Author: Ian “Air Travel Regulations” McIver

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 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 Ba-na-nay-nay

I woke up on Thursday with a specific purpose. I didn’t know that purpose until I got to work later on that morning.

I was sat next to wor Geoff, who’s always got something interesting to say. We were chatting about interesting jobs and he mentioned bananas.

“Bananas? What do you mean?” I asked. It turns out that on his breaks wor Geoff likes to browse the Internet and goes down rabbit holes of various topics depending on how he’s feeling that day. He mentions that apparently there is a job called an authorised banana weigher. I scoff at such a prospect but a little Google later and I find the details on gov.uk website. There IS a job where you are a person who is officially authorised to weigh bananas. I excitedly scan through the page looking for the details on how to become one and reach a list. In order to become one you have to:

  • have no record of infringement or repeated infringements of customs and tax legislation
  • provide assurance that weighing operations will be performed correctly
  • have access to appropriate and maintained weighing equipment
  • maintain accurate records so customs can carry out controls
  • give customs advanced notice of all weighing operations

It’s beautiful. I can do all of this. All I need is some proper weighing scales and I am golden. I’m about to click on the link to fill the form in, well on my way to being an official banana weigher, and my eyes drift back over the list. I’ve missed one. There’s a fairly important one that I must have glazed over.

  • be involved in the import, carriage, storage or handling of fresh bananas

Boo! Booooo! How am I gonna start importing banana? I’ve got no contacts in the banana industry. I can’t fill in a form and start walking around in big shoes, I have to *actually* do something outside of my comfort zone.

Crestfallen, I close the page and return to my job. The excitement has gone. I will never be fully authorised to weigh my bananas, your bananas or anyone’s bloody bananas.

Avatar Newsboost – unused material (part one)

You may or may not remember the Newsboost Twitter account that I started back in 2014. It was a way of force-feeding mega news into the public subconscious via a steady stream. I ran it for roughly a year before abandoning it as one of those Beans side projects that didn’t quite work out as well as we’d hoped.

I still have the same notebook that I jotted ideas in. Most of them were used but there were some that didn’t make the cut, possibly because they were too “radical” for the time or, which is much more likely, because they were utter nonsense that popped into my head for a moment and there was nothing I could do with it.

Anyway, here’s a short list of what could’ve been:

  • A good chair shouldn’t be sat upon
  • Portable sarcasm
  • Pointy beard serving posts (?)
  • Credit card gifts to children for irresponsible parents
  • Broom jacket
  • Aliens have given up on earth
  • Drive by serenades
  • Recycling man caught littering
  • Skeleton career guidance
  • Polar bears stealing chips
  • Tub Barsley promises a marrow for every household
  • Backwards cutlery for dieters
  • THE NOSE IS THE FACE ON THE BODY OF THE FACE
  • Chicken on drums
  • Slowest tortoise keyboardist fired
  • Big ass television comeback
  • Growling slippers
  • New number set to debut this Autumn
  • Chronic pigs

I’ve listed this as ‘part one’ because after turning over the page there’s so much more and one month where I’m not particularly feeling it, I can whip this out again for a quick win.

Proof that not every idea is a good idea (but every invention is a good invention).

Avatar Last minute rush

“… so nobody eat the mushroom cake because you could come out in a rash.

Moving onto our last race of the month, we see the “young” McIver slapping together whatever nonsense that could constitute as a post in order to fill his quota of four. It’ll probably have numerous spelling errors, make very little sense and be as disposable as any film created and released by Netflix.

Chris “Consider Me” Marshall, once the dark horse of the beans collective, now demoted to digging holes in his back garden and filling them with water just to get some attention. It’s a shameful practice and hopefully one that will eventually peter out because what the crowds want is more bathroom art and weird things he sees on the train to work posts. They ALWAYS go down a storm.

We finish, if you can call it a finish due to the unpredictable nature of the man, with the scant offerings of Kevin “Podcast pirate” Hill. Will he slide in with another podcast shortly before the end whistle? Will he be too tired to edit and post one? Does he have enough thumbs for the process after whittling so many wooden spoons? Only time will tell.

It’s going to be a scrabble however you look at it. Still we should all be grateful that these titans of men, these pillars of hope keep generating enough content to fill a website. Where others have fallen, they continue to get back up. I know I never get sick of reading it.

Anyway, onto Purdy’s prediction corner!”

Avatar Clompetition time (again again)

We’re back again to bother you with the possibility of having that briefest glimpse of hope of winning. Winning something? No, no, merely winning. You can’t put a price on that.

Today’s sponsor is Bluebocado, the fruit that never gives up. If you want the taste of blueberries with the hearty goodness of avocados then you need to get some Bluebocado in your life.

What sell by date did this attractive jar of marmalade have?