Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • Thou Shalt Not Measure Thy Goodness Against Fools

    Thou Shalt Not Measure Thy Goodness Against Fools

    In eighth grade, Erika Jenkins was every boy’s favorite target—a tall, freckled volleyball player with legs that seemed to go on for miles and a face that couldn’t hide her fear. The boys called her Horse, Giraffe, Hyena, Zebra—an entire menagerie of cruelty. Every morning she had to walk the gauntlet from her locker to the corridor, clutching her books to her chest like a shield, her eyes darting from side to side as if she were trying to survive a nature documentary. She looked like someone bracing for an attack, because she was.

    Then summer arrived—and performed a miracle. Her grandmother took her on a Caribbean cruise, and somewhere between the turquoise waves and the buffet line, Erika Jenkins molted. When she returned that fall, she was unrecognizable. The boys at Canyon High buzzed with talk of “The Caribbean Transformation.”

    At lunch on the first day, she made her debut. Gone was the awkward, lanky girl. In her place stood someone who could have walked off a shampoo commercial. She wore a sleeveless white linen dress that caught the light, her tan skin glowing like toasted sugar. Her once-flat hair now tumbled over her shoulders in glossy brown waves. Her limbs, once all elbows and knees, now belonged to a young woman who had grown into herself.

    The same boys who had brayed at her like hyenas now worshiped her like pilgrims before a shrine. They tripped over themselves to compliment her, their awe soon sliding into the same loutish cruelty—just with a new vocabulary. The tone changed from mockery to hunger, but the malice was the same. By October, Erika Jenkins vanished—transferred, rumor had it, to a small private school where maybe she could breathe.

    I was furious—but not for noble reasons. I had finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. And now she was gone, like a dream that evaporates the moment you wake.

    That night, I asked Master Po why her story hadn’t followed the script of The Ugly Duckling. “Why wasn’t there a happy ending?” I asked.

    “Because, Grasshopper,” he said, “not all fairytales are true. The boys mocked her when she was an ‘ugly duckling,’ and they mocked her again when she became a ‘beautiful swan.’ Only their weapons changed—from insult to lust. They remained prisoners of their malice. It was they, not she, who failed to evolve.”

    He said this with a sharpness I wasn’t used to. “But I never teased her,” I protested. “Not once.”

    “Do not congratulate yourself for being less vile than the wicked,” he said. “You still measured your worth by their ugliness. You did not defend her. You simply waited for your turn to possess her beauty. Her radiance blinded them—and you as well.”

    “Are you saying I’m no better than they are?”

    “I am saying,” Master Po said, “that even a moth believes itself noble until it burns in the flame. I can already see you falling from the sky.”

    He was right, of course. My heartbreak wasn’t about Erika’s suffering—it was about my own loss. I didn’t mourn her pain. I mourned my missed opportunity to bask in her glow. Even in my sympathy, I was self-absorbed. Master Po saw the rot beneath my pity.

    He always did.

  • Thou Shall Not Skip Gravity Day

    Thou Shall Not Skip Gravity Day

    When I was fourteen, I read in The San Francisco Chronicle that the future of humanity was apparently doomed to unfold inside a giant space terrarium. The article, steeped in optimism and mild insanity, described how overpopulation and resource depletion would eventually force us to evacuate Earth aboard lunar shuttles and live in “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit.” The prophet of this plan was Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill, whose forthcoming book The High Frontier promised solar-powered utopias floating blissfully through the void.

    The paper ran lush illustrations by Don Davis: rolling green hills, placid lakes, couples in flowing white linen strolling past solar panels, all living in a pastel Garden of Eden. But something about those inhabitants unsettled me. They all looked frail—thin, pale, gravity-deprived stick figures with the musculature of boiled linguine. That’s when the horror struck me: in space, there would be no gyms. No dumbbells. No pumping up. No gravity—no gains. My future would be a floating hell of atrophied muscles and existential despair. The very thought made my biceps twitch in protest.

    At the same time, a girl at school named Jennifer slipped me a birthday card with hearts on the envelope. Inside, she’d written that she liked me and wanted me to ask her out. But how could I ask her out when civilization was on the brink of being exiled to a zero-gravity tofu colony? What was the point of romance when dumbbells were about to become obsolete?

    I tore up the card, retreated to my room, and did what any hormonally charged doomsday philosopher would do: I consulted Master Po.
    “Master Po,” I said, “how can I go on living if bodybuilding dies in orbit?”
    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you live too much for yourself. You must empty yourself of self-interest.”
    “But I’m obsessed with myself.”
    “Exactly. And it shows in your quest to make your body beautiful.”
    “But bodybuilding is my life.”
    “And that,” he said, “is your curse. You train your body but let residue accumulate in your soul.”
    “So I should quit working out?”
    “Not quit. But see your body as not belonging to you. It is part of something larger.”
    “You mean, like the universe?”
    “Yes, Grasshopper. The body of the world.”
    “So, what—you want me to start picking up trash on the freeway? That’s your cosmic wisdom?”
    “Once again,” he sighed, “you are far from The Way.”

    I looked at my reflection in the mirror that night—fourteen years old, terrified of zero gravity—and realized that maybe Master Po was right. I wasn’t afraid of space. I was afraid of floating away from myself.

  • When the Cloud Crashes and Humanity Briefly Reboots

    When the Cloud Crashes and Humanity Briefly Reboots

    Amazon Web Services crashed this morning, dragging half the digital universe down with it. Canvas, my college’s sacred “learning management system,” is among the casualties. I have a class in an hour. No panic, though. I can still hand out a physical sheet of paper—what the ancients called attendance—and my Google Slides are miraculously alive. So yes, the show will go on.

    Still, I can’t help savoring the schadenfreude of this AWS outage. What if it took social media down with it? Imagine: no more performative friendships, no more dopamine duels in the comment sections, no more algorithmic outrage masquerading as civic discourse. Maybe we’d start talking to each other again—face to face, like mammals. Maybe we’d even regain the human capacity for silence.

    Of course, this is delusional optimism on my part. Civilization won’t reboot itself because a few data centers hiccuped. I need to quit romanticizing the apocalypse and focus on my real challenge: surviving two hours with a roomful of chatty college athletes while explaining “emotional depth” and “mapping components.”

    Wish me luck. My Canvas may be dead, but my dry-erase marker still lives.

  • Thou Shall Not Confuse Franco Columbu with Thyself

    Thou Shall Not Confuse Franco Columbu with Thyself

    One sluggish afternoon at Canyon High, as Mrs. Hanson’s freshman English class shuffled into their desks and prepared to feign interest in Romeo and Juliet, I had something far more compelling on my desk: Pumping Iron. It was my sacred text, my adolescent scripture, filled with black-and-white photos of demi-gods flexing under the Californian sun. My favorite shot was of Mr. Universe Franco Columbu, hanging upside down from a chin-up bar like a bat carved from granite.

    Next to me sat Jill Swanson—tall, sleek, with the effortless grace of a swimmer and the smile of someone who had never sweated through a protein fart. I decided this was my moment. I turned the page toward her.
    “Hey,” I said, “check out this bodybuilder at the beach.”
    She leaned in. “Holy smokes, he’s huge.”
    I nodded solemnly. “That’s me.”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “That’s me. Can’t you tell?”
    Jill squinted at the photograph, studying the Herculean Italian upside down in all his vascular glory.
    “Oh my God,” she said slowly. “That’s you?”
    “Yep.”
    And just like that, I was Franco Columbu. I spun a whole mythology—how I’d been visiting my grandparents in L.A., hanging out with my “bodybuilding friends” in Venice, when a photographer captured me mid-workout.

    For five glorious minutes, I was a god among freshmen. Then, as Jill flipped back to her notes and I basked in the afterglow of deceit, the truth curdled in my gut. The lie that had inflated me like a balloon was already leaking air. By the time I got home, I felt hollow and cheap. I stared into the bathroom mirror, splashed cold water on my face, and summoned my inner monk.

    “Master Po,” I said, “why am I such a compulsive liar?”
    “Because, Grasshopper,” he replied, “you wish to appear strong because you are weak. True strength is not forged in muscle but in mastering your inner demons.”
    “I have only one?”
    “No,” he said, “but let’s start with the demon of inadequacy—the one that makes you trade truth for applause.”
    “How do I kill it?”
    “You don’t,” he said. “You chip away at it. Great acts are made of small deeds. Each honest act is a strike against the demon.”
    “But where do I start?”
    “Stop gazing at your reflection as though it’s a sculpture to be admired,” he said. “When you cease to worship yourself, you’ll stop fearing imperfection. The sage who puts himself last finds nourishment. You, Grasshopper, are still starving.”

    I looked at my reflection—small, soft, and decidedly un-Franco-like—and realized Master Po was right. The hardest muscle to build is the one that keeps you honest.

  • Thou Shalt Find Beauty in Freakishness—or Die Trying

    Thou Shalt Find Beauty in Freakishness—or Die Trying

    By high school, I had fully accepted that I was not designed for the mainstream assembly line. Master Po—the blind sage from Kung Fu—had become my imaginary spiritual adviser, reminding me that I was a misfit, “a brooding soul misaligned with this world.” I wore that label like a second skin. While the cool kids air-guitared to Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin, I was hypnotized by the twelve-minute prog-rock epics of Yes, King Crimson, The Strawbs, and Genesis—bands that required liner notes and a calculator to appreciate.

    Football was for the square-jawed; I preferred curling iron plates in the garage, sculpting myself into a protein-powered statue of misplaced purpose. Worse, I wasn’t just eccentric—I was evangelical. At parties, I arrived armed with Genesis LPs, a blender, and the self-righteous zeal of a macrobiotic missionary. While everyone else chugged beer, I lectured them on amino acid assimilation. “Beer tastes like horse piss!” I declared, mid-flex, clutching a protein shake like a chalice. Girls scattered like pigeons from a lawn sprinkler. “Come back!” I shouted after them. “I’m the only one here with abs!”

    Later, alone in my room, my biceps and I sulked together under the blue glow of my bedside lamp.
    “Master Po,” I sighed, “why am I such a freak?”
    “Because you throw banana peels in people’s path to keep them from getting close to you,” he said.
    “And why would I do that?”
    “To protect yourself.”
    “From what?”
    “Everyone is broken, Grasshopper—but you are cracked to the core. Yet remember: beauty can be found even in freakishness. If you don’t draw that beauty out, it will turn inward and destroy you.”
    “How so?”
    “Because if you keep throwing banana peels for others, you’ll eventually slip on them yourself.”
    I sighed. “I think it’s already happened.”

  • Breaking Up with the Protein Powder Industrial Complex

    Breaking Up with the Protein Powder Industrial Complex

    The deeper I dug into protein powders, the less convinced I became. What I’d been calling “nutrition” was really convenience dressed up in a plastic tub—processed, low in fiber, and shadowed by questions about heavy metals. So I scrapped the shortcuts. Instead, I built a rotation of four plant-based staples that quietly do the job: plain soy milk, pumpkin seeds, nutritional yeast, and hemp hearts.

    Now, my breakfast writes itself: oats or buckwheat groats folded with soy milk, pumpkin seeds, and hemp hearts—a meal that actually feels alive instead of engineered. For lunch and dinner, I toss the same mix with nutritional yeast into sautéed tofu, quinoa or millet, roasted sweet potatoes, and dark greens like broccoli or kale.

    Knowing exactly where my protein comes from—and how clean those sources are—has wiped out the low-grade anxiety that came with every scoop of powder. I’m no longer buying peace of mind from a supplement jar. I’ve reclaimed it in the kitchen, where real food and a decent spice rack make every meal something worth anticipating.

  • Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    Your Tears Won’t Change the World

    When I was thirteen, I decided the path to popularity ran straight through Soul Train. I spent months studying the dance troupe Captain Crunch and the Funky Bunch, who could pivot from the robotic precision of the Funky Robot to doing splits so fast you’d think they were animated. I practiced every night in front of my bedroom mirror until my limbs clicked like clockwork and my expression was as vacant as a mannequin’s. I was ready to unleash my Funky Robot at the Earl Warren Junior High dance.

    The playlist that night was pure chaos. Whoever the DJ was, he seemed to be drawing songs from a hat. “Free Bird” dragged like a eulogy, “Walk This Way” felt like cardiac arrest, and “Midnight at the Oasis” was exactly what it sounded like—a languid romp in the desert. But when Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” came on, I sprang into motion. My body jerked and popped with righteous purpose. I was a mechanical deity in Adidas, a human jukebox powered by insecurity.

    By some miracle of social physics, I ended up dancing all night with Cheryl Atkins—the prettiest girl there—because her boyfriend Rick hated to dance. While we funked and twirled under the mirrored ball, I noticed the misfits pressed against the gym walls like condemned prisoners. They’d ask for dances, get shot down, and limp back to their corner of despair. Watching them, I felt an unexpected pang—an ache sharper than any muscle burn.

    Meanwhile, the popular eighth-graders were perfecting a ritual called “getting wasted,” which apparently involved puking and maintaining high social standing at the same time. As a Junior Olympic weightlifter, I found this baffling. I could clean and jerk my body weight, but I couldn’t comprehend how vomiting could make you cool.

    By the end of the night, Cheryl and I won the dance contest. Vice Principal Gillis handed me a trophy, but instead of basking in my Funky Robot glory, I felt hollow. The faces of the wallflowers haunted me. That night, I dreamed of a beach where a giant elephant seal handed each lonely misfit a beautiful radio, and as they tuned it, they glowed and vanished into the horizon. I woke up certain of one thing: radios were holy.

    “Master Po,” I said, “the world is cruel. I can’t be happy knowing people like those misfits suffer.”
    “Spare me your tears, Grasshopper,” he said. “Sadness feels noble, but it’s an addiction. It comforts the ego while changing nothing.”
    “But what can I do?” I asked. “Darwin was right—the strong thrive, and the weak pay the price.”
    “Indeed,” he said. “And in case you haven’t noticed, you’re one of the weak. So tend your own garden, Grasshopper. The misfit must save himself before he can save the world.”

  • Care Less About Your Reflection–It’s Already Lying to You

    Care Less About Your Reflection–It’s Already Lying to You

    When I came back from Kenya and landed in the California hedonistic mecca of Earl Warren Junior High, I was less “student” and more “cultural oddity.” I joined the Olympic Weightlifting team and became pathologically devoted to squats—so much that I’d drop into deep-knee bends while the PE teacher took roll, earning myself the nickname “Squats,” which followed me like a bad tattoo. My ignorance of marijuana culture didn’t help. I thought a “doobie” was some industrial-sized cousin of a joint—like a weed burrito—and made the mistake of announcing this to the cool kids at lunch. The laughter was volcanic. Overnight, I went from “Squats” to “Narc,” a walking PSA in gym shorts.

    But my humiliation wasn’t complete until the day the snack bar opened and my friends bolted toward it for ice cream sandwiches. I stayed rooted in place, wallet empty, as a girl perched in a tree pointed at me and sang out, “Ha-ha, Jeff doesn’t have any money!” The shame hit me like the sting of the Portuguese Man o’ War that nearly killed me in Kenya.

    At home, sprawled on my bed, I consulted Master Po.
    “Grasshopper,” he said, “you must learn to accept disgrace with dignity. A self-image is a sword—sharpen it too much, and it snaps.”
    “Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You never got laughed at for thinking a doobie was a family-size joint.”
    He continued, “If you care what others think, you become their prisoner.”
    “I just want respect,” I said.
    “When you stop chasing it,” he replied, “you’ll finally earn it.”

    That night, I resolved to rise above it all—to become a new man. Then I did fifty squats before bed.

  • Do Not Trust the Smile of the Sea

    Do Not Trust the Smile of the Sea

    When I was twelve, my family lived briefly in Nairobi, where my father worked for the Peace Corps. One school break, we headed to Mombasa, the coastal jewel of Kenya, where the Indian Ocean was as warm as bathwater and clear enough to read your reflection in. Leopard-spotted shells glimmered beneath the surface, and purple sea urchins decorated the shallows like jeweled land mines. I was a sunburned boy in blue terry-cloth trunks printed with white lilies—half Tarzan, half tourist—determined to conquer nature with curiosity alone.

    At low tide, I discovered sea cucumbers: bulbous, indecently soft things that looked like props from a B-movie. I picked one up and chased my younger brother along the beach, brandishing it like a medieval mace, laughing so hard I forgot to breathe. Then, mid-laughter, the ocean answered back. I fell into the shallow surf, and my back erupted in white-hot agony. My father sprinted toward me, wielding a stick like an exorcist, shouting that I’d been wrapped by a Portuguese Man o’ War. By the time he peeled the translucent tentacles off my skin, the jellyfish had already written its signature in fire across my spine.

    A local doctor, somber and leathery from the sun, told us a five-year-old boy had died from the same sting just a week earlier. He handed me pain medication and ordered a long, cold bath. As I soaked, trembling and pink, I asked Master Po why the most beautiful place I’d ever seen had tried to kill me.

    “Grasshopper,” he said, “Heaven and Earth show no mercy. You thought yourself Tarzan, but you are a fragile boy—a straw dog—easily crushed by nature’s indifference. Do not be deceived by beauty. It will destroy you.”

    “I’m not fooled,” I said, “but I still want to be close to it. Surfers in Santa Cruz watch their best friend get swallowed by a great white, and a year later they’re back in the same waves. Tomorrow my brother and I will be back in the Indian Ocean. Are we fools?”

    “Foolishness,” Master Po said, “is closing your eyes to the lesson and calling it courage. Tomorrow, you may return to the sea—but this time, you’ll keep your eyes open.”

  • The Wrap Is the Wet Handshake of Tortillas

    The Wrap Is the Wet Handshake of Tortillas

    The Wrap—the pretentious, joyless burrito alternative that slithered into American lunch culture during the 1990s—remains an enduring insult, both culinary and conceptual. It is not a burrito, a falafel, or even a respectable sandwich. Those are categories with histories, boundaries, and soul. The Wrap, by contrast, is the menu equivalent of a corporate mission statement—vague, overpromising, and spiritually empty.

    Marketed as healthy and progressive, it is in fact a sad slurry of “lite” mayonnaise, cold protein, and moral posturing, encased in a tortilla that resembles a damp résumé. The Wrap promises wellness but delivers wetness. Its cold, papery sheath—sometimes greenish with “spinach,” sometimes orangish with “tomato-basil”—cracks under the weight of its own self-importance.

    A burrito is proud, hot, and complete—a working-class symphony of beans, rice, and molten cheese, wrapped in a warm, elastic tortilla designed to survive both gravity and appetite. The Wrap is its sterile cousin, born not in the markets of Juárez but in a boardroom buffet in Palo Alto. One feeds the soul; the other lectures it.

    If the burrito is street poetry, the Wrap is PowerPoint. Burritos radiate grease-stained authenticity; wraps arrive pre-sliced at corporate retreats, accompanied by a motivational slogan.

    And yet, there is something eerily modern about the Wrap—its prefab perfection, its sanitized efficiency. It is the edible ancestor of AI: an algorithm of health and convenience, engineered to look human but taste like compromise. The Wrap, in short, is the uncanny valley of lunch—soulless, identical, and faintly threatening. I fear, as with AI, that it may someday evolve, learn to mimic pleasure, and finally take over the world, one sad office lunch at a time.