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04 November 2015
23:42

I receive unsolicited pitches for TV shows most days. Most are from exciting, new producers looking for a contact to send their revolutionary new show idea. But some are from complete lunatics who have cooked up a programme idea with their dearest and write, suggesting I find people to turn their idea into reality. Someone once emailed me a photo of himself, his wife and his neighbours topless in a hot tub, pitching it as a show where they interview celebrities in the tub over a beer (actually true).

From a quick scan of today's email I could see it was long and rambling, had no attachment and came from a @zetnet.co.uk address. First thoughts: another naked hot tub chat show idea. Then I noticed it was from Chris of Maggie. How long has it been? 15 years since we last emailed?

Oh Christ, he's found me. And not via Twitter, Facebook or some other sensible method, but by the programme ideas email address.

So I quickly set fire to my computer and handed in my resignation.

(You can still do that, if you wish - Ed Note.)

No, what I actually did was find an ST emulator, read a ton of Maggie back issues and agree to Chris' suggestion of writing something for this anniversary edition.

So yeah, since I last wrote for Maggie I've been given jobs of increasing importance where I can still thankfully dick about, but that's ok, because it's in my job description. It's a blessed thing.

Reading those old issues of Maggie made me nostalgic, but mainly made me thankful for modern web design and UX (sorry - Maggie did look amazing at the time). I also totally forgot about the number of random reviews in Maggie. Been to a U2 gig? REVIEW IT. Seen Titanic? REVIEW IT. But it's the only film review in the issue, isn't that weird? NO.

A few years ago I sold my Atari 2600 and games on eBay. Also sold my Atari Jaguar. But the ST stays. It may be disrespectfully up in the loft, with several boxes of floppy disks probably warping from the temperature fluctuations, and no CRT TV to connect it to, but I can't bring myself to part with it. Maybe I'll get it out of the box again one day, and maybe I'll even finally get round to upgrading its RAM, which I bought, then never added because I had no idea how to use a soldering iron (still don't but through age comes recklessness).

WHAT THE HELL ELSE HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO

Urgh. I hate writing about myself, but this is what was asked of me, so here goes. I've been working for television and the internet since the last time I wrote for Maggie (when I was probably still in university). Managing to convince people I know what I'm doing and ending up working for places like the beeb and Channel 4. And while doing that I've been doing various other things on the internet so here are A FEW THINGS FROM JODY'S LONG INTERNET ADVENTURE...

Facesinplaces.biz - Started this in 2006. Became a bit of a phenomena for a while. Started as a flickr group of people submitting photos of pareidolia (inanimate objects that look like faces), then I launched a blog, posting the best, daily. Ran for years, about 7,000 people have submitted photos, I published a book (available on Amazon, folks), then finally ran out of time to keep updating the blog in January this year (2015). I should really write a Christmas update. Also, the idea got ripped off by a ton of ad agencies (who if you've ever had the misfortune of working with one, are total idea and creativity vacuums). One advertising campaign ran, recreating photos from the community near identically, so they could get around having to pay the original photographers and also I'm sure justify charging their client a ton of money to art direct photo shoots. Flickr made a nice profile of the project in 2014 - search the web for Weekly Flickr and you'll find it.

I also got into an argument with the Can Haz Cheezburger (urgh) empire, when they launched their own version, at the height of Faces In Places popularity. They came unstuck when their community would basically steal whatever image was on my blog that day and repost it to their own faces blog, so it was indisputably copying my content. They stopped. A win for the little man. I still totally failed to monetise it and get rich when it was popular.

Knitface.net - No idea why I bought this url and made this. It was an odd couple of hours to be honest. Reminded of it annually when the domain renewal comes round. What was I thinking?

@Banksyideas on Twitter. A Banksy pisstake account on twitter. I'm actually going to write another Maggie article on this alone.

TALKING OF BANKSY

Another notable, lovely thing that happened to me that was enabled by the internet: In 2007 Banksy and a ton of other street artists turned the drab shit-tunnel that is Leake Street (near Waterloo, London) into a street art exhibition. It was an event that lasted a few days, I didn't get a ticket, but went to see the remains a few weeks later when the road was opened for public access again. I took a load of photos, uploaded them to Flickr, thought nothing of it. Among the photos I took, there were a couple of images by Minneapolis artist Broken Crow.

A day or so later, I was notified that Broken Crow (real name, John) added some of my photos to his Flickr favourites, so I dropped him a message, telling him how much I enjoyed the show and jokingly suggested that if he's ever in London again and needs a wall to paint, then he's welcome to paint my house.

John asked me to send him a photo of my wall, said it was perfect and that he had a spare day between visiting relatives in London and painting some commissions in Paris. Three weeks later he's here, in my garden, with his fiance Christin, painting a 12x15ft mural.