A place called Reddit, and a sub-reddit called Place

By James Bell | 29 April, 2017

Here’s a story from the beginning of the month that I found absolutely fascinating – almost worthy of fiction:

It’s a blog article about an experiment, conducted on the website Reddit. For the uninitiated, Reddit is sort of an internet within the internet: a sort of gigantic web forum on pretty much any topic you can think of, with a ‘sub-reddit’ for any conceivable interest group.

What Reddit did was to give its users a space, called simply ‘Place’, where for a limited period of time they could each draw one pixel, and then another, and then another.

Here is a time-lapsed video of what happened:

But really, it doesn’t mean much until you read the article, which tells a great story in a great way.

It’s called When Pixels Collide, and I would add the subtitle: or How I Learnt To Embrace The Void.

The Walk of Life project

By James Bell | 29 December, 2016

There’s guy who has this theory that there is no film that wouldn’t be improved by ending with the song ‘Walk of Life’ by Dire Straits.

It’s a bold claim.

Okay, it’s obviously a daft claim, and not all of them work, but some of them really do. Continue reading →

The Andrew Graham-Dixon blooper reel

By James Bell | 30 October, 2016

For no reason other than that I am a huge AGD fan, and he gives good on-camera fails.

First of all, here is what he looks like in his natural habitat:

Got the tone? Cool. Let’s get down to it then.

Holy shit! It’s Sammy Davis Jr!

By James Bell | 31 May, 2016

A return to my Apropos of Nothing series, in which I feature something in quite a lot of detail, for no particular reason.

This month: Sammy Davis Jr.

“Why?” Because he was one of the greatest entertainers in living memory.

“So what? Why does everyone keep going on about the Rat Pack, and why Sammy Davis Jr particularly?”

Those are three separate questions, and only the last one is interesting. Because he was extraordinarily talented. Because he was a very interesting guy. Because he went through some very hard times and they didn’t defeat him. Because he risked his life on a daily basis to speak out against endemic racism.

But the same could still be said of lots of people.

Basically, I think he was proper bona-fide 24 carat star. Let me try to give some examples why:

Continue reading →

In which we establish that ‘Jamie & The Magic Torch’ was actually written by The Who

By James Bell | 22 March, 2015

You think I’m kidding, right?

Just watch the cartoon’s 2 minute intro:

Never mind the opening Pete Townsend powerchords and the general Who riffage. Never mind that, after the torch is switched on, everything looks like a scene from Tommy. (You can’t get much more Mod than taking a trip to Cuckoo Land on a helter skelter.) Never mind the fact that the dog Wordsworth is the spitting image of Keith Moon.

When Jamie finally flies out at the bottom of the helter skelter… take a look what he lands on.

Seem familiar at all?