Rec. #894: Gourmet Hound

 

What: Gourmet Hound is an absolutely delightful web comic with a tv-miniseries-level premise --- Lucy uses her uncanny sense of taste and smell to track down a certain chef she knows only via their cooking.

Along the way, she gets caught up in the lingering tangles from the mass exodus of several chefs from a workplace gone wrong.

Comparable to: Do you adore how food is cherished in Studio Ghibli films? That same level of loving attention is given to it here as well. 

How to get it: All 166 episodes of Gourmet Hound are available for free online. Start here. 

Rec. #893/Streaming Suggestion of the Week #54: Baroness Von Sketch Show

 

Stream what: Baroness Von Sketch Show is a Canadian tv sketch comedy series. Those tend to have a pretty good record! This one is with Carolyn Taylor, Meredith MacNeill, Aurora Browne, and Jennifer Whalen.

Stream why: It's a natural successor to Kids in the Hall.

Representative bit:

"Diane, we are living in television's golden age of empowered women."

"Absolutely! I mean, it used to be you'd only see pretty girls getting raped and murdered on tv. But now, you get to see a powerful woman investigating pretty girls getting raped and murdered on tv."

"We've come a long way."

Stream where: Here in the U.S., the show airs on IFC and the first season is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Rec. #892: Haunted House

 

What: This song from the brilliantly named Sir Babygirl is an accurate description of how pretty much every social interaction feels now, right? ... Right?

Representative lyrics:

And no one knows the difference from my laughter and my screams
When everyone around me's twenty shots under the sea
And I can't tell if I'm drowning or floating
So I just keep on going, going
And I don't even know if I wanna be free
'Cause the freedom of this party is killing me

How to get it: Don't miss the gut-driven video on YouTube.

Rec. #891: Kajillionaire

 

What: A young woman (Evan Rachel Wood) slowly realizes that her parents' (Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins) use of her to run a lifetime of small cons is ... not great. Enter Gina Rodriguez.

I loved this absurdist comedy from writer/director Miranda July.

Representative quote: "I don't have any regrets. You're gonna have regrets, though. Because you're gonna miss sex and dancing and pancakes. I just had that one pancake. So I'm not gonna be sad."

How to get it: Streaming on HBO Max. Or rent from wherever. (Or borrow the DVD for free from your local library, which is what I did! Because the streaming universe is increasingly just trying to recreate the price-gouging user-unfriendliness of cable packages. And libraries are great.)