According to Lawnstarter, a lawncare startup that appears to operate as the Uber of lawncare services, Baltimore is the number 1 ranked city for Gnome popularity. Click the logo above for a link to their article.
Apparently, the gnome loving trend in Baltimore started when the Orioles gave away Buck Showalter garden gnomes. They followed it up with a 2nd gnome giveaway, this time bearing the likeness of Manny Machado.
Since then, the two baseball gnomes go up on ebay for around $50.
Today in Gnomes in the Gnews, blue gnomes finally get removed. Totnes, a parish in Devon, England, found itself in a civic disagreement about city beautification. Lasting five years, the clash ended the other day when gnomes were removed from a traffic circle. This can be filed under Good Intentions Ruined by Reality. Click the masthead to go to the story.
when they were new?
Apparently, the firm that sponsored cleaning up the traffic island spent £5000 on these "gnomes" that are actually Disney dwarves painted bright blue like smurfs. The plan was foliage from planted shrubs would fill the area in and the "gnomes" would blend in. Nothing grew, and the blue dwarves just ended up being a target for vandalism and gnome gnapping. A few "disappeared" and never returned.
Gravity Falls was a 2 season animated show that ran from 2012 to 2016 on Disney Channel. Created by Alex Hirsch, it follows twins, Mabel and Dipper, who uncover weird mysteries while staying with their great uncle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon. The show has paranormal and cryptozoological themes, with ciphers hidden throughout the episodes.
Among the many monsters, creatures, and weird stuff seen in the show, the first episode debutes the best characters, obviously.
The gnomes need a new queen, and so try and trick Mabel into matrimony. When it doesn't go their way they unite to form a giant super gnome. Also, this episode gave everyone the following gif...
I follow Jason Freeny on Instagram. His theme is fictional anatomy, and he creates original sculptures bisected, showing the insides. Other artists have done similar things, like the Resurrectionist, and the Pokenatomy guy. But Freeny's stuff is sculpture, 3D figurines.
I encourage checking out his entire collection of work. Click the banner above to get there.
Recently, though, he completed probably his best work. In partnership with Big Shot Toys, he designed Ragnar Hellstrummer the Metal Gnome. You can order him here.
On Selby street in St Paul, Minnesota there is a bar with the best theme ever!
The Happy Gnome boasts 90 taps, and a full menu of burgers, tacos, wings and other pub/comfort food. Check out their website here. And if you're ever in the area, check them out. And remember, as they say on the site, they "still haven’t figured out why we are called The Happy Gnome, but somehow the name stuck and it will continue to be Gnome Sweet Gnome".
Update:
In July, 2020, the Happy Gnome was renovated and reopened as the Gnome. They reinvented themselves, changing from a corner pub to a supper club-like theme complete with cleverly named drinks like Fear of the UnGnome, and Gnomer Simpson.
Usually when something looks extremely cheesy and based on things that are so lame I cant understand how they became popular (like Pokémon and Power Rangers), I avoid it at all cost.
RL Stine wrote 87 Goosebumps stories between 1992 and 2000. The books were aimed at young teenagers and all had campy horror themes like famous movie monsters, ghosts, and other creepy things. I actually never read any of the books, but I do recognize the cover art. The books were everywhere when I was a kid.
Hollywood recently added a movie to the franchise (of course they did, no original ideas in Hollywood for the last 15 years). It looks awful. However, a friend of mine defended the recent Goosebumps movie as being a pretty good family comedy. I was skeptical, and the fact that it was made in 2015 and already streaming on Netflix is probably not a good sign. But I watched it the other day and I was pleasantly surprised.
The best part, obviously, were the evil gnomes! Definitely the best part of the movie. These critters are little terminators. We get to watch them get smashed, fed to a disposal, melted in an oven, caught in bear traps and still come out fighting. I recommend the movie for this alone.
Gnomes as the monster in horror stories isn't a new or fresh idea. I wrote about it before on this blog. In 2004 the creator of the failed Chaos Comics wrote a one shot comic for Avatar Press, about killer gnomes.
Brian Pulido founded Chaos! Comics in 1994 and helped jumpstart the "bad girl" comics era. His characters Lady Death, Chastity, and Jade were joined by London Night's Razor and Shi, Image Comics' Witchblade, Dawn, and Dark Chylde, Neil Gaiman's Angela, and IDW's Danger Girl in creating a new era of scantily clad, highly sexualized, exploitative femme fatales. The art style affected comics for the next 20 years.
After Chaos Comics went under in 2002, Brian Pulido began writing for other publishers, and dabbled in film. Killer Gnomes was one of these projects. The comic came first. But in 2009, he wrote and directed a short film called There's Something out There, which follows the plot of the comic book.
Killer Gnomes starts with the main character bringing home a garden gnome which comes to life and protects the garden with extreme murderous efficiency.
