Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • Words of Wisdom in a World of Publishing Hallucinations

    Words of Wisdom in a World of Publishing Hallucinations

    Last night I dreamed I was at the Aspen Institute, where I took the stage as a guest speaker while snowflakes pirouetted past the classroom windows like bored ballerinas. Dozens of young writers—already published, already duped—sat before me, waiting to be enlightened. I told them the truth their publishers had concealed with a smile and a contract: the marketing promises were fairy dust, the royalty checks were jokes, and their “book deals” were little more than elaborate scams. They would earn a pittance, and the betrayal would sting worse than any bad review.

    Some of them glared at me like I’d just blasphemed against their gods, but others—emboldened by rage—shouted the names of their novels and memoirs into the snowy air. A nineteen-year-old tech billionaire from India cried out the title of his memoir: The Gunther Effect. I made him repeat it three times, as if conjuring a spell, so the words wouldn’t slip away. Against my better judgment, I was intrigued.

    By popular demand, I returned for a second sermon. This time, I was flanked by professors and “established” writers who knew the game as well as I did. Their lectures weren’t brilliant, but they didn’t have to be. For me, just focusing on one speaker, narrowing the scattered kaleidoscope of my mind into a single lens, felt like mental hygiene—a purging of the Internet’s endless distractions. I thought, This is what I miss: the monastic joy of being a student, concentrating on one voice instead of chasing dopamine scraps.

    And slowly, the room shifted. The students began to understand that my colleagues and I weren’t cynics but keepers of the ugly gospel. We had the keys to the vault, the passwords to real power. We were the Priests and Priestesses of Light and Success, consecrated by disillusion. Hands shot up like candles in a vigil, their questions burning against the snowfall outside, and we were exalted, gratified, almost holy in the glow of their hunger.

  • The Pee Fairy and Other Family Legends

    The Pee Fairy and Other Family Legends

    Last night I found myself in Studio City, raising a glass to my cousin Pete, who has officially turned 75. His older brother Glenn, still sharp at 77, had flown in from Mercer Island, and the two of them instantly pulled me into a time warp. Suddenly I was no longer a 63-year-old man at a birthday party but a wide-eyed kid again, spending summers with them in the late ’60s on Maryland Street.

    They lived in a Spanish-style home built in the 1920s, the kind of place that looked like it was made for nostalgia: clay tiles, creaky wood floors, and a kitchen that always smelled of coffee, bagels and pumpernickel browning in the toaster. Pete’s Dodgers photos hung in the den, alongside a bobblehead that seemed drunk even before the games started.

    The backyard was Eden in miniature—orange, lemon, and tangerine trees glowed in the California sun, and we’d pedal our bikes past rose-drenched houses while Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” warbled from my transistor radio. Old ladies waved as if we were celebrities, which of course we believed we were.

    Then came my most infamous contribution to family lore: at six years old, I wet the bed and, unwilling to admit it, blamed the “Pee Fairy.” Pete, Glenn, and their parents—Gladys and Gene—laughed as though I’d landed a Vegas comedy set. Gladys, saintly and unflappable, washed the sheets and hung them out beneath lemon-scented sunshine. That was love, the real thing, not nostalgia’s gauzy counterfeit.

    And last night, as Pete blew out his candles, that same love filled the room—messy, enduring, funny, and fierce. I left grateful to have been part of it, both then and now.

  • Quarterback Hell: America’s Favorite Demigod and the Price of Glory

    Quarterback Hell: America’s Favorite Demigod and the Price of Glory

    In her New Yorker essay “Consider the Quarterback,” Louisa Thomas plunders Seth Wickersham’s American Kings and paints the quarterback not as a football player, but as America’s most tortured mythological beast. Quarterbacks embody our national delusions about leadership and manhood; they manage violence and spectacle at once, parading each week into a gladiatorial hell where one misread or misthrow detonates in front of millions. Actors can flub a line, pop stars can botch a note, tech bros can tank a product and still recover. A quarterback’s mistake, by contrast, is immortalized on ESPN in slow-motion high definition. Surviving this gauntlet elevates him beyond celebrity—he becomes a demigod, but one forged in a furnace that melts sanity along with steel.

    Wickersham’s question—what happens when you achieve the dream of being a star NFL quarterback?—turns out to be a warning label. The answer is grotesque. Yes, genius is displayed on the field: the audibles, the poise, the impossible throws. But the book catalogues the price—alcohol, depression, busted marriages, fatherhood disasters, chronic pain, and, at the core, narcissism metastasized into pathology. “Football, it seems, can unleash the kind of narcissistic personality that normal society might constrain,” Thomas notes. Being a quarterback isn’t a job; it’s a metamorphosis, one that can turn men into monsters.

    That Faustian bargain echoes across sports. Once you buy into a mission of athletic greatness, you accept self-destruction as the down payment. Ronnie Coleman illustrates this truth with brutal clarity. His eight Mr. Olympia titles were purchased with 800-pound squats, deadlifts, and a training style that would make orthopedic surgeons salivate. The bill: spinal fusions, hip replacements, shattered hardware in his back, and a daily life of chronic pain, crutches, and wheelchairs. And yet Coleman, a family man without scandal, smiles through it all. He insists he’d repeat it, no regrets—because the wreckage of his body was, to him, a fair trade for immortality.

    Coleman is a useful counterpoint because, compared to the quarterback, he got off easy. Bodybuilding stripped his mobility but not his humanity. The quarterback, however, inherits the same orthopedic carnage plus something darker: brain trauma, depression, addiction, and the corrosive narcissism required to play the role. Football elevates these men into Olympian figures—half god, half brand—while hollowing out their hearts and souls. To be a quarterback is to win everything the culture worships, and to lose everything that makes life worth living.

  • The Road to Studio City Is Paved with Lane Closures

    The Road to Studio City Is Paved with Lane Closures

    Yesterday I braved my cousin Pete’s 75th birthday blowout in Studio City, dragging my wife and one of my twin daughters along for the ordeal. Like a fool, I skipped the Google Maps pre-check. The punishment: three lane closures on the 405. What should have been a breezy forty-minute jaunt became a 95-minute death march in a metal box. I joked that Pete should’ve hired a therapist specifically for the traumatized survivors of Southern California traffic—“Welcome, let’s unpack your freeway PTSD before the cake is served.”

    The party itself was bigger than I bargained for—150 guests orbiting around a swimming pool, lubricated by a taco bar, hummus hills, pita plains, and charcuterie slabs that could feed a small country. A band of four septuagenarians hacked out Beatles and Stones covers with the enthusiasm of men reliving their garage-band glory years.

    I chatted with cousins and one of the guitarists, but inevitably the conversation veered into my professional life: “So, Jeff, what about AI in the classroom?” I gave them my stock answer: AI is a double-edged sword. It can turn us into lazy bots outsourcing our brains—or, on the bright side, it can make my grading life less of a grammar police beat. I explained that AI gives every student a free grammar tutor, a perk I never thought I’d live to see. And yes, I confessed my own guilty pleasure: I write a sprawling Nabokovian memo, feed it to the machine, and tell it, “Sharpen this. Add acid wit.” What comes back is so tight and sly that I want to light a candle in gratitude.

    Left unsupervised, AI churns out limp, hollow paragraphs—Shakespeare’s “sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But with a solid draft and precise marching orders, it can take my word-bloated gasbaggery and spin it into crisp, surgical prose. The tool is neither angel nor demon; the sin or virtue belongs to the user.

    Of course, I also sinned in the culinary department. My “moderation” consisted of three or four thick slabs of brie smothered with figs and crackers, plus a couple of carne asada tacos. I had a token bite of my daughter’s birthday cake, which was so sweet it could have stripped paint, but that was restraint by default, not discipline. I’m certain I left Pete’s bash two pounds heavier.

    The drive home was mercifully shorter—just an hour—though Google still had the gall to insist the 405 was the “fast” route, lane closures and all. Let’s just say the 405 and I are on a trial separation for at least a year.

  • Farmer’s Walks, Rotator Cuffs, and the Ghosts of TypePad

    Farmer’s Walks, Rotator Cuffs, and the Ghosts of TypePad

    Everyday I try to learn something new, though today’s lessons felt like a report card in masochism. After three weeks of doing the Farmer’s Walk—barefoot, lugging kettlebells across hot pavement like some deranged strongman wannabe—my feet staged a revolt. Now I shuffle around in cushioned flip-flops, praying for pardon from my inflamed soles.

    Lesson two: a rotator cuff tear heals on its own calendar, not mine. Gone are the days of explosive kettlebell theatrics; now I creep through slow, deliberate rows like a man tiptoeing past a sleeping dragon.

    But the real education arrived online. When TypePad collapsed and I ferried a few dozen radio-obsessive posts over to Cinemorphosis, I stared into the abyss of my own archive. What I saw wasn’t noble enthusiasm but neurotic Internet poisoning: the frenzied output of a man hooked on the performance of being “a journalist,” even if only in cosplay. The early 2000s gave me all the symptoms of attention addiction—posting too often, sharing too much, mistaking volume for meaning.

    I’m grateful to have deleted X and demoted Facebook to a ghost town. My writing belongs elsewhere now. On Cinemorphosis I can stretch out, let literature, culture, music, television, even dreams bloom into full color. It feels like stepping through a door into a new world, one I don’t intend to leave.

  • Favorite Blast from the Past: Radio Legend Gerald Gives Us a Look at Some Vintage Field Radio Titans

    Favorite Blast from the Past: Radio Legend Gerald Gives Us a Look at Some Vintage Field Radio Titans

    P1000588

    1969 to around 1978. no doubt the pinnacle years of Japanese made portable radios. While Sony and Panasonic certainly lead the way, Toshiba, Sanyo and others were pushed by the excellence of the big two. This resulted in well built , compact super radios as all these manufacturere reached the pinnacle of this technology. Use of the finest materials and cutting edge diodal, transistor and integrated circuitry technology was the order of the day across all brands from japan. The caveat, one of these babys cost you the equivalent of one weeks pay in 1972! But what you got  lasted your lifertime!

     The examples shown here are in new condition and are noted for their quality, durability asnd excellence in true field conditions.  lets introduce them,, the IC77 from Toshiba 1974, the RF 858 wordlboy from panasonic, 1970ish, the rp-7220 trailmaster from sanyo, 1973 and the Toshiba RM201FA. 1969.  as you can see all radios came with protection cases, notably, the rf858 and the sanyo rp 7220 came with hard cases! Of course, all radios came equipped with dial lights, tuning meters and shortwave capabilty.

    I can only say that all perform nearly on an eqaul basis to each other. when i compare them to the new chinese fare,, well,, no contest. ALl pereform acutely on all bands with crisp, concsise analog tuning. These radios pop with life while spearing the unseen radio waves from the ether. 

     These radio compact size made them the perfect field radios. Ive included the rf 2200 for scale, as you can see, the 2200 would be a little cumbersome on the trail. These are oocaisionally offered on ebay, if you see one thats well preserved, get it.

    Just remeber, Sony and Panasonic pushed Sanyo Toshiba and others to excellence in this period, dont overlook them!

    P1000591

  • Blast from the Past: A Radio That Warns the Whole Neighborhood You’re Washing Your Car: The Panasonic RQ-548S

    IMG_3939

    The only radio I have that rivals my RQ-548S in sheer volume is my Panasonic RF-888. Both radios are from around 1974. The build quality on the RF-888 is superior. But the RQ-548S, which I purchased for $25 on eBay plus $15 shipping 3 years ago, is a winner with its 7-inch Dual Cone Speaker. 

    IMG_3940

    I used to see these things NIB for a while and a few used ones but apparently they’ve all been snatched up on eBay as I haven’t seen on for sale in well over two years.

    IMG_3941

    The FM and AM sensitivity is excellent. Mine had a stripped telescopic antenna and required a metric screw, which the local hardware store didn’t have, so one of the employees jerry-rigged the antenna for me (no one would have done this for me at a mega-store). The cassette actually works fine. I notice these 1970s boom radios sell for a lot now and evidence the hunger for a high quality type of boom box that is no longer made today. 

    IMG_3942

  • Blast from the Past: From Russia with Love: Angelo’s Ocean 214 Radio

    On the topic of radios with a wooden case…presenting the Ocean 214—from Russia with love!  I bought it from a seller in the Ukraine, so shipping was on the high side, but surprisingly, I didn’t have much competition bidding on the radio.  I’ve been wanting to try a Russian/Soviet radio for quite a while, but simply couldn’t get excited about the VEF series, because…how can I put this nicely…”they ugly…butt ugly!” 

    The VEFs look like a big block of plastic with little or no imagination in the design.  They might be great performers and high quality—I don’t know, because I’ve never played with one—but I’m not excited by the looks.  Enter the Okeah—I saw a couple different ones from this manufacturer, and settled on the 214.  I like the wooden case and the various surfaces and colors used to make up the package. 

    Mine is in good shape except for an antenna problem—the smaller top portions of the antenna pull out of the base.  But it still receives well on all bands.  Oh, but that’s the other problem—the writing is in Russian and I’m totally unfamiliar with the frequencies they use.  So I push buttons and turn knobs until I hear people talking or I hear music.  It’s an adventure. 

    The sound is good—in a way, similar to my Lloyd’s, supporting the argument that the wooden cabinet does have its own sound.  In fact, the Okeah has more tone controls to play with and I can get a very satisfying deep sound for music, or a clearer, high pitched sound for talk.  The shortwave bands do pull in stations nicely as well.  I’m still figuring things out with regard to how these bands translate from radios I’m used to using.

    I can recommend this radio if you have interest in getting an Eastern European manufactured radio.  From the little I could find on Google, it seems the factory for this brand might be located in Belarus.  There is much more information on VEF, who must have been a much bigger company.  But I like the Okeah—I like the looks, I like the woodgrain and I’m satisfied with the performance.  I will say that it appears to be old, and wasn’t babied as it was dirty when I got it, and apparently not extremely well maintained.  But a few shots of tuner spray brought it to life and it sounds great.  At some point, I might try my luck on E-Bay to see if I can turn a profit.  But for now, I’m having too much fun with the radio.   

  • Blast from the Past: Rick’s Ward Airline GEN 1474A Radio

    Airline A1474 Receiver

    I have this Ward Airline 1494 model and also the similar Montgomery Ward Airline GEN 1474A, which I think is a better radio, at least when I’ve compared the two side-by-side. The 1474A has just one big sliderule dial, but covers the same frequency ranges as the 1494A. It’s a little smaller radio, but I think more handsome. Its AM/FM/SW performance is better, and the airband is absolutely top notch (I’ve been obsessed with listening to aircraft on VHF and HF since the 1960’s.) Even the “S” meter has more bounce on the 1474A than on the 1494. But the most amazing part of the 1474A is its audio, which can blow the windows out of the house! Not surprising when you look at the heat sink they put on the output stage, a major chunk of aluminum. All this in a very nice portable (4 D cells or AC) package.

  • Blast from the Past: Angelo’s Review of the Montgomery Ward Airline GEN-1494A Vintage Radio

    Since the very first time I saw this model listed on E-Bay a couple years ago, I’ve wanted one of these:  The Montgomery Ward Airline GEN-1494A.

    I guess the thing that attracted me to this radio the most is the handsome looks.  I like the symmetry of the dual tuning dials, divided by the power meter.  I like the contrast of brushed aluminum and charcoal color plastics, encased in clear acrylic dial covers.  I like the large but not huge size of the receiver.  Simply, I like everything about this radio’s styling.  I wouldn’t change anything—not even the orange and white frequency information, which looks great on the dark gray/black. 

    The materials are not quite up to Sony or Panasonic standards, but there’s nothing to be ashamed of here.  It’s good quality stuff, certainly comparable to any Sharp or Sanyo of a similar vintage.  It’s in that Toshiba/Hitachi category as far as I can tell.

    Performance wise, it’s a winner.  I was astounded by the shortwave reception—very, very close to matching the Sony ICF-5800 that I recently sold.  It picks up shortwave signals that most of my other radios are unable to track.  FM sound is strong, AM crisp.  It’s very capable of getting the full compliment of AM-FM stations that my other good radios can receive.  After the stellar shortwave performance, I was surprised that it didn’t perform well on the PSB 1 or PSB 2 options.  They were pretty dead—and my old Arvin radios generally get activity on these bands.  Maybe it’s just the night and the location.

    Speaker sound is another high grade.  While it’s not as powerful as the Panasonic 888, it has a pleasing sound.  The “tone” adjustment actually does its job too.  It’s equally good for talk or music.

    This is a well balanced radio that I can heartily recommend.  I have seen several of these over the years, and have bid on a few of them.  I was never able to wrangle one until this one failed to cross the $30.00 mark, and I snatched it up in the closing minutes.  It needed a little cleaning—and to get it to work on batteries, I had to use steel wool to remove corrosion from the battery compartment contacts—-but aside from those minor issues, it’s pretty darn nice.  Perfect antenna, no major dings and a real player.

    Is it a keeper?  For me, there aren’t many keepers.  I generally buy radios at what I consider a value price.  After cleaning them up and playing with them for a few months, I’m willing to throw them back to keep funding my hobby and charting new territory—such as a very recent interest in old tube radios.  But I have to say, the great shortwave performance, on this Ward model will make it a tough decision to let this go.  Like my Panasonic 888, Zenith Trans-Oceanic 7000 and Grundig Ocean Boy 820, this Ward Airline 1494 has virtues that might make it a permanent fixture.  That’s pretty strong company that this radio finds itself in.