Enthusiastic Recommendations — July 25, 2025

It’s been an exciting week for me! Thank you all for the kind words about my new role with Cross Forward. I’ve started digging into some research about target markets and am already fascinated by it. I can’t wait to see what I do with it.

I also wanted to thank Stephen for coming up with the idea for the new logo for the site. He combined a typeface I enjoy along with one of the amazing character designs Jelly had done for one of our St Jude campaigns.

Some recommendations for you:

• First up, see your friends—especially those you haven’t gotten to see in a while. I was very lucky to have Federico and Silvia come over to visit, as they’re in London for the weekend. I hadn’t seen Federico since May last year, and thats been too long.
• I’ve really been enjoying Donkey Kong Bananza this past week. I mentioned last week how much fun I was having during the first few hours, and that fun just hasn’t stopped. The game keeps delivering with enjoyable and intriguing new mechanics and problems to solve all the way through. It’s fantastic.
• Speaking of fantastic, I saw Fantastic Four: First Steps last night. Overall, I really liked this movie. I think my expectations were initially set a bit too high, but upon reflecting over the past 24 hours, I’ve grown to appreciate it more and more. The film really delivers with a great story dealing with some compelling moral dilemmas, and I enjoyed the individual performances of the main characters. They’ve set a solid baseline to build from. Where I hesitate slightly is with some of the interactions among the Four—some combinations have better chemistry than others. They don’t quite feel exactly like the group I wanted yet, but there’s plenty of time to develop that.
• This week we caught up on Taskmaster Series 19, and it’s truly fantastic. There’s no weak link in the group, and it’s consistently hilarious throughout. This is an excellent series to start with if you’re new to this eclectic game show. If you enjoy it, definitely jump back to the beginning—there’s some absolute gold throughout the show’s history. It’s genuinely remarkable that it hasn’t become old or stale. The team behind this show is clearly incredible.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend ahead. A word of caution, though: the iOS beta is destroying my battery life. Think about that before you jump in.

Until next week! ✌️