Howdy! And welcome to Issue #004 of THREE NEW THINGS! It’s No Nut November - far and away the dumbest of all the monthly reminders (and I’m including National Static Electricity Day, which is January 9). No Nut November is a misguided online challenge where men abstain from ejaculation for the purposes of raising awareness for prostate cancer. Trouble is, one of the single best things you can do to help stave off prostate cancer is - you guessed it - ejaculate. At least 21 times per month. This helps flush out toxins from your prostate that could lead to cancer. So, let’s make this No Nut November a YES Nut November… even if that’s not quite as catchy.

Okay, onto the reason everyone is here. This week I’m covering a fantastic show on Hulu that just concluded its run - The Lowdown starring Ethan Hawke. I’ll get into the music of The Beaches, a Toronto-based all-female indie rock group that keeps releasing banger after banger. And I’ll talk about the game Hearthstone - a digital card battler based on the game Magic: The Gathering.

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 qualfies as NEW so consider this newsletter a “seantocracy” in that regard. With that out of the way, let’s get to it!

“There is only one plot - things are not as they seem.” - Jim Thompson

The Lowdown is an hour-long “dramedy” starring Ethan Hawke, who is having one hell of a second act to his career. (If you’ve not seen The Good Lord Bird, a fictionalized and satirical take on Kansas legend John Brown and his abolitionist movement, do yourself a favor and check it out.) The eight-episode series was created by Sterlin Harjo, whose previous show was Reservation Dogs, which depicted the lives of several young Native Americans desperate to leave their lives on an Oklahoma reservation behind and see what the wider world has to offer them.

The Lowdown also takes place in Oklahoma— Tulsa— a city where I spent many of the formative years of my youth. Although I was born in Texas, my very first memories are of Tulsa, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. As was the case with Reservation Dogs, Harjo LOVES the grittier, more rundown environments of Oklahoma. But he shoots them with a real beauty and an obvious reverence for the people who live in these spaces. His shows look lived-in in the best possible way and are the opposite of the “house porn” you’ll see in shows like Big Little Lies.

Ethan Hawke plays a journalist and used bookstore owner who, rather pretentiously, calls himself a “truthstorian.” But the moniker fits because he is absolutely a crusader (or a “White savior” as some characters refer to him, not in a complimentary way). The plot revolves around a piece of disputed land and the various parties who lay claim to it.

Hawke is outstanding in the role, but that’s not a surprise as he’s been on something of a heater lately. Keith David is hilarious because Keith David is always hilarious. Kyle MacLachlan and Tim Blake Nelson play brothers, neither of whom is exactly what they seem. And Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who plays Hawke’s daughter, is destined for stardom. You’ll be seeing her in everything before long.

The Lowdown loves writers and writing (“You do NOT quote David Foster Wallace to ME!”) and, like a good novel, it takes a couple of episodes (chapters) to settle into the unique rhythm of the show. But that’s what makes it great— it’s unlike most other things you’re going to find on television.

The Beaches burst onto the scene (in alt / indie rock circles at any rate) with their hit song “Blame Brett.”

But far from one-hit wonders, this Toronto-based group (named after the subdivision where sisters Jordan and Kylie Miller, and drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel grew up) knocked out an entire album of great songs on “Blame My Ex” in 2023 and then did it again with “No Hard Feelings” in 2025.

“If a Tree Falls” is my personal favorite track from “Blame My Ex.” It’s got a dreamy, surf guitar riff and a beautiful chorus.

Sometimes, it takes bands a while to find their sound. The Beaches began as a teenage power pop punk band. But as they matured, their sound did, too. You can tell on their 2017 debut album “Late Show” that they’re not fully formed. It turned out the missing piece was guitarist and keyboardist Leandra Earl, who joined the band when original member Megan Fitchet left. (She, apparently, was their Pete Best.)

These days, The Beaches are playing bigger venues, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel, and evolving their signature sound even further. Their new album, No Hard Feelings, debuted a few weeks back. The standout track, to me, is “Takes One To Know One”, which really displays Jordan Miller’s gifts as a lyricist.

Anti-social, majadjusted, non-committal, can’t be trusted, that’s so us and…

So many bands these days just release singles and EPs (thanks, Spotify) so when a band is still committed to cranking out abums full of bangers, I like to talk about them!

Hearthstone is a card battler game set in the World of Warcraft universe and available for both mobile and PC. What is a card battler? The original was Magic: The Gathering. You and your opponent each have a deck of cards full of characters (paladin, mage, rogue, warrior, hunter, etc.), spells, and special abilities. The goal is to play these cards in such a way that you reduce your opponent’s health (usually a number like 30) down to zero before they do the same to you. Simple, right?

Well, it can be. But card battlers can also be incredibly complex at the highest levels. Fortunately, Hearthstone gives you options. You can play the basic, free version of the game and have a lot of fun never spending a dime. My wife, Brenda, generally plays this way. She has whatever fun she can WITHOUT buying additional packs of cards.

To compete at the highest levels of Hearthstone, however, you have to climb the ladder. Levels are broken down into five “leagues” with ten ranks per league - Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. Climb through all five leagues (by beating other Hearthstone players) and you’ll achieve LEGEND. Legend is the closest thing Hearthstone has to “winning the game,” but even within the Legend ranks, there is a top legend player. Full disclosure, the highest rank I ever achieved in Hearthstone was Diamond 2. Those last couple of ranks before Legend are an absolute beast.

Here’s a primer on how Hearthstone works in 2025.

Now, we can’t really talk about Hearthstone without broaching the subject of “pay to win.” Hearthstone isn’t pay to win in the same way a game like Candy Crush is with boosters you can purchase to turn impossible tasks into easy ones. But Hearthstone IS pay to compete. If you want to climb to the highest ranks of the game, there’s no getting around buying packs of cards. And there’s no guarantee of what cards you’ll receive in each pack, which introduces a gambling element some find distasteful. Packs of cards are the Hearthstone equivalent of the dreaded “loot box.” With $80 card pack bundles selling four times a year, this “free” game can quickly become a VERY expensive game. It’s why I stopped playing.

But, if you’re a more casual, non-competitive gamer (and congratulations if you are because I’m not wired that way), Hearthstone actually provides quite a bit of value. It gives you quite a few cards for free. And you can win additional cards by winning games and completing tasks. You can play against the computer, you can play mini-games, AND, if you really want to test yourself, you can see how far you can make it up the ladder for free. If superheroes are more your thing, the game Marvel Snap gives you a similar style card battlers game without the fantasy trappings.

This week’s bonus thing is my favorite new comic strip - Poorly Drawn Lines. Created by Reza Farazmand, the webcomic mixes absurdist, surreal, and satirical humor. There’s generally a simple, straightforward hook that gets darker, weirder, and funnier by the end of the strip. This is one of my favorites.

The art style is simple (hence the name), with clean lines, minimal backgrounds, and a direct presentation. The strip features odd characters (a green bear living in outer space), non-sequiturs, and dramatic shifts in tone.

Humor is subjective. Some people love Young Sheldon (I would not be among them), and others walk out of The 40-Year-Old Virgin (we have friends who actually did this). Poorly Drawn Lines hits all the right notes for me because it is generally bizarre and unexpected. And we could use a lot more of that in this world.

Hey, hey, that brings us to the end of Issue #004! I’ve toyed with the idea of dropping my preview of the next issue because I keep changing my mind about what I want to cover. Instead, we’ll call this a tentative preview. I INTEND to cover these things in Issue #005, but you never know because shit happens. So next week I’ll get into the show Boots (about a gay man who joins the Marines), the music of The Happy Fits, and frontrunner for 2025 Game of the Year - Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.