Now playing: “Talk To Me” by Robyn

Sometimes, you can find soul-healing joy because you have the good timing to witness an epic snowball fight in a park (see above). But what about the rest of the time?

If you thought the last years weren’t numbing or gut-curdling enough, you might have found yourself tapping out during the last week or so of 2026. Examining this rage-inspiring situation isn’t exactly my skill-set, so instead I’m going to take a break from talking movies* in the main section of this project to focus on some of the best things that help my days get better.

And, hilariously, they all share a single letter: C.

* this claim does not exactly hold up long, because I will reference a movie in the next section, but it’s just as an aside so I’m OK with that.

Immediately after hitting send on this thing, I realized I’d left my biggest C off. Cooking, such as I’ve been doing with the amazing Roberto soup (thank you Helen Rosner), is one of the very best things one can do for themselves. You take agency over making the food you put in your body, you have ultimate control over flavor, and the act of being procedural and methodical about making something is quite fun.

The anti-cash trend that’s taken over various lunch spots over the country has been frustrating to watch, especially because of how it was obviously a means of slowly booting the less-fortunate among us from entry. Two of my favorite establishments of New York stand staunchly against the tides, though it’s probably not on any moral ground.

I’m instead guessing that Joe’s Pizza of Carmine street is trying to avoid the transaction fees, because they’re popular enough that they can just say “no” to cards and NFC payments. I assume I don’t need to explain much about Joe’s, either. Famous for its placement in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2,” when Mr. Aziz fired Peter Parker for betraying the chain’s 30-minute delivery rule after a series of other mistakes that were also likely tied to the kid prioritizing protecting the people of New York City, Joe’s Pizza sits right down the street from fellow iconic pizzeria John’s of Bleecker, which only started accepting cards (almost exactly) a decade ago.

Anyway, Joe’s is the classic NYC slice shop, with the perfect ratio of crispy crust to oily cheese, and just enough to tomato sauce to be structurally-sound. I’ve never felt like their cash-only rule was a burden, just the price of history.

While there are many other cash-only situations in NYC, such as when the credit card readers go down because infrastructural issues, the other that I cannot stop thinking about is from my favorite sandwich purveyor in town. Bánh Mì Cô Út and its slightly-further-east Bánh Mì Cô Út 2. Again, they’re popular enough (occasional lines out the door, just like at Joe’s) that they can confidently say “cash or go home.” I have three favorites here, and the two I have the least frequently anymore are the #1, the standard house Bahn Mi with its multiple porks, pate, mayo, cucumber, cilantro, carrot, and daikon) and the #9 with grilled pork sausage and peanut sauce. My current standard is the shredded chicken version, which I’ve been leaning towards for dietary reasons.

All of them, though, benefit from the fact that the bahn mi is one of the perfect sandwiches. Each protects rich meats and veggies that add a bright tartness inside a structurally-firm baguette that’s both crunchy and flaky. I try and eat them standing up outside, because otherwise I’m picking bread crumbs off myself in one way or another, as the specks of baguette bread flies like shrapnel. I’m always in the mood for one of these.

And those Bánh Mì Cô Út sandwiches are so good, in fact, that I’ll actually go get cash just because I’m going there.

The wall of Haribo candy at the convenience stores are neat, but ever wished you could just get a little of each bag? That’s what I love about the two candy shops I’ve recently found myself coming back to. Both give me a huge hit of nostalgia, harkening back to a long-since closed candy shop in Times Square that my parents used to take me to when I was a kid.

I’m not saying that the gummies and chocolates I’ve been scooping myself are better than the Peanut M&M’s we all know and love. For starters, they sure get pricier quickly. Still, the mini-chains Bon Bon and lil sweet treat have proven a joyous combination during this moment where I’m being more selective with my sweets.

My favorite items in Bon Bon’s bins tend to be the sour pineapples, watermelon slices, and sour cola skulls. Oh, and the light and dark chocolate nougat morsels. You get to fill your little pink bag with a nearly-golden scoop, taking your time to scan the wall and consider your options, and there’s also plenty of licorice, which is how I discovered them years ago looking for stocking stuffers for my dad.

My recent focus on my intake included an intent to reduce my saturated fats, and that led to me see that one bag of my favorite microwave popcorn had 25% of the daily suggested amount of saturated fats. I know, a serving size isn’t a whole bag, but that is the serving size for all of us who are single without roommates.

So, microwave popcorn had to go. In lieu, I got a hot air popcorn maker and it’s helped me pop the cleanest, most-perfect popcorn I’ve ever tasted. I usually give a very light drizzle of Valentina hot sauce, per an acquaintance’s recommendation, or even less extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt, since that’s what they do at Metrograph.

We shouldn’t think of food as bad or guilty, but my self-dressed air-popped popcorn? I could eat it all day without even thinking twice.

For multiple decades, I’ve been building my little libraries. No less of an iconic individual than author Chelsea G. Summers once said “always buy the shirt,” and that mindset is how I wound up owning stacks of t-shirts bought from bands, independent pro wrestlers, and bootleggers creating movie merch they wished to see in the world. But recently the shirts have started to outgrow the space I have for them, which led me to donate garbage bags full of them. So, I slowed down and became a little more judicious and selective, only producing gems like this highlighter-yellow “The Substance” shirt from Mubi and Director Fits that wound up getting me in one of GQ’s social media videos.

Then came the vinyl album collecting, which slowed down as I’ve started to feel less confident about new releases and more-or-less have the older albums I want. I’m delighted, though, that I have these lovely editions of my favorite records by bands like TV On The Radio, Radiohead, Charly Bliss, Charli XCX, and Carly Rae Jepsen which I didn’t just select because I get a chuckle out of things.

Most recently, though, my collecting habit passion has come full circle, back to the movies and TV-on-disc that I had started building a library of back in high school. I still have some of those movies, including the cardboard-and-plastic boxed The Matrix and a copy of the Mystery Team movie, featuring a very-young Donald Glover. It’s not just about owning physical markers of the past, though, as I actually watch them, screening six of my movies this February and five in January.

The latest acquisition for my movie library is a box set of Wes Anderson’s first 10 movies, from “Bottle Rocket” to “The French Dispatch.” Somewhere along the way since I first started picking up DVDs, I got and lost copies of “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which were formative in ways I’m sure weren’t exactly healthy. Since acquiring it, I’ve already watched the first five movies, with “Fantastic Mr. Fox” just having finished.

I know, I know, I said no movies, but I bring up this collecting because it’s arguably superior to vinyl. Unlike with those records, which have a subjective difference often attributed to warmth, 4K Blu-rays look and sound better than anything on streaming, thanks to compression required because of infrastructural nonsense. On top of that, owning means less reliance on streaming services, and less need to frequently open JustWatch.

All that said, I know of a few different tiers of collector:

Each of them, I think, is using collection to bring order where it is missing. And that’s where the joy is found.

Unfortunately, I got so good at making my own cold-brew coffee the way I like it, creating a concentrate with great beans that I can adjust to however tired I’m feeling that day, that nearly all of the cold-brew in New York City (save for the priciest) just doesn’t go hard enough for me.

Since we last talked, I finally saw Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” which basically should be mandatory for graduating high school. Also, I finally saw all of Alan J. Pakula’s “Klute,” which I unfortunately missed some of the first time, because I was a bit too tired at that point. Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “Pictures of Ghosts” was a nice flick to watch, definitely check it out if you loved his film “The Secret Agent.”

I also got to see the live action short films nominated for the 98th Academy Awards, which are a mixed bag.

In terms of at-home movies, I loved Robert Altman’s “McCabe & Mrs. Miller,” and thank Night Owl Video for their excellent return and exchange policy. After “Reds,” I needed more Warren Beatty in my life, and his “Pudgy” McCabe is a great performance.

Next on the movies docket are the rest of the first 10 Wes movies, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s (I got that right in 1 try) “The Bride!,” "Days and Nights in the Forest," “Kiki's Delivery Service” in 4K at the IMAX, and “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” in 35mm.

Thank you for reading this far.

Next time, well, we’ll save that topic for then.