Avatar: Rise of the Naughties Cartoon

October 16, 2013March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Latimer: As a nineties kid, I always felt like we had the best cartoons – all the Marvel cartoons, Gargoyles, Animals of Farthing Wood, Mummy’s Alive, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Batman… the list goes on!

Those cartoons had proper, involved story-lines.

But somewhere in the late nineties cartoons got fixed on this one episode, one story, structure, that I never liked. I always missed the ‘larger picture’, the big story arcs.

Then, around this time, I more or less stopped watching cartoons – so they remained, in my mind, fixed in that ‘one episode, one unconnected story’ structure.

In slightly later life, I swapped Western cartoons for Eastern ones. This would be around the time my obsession with anime kicked in. In anime, big story-lines never went out of style!!

I noticed early in the naughties Western cartoons started to taken on this East-meets-West style; an almost ‘anime but not quite, style’. I think it was due to the popularity of anime at the time.

That was probably what brought me slightly back to Western cartoons.

I think out of all those new ‘East-meets-West’ cartoon series, Avatar, has got to be one of the best.

Forget that terrible movie version. The cartoon is where it’s at!

Avatar is a great show. I was late to the game – I haven’t seen all of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but am a pretty big follower of Avatar: Legend of Korra.

I love the style, music and feel of Avatar… It’s a well-thought out story-line, with interesting characters, with interesting ethnic backgrounds. Basically the story is focused on a world where people have the power of controlling (bending) elements; water, fire, earth and air. The avatar is the one person in the world that can do all four and is sort of the, near as I can tell, spiritual and bending guide of the people. A big figure-head basically.

When the avatar dies, the next avatar is born and so on….

So, when the new Avatar Korra takes centre-stage, you know that the previous Avatar, Aang, is dead.

Which is pretty sad actually, given that the last time we see him is as this chipper 12 year old kid who saved the world. We don’t really get time to grieve over that, we just have to accept it, which is… yeah kind of rough!

But there’s lots of cool, funny characters in Legend of Korra too (and Korra is a very strong female lead, so that’s pretty cool!)

My favourite characters are Bolin and his little red panda Pabu – Bolin is just brilliant…

Okay, so maybe the best cartoons didn’t end with the 90s, maybe there are lots more to come! 🙂

Game Watchers

October 2, 2013March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt... ho-yah! — Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt… ho-yah!

Latimer: I used to be a recreational gamer.

I wouldn’t say I was a real gamer, because I know what it is to be obsessed about stuff and I didn’t qualify for this one!

I do have a bit of a history with gaming though.

We used to have an Amstrad in our house, when I was young. I say we, but that’s a lie, my big brother owned it and it got passed down to us young’ens over time.

It was a clunky, beautiful beast.

Games came on cassettes and you had to wait for it to ‘load’ whereby the title image would appear on the screen, one painful, pixelated line at a time.

Games took a very, very, long time to load. I remember we had a game called ‘Run the Gauntlet’ that was a series of different races; boats, cars and a final cross-country level – that was impossible to pass!

I always wondered what came after that, as the computer AI’s whizzed past my character… I would sigh, thinking, ‘I’ll never know’. And I never did. The joy of being denied content because you have no talent for gaming – that was my lot!

I used to beg my parents to buy me a console.

A Sega Mega Drive?

NO!

A Dreamcast (what happened to them!?)?

NO!

A Playstation –

No – look how are you not getting this by now? Stop asking!

Sometimes we would rent consoles from the video shop (I wonder do people do that at all anymore?) – it was about 10 pounds (back before the euro!) a night, and you’d get a game. Usually the console was a Sega. And it would be the best night ever and I’d wake up early the next day to get all the enjoyment I could before the console was pried away from me, never to be touched by my crappy, but loving, gaming hands again.

My brother somehow managed to wrangle a Gameboy out of my parents one year.

That was brilliant… that’s when I met Kirby, in Kirby’s Dream Land. Oh what a game! The premise – you are Kirby, loveable vacuum-powered ball of joy, protecting his homeland from an evil dragon-creature.

Sssss... POW evil tree! — Sssss… POW evil tree!

This was one of the few I cleared and I still take it as a badge of pride. Ridley has this honour too I believe!

We did have games for the PC though. That’s where I met Lara Croft and I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist – ah, yeah, I was easily swayed!

When my sister got a real job, she bought herself a Playstation and that was my first look into having a games console on demand. She bought Kingdom Hearts and to this day I will say that it’s my favourite game to play.

I'm a Keyblade Master!! I AM!!!! — I’m a Keyblade Master!! I AM!!!!

Here’s the thing, the ending made me cry and the whole game made me love Disney again. Yup, that’s the power of Kingdom Hearts – I won’t have a bad word said about Sora and the boys (Donald Duck and Goofy)!

If I still had my young heart today, I would buy a console; a Playstation 3 or 4… or 5,000 – whatever it is now. But, truth is, being denied the content of a story because I couldn’t figure out the puzzle or beat the boss (which would be inevitable) would kill me. I remember telling Ridley once (as I was playing Kingdom Hearts 2) that I got a stabbing pain in my eye and had to lie down, because I couldn’t beat a boss (the one with the water guitar – ARGH!) – I got so frustrated I literately had to go lie down and sleep away the anger.

So I know that I couldn’t handle the stress.

That’s why today, I don’t play games. I’ve moved from recreational gamer, to avid games watcher. You see I love watching games trailers and game cutscenes.

That might seem weird, but computer games combine two of my loves, art and story-telling. Games are beautiful pieces of art and they’re getting smarter and bigger all the time – and this means the stories can get more complex and involved too. Games are like books; they draw you in.

Because I don’t play, I like watching people like Pewdiepie playing for me – because it’s fun to have the shock moments during the game and Pewds is fun!

The new games today are amazing feats of world-building.

Bioshock Infinite had this massively involved story set in this epic world. It was a stunning place – a city in the clouds.

My ultimate favourite game to watch though is the Uncharted series! Oh how brilliant are they! It’s basically modern-day Indiana Jones treasure hunting.

Damn it's hot out in the desert... — Damn it’s hot out in the desert…

Uncharted 2 is a major reason for me wanting to go visit Nepal! I want to stand on a mountain surrounded by temples and prayer-wheels and flags… one day…one day!

I often wonder if there are other people out there who love to watch games as much as I do – other games watchers.

We should come up with a name for ourselves – unless it exists already, in which case… what are we? 🙂

Take to the Streets

September 25, 2013March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Latimer: Recently I’ve been taking a lot of notice of street art. To the point where, as I walk down the street and come face-to-face with an empty wall, I start to daydream about what maybe I could put there…

I imagine images weaving across the concrete. And I start to think, leaning back and getting some perspective on the wall – ‘That would be fun!’

My daydream then takes me to the street at night-time, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag of spray-paint cans. I’m going to unfold my masterpiece image. I’m going to fix it to the wall, by climbing a steep rickety old ladder that stretches up six floors to the roof. And I’m not afraid to do it (this would never happen, I’d be crying if I had to climb a ladder).

I spray-paint the stencil. I scramble down the ladder and race across the road.

No police catch me.

I admire my mural, and then, I fade into the darkness like a thief in the night. A wispy shadowy creature of the witching hour; in the morning people will pass the image, wondering – who did that? How’d they do that? And I’ll pass by, smile a secret smile, and walk on.

Then my daydream ends with the harsh whack from the reality stick. I don’t go down that street at night-time, because it’s too dark and could be full of people baying for my blood; like gangs of New York.

I don’t dress in all black, because if I remember correctly I don’t have a black hat and I threw out those black jeans the other day. Where would I find the stencil? That’s a big wall, the perspective would be too much; I mean drawing on an A3 page is the most I’ve ever done. And I’ve never made a stencil…

No. I’d get caught! Definitely; if anyone would I would. The police would catch me. I’d get in trouble.

Where do you get the spray paint anyway… is it expensive… etc. etc.

Yup, the dream fades pretty fast.

So, I’m left as a voyeur on the street art of others. I like the secret pictures and I like the mysterious people that flit in the night, spicing up the streets with quirky images. Their work waves at me as I pass the streets, from time-to-time, and I smile thinking, “Well, hello there piece of art!” Like it’s a secret discovery, belonging to just me and the street.

After you see one, as with all things, a door opens and suddenly they’re everywhere. It used to be a Dublin thing, now it’s a world thing. The images from people I’ll never know, waving across countries at me, a little Latimer they’ll never know.

Here are some I found in Barcelona.

Keep an eye out on whatever streets you’re walking! There are cool secret artists out there! Thank you for sharing your art!

—-

I’m not sure who the artists are, so if anyone knows, drop us a message and we’ll tag the photos etc!

Tumbling over Kid’s TV

February 13, 2013March 15, 2023 | mlatimerridley

Latimer: I have this ritual at the weekends. For maybe an hour I watch Jamie Oliver cookery programs, while relaxing with a cup of tea. I sit on the lovely comfortable couch and blissfully salivate over Jamie’s lovely food, thinking; “yes, I could make that… oh that’s yummy!”

But lately, my nieces (who might be over in the house visiting) will pop into the room and the following will happen (in this case it was my two-year-old niece E)….

As per usual, I was happily watching Jamie Oliver (with my tea) and E’s small figure appeared in front of me. She stood staring at me a moment, then looked at Jamie… then squealed…

‘cbeebies’- that’s the BBC baby’s channel and it’s one of the first words any of my nieces seem to have learned. You know after ‘mammy’ and ‘daddy’ it’s ‘cbeebies’!

My first reaction…

“No….!”

Then I’m arguing with a two-year-old, trying to convince her of the merits of watching food being cooked. Her only response is to repeat herself more adamantly.

There’s nothing else I can do in the face of her continuous repeating of the word. I give in and we start watching one of her favourite programs, ‘Mr Tumble’.

This is what I learned about the show – Mr Tumble dresses in polka-dots, lives in a house filled with polka-dots (and my thought was, ‘I wonder do they rent that house just for that one shot? Or does BBC own the house… do they have to stick the polka-dots on everyday?’), he uses sign language (which I tried to learn) and has a magic bag.

Well E was very happy, me not so much.

I have been happily detached from baby TV for, well, since I was a baby. But now, with baby nieces and nephews, I think I could tell you what’s popular among the 1-4 year olds!

I sat there watching Mr Tumble, thinking; “this is actually painful!”

Mr Tumble has a friend on the show called Justin.

And actually, Justin IS Mr Tumble (same actor). I got to the point where I was trying to convince my niece that Justin was Mr Tumble (it was the only enjoyment I could get out of having to watch the show), but she was having none of it! She basically thought I was a fool to think they were the same person (bested by a two-year-old who stopped listening!).

3333

She’s probably learning a lot from the show. I’m sure baby TV taught me a lot too. Like I actually remember watching Bosco (an old Irish show that was from the 70s but re-run in the 80s and 90s so weirdly it feels like everyone in Ireland remembers Bosco).

(It still makes me smile)

I also remember one of my sisters accusing me later in life that; “Oh yes, when Bosco was on we had to change the channel so Latimer could watch it.”

Okay, so I was grateful that people let me watch Bosco, so I guess I have to do the same and let the kids watch cbeebies.

One day I’ll be accusing E of denying me Jamie Oliver and I’ll still be insisting that Justin was Mr Tumble, maybe she’ll finally agree with me!

Another shade of grey

December 31, 2012March 9, 2022 | mlatimerridley

Time is ticking by and we are moving towards 2013!

Latimer: I’m reminded that with another year biting the dust, I’m another year older. I’m finding grey in my hair these days – that’s a little worrying. Rightly or wrongly, I do get rid of them – but it always shocks me when they return… with friends!

Am I at the point now where I should be a little offended, or protective, when people ask ‘what age are you?’

It happened in work recently; “Latimer what age are you?”

I smiled, though warily because it felt like I shouldn’t be telling! “Why?”

The woman asking reached out to my hair (that’s odd, I thought, then I dropped, I knew where this was going!); “You have grey hair!”

I KNOW!! And they're white... actually! — I KNOW!! And they’re white… actually!

“I have a stressful life!” I shot back.

“But you are so young,” she pressed. I narrowed my eyes, well again, this was odd. “You look young on the face,” she added. I don’t know if that was just a cover for the grey hair comment, but I smiled anyway.

“Hopefully that sticks around,” I laughed. Then as I walked away, I located the white hair and yanked it out.

My mother told me children get grey hair too, apparently.

That’s good! Maybe I’m actually Peter Pan so 🙂

Happy New Year from MLR, wherever and whenever you are 🙂