2019 British Arrow Awards

We've been going to the Arrow Awards for a long time. I won my first tickets in a drawing at TR and when they got more popular with the younger crowd (I assume that's what happened when I quit winning tickets after about three-four years), we switched to buying them.  We generally make it an anniversary event (26 years this year) with dinner.  This year was my first anniversary working downtown, so I met them at Christo's.  We should have given ourselves a bit more time.  It was pretty rushed to get through dinner and over to the Walker.  I had the added gift of taking the Route 18 down Nicollet.  That's the route I took 30 years ago when I was working at Third District Nurses.  Back then, I expertly avoided working during rush hour traffic.  So after a quarter century, it finally caught up to me.  It was PACKED.  I offer this anecdote:

I took the 18 down Nicollet to meet my family for dinner. The bus was a sardine can. One more person tried to get on and was turned away. There was a pause and then a guy near me said, "What? No. The bus is like county lockup. There's always room for one more."

The Amazon commercials were funny, both the Alex voice variants and the variants where individuals watching binge-able shows began to exhibit the characteristics of the main characters.  The Old Spice ones were funny.  The Rang-Tan in my bedroom one explains a piece of paper I saw when we went to a very strange movie at the Trylon: The Final Level: Escaping Rancala".

And Viva La Vulva is an experience.

BBC One's spend time with your kids one had me thinking they'd go Doctor Who somewhere during the play.  And I'd Rather Get Paid by Secret about equal wages was very well done.

Arrow Awards 2015

I won tickets to the Arrow Awards, so I picked a date that allowed us to celebrate our 22nd annivesary.  We got an extra ticket for Eryn, went to Christo's for a family dinner, and then enjoyed the best advertising has to offer.  A warning...this is full of spoilers if you're going to the awards at the Walker at some point.  If you not, they're usually public domain (e.g. on YouTube), so I'll share the ones I liked that weren't particularly serious (there were some good commercials for the anniversary of WWI in the UK, Fuck the Poor, anti-Elephant Riding, anti-domestic violence, et al. If you want to see a more in depth play list, someone has put one together out on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi7HTNtEyVs&list=PLryF_BTbFSHVFTH0GRmO5DXYq9NQCVd1t

Sainsbury's Christmas 1914


Levi's Just Don't Bore Them


Jagermeister Journey to Surf


Netflix Superfan


Three - Sing it Kitty


Dave of MoneySuperMarket gets Bootylicious


Call to Arms (known by Lynx in the UK)


Merry Beeping Christmas (Oral B)


M&S Back to School


John Lewis Monty the Penguin

British Arrow Awards

Tonight we (just the adults) went to The British Arrow Awards at the Walker.  We'd been once before and that time, and this one, I won two tickets from work, making the total cost for our evening of entertainment $4.00.  Nice.  The advertisements featured were both funny, in the case of Guinness and Axe and Thinkbox and Money Supermarket, and disturbing/sad in the case of the women's shelter (scary rape scene because the shelter was being defunded), childhood abuse prevention, smoking, and anti-shark finning.  The did an excellent job pulling the series together to handle the ups and downs to keep you entertained rather than simply amused or too sad/shocked.  Some of my favorites:

Guinness' Sheep Dog:

Money Supermarket Astronaut:

Thinkbox's Harvey & Rabbit

Funny Fortnight with Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson - my fellow Anglophiles will recognize the context of the duo together:


John Lewis Christmas Retail - The Journey

Orange Security:


John Lewis Never Knowingly Understold - not funny, but really a beautiful commercial with a great cover of INXS