When we went to DC back in June we saw Josh Johnson who was excellent, but the unexpected treat was Mandal opening for him. I was aware of him from guest appearances on My Momma Told Me and Stavvy’s World. But hadn’t seen his stand up. Now I am seeing his stand up pop up all over. Old and new work with Rob Haze and now interviews with a bunch of great folks at Big Fun.

I can’t tell between his stand up, podcast, or comedic role as a manager to celebrities, which is his strongest suit. Thankfully I don’t have to. All of it is hilarious and every day he is popping up in more places. More Mandal comedy is all one can ask for right now.

After a drought, the Best Games of the 2020’s is back with a new entry, and a chill cat game comes off the board.

Lost in Random: The Eternal Die (2025) goes on at #39

The Eternal Die is a sequel to a game by the same title (Lost in Random) from 2021. This late in life it does not surprise me that I hadn’t heard of the original. I am old, busy, and so many games come out now. Also, turns out that didn’t matter.

The Eternal Die has plot and character ties to the game that spawned it, but gameplay wise it is a naked rip off of Hades (#4). That sounds cruel, but they pull it off. The combat is crisp and challenging, the rouge-like loop stimulates the “one more run” center of my brain, and the graphics/art direction are top stuff. Finally, Hades II is in early access, and already rating at the top of the 2025 critic list. But I’ve been avoiding playing it till they hit retail release, so The Eternal Die gets bonus points for helping me hold the line. It’s on Game Pass too!

Stray (2022) is slides out of 50th place. It had stellar art and world design, told an interesting story with very little dialogue, and had simplistic game mechanics that largely supported it’s best attributes.

I took a leap on Primal Planet. Once again it was a Besties recommendation, but I usually pair that with OpenCritic for the wisdom of the crowd. In this case that was 5 critic reviews at the time, that didn’t add up to enough consensus for them to score it yet. Regardless, the leap paid off.

Primal Planet released in late July from SeethingSwarm, a solo developer from Finland. The whole thing clocked in at 6-8 hours, played over the course of a weekend. That wasn’t a complete run, but did see me through the main plot. At it’s root it is a metroidvania lite, but without many of the gear/ability progression gates inherent to the genre.

Dinosaurs + Aliens as a theme is already a cheat code, but paired with strong platforming and semi-challenging combat is a great start. The pixel art and animation is peak SNES/Genesis and the sound track compliments it well. The upgrades via expanding your village and it’s inhabitants is a little under developed, but didn’t get in the way of progress. All in it was well crafted short game that well exceeds the $20 price tag. A nice high note to the recent wilderness.

The biggest threat to us finishing the ABC challenge is us discovering and wanting to try other new restaurants. That was the point of the whole thing, right? So not the worst problem to have.

Secret Squares

The once pop-up only pizza offering is now a brick and mortar in Church Hill. You still have to pre-order 24 hours ahead to ensure you can get these Detroit style sourdough pies. It is worth the effort, to answer our crews collective question post meal. The crispy edges, fluffy bites, and combination of tasty toppings all add up to great pizza. If it was closer and easier to get, we might have problem at our house.

Stock Bistro & Bar

Technically we could have used TXTUR as our letter “T” but that would be probably be cheating, as that is name of the furniture store, not the restaurant. We went to shop for furniture and pair it with a cocktail, fell in love with “Kapsalon” (pictured above) and the whole thing turned into dinner. You can turn up to 20% of your meal total into a discount on furniture. So we have a new coffee table and chair now too.

Skill Up, creator of the fantastic YouTube series TWIV, recently launched a companion site with the same name. This Week in Videogames is a news and review site that is fully fan supported. That means no ads, no SEO headlines, and no AI slop masquerading as writing a human crafted. After almost a month I find myself heading there 1-2 times a week as a new habit.

My history with reading videogame writing and news starts way back with Nintendo Power. Many magazines in between, eventually websites, and the early days of videogame podcast later. That space has evolved, decayed, bloomed, and cycled over and over again. Finding good, entertaining, and informative voices feels harder than ever right now. Ad revenue as a vehicle for writing and other content had the bottom fully fall out. Good writers are losing their jobs and scrambling to figure out what comes next.

New sites like TWIV, smaller projects like Chris Plante’s newsletter, and of course The Besties give me some hope. It is just sadly harder and harder to find now.

I’ve never once come away from a Freddie Gibbs album wanting. He makes music that is in conversation with an era of 90’s/early 00’s rap that I came up in. Not weighed down by it, but building on it with his own creativity and vision. Alfredo 2 is his 10th project since 2013 and his 3rd with The Alchemist on production. Throw in features from JID and Larry and it crushes. Smooth bars stacked on smooth beats.