Hi, and welcome to THREE NEW THINGS, a newsletter for Gen Xers who still love new content in the areas of movies and streaming shows, music, video games, pop culture, and just fun in general.

“But if I’m not a Gen Xer can I still subscribe?”

Absolutely! While my focus is on introducing people 45+ to things that are new and fun, anyone is welcome to subscribe.

Each week I’ll pick:

- a new song (primarily alt/indie rock but not exclusively)
- a new streaming show or movie
- a new video game

Then I’ll break down what makes each worth your time. There will also be 4th BONUS THING each week that, honestly, could be anything - a new food, a scientific discovery, a theme park ride, a fun off-the-wall story… whatever.

I’ve been a professional writer my entire life, but this is my first crack at a newsletter. Things may be a little rough at first as I figure out this new format, but I invite you to come on the journey with me as I mangle my way through this thing.

There’s really only ONE rule, and it’s this - new means RELATIVELY NEW. I’ll cover a lot of stuff that just came out the previous week. But I’m also going to cover things - video games especially - that may have come out in the last few years. It’s completely at my discretion to decide what qualifies as NEW, so consider this newsletter a “seantocracy” in that regard. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

Rotten Tomatoes is a tricky thing. No one wants to feel their decisions are made via aggregation. We all want to be independent thinkers. But we also have to make choices because who has the time (or desire) to watch everything? Rotten Tomatoes is just ONE source, but if a show is above 80% or below 20%, it’s a pretty solid indicator as to whether or not it may be worth your time. Where it gets trickier is when a show falls into that middle ground like Black Rabbit does with its critics score of 66%. That’s just barely above “FRESH,” The audience score, however, is higher at 82%.

Personally, my wife and I agreed more with the audience on this one and found Black Rabbit to be a dark delight. The show is a crime thriller about two brothers played by Jason Bateman and Jude Law. What’s most interesting is that neither of them takes the role you would expect them to, with Bateman playing the nothing-but-trouble brother instead of the straight man he played on Arrested Development and Ozark, and Law taking the role of the trying-to-hold-it-all-together brother.

Could Black Rabbit have been six episodes instead of eight? Probably. But that’s a minor quibble considering how much fun it is to spend with the constantly squabbling brothers. Bateman, in particular, has a blast playing against type, becoming more and more hilariously indignant the more he fucks up, and he fucks up with regularity.

Check it out if you need a pulpy weekend binge.

The Wrecks are an indie band out of Thousand Oaks, California, that’s been around since 2015. Nick Anderson (vocals, rhythm guitar, songwriting) founded the band and invited friends Nick Schmidt (lead guitar), Aaron Kelly (bass), and Billy Nally (drums) to join. The band started with no money, no connections, no producer, and no experience with studio gear (they just figured it out as they went along). Their debut EP - We Are The Wrecks - was recorded in one marathon 72-hour session as they were all figuring out how to use the equipment. Not too shabby.

The song “Speed” has been on my new music playlist for a few weeks now, but the music video premiered just yesterday (October 23). Their sound consists of jangly and crunchy guitars (janglecrunch?) with driving beats and a hook-driven pop sensibility. Enjoy the tune and, please, feel free to bop around your house!

I’ll only be featuring one new song per week, so be sure to check out the THREE NEW THINGS playlist on Spotify for ALL the best songs of 2025. (Just click on the “3” to open up the playlist in a new window.)

Admittedly, this is going to be the toughest of the three sells each week. Only 40% of those 45 and older play video games, and when you exclude mobile gaming (I’m looking at you Candy Crush and Words With Friends) that number drops to 25%. The reason I’m going to advocate for it in this newsletter is because gaming is currently one of the best storytelling experiences you can have. I’ll cover games that DON’T have stories to be sure, but a major focus of THREE NEW THINGS is going to be games that sweep you up in a narrative and allow you to become the main character. It’s an experience unlike watching a movie/show, or reading a book, because it’s active, not passive. Your choices, to a large extent, determine how the story plays out.

When Cyberpunk 2077 launched in December of 2020 it was an unmitigated disaster. Teased since 2012, the game was notoriously buggy, and many gamers felt the reality did not match all the hype. But people LOVE a comeback story, and Cyberpunk 2077 more than came back - it soared. Most video game companies will abandon games that have a terrible launch, but CD Projekt doubled and tripled down on fixing what was broken and adding additional polish to what wasn’t. In 2023, the Phantom Liberty expansion pack was released and delivered the experience Cyberpunk fans were hoping for from the very beginning. Today, the game stands among the all-time greats. The video below is an excellent primer on the state of Cyberpunk in 2025.

You play V, a character you can customize to make your very own, including gender, face, body type, myriad hairstyles, cybernetics, clothes - you can even choose your penis size. No, I’m not kidding. You can quite literally have Big Dick Energy. After an extended prologue that eases you into how to play the game, you get teamed up with Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves) via a construct in your head. Johnny relentlessly and hilariously taunts you and your decision-making ability throughout the story. Fuck up and he’s going to be there to rub your face in it. And it’s always a delight.

The REAL star of Cyberpunk 2077, however, is Night City, a fully realized cyberpunk world that you are free to explore at your leisure. There are missions to do, and a main storyline, but half the fun of Cyberpunk is just wandering around, getting yourself into trouble, and gawking over how the developers built this massive neon playground. (There’s even a roller coaster that, if you take the right steps, you can get working.)

How you play? That’s also up to you. Be a gun-fu headshot assassin, a sword-wielding futuristic samurai, or a netrunner (hacker) who gets by on his or her wits. It’s possible (although difficult) to get through the entire game without killing a single person.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PC, Xbox Series X, PS5, and even the Nintendo Switch, the latter being a surprise considering how resource-heavy the game is.

If you’re brand new to console or PC gaming, one of the first things you’re going to want to learn is how to move around in 3D space with a controller. It’s an essential skill for all first-person and third-person games, but pretty easy to get down with just a bit of practice. I’ve included a YouTube tutorial to walk you through the basics. If there’s a demand, I may end up making some of my own tutorials as this one is a little lacking, but it was the best one I could find.

This week’s bonus thing is the new line of Frigidaire ovens featuring Stone Baked Pizza Mode. Now, let’s get one thing out of the way first… no, Frigidaire isn’t paying me to write this. Why would they? This is issue #001 and, as of right now, I have exactly ZERO subscribers. I mean, I hope to get the chance to sell out one day, but right now I’m just doing this for fun. To quote the great Marc Maron, “It’s pretty easy to keep your integrity when no one is offering to buy it.”

What’s the difference between this and a standard oven? 200 degrees, baby! This bad boy goes to 750-degrees Fahrenheit. Why does that matter? Good pizza dough has trapped CO-2 bubbles from fermentation. You want those gases to expand as rapidly as possible so the dough puffs up before it dries out. The hotter the oven, the more likely you are to get a light, chewy interior with a crispy exterior - the holy grail of texture and flavor. Currently, the entire line is priced over $1,000, so whether that’s worth it to you or not really comes to how much you like homemade pizza. I like it quite a bit.

So, that’s it. That’s Issue #001 of THREE NEW THINGS. I hope you enjoyed it! I hope you’ll tell your friends, your enemies, family, and co-workers (some of those are going to be the same people). And I hope to see you next week for Issue #002, where I’ll cover the movie Weapons, Baldur’s Gate 3 (perhaps the greatest game ever made), and a song to be determined. I’ll see you then!