I’m going to start off talking a little about college basketball. This is an entertainment newsletter, and sport is, after all, entertainment.

I bleed crimson and blue. So when my team— the Kansas Jayhawks— landed a generational talent in Darryn Peterson, I was thrilled. But it’s been a mixed bag. This clip from TNT is the whole Darryn Peterson experience in 6 minutes. Glimpses of IMMENSE talent followed by a discussion of, “Why isn’t he playing THIS TIME?”

When he’s on the court, he makes the game look effortless. In the first 15 minutes of last night’s game against Oklahoma State, he essentially gave Kansas a 20-point lead all by himself. He’s THAT good. Then— in a scene that’s all too familiar to Kansas fans— he played two minutes of the second half, nailed a three-pointer, and then sat himself for the rest of the game.

No one really knows what to make of it. Does he have some underlying condition that no one is talking about? Is it load management? Is he the dreaded “S” word… soft? No one outside of Peterson’s camp really knows.

All I know is this. I think it’s time for college hoops, especially in the era of NIL, to look to college baseball as the model. In baseball, you’re allowed to go directly to the pros out of high school. BUT, if you commit to college, it’s a two-year commitment. I’m all for players getting paid for their talent and contributions. For too long, the system exploited them. But the system we have right now in college basketball isn’t working. Not forcing a player to spend a year in college who doesn’t want to, but requiring a two-year commitment from those who do, seems like a fair compromise. It’s stability without the exploitation.

The narrative around Peterson is that his various vague injuries and illnesses are really load management. That he doesn’t WANT to play college ball and is doing just enough to maintain his place as the No. 1 pick in the draft. I don’t know if that’s true or not. No one has ever seen a college player behave quite like this, and no one knows exactly what to make of it. But let’s not force people into college who don’t want to be there. It’s time to once again let players go straight from high school to the pros.

Predator Badlands raises an interesting question: Is it okay for IPs (intellectual properties) to have different tones? Or does the property stop being itself if you stray too far away from what made it popular in the first place? And the answer is… it depends.

Star Wars has grown to the point that it’s more than one thing. There are Star Wars shows for children (Young Jedi Adventures and Lego Star Wars), and there are Star Wars shows for adults (Andor). Most of Star Wars— the movies in particular— fall somewhere in between. But Star Wars has been adapted over the years for a wide array of audiences in a wide array of voices and styles.

Now, take something like Game of Thrones. It’s not been around as long as Star Wars, but Game of Thrones is pretty much Game of Thrones, whether you’re talking about the books, the original HBO show, House of the Dragon, or (my current favorite show of the year) A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. It’s a brutal, bloody, adult world in all its various incarnations.

Which brings us to Predator Badlands. And I’ll just come right out with it— I hated it. HATED IT. So much. Because Predator Badlands answers the question no one was asking: “What would Predator be like if it were a Disney movie?”

Now, maybe there’s a 10-year-old kid out there whose first exposure to Predator was the movie Badlands, and he or she loves it. And I don’t want to be the gatekeeping grump who takes that away from anyone. Badlands, however, was not MY Predator.

Let’s go back in time to June of 1987. I was a little older than a kid myself. And this was a time without the internet, so often you didn’t know a whole lot about a movie before you saw it in a theater - you just took a chance. That’s what I did with Predator. I was bored one June afternoon and went to see it on a whim. I even walked in a minute late. My lateness actually made the movie BETTER because I missed the initial spaceship shot. Going in, I thought Predator was going to be your standard Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick where he blows up bad guys and makes terrible puns.

Imagine my surprise when something mysterious started hunting Arnold and his crew of badass mercenaries. The premise of the original Predator is simple but incredibly effective. Take the most ruthless men on the planet and put them up against something so powerful that it picks them off - pretty easily - one by one.

The Predator in the original film - thanks to John McTiernan’s direction, Stan Winston’s creature design, and Alan Silvestri’s spooky/iconic bongo drum musical cues - was terrifying. The movie puts you right there in the sweaty heart of the jungle and forces you to ask yourself, “If I were out there alone, would I stand a chance in hell against this thing?”

Predator Badlands, I feel, strips Predator of what makes it essential. First, it makes the Predator the protagonist rather than the monster. It then adds a wise-cracking synthetic being (Elle Fanning, whose work I usually enjoy). And if that weren’t enough, the movie throws in its very own Cousin Oliver in the form of a CG alien monkey.

For those of you not old enough to remember, Cousin Oliver was added to the Brady Bunch when producers felt the kids were getting too old. So suddenly, the Bradys had a young cousin. And he was terrible. Nails on a chalkboard terrible. There have been different versions of Cousin Oliver over the years. Jar Jar Binks. Bat Mite. Godzuki. And if that sounds like absolutely the wrong thing to add to a Predator movie, congratulations, you have more sense than the producers of this film did.

So, going back to my original question - can IPs embrace different tones? The answer is that it really depends on the property. Some more naturally lend themselves to being more than one thing. But when you strip the terror and blood from Predator, add in Marvelesque wisecracking humor, and throw in a “cute” CGI critter, you’ve lost the plot. And you’ve stripped Predator of everything that makes it great.

You’d be forgiven for thinking YONAKA was an Asian musical artist and not the British alt rock band that they are. As it turns out, “Yonaka” is a Japanese word meaning “the dead of night,” which hints at some of the darker themes of their music.

YONAKA blends indie rock, pop, punk, and even sometimes hip hop into their own unique mix. Their style can vary from song to song, but their newest— “Eat You Alive”— is a straight-down-the-middle slice of power alt rock. Very driving, very anthemic, the kind of alt rock music you can work out to.

Speaking of music you can work out to, you could do worse than throw on the THREE NEW THINGS playlist for 2026, which now features 68 songs and nearly 4 hours worth of music! Just click on the “3” and start jock jamming… or whatever it is you do when you work out to music.

“Eternity” on Apple+ made for a fun little Valentine’s Day watch with my wife, Brenda. Ultimately, it was a lot like Lay’s Potato Chips— enjoyable in the moment, but not especially filling. And that’s okay. Not every movie has to change your world.

Essentially,“Eternity” is “Defending Your Life Lite.” It never matches the sardonic brilliance of Albert Brooks’ best work (in my opinion) nor does it leave you with anything to chew on when it’s done. (In Brooks' film, the message was that fear, more than anything, is what holds you back in life.)

If that sounds like I’m damning the movie with faint praise, perhaps I am. I didn’t dislike it. I just thought it could be more. The movie stars Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, and Callum Turner. Teller plays Olsen’s first husband, who dies in the Korean War. Teller plays her second, whom she was married to for more than 60 years. She can choose just one of them to spend eternity with.

I suppose this counts as a spoiler (so look away if you don’t want to know), but you can guess who she ends up with by the fact that you’ve heard of Elizabeth Olsen and Miles Teller, but likely not Callum Turner. (The only thing I’d seen him in other than this was the WWII bomber flick, “Masters of the Air.”

If you need to kill a couple of hours and want to watch something romantic with your spouse or partner, “Eternity” hits the spot. It’s the McDonald’s cheeseburger of afterlife films. But there was a deeper, darker, more complex movie in that premise, with more biting comedy, that I wish “Eternity” had explored more. For a taste of what COULD have been, check out this bit from “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

As I noted earlier in this newsletter, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has been my favorite show of the year. It has brought back PEAK Game of Thrones by telling a small story rather than an epic, sprawling one. With House of Dragons, season 3, we go back to epic and sprawling, for better (season 1) and for worse (season 2). Season 2’s big misstep, in my opinion, was sidelining Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen. Hopefully, in season 3 he’ll have more to do than mope around a sad castle and have hallucinations.

I’m pretty much down for anything from the cast of the great Freaks & Geeks. Seth Rogen, Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, (not you, James Franco), Jason Segal - they’re all knocking it out of the park these days. I hadn’t even heard of Over Your Dead Body until the trailer dropped this morning, but color me intrigued. It looks to have just the kind of dark comedy I LOVE. We’ll see if the entire movie lives up to the trailer.

“And your stupid accent. It’s like British crossed with the devil!”

Issue #016. That’s four months’ worth of newsletters! If you’re wondering where all the video games coverage has gone, fear not, it’s coming back. We’ve been in a bit of a dead time for video game releases, but that’s all about to change with AAA game “Crimson Desert,” which comes out in a month. I mentioned it in my 2026 games preview, but I’ll be taking a more in-depth look at it next week! See you then!