#51: Have you considered going for a long walk and eating good food?
Death By Consumption
4/22/25 - 4/28/25
Look, some weeks I'm very timely with my cultural experiences, and other weeks it's a mishmash of 90s Spanish sexual melodramas and 50s Swedish art films. But that's the agony and the ecstasy of these stupid emails; you're stuck on the ride with me! This week I did also watch a couple of newer movies, both of which were very mediocre if not outright bad, and I did some reading about one of my favorite subjects: how deeply insane everyone is now.
Since everything in the world seems designed to drive us all as crazy as possible right now, might I suggest doing what I did a couple times this week: go for a long walk (I'm talking an hour, minimum) that ends at a delicious restaurant. It completely cures your mental health, for at least a moment! Plus, we should all enjoy food as much as we can right now, before the shortages start. I'll look back on this week fondly from the bread lines.
Jamón Jamón (1992) — on Criterion
Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem in Jamón Jamón are the two most attractive people who have ever lived. This is somewhat uncomfortable to say because Penélope might have been 17 at the time of filming (she has said in a semi-recent interview she was 18, and she was definitely 18 when the movie was released, but it’s unclear to me how old she actually was when they shot it). Which is a very uncomfortable fact when you see how often her breasts are just, like, fully out in this film. But, still, it has to be said: these are two extremely beautiful people. And that is essentially the point of the movie!
Penélope plays a girl working at a men’s underwear factory, who is engaged to the factory owners’ son. The boy's parents disapprove, so the boy’s mother hires Javier Bardem — a local pork delivery man, who aspires to be a bullfighter, and who also happens to have an enormous bulge (the camera loves to linger below Javier's waist) — to seduce Penélope. Naturally, the mother herself falls in love with Javier, too, whoops! And the hijinks and drama spiral from there. By the end of the film, everyone in this dusty little town has slept with everyone else, and it all becomes a big, melodramatic mess.
It's an operatic film, with a zany tone that keeps you on your toes and doesn't always work, but the real purpose of the movie is to watch absolutely beautiful people in an absolutely beautiful setting, behaving like lunatics. The highlight of the movie for me, of course, was Javier Bardem's entirely nude bullfighting scene, which, like a lot of the film's nudity, has really no point other than getting the beautiful actors naked for the sake of showing them off. Which is lascivious and a bit exploitative, but also — I'm sorry if this makes me toxic — it was all very appreciated by me!
Of course, none of the above applies if you're a straight man. You should not be watching this! You shouldn't even be reading this! Penélope could be your daughter! Go away! But for the rest of us: enjoy!
Last Breath (2025) — on Peacock
A perfectly average movie about the ocean being terrifying, a subject I will apparently never get tired of. It’s based on a true story, which makes it even more horrifying, of a deep sea diving expedition that goes wrong when one of the dudes ends up trapped at the bottom of the ocean with only 10 minutes’ worth of oxygen left. 10 minutes! Imagine!
What makes it all even worse is they’ve used real footage from the incident — specifically an extremely upsetting shot of the guy’s body twitching and convulsing on the bottom of the ocean, in the pitch black. The movie itself is totally generic, with a script even your shittiest AI could write, but it works due to Woody Harrelson’s charm and the pure horror of imagining yourself in this guy’s situation. I knew I was, at my core, an American when my reaction every 10 minutes was, “I would sue.” I don’t even know who I would sue, but just know that if I ever found myself in this situation (I would never be down there, though, let's be real) and got out alive, I would be deeply, filthy rich after I sued anyone even remotely involved.
Anyway, this is probably a totally passable plane movie, though it might trigger a panic attack in your seat, and above all else it is a very good reminder to never, ever, ever, ever go in the ocean.
Wild Strawberries (1957) — on Criterion
If you ever need to trigger an existential crisis — and forgive me for being a cliche film bro here — Ingmar Bergman can get you into a full-blown depressive episode within a tight 90 minutes.
I really leaned into my inner film douche with this one, taking two puffs of a joint before settling back to enjoy some classic Swedish cinema, and by the time Justin got home from meeting some people for drinks… I was not in a good place, mentally. “Should we go out somewhere?!” Justin asked as he came in the door, buzzing off cocktails and the energy of the city, and I replied from under a blanket on the couch, “I’m thinking of all the regrets I might have when I’m old.”
Ingmar Bergman is a sublime buzzkill, and an incredibly stupid choice when the weather is lovely outside. Don't do it!
The Monkey (2024) — on Apple
Osgood Perkins… he should change his name to Osbad. After Longlegs and now The Monkey, I am done with his stupid ass. This movie flopped hard for me, taking one of Stephen King’s dumbest and most basic plot ideas (a cursed toy, oh wow, so scary) and trying to do a Final Destination with it. Also, in a movie where people literally explode into human sludge after touching electricity, the most unrealistic part of the movie is the idea that someone who looks like Theo James would ever be a grocery store clerk. People with faces like that don't have to work normal jobs!
"How Did Two Elite Students Fall for the Zizians Cult?" by Ezra Marcus — in NYMag
This article is a great longread about the murders committed by the Zizians Cult, who you may or may not have heard of, but it's a fantastically horrific deep-dive into my favorite current genre of story, which amounts to: everyone in America is completely insane now.
The Zizians, if you're unfamiliar, are an AI-worshipping cult who believe that, once AI takes over, it will take inspiration from our factory farming processes and do the same to humans, so we all need to become vegan ASAP. (Vegans, I'm sorry, you do not deserve this kind of press.)
It's a totally wild story about online radicalization (these people started on the path to violent murder by getting radicalized by a piece of Harry Potter fanfic.........I'm not joking), AI worship in the tech community, Peter Thiel's continuing negative effects on humanity, and deeply irrational people who call themselves rationalists. It's the kind of article with sentences like: "Some rationalists fell into occult practices like tulpamancy, a practice ostensibly derived from Buddhism and popularized by My Little Pony fans on 4chan, which involved using meditation exercises to apparently create independent sentient entities that live in one’s brain." I think everyone is doing great in this country, mentally.
Health & Safety: A Breakdown, by Emily Witt (2024) — library ebook
Another deep-dive into everyone being completely insane in America! I do think the combo of Trump, Covid, and social media did something to a lot of people that we're still dealing with, and this memoir by Emily Witt is a good articulation of how it all affected one specific person: her boyfriend.
The first half of the book is a memoir about the rave scene, before taking a hard swerve when Covid hits, and the book shifts focus to the terrifying and awful mental breakdown of Emily's partner at the time, Andrew. The book is nebulous and hard to pin down, with segments that feel entirely disconnected from the larger narrative at times, but you just have to go along for the ride and see where it all ends up, like surrendering to a drug. The structure mirrors a bad drug trip, in fact, where the come-up is all exhilaration and fun and possibilities, and the comedown is a brutal awakening.
The first section reminded me of William Finnegan's surfing memoir Barbarian Days, just a lot of beautiful writing about a very specific subculture — I never knew there were so many words you could use to describe techno and house music! But the back half is a horror story, as Andrew spirals into mania and violence and abuse, and Emily is cast adrift at a time when everyone was lost and scared and confused. This is not a Covid memoir, thankfully, but it does bring back some very unpleasant memories and feelings from a very unpleasant time. This is a heavy book, and a sad one, but also a necessary reminder that escapism works for a little while, but reality always catches up. Just a light read for the summer, really.
Guru hingal — at Village Cafe, in Brooklyn
On a rainy, humid day this weekend, Justin and I and our friend Zach decided to walk 4 miles into South Brooklyn, deep into Midwood, to eat at an iconic Azerbaijani restaurant, Village Cafe. After a delightful, slightly wet walk, in which we took shelter from a rainstorm at a pub and enjoyed a couple pints of Guinness, we arrived at the cafe, and were informed by the waiter that we could pick up some vodka from the liquor store next door and bring it to our table. "I'll bring shot glasses," he said, making it apparent that the vodka was not optional for us — nor were we to consider any other beverages like beer or wine. We did not fight him on this, and went to buy vodka.
Zach and I were overwhelmed by the vodka options at the liquor store, and almost made the fatal mistake of buying a bottle that looked good, until we noticed a MAGA label on the bottle's neck. They make MAGA vodka now?! We quickly switched the bottle out for a Ukranian brand of vodka, which proudly displayed the Ukranian flag on the label. "Good choice," a woman said at the checkout counter, and I felt unduly proud of our vodka selection.
The food itself was outrageously good, my first time trying Azerbaijani food, which unsurprisingly is a mix of, essentially, all European/Asian/Middle Eastern cuisines, thanks to our old friend the silk road. A particular favorite was the guru hingal, grilled minced lamb meat and spices served on wide noodles, similar to la mian hand-pulled noodles in China. We also loved the lamb kutaby, thin pancakes with minced spiced meat inside; the lamb pelmeni, delicate steamed dumplings dipped in sour cream, so good we ordered a second plate; and of course incredible kebabs, plus warm and crispy Turkish bread. Azerbaijani food — who knew! (Azerbaijani people, I assume.)
Full and happy and drunk on non-MAGA vodka, we walked the 4 miles back home, and the instant we got in the door I took a nap lying flat on my back on the hardwood floors.
Sator goong — at Chalong, in Manhattan
The theme of this week, as I told you, was taking long walks in order to eat food. I left work on a beautiful day and walked from the West Village all the way up to Hell's Kitchen, where Justin and I met at Chalong, a Southern Thai restaurant that miraculously had a table for us without a reservation. To get a table at a popular restaurant without enduring the indignities of Resy... divine!
The menu was small and seafood-heavy, and the waiter warned us a few times which items were spicy. We chose the spiciest thing on the menu — the sator goong, ground pork and shrimp and something called stinky beans, in a very spicy curry paste — and our Thai waiter, I'm not joking you, made a face of true horror when I ordered. Imagine the feeling when you say what you want to eat and your waiter retracts their head back into their neck a full 6 inches while being like 😬😬. "It's too spicy for even me," he warned us, his face deadly serious. I felt immediate regret, horror, panic. We ordered two Singha beers in the desperate hope that it would staunch the spice when it arrived, but I felt like we had made a huge mistake.
When the food arrived, we nervously tasted the sator goong and... it was great! Almost immediately, my sinuses opened and sweat started beading on the back of my neck, but it really was not even close to the spiciest thing I've ever had. Once the spices really hit, I felt that rush of endorphins that make spicy food so addictive, and I happily went back for seconds and thirds while eavesdropping on the date next to us, where the man was droning on and on about his father who was a CIA agent in Pakistan, while warning his female date not to eat too much spicy food because "we have to share a bathroom." It's so cruel that people have to go on dates with men!
And when the waiter came back to clear the table and discovered we had finished the entire thing and our taste buds were still doing just fine, my smug sense of satisfaction — oh boy, you could have powered the whole block with it.