Rec Center #5: December

NOT a gift guide

Welcome to the December edition of Rec Center! Unlike every other Substacker in the world, I will not be publishing a holiday gift guide. My only guidance for gift-giving is my personal philosophy: the best gifts are things that the recipient would not buy for themselves (even if they had the money), but which will cause them delight.

December’s recs are just the same grab-bag of random stuff that I’ve been obsessed with this month. See previous recommendations from November, October, September, and August.

King of New York, dir. Abel Ferrara (1990)

These days, it’s impossible to choose what to watch with the infinite scroll of various streaming apps. My household tries to simplify our decision for movie night by choosing from the ‘Departing at the end of the month’ menu on the Criterion Channel (the most pretentious but also actually good streaming service from the Criterion Collection). That’s where I first encountered the director Abel Ferrara via his 1998 movie New Rose Hotel, starring Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento, and Christopher Walken. New Rose Hotel is a sexy proto-mumblecore adaptation of one of my favorite William Gibson short stories from the collection Burning Chrome. It’s fun and vibey, and about 40 minutes too long, but required viewing for any cyperpunk fans. It appears to have been made with a budget of approximately $76, but Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken seem like they’re having a lot of fun. And Asia Argento gives a surprisingly subtle performance as the alluring corporate espionage temptress.

This month, King of New York, supposedly considered Ferrara’s magnum opus and strongly recommended by my friend Josiah, appeared in that ‘Departing December 31’ list.

This stylish, star-studded, ultra-violent organized crime movie knocked my socks off. Christopher Walken stars as a kind of egalitarian mob boss with a heart of gold recently released from prison, moving through every layer of New York society with ease (and more than a few dance moves). “Larry” Fishbourne, Giancarlo Esposito, Wesley Snipes, and Steve Buscemi each steal a few scenes as well. Everyone looks so young! I recommend it for anyone who wants an organized crime/crooked cop movie with every dial turned up to 11. It hits somewhere between exploitation/B-movie and Scorsese.

As a little treat, check out this train wreck of an interview Ferrara did on Conan in 1996. He’s clearly out of his mind on dope and yet ends up being funny and charming as Conan desperately tries to keep the show on track and keep the audience engaged. With the heroin trade featuring so prominently in King of New York, I suppose it’s nice to see an auteur walking the walk.

I look forward to furthering my Ferrara education by tracking down The Addiction, in which Christopher Walken plays some kind of vampire in a metaphor for heroin addiction, and China Girl, supposedly a kind of West Side Story-but-in-Chinatown movie that I hope doesn’t get too racist.

The Philosophical Society of Washington (PSW Science)

What’s the hottest ticket in Washington, D.C. on a Friday night? Biweekly, free lectures by top scientists in all fields at the Cosmos Club, hosted by the Philosophical Society of Washington! I’ve been attending these PSW lectures off and on since 2018, and I think the Society is one of the great hidden gems of DC. PSW was founded in 1871 by Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. PSW invites researchers and scholars from all over the world to come speak about their work in a way that assumes a scientifically literate audience. The speakers each interpret this differently, and some give a broad introduction to their work while others get hyperspecific and technical.

Some of my previous favorites include Eric Cline’s lecture on the Bronze Age Collapse and its aftermath; Brent Seales’s lecture on using AI to read the burnt Herculaneum papyri; Amanda Podany’s lecture on deciphering the lives of everyday Mesopotamians through cuneiform; and Sean Carroll’s lecture on the equation that defines spacetime. There are a huge range of topics explored, but I tend to be drawn to the archaeology, astronomy, and physics lectures.

In 2023, my husband and I became PSW members for the first time (thanks to our friend Lisa’s wedding gift!), which grants us the privilege of attending the pre-lecture dinner and cocktail hour with the speaker du jour in the swanky Cosmos Club reception room. The average member age is somewhere north of 60, but the conversation is always lively and the food and drink are great. 

For those not in the DC know, the Cosmos Club is one of those ultra exclusive members-only clubs where you have to be not only rich but also professionally distinguished and/or politically connected to be invited. Membership fees are somewhere in the thousands per year. PSW, on the other hand, has annual dues of $75, so it’s kind of like a cheat code to cosplay luxury and class. But if you aren’t in easy range of DuPont Circle, fear not! They live-stream all of their lectures on YouTube and then post the recordings for posterity. Some Friday nights when we don’t feel like trekking into DC, we’ll make a big bowl of popcorn and nerd out to the livestream on the couch. 

Obscene rococo displays of wealth at the Cosmos Club (cosmosclub.com)

Large Hadron Collider Rap

The last PSW lecture was “The Science Driving Particle Physics and Big Accelerators” by JoAnne Hewett, the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Higgs boson particle was experimentally confirmed in 2013, the year after I took physics in college, so much of the lecture covered things I used to know about, and it was overall very engaging and mostly accessible. The talk triggered a deep memory of the LHC Rap, perhaps the best and least embarrassing educational rap video that came out of the 2000s. Please do yourself a favor and watch the video. It has the most wholesome comments section of any YouTube video I’ve ever seen.

New Amphetamine Shriek (The Fugs, Virgin Fugs, 1967)

Y’all are going to think I’m fully unhinged for this rec. Every so often I return to this singularly catchy and grating song, and this week I cannot get it out of my head. The Fugs were a crude but smart proto-punk rock group that emerged from the joke-folk-revival group the Holy Modal Rounders and the general druggy miasma of the early 60s Greenwich Village scene. 

“New Amphetamine Shriek” is an outtake from the first session of the Fugs’ first album, recorded in 1965. It’s credited to Peter Stampfel, who was a member of the Holy Modal Rounders, and happened to be obsessed with Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music (iykyk). The song is gloriously sloppy and grotesque, punctuated with clever turns of phrase and a high-low vibe. The opening verse is a more effective anti-drug message than DARE could ever hope for:

I don’t have a bedtime, I don’t need to cum

For I have become an amphetamine bum

If you don’t like sleeping and don’t want to screw

then you should take lots of amphetamine too

Something about the juxtaposition of a classical allusion with the image of a Village drughouse and the earnest medical advice in the last verse just tickles me:

There’s nine bouncing people in one little room

The victors are threading eternity’s loom

It’s not bad for brain cells, the doctors proclaim

It’s almost as safe as that good ol’ cocaine!

I might be overthinking it, but to me, “eternity’s loom” evokes Book Ten of Plato’s Republic, in which the Fates (the goddesses Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos) spin the thread of life from a spindle, measure it, and cut it, weaving each person’s thread into the tapestry of fate. I love the pathetic, grandiose image of a room full of euphoric speed freaks feeling that they have control over life and death. As a degenerate youth, I took a fair amount of recreational stimulants, although it was never my main thing. These days, this song is how a full-caff double espresso after 3pm makes me feel.

Egg Cookers

Soft-boiled eggs make everything better.

Lillian, please— I have a pot. Why would I want a single-purpose kitchen appliance? 

Because unless you’re some kind of egg prodigy, you’re playing egg roulette like the rest of us every time you boil eggs in a pot like a peasant. I am a recent convert to the egg cooker, most devout. My husband found this Cuisinart Egg Central basically new, in the box, at a thrift store for a couple bucks a few months ago, and it’s a game-changer. We love a perfectly cooked soft boiled egg for ramyeon, soba, bibimguksu, rice, toast, or a snack over cottage cheese, and this clever little egg-shaped device takes the guesswork out. (Note that that’s an affiliate link for Amazon, which in theory would give me a commission, but I’d encourage you to look for it or a similar device second-hand instead.)

As a powerlifting household, we eat a lot of eggs for protein, and the Egg Central makes it easier to prep the perfect egg every time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily make peeling the eggs any easier. Use older eggs and shock them in ice water to help. 

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Please let me know what you think of this month’s recs—drop a comment or send me an email! And please consider giving this post a ‘like’—it helps other people discover my newsletter on Substack. :)