The Philly Beef Algorithm

Happy Monday readers! Hope you had a great weekend.

A new month is upon us and we are closer to the end of the year. Dang this year went by fast!

I am starting a new school thing today (November 4th). I am taking a course to get a project management certification. To be honest, I am a little nervous about it. Mostly about motivation. When I went back to finish off my bachelors a few years ago, I was actually going to a classroom and had a set schedule and what not. With this program, it is all online and kind of self paced. I mean, I have a certain number of weeks to complete the course but learning the material and doing the assignments and what not is all based on self motivation and initiative. If you aren’t already aware, I had ADHD. Self motivation is not my forte. So this is going to be a different playbook than when I got my bachelors. I might keep this thing updated with my progress (or lack of) as I go along.

Oh. Why the philly beef reference? I attempted to make philly cheese steak sandwiches last week for dinner. Everything turned out good except for the fact that I forgot the cheese. So it was just philly beef.

Here are last week’s new music releases that I thought I’d point out:

The Rills - Don’t Be A Stranger
Bumsy and the Moochers - Anywhere But Here
As Friends Rust - Lightless
What Gives - Got Lost

And since this is this the first issue of November, here is a list of my favorite albums that were released in October:

Stomatopod - DrizzleFizzle
Psychotic Reaction - Dystopian Anthems for Lotus Eaters
The Linda Lindas - No Obligation
Japandroids - Fate & Alcohol
The Copyrights - New Ghosts
Pixies - The Night the Zombies Came
Chuck Ragan - Love & Lore

Also, here are my top 5 listened to artists for the month of October (based on Last.fm):

Last week’s comic book pull list was not as big as the previous week. It had 3 books on it.

Star Wars: The Battle of Jakku - Insurgency Rising #3
The Last Halloween #2
Penguin Special #1

I finished volume 1 of No Man’s Land and decided to take a break from that massive undertaking. I will return to it at some point but there is other stuff I want to read first. For example, I got caught up on the current Ultimate Spider-Man series (Jonathan Hickman). Here are some other things I read:

Batman and Robin Vol. 1: Father and Son by Joshua Williamson. This one follows the story arc where Bruce loses all his money and he and Damian move out of the mansion and into a small brownstone in Gotham.

Catwoman #69 by Torunn Grønbekk. That’s the first issue in the series of a new story arc with a new creative team.

Batman and Robin #13 by Phillip Kennedy Johnson. This one is the also the beginning of a new story arc with a new creative team.

Batman and Robin Vol. 1: Batman Reborn by Grant Morrison. I think I read a couple of issues of this when it first came out in 2009 but never got into it at the time.

To no one’s surprise, including my own, I gave up on the audiobook to Heir to the Empire. It wasn’t that I wasn’t liking it. I actually was. I just haven’t bee in a book reading mood lately. Lately I would just rather read comic books. I usually listen to audiobooks when I’m working but for the past few weeks I’ve been using that time listening to music instead. Maybe I’ll get back to that book sometime.

Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - I watched this on Disney Plus earlier in the week. It was a pretty fantastic movie. It chronicled the band on their most recent tour through filming of rehearsals, live performances, and interviews with the band memories. If you are a fan of Bruce, I 100% recommend checking this out.

Some other random things that I watched on TV last week included the first episode of Agatha All Along, some episodes of My Name is Earl, some episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and the 2003 Clone Wars TV series.

I forgot to mention in last week’s issue that I ran another session of the Rebel Rock Radio Star Wars RPG campaign. If you are new here, we record those sessions and post them over on our Patreon. If you are interested in checking the new episode out you can check it out here.

I have been playing a lot of Batman Arkham stuff lately on my Xbox. I started and finished both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City over the last couple of weeks and started Arkham Knight. Those are all really good games. Outside of the Fallout franchise, this is my favorite video game franchise. Unfortunately, Arkham Origins is not available outside of finding a used physical copy. Maybe I’ll go track one down one of these days.

There was no regular live episode of Rebel Rock Radio last week. JD was out of town for the Halloween holiday. He was in Salem, Massachusetts. Be sure to check us out this week for an update on that trip.

While there was no regular episode, we did drop the first episode of The Batcave on our YouTube channel. It was an early access episode for patrons so we only had it on the Patreon for a couple of weeks. But now everyone has access to it. Blue and I recorded our 2nd episode of that and it is currently on our Patreon. It will also eventually be released on our YouTube channel. On the new episode we talked about the 1993 animated film Mask of the Phantasm.