Video: The Toy Show 2016 Supercut

The Late Late Toy Show - one of the TV highlights of the year here in Ireland. Having not seen one in at least thirteen years, I finally gave into the peer pressure and the FOMO and tuned into to last year's show, and boy, I don't know what I was expecting, but this is pretty much what I got. :D

I don't know, a two-hour show of kids reviewing toys I think I could get behind, but that's just not what this is. The toys are more or less a sideshow here to all the musical numbers, celebrity appearances, awkward audience interactions, and a volume of promotional tie-ins so large, it would make Geoff Keighley blush. Well, probably not, but...

Even the toy segments themselves - and I may get thrown out of the country for saying this - I think are kind of bad. Ryan just doesn't seem that that into the toys, or even particularly engaged in what the kids have to say most of the time. If he's not rushing them along to get to the next segment, he's half ignoring them while trying to score a few cheap laughs from the audience. Sometimes even at the kid's expense, which kind of shocked me to be honest. That bit in the video where he's grilling the kid about his dead pet lamb: my jaw was hanging open. And he only kept going from there! Come on, man, they're kids, and they're doing their best; you can really see in the show just how much they've prepared for their bits, and you're just blowing through them, making bad jokes? Not cool.

Overall - and I have to admit, musically talented kids didn't do anything for me even as a kid - I found watching this a gruelling experience. :D The cringe levels here were easily up there with the worst of E3. I mean, hence the video. Within minutes of watching I knew that this demanded the supercut treatment. I don't know how long this is going to stay up. I'm kind of expecting a copyright strike, but for the moment, please enjoy some of the very finest moments last year's show had to offer.

Tumblr Doodles: Jul-Dec '15

For more doodley nonsense, check out jilik1.tumblr.com.

Photos: Picking Blackberries

One of the major perks in living out in countryside the middle of nowhere: blackberries! Every year from about the middle of August into October they grow in vast numbers on hedgerows all around here. I spent a fair bit of time picking them as a kid, but it's only since I got into this whole gardening thing that I've gotten back to it, stockpiling them in the freezer for pies, jam, ice cream and more. I grabbed my camera to take along with me, out into the wilderness, the last couple of times I went picking them and, of course, never got around to posting any of the pictures I took. But hey, let's take a look now:



Oh, you thought I was kidding about the wilderness part? No, this is for real the middle of nowhere.



Quite a dramatic sky, even if it is a bit spoiled by the phone lines. Hey, people out in the country need to watch E3 cringe compilations too. I assume.



So I only brought this little container for my first time out in 2014, which would have been hardly worth my while. I came back to a different spot a couple of weeks later with two huge bucket to do things right. That lot actually lasted me right up until last year...



... where I found myself replenishing my supplies, on a much more blustery day in the middle of this semi-flooded cattle path.



Very much a wellies-only job.