Skummy

Episode five was incredible. The animation felt very different, like it was taking its lead from Akira and that era of anime more than the X-Men series. More than that, though, it was just a phenomenal bit of superhero media and everything I want from X-Men, while also being completely heartbreaking and making me desperate to see what comes next.

I really liked the new Yard Act too, having been fairly indifferent to them before; they feel like a much better version of Sleaford Mods in places, but I can get the Damon Albarn comparison for sure. I've had "We Make Hits" stuck in my head since I heard it. Completely agreed on Beyonce, it was just way too long and in too many places feels like a gimmick. It's a shame, because if you could trim the fat there's some really great stuff in there, but there's so much surrounding it that I've no real desire to go back to it. It doesn't help that Lemonade is one of my favourite albums of the last decade, so everything she does has that to live up to, and "Beyonce does country" was already done better in "Daddy Lessons" on that album. I didn't really get into the new Vampire Weekend - loved "Pravda", but nothing else grabbed me, so that might be worth a relisten, as it feels like it could be one that grows on you; like you said, there's not those obvious big poppy moments. I've added Kacey Musgraves and Julia Holter to my list, you've made them sound great. The two new releases this month that I've really loved so far are the new Bob Vylan and Caleb Landry Jones. Bob Vylan are less outwardly angry than their previous work, but a lot more musically and lyrically mature, and I think it makes for a more interesting listen, and more depth to the lyrics that used to veer a little bit more towards big brash slogans. Landry Jones' album is just superb, a little bit art-pop, a little bit glam, and a lot of offbeat weirdness in there - it might just be because it's an album by an actor with a sideline in music, but it reminds me a little in places of the stuff Crispin Glover was doing in his music career, but far more commercial and listenable. On the heavier side of things, the new Iron Monkey has some really meaty heavy-duty riffs - it's not a great album, but there's enough there to make it really work for me.

wololo

Seems hard to justify most of that list as "iconic". To me, that means instantly recognisable and symbolic of its game or franchise - from that list, I'd go: 1. Mario 2. Pac-Man 3. Pikachu 4. Sonic 5. Lara Croft 6. Minecraft Steve 7. Solid Snake And then you could make a convincing argument for Crash Bandicoot, Link, Master Chief and to some extent Agent 47, Cloud Strife and Kratos, depending on your audience. Nothing screams "recency bias" more than a list of "most iconic characters of all time" including two characters from a game that came out less than twelve months ago.

I can't have listened to much music on Spotify in March, which makes sense, as I was listening to a lot of podcasts. Bleachers, Judas Priest and Beyoncé are literally all only on there because they had new albums out, and I don't think I listened to any of them more than once. I'm reading a biography of Jake Thackray at the moment, so him being number one in unsurprising, as I haven't listened to much else. For clarity in that top 5: 1. Cat Scratch Fever - Motorhead 2. Wichita Lineman - R.E.M. 3. To Do With You - Jake Thackray 4. Between The Bars - Tanya Donelly 5. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters - Orville Peck All bar the Jake Thackray song are cover versions, and all bar Tanya Donelly are in a playlist I put on when I don't fancy a podcast - usually either on the bus home from the pub, or if I'm on the Tube and the line I'm on is too noisy to take in what's being said on a podcast. The Jake Thackray song is in said playlist, and also probably boosted by my listening to him more regularly because of the biography. The Tanya Donelly track is from an Elliott Smith tribute album I listened to maybe two or three times over the course of the month.

is this where we talk about X-Men 97? Watched the first two episodes last night, and really enjoyed them. The tone of it all feels perfect. I watched the original cartoon religiously, and was starting to read comics at the time, so it's all powerfully nostalgic and feels like "my" X-Men. The direction of the story feels fairly obvious for someone who was reading at the time, but I imagine there will be some fun timey-wimey twists to come.

For people not currently under contract with WWE, they have to negotiate each appearance/royalties fee separately. So it's a matter of 2K either not being able to get Finkel's estate to sign off on it, or not trying, rather than WWE themselves blocking it. They should just replace every person they couldn't get rights for with The Enforcer from 2k16.

has PS Plus gone weird for anyone else? If I try and sort the available free games by "Recently Added to PS Plus", it's just a ton of old games that have been on there for months at the top, not the most recent ones.

I never got into Dragon Ball, but it's hard to argue how iconic and influential his artwork was, and Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger alone would be one hell of a legacy even without DBZ. I'm currently playing the remaster of Secret of Mana, and his influence is on everything in that game.

I've bookmarked this, as it sounds right up my street. Apologies if this is already mentioned in the video, but the other thing that always comes up when people try and use Native cultures' stories to support the existence of Bigfoot, UFOs, or anything else along those lines, is that these are often oral traditions, and the stories are adapted and evolve over time to fit in new information and reflect people's prior knowledge. So even if stories being told today sound like they are about Bigfoot or UFOs, it's because those things are in the zeitgeist and have been folded into newer versions of the story.

I land in pretty much the same place on most of those - the new Idles is incredibly dull; the song with LCD Soundsystem is better than anything else on there, but it's still boring. I'm a little higher on the new Sleater-Kinney, but it doesn't hold up to how good they used to be. I was disappointed by the new Hurray For The Riff Raff - they kind of came out of nowhere for me and I loved what I first heard from them, but there was nothing that jumped out to me here. There's not many albums I've listened to this year that I've flagged as good, let alone great or potential album of the year, and there's been a fair few disappointments. I enjoyed the new The Smile album, and the new Dead South is good for what it is, but mostly it's been things that I was looking forward to and didn't quite land for me, like the new Laetitia Sadler, which is nice, but nothing special, or the new Pylon Reenactment Society, which has some high points but is mostly a bit patchy. On the heavier side of things, the new Obsessed has one or two decent tracks but nothing that holds up to their best work, and Ihsahn's newest is good but nothing I can see myself going back to.

also, the title of that Pigsx7 song is a Brodie Lee tribute. Pigs and Colter Wall are some out of the box choices for a wrestling game soundtrack, but not much else really jumps out at me.

yeah, "Daddy Lessons" from Lemonade was a better avenue into "Beyonce does country", particularly the version with The Chicks, than Texas Hold 'Em, which feels too contrived.

similarly, watching the newLegacyInc stream of it, one of the things they were most excited about was being able to throw and catch weapons which, while fun, is once again something that we had in the first two games. Same thing really with the 40 years of Wrestlemania stuff - based on the artwork, it gives us Hogan, Andre, Rock, Austin, Bret, Undertaker...all people who have been in these games countless times already.

didn't he basically pivot all the way back later on, though? He was a big Trump guy, IIRC. Toby Keith was one of the many people Jarrett tried to convince into buying or bankrolling TNA over the years too, and put up some of the money for GFW. I listened to the (mostly excellent) album of Willie Nelson's 90th birthday concert, and remember thinking that Kris Kristofferson sounded really frail on it, and then realised that he's 87 years old.

I think this week's episode put paid to that criticism, some absolutely brutal work from the Gladiators. I'm not feeling what they're doing with Viper at all, I just don't buy him as a heel, there's no personality there, and it feels forced. It's for kids to have a baddy to boo, though, so that's fine. I hate the backstage dressing room camera stuff. Skirts the wrong side of kayfabe for this show for me.

Depends if you have the option of going back into retro games - aside from the games already mentioned, I think Smackdown vs. RAW 2010 was the first WWE game to not allow you to play intergender matches. Any of the main series WWE games prior to that on Playstation and subsequent equivalent generations of console would allow for an intergender Rumble.

it's pie in the sky stuff, but just thinking in terms of likely rights agreements and so on, I'd think a genuine 40 Years of Wrestlemania series could look something like this: That's 39 matches, mostly main events and some semi-main events, that they could choose that involve people that have already been in the games in recent years, and allows for some variety in terms of different variants of the same characters, and a few different match types. I'd love something more wide-reaching, with people not in the games previously, and some weirder midcard matches, and varieties of gimmick match, but just to keep it simple in terms of the range of people involved, it's surprisingly easy to come up with a feasible list of matches from every Wrestlemania, and it's surprising which are the harder ones to find something - Wrestlemania 2000 especially.

it's classic WWE games that so many of the new features they're promoting were already in games twenty years ago - better backstage brawls with interactive elements, special referees, casket matches; these are all things we had on the PS1! There's some stuff for MyGM that I've never played, but have heard specifically requested by Youtubers and podcasters who do, so that's fair enough, but so much of these games always feels like you're expected to be grateful for stuff that should be the norm by now. The 40 Years of Wrestlemania mode doesn't sound meaningfully any different from previous showcases; that it's 21 matches means that there's not going to be something from every Wrestlemania, which is what the name implies to me. At the very least, I hope you can unlock every 'Mania's arena. From the AI art poster, it's not like "40 Years of Wrestlemania" is allowing us to play as stars that haven't made it into the games before - again, we've been able to play as Andre, Hogan, Bret, Austin and Rock in WWE games for 20+ years now.

I have fallen completely in love with this channel, and it's become the only YouTube channel I regularly watch with my partner, and fairly regular easy viewing. Nothing has topped Planet Zoo so far, but a lot of it is incredible. EDIT: The dealbreaker for Nebula for me is the lack of a dedicated TV or PS4 app, because that's how I watch YouTube 99% of the time. First world problem time - I could maybe get it to work using the Fire Stick, but that seems like effort. I would be curious to check it out; I listen to the podcast It's Probably Not Aliens, which is by two YouTubers whose work I've started delving into a bit more - Step Back, and NerdSync - and they're both big on pushing Nebula. It would be great to have a streaming site to genuinely rival YouTube, and to be more creator-driven and creator-friendly, so I feel like I should check it out properly.

the Ramones had Judy Is A Punk and The Return Of Jackie and Judy.

Nick Pemberton could be superb, and Nick Mohammed promises to be absolutely deranged - if you've seen him at all, it's likely to be as his alter-ego "Mr. Swallow", who is fantastic. I don't really know any of the others well enough, but I trust Taskmaster on this stuff - I didn't know Mike Wozniak at all before he was on the show, and he's one of my favourite comedians now.

I have a few still to check out, but here's what's stuck out to me most so far: Joyous and Danceable Pop/Rock Category: Sparks - The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte The Go! Team - Get Up Sequences Part Two Jake Shears - Last Man Dancing Dorian Electra - Fanfare Extremely Heavy Category: Khanate - To Be Cruel Godflesh - Purge Boris and Uniform - Bright New Disease Divide and Dissolve - Systemic Wolves In The Throneroom - Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge Racetraitor - Creation And The Timeless Order of Things Transcendently Beautiful Category: Ahnoni & The Johnsons - My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross PJ Harvey - I Inside The Old Year Dying Bonnie Prince Billy - Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You World's End Girlfriend - Resistance and the Blessing Hip-Hop/Rap/R&B Category: DJ Shadow - Action Adventure Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions Quirky Not Quite Fitting Another Category Category: Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter - Saved! Half Japanese - Jump Into Love Laibach - Love Is Still Alive Alabama 3 - Cold War Classics Vol. 2 Buddy & Julie Miller's In The Throes is in there somewhere too. I might write more about some of these later, but that's everything that has felt like it really needs documenting from this year. The new Creeper is an outlier, in that I think it's ridiculous fun, but probably doesn't quite make the cut.

he was so good in Homicide, but Brooklyn 99 is rightly what made him an absolute joy of an actor to watch. It very quietly has become some of my favourite comfort viewing over the past year; my girlfriend used to put it on while she had lunch or something, and I never really cared about it, but the more I paid attention the more I liked it, and that's almost entirely down to how much I loved Captain Holt as a character and Andre Braugher as a performer. Someone said that you can see as the show goes on, how it starts to orbit more and more around him as the heart of the whole thing, which can't have been the intention from the beginning, but is testament to just how good he was.