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one thing about me is that Gnomes. i'm autistic and i love these little guys. i have developed an interest in garden gnomes specifically, and so now i have made a Gnome Hub ! i hope you see me as not only a friend but a source of... gnowledge (sorry)
garden gnomes have issues, gnome alone
please email me gnome gifs i will <3 you forever
thank you ever so much to everyone who has emailed me gnimages !!!!!! i love them all so so much
there aren't so many gnome links, but here are some gnomely resources i have found (there are currently not many for which i apologise, please do email me more if you have any and i will be so so happy)
there are a few pieces of gnome media in this world. i think we need more, but here are my thoughts on the ones we have so far
WHAT A PLACE TO BEGIN i adore gnomeo and juliet with my entire heart. it is the absolute movie of all time and has a bangin soundtrack (though i have some Thoughts about the release of said soundtrack).
about this piece of gnedia
gnomeo and juliet is a 2011 british-american computer-animated film by touchstone pictures and rocket films. its soundtrack was written by elton john and bernie taupin, with the majority of the songs being from elton's back catalogue except for two original songs for the movie, love builds a garden
and hello hello
(performed in the film by elton john and lady gaga, though not in the soundtrack release, but we'll get to that one later).
thoughts on this gnedia
i'd like to state right now before i say anything that i am completely and totally 100% biased towards loving this movie, for a multitude of reasons including but not limited to:
... which is to say take everything i say here with a MASSIVE grain of salt
but anyway. i LOVE gnomeo and juliet, it's just this silly little lighthearted movie about gnomes in a garden and that's what it tries to be and that's what it is! it achieves its goal perfectly well and i just love that for it. however, when mentioning gnomeo and juliet i do unfortunately have to mention to you The Truths..
The Truths are some laws of gnomeo and juliet me and a friend devised when watching it in around august 2022. they serve as a testament to both the unhingedness of this movie as a concept (i mean who just wakes up and thinks "you know what would be great?? child-friendly romeo and juliet except it's gnomes") and also why you should not think too hard about silly goofy gnome movies. and so i present to you The Truths
thank you so much to zaphod for helping with this
(note: this probably makes little to no sense because it was 1 in the morning when i wrote it)
the gnomeo & juliet cinematic universe will henceforth be referred to as the gjcu
1. it's very heavily implied that paris (an elton john parody) and nanette (a female frog) are hooking up
there is a … vaguely suggestive shot of nanette in which she imagines paris singing to her while she lies sprawled out on a bed of rose petals
nanette dances with paris at the end of the movie, however paris is nowhere to be seen in sherlock gnomes, which is allegedly set shortly after gnomeo & juliet (more on that later).
in sherlock gnomes, nanette quickly gets with benny, and shows how she would normally act with a romantic interest, which (spoiler) does not include fantasies where she is posed on a bed of roses for her lover
2a. either elton john exists in the gjcu…
paris is an elton john parody, and nanette imagines paris as elton john when he is singing, which means that he must exist or nanette would have nothing to base this fantasy off of.
2b. …or nanette is some sort of bernie taupin/elton john hybrid
as previously established, nanette imagines paris as elton john. when she imagines this, she pictures him singing “your song”, one of elton’s most widely known and well-loved songs. if elton john did not exist in the gjcu, and he was just a figment of nanette’s imagination, then that could mean one of two things: that nanette came up with the lyrics and tune of your song; or that bernie taupin had become the songwriter for a different up-and-coming artist in the 70s, and nanette rewrote the tune of the song with bernie’s lyrics (as bernie taupin wrote the lyrics, and elton john the tune, of the song)
3. assuming that elton john does exist in the gjcu, either g&j is either set in the 70s (which is contradicted by the decidedly 2011 computers); elton john in the gjcu is straight; or nanette is homophobic
in the 70s, elton john was closeted, so nanette having a celebrity crush on him as proved by the above points would be relatively reasonable.
the same logic applies for “elton john in this universe is straight”.
the “nanette is homophobic” theory also applies this same logic, though in sherlock gnomes this theory is somewhat negated by the fact that when benny reveals to nanette that he likes someone, she says “well maybe they have a crush on you back!”. it is of course possible that nanette quickly changed her homophobic ways, however, so this theory is not completely implausible.
4. interspecies relationships and apparently hookups are normalised in the gjcu, although this could be contradicted by the fact that technically they're all garden ornaments
nobody questions nanette
5. it is loosely hinted at that tybalt is queer
"flower boy [tybalt] won't come out"
tybalt: "do i look like a begonia?"
other gnome: "no, more like a pansy"
also his constant references to benny's big hat. see below.
6. hats are the sexual organs of gnomes
when seeing juliet after she met gnomeo, nanette says "how big was his… [implied to mean dick]" to which juliet responds by describing his hat. this of course begs the question: are hats the sexual organs of gnomes? if this is the case, that would mean that gnomes have an infinitely more advanced society than us, due to the fact that they all have the same sexual organ and yet they have gender, meaning that they have destroyed the concept of genders assigned at birth; or half the gnomes are trans
at one point in the film, benny's hat breaks and has to be repaired. this means that following the theory that hat = genitalia, benny canonically got his dick surgically repaired
7. the people who made this movie either didn't think anything through or were high maybe
the soundtrack of gnomeo and juliet
i mentioned in the introduction that i have some quibbles about the release of gnomeo and juliet's soundtrack and score. i'd like to preface this paragraph by saying that i ADORE all of the music itself, it's all absolutely amazing and perfect, but it's specifically the way in which the album was released where my issues lie. i'd also like to say that i'm basing this off of the spotify version of the soundtrack and assuming that all physical media was released in the same manner, although i am looking into buying a CD of the soundtrack so i will amend this page if necessary when i get that sorted.
the release of the gnomeo and juliet soundtrack was... interesting, to say the least. for one, there were three versions of one song - one which i really don't think should even exist, and one that feels entirely incomplete. there were also multiple other issues. i'll go into them all in detail, but here's the tl;dr:
1. only three parts of the score were on the album
the score of gnomeo and juliet was by james newton howard, who did an incredible job of it, in my opinion. it's made up of orchestral versions of elton's songs and pieces of original score all woven together into a beautiful composition which doesn't get anywhere near as much appreciation as i think it should. this is especially reflected by the fact that ONLY THREE ITEMS FROM IT were released on the soundtrack, out of god knows how many. i am fuming
2. literally zero (0) of the songs were released on the soundtrack as they were in the original movie
this one really gets to me. it just makes no sense? it'd be incredibly easy to put the songs into an album as they were on screen, but instead they made a compilation album. it's even listed as such on spotify:
and this irritates me because all of the songs were edited ever so slightly before going into the movie, and it's just completely erasing that. and they were so beautifully edited too! it's sad because someone clearly spent a lot of time on it, for example in don't go breaking my heart - as they both move, little flourishes are added into the music that are so subtle that even i, speaking as someone who could recreate every note of every instrument to this song in my sleep, didn't notice them until around my third watch? and that's because they're just so seamless and so perfect, and they enhance it so nicely and go with the music perfectly. it must have taken a lot of effort to make it sound so close to the original, even in terms of the way it would have been recorded and mixed in, so that's absolutely amazing on the part of the audio team, and a massive travesty on the part of whoever manages the albums.
the two original songs plus nelly furtado's crocodile rock also had whole instrumental sections taken out, saturday night's alright for fighting had the whole chanting taken out (which i can sort of understand, but it'd be nice to have it as it was in the film), your song completely omitted the bits sung by paris in the movie about miracle gro and all, tiny dancer and bennie and the jets weren't even IN the movie aside from the score, and they omitted the bitch is back even though they used the instrumental from it (though i do kind of get that one because it's intended for children to listen to,, which is why they should have made it a score track). it's a complete mess and i really have strong feelings about that one.
3. they remade the instrumental to the bitch is back?
this one isn't so much something i'm annoyed about, but rather something i'm SO CONFUSED by. the bitch is back by elton john has a middle eight. elton john was working on the film with them, so rights wouldn't have been an issue. and yet instead of taking this instrumental, remastering it, and using that, they recreated it? and i don't even mean "they recreated it and changed something", i mean it was very subtle and i'm fairly sure the only reason i noticed was the elton john special interest. this one is just downright weird
4. the hello hello ordeal
if you read all of this i literally love you because i have an AWFUL LOT TO SAY ON THIS SUBJECT.
one of the two original songs written for the movie gnomeo and juliet was called hello hello. it was written, like the majority of elton's songs, by him and lyricist bernie taupin, and this particular song was performed by elton and lady gaga, who, at the time, was one of the biggest popstars ever. now, for most soundtracks, there are up to two versions of a song: the version used in the film, and, if that version has dialogue over it, a version in the soundtrack with the dialogue (and possibly any long stretches of instrumental) taken out. so why, then, does gnomeo and juliet not follow this rule?
there are three versions of hello hello. number one is the version used in the film, which contains both lady gaga and elton john, along with dialogue, instrumental flourishes to go with movement, and instrumental sections, with the ending being cut off by action. number two is the version in the end credits, which is decidedly stripped back in terms of instruments, has none of the flourishes, and no instrumental sections, but again with gaga and elton performing it. number three is similar, except - for some reason - lady gaga is absent. for reasons unknown, the stripped-back, gaga-less version was the one released on the soundtrack. (i believe this is true on the CD as well, due to the wikipedia page mentioning that "the soundtrack version only features [elton] John".)
there are multiple issues with this. for one, why does the version without lady gaga even (still) exist, never mind be the version they choose to release? and why did they use a much more stripped-back version for both the end credits and soundtrack versions of the song?
just as i was writing for this page, i decided to do some more research on why there was a version without lady gaga. as it turns out, a billboard article from 02/1/2011 (dd/m/yyyy or mm/d/yyyy??) says: "[elton] John said in an interview that he asked Gaga to join him for the song last year [in 2010] after she performed at a charity benefit at his home in England" (source). my original theory was that gaga had joined later on in production, considering that gnomeo and juliet began in ~2000 and gaga got her breakthrough in 2008, so i wasn't entirely off. as for why they chose to release this version on the album, i still don't know. there was speculation at the time that it would be released on born this way
, lady gaga's upcoming album at the time, but this didn't happen as elton and gaga were not labelmates.
of course, this still isn't the ideal version. i would be much happier if a version with lady gaga singing as well was released on the album (maybe happy enough to not even complain about it lol) but there's still the issue of the fact that it's stripped back! i understand some parts, like not including the dialogue-accommodating string interludes from the film, but there are some parts that should have stayed - take, for example, the lead-up to the chorus. after the lyrics just when you think / you're a chain with just one link / something comes to tip you off your stool
in the first pre-chorus, we hear in the film a little piece of tune from the strings that lead into the chorus perfectly. this is gone on the soundtrack version, as are other similar bits. and i know this sounds nitpicky and stupid and i'm sorry for that but just from a musician and analyst point of view it just annoys me!!
but that's all i'll say on this whole situation, for the time being. overall it's an excellent song, one of my absolute favourites of all time, but just the release really gets to me to a frankly unhealthy degree
investigations into the christmas cover
today (23rd feb 23) i was looking around the internet to try and find the cheapest available edition of the gnomeo and juliet ost CD, because as i mentioned earlier i'd like to get it for the purpose of examining it and seeing if the release is normal on there, and obviously gnomeo and juliet DVDs were coming up because it's a similar thing, but then there was a specific one that stopped me in my tracks because it's so CONFUSING to me. and that is the christmas cover!
at first glance this doesn't seem to be anything really confusing. it was made in the early 2010s, DVDs were insanely popular, so they capitalised on that and the festive season and made an alternative DVD cover to boost sales. but you have to think about the sheer IMPLICATIONS of that. the popularity of DVDs at this point in time were at their peak - most people didn't have VHS players anymore and it was before the reign of streaming services - and gnomeo and juliet was a big film, with big names attached, so a LOT of money must have gone into DVD production even BEFORE the festive sleeve, so why would they make a specific christmas version when that's not likely to boost sales that much but it would cost a lot?
and this baffled me so much i decided to do some digging :)
my first point of action was to see exactly how common this specific version of the DVD was. a quick google search provided a lot of listings, but one thing really stuck out to me - they were ALL region 2, and the ones in europe said that they were UK imports, which says to me that it was probably a UK-only release. this makes it make a little more sense, because that narrows down the market heavily meaning a lot less money would be spent on it than worldwide DVD release, but this isn't a definite statement because i used google and i'm based in the UK so i feel that it would give me UK results anyway (although there were a couple of european ones and a bahrainian one that said they were UK imports which is why i didn't discount that entirely). anyway, my conclusion there was that it was likely UK-only and very easy to get for me.
then, i found a cheap listing that looked like it came from a real person and not just a corporation, and thought about buying it, but i had already bought a CD that night so i was being a bit tight and i decided to message the seller instead. i came up with the angle that i was a parent with a six-year-old child who was obsessed with g&j it's me i'm the 6-year-old, because i thought that might yield good results. here's the message i sent:
Hello! Sorry this is a bit of an interesting question haha, but I am really intrigued by the Gnomeo & Juliet DVD you have listed -- I've never seen one with that specific cover before, so I was wondering if you know if it has any particular Christmas-themed special features or clips, or if it's just a marketing thing? Sorry for the odd request, my 6-year-old is very obsessed with this movie and desperately wanted me to ask just to see that he had definitely watched everything to do with it😂 thank you for your time!
i had to channel my inner millenial and it was kind of painful to write, but it was worth it in the end. the seller messaged back today (24th feb) and told me that there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary and that there were no special features that didn't seem to be on other releases. this fact makes me even more confused - making a christmas cover with christmas-themed extras or a little short or something would make sense, but just straight-up making a christmas-themed DVD cover for no apparent reason? that's just odd?
after this endeavour, i kept on looking through the google results trying to find more information and eventually one of the listings on musicmagpie gave me a little snippet - it said the DVD was released on the 17th of october 2011. i'm not taking this for undeniable fact because i got it from one singular musicmagpie listing, which doesn't seem like a very scholarly and reliable source, but equally i'm not going to immediately discount it because it's not like i'm going to get any other information anywhere else. if this date is accurate that differs significantly from the standard release, which was the 24th of may that year.
my next resource was the disney wiki, because disney were in charge of distribution. annoyingly enough they have a whole page on the home release which includes NO INFORMATION about any releases other than the US ones. however, that does say to me that i could be right in my assumption that it was a region 2 or UK only release, so i guess it's not entirely useless. from there i decided to go to the disney wiki's page on gnomeo and juliet to see if i could gain anything from that, and saw the link to the gnomeo and juliet website! it's no longer up, but the wayback machine is my best friend in the entire world and so i decided to look at some pages from october 2011, to see if it was advertised there, and - shocker, based on the amount of information i've found so far - it wasn't. they advertised the blu-ray 3d combo pack, the blu-ray combo pack, the (standard-issue) DVD, and the itunes download. my original thinking was that this lined up with it being a UK release, because it's a .com domain, right? but changing the .com to .co.uk led me to a completely unrelated site, and then going forward in time the domain became up for sale, so that wasn't a lead.
UPDATE 28TH FEB!!! i bought the DVD in the end and it just arrived today. so far i have inspected the cover and the disc itself, and everything is EXACTLY the same as on my other DVD copy, which is just the regular UK release. this includes, as suspected, the same special features are listed (elton builds a garden/deleted & alternative scenes). the back of the DVD is identical to the standard release. in fact the only noticeable difference in terms of the casing (other than the obvious christmas theme on the front and side) is that it feels quite a bit heavier than the original release??? which is really odd but i digress. the artwork on the disc itself is, upon further inspection, a tiny bit more saturated than my normal copy, but that's got to be unintentional. i am going to see if the menu screen has a christmas theme, because really that's the only other thing that could plausibly be different.
an update: the menu screen is EXACTLY THE SAME. i am beyond confusion at this stage. i do not know what is going on with the christmas cover of gnomeo and juliet and at this stage i am too afraid to ask
overall, gnomeo and juliet is a movie i absolutely adore. it just raises a lot of questions as well
i was hesitant to include this one considering that it's literally one song and i've already said a bit about it on the music page but i don't even care any more it's my website and i am here to talk about the laughing gnome by david bowie.
here's my review from the music page:
The laughing gnome
I think David Bowie just saw an opportunity to fit a load of gnome puns into a song and you know what i can respect that. There are SO many gnome puns in this song and they are all awful and i just adore that. [heart] like they are just CRAMMED in there at unnecessary random points and i find that so funny i love this song!
the laughing gnome was a single by david bowie released in 1967, before he got his major breakthrough in the media. it was initially sort of ignored because it's a song about a laughing gnome but then in 1973 it made no. 6 in the UK charts as it was reissued. it contains 7 gnome puns just sort of slotted in there, which are all so objectively awful and i love that about them. the main hook of the song is david bowie singing a duet with a chipmunk version of himself, with the words being "ha ha ha hee hee hee i'm a laughing gnome and you can't catch me". this song is so silly and i love that <3
i don't really have much to say about this song. it's a banger which was recommended to me by a tumblr mutual and i just love it a lot ajkskadjh
as a certified 
, i think it's important to read gnome-critical literature sometimes. however, i was absolutely shocked at the misinformation about gnomes spread by this obscene excuse for a book! gnomes are harmless creatures, residing in gardens worldwide to brighten up the atmosphere and have a fun time, and yet in this frankly dangerous "guide" they are shown to be bloodthirsty creatures, trying to break into your home and kill you. to disprove this i have decided to conduct a study: i have Gnome shelves in my room. they contain my whole gnollection (gnome collection; see below). if i do not die via gnomes within a year's time - which, according to the book, is ample time, clearly - then i think it is safe to conclude that it is a work of fiction, created to defame and put down gnomes. stand up to degnomenisation and support gnome rights today!
this is all satire by the way it's a very funny book that i enjoyed
there are some things about this page that i find very funny (the highlighter colours look nicer in real life my scanner is just not great with colours)
(g)note: a lot of this collection is actually comprised of gonks, which are different to gnomes but i am filing them under the gnome page because they are related and also i don't know enough about gonks to create a whole page about them (also this isn't exclusively gnomes but rather gnome-related things that i own)
photos will be supplied at the nearest possible convenience
list organised approximately from oldest to newest
i am of course hoping to expand this collection, my family were never too big on gnomes but i am slowly changing this <3