Life Imitates Art ... Or, Did Burt Lancaster Invent Google Earth?

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Kids are jumpin'
In other peoples' pools

A real irony would have been, back in the day, if the those bobby-socking teens raided George Gershwin's pool.

I espied this link this morning and did, sort of, a double-take, followed by a hearty laugh.

The Google Earth gatecrashers who take uninvited dips in home-owners' swimming pools

Would-be revellers are using satellite images on the internet to find houses with swimming pools - and then turning up uninvited for an impromptu dip.

The craze involves using the Google Earth programme, which provides high-quality aerial photos of Britain and other countries.

Once a target is chosen, the organisers use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo to arrange to meet, say police.

There's other accounts of it Here and Here.

Absolutely incredible!

And hysterical ...

Who woulda' thunk it?

"If you build it, they will use it ..."

And, to play this all the way out, extend this thought-process of looking up pools and then crashing them, you have to believe that every business involved with pools - from building them, to cleaning them, to catering pool parties, to those retro Chinese lanterns, to providing glo-in-the-dark floating devices, to those providing home security - are all locked in to Google Earth, and burning up the printer, shooting out customized sales letters.

Chimneysweepers, fire up those computers, and exercise whatever finger you're going to use to zoom in on the roofs.

And then, I broke out laughing all over again.

It's, kind of, a back-to-the-future, kind of thing ...

I immediately thought about the odd, little (based on a John Cheever short story) Burt Lancaster film, 'The Swimmer';

On a sunny late summer day in Connecticut, Ned Merrill (Lancaster), an apparently successful, appealing and popular middle-aged businessman, emerges from the woods wearing only a pair of swimming trunks and decides to "swim" home across the county, dropping in on friends' swimming pools ...

At first he receives a warm welcome ... However, as the day wears on and he encounters those who have been closer to him more recently, the welcomes turn increasingly sour ...

If someone wants to remake this film, the kids have already given them the storyline ...

Start those office pools (no pun intended) for when this storyline (using Google Earth to raid swimming pools) makes its' way as the plot for CSI, or some other crime-busting show, next season (of course, there's either a dead body or kidnapping involved) ...

I almost guarantee it ...

They either figure it out in the first 10-15-minutes, and then it's a harried chase, to the end of the show (if it's a Sweeps Month broadcast, they can stretch this into a two-parter) ...

Or, there's a Eureka! moment, at around the 45-minute mark, and they simply trace a few computers to catch their criminal.

Ohhhhh ... Can they use Google Earth to crash in on those office pools?