not an addict. So my first inclination was to beg off when a company that puts Internet kiosks in malls asked me to participate in a publicity exercise it was calling a "celebrity surf-off."
Hesitant at first
It seemed kind of commercial; I didn't want to look like a dork in public; and if the company was calling me, it meant it was out of legitimate celebrities.
But the firm was offering $1,000 to a charity of the winner's choosing, and that would buy a lot of dog biscuits down at the SPCA of Texas, my charity of choice. Besides, the company said I could bring along somebody more Net-adept to do the heavy lifting.
I recruited Beth Keithley, the SPCA's publicity manager, who is young enough to have grown up with the Internet. Her aptitude made me feel like an old geezer still mistrustful of horseless carriages and talking movies, but she said that at 26, even she's a shade too old to take the technology for granted.
"My sister takes a laptop to class to take notes," she said, a little enviously. Wow, I thought. We used pencils, by cracky.
The contest, held in an especially conspicuous area of the Galleria, was sponsored by a company called – I could not possibly make this up – BigFatWow Inc. It is putting Internet stations at shopping malls where you can look up information or check your e-mail or park your bored husband while you shop.
The task was to field trivia questions, look them up on the Internet, and signal with a noisemaker when we got the answer. Beth took over the keyboard, and I was in charge of the noisemaker. Ours was a harmonica.
Speedy 'net-nerds quickly left us in the dust. There were ringers in the group, dot-com wizards who found the final score to Super Bowl V (Colts 16, Cowboys 13) and the price for a night in the Presidential Terrace suite at The Mansion on Turtle Creek ($2,400) in about a mouse click-and-a-half.
But we finally got on the board by being the first to find out what the "Hollywood" sign originally spelled out ("Hollywoodland"). And we were on a roll, Beth smoothly skipping through search engines and sites, me wheezing frantically on the harmonica when she fished out the answers.
Competitive drive
It's foolish, I know, but I really wanted to win. I wanted to get a big novelty check made out to the SPCA to help provide comfort and shelter for the trusting animals we so casually abandon. I wanted it to buy chow or worm medicine or kitty litter, to spay teenage mom cats and get haircuts for dogs.
We nearly won, too. Beth was pretty quick. Tied for first, we blew it on the tiebreaker question: What is Ireland's national emblem? We kept finding wrong answers, but the Texas Technology Magazine team was first with the right one (a harp). It won the G-note for a children's advocacy group.
There were so many worthwhile charities represented, in fact, that I wish everyone could have won. I wish they could all get $1,000. I wish they could all get a million.
At least I got the harmonica. After I pointed out that it already had my spit in it, they said I could keep it.
There was a little feature on all the Internet terminals that invited users to e-mail a Christmas wish to Santa Claus.
"Go on," I urged Beth, before we left. "Send in your wish."
Here's what she typed:
I would like the SPCA of Texas to be empty on Christmas morning because all the animals were adopted into good homes.
That's what I want, too.
Jacquielynn Floyd can be reached at 214-977-8065 and at
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