Good morning, fam!
Last week, it was temps above 100 degrees. This week? Flash floods in St. Louis.
Global warming, amirite?
It seems like we could use a little something to take our minds off our planet’s eminent demise, so let’s jump right in.
Bust out your Bop It, pour up that Rice Krispies Treats cereal1, and let’s get into it!
Here’s what I have for you this morning:
Beyoncé dropped Renaissance (her new album and act one of three) yesterday. What else is there to say? Go listen to it on Spotify. Now.
Looking for a nerdy love story that follows two friends over their 30-year journey to building a video game empire? Neither was I until I started reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel. Gabrielle Zevin’s second book uses video game culture to explore what it means to live a life of love and loss. Bonus: you can even play a video game designed by one of the main characters!
Everything Taika Waititi touches is pure gold and Our Flag Means Death is no different. In this comedy loosely based on the adventures of Stede Bonnet, the gentleman pirate, Taika stars as Blackbeard and directs one episode. Think What We Do in the Shadows (he’s an Executive Producer) but with pirates.
When Jordan Peele comes out with a new movie, you don’t ask questions - you just go see it. This past week, we saw Nope and like his other movies, it’s a genre-bending look at society. This time, it’s touches on spectacle and the entertainment industry while adding in some creepy UFO goodness.
What’d we watch during our weekly movie night? The Gray Man (Netflix’s newest blockbuster from The Russo Brothers) was…meh. Apparently Netflix is already turning it into their next cinematic universe. My advice: let Ana de Armas take the reins. She outacted and out ass-kicked both Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans combined.
After coming down from the giddiness that was Stray, I decided to give No Man’s Sky a try on PS5. Imagine a video game where you’re an astronaut who explores planets, discovers new species, and mines materials, but there’s one catch…it’s infinite. NMS uses something fancy called procedural generation which means each planet, creature, ship, and most other items are created procedurally using algorithms in the game itself. TL;DR: Nothing is repeated and it goes on forever.
What do you do when you’re in line at Gioia’s Deli and you have no idea what to order? You text the sultans of sammies. Thanks to my friends Paul and Parker, I got the salami and roast beef on garlic cheese bread with lettuce, tomato, Provel cheese,2 onions, pickles. The pièce de résistance? Horsey 👏 mayo 👏.
Last week, Instagram got me with an ad for Hungryroot. We got our first shipment this week and something hit me: I actually enjoy cooking/eating dairy and gluten-free when everything is done for me. They even threw in a tub of almond chickpea cookie dough which tastes wayyy better than it sounds. The best part? You can eat it raw without getting E. coli or Salmonella!
Pour one out for one of the greatest ice cream treats from our childhood.
While I prep the first round of interviews for How the Heck Do You Get Into Tech?, I shared how working in tech changed my life and how it chan change yours, too.
You made it to the end! As a bonus, I’ll leave you with this.
Cheers,
Billy
The most glorious cereal ever made.
It’s a St. Louis thing.