Welcome to a beta season of foofaraw. Over the course of the last year on Substack (what I'm going to refer to as "Season 1") we released 38 issues of streaming variability, 39 supplemental issues around music, movies, comics, and news, and 3 forward looking zines across the media landscape. With the move to Buttondown, I'm looking to shake things up a bit before "Season 2" officially kicks off. If you're interested in what this "beta" season is all about and how I'm thinking about the newsletter moving forward, I'll dive into more detail at the end of this issue.

streaming variability

what's on tv this week

It's truly Halloween season with 4 horror or horror-adjacent shows premiering this week, 3 of which land on Friday the 13th. Talk about synergy. There's also an unscripted John Carpenter anthology series hitting Peacock on Friday, but once I realized it was unscripted I scrapped it...

New Shows

The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix) — 12 October

New Mike Flanagan show on Netflix. They've been hit or miss for me, but I always find them at least worth checking out. Now that I think about it... I've finished all of them up until this point, so I don't see why this one will be any different.

Frasier S1 (Paramount) — 12 October

I don't think I'll actually watch or keep up with this, but I felt obligated to include it...

Good Night World S1 (Netflix) — 12 October

Decided to include this one at the last minute. It's anime so it's probably not up the alley of many reading this, but the VR gaming vs real life premise here has me intrigued enough to at least try to squeeze this in when my wife is away.

Lessons in Chemistry S1 (Apple) — 13 October

Don't actually know much about this show, but I think Brie Larson is talented and between that and Apple's pretty high hit rate, there's enough there to make this worth checking out.

Shining Vale S2 (Starz) — 13 October

I didn't watch S1, but I wanted to... Still plan on eventually catching up on this, but that requires paying for Starz again...

Goosebumps S1 (Disney) — 13 October

I don't think I'll watch this either... but it has Justin Long and actually looks quite fun.

Creepshow S4 (Shudder) — 13 October

Finally, our last Friday the 13th horror show, is the Shudder anthology for it's 4th season. I really do love anthologies so I'm going to have to give this and Shudder a go one of these days. Also fitting given the second issue of the comic is out this week as well.

Rick and Morty S2 (Adult Swim) — 15 October

It's back! And with new voice actors, who honestly, are nailing it. I was worried they'd approach it like they did with Solar Opposites and just completely change the voice, which, would probably make R&M unwatchable, imo.

The Schedule

Days based on streaming availability for the majority of people

Wednesday

• Invasion (Apple) 2:8

• Welcome to Wrexham (FX) 2:7

Thursday

• Archer (FX) 14:8

• Star Trek: Lower Decks (Paramount) 4:7

• Our Flag Means Death (HBO) 2:4-5

• The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix) S1

• Frasier (Paramount) 1:1-2

• Good Night World (Netflix) S1

Friday

• The Changeling (Apple) 1:8

• Still Up (Apple) 1:6

• Gen V (Amazon) 1:5

• Loki (Disney) 2:2

• Lessons in Chemistry (Apple) 1:1-2

• Shining Vale (Starz) 2:1

• Goosebumps (Disney/Hulu) 1:1-5

• Creepshow (Shudder) S4

Sunday

• Billions (Showtime) 7:10

• Last Week Tonight (HBO) 10:13

• The Circus (Showtime) 8:8

• Rick and Morty (Adult Swim) 7:1

sonic vibrations

this past Friday's best album releases

Release of the Week

💽 Several Songs About Fire — A Savage

This was really a fun week of releases. Three other albums had the potential to be the release of the week, but ultimately, I went with A Savage's (singer of Parquet Courts) solo album. His voice just has those dulcet tones that make listening so enjoyable and he goes for a more tamed, laid back vibe here with his solo album vs the Parquet jams.

Other Releases

Runner-Ups

• new planet heaven — HUNNY

• Oblivion Will Own Me and Death Alone Will Love Me (Void Filler) — Short Fictions

• Lucid Dreams — BoyWithUke

The Big Guns

• Javelin — Sufjan Stevens

• VOIR DIRE — Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist

• Somewhere Between the Power Lines and Palm Trees — Dogstar

A Fun Bunch

• Auto Locator — Del Paxton

• We Can Be Friends — iogi

The Softer Side

• AUDIOBOOK — Sam Gendel

• Poet's Tooth — Tele Novella

Bits and Bobs

• Tough Kid (EP) — Daisy the Great

• Dance with Me (Single) — blink-182

• I Don't Sleep as Good as I Used To (Single) — GAYLE

sequential variants

this weeks best comic releases

I'm not going to go into too much detail this week with the comics, but I pulled out some intriguing number ones, the stuff I always think is worth checking out, and some really great looking graphic novels at the end.

No. 1s

• Nights (Image) #1

• Batman: City of Madness (DC) #1

• Midlife (or How to Hero at Fifty!) (Image) #1

• Operation Sunshine (Dark Horse) #1

• Space Usagi: Yokai Hunter (Dark Horse) #1

• Wesley Dodds: The Sandman (DC) #1

• Blitmap (Titan) #1

Releases

• Fishflies (Image) #2

• Kaya #12

• The Cull (Image) #3

• Damn Them All (Boom) #9

• Weird Work (Image) #4

• Creepshow (Skybound) #2

• The Hunger and the Dusk (IDW) #3

• House of Slaughter #18

• Batman and Robin (DC) #2

• Danger Street (DC) #10

• Undiscovered Country (Image) #26

Bigger Books

• The Great Beyond TP (Drawn & Quarterly)

• Mobilis: My Life with Captain Nemo HC (TKO)

silver-screen voyage

movies hitting the big screen this week

Anatomy of a Fall

This years Palme d'Or winner finally hits theaters.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

Besides the Palme d'Or winner, there really isn't much in theaters this week and I think that's largely due to Ms. Swift taking up all the screens.

Dear David

More Friday the 13th "content". This one is based on a story from the webcomic creator Adam Ellis, who I've been following on Instagram for what feels like forever. This is a "wait for streaming" for me, but definitely something I want to see eventually.

Dark Harvest

And finally, one more for Friday the 13th... Honestly, not a big horror/halloween/scary season person so this is all very, very tiring for me...

Outro

So as I mentioned, I'm once again looking to shake things up a bit. The first, obvious, change is the fact all of what used to be separate newsletters are now combined all into one. I'm hoping this makes it both easier to put together and puts less strain on your inbox. Even if you aren't interested in certain sections it should be easy enough to skim through.

The second, less obvious, change is the fact I'm no longer using Substack. As a tool, I think Substack is phenomenal, especially the way I was able to have multiple newsletter sections that individuals could pick and choose from. There's also the network, which really does help you grow, but this has never been about growth and becoming a business for me. So why leave? Overall, their VC-backed business model, need for growth, and desire to essentially eat into the small indie-web space of newsletters is a pretty big deterrence for me. I stuck with it so long because of it's ease and ability to do so much, but I finally decided it was time to make the change.

I'm experimenting though, which is why I'm calling this a beta season. "Season 2" will officially kick off once I settle on a few of things. As the term "season" implies, I also want to try to figure out when the various media industries have their biggest lulls and build myself breaks around them so that a year is split up into something like two seasons with two breaks. I'm hoping those breaks will help reduce the number of times I go dark without warning and also give me the ability to shed some light on whatever is coming out during those breaks.

The last thing I'm thinking about is (potentially) a more free-form issue of writing or maybe bringing back the news. While this main feature is very much focused on creating a list of all the important media in a given week with some comments here and there, I'd like to have a space for a bit more writing (or design), which brings me to the topic of paid vs free. I don't have an opinion yet and at the moment I'm planning everything to be free (it is a labor of love after all), especially since it'll cost me money to be able to charge..., but the nice thing about Buttondown is, I believe, it allows for some additional flexibility so I might be able to do something more like $3/mo and $25/yr. And even a few paid subscribers would allow me to dedicate more time to do things like ad SongWhip links again and pull in other links for things like comics, which tends to be extremely tedious.

Anyways, that's it for this issue. If you have any thoughts or opinions go ahead and reply. Would love to hear how you read/utilize this newsletter and what you'd most like to see.

Stay tuned and stay sane,

—humdrum