Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • Teaching College Writing in the Age of AI

    Teaching College Writing in the Age of AI

    Recently, the English Department had one of those “brown bag” sessions—an optional gathering where instructors actually show up because the topic is like a flashing red light on the education highway. This particular crisis-in-the-making? AI. Would writing tools that millions were embracing at exponential speed render our job obsolete? The room was packed with nervous, coffee-chugging professors, myself included, all bracing for a Pandora’s box of AI-fueled dilemmas. They tossed scenario after scenario at us, and the existential angst was palpable.

    First up: What do you do when a foreign language student submits an essay written in their native tongue, then let’s play translator? Is it cheating? Does the term “English Department” even make sense anymore when our Los Angeles campus sounds like a United Nations general assembly? Are we teaching “English,” or are we, more accurately, teaching “the writing process” to people of many languages with AI now tagging along as a co-author?

    Next came the AI Tsunami, a term we all seemed to embrace with a mix of dread and resignation. What do we do when we’ve reached the point that 90% of the essays we receive are peppered with AI speak so robotic it sounds like Siri decided to write a term paper? We were all skeptical about AI detectors—about as reliable as a fortune teller reading tea leaves. I shared my go-to strategy: Instead of accusing a student of cheating (because who has time for that drama?), I simply leave a comment, dripping with professional distaste: “Your essay reeks of AI-generated nonsense. I’m giving it a D because I cannot, in good conscience, grade this higher. If you’d like to rewrite it with actual human effort, be my guest.” The room nodded in approval.

    But here’s the thing: The real existential crisis hit when we realized that the hardworking, honest students are busting their butts for B’s, while the tech-savvy slackers are gaming the system, walking away with A’s by running their bland prose through the AI carwash. The room buzzed with a strange mixture of outrage and surrender—because let’s be honest, at least the grammar and spelling errors are nearly extinct.

    As I walked out of that meeting, I had a new writing prompt simmering in my head for my students: “Write an argumentative essay exploring how AI platforms like ChatGPT will reshape education. Project how these technologies might be used in the future and consider the ethical lines that AI use blurs. Should we embrace AI as a tool, or do we need hard rules to curb its misuse? Address academic integrity, critical thinking, and whether AI widens or narrows the education gap.”

    When I got home later that day, in a fit of efficiency, I stuffed my car with a mountain of e-waste—ancient laptops, decrepit tablets, and cell phones that could double as paperweights—and headed to the City of Torrance E-Waste Drive. The line of cars stretched for what seemed like miles, all of us dutifully purging our electronic skeletons to make room for the latest AI-compatible toys. As I waited, I tuned into a podcast with Mark Cuban chatting with Bill Maher, and Cuban was adamant: AI will never be regulated because it’s America’s golden goose for global dominance. And there I was, sitting in a snaking line of vehicles, all of us unwitting soldiers in the tech wars, dumping our outdated gadgets like a 21st-century arms race.

    As I edged closer to the dumpster, I imagined ripping open my shirt to reveal a Captain America emblem beneath, fully embracing the ridiculousness of it all. This wasn’t just teaching anymore—it was a revolution. And if I was going to lead it, I’d need to be like Moses descending from Mt. Sinai, armed with the Tablets of AI Laws. Without these laws, I’d be as helpless as a fish flopping on a dry riverbank. To face the coming storm unprepared wasn’t just unwise; it was professional malpractice. My survival depended on it.

  • An Essay Is Born of Conversation

    An Essay Is Born of Conversation

    One morning, I found myself performing the sacred rites of domesticity—washing dishes, chugging my second cup of dark roast like it was holy water, and catching snippets of Howard Stern’s radio show in between the clatter of silverware. Stern, the man who’s built an empire on the backs of potty humor and shock jocks, suddenly ditched his juvenile antics for something more personal. What followed nearly made me spit out my coffee. The King of All Media, a man who’s made millions by talking non-stop, admitted that he has no friends. Let that sink in—a professional chatterbox with zero pals. My immediate thought? Here’s a guy so wrapped up in his own celebrity bubble, buried under endless meetings, and tucked away in his cozy cocoon with his family, that he’s practically marinating in his own solitude. 

    Stern’s confession hit me like a cattle prod straight to my existential crisis, jolting me through the cobwebbed back alleys of my own past. Thirty-five years ago, when I was a baby-faced college writing instructor with more hair and less cynicism, my landline phone wasn’t just a device; it was an extra limb, surgically attached to my ear. I wasn’t just talking to friends—I was engaged in marathon sessions of verbal gladiator battles, the kind of conversations where we didn’t just solve world problems, we dissected the universe down to its subatomic particles.

    We’d exchange stories so absurd that Kafka himself would rise from the dead, throw his manuscript in the trash, and declare, “I can’t compete with this!” We laughed like it was an Olympic sport, the kind of laughter that made your ribs ache, your eyes tear up, and your bladder question its loyalty. These were the days when human connection wasn’t just a handshake and a nod; it was full-contact rugby for the soul, complete with head injuries and emotional bruises.

    Back then, phones had cords—literal leashes that tied you to the landline, forcing you to stay in one place for hours, committed to the conversation like it was a prison sentence with your best friend as the warden. Every call was a saga, a never-ending odyssey through every absurd thought, half-baked philosophy, and stupid joke that popped into our heads. There were no text messages to hide behind, no quick emojis to slap onto an awkward silence. You had to talk, and by God, we talked. Hours on end, as if the fate of the cosmos depended on our ability to debate the merits of Star Wars versus Star Trek for the thousandth time.

    Nowadays, those conversations are as dead as pay phones. And my phone? It’s just a sad rectangle of glass and regret, used more for doom-scrolling and sending passive-aggressive emails than for any real human connection. I’ve traded in deep conversations for shallow interactions, where “likes” and emojis have replaced belly laughs and epiphanies. It’s like swapping out a gourmet meal for a microwaved hot dog—and not the good kind.

    Now, fast forward to this glittering dystopia we call the present, where I’ve amassed a veritable army of so-called “friends” across social media platforms—each one just a pixelated speck in the vast, soulless void of the internet. Sure, I might occasionally lob a carefully filtered photo of a family vacation into the void, fishing for a few paltry likes and insincere comments. But once I’ve collected my meager dopamine hits, I retreat right back into my hermit cave, where human interaction is about as rare as a unicorn on a skateboard.

    Despite being fully aware that friendship is as vital to mental health as oxygen is to a scuba diver, many of us somehow marooned ourselves in what I now dub the Howard Stern Condition. This self-imposed exile didn’t happen in a single, dramatic twist of fate. It was a slow, insidious descent into madness, like slipping into a warm bath that turns out to be full of piranhas. 

    One of the dangers of losing real conversations is that our writing is a reflection of the quality of our interactions with others. Spontaneous conversations with surprising twists and turns make for a kind of writing that is vital and engaging. But half-baked conversations degraded into mindless likes and comments creates a kind of algorithmic writing that is anodyne, soulless, and even soul-crushing. Therefore, writing instructors must teach their students how to create essays born of real conversation. The question is how is this done? 

    As I wrestle with ways to create assignments that are born of meaningful conversations, I turn to Sherry Turkle, my oracle in a wilderness dominated by endless scrolling and dopamine hits. For over a decade, Turkle in her books Reclaiming Conversation and Alone Together has sounded alarms on “always-connected lives,” describing a “flight from conversation” and warning us that “we have come to expect more from technology and less from each other.” Now, more than ever, we are “satisfied with less,” content to trade meaningful exchanges for a digital mirage of connection. Turkle’s message is clear: don’t be so mesmerized by the flashing lights and instant feedback of tech, because, eventually, we have to confront the dark side of a life filled with shortcuts, plagued by a shrinking attention span, crumbling conversation skills, and the hollowing out of genuine relationships.

    So what do we call a generation content with a life that’s “good enough”—an existence that leaves us lonely and anxious, yet just distracted enough to stay docile? Maybe zombification fits the bill: living in a deadened state, either oblivious to it or too indifferent to do anything about it. Turkle is holding up a mirror, showing us our zombified selves as we expect more from our devices and less from each other, and urging us to make “course corrections” before we drift any further.

    To make these corrections, Turkle isn’t suggesting we toss our devices out the window. Instead, she wants us to dig deeper, examining how our tech dependence erodes essential qualities like empathy, social cues, and basic human decency. In this screen-saturated stupor, we risk becoming shut-ins, devoid of social skills, and isolated from genuine connection. In bypassing the trial and error of real-world interactions, we lose the etiquette and resilience necessary for life in a cooperative society. With this in mind, I developed a writing assignment that is AI-resistant in that it requires autobiographical content that defies AI generation. It is designed to explore the necessity of face-to-face interactions: 

    Writing Prompt: Lessons in Manners and Etiquette Beyond the Screen

    Think back to a time when you found yourself in a social situation where the importance of manners, etiquette, or unspoken social rules became clear to you in a way that only a real, in-person experience could reveal. In today’s world, where so many interactions are mediated by screens, we can miss out on learning the nuances of human interaction—the kind of lessons that can’t be taught through text messages, social media, or YouTube tutorials. Your task is to recount a time when an in-person interaction left you with a memorable lesson about behavior, respect, or common sense that changed the way you see social dynamics.

    The purpose of this writing prompt is to encourage you to reflect on the unique, irreplaceable lessons that come from real-world social interactions, highlighting the limitations of digital communication. In an age where much of our interaction occurs online, screen-based communication often lacks the depth, nuance, and immediate feedback that face-to-face experiences provide. By recalling a memorable in-person situation where manners or etiquette were essential, you can recognize the invaluable role of direct human contact in developing social skills that can’t be honed through social media alone. This reflection serves as a foundation for understanding how the overuse or misuse of social media might erode these essential skills, weakening our ability to navigate complex social landscapes with sensitivity and respect.

    Assignment Instructions:

    1. Setting the Scene: Start by describing the situation, the location, and the people involved. What was the environment like? Was it a structured setting (like a school or job) or something more informal (a family gathering, gym, party, etc.)? Explain your initial feelings or expectations as you entered the situation. Did you feel comfortable, nervous, or completely out of your element?

    2. The Faux Pas or Mistake: Describe the specific moment or behavior where things started to go sideways. Did you accidentally break an unspoken rule or do something that, in hindsight, seemed awkward or inappropriate? How did people around you respond? Were there direct consequences, or did someone pull you aside to “educate” you on what was expected?

    3. The Lesson Learned: Reflect on what this situation taught you about manners, etiquette, or respect. How did this experience shape your understanding of appropriate behavior? In what ways did it reveal social rules that you hadn’t fully appreciated before? Why do you think this lesson could only have been learned face-to-face, rather than through a screen?

    4. Impact on Your Future Behavior: How has this experience influenced you since? Are you more aware of how you interact in similar situations now? Describe any changes in your approach to social settings and why this particular incident left a lasting impression on you.

    In your response, use specific details and a vivid description of the moment to help the reader experience the lesson with you. Think about why in-person experiences teach us lessons that screen-based interactions often cannot, and consider how this knowledge shapes who you are today. Aim for approximately 500 words, and remember to highlight why this lesson is one that could only be learned through direct, human interaction.

  • The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much

    The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much

    Last night, I was in my kitchen, casually sharing shrimp, cocktail sauce, and champagne with public intellectuals Andrew Sullivan and Reihan Salam. As one does. We dove headfirst into the big topics: public policy, identitarianism, the collapse of critical thinking in echo chambers, and the shaky health of democracy. Between bites of shrimp and sips of champagne, we reveled in our status as lifelong learners, trading stories about childhood, lost pets, first crushes, and bouts of existential despair. The shrimp bowl magically replenished itself, and the champagne glasses never emptied. It was glorious—three intellectual heavyweights, solving the world’s problems, toasting to friendship and intellectual curiosity. For a fleeting moment, I felt like I’d reached peak existence: camaraderie, enlightenment, and a deeply inflated sense of self-worth, all in one glorious, shrimp-fueled evening.

    Only it didn’t happen.

    I was dreaming, my subconscious hijacked by The Dishcast. This is my nocturnal routine: When I go to bed at night, I fall asleep to a podcast and, before long, I’m the star guest. There I am, delivering profound manifestos about the human condition, my opinions urgently needed and universally admired.

    When I woke up, the camaraderie still lingered, as if Andrew and Reihan had just slipped out the back door, leaving only a faint echo of laughter.

    This happens all the time. In my dreams, I’m not just a listener—I’m part of the podcast universe, slapping backs, sipping champagne, and dropping truths no one dared to utter. Reality, by comparison, is disappointingly quiet.

    Clearly, podcasts are taking too much bandwidth in my brain. I’m not alone. Like millions of others, I’ve practically taken up residence in the world of podcasts. My life runs on a steady soundtrack of conversations and monologues, piped directly into my ears while I swing kettlebells, pedal my exercise bike, grade uninspired writing assignments, cook, eat, and scrub the kitchen into submission. Podcasts are my companions for post-workout naps, my co-pilots on the commute, and my salvation during middle-of-the-night insomnia—the kind where you wake up at 2 a.m., stare at the ceiling, and hope a familiar voice can lull you back to sleep before dawn.

    In total, I must rack up over a hundred hours of podcast listening every week. I spend more time in the podcast multiverse than in the real one, and inevitably, these voices have taken up permanent residency in my brain. Some of these parasocial relationships I welcome with open arms; others, I tolerate with the resigned grumbling of a bad roommate. And then there are the hosts who commit unforgivable sins—becoming smug, tedious, or worse, preachy—earning themselves a one-way ticket to oblivion. In this universe, the delete button is my only weapon, and I wield it without mercy.

    Living in the podcast world as I do—where most of my waking and sleeping hours are dominated by disembodied voices—I’ve started asking some uncomfortable questions. Have I, like millions of others, surrendered my brain to the podcasters, letting them hijack my mental real estate to my own detriment? Am I so immersed in podcast life that I’ve lost all perspective, like a fish in water, oblivious to how wet it is?

    What am I really after here? Entertainment? Wisdom? A surrogate friend? Or just noise to drown out the endless chatter in my own head? Why do some podcasts stick while others fall by the wayside? Are my favorites truly brilliant, or just slightly less irritating than their competition? Is it their buttery voices, sharp wit, or the fact that they don’t seem to realize they’ve become permanent fixtures in my inner monologue?

    Could I live without podcasts? Would the silence reveal things about myself I’m not ready to confront? What do I call that blissful, cozy state when I’m wrapped in the warmth of a trusted voice? Podcastopia? Earbud Nirvana? Sonic Solace? And is it possible to “love” a podcaster too much, like when I know their pet’s name but can’t remember my sibling’s birthday?

    Am I escaping something? Is this obsession a creative pursuit or an elaborate scheme to avoid existential dread? And most importantly, does this insatiable consumption mean something is deeply, hilariously wrong with me? Or does it point to something more profound—a need for a new word to describe the bottomless, soul-deep immersion of chasing episode after episode like a digital hunter-gatherer?

    Yeah, I’ve got questions. But it might be too late. I may already be The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much.

    After waking up from my dream of hanging out with Andrew Sullivan and Reihan Salam, I crept into the kitchen for breakfast–a self-inflicted atrocity of overnight oats. Not just any overnight oats, mind you, but a Trader Joe’s variety touting “ancient grains,” as if the endorsement of long-dead civilizations could somehow redeem the experience. Spoiler: it didn’t. Despite my best attempts at culinary CPR—vanilla protein powder, a smattering of berries, and a dusting of pumpkin spice—the result was still cold, gluey sludge, the breakfast equivalent of a wet handshake.

    Each spoonful felt like a personal affront, a betrayal by my own hands, as though I had willingly prepared the kind of gruel Dickensian orphans would revolt over. The texture was an abominable mix of paste and gravel, and the cold temperature screamed “punishment” rather than “sustenance.” By the end, I wasn’t just eating; I was enduring. Mental note: next time, boil this nonsense into something remotely edible—or toss it and make a proper breakfast for a self-respecting adult. 

  • INTERROGATING THE ALTER EGO OF RACHEL BLOOM IN CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND

    INTERROGATING THE ALTER EGO OF RACHEL BLOOM IN CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND

    Rachel Bloom weaponizes her alter ego, Rebecca Bunch, to dissect her neuroses with surgical precision, laying bare her obsessions, compulsions, and complete disregard for boundaries. Rebecca isn’t just self-destructive—she’s a human wrecking ball, alienating friends, terrifying acquaintances, and steamrolling her own well-being with reckless abandon. And yet, despite all the chaos, she remains irresistibly lovable, armed with good intentions and a heart too big for her own good.

    Rebecca is a whip-smart New York attorney drowning in success-induced existential despair when fate—or perhaps something more deranged—intervenes. A chance sighting of her old summer camp crush, Josh Chan, sends her into a tailspin of romantic delusion. Suddenly, the only logical course of action isn’t therapy, self-reflection, or even a stiff drink—it’s packing up her entire life and moving to West Covina, California, in pursuit of a man who barely remembers her. What follows is less a fairytale romance and more an operatic descent into obsession, complete with full-blown musical numbers choreographed straight from the fevered depths of her subconscious.

    Once in West Covina, Rebecca lands in a delightfully dysfunctional law firm, where her brilliance is only matched by her ability to make everyone around her deeply uncomfortable. She barrels through life like a caffeinated hurricane, terrifying innocent bystanders with her intellect and intensity, all while chasing an idea of love that exists only in her own head. The show’s most poignant relationship, however, isn’t a romantic one—it’s her friendship with Paula, a sharp-witted, no-nonsense co-worker and mother who, in many ways, fills the maternal void in Rebecca’s life. Paula, trapped in the drudgery of domesticity, finds a thrilling (and slightly concerning) outlet in Rebecca’s increasingly unhinged escapades, turning their dynamic into the show’s emotional anchor.

    At its best, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend thrives on this friendship, an odd yet deeply affecting bond between two women clinging to each other for meaning and validation. But by season four, the show stumbles, bogged down by meandering storylines and an inexplicable reluctance to lean into its greatest strength—Rebecca and Paula’s relationship. The final season drags like an overlong curtain call, but even its missteps can’t erase the brilliance of what came before. At its core, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is an incisive, darkly hilarious exploration of self-sabotage, redemption, and the uphill battle of getting out of your own way.

  • When We Had to Get Approval from the Attendance Priestess

    When We Had to Get Approval from the Attendance Priestess

    I don’t miss the pre-digital education era when the semester was over but I still wasn’t finished. I had to drag myself to the campus during the semester break, lugging a mountain of paper that looked like it had survived the apocalypse.

    My stack of grades and attendance records—yellowed, dog-eared, and adorned with enough coffee stains and White-Out smudges to pass as a Jackson Pollock reject—was a bureaucratic nightmare in physical form. I found myself in line with a hundred other sleep-deprived, caffeine-fueled professors, each clutching their own messy masterpieces like they were carrying the Dead Sea Scrolls. The line outside the Office of Records was so long it could have served as an endurance test for Navy SEALs. To stave off starvation and existential dread, I had packed a comically oversized sack of protein bars and apples, as if I were preparing for a month-long siege rather than a simple bureaucratic ritual.

    There I was, supposed to be basking in the sweet, sweet nothingness of semester break, but instead, I was condemned to a gauntlet of waiting that made Dante’s Inferno look like a walk in the park. For what felt like hours, waited for the privilege of sitting at a table and enduring the laser-like glare of humorless bureaucrats who would scrutinize my records as if they were forensic experts analyzing evidence from a high-profile murder case.

    Once I finally managed to wade through the outdoor line, I advanced to the foyer for the second, even more soul-crushing phase of The Great Wait. Inside, rows of desks manned by expressionless drones awaited, each one peering over piles of grading records that seemed to stretch back to the dawn of civilization. Behind the staff of functionaries who examined the professors’ gradebooks were towers of file boxes stacked so precariously that a single sneeze could have transformed them into a cataclysmic eruption of dust and possibly asbestos.

    Eventually, I was summoned to one of the desks where an eagle-eyed Attendance Priestess scrutinized my records with the intensity of a customs officer suspecting I had smuggled contraband. She licked her fingertips with the solemnity of a high priestess preparing for a sacred ritual, only to cast me a look of such disdain you’d think I’d just handed her a wad of toilet paper instead of my gradebook.

    Finally, when the pinch-faced administrator deemed my records sufficiently unblemished and granted me the bureaucratic blessing to leave, it felt like I had just been handed the keys to the Pearly Gates. I then sprinted to my car unless she changed her mind and needed me to edit this or that. I never fully trusted her.

  • Perkatory

    Perkatory

    Every morning at 6 sharp, like some deranged caffeinated monk, I stagger to the kitchen, where the sacred rite of coffee-making begins. This isn’t just a routine—it’s a holy sacrament that grants me the powers of focus, confidence, and the kind of superhuman alertness that helps me work on one of my best-selling coffee table humor books or grade college essays. The taste of that bitter coffee kissed with a hint of milk and a drop of liquid stevia, is nothing short of ambrosia. By 7 a.m., after downing two 18-ounce cups, I’ve ascended to a higher plane—a realm where I’m not just a man, but a writing, essay-grading, piano-playing, kettlebell-swinging demigod. I go through my day, shower, lunch, nap—rinse and repeat—like a well-oiled machine of productivity, albeit one lugging around a trunkful of neuroses and the social skills of a startled raccoon.

    But there’s this nagging little itch I can’t quite scratch: coffee. It’s more than just a drink at this point; it’s an obsession. Do I love coffee too much? Maybe. Do I worship the ritual a bit too fervently? Definitely. Throughout the day, this thought keeps tiptoeing into my mind like a ninja with a vendetta: “I can’t wait till tomorrow morning when I can make coffee again.” And then, the existential kicker: “Is my life just one endless loop of killing time between coffee sessions?”

    Pat myself on the back: I’ve crossed into a special kind of hell—a hell I’ve christened Perkatory. It’s not quite purgatory, but it’s close. It’s that torturous stretch of time where I’m just existing, dragging myself through the mind-numbing hours between one glorious cup of coffee and the next. It’s a slow-burning obsession that has taken over my life, turning everything else into the dull, gray filler content I’d skip if life had a fast-forward button.

    I remember those bleak, pre-coffee days of my youth—days when Perkatory wasn’t even a thing. Back then, life was simpler, more innocent, and tragically devoid of the caffeinated highs I now chase with the zeal of a junkie trying to recapture that first, glorious hit. But let’s be honest: there’s no going back. Perkatory is here to stay, like that annoying roommate who never does the dishes and steals your leftovers. I’m stuck in this never-ending cycle of waiting, longing, and counting down the hours until I can get my next hit of that sweet, sweet java.

  • Transforming into Mope-a-saurus Rex

    Transforming into Mope-a-saurus Rex

    There’s ongoing debate over whether boomers willingly morph into Mope-a-saurus Rex—the scowling relic pacing his lawn and muttering about “kids these days”—or if the transformation is as unavoidable as hair loss and rising cholesterol. Maybe it’s some grim milestone on the aging checklist, or maybe it sneaks up, the natural side effect of realizing your cultural currency has expired while the youth livestream their way into the future. I’ll leave that existential puzzle for the philosophers to untangle.

    What I do know is that by the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I was still carrying the weight of grief like an overstuffed holiday plate. I’d said goodbye to my mother during the pandemic, standing outside a nursing home window and offering her love through a mesh screen, as if I were visiting someone in solitary confinement. Two years later, I watched my father—a proud infantryman in his day—fade to 130 pounds, his body surrendering to cancer. Since their passing, the world felt quieter, smaller, like someone had dimmed the lights without warning.

    So, when hosting Thanksgiving fell squarely on my plate, it wasn’t some Norman Rockwell fantasy. It was more like getting crushed by a baby grand piano dropped from the second floor. And instead of gracefully stepping aside, I just let it hit me—because honestly, moving felt like too much effort.

    The guest list wasn’t exactly daunting—just my perpetually single brother, whose dating apps seemed better at generating cautionary tales than romantic prospects, and two of my wife’s teacher friends, both middle school band directors still recovering from clarinet-induced PTSD. The conversation was polite, though it had all the flavor of plain oatmeal.

    Stuffed to the gills but somehow still shoveling pie like our lives depended on it, we trudged through the ritual of TV show recommendations. Each suggestion was delivered with the gravitas of a public service announcement—skip this series at your own peril. Apparently, failing to watch that one obscure, eight-part masterpiece would leave me culturally destitute, wandering through a desolate landscape devoid of punchlines and plot twists.

    Honestly, I enjoyed the company. The real villain of Thanksgiving wasn’t the guests—it was the dishes. The endless scrubbing that left my hands raw, the dishwashing marathon that stretched into eternity, the mountain of dirty plates multiplying like gremlins in the sink. That’s where the wheels came off.

    My wife, meanwhile, glided through the chaos like some kind of culinary sorceress, humming softly as she orchestrated the entire meal with the grace of a Michelin-starred maestro. She didn’t grumble. Not a single passive-aggressive sigh escaped her lips. She was the picture of serene competence.

    I, on the other hand, hovered around the kitchen like a useless NPC in a video game—occasionally moving a plate from table to sink and acting as though I’d just conquered Everest. At one point, I genuinely felt winded after rearranging the silverware. My contribution was so meager it felt performative, like a child pretending to be tired after “helping” Dad mow the lawn by pushing a plastic toy mower ten feet behind him.

    Somewhere between rinsing the roasting pan and glaring at the pile of silverware, it hit me—I was teetering on the edge of a Mope-a-saurus moment. The only thing preventing my full transformation was the vague sense of shame that my wife, who had just cooked for hours, wasn’t grumbling about the aftermath. That’s when you know you’re in trouble—when someone else’s superior competence and good cheer makes you feel like a defective appliance, sputtering through life with a flickering power cord and a weak motor.

    I’m such a fragile soul that after surviving the harrowing gauntlet of Thanksgiving dishes and the Herculean task of small talk, I felt entitled to a months-long convalescence—something involving soft blankets, intravenous fluids, and a team of specialists monitoring my vitals like I’d just summited Kilimanjaro in flip-flops. Surely, I had earned the right to collapse melodramatically onto a fainting couch and demand chicken soup by candlelight.

  • Never Insult Your Guests with Mock Apple Pie

    Never Insult Your Guests with Mock Apple Pie

    One fateful evening in 1982, as I was nestled on the couch like a potato after a long day, I tuned into a San Francisco KQED comedy special. Enter Bob Sarlatte, a comedian with a chin so bold it could be used as a paperweight and a grin so snide it seemed to have its own agenda. He took aim at the pièce de résistance of culinary chicanery: the Ritz Crackers recipe for Mock Apple Pie. Sarlatte was on a mission to uncover the absurdity behind Ritz’s audacious claim of making apple pie with, wait for it, crackers instead of apples. He was incredulous, practically frothing at the mouth as he dissected this travesty. “Why on earth,” he demanded, “would Ritz, in all their cracker-clad glory, boast about a recipe that doesn’t even remotely involve apples?” According to Sarlatte, this so-called “apple pie” was like calling a desert a beach because it had sand—except the sand was made of crushed Ritz crackers, and the beach was a figment of your imagination. The comedian was in no mood for Ritz’s grandstanding. To him, this wasn’t a culinary innovation; it was a culinary catastrophe. He took Ritz to task for attempting to pass off a cracker conglomeration as apple pie, as if the lack of fruit was a feature, not a flaw. “Who,” Sarlatte railed, “are you going to serve this Mock Apple Pie to? Your mock friends? People who enjoy mockery served with a side of disappointment?” Sarlatte’s razor-sharp wit wasn’t just about lampooning a recipe—it was about exposing a greater travesty: the shameless elevation of a subpar substitute as a triumph of creativity. This wasn’t a clever culinary trick; it was an insult wrapped in a cracker crust. Bob Sarlatte laid bare the staggering lack of self-awareness and the brazen audacity required to serve such an ersatz “apple” pie with a smug smile. It was a masterclass in how to serve up an insult with a cherry on top, minus the apple, of course.

  • When I Met the SpaghettiOs Overlord

    When I Met the SpaghettiOs Overlord

    In June of 1999, I did what a college professor cannot do: I lost the classroom key. Yes, the sacred, university-issued key that was supposedly worth more than its weight in gold and was meant to be guarded as if it were the last surviving relic of Atlantis. After a frantic week of turning my Redondo Beach condo upside down—searching under couch cushions, rifling through laundry baskets, and even interrogating the houseplants—I had to admit defeat. I was summoned to face the wrath of the university’s ice queen of administration, who greeted me with a glare that could freeze lava. “The one thing a college instructor does not do,” she said, as if reciting an ancient curse, “is lose his key.” She inspected me as if I were a criminal in a bad noir film, and then informed me that I had to make a pilgrimage to the edge of campus, to the mythical and dreaded realm known as Plant Ops, to pay for a key replacement with cash only. I felt like I was being sent to Mordor to drop off a pizza. 

    So, I embarked on this perilous quest, driving east from campus. At first, the road was a decent pavement. But soon, it disintegrated into a wasteland of dirt, rubble, and potholes the size of small craters. My car bucked and jolted over the rocky path, like an old west wagon on a treasure hunt, as I passed ghostly rows of cow skulls and tumbleweeds rolling by in the wind like some grim, dusty parade. Above me, buzzards circled, perhaps in anticipation of a fresh meal or merely to witness my impending doom.

    Just as despair was about to pull me under, a nauseating aroma of glue, pickles, and formaldehyde wafted through the air, signaling the arrival of my destination. I squinted through the gloom to see a structure emerge from the fog—a dilapidated hangar that looked like it had been plucked from a post-apocalyptic movie set. Inside was the world’s most disgruntled handyman, a short, rotund man with glasses thick enough to start a small library, a bushy mustache that looked like it was trying to escape his face, and a head bald enough to use as a landing strip for insects. He was hunched over a workbench, devouring SpaghettiOs straight from the can with the kind of focus usually reserved for nuclear codes. His irritation at being interrupted was palpable, like I’d crashed his private spaghetti party.

    “Twenty dollars cash,” he grunted, extending his hand with the authority of a toll collector in the underworld. I handed him the bill with the reverence of a pilgrim offering gold to a god. He stuffed it into his grease-splattered apron, took another spoonful of his cold, canned meal, and scowled at me like I’d personally betrayed him. With the wind howling through the thin steel walls of the hangar, I half expected the place to take off and join Dorothy’s house in the sky. The handyman delivered his parting words with the gravitas of a crypt keeper: I must never lose a key again, lest I face the incompetence of his replacement, who was, according to him, a veritable nincompoop with the locksmithing skills of a potato. I thanked him, exited the hangar, and raced straight to the nearest hardware store. I bought a keychain made of Kevlar, equipped with a tether reel and a high-density nylon belt loop—basically, a key-keeping apparatus that could survive a nuclear blast. It was clear I’d never let my keys out of my sight again, lest I face another odyssey to the land of a disgruntled Plant-Ops overlord.

  • Before Snack Times

    Before Snack Times

    In the Before Snack Times of the early 70s, we didn’t have helicopter parents hovering over us, micromanaging our every move with a suffocating schedule of dance classes, gymnastics, karate, swim lessons, math tutors, writing coaches, soccer practices, chess clubs, computer coding, mindfulness meditation, and Ashtanga Yoga. We didn’t have smartphones tracking us like we were secret agents with microchips implanted in our necks. For the entire day, our parents had absolutely no clue where we were or what we were up to. We’d saunter off after breakfast, either on foot or aboard our trusty bicycles, and were expected to return only by dinner. During that endless stretch of freedom, we’d navigate through construction sites strewn with lumber, nails, electrical wires, and bottomless ditches, all of which screamed, “Adventure awaits!” We gravitated toward mud, streams, and rivers like moths to a flame, setting up wooden ramps to perform Evel Knievel-level stunts over bodies of water. The messier and more perilous the terrain, the more irresistible it became. These hazardous playgrounds were usually bordered by rusty barbed-wire fences and “Do Not Enter” signs, which not only failed to deter us but ignited our rebellious spirits to trespass with even more gusto. Inside these danger zones, we’d be chased by furious steers, territorial cows, and muscle-bound guard dogs. Occasionally, a disgruntled landowner would fire warning shots at us with a pellet gun, a token gesture that barely fazed us. In the ravines behind our homes, we crafted forts, swung from vines, ignited firecrackers, and leaped into piles of poison oak. We encountered black widows, rattlesnakes, bobcats, coyotes, and even the occasional mountain lion. After a day of flouting every conceivable health and safety code, we’d trudge home at night, our bodies caked in filth, bruises, and scratches. But our parents, bless their oblivious hearts, never inquired about our whereabouts or escapades. As long as we took a bath and cleaned up, they were content to feed us hearty helpings of turkey pot pies, meatloaf, chili, and tacos. They knew we needed the energy to wake up the next morning and dive headfirst into another day of mayhem. Back then, we had little time for snacking. Our days were filled with wilderness adventures, where our imaginations ran wild. This level of playfulness, chaos, and enchantment is as extinct as the dinosaurs in today’s Snack Age, where parents meticulously micromanage their children’s activities and pacify their appetites with chips, juice boxes, chocolate chip granola bars, fruit rolls, and Happy Meals.