Cinemorphosis

Category: Confessions

  • My Midyear Top 5 Music Obsessions of 2025 (So Far)

    My Midyear Top 5 Music Obsessions of 2025 (So Far)

    Let’s call this what it is: a midyear soundtrack to my emotional needs, taste refinement, and irrational belief that a great song can still restore one’s faith in the universe. Below are five songs from 2025 that didn’t just catch my ear—they staged a full occupation of my psyche.

    1. Billie Eilish – “Wildflower”

    Boomers love to chant, “They don’t make music like this anymore,” usually while polishing their vinyl copies of Rumours and sipping overpriced Malbec. To which I say: Have you heard “Wildflower”? Billie Eilish wrote a melody so hauntingly beautiful and emotionally precise it might just slap Stevie Nicks across the astral plane. “Wildflower” isn’t nostalgic—it’s timeless, and it makes the whole “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” argument sound like a radio station that’s lost its signal.

    2. Miley Cyrus – “Flowers” (Demo Version)

    Forget the radio-polished, empowerment-anthem version designed for spin class playlists and morning talk shows. The demo is the real deal. Stripped down and raw, it sounds like Miley walked into the studio, ripped her ribcage open, and hit record. It’s not just about self-love—it’s a reckoning. A breakup song without the mascara, just bone-deep clarity and vocal grit. If the original was a brand campaign, the demo is the heartbreak behind it.

    3. Lana Del Rey & Father John Misty – “Let the Light In”

    This track is so beautiful it feels like eavesdropping on two fallen angels trying to talk each other back into heaven. I’m humbled, elated, and borderline offended by how good it is. If I’d played this song for Anthony Bourdain who once told KCRW’s Evan Kleinman that during his Applebee’s-induced existential spiral he lost faith in the human soul. I wish I could have played him “Let the Light In.” Perhaps he would have reconsidered the cosmic bleakness of mediocre mozzarella sticks. Lana and Misty have composed a shimmering argument for the existence of the human soul. It should be piped into the waiting room between this world and the next.

    4. Strawberry Guy – “As We Bloom”

    Strawberry Guy continues his gentle tyranny over my playlists. “As We Bloom” is another heart-melting, dew-soaked track that could have been transmitted from the dream-state of a lonely Victorian poet. He has the rare talent of making everything feel sacred and a little tragic, like a faded birthday card found in a drawer during a move. In vibe and texture, he’s a spiritual cousin to The Innocence Mission, and I say that with reverence.

    5. Olivia Dean – “Touching Toes”

    This song made me forget my age, my responsibilities, and that I’m not, in fact, swaying in slow motion through a desert cantina in the 1970s. “Touching Toes” is sultry, jazzy, and unselfconsciously whimsical—pure auditory flirtation. It gives me the same odd, disorienting confidence that Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” once offered: a delusion of magnetism and a sudden desire to wear silk and speak in metaphors. Olivia Dean makes me feel like maybe I am the moment.

  • The Forgotten Fleet: Memoirs of a Honda Hoarder

    The Forgotten Fleet: Memoirs of a Honda Hoarder

    Last night, my subconscious staged an intervention.

    In the dream, my family and I had relocated to a sprawling house perched at the edge of a forest—idyllic at first glance, but the driveway told another story. It had become a graveyard of Honda Accords. Not just one or two, but an entire archaeological dig of them: gleaming new models barely broken in, others half-eaten by moss and mulch, some peeking out from decaying leaf piles like forgotten Easter eggs, and one—yes, really—buried in the earth like a pharaoh’s chariot. Another Accord had somehow washed up near the beach, sun-faded and abandoned like a bloated sea lion.

    A kindly messenger—part real estate agent, part archangel—told my daughter and me about the beach-stranded Accord. So we climbed into an older model, the color of a liver spot, and headed to the coast. Upon arrival, we ditched that old heap to rescue another Accord of the exact same jaundiced hue. Predictably, the beach Accord was dead on arrival. My daughter and I, summoning the brute strength of Greek demigods, pushed it across the sand, up a mountain, and across California at warp speed—from Orange County to Simi Valley—as if towing the sins of my consumer past behind us.

    We paused at a cousin’s house, where iced tea and human needs awaited. My cousin, ever the concerned parent, confided that his son was wilting from loneliness. Without missing a beat, my daughter rang up a stunning actress—someone so luminous she made Instagram filters seem redundant. She showed up. So did half the neighborhood, offering baked goods in exchange for a glimpse at the sun goddess. One woman brought a cherry pie, trembling with reverence.

    As we continued northward, my joy curdled into anxiety. How many Accords had I bought over the years? Were there more hidden somewhere—collector’s editions with leather interiors and forgotten potential—lost to my Swiss cheese memory? Had I turned into the automotive equivalent of a hoarder monk, stacking sacred relics of midlife crises in the forest of my own forgetfulness? I awoke not with peace, but with regret, soothed only slightly by a tall, steaming mug of Sumatra roast, which I drank like a sacrament to sanity.

  • The Watch Habits of the Truly Deranged

    The Watch Habits of the Truly Deranged

    • You’ve sold and rebought the same Seiko twelve times, as if flipping it repeatedly will unlock a spiritual truth—or at least reduce the buyer’s remorse.
    • You use your Submariner bezel to time pasta, because naturally, a $12,000 tool watch was designed to ensure your rigatoni hits al dente.
    • You wear one watch exclusively for months while the other twelve sulk in a drawer, exiled as part of your emotional detox protocol.
    • You sleep with a watch on—not for timekeeping, but for comfort. It’s not horology anymore; it’s therapy. That watch is your blankie with a dial.
    • You buy back the same discontinued Seiko Monster you sold six years ago for seven times the original price, and feel a deep, almost religious sense of relief—like recovering a lost heirloom from a war-torn attic.
    • You curate a “State of the Collection” video for YouTube, omitting your secret stash of watches like a drunk hiding vodka in shampoo bottles. That drawer in the closet? Classified.
    • You lie about your watch count the way others lie about cholesterol. “Oh, maybe nine or ten,” you say, casually ignoring the drawer, the safe, the storage unit.
    • You experience wrist-rotation anxiety so paralyzing each morning, you consider wearing no watch at all—only to remember that’s what serial killers do.
    • You’ve nearly crashed your car admiring how the AR coating on your sapphire crystal plays with the sunlight. “Distracted driving” doesn’t cover it. This is horological hypnosis.
    • You fabricated a hurricane off the coast of Maui so your family would cancel vacation and you could redirect funds to a Planet Ocean Ultra Deep. You’ll confess the lie on your deathbed, right after asking for one last wrist shot.
  • My Watch Hobby Has Taught Me That Consumerism Can Become a Full-Time Job Resulting in Madness

    My Watch Hobby Has Taught Me That Consumerism Can Become a Full-Time Job Resulting in Madness

    Experience has taught me that one more watch could push me from “mild enthusiast” to full-blown horological lunatic. I currently own seven watches I like. Each serves a function, fills a niche, scratches an aesthetic itch. And yet, the siren song of three very specific timepieces keeps playing in my head: the Tudor Pelagos, the Seiko Astron SBXD025, and the Citizen Attesa CC4105-69E.

    These aren’t idle cravings. They’re fully staged daydreams with lighting, music, and a voiceover narrated by my inner Watch Demon. But I resist. And I resist for three very good reasons.

    First: Trying to fit more watches into my already-balanced rotation turns my so-called hobby into a logistical nightmare. It’s no longer joyful—it’s wrist-based Uber driving, shuttling watches in and out of rotation like I’m managing a fleet. I find myself resenting time itself for not giving me enough wrist hours to justify the collection. A hobby should not feel like an unpaid internship.

    Second: I fall into the delusion that this next purchase—the Pelagos, the Astron, the Attesa—will be the final watch, the one that ends the madness and ushers in a golden era of contentment and minimalist grace. But let’s be honest: feeding the Watch Demon only sharpens its teeth. Every new arrival rewires the brain for more dopamine hits, not less. It’s not a cure. It’s a catalyst.

    Third: Whenever I buy a new watch, something twisted happens—I begin to resent the ones I already own. Not because they’ve failed me, but because I need to invent reasons to justify their exit. The logic goes: “This new watch is more versatile,” or “I’ve outgrown that one.” Then I sell a beloved watch, feel instant regret, and enter the soul-destroying loop of rebuying what I never should have sold.

    So what’s the solution? Lately, a single thought has been rising above the noise like a lighthouse in the fog:
    “Jeff, put on your Tuna.”
    Specifically, my Seiko Tuna SBBN049—possibly the most salient, most “me” watch I own. When it’s on my wrist, I don’t think about the next acquisition. I don’t scroll listings or pace the floor of my psyche looking for the next horological fix. I’m just… good.

    Maybe that’s the Truth Path: stop chasing. Start wearing. Let the Tuna do its quiet, oversized magic and get back to the point of all this—joy, not inventory management.

  • Crying at the Sink: The Dishwashing Grammy Awards

    Crying at the Sink: The Dishwashing Grammy Awards

    Don’t ask me why, but there’s something about doing dishes after dinner that turns me into a soft-focus emotional wreck. Somewhere between the soap suds and the rinse cycle, I cue up Rickie Lee Jones’s “Living It Up”—one of my all-time favorite songs—and without fail, it punctures the heart like a stiletto dipped in nostalgia. Tonight, it brought on another weepy micro-moment, which means it’s time to officially give it The Most Likely to Make Me Cry from Too Much Beauty Award.

    This of course sent me spiraling into my own kitchen-sink Grammy ceremony, where I began handing out awards like a deranged emotional sommelier.

    • Todd Rundgren’s “Can We Still Be Friends” wins The Song That Makes You Recommit to Being a Half-Decent Human Being Award. It’s the sonic equivalent of an awkward apology after ruining Thanksgiving.
    • The Isley Brothers’ “Living for the Love of You” earns The Track Most Likely to Be Playing in Heaven When You Arrive Award—assuming heaven has good speakers and excellent taste.
    • Yes’s “And You and I” takes home The Sounds-Like-It-Was-Composed-by-Angels-on-a-Mountain-Top Award. I don’t know what dimension that song came from, but it wasn’t this one.
    • John Mayer’s “No Such Thing” is given The Makes You Happy to Be a Living, Breathing Fool Award. It’s that rare pop song that makes you want to fist-pump your own mediocrity.
    • The Sundays’ “You’re Not the Only One I Know” walks away with The Makes Sadness So Gorgeous You Forget to Be Upset Award. It’s a musical sigh pressed between lace and rain.

    I could keep going—my brain has a whole red carpet lined up—but I’ve got another episode of Sirens on Netflix to cry through. Turns out the best part of my day is a cross between dish soap, beautiful songs, and low-level existential unraveling. What a life.

  • The Vegan That Lives in My Head (and Nowhere Else)

    The Vegan That Lives in My Head (and Nowhere Else)

    At six a.m., mug in hand, I sat down at my desk with the smug satisfaction of a man pretending to be in control of his day—only to be ambushed by a large brown spider launching itself from my desk drawer like it was fleeing the FBI. It vanished into the shadows, and I was left stewing in the indignity of defeat. I didn’t catch it. Worse, for the second morning in a row, I couldn’t remember my dream. Something about a car near the ocean, a faceless authority figure mumbling instructions, and then—blank. Freud would be disappointed. I’m more annoyed.

    My dreams often involve cars. They also often involve the ocean. I suspect this means I’m perpetually trying to get somewhere, while simultaneously wanting to be swallowed by the Great Womb of the Deep. Birth, Death, and the Cycle of Life.

    Midway through my coffee, my teenage daughter wandered into my office, eyebrows raised in alarm as I recounted the spider saga and my failed dream recall. She showed the appropriate amount of concern, then casually announced she was heading to Starbucks for a chai latte. It’s comforting how the rituals of youth persist, even as their fathers spiral existentially over arachnids and unconscious symbolism.

    I banged out a new essay prompt for next semester—something about manufactured authenticity and influencer FOMO—then drove the girls to school, came back, and burned 805 calories in 61 minutes on the Schwinn Airdyne. Or as I’ve come to call it: The Misery Machine. This isn’t exercise. This is penance. Only those seeking redemption or working through unresolved guilt buy these medieval contraptions. The bike doesn’t offer health—it offers absolution.

    Post-shower weigh-in: 231. Still twenty pounds away from my goal, but less disgusting than I was yesterday, so—progress.

    Later, I drifted into my usual morning fantasy: becoming a vegan. No, not a preachy zealot in hemp sandals, but a serene, plant-based domestic monk, stirring lentils and sipping soy lattes like some morally superior Miyagi of meal prep. In this fantasy, I don’t haul home slabs of meat leaking blood onto Trader Joe’s paper bags. No. I have evolved.

    In this alternate timeline, breakfast is steel-cut oatmeal or buckwheat groats with walnuts, berries, soy milk, and a dash of protein powder. Lunch and dinner are identical—because I’m disciplined, not boring—a sacred Le Creuset Dutch oven bubbling with a Caribbean rice-and-beans concoction: quinoa or white rice, black beans, cubes of tempeh, coconut milk, tomato sauce, and enough spice to remind me I’m still alive. The afternoon snack is a tall glass of soy milk with a scoop of vegan protein, because the aspirational me is nothing if not consistent.

    Of course, this will never happen.

    My wife and daughters won’t eat this way. Neither, frankly, will I. I’ve known student-athletes who withered into pale husks trying to go vegan. Others have thrived and glowed like enlightened celery sticks. I, on the other hand, turn into a foggy-headed anemic with the energy of a depressed manatee. But the fantasy persists. This vegan version of me—let’s call him “The Better Me”—exists only in the realm of self-mythology, filed away with other fictional selves: The Novelist Who Writes Before Dawn, The Man Who Loves Yoga, and The Guy Who Only Checks His Phone Twice a Day.

    They’re all gathering dust in the mental trophy case labeled Deferred Dreams. To catalogue them all would require another post—and a second pot of coffee.

  • I’ve Become Leery of the Ronnie Coleman Effect in AI Writing

    I’ve Become Leery of the Ronnie Coleman Effect in AI Writing

    My college writing students and I have been collaborating with ChatGPT for over a year now. I’ve often been impressed with this writing platform. Provided I give very specific instructions and make it clear what kind of tone and persona I want, ChatGPT can perform in ways I can’t. It can’t make a turn of phrase and make language sing in ways that dwarf my own solid writing skills. 

    But recently, I’ve been leery of ChatGPT and have been eager to write without it. What I’ve noticed is that it can flex its prose muscles in impressive ways that I call the Ronnie Coleman Effect. Ronnie Coleman was a champion bodybuilder, arguably the best in his era, late 90s to early 2000s. At 290 pounds, his steroidal muscles exploded in ways that made him look impossibly superhuman. I was a natural bodybuilder in my youth. Coleman would blow me off the stage. Coleman’s 290 pounds to my 190 pounds is what my prose is compared to ChatGPT’s: I’m the natural, lean, almost boring bodybuilder while ChatGPT is the flexing, bulging Ronnie Coleman who steals all the attention. I’m simply overpowered by this AI platform. 

    However, there are downsides: AI overwrites, can obscure clarity, can be florid in nonsensical ways, can be grossly inaccurate, and can steal my confidence because it says, “You’re nothing compared to me,” and it can make me lazy because it whispers, “Just jot a few notes. I’ll take care of the rest.” 

    For this reason, I started writing without ChatGPT. I need to get out from under the oppressive Ronnie Coleman Effect and be human again. 

  • I Have No Illusions About Converting My Students to “The Ways of Literacy”

    I Have No Illusions About Converting My Students to “The Ways of Literacy”

    My college students admit that they barely read. They avoid books. They’ll skim an article. Their “cognitive load” is taken up by texting on their phones and watching TikTok and YouTube videos. They don’t have bandwidth for doing deep reading.

    Many of them were in the eighth grade during the pandemic. They lost close to two years of school, spent time on their phones and Chromebooks, and see ChatGPT as a godsend. They can outsource college instructors’ writing assignments and no longer have to worry about grammar or formatting. 

    Teaching college writing, I have to meet students where they are. I have to teach them rhetorical skills, critical thinking skills, and the transforming power of literacy, so I show them powerful arguments, and what makes them persuasive, and people who have found their higher selves through literacy, such as Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X, and the happiness derived from Cal Newport’s notion of “deep work” as an antidote to the despair and nihilism of popular culture’s default setting for cheap dopamine hits, immediate gratification, and meretricious consumer hype. 

    The good news is that my lessons resonate with the students evidenced by their engagement with class discussions. The less than good news is that these philosophical discussions don’t turn them into readers, don’t make them want to trade their phones and social media platforms for a novel or a biography, and don’t make them want to learn the finer points of rhetoric. 

    My students are smart, decent, reasonable, and pragmatic. They learn what they feel is essential to adapt to life’s challenges. Doing a deep dive into reading and writing doesn’t seem that essential to them even though they’ll acknowledge many of the writers and writing samples I present to them are impressive and worthy of admiration. 

    My students seem to appreciate me for giving them an entertaining presentation and for having made the effort to sell literacy as an essential tool for becoming our aspirational selves, but at the end of the day, they focus on getting their homework done as efficiently as possible, working a part-time job to pay the bills, enjoying their friendships, and nurturing their romantic interest. 

    The unspoken agreement between my students and me is that I will be entertaining and enthusiastic about my subject for 90 minutes, but I will not have any delusions about converting them to The Ways of Literacy. That is a teacher’s fantasy, made even more elusive in the AI Age. 

  • The Handwriting Is on the Wall for Writing Instructors Like Myself

    The Handwriting Is on the Wall for Writing Instructors Like Myself

    There’s a cliché I’ve avoided all my life because I’m supposed to be offended by cliches. I teach college writing. But now, God help me, I must say it: I see the handwriting on the wall. And it’s blinking in algorithmic neon and blinding my eyes.

    I’ve taught college writing for forty years. My wife, a fellow lifer in the trenches, has clocked twenty-five teaching sixth and seventh graders. Like other teachers, we got caught off-guard by AI writing platforms. We’re now staring down the barrel of obsolescence while AI platforms give us an imperious smile and say, “We’ve got this now.”

    Try crafting an “AI-resistant” assignment. Go ahead. Ask students to conduct interviews, keep journals, write about memories. They’ll feed your prompt into ChatGPT and create an AI interview, journal entry, and personal reflection that has all the depth and soul of stale Pop-Tart. You squint your eyes at these AI responses, and you can tell something isn’t right. They look sort of real but have a robotic element about them. Your AI-detecting software isn’t reliable so you refrain from making accusations. 

    When I tell my wife I feel that my job is in danger, she shrugs and says there’s little we can do. The toothpaste is out of the tube. There’s no going back. 

    I suppose my wife will be a glorified camp counselor with grading software. For me, it will be different. I teach college. I’ll have to attend a re-education camp dressed up as “professional development.” I’ll have to learn how to teach students to prompt AI like Vegas magicians—how to trick it into coherence, how to interrogate its biases. Writing classes will be rebranded as Prompt Engineering.”

    At sixty-three, I’m no fool. I know what happens to tired draft horses when the carriage goes electric. I’ve seen the pasture. I can smell the industrial glue. And I’m not alone. My colleagues—bright, literate, and increasingly demoralized—mutter the same bitter mantra: “We are the AI police. And the criminals are always one jailbreak ahead.”

  • The Rebranding of College Writing Instructors as Prompt Engineers

    The Rebranding of College Writing Instructors as Prompt Engineers

    There’s a cliché I’ve sidestepped for decades, the kind of phrase I’ve red-penned into oblivion in freshman essays. But now, God help me, I must say it: I see the handwriting on the wall. And it’s written in 72-point sans serif, blinking in algorithmic neon.

    I’ve taught college writing for forty years. My wife, a fellow lifer in the trenches, has clocked twenty-five teaching sixth and seventh graders. Between us, we’ve marked enough essays to wallpaper the Taj Mahal. And yet here we are, staring down the barrel of obsolescence while AI platforms politely tap us on the shoulder and whisper, “We’ve got this now.”

    Try crafting an “AI-resistant” assignment. Go ahead. Ask students to conduct interviews, keep journals, write about memories. They’ll feed your prompt into ChatGPT with the finesse of a hedge fund trader moving capital offshore. The result? A flawlessly ghostwritten confession by a bot with a stunning grasp of emotional trauma and a suspicious lack of typos.

    Middle school teachers, my wife says, are on their way to becoming glorified camp counselors with grading software. As for us college instructors, we’ll be lucky to avoid re-education camps dressed up as “professional development.” The new job? Teaching students how to prompt AI like Vegas magicians—how to trick it into coherence, how to interrogate its biases, how to extract signal from synthetic noise. Critical thinking rebranded as Prompt Engineering.

    Gone are the days of unpacking the psychic inertia of J. Alfred Prufrock or peeling back the grim cultural criticism of Coetzee’s Disgrace. Now it’s Kahoot quizzes and real-time prompt battles. Welcome to Gamified Rhetoric 101. Your syllabus: Minecraft meets Brave New World.

    At sixty-three, I’m no fool. I know what happens to tired draft horses when the carriage goes electric. I’ve seen the pasture. I can smell the industrial glue. And I’m not alone. My colleagues—bright, literate, and increasingly demoralized—mutter the same bitter mantra: “We are the AI police. And the criminals are always one jailbreak ahead.”

    We keep saying we need to “stop the bleeding,” another cliché I’d normally bin. But here I am, bleeding clichés like a wounded soldier of the Enlightenment, fighting off the Age of Ozempification—a term I’ve coined to describe the creeping automation of everything from weight loss to wit. We’re not writing anymore; we’re curating prompts. We’re not thinking; we’re optimizing.

    This isn’t pessimism. It’s clarity. And if clarity means leaning on a cliché, so be it.