Bean's Blog Mailbag #1

Sir, a new Bean's Blog Segment has hit the Second Tower.

Last week I shared a link to a Google Form to try and get feedback/questions from my followers on topics they'd like to hear me cover on Bean's Blog. I want to keep this open-ended and on-going -- I will keep this link in my bio at all times, will continue posting the link on my story periodically as reminders -- but if you have anything you'd like to hear my take on, please submit it!

Whether it's a question you have about a new TV show you just watched, your favorite older TV show you want my take on, want to hear my Top 10 movies in a certain category/directors/actors/etc, have any sports questions, any older segments you want brought back or new segment suggestions, Power Ranking Topics you want to see me cover -- we're open to any and all suggestions here at Bean's Blog.

We got several great questions in this first round of Mailbag prompts -- so today's blog will be me going through a handful of them, spanning topics from Movies/TV, Fantasy Football, the streaming industry, Main street restaurants, and more!

If you were in a 10-man Auction Draft fantasy league with a $200 budget -- who are you allocating your top funds to, and how much?

Love this question as it reminds me how close we are to not only fantasy football being back, but football in general being back. I'm ready to run through a wall.

Thought this was a patronizing question from a league-mate at first that knows I don't have my full $200 budget going into our 2026 auction draft -- as I brazenly traded $31 of my 26' budget last year to acquire Jamarr Chase and Cedee Lamb to make a Championship push. But it was from a fellow league-mate that did the same thing as me (and also lost). Plus, we've also decided to outlaw trading auction budget going forward -- so I just need to weather the storm this season.

If you've never done an Auction Fantasy Draft -- here's the gist: managers put players up for auction, you bid on them, if you bid the most, you get them (Pretty racist way to draft if you ask me). The standard budget in most leagues is $200, and the top-ranked players typically go for anywhere from $55-$75.

Last year was my 2nd time doing an auction draft -- but the most money I spent on a player was $40. And that was with my full $200 budget. Part of that was being tentative in a new format -- part was me wanting to ensure I had a very well-rounded team. I went quantity over quality and withstood the bye weeks by having a deep roster, and took under-appreciated/under-valued skill guys rather than the big names.

To answer this question, I do think it makes Fantasy Football more fun if you have one or two big name players you can bank on for 20 points a week. It's riskier for sure -- the more budget you spend on top guys, the less you have to fill out the roster. But I think it's reasonable to allocate 60% of your budget to getting a couple stars. Who you value is up for debate -- and is very dependent roster defaults in your league (whether you're PPR, how many WR slots you have, if TE's qualify for flex, etc).

My cookie-cutter mentality would be to go for 1 big RB, 1 big WR, and choose between going for a Top 5 QB or a Top 5 TE. I think going big for both TE and QB leaves you handicapped trying to fill out RB/WR slots, and I think not being aggressive for one leaves you with so many RBs/WRs that it'll leave you in manager hell: trying to decide who to play each week, or trying to find trade partners to take them off your hands.

Lastly, to all the people that say Auction is so superior to snake draft because "you actually have to be strategic, snake draft is all luck" -- shut the fuck up. I'm wholly convinced that draft position in a snake draft has no effect on your chances to win -- I picked #6 in my snake draft league last year (widely thought of as one of the worst picks) and won the league. Fantasy football is 90% luck -- a player's entire season can be derailed by injury at any time, to him or his QB/rest of his team. You can make all the best picks, make every sharp waiver wire add, have the most stacked team imaginable -- and you can get beat Week 15 in the playoffs because Jayden Reed caught 3 TD's and TJ Hockenson had 12 catches for 200 yards.

Auction drafts are very fun and something different -- but the people that say it's superior because of strategy are just pretentious snobs that suck at snake drafts because they're ADP Sheep.

With Comedy Movies seemingly finding their way back to theaters, do you see Netflix moving to more of a production company model and putting their Netflix Originals in theaters before moving them to streaming?

Another terrific question, especially for a movie nerd/industry nerd like myself.

There are a lot of factors to think about with this, but my broad answer to this question would be that I do not think Netflix (specifically Netflix) is going to move as hard into this space.

The biggest factor is simply that I don't see Ted Sarandos being interested in this model. When Netflix was working to acquire Warner Brothers, one of the talking points about why that acquisition would be bad for the future of movies was because Sarandos wanted to Netflix-ify the movie production side. There would've been shorter theatrical releases and a quicker move to get them on their streaming platform. Early reports said they would've shortened the standard 45-day theatrical run to a window of just 17-20 days.

Netflix's primary revenue source is recurring subscriptions -- subscriptions that they continually raise the cost of because they know people will pay it. So from a business model standpoint, Sarandos always leans on, "what can I do to increase our number of subscriptions?" Adding blockbuster movies and a massive Warner library of films to Netflix would have done just that -- but even without Warner, he'd still rather bank on those subscriptions than risk a costly theatrical release schedule that lose money if a film flops.

So when it comes to comedies and Netflix Originals specifically, I don't see Netflix abandoning their model, even if trends are changing and people are going to theaters more often. In the Originals category, Netflix has definitely had successful projects over the last several years -- Marriage Story, The Irishman, All Quiet on the Western Front, Rebel Ridge, Da 5 Bloods, Don't Look Up, Extraction, Bird Box. But those aren't comedies -- Don't Look Up tries to be, but is a shit one in my opinion.

They've had a handful of successful comedies as Netflix Originals -- Hit Man, Dolemite is my Name, Always be my Maybe come to mind. But broadly speaking, I'd argue that the vast majority of Netflix Original Comedy movies are very poor quality. They may rack up the views on Netflix, but I think if they were released in theaters, they'd be major flops.

So I don't see Netflix diving deeper into theatrical releases for comedies, but I can definitely see other streamers and production companies doing so. It's clear that audiences are more willing to go to theaters than they have been in past years -- but that also begs the question, are comedies what they're most interested in?

Thinking about 2026 alone for what movies have seen huge Box Office success -- movies like The Odyssey, Obsession, Backrooms, Project Hail Mary, Michael, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Super Mario, Toy Story 5, Minions. I'm not sure true comedy is what audiences are clamoring for at the theaters. And I know the box office isn't everything for comedies, but it's definitely an indicator of what people are interested in going out of their way to see.

There are examples of movies in the comedy sub-genre being very successful this year -- The Invite, The Drama, The Devil Wears Prada 2. But these are more outliers than indicators to me -- and they certainly aren't the same quality as the goy slop Netflix pumps out in the comedy department 90% of the time (Anybody else see "Kinda Pregnant" with Amy Schumer? Fucking YIKES).

My opinion is we'd need to see a more consistent trend of high-quality comedies being made, and/or a more consistent trend of audiences wanting to go see them in theater, before we see a streamer like Netflix get on board with traditional theatrical releases.

How large of an impact does the soundtrack have on your movie experience? Do you prefer the inclusion of actual fully released songs, or a fully original soundtrack like we see in Nolan movies?

Sticking with movies for question #3 -- another great one. An under-talked about aspect of movies in my opinion.

Difficult question to answer for me, though. There are no movies that come to mind where I knocked the movie down a notch because I didn't like the soundtrack they used -- I find it to be a purely additive factor. And when it's additive, it's VERY additive for me -- to this day I still listen to the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtracks on Spotify when I'm in the mood for some oldies, and there's so many movies that I look back on more fondly because I loved their soundtrack.

And there definitely is something special about a movie that has all original songs, especially one that composes a totally original score that plays throughout. There are so many movies that you hear the title and can just hear the iconic score -- Star Wars, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, The Godfather. I know this question isn't specifically about Score -- that's another topic for another day -- but it's pretty awesome when a movie creates music that, 10+ years later, you still can hear anytime the movie's brought up.

Off the top of my head, some of my favorite movie soundtracks, both with original songs and already released songs would be: Boogie Nights, A Star is Born, all the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Black Panther, Marty Supreme, Baby Driver, Spider-Man Into/Across the Spider-verse, 8-Mile, Once Upon a time in Hollywood, Almost Famous, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Space Jam (just for "Fly Like an Eagle" alone), and Goodfellas.

Short answer: I love when a movie has a good soundtrack, and when it does, it definitely enhances the experience. But it doesn't hurt my viewing experience if the soundtrack isn't that great -- and I don't really have a preference between original songs or already-released songs being used (but think it's more impressive when it's all originals -- and those movies typically need those originals to be great to be successful in my opinion) ((A Star is Born doesn't work as well if those songs aren't fucking bangers, but they are, so it does)).

If you're familiar with "closet picks" you should do a closet picks blog or vlog

Going to save this one for a full blog or vlog like the question suggests, because we all know how I can ramble for days about movies. But if you'd rather see me do a vlog/Instagram reel on this than a full blog -- leave a comment on Instagram or on this blog (which you can do if you subscribe to beansblog.com on Wix -- download in the app store, subscribe, and download "Spaces" to have all Bean's Blogs right at your fingertips).

And if you're unfamiliar with "closet picks" -- it's referring to the Criterion Closet videos on YouTube where celebs/directors go into the Criterion closet and pick their favorite movies that are there and discuss why they're such great films.

Next question was a multi-parter -- so I'm going to split it up and hit some quick answers to close out today's mailbag.

If you haven't played through Red Dead Redemption 2, this would be a good time before GTA 6 comes out (GTA 6 review also when it does come out?)

In the world of my many interests, unfortunately video games is one of the few that just never hit for me. I played a Wii and a PlayStation 2 growing up -- so if you wanted a review of GTA 3/San Andreas, I'd be your man. But I won't be purchasing 6 -- I currently have an Xbox and the last game I bought was NCAA Football 26, and I'm debating buying NCAA Football 27 for the upcoming season -- but don't foresee GTA 6 being on my list.

If you haven't watched Avatar the Last Airbender, this is my favorite show of all time (and the new movie just came out on Paramount+)

I watched Avatar the Last Airbender religiously when I was a kid, and thought it was INCREDIBLE. But I probably haven't revisited it since watching it as a kid, and I think I'm long overdue for a rewatch, so I may start working on that and get back to you, Writer. The real question: if you could choose, are you going Air, Water, Earth, or Fire Bender? I'm going Earth all day. For whatever reason I alwats thought the earthbenders were so sick.

Opinions on City Soccer making a playoff push (Hot Take: MLS 360 is better than Redzone)

I haven't been super locked in on STLSC this season, but I'm always keeping tabs on the homeland's newest team. They were getting hot before the World Cup break, and I was worried that time off would make us rusty when play resumed -- but the boys picked up right where they left off, going 3-0-1 in their 4 games since. Currently sitting at 7th in the west, which is the last playoff spot -- a playoff run would be huge for the city to reignite some of that passion in the fanbase. During STLSC's 1st season, those games were BUMPING every week, and the team was such a blast to watch. They're starting to capture some of that magic again (I haven't been to a game this season, but from the looks of it, the home crowd is getting back to elite levels). And the team's been so much more fun to watch -- the game-winner from Ostrak against Colorado a couple weeks ago was fucking nasty. If you're a Cardinals fan and you're sick of watching them lose -- tune into City who's actually bringing some W's to St. Louis right now.

(I can't speak on the MLS 360 over Redzone take -- but Soccer seems like the perfect sport for that style of viewing experience, so I believe it).

Food Review: Big A's on the Riverfront. Best Burgers in Town

I'd frequent Big A's on Main street when I still lived in the Chuck, but more often than not for some late night beer buckets rather than dinner. Although I did go there back in May for dinner and had a fantastic buffalo chicken wrap and pretzel app. Their pizza has also never done me wrong, but next time I'm back on homebase, I'll make a trip to try my hand at one of these burgers. Score TBD, we'll revisit one day.

And that'll do it for the first ever Bean's Blog Mailbag! If you have any questions/topics/suggestions for the page -- please utilize the mailbag link in my bio and send em' my way!