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“Just as soon as the material is produced…”

Published 8th July 2016

Internet

Please join me, as we take a trip back in time through to the early days of the web. Mind your head on that <blink> tag.

Old websites which have (brilliantly) managed to cling to being online have been endlessly discussed; the Warner Bros Space Jam site from 1996 is the classic example. Abandoned projects online are nothing new either, although they endlessly fascinate me. The saddest example I can think of is the Save TV Centre Studios campaign – last updated in 2013, with absolutely no admission that hey, it didn’t work out, but they tried their best.1

I think I may have found the most perfect combination of both, however. Behold: Exposure, “The How-To eZine Covering The Art Of Illusion”. Oh, it’s all there. Six illusionists listed on the front page, all promising to give their secrets… only two of which are links. And when you visit the David Copperfield section, you’re greeted with a list of all his tricks… precisely none of which are clickable, or have any content whatsoever. In fact, there is only one single piece of content on the entire site.

But the real beauty comes when looking at the What’s New page. Please forgive me if I just quote all of it.

October 9, 1997 – EXPOSURE gets an overhaul. A new home page now shows some of the magicians that will be featured. Although David Copperfield is an active link, there are no illusions available for viewing – just a list of his television specials with a sub list of the illusions in each special. The illusions will have active links just as soon as the material is produced. The David Blaine link now includes an illusion breakdown of his recent television special, Street Magic. At this moment, the only available illusion is the Balducci Levitation. Others will be made available just as soon as the material is produced.

September 15, 1997 – EXPOSURE goes online, thanks to free web hosting from GeoCities. The Balducci Levitation is the only illusion available.

Yep, that’s it. A grand total of two updates… both done in 1997. Nearly 19 years ago.

And that’s odd. A site going online in 1997, having a total of two updates, and then being swiftly abandoned wasn’t exactly rare. But the fact the site is still online certainly is. Even more weirdly, the site was obviously originally hosted on Geocities, which has obviously long since closed – but the author bothered to find new hosting, buy a proper domain name for the site, and then continue to do nothing else with the site. Not even remove the little Geocities GIFs. Just to make things even stranger, through checking archive.org it appears the site had some inconsequential changes made in 1999, but the currently online site is an earlier version!

A bit of research indicates that the domain name was bought in 2005, although it seems to have only been active since 2010. Geocities closed in 2009. So it seems that the site was created in 1997, sat idle on Geocities for years until Geocities closed, then moved to its own hosting… but still with no updates whatsoever.

An old site falling off the web is a shame, but understandable. An active site moving hosts and continuing to be updated is understandable. Even an inactive site which has a huge archive of material moving hosts and staying online is understandable. But a website with no content, which is never updated, suddenly moving hosts after years, but still completely abandoned?

That’s just weird. Maybe someone’s got a magic trick up their sleeve and are just playing a really long game.

  1. I have never abandoned a project online, of course. ↩

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The New Journalism

Published 3rd July 2016

Internet

Boing Boing’s entire article:

“This inquisitive fellow was unable to keep his hands off a delicate museum piece hanging from the wall at the National Watch & Clock Museum. After breaking it, he lost interest and walked away, leaving his companion to clean up the mess.”

Description on the video, posted directly by the museum itself:

“This is why we beg and plead with our visitors to please refrain from touching objects in museums. The couple did notify Museum staff immediately.”

A few points:

  • So in fact, after breaking it, the guy didn’t “lose interest and walk away”, but actually went to notify museum staff. Which means Boing Boing managed to get the story entirely wrong.
  • Getting the story entirely wrong is especially impressive when it consists of just two sentences and an embedded video.
  • From this, I think we can safely say: not even bothering to read the description attached to a video when you intend to write something about it is not recommended practice.
  • The incorrect information has been pointed out in the site’s comments, but the article has not been corrected or updated to reflect this.
  • Oh, and the article is a duplicate of one posted on the site two and a half weeks before. Except that the original piece got the details correct.

Still, aside from that, excellent work Boing Boing.

Oh, and did I mention that the writer of the piece works as a Research Director?

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Mouthbox Redux

Published 2nd July 2016

Internet

Just over a year ago, I wrote about a TV review site called Mouthbox. The short version of that piece: I noticed a rather odd practice where the same reviews were simply being republished with a new date, rather than new reviews being written. Not the journalistic scandal of the century, it must be said, but it amused me at the time.

Over the past year I’ve given the site an occasional visit, and noted that no more reviews have been posted. (Or, indeed, re-dated.) Still, a blog not updating for a year is hardly worth a follow-up article. However, recently something has changed on the site. No, I’m afraid it’s not a brand new TV review. Instead, rather awkwardly, a link to “Panto Scripts” has been added to the top navbar – so awkwardly, in fact, that the navbar splits onto two lines now when the site is viewed at full width. If we trust The Wayback Machine, the link was added between February and March of this year.

So, let’s take a look at what this new link is actually about.

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Hark at Barker

Published 1st July 2016

TV Presentation

Yesterday there was a bit of consternation about a late schedule change forcing coverage of Wimbledon onto BBC Four and postponing Top of the Pops for an hour. For various reasons I can’t really talk much about that, although expect a THRILLING article about schedule changes generally on here at some point.

I would, however, like to point out something about how Sue Barker ended the show. Over a beauty shot from the grounds:

“Now, coming up next on BBC Four it is Top of the Pops 1982, and it’s a good year for music. A vintage year for tennis as well; Jimmy Connors beat John McEnroe here, and also Martina Navratilova beat Chris Evert. So, that is next here on BBC Four, but I hope you enjoyed our coverage at Wimbledon – we’ll be back with more tomorrow at 11:30. Clare Balding will be here with Today at Wimbledon, that’s at 9:30 on BBC Two. But for now, from Wimbledon, goodbye.”

It’s simply one of the most skilful bits of presenting I’ve ever heard.

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Who Framed Michael Eisner

Published 2nd June 2016

Animation / Film / TV Comedy

When it comes to rumours and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, you all know the drill. Eddie Valiant and Jessica chase Judge Doom out of Toontown, they crash spectacularly, sail through the air, Jessica’s dress hitches up, and you may or may not be able to see her hairy minge. The whole thing has been investigated in great detail, although frankly not quite enough detail for my taste.

Still, that’s not what this piece is about. No, my query is about another rumour associated with the film – and specifically, about this scene in Toontown with Eddie:

allyson

We’ll let the previously linked to Snopes article give us the basics (emphasis mine):

“In another scene, Bob Hoskins steps into a Toon Town men’s room. Graffiti on the wall reads “For a good time, call Allyson Wonderland”, with the phrase “The Best Is Yet to Be” appearing underneath it. Allegedly, Disney chairman Michael Eisner’s phone number replaces the latter phrase for one frame. Although the “Allyson Wonderland” graffiti is clearly visible on laserdisc, Eisner’s phone number is not. If the phone number was in the film originally (as rumor has it was), it was removed before the home versions of the movie were made available.”

The removal of this phone number seems to apply to every single home version of the film I – or seemingly anyone – has ever come across. LaserDisc, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, the lot. If Eisner’s phone number was ever there in the film’s theatrical release, it’s gone from the retail versions. If is was ever there, of course. Because without evidence, this really starts to take on the feeling of an urban legend. Notably, Snopes has no actual evidence to offer, and the article goes out its way to label the phone number story as a rumour.

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The Fragility of the Web

Published 29th April 2016

Internet

My late-night web browsing covers a wide variety of esoteric topics. Sometimes I find myself looking at the in-depth technical specs of the Evel Knievel pinball machine. Or amazing barely-released Xenomania tracks. Or early versions of toys which ended up becoming Transformers. You get the picture.

The other day, I found myself in a spiral of links about Favrd – an old Twitter favourites aggregator run by Dean Allen1 which was shut down in 2009. At the time, Jeffrey Zeldman wrote this poignant piece about how web communities end. And everywhere round the internet, there was the plaintive cry – from Andy Baio, John Gruber, and Zeldman himself: if only Dean had kept the archives of the site online.

Pleasingly, however, we’re not left in the dark as to his motives. Dean answered these criticisms in the comments section of Zeldman’s blog. Hang on, I’ve got it here, it’s linked to on Daring Fireball… oh, wait, it’s gone?! Yes, Jeffrey Zeldman got rid of all comments on zeldman.com a couple of months back.

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  1. Dean’s online presence sadly seems to have disappeared entirely. His Twitter was last updated in 2013, and his website is long gone. ↩

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How the Internet Works #82748293

Published 4th April 2016

Internet

The Bodies of Leakin Park, “Hae Min Lee”, from October 16th 2014:

“Maybe my prejudice is showing through but who in their right mind lets their daughter date a man named “Adnan Musud Syed”? Putting that aside, I am intrigued that Mr. Syed is at Cumberland. I could see where he would have spent the first 5 years of his sentence there, since that is where the state likes to send violent offenders first to cool off, however, there is a point in time where an inmate has to grow a pair and face the general pop in Hagerstown. It’s been long enough, Mr. Syed is 28, let’s quit coddling him.”

Serial, Season 1 Episode 10, “The Best Defense is a Good Defense”, from 4th December 2014:

SARAH KOENIG: Reporting this story, I found plenty of examples of casual prejudice against Muslims. One of Adnan’s teachers for example: “Think about what he would have been taught about women and women’s rights.” Another teacher I talked to told me she was terrified at the time that Adnan’s relatives were going to come after her for talking to the detectives. She told me she assumed his parents were evil. On that website that lists all the bodies found in Leakin Park, the author’s commentary about Hae Min Lee’s case is: “Maybe my prejudice is showing through but who in their right mind lets their daughter date a man named Adnan Musud Syed?”

The Bodies of Leakin Park, “Hae Min Lee”, today.1 The section quoted from October 2014 above is entirely deleted. In its place:

“1) I am intrigued that Mr. Syed is at Cumberland. I could see where he would have spent the first 5 years of his sentence there, since that is where the state likes to send violent offenders first to cool off, however, there is a point in time where an inmate has to grow a pair and face the general pop in Hagerstown. Nobody is asking the tough questions as to why he is still in Cumberland, could it be unruly behavior?

2) Sarah Koenig is the most irresponsible self-serving human being on the planet. Adnan Syed is not getting out of prison ever, he’s guilty.”

Whether this change was an appropriate and convincing way of dealing with Koenig’s comments, I shall leave as an exercise for the reader.

  1. Looks like the page was edited on the 7th and 16th of December 2014 – three days and 12 days after the Serial episode was published respectively. ↩

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Fawlty Towers: A Touch of Class

Published 20th March 2016

TV Comedy

Fawlty Towers sign from pilot episode

19th September 1975, 9pm, BBC2, and the first programme of a little series called Fawlty Towers is broadcast. And whilst most of that first series of Fawlty Towers was shot in the summer of 1975, the very first episode – A Touch of Class – was recorded eight months earlier, in December 1974. The reason for this is simple: that first programme was a pilot. Unlike some programmes, which are re-recorded entirely for their first episode1, most of that pilot made it to air more or less in its original form. For instance, the opening sign is a different design in the pilot episode compared to every single other programme in the first series, and the theme music is also a different recording. Indeed, you wonder why, when it came to broadcast, they didn’t at least change the opening titles to be consistent with the other episodes, but I digress.

Fawlty Towers - opening titles from A Touch of Class

Opening titles from A Touch of Class

Fawlty Towers - opening titles from The Builders

Opening titles from The Builders

One detail, however, was changed between the initial pilot recording, and its broadcast. Polly was originally meant to be a philosophy student – and that’s what she was in that pilot episode. For the series, they decided to change her to being an art student – and so they reshot parts of the pilot to incorporate the change. To quote John Cleese, in an interview on the 2001 DVD release:

CLEESE: She in the pilot episode was a philosophy student, and we didn’t feel that worked as well as art student, so we re-recorded just a little – maybe four or five minutes – and cut that into the first episode before it was transmitted to the general public.

The obvious question to ask, then – at least, if you’re me – is: which parts of the transmitted episode were reshot? And was it really four or five minutes of material? But whilst you could easily guess about one section which was reshot, for years that was all the information we really had about the change.

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  1. Citizen Smith is a good example of a show which had a pilot, and then was completely reshot for its first episode broadcast six months later – both are on the DVD, and it’s fascinating to compare them. ↩

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Men Behaving Badly: Stag Night

Published 4th February 2016

TV Comedy

Men Behaving Badly - title sequence

Last time I talked about the BBC Writersroom on this site, I wasn’t exactly complimentary. But it’s not like there aren’t positive things which have come out of the initiative – and one of those things is the Script Library: a collection of BBC TV, Radio and Film scripts.

Of course, the scripts that garner the most attention are things like Steven Moffat’s four solo-written scripts for Doctor Who Series 9. But if you dig deeper into the archive, there are all kinds of other gems. And one of those gems is the script for Series 6, Episode 1 of Men Behaving Badly: Stag Night. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice there are there’s all kinds of little changes compared to the final broadcast version of the episode which are Really Rather Interesting.

Let’s take a look, shall we? Cut or changed material is marked like this. Note that I haven’t listed every single slight difference in the dialogue; in general, the actors seem to have been at liberty to reword things as they saw fit. Let’s concentrate on the interesting changes.

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Dirty Feed: Best of 2015

Published 1st January 2016

Meta

2015 • 2016 • 2017 • 2018 • 2019 • 2020 • 2021 • 2022 • 2023 • 2024

Happy New Year, everyone. And another year, another opportunity to be self-aggrandising and pretend it’s all in the spirit of “reflection”. Nevertheless, here are some of my favourite articles on Dirty Feed from the last 12 months. ENJOY IT YOU SCUM, ENJOY IT OR I WILL HAVE YOU KILLED.

On Automation.
Specifically, why automation isn’t to blame when a TV channel falls off air. Mainly written so I can smugly point to it when someone randomly complains about TV automation on Twitter. Yes, I am a complete cunt, why do you ask?

11 Things Wrong With Fawlty Towers
By far my most popular article all year in terms of hits… mainly because most of the words are John Cleese’s, not mine. My main aim was to prove to everyone that the John Cleese commentaries on the Remastered boxset are absolutely glorious, and well worth repurchasing the show for alone.

Acorn Fools’ Day
A trek through some fun April Fools gags in Acorn computer magazines of the 80s and 90s – and one of those articles I’ve been meaning to write for years, and then finally got round to. I’d love someone to write something similar about magazines for other platforms. Please?

Duncan Newmarch: “The Jingles I Grew Up With”
A chat with BBC continuity announcer Duncan Newmarch about why he loves radio jingles so much… and why he put together a montage of them which lasts two hours. I really must do more interviews, as “somebody else talking instead of me” is usually a relief to everybody.

24 Hours in Channel 5 TX
Probably the best thing I wrote all year, about a topic which really isn’t talked about much: how a television channel these days is actually put together. (I promised a follow-up piece answering all your questions which has yet to be published: hopefully it’ll be finished this month.)

One Foot in the Grave: Hearts of Darkness and The Thrilling Conclusion
Finally, the answer to a question I’ve been wondering for years – exactly what was cut out of the One Foot in the Grave episode Hearts of Darkness when it was released on DVD? It was extremely satisfying to finally get to the bottom of the mystery… especially when the answer was one nobody could have predicted.

‘The Quatermass Experiment’ Experiment
A piece ostensibly about the differences between the original broadcast and DVD release of the live 2005 version of Quatermass… but which turns into musings about the nature of live television drama about halfway through. This just nipped in right at the end to be my second-most popular piece of the year, which is nice, as this is the main reason the site quietened down for the last few months – it was an absolute bitch to research and write.

And bringing up the rear: why Comedy Central are IDIOTS, the history of jingles, how journalism works, and a look at edits made to The Fast Show on DVD. Oh, and this site hasn’t updated since I slagged it off, which is amusing.

So, a little self-indulgent ramble. Whilst I don’t sit obsessing over stats, “Are people reading your stuff?” in a general sense is always nice to know. 2015 has been the most successful year yet for Dirty Feed in that regard, with more readers than ever – in fact, slightly more than 2013 and 2014 combined. This is mainly down to a few pieces being shared rather more than usual, so thank you if you’ve retweeted, linked to, or written about one of my bits of nonsense over the past year. I really appreciate it.

In terms of the writing, I’m never happy that I’ve written enough, and I certainly didn’t write as much as I planned to. On the other hand, some of the pieces I did get round to writing are some of my favourites I’ve ever done. It feels like Dirty Feed has established its own voice more than ever, and hopefully that voice is “Things most people wouldn’t bother to write about, but you’re vaguely glad that somebody has.”

Sadly, my planned redesign and relaunch of my podcast didn’t happen, and in 2016, the lack of a proper responsive, mobile-friendly design is nothing short of ludicrous. These are my two priorities for the forthcoming year. No excuses.1

And that’s quite enough of that. Happy 2016 everyone. I hope you’ll join me for more nonsense this year. Right, I’m off to research old Buffy fansites which disappeared off the net ten years ago.

I’m not joking. That is literally what I am doing.

  1. There might be excuses. ↩

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