End of August Extravaganza

Another month has flown by! As is now tradition, it’s time for me to wrap up the month by replying to things you guys have been saying and wrap the month up!

The Conversation

Yeah, a fancy new title for this part of the post. It’s the same old thing where I share the best comments and share them with you!

Niamh [on Laughing at London 2012]: Great! Have you seen this photoshop of the diving?!

I had not seen that photo but it made me laugh when I looked at it. Great stuff!

Precious [on Laughing at London 2012 #2]: This is awesome! I love Usain Bolt's arrogance (or is it just confidence?!) about playing for Man U.

I have news on this story! Bolt was the special guest at Manchester United for their match against Fulham last weekend. He was treated very well and met some of the players and had a chat with manager Sir Alex Ferguson. Is he going to be in the squad sometime soon? Unlikely, but you never know!

Niamh [on My Autobiography]: I have only managed to keep a diary for two periods of time in my life, one was a summer when I was about 9 or 10 maybe then one through a few months of year 11 which I think basically consisted of me writing about how we were getting to prom! :L But I don't think I could ever post my diary on the internet!

I wrote a diary inconsistently until 2007 when it saw of fell apart. Back in June though I started up a grand new grown-up one which is much better. I am very embarrassed by my old diaries and still cringe if I look back on the posts featuring excerpts from them. You can read “Dan’s Diaries” here and stay tuned as bits from my 2005 diary will be here at some point during September! I dread to think what that volume contains!

A few comments from the Guest Post which lists the Top 10 Cartoon Characters now:

Filman Santiago: while I love Popeye and Bugs Bunny, my son loves action heroes like Superman. Great list of top cartoons though.

Nellie Vaughn: How did Mickey not make it to number one. I am a little upset.

Horus: U should make a top 10 anime characters too! :D Big hug :3

Niamh: I love the Powerpuff girls! :D

I don’t think anyone could have agreed with the list as we all have our own opinions on cartoon characters. I think Mickey Mouse didn’t make the list because of how poorly known he is amongst today’s kids. Mickey has appeared in very few things over the last few years (the only thing I know for sure is the Epic Mickey games). I’d be happy to run a top 10 anime characters list if someone wanted to write it but I will have a special comics post coming up some time soon which you might like.

Phew! Thanks as always for all your comments and please do write something if you read one of my posts. Or at least give it a star rating underneath!

Minion of the Month: This goes to Niamh for some great comments and that picture of the divers with digestion issues. I love getting responses like that which add to what I’ve written!

Into Geek Highlights: The best posts this month are from my time in Edinburgh. Read about me exploring Scotland’s capital, seeing some great street performers and ending up on stage during a show by clicking here!

Guest Post of the Month: As you can saw from the great comments on it, the most popular guest post this month was the Top 10 Cartoon Characters. Thanks to Liam Ohm for that post and should you want to write your own all the details are here.

Blog of the Month: This time I’ve chose a blog which is a new addition to my enormous reading list and that’s Sweet Home Santa Barbara by Amy. I like her blog because it’s got lots of pictures to liven things up, it’s pretty funny and Amy just seems like a lovely person from her writing. Worth checking out!

It’s time for me to review the month. For me, August was great. It turned an average summer into a great one. The week in Edinburgh was fantastic as were the London Olympics. And I spent lots of time working and I loved it. It’s all ended on a great note too with a visit to the Bournemouth Air Festival and a family holiday to Center Parcs, which you can here all about next week. Overall, it’s been great and if every month was as good as August was I’d be more than happy with my lot in life.

Thank you for reading and come back throughout September for what I genuinely think might be the best month for this blog ever. Bye!

The Onset of Autumn

Hello. This is one of my occasional life posts which has nothing specific to tell and is instead a mish-mash of stuff. I literally have very little idea of what’s going to be included when I start one of these posts and generally make it up as I go along. At this stage of writing the title could end up being absolutely anything.

So August is coming to an end and the Autumn is creeping up on us. Well us in the Northern Hemisphere anyway, you southerners are just looking forward to Spring. We hate you at this time of year. One of the things this means is that my work is over for another summer. It’s been a joy more than ever this year and I’d quite happily do it all year round. Last week through work I even ended up being the carer of a child for the day, which was unexpected but turned out to be pretty good.

It’s now around a month until the new term starts at university. Currently my Third year is all a bit mysterious. The provisional timetable we’ve received just tells us when we have things and not what they are and has a random week with no lectures in which has not been explained. The only thing I do know is that there’ll be six weeks of probably pretty rubbish lectures before a 6 week teaching practice, though which school and age group that will be is anyone's guess at this point. Our uni aren’t very good at giving us the information we want to know. This for me is this big one. If it all goes badly then it could see me walking away from the profession forever, which sounds awfully dramatic. I am thinking about it a bit more positively than I was a few weeks ago though after a late night thinking session which led me on to the fact I know I can teach brilliantly and just need to stop having so little confidence and get on with it. Easier said than done though.

Hmm, I’m thinking the title of this post will now be Autumn related as I can see a sort of theme running. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier but it does mean you can get some pretty awesome sunset photos…

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Autumn this year is the return of Doctor Who. It all starts with the sure-to-be spectacular “Asylum of the Daleks” this Saturday! I can barely contain my excitement. This is the longest period without Doctor Who since it’s revival in 2005. And we’re only getting five episodes before it stops again. But they are sure to be five awesome episodes. Every Sunday I’ll be chatting about them in my Time Vortex feature right here (though it’ll be Monday this week for reasons I’ll explain later). You can see my Series 7 preview right here.

If you’re anything like me and can’t wait for the series, check out “Pond Life” which is a five-part mini-adventure following life with Amy and Rory living at home and the Doctor occasionally turning up. It’s pretty short but very funny and you can view it online here.

Something which has been occupying large amounts of my time recently is the newly released New Super Mario Bros 2 for Nintendo 3DS. Normally I’d give this a proper review but my blog schedule is chocka-block with stuff and there just isn’t room. It’s very similar to the original game and the Wii version, although as you play through the levels you aim to eventually collect a billion coins, which I have realised is going to take some time. Though not very original, it’s still excellent fun. I much prefer NSMB on a handheld console, it just didn’t feel right for me on Wii. Although I loved the Yoshi’s in that version. NSMB2 is a great game and I shall certainly be spending a lot of time attempting to get to a billion gold coins!

I actually downloaded this on the Nintendo e-shop rather than bought a physical copy. It’s 2012, you can do that kind of thing these days.

This rest of this week looks to be awesome. Tomorrow I shall be off to the Bournemouth Air Festival (it’s annual tradition now) and then on Friday I’m off for a four day weekend break with my family which will be nice. Plus somewhere in that time I’ll get to watch new Doctor Who! Of course you’ll be able to hear all about that at some point next week. And if you fancy reading some more stuff by me check out my Scrapbook of Thoughts where I write about various things that happen to cross my mind. Thanks for reading and I’ll be seeing you all soon! Now to write a post title and try and make it sound awesome.

Chart Chasers #30

Hello and welcome to Chart Chasers, where I check out the latest songs to make the UK chart. This week it’s the 30th edition and to celebrate the musical world has been giving us it’s best songs. There are SEVEN songs today and I genuinely think this is the best set of songs this feature has ever had!

It all begins with a song from one of my favourite bands ever, Muse. This track is called Madness and is off their upcoming dubstep concept album. Yep, Muse doing dubstep. This will be interesting.

Oh my goodness. I love Muse but some of their recent stuff hasn’t been that great. But this is absolutely fantastic. It has some dubstep elements but it’s not that far from Muse’s usual stuff. I actually think this is one of Muse’s best songs ever, I properly love it. 5/5.

After their huge success with “We Are Young”, fun. are back with a new song. It’s called Some Nights and it’s difficult to know what to expect when they’ve only ever done one song (which I didn’t think that much of quite frankly). The song itself starts at around a minute in to this video.

This reminds me of Queen in some places, which is only ever a good thing. It’s a pretty good anti-war song with a strong chorus. It’s a shame there’s a bit of auto-tune in places because it’s simply not needed. A good effort and I prefer this to We Are Young. 4/5.

Some artists become renowned for being one-hit wonders. Two modern day artists that probably fall under that title are Owl City, who did “Fireflies” a few years ago, and Carly Rae Jepson, the singer of the modern classic that is “Call Me Maybe”. To attempt to get another hit the two of them have teamed up for song called Good Time.

I love this. I’ve always liked Owl City and have quite a few of his other singles on my iPod. Teaming up with Carly was a good idea as there voices work well together. This is a fantastic feel good song and proper fun pop. I love it. 5/5.

Next up day are Simple Plan, whose music I rather like. Anyone who’s been in an episode of Scooby-Doo can’t be that bad. (In the What’s New Scooby-Doo episode “Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman”. Plus they did the theme tune to that song.) This track unfortunately also features Sean Paul but that can’t be helped. It’s called Summer Paradise.

This song really doesn’t need Sean Paul, it would be much better without him randomly shouting things out whenever he feels like it. Apart from that though it’s fantastic, a proper summer love song. It’s yet another 5/5.

It’s been such a great edition of Chart Chasers today, wouldn’t it be a shame if a rubbish song came along and ruined it. That is what I suspect might be about to happen. Standing on the Watchtower is Devlin, someone whose music I don’t like very much. At least he’s being helped out by Ed Sheeran but I somehow doubt Ed will be able to save this song…

I should have realised from the title that this is a reworking of Jimi Hendrix’s classic track (All Along the) Watchtower. They’ve modernised it and put some rapping in. It was an extremely brave thing to do and I think they very nearly pulled it off. It’s not quite there but it’s a damn good attempt and I take back what I said about Devlin. Good work. Although in future make your music videos silent so they don’t interrupt the song. 4/5.

Some of you may remember previous times when I have expressed my love for Taylor Swift. This is another of those times. The most beautiful woman in the music world has released a new single called We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. I am very glad of that Taylor, you’re far too good for him.

Now as you may have gathered I might have some biased towards Taylor and couldn’t ever say anything that bad about her songs, but I will always try and be as honest as possible. And I genuinely like this song, it’s quirky and has a catchy chorus. Very pleasant to listen to, great work Taylor. 4/5.

Sadly this run of great songs does have to end eventually and it ends with the song with is currently number one in the UK. It’s by Sam and the Womp and is called Bom Bom. You know a song is going to be awful when it has a title like that…

HOW DO PEOPLE EVEN LIKE THIS? It’s an incredibly annoying Nicki Minaj-style vocal which makes no sense whatsoever. It’s complete rubbish and ruins the fantastic run. It disturbs me this beat all the other songs to the top of the chart. The British public are morons. 0/5.

Well that’s all for today and it was largely extremely enjoyable. It’s a shame about Sam and the Womp but apart from that this is a great set of songs. Let me know what you thought in the comments!

Edinburgh Fringe: Exploring Edinburgh

Last week I travelled the 500 miles up to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe with my good friend Chris. It’s the world’s largest arts festival and the huge majority of this is theatre and comedy. We went for the comedy mostly and had to do so on a tight budget because neither of us have very much money. This is the third of three posts about my week (Part One here and Part Two here) and this is one is about us exploring the city and the other stuff which didn’t fit into the other posts!

We arrived in Edinburgh at 8:30AM on a Monday morning after getting a ride on the nicest bus we’d ever been on. Our local buses are pretty rubbish and we were somewhat amazed at the airlink bus which had tables and really comfy chairs and music and a digital display telling you where along the route you were. It dropped us of on a bridge and then we had to work out what to do next. Arriving in a strange city early in the morning having not had much sleep and very little idea of the local geography was something of a challenge. By pure luck we ended up on the Royal Mile where the Fringe shop is so we printed off the tickets for shows and picked up a free map, which was invaluable for the time we were there.

The Royal Mile is a stretch of the old part of Edinburgh which serves as the centre for the Festival Fringe. It’s along there that the street performers do their shows (see Part Two) and the atmosphere there is amazing. As well as all the street performers there’s all sorts of people desperate to sell tickets for their shows and you find flyers being waved in your direction from all over the place. In fact it would seem people will do anything to get you to take a flyer…

^{Some people did origami with their flyers whilst others simply opted to dress up as a giant robot}

Our base for the week was the one of the building used as accommodation for Edinburgh University, which is turned into a hostel for the summer. It was a pretty decent place and the facilities were decent enough for somewhere so cheap. There were two issues though. The first was that our room was on the fifth floor and with no lift it was quite a feat just to reach it. The other was that building work was going on outside and so at 8:30AM every morning we were woken by the noise of drilling and sawing. That was pretty horrendous.

^{The view from our window. Not very inspiring at all.}

As we had a lot of free time during the day, we did lots of touristy things. We visited the various museums and galleries (the free ones anyway), though the museum about the Bank of Scotland was pretty boring. The National Museum for Scotland was worth the visit though and had some great exhibits.

^{Techno sceptic? Me? What are you talking about silly alien thing?}

^{That’s the actual Dolly the Sheep. You know, the first ever cloned mammal.}

You can climb to the roof of the museum where you get a pretty good view of the city:

^{Edinburgh Castle/ The Udderbelly (a ridiculous theatre which is shaped like an upside down purple cow)}

If you want an even better view of the city though, Arthur’s Seat is the place. It’s an extinct volcano which was eroded by glaciers to give it it’s modern form. It turned out to be quite a climb, especially with the two of us being incredibly unfit. It probably didn’t help that due to bad planning we had all our luggage with us, though at least it was only one small bag each because we were saving money on the plane.

^{A ruined building on the way up/Arthur’s Seat from below/ The summit of Arthur’s Seat (very rocky)}

^{The view from the top/ Proof that we climbed it!}

And here’s a few photos of other things we spotted:

^{Edinburgh’s bit for the Olympics/ The National Monument for Scotland}

^{Chris on the National Monument/ Chris with the golden postbox for Chris Hoy’s Olympic Gold}

And that’s it! Our time in Edinburgh finished on Friday and it was quite sad to be returning home. It was the highlight of what has so far been a great summer. I hope you enjoyed the post and don’t forget to check out the other parts using the links below!

Edinburgh Fringe: The Shows   Edinburgh Fringe: Street Performers

Edinburgh Fringe: Street Performers

Last week I travelled the 500 miles up to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe with my good friend Chris. It’s the world’s largest arts festival and the huge majority of this is theatre and comedy. We went for the comedy mostly and had to do so on a tight budget because neither of us have very much money. This is my second of three posts about my week (Part One here) and this is all about the various street performers I saw.

The Edinburgh Fringe must be the highlight of any street performer’s year. Performers from all over the world come to the city’s Royal Mile and get given a slot in which to perform their show. There is all sorts of things happening on the Royal Mile, from strange street shows to circus tricks and fantastic music. Plus there’s literally hundreds of people flinging leaflets in your direction desperate to get people to come to their show. Unlike with the shows, it was pretty easy to take photos of the street performers and in this post are a selection of the best acts I saw, with something a bit different from the typical riding a unicycle, escaping from a straitjacket or juggling machetes (all impressive of course but they get dull after a while).

This guy was very funny. He’s Spanish and was great with the crowd. What you can’t see in that picture is that he is balanced on a board which is on top of a tube. The bomb just makes a loud noise when it goes off but it’s still quite impressive to stay balancing.

This great little band playing some country music, with quite a few ‘unusual’ instruments. The guy in the hat was playing an old washboard with metal bits on the end of his gloves and the curly haired guy was making a tune using a converted megaphone. At one point the woman in glasses proceeded to play with her shoes. It was sort of tap dancing but they noise was part of the song, which was pretty incredible.

This is incredibly talented beat-boxer MC Xander. He used a loop station to record loops of bits he beat boxed and layer them up to create whole tracks. It was truly breath-taking to listen to and he even managed to include some great messages in his work. Check out some of his music on his website.

These guys did a sort of comedy martials arts show. They were very funny and there were some great sequences in it put to music and sound effects. They had perfect timing meaning pretend bullets being deflected by the plastic sword worked fantastically.

I think this was my favourite street performance of the Fringe. This guy had no show at all, he just improvised with people walking past and in the crowd. He playing music to go along with people and put voices to them. He stole someone’s phone when they were in the middle of a phone call and plugged it into the speaker. The funniest bit was him playing a gong noise and bowing when Asian people walked past. Pretty racist but still incredibly funny. A side-splittingly funny show.

This guy dressed as a bell boy was a bit odd but still pretty funny. He pranced around a lot and then dressed a male member of the audience in a dress and wig (picture) and proceeded to dance with him.

We saw a couple of magicians on the street too but I was too busy concentrating on their tricks to take photos one. One took a £10 note from the member of the audience and made it go inside a walnut that was a in a bag of walnuts that he never touched. It was pretty amazing. Another did the typical balls under cups thing but then made loads of oranges appear from the cups and a melon appear under his hat. Magicians are scary.

Tom had exactly the same voice as comedian Steven Merchant. You can see in the photo he is riding a unicycle and has a child’s tennis racquet around his waist. He proceeded to remove that tennis racquet over his head by partly dislocating his shoulder. It was both disgusting and amazing.

On walking back from a show we came across a group called “Zambezi Express”. They had come all the way from Zimbabwe and made some incredible music which was both beautiful and lively at the same time. It was wonderful stuff and stood on a Scottish street corner at 10PM listening to African music made me realise how global society is these days.

This guy was quite frankly insane. He had a fantastic ability to juggle any stick like items, which he demonstrated effectively. But then he went one further and juggled a machete, a fake grenade and a working chainsaw. Don’t try that at home. He survived intact though and then laid on a bed of nails and had a woman stand on top of him. You could see the nail marks in his back afterwards…

And that was the highlight’s of the street performances I saw. It really is a crazy place. One street performer said Edinburgh during festival time was like an open air mental home and you’d be hard pressed to disagree. Join me at the weekend for the third and final post on my time in Edinburgh as I explore the city. See you then!

Edinburgh Fringe: The Shows    Edinburgh Fringe: Exploring Edinburgh

Edinburgh Fringe: The Shows

Last week I travelled the 500 miles up to Edinburgh for the Festival Fringe with my good friend Chris. It’s the world’s largest arts festival and the huge majority of this is theatre and comedy. We went for the comedy mostly and had to do so on a tight budget because neither of us have very much money. I’m going to be blogging about this over three posts and this first one is all about the various shows we went to see.

The Axis of Awesome: Cry Yourself A River

The Australian comedy band opened with a song about the Games of Thrones books being better than the TV series and went on to include songs slagging off business men, young people, modern house music/clubs, smoking and many other things. The songs were interspersed with witty dialogue with running jokes including Austin Powers quotes and the idea that peacocks are actually really manly. It concluded with the internet hit Four Chords, which they didn’t even bother to properly introduce. It was a great end, especially updated and with bits from the show cleverly referenced in. Whilst all the songs were well performed, a couple weren’t that funny but largely it was foot-tapping, side-splitting stuff. 4 Stars.

Aaaand Now For Something Completely Improvised

Crammed into the upstairs room of a pub at 12 Noon we excitedly awaiting the beginning of this free improv show from a group called Racing Minds. The crowd must select a character name, their big secret, the setting and the title. Suddenly “The Burning Bush” featuring Molly and set in an Indian bazaar happened. And because it was so funny we went again and saw “Down by the Seaside” where Oliver, an employee at a bubble factory in Birmingham, had to thwart a plan from an Irishman trying to make the whole world Irish by putting Guinness in the water. It was all very silly but the group did a great job of adding all the elements together to make a hilarious comic play. Hugely enjoyable and different every day! 5 Stars.

Christian Reilly: This is Not a Love Song

Another pub, another ‘free’ show. Whilst The Axis of Awesome turned jokes into songs, Reilly turned songs into jokes. He saved us money by doing a cover of every song by various artists- Bruce Springsteen, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and the Arctic Monkeys were all included. A spectacularly funny show that could have easily charged the price of some of the top shows. 4 Stars.

Al Murray: The Only Way is Epic

The venue for the pub landlord was a big tent. Within five minutes of opening he’d managed to take the piss of most of the first row and tested a load of drinks to ‘check what they were’. He continued on to ‘change the world’ covering politics, sport, nationality and everything else too. It was expertly performed and the it’s clear that the character is now second nature to his creator. Much of the humour is edgy and it is hilarious to see people being ripped apart. 4 Stars.

The Dirty Uncle Comedy Roadshow

A free show, and a terrible one. I didn’t count the exact number of the audience but it wasn’t many more than 10. A series of comedians went on stage and tried to be funny. For the most part they failed. There was the occasional funny joke but the lack lustre performances and the meagre audience meant even they died a death. Still, it extended our fringe experience and proved that not all the acts here are that great. 0 Stars.

The One Eyed Men’s Friendship Formula

This free show was effectively a sketch show. There was everything from a look into what it must be like to be a battery chicken to confusion over the plots of the bible and the Lord of the Rings (easily done). There was also a series of sketches involving the trio attempting to make a friend from the audience. And in the show I saw, I was the friend. This saw me say “I’m a sexy motherf***er on stage, dress up as a knight and ‘play’ Dungeons and Dragons and also wear a colander on my head in an attempt to become friends through brain waves. In the end I became their friend and ended up being given a beer. It was rather overwhelming being on stage and not having a clue what was going to happen next but I suppose it was enjoyable. It was a surreal and funny show, unlike anything else you’ll see. 4 Stars

^{There’s me with my new friends The One Eyed Men…}

Rhod Gilbert: The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo

This was exactly what you expect Rhod Gilbert to be like- hilariously angry, though he claims he is better these days. The show flows around the tattoo he ended up with on a TV show and a relationship in a rut. It follows a story with regular intervals where there are rants- subjects that make Rhod angry in this show included toothbrushes and potatoes. It’s what you expect but it more than lives up to the expectations. 4 Stars.

Mark Watson’s Edinborolympics

This was probably the best show we saw. Mark Watson was the host and did a great job at it too, with lots of improv and some prepared jokes, like passing on an electric torch and telling us to watch out for Seb Coe. The show consisted of 3 comedians (David O’Doherty, Richard Herring and Al Pitcher) competing in various events. A standing long jump, best name (decided by members of the audience finding people with the same names on the street), throwing something into a bucket with another bucket on your head and the admin pentathlon (sorting mixed veg, peeling an orange, sending a text and going outside). It was all very silly but incredibly funny. 5 Stars.

^{The bucket event as it happened…}

Lloyd Langford: A Day in the Life of Lloyd Owen Langford

Though advertised as a day in the life, this was actually only an hour in the life. Much like his landlord and friend Rhod Gilbert, Langford’s story is interspersed with various interludes- here Langford considers everything and nothing, including circumcision. It’s a simple show but hugely enjoyable. 4 Stars.

 

So there you go, that’s the show bit of my time at the Fringe for you. Tune in later in the week for street performers on the Royal Mile and us exploring the city. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

Edinburgh Fringe: Street Performers   Edinburgh Fringe: Exploring Edinburgh

Chart Chasers #29

Hello and welcome to my weekly look at the new songs in the UK chart. This week is effectively an Olympics Closing Ceremony special. The Closing Ceremony was one big concert where loads of artists performed. And many of those have reached the chart, along with a few others, to create this enormous post with TEN songs in!

Our first song of the day is No Name by Ryan O’Shaughnessy. I wish he actually had no name because “O’Shaughnessy” is extremely hard to spell.

Well it’s a pretty song but also pretty dull. Yawn. It’s so uninspiring and boring! I suppose Ryan has a decent voice but it’s not put to great use here and the song is terribly written and doesn’t flow very well. Not impressed. 2/5.

Cheryl Cole is back with another song (although she’s only known as Cheryl these days). It’s called Under the Sun. I haven’t heard this yet but I expect it’s another typical Summery pop song.

Despite myself, I kind of like that. It’s not a particularly Summery song but it’s an upbeat pop song. Cheryl’s voice is auto-tuned in the chorus which loses her a mark but having other voices in it makes up for it a little. A cheery pop song. 3/5.

Now we’re onto the Olympics songs. Next up is John Lennon with Imagine. Now there’s something I never thought I’d be writing here. Enjoy the classic!

A beautiful song by an incredibly talented singer and songwriter about imagining an entirely peaceful world. They don’t write them like that any more. How can it be anything other than 5/5?

Next we have George Michael. This is his brand new song which he performed at the Closing Ceremony. It’s called White Light.

This is a weird song. White Light I assume is talking about death. This is probably the best song George has created in many a year but it’s still not great. Too much auto-tune and general trickery to make him sound better than he actually is. 2/5

Porter Robinson is up next with a song called Language. I have no idea who Porter Robinson is and can’t tell you even which gender they are. Let’s listen to the song and find out.

Well that was a typical Ministry of Sound track. It’s quite enjoyable though, but nothing particularly special. Same old stuff. 2/5.

To cut loading times on the main page, to access the second half of this post you might need to press “Read More” below. Please join me for some great songs and be aware it make take a few moments to load.

Guest Post: Top 10 Cartoon Characters

Saturday is Guest Post Day! This week our guest writer selects the most popular cartoon characters of all time!

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Top 10 Most Popular Cartoon Characters Of All Time

Picking the most popular cartoon characters of all time is difficult. Their popularity ranges from everything from whether they were in some of the most iconic cartoons or features, or whether they have been a lucrative part of merchandising empires spanning cartoon games, toys and theme park rides. Any of these kinds of lists is going to be subjective, and the following characters shouldn’t be seen as being definitive. There are many exceptions, and the list comes down to characters that I’ve enjoyed over time, or believe have made an important contribution to animation. They include:

10 – Popeye

Popeye first appeared as a comic strip character created by Elzie Crisler Segar in 1929, and grew in popularity as a syndicated figure throughout America. In 1933 Popeye was turned into a cartoon character, appearing in shorts made by the Fleischer Studios for Paramount Pictures. Popeye was later adapted into a Warner Bros. live action film in 1980.

9 - Betty Boop

Designed by Max Fleischer as a cartoon version of the 1920s flapper, Betty Boop appeared in animated shorts for Paramount in 1930, and went on to be one of the most popular characters of the era. Her flapper personality and sex appeal made her into an iconic figure, and she has since gone on to be a lucrative merchandising item, even if new material isn’t made around her.

8 - Scooby Doo

The Great Dane made his first appearance in a Hanna Barbera cartoon in 1969, which aired on American network CBS on Saturday mornings. Scooby Doo was the loveable sidekick to a gang of mystery solvers, and appeared again in an ABC cartoon and multiple adaptations through to the 1980s and 1990s. Live action films and rides have been made from the original cartoon character.

7 - Donald Duck

Created in 1934, this Disney character appeared in a number of cartoons as part of the studio’s series of shorts in the 1930s. Donald also became the star of a series of Disney comics, and eventually gained a family that included Scrooge McDuck and his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. Donald has been particularly popular in Europe and Scandinavia, where his comic books are still bestsellers.

6 - Powerpuff Girls

These Craig McCracken designed superheroes were a hit on the Cartoon Network from 1998 to 2005, and spun off a number of films, specials and merchandise. Recommended for their blend of feminism, comedy and great animation.

5 - Fred Flintstone

A major influence on later animated characters, Fred Flintstone first appeared as the star of The Flintstones, the first primetime cartoon in 1960. The put upon, blue collar Fred helped make the series the longest running primetime cartoon until The Simpsons.

4 - Bart Simpson

For the first few years of The Simpsons in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bart was the undoubted star, spawning catchphrases and merchandise. While the show gradually moved its focus to Homer and the family as a whole, Bart remains one of the most recognisable cartoon figures in the world.

3 - Bugs Bunny

Bugs made his first appearance in 1938 as part of the cartoon ‘Porky’s Hare Hunt,’ and went on to be one of Chuck Jones and Warner Bros. Animation’s most popular characters in the Looney Tunes series in the 1940s. Today Bugs is a corporate mascot and the star of extensive cartoons and feature films.

2 - Mickey Mouse

The corporate icon of Disney, Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in the 1928 short Steamboat Willie. While Mickey has appeared in 130 films and shorts, he has gained greater longevity as Disney’s official mascot, and has also appeared in video games and comic strips.

1 - Homer Simpson

Voiced by Dan Castellaneta, Homer Simpson has arguably become the most popular character in The Simpsons. From his clumsy but essentially sweet natured behaviour, through to his slapstick performances and one liners, Homer is perhaps the most consistently entertaining animated character in history.

Liam Ohm is a technology and gaming enthusiast. In his spare time he enjoys anything from blogging about the newest developments in technology to playing free online games for boys. His children are eagerly awaiting the release of FIFA 13 and currently use the Cartoon Network website to get their gaming fix!

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