Look at what I bought!

A "Garden Gnomes for Obama" pin!

 

From the coveted garden gnome demographic.  They're probably what put him over the edge! 

Speaking of gnomes (best transition ever, probably), I just found this amazing site called Better Gnomes and Gardens, which has all of the latest gnome gnews and information.  As a fan of gnomes, I cannot tell you how absolutely ECSTATIC I am to have found this!  I just wish I had known about it two months ago, when there was an alert for a giveaway of 300 garden gnomes in Phoenix!  (My mom would have loved that!)  Better Gnomes and Gardens has quickly rocketed up towards the top of my list of the Best Things on the Internet, Ever (I'd say it's above This is why you're fat but below Videogum and Wizard People, Dear Reader).  

Peep Show is great!

I may have mentioned earlier that the British television comedy Peep Show is great, but I will mention it again.  Peep Show is great!  Oh man, it is SO GOOD.  I'm midway through the third season right now, and I have to say, I am quite impressed by the consistent super high quality of this show!  ALL OF THE EPISODES thus far have been top-notch, hilarious, cringe-tastic entertainment.  Let me tell you more about it, and why I like it so much!

I came across Peep Show after watching the excellent sketch comedy series, That Mitchell and Webb Look, which has the same two guys as Peep Show.  It's very funny!  Here is a sketch from it:

Ahaha.  That's funny even though I don't live in England where there is, apparently, an excessive amount of football (soccer) coverage; instead, I live in America, where there is, in fact, a dearth of football (soccer) coverage!  But if you substitute all the "football!"s for "American football!"s, it makes TOTAL SENSE.  (The heroin addict Christmas one is also great.)

I enjoyed watching That Mitchell and Webb Look for quite some time, mostly via YouTube, but also sometimes at ungodly hours of the night on BBC America (and one glorious Tuesday afternoon three months ago, when there was a marathon!).  But THEN I found out about Peep Show, which is a real non-sketch show (!) with Mitchell and Webb (!!) that has actual narratives (!!!) and an innovative point-of-view camera technique (!!!!).

SO.  Peep Show is about these two flatmates, Mark and Jez, who are what could be called an "odd couple."  Mark is a terminally pessimistic and awkward office worker and Jez is the opposite of that, but also a "musician."  But what makes this interesting is the innovative point-of-view camera technique and the inner monologue voice-overs.  Here, watch THIS!  Okay, did you watch that?  Good!  Wasn't that neat, how each character's thoughts play out over the action, which is often from their point of view?  What a great idea that was!  (Also, did you notice how immensely quotable it is?  "Tinned food is for crackheads and wores.")  The point of view thing took a while for me to get used to - there was a lot of staring down at food in the first season - but it's pretty neat.  And the voice-overs are great because they double the LPM (laffs per minute).

ALSO:

• Like my other favorite British cringe comedies, The Office and Extras, Peep Show is sometimes very painful to watch!  It gets really bad at times, but in a good way.  It still manages to be very funny even when the characters are at their most unlikable, which is impressive.
  
• Speaking of The Office, it is very much like The Office sometimes, but just because half of it takes place in Mark's office and there is lots of Office-type humor.  But it is unique and different!
• Also speaking of The Office, the Guardian claims Peep Show is the best British comedy of the decade (lofty claim, I know!), better even than The Office (because Peep Show has been on the air for six seasons without a decline in quality, which I'm not sure is how you judge these things, but sure, IT IS THAT GOOD!)!
• The first season was great, but I've been loving the second and third ones because there has been more action from the supporting characters, all of whom are great, but especially Super Hans the crackhead. 
• Okay, so Peep Show is great.  Watch it!  It's all on YouTube!
  

Look at what I bought!

GOLD LION DOOR KNOCKER EARRINGS!

I love working at a thrift store.

This is the last time I will talk about Skins for a while, I PROMISE

I know it's been weeks, practically months since the last episode of Skins, and I haven't done my RECAP yet, but here it is.  It was rather underwhelming for a SEASON FINALE but it still had many good parts.  Here's what happened!

The first 30 seconds of the show are absolutely, without a doubt, THE most seizure-inducing 30 seconds of any TV show I have ever witnessed.  I have no idea what's going on!  Oh wait, it's just Effy and Cook, partying really hard.  They're living as outlaws these days, after Effy's accidental attempted murder of their friend Katie.  They're just banditting through the English countryside, stopping at all the most podunk towns to see which one has the best raves.  Apparently it is the town where Cook's dad lives.  Cook is really nervous about meeting his dad, whom he hasn't seen in years; it's nice to see Cook being not a total jerk.  And NO WAY! Cook's dad is Super Hans from Peep Show (a quick word on Peep Show:  oh man, it is SO GOOD.  Probably the best cringe comedy since Extras.  Watch it here!)  He is quite a nasty character, but he says some funny things.  "This here kid is the FRUIT OF MY LOOOMBS!" etc.  They hang out at the pub because Cook's dad is an alcoholic.  Cooke is loving it because he's also an alcoholic (like father, like son!).  Effy is not amused.

That night, they are still at the pub but now everyone is dancing.  Effy is the hottest girl there!  Cook's dad is like, "Hey son, your girlfriend is MAJOR hot.  I'd hit it!" and more rude things that normal, boundary-respecting dads don't say to their kids.  Cook doesn't say anything, but it is dawning on him that his dad is a total creep.  Cook gets in a fight with some guy who's hitting on Effy, for the sole purpose of setting up an IMPORTANT PLOT POINT.  Effy leaves the pub.  She's getting tired of Cook's antics.  But then Cook's dad hits on Effy and proposes to "have a rumble" with her.  Yuck, what a creep!  Effy is not amused.

Meanwhile, JJ and Freddie are at work, being all pissy and argumentative.  JJ thinks Freddie smokes too much and is too boring, and Freddie is like "WHAT!  Me, boring?!?!?  I'm really, really, ridiculously good looking and I have TWO LOOKS!  I'm practically the most exciting person there is!!!"  JJ is even more bored now.  He would prefer the company of Effy's mom to his boring friend.  They have a nice chat.  She really cares about her daughter but doesn't understand her!  JJ can relate because he's a magician, or something.  Later on, he goes to Freddie's house to apologize for their row, but Freddie is in the middle of a furious wanking session!  PHEW.  I was so worried this season would end without a single wanking scene, but they managed to sneak one in right at the end! Good job, guys.  Anyways, Freddie gets a call from Effy and she says "Cook is in trouble, you have to come help him!"  Freddie is all "whiiiine whine whine, why do I have to help him, I thought you liked him?" and Effy is like "Because I love you, Freddie."  Aw.

Cook's dad owes a lot of money to the pubtender so Cook enters a race to help him out, and also to beat that guy who was hitting on Effy earlier.  But then Freddie and JJ show up!  They all have a big argument and everyone drops what they are doing to listen to them.

"I'm really interested in what these children are talking about in slightly raised voices."

Freddie and Cook decide to race against each other and whoever wins will get to keep Effy, or whatever.  But then JJ enters the race!  What's he doing there?  He's too nerdy to win a race, especially if it is a GRANNY RACE?!?!?! WHAT!

Surprise!  JJ wins, because slow and steady wins the race.  The granny race, not the race to win Effy's heart.  Because Freddie wins that later on, when he and Effy are totally getting it on in some warehouse or whatever.  BUT FIRST.  Freddie and Cook are very mad at each other because neither one won the race and now we will never know who will be with Effy!  They get into a fight but JJ breaks it up with a magic "if you don't stop being such babies I will snap your fingers in half and make your eyeballs pop out" trick.  He proceeds to put everyone in their place.  Freddie and Cook are being really stupid these days!  Effy should stop being so "fit and mysterious"!  And Effy really has to stick with one guy, she's tearing their friendships apart!  Cook hates relationship talks, so he leaves, and so does JJ, and now Effy and Freddie can get it on in peace.

Cook goes to see his dad at the docks (he lives on a boat, btw) so they can have more fun, father-son bonding time.  But what's this?  His dad is trying to leave town before his boat can be seized and his son can say goodbye to him?  Plus, his dad didn't want Cook to visit, and besides, Cook was an accident so why should he care about him?  Ouch.  Cook is distraught.  is dad threatens to hit him with a lit firecracker?  Crazy.  But then Freddie shows up and knocks Cook's dad out with the classic heavy object to the head move!  JJ and Effy who up, and they all start sailing down the river with Cook's dad's unconscious body in tow.  He wakes up and Cook shoves him overboard because he has finally realized he does not need that nasty dad, even though he is the only dad he's got.  Freddie and Cook are friends again!  Freddie wonders "What do we do now?" and it is ALL OVER.

Friends!

And here's what I thought:

• My main problem with this episode and pretty much the whole third season, is this: I don't care which guy Effy ends up with!  They're both pretty bad!  Cook is a childish jerk and Freddie is a boring wanker (but that might be more of a problem of that guy's acting, which is pretty bad sometimes)!  That was a pretty weak overarching plot line.  (but OBVIOUSLY Effy should've chosen JJ because he's a gentleman and he won the race besides.)  
• Where was everyone else?  Finales are supposed to be "everyone" episodes!
  
• That was such a boring and lazy ending!  "What's going to happen next? WINK WINK, keep watching our show!" Geesh.  I don't care what happens next because there are no questions dying to be answered unless you count "Will Effy stay with Freddie this time?" which would be a boring question.  I'm going to be irked (IRKED!) if I have to sit through that dumb storyline again!  I miss the days of Skins yore, when finales were times for Cat Stevens singalongs and transcontinental soul searching.
• Otherwise, it was pretty good.  It was nice to get some backstory on Cook, and for that backstory to involve Super Hans.  

And here is a Skins Series 3 Report Card:

• I ended up liking it more than I thought I would at the (horrible) beginning.  The characters certainly grew on me, except for Freddie, who got VERY ANNOYING by the end.  Even Cook was not so bad!  I actually thought the guy who played him, Jack O'Connell, did a great job (and I just found out he was Pukey Nicholls in This is England.  True story!) and I totally wouldn't mind if he went on to star in the next Big Movie and be nominated for all the awards, a la Anwar of Series 1 and 2.  And I really liked JJ and the twins and Thomas.  The actors who played them were pretty good, too.  And Naomi and Pandora were fine as well, I suppose.  And of course (of course!) Effy was great.  Good job, everyone except Freddie!
• Gradeswise, I would give the first half of the season a D and the second half a B+.  I'm really glad they (They? They.) took my advice and toned down the CRAZY EXTREEEEME of the first few episodes.  Good job, you guys!

I am loving these two movie things right now!

I just recently stumbled upon two sites that you will probably love if you like movies and/or things that look cool.  The first one is some guy's flickr page where he makes minimalist posters for some classic movies.  What a great idea!  This one's my favorite:

Isn't that neat.   On the other site, someone made old-style novel versions of classic movies.  Look at this one!

 

Pretty cool, right?  And I love this one:

Okay, you get.  Great stuff!