I’ve been eagerly awaiting Dan Trachtenberg‘s third Predator entry. After Prey and Killer of Killers where so great, I wanted more fresh takes on this world. We waited for it to hit streaming and then caught it on a snowed in weekend in late January. It was worth the wait, fun action, a story that isn’t just a back drop to that action, and some comedy to balance out the self seriousness. Also killer visual and practical effects, costumes, etc.

Between Alien: Earth, Alien: Romulus, and these new predator movies I’m a really enjoying this generation the franchises. Where prior to the 2020’s, I’d have told you that all of it was bad since the original films. Well maybe, I never saw Aliens vs Predator – Requiem in 2007.

Bonus & Big Spoilers: Corridor had on a guest from Weta FX to break down some of the VFX (visual effects). It is great, but heavy on spoilers, I’d highly recommend the movie first if you haven’t.

Having Dominic Solanke back on the field feels like a foothold for Spurs to climb out of the hole they are in. Watching him score a firecracker of a scorpion kick against City was a moment of sunlight a gloomy season. The Frank era Spurs are currently just as bad as last seasons Postecoglou Spurs. It doesn’t feel the same, but the table tells no lies:

That said, this has been a season plagued by injuries and I generally like the tactics Frank deploys. Spurs started the season without Maddison, Kulusevski, and Solanke has been out since October. The list of first team players in and out of the line up is a big wet blanket to what Frank is trying to do, and I hope he gets the time this season and next to do it.

Bay area rapper LaRussell is independent, making music his way, and always seems to be having the best time doing it. He is heavily influenced by the Bay sound, think E-40 or Mac Dre, but with his own 2020’s take on it. Add to that he host concerts at his childhood home (seen in the video above) and sold his most recent album direct to fans with a pay what you want model.

The Diplomat

This is not usually the kind of show I bring to wife. But we were captive in a hotel room for a soccer weekend away and needed something to watch. We end up watching the first 3 episodes and coming home to zip through season one. A smart, no nonsense, but sometimes too smart and no nonsense for her own good ambassador lands in a diplomatic pressure cooker. All of the writing and acting is great.

Primal

Everywhere I look this is listed as Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal. A name I didn’t know at first glance, but he’s the Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, and Star Wars: Clone Wars guy. Primal is very adult, by comparison to those titles, action horror animated series that has no dialogue. Just a cave man and his dinosaur friend surviving in a brutal world. It looks gorgeous and the emotion it can convey with no words is impressive. The only reason it popped up on my radar, is the third season just started airing after a four year hiatus.

I’ve been slowly coming up to speed on football for a decade now. It was not the sport of my youth. Learning it through youth soccer via my kids and following professional football mostly by way of watching the Premiere League has been my vehicle. That also came with lots of news sites, books, videos, and of course podcast.

I am here at the start of 2026, through countless hours of research, to proclaim the best podcast in that space is the Tifo Football Podcast. Twice weekly it is perfect hour of serious commentary and data driven insight. That is then flipped on it’s head with goofball bits and tangents that ground the sport in it’s roots as a fun kids game and distraction from the world and life.

It is a priority listen every week, even when Tottenham play poorly, which is all the time recently. They rotate the cast of cohost, but generally Joe Devine is the ring leader guiding and then hilariously undermining every topic covered. Lastly I’ve talked about TIFO (their explainer YouTube channel) before on the old site and even on the podcast, RIP. Also their book, How to Watch Football, is great too.

Bonus: Somethings been cut!

I’ve been a long time fan of the All Fantasy Everything podcast and recently their producer has been shouting “somethings been cut!” when they need to edit out something problematic. He then confirmed its an homage to the Tifo Football Podcast. Love a cross over.

Marco Plus jumped on to my 2021 annual playlist^ as an addition in 2023. Which is a long way of saying I’ve known about him, but wasn’t on it. His latest album at the end of 2025 has been a full exploration of his music for me and I’m here to say that it is good stuff.

^ The track was “Lately” and it still destroys:

Love a Daniel Warren Johnson comic. Last year a highlight was Absolute Batman, but this past weekend I stumbled into these older videos he did with Proko. The first is him digging through his travel art supplies and explaining how he uses them. I bet you can’t avoid buying something new after watching it. I couldn’t.

The second is a walk through of how he draws perspective environment scenes with some of those same tools. Of course he references Kim Jung Gi during it, how could he not.