Cinemorphosis

Author: Jeffrey McMahon

  • The Dopamine Dial: Why Your Grail Watch Can’t Make You Happy

    The Dopamine Dial: Why Your Grail Watch Can’t Make You Happy

    To understand the madness of the modern watch addict, you’d do well to consult Dopamine Nation by Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, a book that should be shelved somewhere between philosophy, neuroscience, and quiet screaming. Her central thesis? In an age of relentless indulgence, the line between pleasure and pain is not only blurry—it’s the same neurological pathway. You’re not escaping pain with your latest acquisition. You’re feeding it.

    “The smartphone,” she writes, “is the modern-day hypodermic needle.” And the drug? Dopamine—delivered in neat little parcels: TikToks, tweets, memes, and yes, wrist shots of watches you don’t own (yet). If you haven’t met your poison of choice, don’t worry. It’s just a click away.

    Lembke makes the uncomfortable truth clear: The more dopamine hits we seek, the more our brain adapts by reducing our baseline pleasure response. What once thrilled you—your grail watch, your Rolex Explorer, your Seiko with the Wabi-Sabi patina—now barely registers. You’re not chasing pleasure anymore. You’re just trying to feel something.

    Watch addicts, of course, understand this intimately. The pursuit of horological perfection starts out innocent enough: a G-Shock here, a vintage diver there. But soon you’re tumbling into the abyss of boutique limited editions and message board enablement, haunted by the need to stay relevant. Because here’s the twist: It’s not just about the watches. It’s about being seen. You post, you review, you flex because if you stop, you vanish. No new watches = no new content = digital extinction.

    And extinction, in a social-media world, feels like death.

    Lembke warns us that addiction thrives in secrecy, in the exhausting double life. The watch addict may present as a tasteful minimalist to family and friends, while secretly rotating 19 watches, five straps deep, waiting for the next “drop.” The addiction is fed by access, and we live in an access economy. New releases are no longer annual events—they’re hourly temptations. The vortex is bottomless. The supply creates the demand.

    Even worse, modern society normalizes this behavior. Everyone is scrolling. Everyone is upgrading. Our addiction to novelty is passed off as taste. Our frenzied consumption masquerades as identity. Lembke borrows from Philip Rieff to explain the deeper shift: “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.” The modern watch collector doesn’t believe in salvation. He believes in configuration.

    But here’s the cruel irony: The more you seek to be pleased, the less capable you are of being pleased. In Lembke’s words: “Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia—the inability to enjoy pleasure of any kind.”

    What’s the solution? A dopamine fast. Lembke prescribes it like a bitter medicine: Remove the source. Reset the brain. Let it reestablish homeostasis. For the watch addict, this means one thing: a watch fast.

    And yes—it’s brutal. I’ve been a watch obsessive for over twenty years. My longest fast? Six months. And I nearly went feral. New releases tempt. Friends enable. Algorithms whisper. Strap swaps and vintage reissues beckon like sirens. Even the FedEx truck starts to look like a personal tormentor.

    So you get creative. You stash watches in the safe and “rediscover” them. You buy new straps instead of new watches. You try to redirect the compulsion toward something productive: fitness, music, sourdough, monkish austerity. Anything but another chronograph.

    But the real cure, oddly enough, may be conversation—actual human connection. At watch meet-ups, we start out discussing bezels and spring bars, but within ten minutes we’re talking about life: real estate, parenting, knee surgeries, emotional burnout, dinner recipes. We talk for hours. But barely about watches.

    The truth slips out in these moments: we want to be free. We crave community more than we crave sapphire crystals. What began as a shared obsession has become a trap, and these conversations, paradoxically, offer relief from the very addiction that brought us together.

    Imagine a bunch of watch enthusiasts at a watch meet-up and we’re talking about everything but watches. Wrap your head around that.

  • Relevance or Death: The Watch Collector’s Dilemma

    Relevance or Death: The Watch Collector’s Dilemma

    In her darkly hilarious comedy special Father, Atsuko Okatsuka shares the origin story of her career in punchlines. Her schizophrenic mother once “kidnapped” her in Japan and whisked her away to the United States without warning, severing her ties to her father in the process. The trauma was so disorienting, so profound, that Atsuko now mines laughter for survival. She tells us, with a comedian’s grin and a survivor’s twitch, that she performs to fill an infinite hole in her soul with the validation of strangers.

    That hole is not unique to her. It’s a universal pit—bottomless and demanding. Validation comes in many flavors. For some, it’s esteem and admiration. For others, it’s expertise, artistry, the warm glow of audience approval. For Atsuko, it’s laughter. For others, it’s the faint buzz of a “like” on a post about a wristwatch.

    Let us now consider the watch obsessive, a different breed of relevance-seeker, but a kindred spirit nonetheless. He isn’t doing five-minute sets at the Laugh Factory, but he is performing—on Instagram, on forums, on YouTube, in the comment sections of strangers’ macro shots. He presents his taste, his “knowledge,” his ever-shifting collection. But underneath the sapphire crystals and brushed titanium is the same primal whisper:
    Do I still matter?
     Do they still see me?

    Here’s the tragic twist: he may already have the perfect collection. It gives him joy. It’s balanced. It fits in a single watch box. By all logic, he should stop. Buying another watch would be like adding a fifth leg to a table—wobbly and unnecessary. But he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop.

    Why? Because if he stops collecting, he stops posting. If he stops posting, he stops being seen. And in a world addicted to scrolling, disappearing feels like dying.

    Relevance is the new oxygen. And social media is a machine that runs on novelty, not legacy. The digital hive forgets fast. “Gangnam Style” is now a fossil. “Call Me Maybe” is background noise at the grocery store. To stay visible, you must be new. You must be shiny. You must offer dopamine.

    And what happens when the watch addict manages his demons, reaches peace, and stops feeding the machine?

    He becomes boring. He becomes silent. He becomes irrelevant.

    And the parasocial bonds he once had—those illusory friendships, those mutual obsessions—fade. The sense of exile is real. It doesn’t matter that the exile is self-imposed. The pain still lingers.

    That fear—that primordial fear of irrelevance, of being cast out from the tribe—can be so powerful it masquerades as passion. It convinces the watch obsessive to keep flipping, keep chasing, keep posting. Not out of love, but out of fear.

    So the question becomes: Are we collectors? Or are we hostages? Do we love horology? Or are we simply terrified of vanishing?

  • Camry vs. Accord: The Obsession That Killed My Career

    Camry vs. Accord: The Obsession That Killed My Career

    Last night I dreamed I was adrift in a farmer’s market purgatory, toggling between two dried fruit stalls like a man on a doomed pilgrimage. At one end stood my friend Adam, hawking dried apricots beside his immaculate new Honda Accord, polished to a showroom glint. At the other, Andre offered prunes with the calm assurance of a man backed by a brand-new Toyota Camry.

    I paced between them, acting like a mildly deranged Consumer Reports correspondent. I asked about mileage, comfort, tire pressure, road feel. Adam, ever candid, confessed that his Accord’s 19-inch tires required constant babysitting—a weekly ritual of crouching beside his car like a penitent monk, pumping air into finicky rubber. Andre, on the other hand, practically preened. His Camry had no such neediness. His tires, he implied, were stoic and self-reliant, like Roman centurions.

    As my dithering grew more manic, Adam and Andre began to notice. They called each other—yes, in the dream they phoned each other mid-market—and the temperature dropped. Andre, initially genial, grew terse. Adam smirked defensively over his dried apricots. The whole affair soured like old fruit.

    Then, like a man possessed, I made my declaration. I would buy the Camry. Not for the horsepower. Not for the design. But because I refused—refused!—to spend my golden years crouching beside a car, inflating tires like a desperate cyclist.

    No sooner had I made my proclamation than the dream world pivoted sharply, as dreams do. I was no longer in a farmer’s market—I was on a college campus. But not my college. Not the place where I once held a proud tenure-track post. No, I had been demoted. My prestigious job had evaporated. I was now an adjunct at some podunk backwater school with low ceilings and fluorescent lights that hummed with institutional malaise.

    Why the fall from grace? Simple. My years spent obsessing over the Camry-vs-Accord dilemma had not gone unnoticed. While I was inhaling tire PSI data and fondling prune samples, my absence from the college became conspicuous. The administrators, ruthless as vultures in blazers, terminated me. I had toggled too long. My career had flatlined.

    I woke at 5 a.m. in a wash of dread and despair—not from the dream’s end, but from the clatter of the real world: an Amazon delivery person, fumbling at the gate, dropping a box on the porch like a coffin lid.

    I opened it. Inside was a stainless steel bathroom trash can, taller, sleeker, with built-in liners—my daughter’s request. Unlike our old can, which was a rust-streaked monument to hygienic defeat, this one gleamed with a kind of futuristic dignity. Its surface mirrored my face: puffy, sleepless, faintly haunted.

    And yet, in its shimmering steel, I saw something unexpected: hope. Renewal. The modest redemption of functional design.

    A new beginning, sealed in plastic wrap.

  • Uncut Bezels: Watch Addiction and the Cult of Chaos

    Uncut Bezels: Watch Addiction and the Cult of Chaos

    Watch obsessives have more in common with Howard Ratner than we care to admit. Yes, that Howard Ratner—the unhinged gem pusher played with twitchy brilliance by Adam Sandler in the Safdie brothers’ cinematic panic attack, Uncut Gems. Ratner operates in the Diamond District behind bulletproof glass, drowning in sparkle and debt. We operate behind the bulletproof delusions of horological obsession, buried in brushed steel and moonphase complications.

    Like Ratner, we gamble—not at sportsbooks, but with FedEx tracking numbers. We tell ourselves, this is the one as we refresh the delivery status of the next “grail” watch. The package might as well be glowing, Pulp Fiction-style. And like Ratner chasing a cursed Ethiopian black opal mined from the bloodied crust of the Earth, we twist ourselves into financial and emotional pretzels to score that one special piece—the wrist-mounted miracle that will finally quiet the voices.

    Spoiler: it never does.

    Ratner is a man who thinks more is the cure. More bets. More jewels. More chaos. The watch obsessive runs the same play. We soothe our midlife despair not with therapy or silence, but with spring drives, meteorite dials, and limited edition bronze cases. Our collections don’t grow—they metastasize.

    Like Ratner, our problem isn’t the world. Our problem is internal. The call is coming from inside the skull. He can’t stop because he doesn’t want to stop. The thrill is the point. Every acquisition, every wrist shot, every gushing forum post—just another hit of synthetic joy to distract from the gnawing void. We call it a hobby. Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s dopamine addiction disguised as design appreciation.

    Uncut Gems is a cinematic espresso shot laced with panic. My wife and brother couldn’t sit through thirty minutes. Too stressful, they said. Too jittery. I’ve watched it three times.

    But of course I have. I’m a watch addict.

    I live in Ratner’s world. The caffeinated chaos? That’s not discomfort. That’s home.

  • The One-Watch Monk Is Not Immune to a Relapse

    The One-Watch Monk Is Not Immune to a Relapse

    I know a few brave souls who have done the unthinkable. They’ve faced down the snarling beast of the Timekeeper’s Cavebrain—the primordial voice that whispers, “One more won’t hurt”—and emerged with nothing but a $79 G-Shock strapped to their wrist like a talisman of survival. These men are not collectors. They are survivors. Ex-chronoholics who now wear a single resin slab like a badge of sanity in a world overdosing on lume and limited editions.

    And yet—here’s the twist—they still linger in the digital temples of temptation. They haunt the forums, stalk the subreddit threads, and scroll the Instagram wrist shots like monks in a wine bar. They do not comment. They do not buy. They simply observe, living vicariously through the endless dopamine-chasing of others. Their presence is ghostly, detached, almost ethereal.

    These men have all, at some point, knelt before Father Time-Out, a shadowy ascetic who preaches from behind a cracked Casio:

    “You were once a sinner in the temple of timepieces. You must now enter permanent exile. Perhaps, in time, you may guide others out of their chrono-hell. Become a lighthouse of restraint. Point them toward the True Path.”

    And some do. These One-Watch Monks become minor saints of the community—offering cryptic encouragement, spartan wisdom, and the occasional photo of their battered DW-5600 glowing like a sacrament. They are revered not for what they wear, but for what they don’t. They symbolize what every timepiece addict secretly craves: freedom.

    But not all monks stay in the monastery.

    Sometimes, the Cavebrain resurfaces, soft-spoken but persuasive:
    “You’ve earned a second watch. Something modest. Something Swiss.”

    And just like that, a relapse: the purchase of an Omega Seamaster “as a test,” a way to prove their control. They become Two-Watch Semi-Monks—respected, yes, but no longer holy. The mystique is gone. Their resin-born purity has been tarnished by a splash of steel and hubris.

    They will say, “It’s just two watches.”
    But the Timekeeping Community knows better. It always starts with one exception.

    Still, we do not mock the fallen. We nod, we sigh, and we tighten our NATO straps. We know how easy it is to go from sage to sucker, from minimalist to maximalist, from monk to maniac—in just one click.

  • The Timekeeper’s Curse: Why You’ll Never Be Satisfied with Your Watch Collection

    The Timekeeper’s Curse: Why You’ll Never Be Satisfied with Your Watch Collection

    To understand the tortured psyche of the modern Timekeeper, you must first meet his most conniving organ: the Cavebrain. This primal relic, forged in an age of spear tips and saber-toothed tigers, was never designed for eBay, Instagram wrist shots, or limited-edition dive watches with meteorite dials. And yet, here he is in the 21st century, a man both blessed and cursed with opposable thumbs, a PayPal account, and a psychological need for existential renovation every time he clicks Buy It Now.

    A high-ticket watch purchase for the Timekeeper is not a simple act of consumer indulgence—it is a rite of passage, a narrative arc, a full-blown identity reboot. He isn’t just buying a watch; he’s staging a personal renaissance, performing emotional alchemy with brushed titanium and spring-drive movements. He craves the sensation of getting something done—and if he can’t change his life, he’ll change his wrist.

    But a new acquisition can’t simply squeeze into the old watch box like another hot dog in an overstuffed cooler. No, it demands sacrifice. One or more watches must be winnowed down, exiled like loyal but unremarkable lovers who just didn’t “spark joy.” There is drama here—drama more potent than remodeling a kitchen or repainting the bedroom a daring eggshell white. This is a domestic upheaval that matters. The arrival of a new timepiece—let’s call it “the new kid in town”—requires a realignment of the soul.

    Now, for those poor souls unacquainted with Timekeeper theology, let me explain: He cannot simply collect indiscriminately. He is bound by the Watch Potency Principle, a dogma revered by enthusiasts. This principle states that the more watches a man owns, the less any of them mean. Like watering down bourbon, or stretching a heartfelt apology into a TED Talk, the essence gets lost. The once-sacred grails—the unicorns he hunted with obsessive glee—go sour in the dilution of excess. Only by restricting the herd to five to eight carefully curated specimens can he maintain potency and fend off emotional ruin.

    Of course, there’s a devil in the details. The Timekeeper suffers from a chronic affliction known as Watch Curiosity. He’s always sniffing around the next shiny object, eyes darting at macro shots on forums, lurking on Reddit, and falling prey to influencers wearing NATO straps and faux humility. Inevitably, he pulls the trigger on yet another must-have diver, thus initiating the ritual purge. A watch he once swore eternal fidelity to must now be cast out—not because it’s inadequate, but because he has convinced himself that it is. This self-gaslighting feeds a demonic loop known as Watch Flipping Syndrome, wherein watches are bought, sold, and rebought with the desperation of a man trying to time-travel through retail therapy.

    If the Timekeeper is lucky, if he can wrestle his impulses into a coherent, lean collection, he may briefly find peace. But peace is not his natural state. Beneath his curated restraint lies a restlessness, a gnawing sense that time—his most feared adversary—is standing still. His desire for a new watch is not about telling time; it’s about rewriting it. When he buys a new watch, he isn’t updating his collection—he’s updating himself. He wants change, achievement, rebirth.

    Enter the Honeymoon Period—a temporary euphoria where the new watch becomes a talisman of transformation. He floats, rhapsodizes, posts gushing tributes on enthusiast forums. He becomes a preacher in the Church of the Chronograph, recruiting others to experience this miracle. The watch didn’t just change his wardrobe—it changed his life.

    But, as all honeymoons do, the enchantment fades. The novelty rusts. What was once a grail becomes just another object—another timestamp on the long and winding road of emotional substitution. He finds himself, once again, alone with his Cavebrain, who, ever the unreliable life coach, whispers, “Maybe there’s something better out there.”

    Thus, the cycle repeats—endless, compulsive, costly. The Timekeeper is not a collector. He is an evolutionary casualty. A caveman in a smartwatch world, still looking for meaning in a bezel.

  • Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict

    Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict


    In the early 1990s, I saw comedian Rob Becker perform Defending the Caveman in San Francisco—a one-man anthropology class disguised as stand-up. His central thesis, stitched together from kitchen-table spats with his wife, was that men are hunters, women are gatherers, and this prehistoric wiring still runs our modern relationships like a bad operating system.

    His proof? Shopping.

    For the gatherer, shopping is a leisurely daydream. Wandering the mall for six hours and imagining buying things she can’t afford is an enriching sensory experience—like spiritual window-shopping. For the hunter, shopping is a surgical strike. He wants pants. He buys pants. He leaves. The suggestion to “just browse” makes his eye twitch.

    “Let’s get the hell out of here,” says the man. He has completed his mission. He has felled the beast.

    That moment—man as single-focus, tunnel-visioned, goal-oriented predator—explains a great deal about the pathology of watch addiction. We are still cavemen, just hairier and worse at squatting. And we don’t hunt food anymore. We hunt wristwear.

    We see a watch online and a brontosaurus steak lights up in our brain. Locked in. Target acquired. Our dopamine circuits spark like faulty Christmas lights. We must have it. There is no tranquility, no peace, until the object is in our possession.

    The problem? Our primitive instincts weren’t designed for the digital age. Back then, acquiring a new object meant trekking through wilderness, battling saber-toothed tigers, and earning your meal. Today, it’s clicking a “Buy Now” button while half-watching a YouTube review at your ergonomic standing desk, surrounded by a sea of unopened Amazon boxes.

    Our brains still think we’re walking 40 miles to spear a mammoth. In reality, we’re reclining in office chairs with lumbar support, ordering $2,000 divers like they’re takeout sushi. The hunt requires no sacrifice, no sweat, no real effort. And so it never satisfies.

    You get the watch. You admire it. You post a photo to Instagram. Then—you twitch. You fidget. Your brain says, “Good job. Now go get another.”

    We are not content in the cave. Evolution didn’t design us for stillness. It designed us to be hungry. To prepare. To hoard. So we keep hunting. And the cave fills with stainless steel trophies until the glint attracts low-flying pterodactyls that dive-bomb us in our sleep and try to pluck the Omega off our wrist.

    We are maladapted creatures. Our eyeballs evolved for survival. Now they doom us. We were built to scan the horizon for danger. Now we scan Hodinkee, Instagram, Reddit, eBay, WatchRecon, and Chrono24 until our dopamine is a wrung-out dishrag and our bank account is an obituary.

    We’re trapped in a glitch—stone-age instincts, 5G bandwidth. Our visual fixation, once essential to survival, now chains us to a cycle of desire and regret. Thousands of watches flood our screens in a single hour, and our brains are too old and too soft to resist. The only real solution is exile. But exile from what? Our jobs, our networks, our entire digital lives?

    There is no cave to retreat to. Just another tab open.

  • The Next One Is Always the One

    The Next One Is Always the One

    About eight years ago, I experienced the horological equivalent of speed dating. Two watches arrived on the same afternoon: a Seiko Sumo SBDC001 with a black dial and sapphire, and the sleeker SBDC051—a reissue of the classic 62MAS. I placed them side by side like two contestants in a Darwinian experiment, then strapped each one on as if I were auditioning them for the role of “forever watch.”

    It wasn’t even close.

    The 051 had the refinement and wrist presence of a watch that knew it belonged. Crisp finishing. Perfect proportions. Lume that could guide ships through fog. The Sumo? It felt cheap. It wasn’t worth half of the 051. I sold it before dinner. Brutal, but deserved.

    Fast-forward eight years. I’m hunting again—not for a grail, but for something that will sing when paired with my beloved orange Divecore strap, the one accessory that unlocks my inner Watch Beast. Naturally, I thought about giving the Sumo a redemption arc—maybe the gray-wave dial SBDC177? But my instincts flared. Once a dud, always a dud?

    Then I spotted the polygonal Seiko SBDC203 (SPB483), aka the “Coastline,” and something clicked. This one looks like it could go toe-to-toe with the 051. Sharp lines, killer specs, and the kind of tactile satisfaction you only get when Seiko decides to actually try.

    Two closing thoughts:

    First, nothing has made me feel more bonded to my watch obsession than the orange Divecore strap. It’s not just a strap—it’s a mood, an identity, a wrist-based mission statement.

    Second, I’ve come to believe the real addiction isn’t the watches. It’s the brain hijack you constantly crave. The way your brain lights up when The Next Thing to Get starts coming into focus. That little thrill of clarity when you think, Yes, this is the one. It’s the same buzz I get from customizing a Camry XSE in Heavy Metal Gray on Fletcher Toyota’s website and seeing it listed for “only” $38K—a car I may or may not buy but already love as if it’s parked in my soul’s garage.

    Humans are a deranged species. We crave imaginary ownership like it’s the secret to inner peace.

  • The Wind Stole My Midterm

    The Wind Stole My Midterm

    Last night I dreamed I was co-teaching a college course on health and mixed martial arts with Eliot—the bearded jazz musician who moonlights as a Trader Joe’s clerk. He was fired up like a preacher at a tent revival. I, on the other hand, had the enthusiasm of a dogwalker who’s just spotted a fresh pile and no bag.

    Eliot, bless his plaid soul, had prepped a morning exam for his students—neatly typed, stapled, and probably color-coded. Meanwhile, I forgot I was even supposed to give a test. My lectures were improvised jazz solos, long on flair and short on structure. I’d wander into class and riff about cholesterol, Muay Thai, or the history of granola, depending on my mood or what I’d eaten for breakfast.

    But here’s the kicker—I had better material. Buried under the kitchen of my imaginary mansion was a secret archive: white binders filled with decades of syllabi, obscure readings, quizzes, interviews, and errant genius. I never used them. Too lazy. Too proud. Too me.

    Eliot, the eager grasshopper, somehow discovered the hidden staircase that led to the front porch—don’t ask how dream architecture works—and climbed it with evangelical zeal. I watched from my perch in a bathrobe, coffee in hand, while he scaled those steps like a man training for the Tour de France. When he reached the door, breathless and bright-eyed, he begged for the archive.

    So I gave it to him—several white binders, edges fraying like the conscience of a plagiarist. He held them like sacred scrolls, eyes gleaming with the same reverence I once had before tenure made me soft and cynical. I felt a flicker of gratitude. At least someone would use them. At least the work would live on.

    Then came the twist.

    He informed me, with the officious glee of a parking enforcer, that according to some obscure clause in the college handbook, I’d have to sit for his early-morning exam to renew my credential. Me—the man who had literally written the test’s DNA. I considered studying, briefly. Then I took a nap instead.

    The exam was held in the middle of a chaotic street fair, somewhere between a kettle corn booth and a band playing off-key Fleetwood Mac covers. Wind tore through the papers like it was auditioning for a disaster movie. Test pages flew like startled pigeons, and students chased them in panic. It was academic absurdism, pure and uncut.

    And me? I was at peace. I knew—somehow, with prophetic clarity—that there would be no consequences. That the wind, the noise, the anarchy, would camouflage my ignorance. Eliot’s students would struggle. I’d bluff. The test would become performance art, and no one would remember the score.

    What separated me from Eliot wasn’t intelligence or experience. It was weariness. He was still playing to win. I was waiting for the buzzer. He taught with the fire of the newly converted. I taught like a man allergic to rubrics and enthusiasm. He saw a future. I saw a pension.

    And maybe, in that dream, I realized I had already started to retire—from effort, from purpose, from caring about the difference between good teaching and showing up with anecdotes and gumption. Eliot wanted to be me. I wanted to be gone.

  • Everyone Has an Origin Story. Here Is Mine

    Everyone Has an Origin Story. Here Is Mine

    The Road Trip That Made You Possible

    Everyone has an origin story. You are no exception. Yours begins with your father. Without your father’s sheer audacity and competitive determination, you wouldn’t even be here today. Long before you were a glint in his eye, your father was locked in a battle of epic proportions—an all-out, no-holds-barred contest for the affections of your eighteen-year-old mother. And this wasn’t just any competition. His rival? None other than John Shalikashvili, future United States General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their battlefield? The smoky, beer-soaked bar scene of Anchorage, where the stakes were higher than a highball glass during happy hour.

    Their duel for your future mother’s heart took a brief Christmas ceasefire when Shalikashvili retreated to his tactical command center in Peoria, Illinois, while your father returned to Hollywood, Florida, to soak up some sunshine and plot his next move. But as he lounged by the pool, your father realized that victory in this romantic Cold War required swift and decisive action. So he cut his vacation short, crammed himself into a cream-colored 1959 Morris Minor—a vehicle that looked like it had been assembled from the Island of Misfit Toys, complete with a coat hanger for an antenna and door handles barely clinging on by the grace of duct tape—and embarked on the most high-stakes road trip of the 20th century.

    Halfway through this odyssey, the car’s fuel filter decided to go on strike, leaving your father stranded in the middle of nowhere. When the local auto parts store couldn’t supply a replacement, your father—who would later perform engineering miracles at IBM—pulled off a MacGyver-level feat of mechanical wizardry. Armed with nothing but a prophylactic and a paperclip, he fashioned a makeshift fuel filter that was equal parts creative desperation and mechanical blasphemy. This duct-taped miracle kept the fuel pump from either flooding the engine or abandoning ship entirely, depending on its mood.

    Driven by the urgency of love and the fear of losing ground to Shalikashvili’s brass-polished charm, your father powered through the journey, ignoring his growling stomach like a man possessed. Subsisting on loaves of bread devoured like a feral squirrel, he soldiered on, skipping meals because, who needs food when you’re racing against the clock to prevent a military coup over your future wife?

    After a ferry ride that probably felt like crossing the River Styx, your father finally arrived in Anchorage, a full forty-eight hours before Shalikashvili could swoop in with his military swagger and irresistible authority. Nine months later, you were born, the ultimate trophy in this love-struck arms race.

    Even before you took your first breath, your father’s victory over Shalikashvili imparted some crucial life lessons: The competition is fierce, and life is a zero-sum game where you’re either a winner or a nobody. To survive, you must find a competitive edge, and if you ever get complacent, rest assured, someone will move in on your turf faster than you can say “ranked second.”

    As a teenage bodybuilder obsessed with becoming Mr. Universe, opening a gym in the Bahamas, and silencing your critics, you often thought about bodybuilding great Ken Waller stealing Mike Katz’s shirt before a competition in the movie Pumping Iron. Something as trivial as a missing shirt could send your opponent into a tailspin, disrupt his focus, and rattle his confidence like a cheap shaker bottle. Like Mr. Universe Ken Waller, your father taught you that power is a road paved with relentless cunning, ruthless strategy, and a healthy dose of underhanded shenanigans. 

    But underneath the shenanigans and Machiavellian flair, your father taught you one core truth: sweat more than everyone else. Out-hustle, out-grind, outlast. In his gospel, sweat wasn’t just effort—it was currency. The person who left the biggest puddle won.