Sailing to San Juan-Caribbean Blue
Panama Photograph · Port Everglades · Paradise Island
Answer the CallMerry Kissmas
The photograph came from Panama. The departure was Port Everglades. The destination was somewhere between Paradise Island and a tabloid-sized joke.
Caribbean Blue
Imagine Sky High Above
...if all you told was turned to gold / if all you dreamed were new / imagine sky high above in Caribbean blue...
The line supplied the atmosphere before the ship supplied the route.
Caribbean blue was less a color than a direction: away from the terminal, beyond the breakwater, and toward the next island.
Panama Photograph
The Image Came from One Port. The Story Departed from Another.
Port Everglades
Headed Out to Sea
Merry Kissmas.
The photograph was from Panama, but I was in Port Everglades, headed out to sea.
Paradise Island, The Bahamas, was the destination.
The rest was pure tabloid-era imagination: chasing Tiger Woods and his entourage toward the islands and selling the photographs to TMZ.
Not a reporting plan. A punchline with a boarding pass.
The Tabloid Voyage Equation
Departure + Rumor + Paradise Island = A Story Before ArrivalWhat the Old Tags Were Trying to Say
Privacy, Celebrity, and the Appetite for a Photograph
The person does not have to be visible for the rumor to dominate the frame.
The source’s old Technorati tags captured the tension between curiosity and intrusion.
The tabloid reference turns an ordinary departure into comic undercover theater.