25 Good Things - An Introduction

23 weeks left of the first quarter-century in this new millennium.

Mixed feelings, as per usual with me.

For one, I’m starting this project two weeks late. For two, this 25-year milestone has infused the list-making commentary landscape with a weird combo of starry-eyed longing for the bombastic optimism we left behind in the 90s and the COVID-hazed mumbling doomerism of the moment.

And while reflecting on 25 years of movies, games, books, and music in blog form is certainly a fool’s errand - what utility is there, after all, in trying to excavate insight from so wide a swath of time and experience - I feel compelled nevertheless to chart some course between these optimism/doomerism poles. I want to think, for a while, about how the good things I’ve played, seen, and read since the year 2000 feel from here, the place and time I am now. To see if they’re still good at all. To see if, as the years have slid towards our current listless, careening media environment, they’ve picked up new things to say along the way.

Think of each entry on this list as two things. First, a flat recommendation. If it’s here, it’s because I think it’s interesting, insightful, or pleasurable in some way that left me feeling rewarded for having spent time with it. These are things you should simply try if you haven’t. Second, a point of inflection. Something about these things changed the pitch in which I hear the world when I first encountered it. I understood future moments in relation to them, whether in harmony or dissonance.

Including this weekend (July 26 and 27) there are twenty-three weeks left in the year. Each week I’m going to share a good thing with you from the past twenty-five years, doubling up twice for a nice 25 things in 25 years symmetry. I’ll be diving deeper into each recommendation than I’ve had space to in past entries of this newsletter, giving everything a bit more room to breathe and play with my own reflections on life since I was 12 years old.

So here’s the break down. Five movies. Five video games. Five table top games. Five books. Five albums. Delivered one at a time in weekly posts. Starting tomorrow with the first entry.

No particular order to any of this, by the way. No rankings, no chronology, nothing like that. You can make up your own mind about all that if you’d like. Would love to hear from you actually if you’ve got some strong feelings in that direction.

Either way, I’m excited to get started and excited to welcome you back to The Crossover Appeal. I hope you enjoy this journey through a quarter century of slightly dilletantish taste, and maybe with a little luck, discover a little goodness for yourself.

Thanks for reading.

Jordan Cassidy