Avatar Ouroboros DVD review

Huh.

Have you ever read something that made so little sense you skipped over it, only for your brain to react much later with an almighty, “you what?” that left you mildly stupified?

I know, that’s a very niche situation. Let me try and explain.

I was reading some reviews of films on CEX. I do this on a regular basis because they’re rarely about the quality of the film itself and contain such poor punctuation and grammar it makes me feel slightly better about my own poor grasp of the English language.

I saw the review above a few days ago and had to come back to it to try and work out the logic (if there is any).

Did he buy it and then get it again? Does he mean that he bought it digitally but because it had such a profound effect on him, because it was such a wonderful and thought-provoking work of art that he purchased a physical version to enjoy forever? Perhaps it’s supposed to be a story about time travel:

“I bought this dvd (present), because i liked it (past), and thought it was brilliant (still past) so I got it (back to the present).”

Who’s to say? You could go round and round and never fully understand the true meaning. I guess we’ll never know what *checks* stewardle was talking about. If only I’d gotten to him earlier. Ten years is too long.

Avatar Sunday louche

What are Sundays for?

Are they for the regular weekly food shop? Do you procrastinate about doing little jobs through the week and then spam them all on the Sunday before a new week starts and they all reset? Do you spend hours in the garden trimming and pruning bushes and hedges so everything is perpendicular?

For me, I like to have a nice mix of jobs to do and lounging. I love a good lounge on a Sunday no matter the state of the weather. If it’s nice and sunny you stretch out and soak it up. If it’s cold and wet you wrap up and enjoy being inside. Come at me with whatever you have, Northern weather, I’ll take it all in. I can louche with the best of them.

No matter how hard I try though I can never be as louche as Daisy. She seems to be able to louche without even properly trying. She’s the grand master.

I heard a rumour that Kev really loves pictures of doggos so this seemed like a good idea for a post and I would heartily encourage anyone else with doggo pictures to post them here.

Avatar The Squirrel Capital of Disneyland

In Disneyland, nothing is normal. And I’m not just taking about that fact that there are grown adults walking around wearing Mickey Mouse ears and carrying a stuffed toy Cheshire Cat. Nope, everything in Disney gets ‘imagineered’ which is a horrible phrase to describe how they pay too much attention to stuff many won’t even notice, but when you do, it’s quite nice.

Whilst queueing to have “Blanche Neige et les Sept Nains” inflicted upon me, I glanced up to see these funny little buggers and it made me chuckle, so here they are for you to look at with your eyes too (and you can avoid having to queue to see such things)

Avatar Memory Flash: celebrities

When you were watching television as a kid did you ever notice a person or persons who seemed to be everywhere? I watched a lot of TV when I was young. I drank it all up at all times of the day. I would watch kid’s programmes very early on, mundane game shows and special interest programmes during the day and films that were definitely not for my age group late at night.

Those interest programs and gameshows though, they were something else. You’d be watching something like ‘Noel’s House Party’ and a particular someone would be there, and then they’d also be on ‘Blankety Blank’, and then you’d see them later on in the week on ‘Crosswits’. This person would always be there, no matter what you were watching on what channel. They still flash into my mind every now and then and the majority of them I have no idea why they’re famous. I thought it best to therefore look into the CVs of a select group so that we can all remember why

Lionel Blair

Lionel Blair was an actor, dance, choreographer, tap-dancer (I remember this about him the most, don’t ask me why) and television presenter. When he father died when he was thirteen, he became the breadwinner for the family and took to the stage to earn money. He briefly took on a career as an actor before deciding dancing was for him. His dance troupe appeared on a number of TV programmes in the 1960’s. He also appeared in the Beatles film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and was one of the team captains on the game show ‘Give us a Clue’ from 1979 until the early 1990s. Later on in his years, he earned up to £100,000 for a six-week run doing pantomimes. This is but a brief insight into what must have been a very illustrious career.

The Krankies

This was a husband and wife duo, Ian and Jannette respectively, where the latter dressed as a schoolboy called Wee Jimmy and the former was their umm paternal figure. Unusual setup aside, they began their comedy career performing on the circuit during the 1970s and were given a big break with a spot on the Royal Variety Performance. They released a series of pop singles and an album, they had roles on several television shows including Crackerjack (?) and the Joke Machine (??). In 2003, Wee Jimmy Krankie was voted ‘the most Scottish person in the world’ by readers of the Glasgow Herald. The most interesting aspect of all of this me looking at Wikipedia is that in 2009 they were invited onto the Paul O’Grady show for the pantomime special of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in which Janette played a hooker and Ian played a rampant camel. Yes, you read that right. I’m sure that’s not the strangest part of their careers but hey ho.

Gary Wilmot (who?)

Wor Gazza needs no introduction. Already adept at singing and performing, his big break came in 1978 when he featured as part of a comedy double act with Judy McPhee (?) on ‘New Faces’. This then led to numerous appearances on ‘Copy Cats’, ‘Knees Ups, Cue Gary’ (??) and ‘The Keith Harris Show’ (???). In addition to co-presenting the kid’s quiz show ‘So You Want To Be Top’ (I’ve never heard of any of these things), he hosted something called ‘Showstoppers’ where wor Gaz would sing songs from musicals with special guests, although the main point of the show was for celebrities to learn and perform a song in ten days. Nobody cared about that mind. Gary was so popular that his original sixty dates taking the performance on tour had to be increased to one hundred and sixty due to phenomenal demand.

We all know his marvellous music career including such classic albums as Double Standards, The Album and, of course, Love Situation.

Gaz has dabbled in theatre too playing numerous roles in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, ‘Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I personally remember him being the guy man in ‘Chicago’ when it was showing in Leeds around maybe 2010. Not because I actually went to see it but because I saw the poster in Leeds train station and took a photo of it (and I still have it somewhere).

I also saw him recently on Richard Osman’s ‘House of Games’ which was only showing last week however I can’t remember if it was a repeat or not.

There you have it. A comprehensive insight into the world of people who were around when we were growing up. It’s not too much of a understatement to say that there’s a lot going on here (especially for Lionel Blair, who knew?) and I would thoroughly encourage everyone to go do their own research.

Also, what happened to Rowland Rivron?

Avatar Words to live by

Now I’m unsure as to how far this could go. Could you blame them for getting into work late? Would they be a good alibi in some kind of police investigation? Are they able to take the heat off you when you’ve forgotten to pick up, I don’t know, curried lentils from the supermarket?

All I know is that this is a thing and we all need one hanging in our respective hallways / living rooms.

It may save your life someday.

Avatar Amphibian/reptile brag

Guess what? My parish has more native species of amphibians and reptiles than yours.

Sometimes when I take the dog out I pass this little statue of a toad, but I hadn’t actually stopped to look at it properly until the other day. It turns out that it relates an important fact about my local area that I didn’t know until now.

The plaque underneath says this.

Whitehill is the only parish in the UK to claim home to all 12 of our native amphibians and reptiles, including this, the rare Natterjack toad. Only 7cm long with a distinctive yellow stripe down its back, it favours sand and heathland and breeds in shallow pools. It eats insects, worms and small reptiles and can live up to an amazing 15 years.

Twelve. Twelve native species of amphibians and reptiles. Your parish certainly has some of them, it might even have quite a lot of them. But it won’t have all twelve. I don’t know why amphibians and reptiles are measured by the parish, which seems an odd choice of geographic area to use for this, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is this.

My parish has more native species of amphibians and reptiles than yours.

In your face, sucker.

Avatar Long-awaited outcome

I was recently reminded that this exchange had happened while Ian and I were talking about gingerbread.

1 May 2025 was three weeks ago and I can confirm with pleasure that it was a fairly normal day. I was at work, where among other things I dealt with some emails about election coverage and logged a call with our facilities helpdesk to have a carpet cleaned following a minor water leak.

As a result I am pleased to confirm that my ability to see precisely five years into the future is working nicely. Or at least it was five years ago. If you want to know whether it’s still working now you’ll have to wait another five years.