Cinemorphosis

Category: Confessions

  • How Soon Is Theft?

    How Soon Is Theft?

    In 1990, I was in my late twenties, a newly minted college writing instructor drifting through life with the ethereal soundtrack of The Smiths, the Cocteau Twins, The Trash Can Sinatras, and The Sundays rattling in my head. One afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard with my girlfriend, I did what any self-respecting young melancholic would do: I bought Smiths T-shirts and posters like sacred relics. The crown jewel was my “How Soon Is Now” poster, a portrait of an angst-drenched youth in a gray cable-knit sweater, gazing downward as if staring into the abyss. I taped it proudly to my office door, a shrine to my tribe. Within a week, it was gone—stolen.

    The theft still smolders decades later. It wasn’t just the insult of having something ripped from my door; it was the betrayal of the faith I placed in The Smiths’ congregation. Their music was heartbreak bottled into beauty, sadness transmuted into community. To love The Smiths, I believed, was to be incapable of theft. Fans were supposed to be fellow pilgrims on the same road to melancholy salvation. You don’t rob your brother of his relics. You light a candle with him and hum “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.”

    But there it was: my poster ripped away not by a barbarian from the outside, but by a fellow initiate. The irony was unbearable. If The Smiths could not protect us from base impulses, if their music could not ennoble even their most ardent listeners, then what was art worth? Wasn’t it supposed to make us better, kinder, less brutish? The theft of that poster wasn’t just petty larceny. It was the murder of a principle.

    To this day, I remember the empty rectangle of tape marks left on my office door, staring back at me like a smirk from the abyss. The thief didn’t just pocket a poster; they handed me a lesson in nihilism, gift-wrapped in Morrissey’s sorrowful croon. And I’ve been suspicious of beauty ever since, knowing it can inspire devotion and betrayal in the same breath.

  • The Man Who Always Waved

    The Man Who Always Waved

    When my twins were born in 2010, I spent years pacing the sidewalks of my Torrance neighborhood with them—first in a stroller, then a wagon, and eventually on their own unsteady feet. Along those same sidewalks shuffled old couples with dogs, walkers, and time to spare. Sometimes one half of a pair would vanish, leaving the other to walk alone, and soon enough that figure too disappeared from the neighborhood stage. I never knew most of their names, yet I felt tethered to them; they would smile at my daughters, wave with fragile hands, and in that exchange I saw the cycle of life laid bare: the beginning in my stroller, the ending in their absence.

    One man I did know by name—Frank. I don’t recall how we met, but I remember the details: his beige Volvo station wagon, the clever mirror nailed to the tree behind his house so he could back out with precision. Frank looked to be in his late sixties in 2010. He walked the neighborhood with brisk efficiency, always in uniform—olive shorts, white T-shirt, glasses perched on his nose, a beige bucket hat shading his face, and a small wristwatch on a leather band, which he consulted like a man keeping an appointment with life itself.

    He reminded me of a restrained Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day: perhaps square at first glance, but steady, decent, reliable. No matter how intent he was on his route, he never failed to lift a hand in greeting. The wave was never exuberant, never perfunctory—it was graceful, automatic, the gesture of a man who seemed stitched together with quiet goodness. His wife matched him in cheer, and though I never learned her name, she radiated authenticity. They were a pair who seemed to exist outside of fashion, untouched by fads or pretensions.

    Over time, I realized they had become more than neighbors to me. They were a balm against my cynicism, proof that stability, kindness, and simple decency still existed in a world that seemed allergic to all three. Which is why, six months ago, while lifting weights in my garage, I felt a chill: What happened to Frank? I hadn’t seen him in ages. He would be in his eighties now. Surely he hadn’t slipped away unnoticed?

    Then, this morning, as I turned into my neighborhood after dropping my daughters at high school, I saw him. Frank, unchanged, same outfit, same bucket hat, same little watch. I raised my hand. He raised his. And before I knew it, a tear streaked my cheek.

  • Margaritaville for the Damned

    Margaritaville for the Damned

    Last night I dreamed I was marooned in Prescott, Arizona, summering not in a cabin or hotel but in a public park. The grass was cartoonishly green, a kind of chlorophyll utopia, and families sprawled across it like they’d been carefully arranged for a Chamber of Commerce brochure. My suitcase sat at my side like a misplaced airport refugee, and I couldn’t help but wonder: why Prescott? Why not Denver, or somewhere less suffocatingly wholesome, less postcard-perfect?

    Then I looked up. Looming above the park was a billboard—a monstrosity of sun-bleached cheer—featuring a leathery couple in their seventies. They were bronzed like overcooked turkeys, grinning wide, basking in the eternal glow of some Florida condo where “Margaritaville” played on an endless loop. This was not their first rodeo: it was their fifth marriage each, the residue of decades spent riding the carousel of lust, liquor, and litigation. Their message was plastered across the sky: hedonism may lead to divorce court, bankruptcy, and sun-damaged skin, but look—if you just keep grinning, it’s practically a lifestyle brand.

    I felt an almost religious revulsion at the billboard. It was hollow cheer dressed up as wisdom, a glossy ad for despair masquerading as joie de vivre. Pulling my luggage closer, I glanced at my watch and felt relief that my wife and daughters would be joining me soon. The counterfeit joy overhead only made me hunger more for the real life that I have.

  • I’m in a YouTube Video Slump and I Don’t Know Why

    I’m in a YouTube Video Slump and I Don’t Know Why

    My WordPress dashboard tells me I’ve posted on Cinemorphosis for 152 days in a row, as if it’s awarding me the Blogging Olympics medal for “Most Neurotic Streak.” I don’t post daily out of discipline so much as survival. Writing is my mental hygiene—my daily scrub against chaos. Free therapy without the billable hours.

    YouTube, however, is another story. I haven’t made a video essay in over two weeks, and the gap feels like a cyst growing on my confidence. The longer I wait, the heavier the silence becomes, like trying to deadlift after skipping the gym for a month. I want to post, but not just to feed the beast. I don’t want to churn out recycled monologues about my watch obsession or let YouTube’s algorithm turn me into a carnival barker with clickbait headlines and fake urgency.

    It’s not as if I lack material. College just started, and I’m teaching the entire athletic department. A room full of goal-driven athletes who actually follow instructions? For a writing professor, that’s better than tenure. And as a relic from the muscle era of the 70s—Olympic lifts, protein shakes, and the occasional posing oil—I feel a strange kinship with them. We’ve already launched into our first essay assignment: the crisis of masculinity and how Bro influencers like the Liver King peddle snake oil dressed in bison liver. These guys exploit the anxieties of young men the way payday lenders exploit the broke. Can’t buy a house? Don’t worry, kid, buy abs. Tongue-tied around women? No problem, creatine is your Cyrano de Bergerac. The students are eating it up, and for once, their feedback has been better than protein pancakes.

    So why can’t I translate this into a video essay? Maybe because my brain recently short-circuited over something ridiculous: watch straps. I fell down the rabbit hole of FKM rubber straps after reading a study claiming they leach chemicals into your skin. My beloved Divecore straps—once the apex of wrist comfort—suddenly looked like toxic bracelets. I agonized for days, debating whether to bin them, keep them, or wrap my wrists in cheesecloth. The obsession drained me like a bad relationship. In protest, my mind and body staged a walkout, shutting down further watch chatter. For now, I’m taking a mental break. I’m grateful for the watches I have, but I don’t want to rejoin the strap wars or churn out videos about my latest dive into consumer madness.

    So here I am, taking a mental breather, trying to avoid the treadmill of compulsive content. It’s humbling to admit that the blogging streak hides a creative stall. But I know the video essays will return. They always do. Once I shake off the chemical paranoia and algorithm anxiety and process my thoughts, I’ll be back in the groove—hopefully with something worth watching.

  • Triple Lounge Wear: My Magnum Opus of Sloth Couture

    Triple Lounge Wear: My Magnum Opus of Sloth Couture

    When I think of Sigmund Freud, I don’t picture the sober father of psychoanalysis so much as a man presiding over an endless therapy session in which a poor soul reclines on a tufted couch, excavating their psyche with the zeal of a Siberian prisoner digging for coal. I tend to side with podcaster Katie Herzog here: all that navel spelunking doesn’t yield much juice for the squeeze. My mental health cure is more prosaic—get out of my head, do the dishes, help someone else, and remind myself that brooding isn’t a spiritual distinction but simply the human condition, dressed up in self-importance.

    That said, Freud remains a cultural heavyweight, a sort of St. Paul of the psyche. Both men dove into deep, uncharted waters: both charting neurosis and the divided self from different angles. Their remedies were at odds—St. Paul promised redemption; Freud essentially said, “There is no God. Buck up, buttercup.” But there’s always a third way. Perhaps we can podcast our way out of despair. That thought struck me as I read Rebecca Mead’s New Yorker profile of Bella Freud’s “Fashion Neurosis.” Sigmund’s great-granddaughter, Bella isn’t exactly a scholar of the old man’s work, but she leans into his therapy tropes with sly cosplay. Guests flop onto the proverbial couch, confess their quirks, addictions, and philosophies, and tie it all back to their fashion obsessions. Clothes become the psyche’s fabric, quite literally.

    As for me, Bella probably won’t be calling. My claim to fame is enjoying oatmeal for dinner. Still, if she ever asked, I’d come armed with a story. In kindergarten, I had my prized “Monkees pants,” green checkered flares with a radioactive sheen, worn proudly for Show and Tell as I belted out the Monkees’ theme song. Girls swooned, begged for autographs, and I was five going on Micky Dolenz. Then came my Hulk phase: mutilating brand-new jeans so it looked like my swelling muscles had shredded them. My parents adored this use of their clothing budget. Later, the bodybuilding years brought muscle shirts and tight jeans, followed by my “uniform” phase: gray golf shirts, boot-cut jeans, tennis shoes, repeated ad nauseam for three decades.

    My magnum opus, however, is what I call Triple Lounge Wear. A gray tank top and Champion shorts serve as daywear, pajamas, and gym attire—a holy trinity of frictionless fashion. Why cycle through outfits when you can be a one-man capsule collection of sloth and efficiency? 

    Naturally, no discussion of fashion would be complete without confessing my incurable diver watch obsession. My imagination is still shackled to childhood visions of Sean Connery suavely flashing a Submariner on a NATO strap, or Jacques Cousteau backstroking with porpoises while his orange-dial Doxa Sub 300 glowed like a miniature sun. Compared to that, what hope does any outfit of mine have? A diver watch isn’t an accessory—it’s the anchor, the crown jewel, the only thing saving me from looking like a man in oatmeal-stained gym shorts pretending he has style.

    Bella Freud would beam at my ingenuity, then lower her voice and ask, “So Jeff, tell me about your childhood.” And I’d answer, “Well, it started with the Monkees pants…”

  • Radical Boring: The Oatmeal-Based Lifestyle Brand No One Asked For

    Radical Boring: The Oatmeal-Based Lifestyle Brand No One Asked For

    Next month I’ll be 64, which apparently means my taste buds have joined AARP. My diet is now narrower than my tolerance for small talk: buckwheat groats, oatmeal (rolled or steel-cut, because why not keep things spicy), Greek yogurt with berries and honey, and peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches on dark bread. While normal humans dream of steak and champagne on a Paris-bound jet, I fantasize about oatmeal for dinner. Forget first class—I’m on the Oatmeal Express, and my only beverage service is dark roast coffee, soy milk, and sparkling water, which is just soda pretending it went to finishing school.

    I know what’s happening. I’m regressing. I crave mush, porridge, pablum—the kind of food that comes in jars with smiling cartoon fruit. My kettlebell workouts, five days a week, are my only defense. I sweat buckets, swing heavy weights, and imagine I look like a Viking—but in truth, it’s just a grown man clinging to his giant metal pacifier. Exercise has become my lullaby. When I collapse afterward, I feel less like a warrior and more like a sedated infant.

    Of course, at a family birthday party, one cousin reminded me that growth only happens when we leave our comfort zones. I nodded while thinking, No thanks, I’ve had enough character development for one lifetime. At this stage, I don’t want adventure. I want oatmeal. I don’t want novelty. I want predictability. I’m not only becoming a baby—I’m pioneering a whole new lifestyle brand called Radical Boring.

    My big act of rebellion? When my twins turn sixteen in six months, they will take my wife’s 2014 Accord, she’ll inherit my 2018 Accord, and I’ll step into the future—so long as the future, a 2026 Accord that comes in “canyon river blue.” My wife begged me not to get silver or gray again, so this is me living dangerously. Of course, I’ll rarely drive it. I’ll open the garage, admire the shiny paint, then close the door and scuttle back inside for a soothing bowl of oatmeal.

    My family laughs at me. They think I’m absurd, predictable, hopelessly domestic. But at least I’m consistent. And if authenticity means being true to yourself, then yes—I am authentically a 64-year-old content with my porridge, my pacifier workouts, and my canyon river blue Honda. Call it returning to the womb if you want. I call it destiny.

    And now, having confessed this ridiculous self-revelation, I find myself thinking of my literary kindred Ariel Levy and her An Abbreviated Life—a memoir I clearly need to revisit, if only to confirm that my brand of absurdity has precedents.

  • 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.

  • 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.