Media Noms: Week 27 2026
June 29th - July 5th 2026
TV
- Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You | Jinushi - I have been seeing this series getting a lot of buzz over the past few months. I know the manga is quite popular and when the anime dropped it only got more popular, but I had a hard time justifying buying the manga given it looked like a straight romance story. Instead, I happened to be staying over at Crunchyroll havers house and I binged the whole first season! Each episode is a minisode (8-12 min) and are paced excellently. It’s simple, kinda stupid slice-of-life with moments that make you want to believe in humanity. Simple moments where people decide to be good. The animation is wildly inconsistent, but it doesn’t really affect the show at all. It’s hard not to recommend with how short they are. Please go watch!
Music
- Zero | Alewya - Essentially a perfect album. All of the influences, primarily traditional Middle Eastern music and American hiphop, play together perfectly and result in an album that gets better with each song, and somehow surprises you with each song the whole play through.
- you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love | Olive Rodrigo - Have to give a shoutout to a Filipino fav. Album is a bit samey, but if you like Olivia Rodrigo then you’re gonna like this! My favorite track is “what’s wrong with me.”
- Wonderwall (in the style of Linkin Park) | Anthony Vincent - A pretty cool metal cover of Wonderwall. I am finding that the metal and extreme vocals community make some of the best covers!
Books/Manga
- Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in teh Video Game Industry | Jason Schreier - After reading “Play Nice” and being absolutely immersed in the history of one of my favorite studios, I decided to look into more books in the genre. I tried “Doom Guy,” which is an autobiography of John Romero, co-founder of iD and all the Doom games. I could not get into the narrative, which may be the first-person writing style. So, I returned to Jason Schreier. I found Play Nice to be dry on the writing, but unmatched in the content he was able to get access to, and the bear of a process I can luckily only imagine of getting it all into order. For all of its investigative journalistic quirks of being measured and direct, it still felt compelling. Press Reset is more of an anthology of stories and, true to its title, is quite a downer. You can’t really let that influence your review per se, but I did have to take this book slower just to balance out the emotional tone of it all. So, in that way it was a success. As I think part of Schreier’s point of writing was to both inform and disillusion the public and potential developers by findings so many real-world examples of how it all goes wrong. And what is particularly powerful is how it does not matter who you are - unless you are Gabe Newell, I guess- but everyone else, even the greats, fall to the machine that is the video game industry. There is more of Schreier’s personality in this book, though it is still very sparse. His moments don’t add anything for me, but it may add levity to others reading. I’m glad these stories are documented and I’m glad this book was written, but I can’t really recommend it unless you are a diehard fan of one of the games covered, a general fanatic about the games industry, or on the academic/historian side of this because of all the primary sources.
YouTube
- Gigi Perez covers Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ for Like a Version | triple j - This is an insane cover. Throw this on and giver her all your attention. Wait for the husky, textured voice to kick your ass about halfway through. Then, rewatch it. Rewatch it and just watch the guitarist. This lady is insanely hot and insanely calm just making the guitar her bitch. S-Tier cover.
- Slate Truck First Look: The $25,000 Modular EV! | Auto Focus - Idk how many people know about this, but it’s pretty fucking cool!
- I experienced the “worst” World Cup Ever | Morning Brew - Holy shit this was so fucking funny. It’s a pretty good investigation into FIFA corruption and all that, but mostly this host is soooooo unhinged I love her. She says and does some crazy shit and I highly recommend.