Snow Falling on South Jersey: Entertainment Blitz Blizzard

Fantastic Flora and Fauna Necklace

Top: Wet Seal

Skirt (a dress!): Macy's

Shoes: Christian Siriano for Payless

Bag: Nine West, Marshalls

Belt: Marshalls

It's been snowing a lot in my neck of the woods.  Which I hate.  Because snow is cold and dangerous and prevents me from wearing my very best outfits.  Still, if you don't have to be out in it, it does have its charms -- e.g. curling up with a good book, Pinterest page, or premium cable binge-a-thon.  So, I took full advantage, traveling to sunny California to catch up on Silicon Valley.  Also, I made this very tropical Fantastic Flora and Fauna Necklace.  You know.  To remind me that Memorial Day is slumbering somewhere beneath the permafrost.

So, "Silicon Valley."  This is a show that I shouldn't even like, but love.  As an artsy-craftsy girly girl who thinks "dress" when she hears the word "code," it seems unlikely that I'd be interested in the trials and tribulations of a boy's club of wisecracking technies.  Then again, "Silicon Valley" is really about a bunch of underdogs doing their thing, which is something I'm always on board with.  Also, I really dig wisecracks.  

I can't help but root for Richard (Thomas Middleditch).  As the head of the pack, he's a beta alpha dog if ever there was one, the ultimate David to Corporate America's Goliath.  He's brilliant and painfully awkward and never stops trying to get his brilliance out there.  He's like an artist that no one understands but who knows he's got something special.  Of course, there's a part of me that sometimes thinks, wait a minute, though, he's not an artist.  He's an engineer promoting a product that's supposed to make people's lives easier.  But most people aren't as smart as he is.  So why doesn't he just add the Word-Help-Paperclip-clone Pipey (yes, as in Pied) thing to the software to walk people through it?  Sorry, Richie, but remember, this is the technically-challenged part of me ranting.  The trailblazing creator part still thinks you're badass.  Anyway, you do adopt Pipey.  And win over your biggest regular person user critic, Bernice.  So, well done.  But all of that, like everything else in this show, becomes moot because of some crazy plot shift that I no longer remember.  It's this chaos -- and Pied Piper's deus ex machina ability to rise above it -- that makes Silicon Valley such a great dramedy.

That said, if Richard has the goods, then Big Head (Josh Brener) has the life I'd most want.  Because no matter what troubles assail him (and there are many), his response is always, "whatevs."  In this way, he is high-strung Richard's foil.  He never lets his circumstances cloud his outlook, or a quest for power hamper his happiness.  When he discovers that he's a guest lecturer instead of a grad student at Stanford, he copes by showing vaguely computer sciencey movies, starting with The Social Network and ending with the sophisticated cyber stylings of You've Got Mail.  He's content to be the easygoing court jester, guzzling his ever-present Big Gulp the way most Pacific Northwesterners suck down Starbucks.

So, maybe he's on to something.  Because anyone who can make a sno-cone-like drink from snow can't be all that bad.