Famous internet people!

Last month I got an email from my Webmaster Tools PM saying that she was organizing a ski trip and movie night for our team, and that Danny Sullivan and some kids from SEOmoz would probably be there. I got terribly excited about this because these are Famous People (on the internet) whose blogs I frequent, and I was all psyched to get to meet and hang out with them in person (I declined to blog about it because not even Nick knew who they were, that's how niche-geeky I am).

The 'SEOmoz people' turned out to be Rand Fishkin and his girlfriend Geraldine (this will become important later in the story). We all watched movies and ate pizza and it was fun, Rand and Danny and Geraldine were all really cool. End of episode, right? Well, yesterday in a meeting my PM says, "Oh hey, by the way, Rand proposed to Geraldine last night... you can find the video on ifilm." I'm thinking, the video?? What does that mean? So I go look it up.

Turns out Rand is the latest internet meme: the anonymous bachelor "JP" who has been planning to propose to his girlfriend during the Super Bowl on national television. His story has become somewhat of an internet phenomenon: according to the Seattle PI,

"After Adweek polled respondents about which commercials they most anticipated seeing during the big game, "That marriage proposal guy" came in first with 36 percent, beating CareeerBuilder.com (21 percent) and the new Budweiser Ads (18 percent)."

Long story short, he got a corporate sponsor who was gonna pay the however-many millions it costs to get ad time during the Super Bowl, but then they pulled out at the last minute, so he aired his commercial during Geraldine's favourite TV show instead, a couple nights ago.

So go watch it! And when you're done, watch her response—it's great. :-)

Congrats to Rand and Geraldine! (And, in a much more insignificant way, to me for knowing internet-famous people!) I hope I get to hang out with you guys again sometime...

Edit: Just found a blog post that Rand did about that evening... complete with pictures and a subversive list of Google To-Do's for 2007!