Cinemorphosis

Category: Confessions

  • Life Is Uncertain. Porridge Is Not

    Life Is Uncertain. Porridge Is Not

    For the past week my appetite has surged like a rogue wave. That could mean several things, none of them particularly flattering. Perhaps I’m medicating stress with food. Perhaps there are subterranean stress triggers rumbling beneath the surface that I haven’t identified yet. Life, after all, provides a constant background hum of anxiety, and it’s difficult to distinguish ordinary daily strain from something more corrosive.

    Retirement is hovering in the distance like a financial fog bank. I’ve been emailing HR about the price of keeping my Kaiser coverage after I retire versus moving to my wife’s more modest plan. Her school pays less than mine, which means we’re staring at something in the neighborhood of $1,500 a month once dental and vision enter the scene. Retirement, which is supposed to represent liberation, suddenly looks like a complicated negotiation with spreadsheets, identity, and self-worth. And apparently my body’s response to this existential accounting exercise is simple: eat more chicken.

    There is, at present, a dangerous quantity of takeout chicken in this house. Fried chicken. Roasted chicken. Greasy, seductive chicken lounging in the refrigerator like a gang of edible hoodlums. I open the fridge intending to take a small, respectable bite. Five minutes later I’m standing there gnawing through a drumstick like a raccoon that has discovered civilization. The aftermath is predictable: gluttony followed immediately by anxiety.

    The anxiety, unfortunately, does not arrive alone. It brings a surveillance drone. I watch myself overeating as if my consciousness has sprouted a third eye hovering above the scene like a judgmental security camera. I am both the criminal and the detective. The more I watch myself eat, the more anxious I become. The more anxious I become, the more I eat. I have achieved what behavioral psychologists might politely call a closed loop of misery.

    Action is required.

    My proposed solution is radical in its simplicity: three meals a day, no snacking. Breakfast will be steel-cut oatmeal or buckwheat groats fortified with protein powder. Lunch will be rolled oats with yogurt and more protein powder. Dinner will consist of a sensible portion of protein, vegetables, and an apple. It is not glamorous, but glamour is precisely the problem.

    Oatmeal comforts me. It possesses the mild, reassuring neutrality of something that has no ambitions beyond keeping you alive. Perhaps it is a kind of surrogate baby food. Perhaps the approach of retirement has triggered a mild regression in which my brain seeks the emotional equivalent of warm porridge and a quiet afternoon nap. As I drift deeper into my mid-sixties, it is entirely possible that my culinary philosophy is reverting to something suitable for a kindly monastery.

    Life is uncertain. Porridge is not.

    I like the predictability of three meals a day involving some form of oatmeal. I like the idea of owning a Lenovo ThinkPad, which is the oatmeal of computers. I like the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry, which are the oatmeal of the automobile world. And I like my solar atomic G-Shocks, which are the oatmeal of timepieces—durable, accurate, incapable of drama.

    If possible, I would like to swim inside a large industrial vat of oatmeal, floating peacefully while the chaos of the modern world clangs harmlessly against the outside of the tank.

    Unfortunately, hostile forces surround the vat.

    My daughters campaign relentlessly for takeout: Dave’s Hot Chicken, Wingstop, Panda Express. Holiday gatherings appear with enough pies and brownies to launch a regional bakery franchise. A man can only resist these temptations for so long before the walls of discipline begin to buckle.

    Meanwhile, medical costs continue their relentless ascent, and retirement funds tremble nervously as global markets perform their daily interpretive dance of geopolitical uncertainty.

    Under such circumstances I find myself clinging to a personal doctrine I’ve begun to call The Porridge Principle: the instinct to confront anxiety by retreating into humble, reliable technologies and routines that promise frictionless predictability. Oatmeal breakfasts. ThinkPad laptops. Honda sedans. Solar atomic watches. These objects do not thrill, but they do not betray.

    When the world becomes chaotic, the mind begins searching for tools and rituals that behave exactly the same way every day.

    So that is the plan.

    Trader Joe’s opens in an hour. I will buy groceries for my family and a heroic supply of oatmeal. The campaign against uncertainty has begun.

    Pray for me.

  • Deacon Blues Syndrome and Watch Addiction

    Deacon Blues Syndrome and Watch Addiction

    You felt a flash of embarrassment the other day when a thought arrived that should have been obvious years ago. The tension you carry around your watch collection—the way you analyze every purchase, every rotation, every sale as if it were a decisive move in a championship match—does not come from the watches themselves. It comes from loneliness. In the blunt language of the present moment: you don’t quite have a life.

    On paper, you appear responsible enough. You try to meet the expectations placed upon you. You pay attention to your finances. You maintain your fitness routine. You show up for your marriage and your children. Yet beneath these obligations runs a quieter truth: you spend most of your life inside your own head. You worry. You brood. You sometimes imagine that life has shortchanged you—that the grand parade of glory you expected never arrived. No brass band, no confetti. Just the steady hum of ordinary days.

    In this sense you resemble the narrator of Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” a man who moves through one life while dreaming of another. Your version of that alternate world happens to be your hobby. Watches provide a parallel universe—one filled with purity, precision, and tidy solutions. In that world you can become the connoisseur, the signal hunter, the disciplined curator of perfect instruments. It is a carefully engineered emotional ecosystem, designed to distract you from the messy ambiguities of real life. The danger, of course, is expecting this world to deliver something it was never built to provide.

    Call this condition Deacon Blues Syndrome. Borrowing from the Steely Dan narrator who imagines himself transformed into a romantic alter ego, the term describes the habit of living an ordinary life while mentally inhabiting a heroic or purified version of oneself. The watch obsessive becomes the protagonist of this private mythology. Meanwhile, the real world remains stubbornly ordinary, leaving the hobby to absorb the emotional energy of ambitions that never quite found their stage.

    This realization may sound harsh, but harshness is not the point. It is simply honesty. Just as Rainer Maria Rilke wrote Letters to a Young Poet to encourage solitude, self-examination, and inner clarity, those of us who struggle with watch addiction might benefit from something similar—Letters to Broken Watch Addicts. The purpose of such letters would not be cruelty or ridicule. Their purpose would be clarity: to illuminate the psychological currents that drive the obsession and, perhaps, to open the door to a quieter, more deliberate way of living.

    Such explorations are in my book The Man Who Lost His Mind to Watches.

  • A Frogman Alone on the Steel Altar

    A Frogman Alone on the Steel Altar

    This industrial T-bar now stands on my windowsill like a small piece of plumbing that wandered indoors and found religion. Its official purpose is noble: give my G-Shock Frogman plenty of sunlight for its solar battery and a clear path for the atomic time signal drifting across the continent from Colorado. In theory it is a piece of practical engineering. In reality it looks suspiciously like a shrine.

    And there, hanging from the crossbeam, is the Frogman.

    Alone.

    It dangles from the steel arm like a black armored bat waiting for nightfall, absorbing sunlight by day and atomic whispers by midnight. The watch is perfectly content with its arrangement. I’m the one feeling uneasy. A single watch hanging from a rack designed to hold several feels like the opening chapter of a story that ends with six of them lined up like tactical fruit.

    Which raises an uncomfortable question: have I just installed the infrastructure for a collection?

    The GW-7900 is scheduled to arrive in about five days, which means the Frogman’s loneliness will soon be cured. Not that I’m counting, of course. That would imply anticipation. This is merely a logistical observation. Five days. Give or take a few hours.

    This Industrial T-Bar for my G-Shock Frogman should provide it with good lighting for solar battery and maximize the atomic radio signal. But does that Frogman look lonely up there. I fear this T-Bar may be setting the predicate for a G-Shock collection. The GW-7900 arrives in about 5 days, but who’s counting?

  • Collector’s Paradox

    Collector’s Paradox

    I sometimes imagine the perfect end state of my G-Shock hobby: four watches rotating peacefully through my week like planets in a stable orbit. The lineup is already clear in my mind. The Frogman GWF-1000. The Rescue GW-7900. The Three-Eyed Triple Graph GW-6900. And the Frogman GWF-D1000B. Four machines, each with a distinct personality, each capable of carrying the entire hobby on its shoulders without needing help from a dozen cousins.

    In theory, that sounds like serenity.

    But there’s a catch.

    A modest four-watch rotation brings peace, but it also brings something else: the end of discovery. And discovery is half the fun. The moment the collection becomes complete, the hunt quietly packs its bags and leaves town.

    This is where the trouble begins.

    Inside my head two different personalities are negotiating, and neither one intends to surrender easily. One personality wants order. The other wants novelty. One wants a finished system; the other wants an endless frontier.

    The first personality is the Curator. The Curator wants a tidy garage with four perfectly chosen machines parked inside. He wants familiarity. He wants mastery. He wants watches whose buttons, modules, and quirks are so well known they stop feeling like gadgets and start feeling like companions. In the Curator’s world, the hobby becomes calm. Predictable. Comfortable.

    But the Curator’s paradise has a downside: once the system is finished, the hunt is over.

    And the hunt is intoxicating.

    That’s where the Explorer enters the picture. The Explorer lives for discovery. He watches reviews. He compares modules. He learns about obscure models produced in tiny Japanese batches fifteen years ago. He imagines how each watch might fit into his life like a missing puzzle piece. The excitement is not really about owning the watch—it’s about the possibility of it.

    Discovery delivers a small dopamine rush.

    But discovery has a hidden clause buried in the contract: every discovery whispers the same seductive suggestion—You should own this.

    When that suggestion is obeyed too often, the collection begins to swell. And when the collection swells, the hobby begins to generate friction. Watches compete for wrist time. Drawers fill up. Decisions multiply. The collection slowly transforms from a playground into an inventory system.

    The very activity that made the hobby thrilling begins to make it stressful.

    This is the Collector’s Paradox.

    Discovery is the fuel that powers the hobby. But discovery also leads to accumulation. Accumulation eventually produces clutter, decision fatigue, and the creeping sense that the watches are managing the collector instead of the other way around.

    To escape that stress, the collector dreams of a small, perfectly balanced collection—four watches rotating peacefully like a well-tuned engine.

    But here’s the paradox: the moment the collection feels complete, the discovery that made the hobby exciting begins to disappear.

    Discovery creates excitement but leads to accumulation.
    Restraint creates peace but risks boredom.

    And the collector finds himself standing between two competing instincts: the Curator, who wants a finished system, and the Explorer, who wants endless possibility.

    One way out of this trap may be to admit that I’m actually practicing two different hobbies at the same time.

    One hobby is ownership—the watches I actually live with. The small rotation that occupies my wrist and my watch box.

    The other hobby is exploration—the endless universe of watches I can study, admire, and analyze without needing to buy them.

    Separating those two activities may be the key to keeping the hobby alive without letting it metastasize.

    This is not easy in the world of G-Shock. G-Shock culture is a discovery machine. Hundreds of models. Endless colorways. Limited editions popping up like mushrooms after rain. The watches are affordable enough that buying one rarely feels catastrophic, and the community itself celebrates acquisition like a team sport.

    The Explorer inside a collector can run wild in that environment.

    But the fact that I’m even imagining a four-watch rotation suggests something interesting about where I am psychologically. The Curator inside me is gaining strength. Many collectors never reach that stage. They remain permanently trapped in the thrill of acquisition.

    The anxiety I’m feeling may actually be a sign that I’m trying to bring the hobby under control rather than letting it control me.

    And that leads to a possible next stage of the hobby: Observational Collecting.

    In Observational Collecting, curiosity and acquisition finally separate. Watches are still studied. Still admired. Still discussed. But they are no longer automatic candidates for purchase.

    The central question of the hobby quietly changes.

    Instead of asking, “Should I buy this watch?” I begin asking, “Isn’t that an interesting watch?”

    The curiosity remains alive, but the compulsion to acquire loosens its grip.

    Discovery doesn’t disappear. It simply stops demanding ownership as the price of admission.

    And if that shift finally takes hold, the hobby may achieve something collectors rarely experience.

    Peace.

  • The G-Shock Multiband 6 Salvation Fantasy

    The G-Shock Multiband 6 Salvation Fantasy

    Pascal once observed that man cannot sit quietly in his room. Leave him alone with his thoughts and he begins to itch. Mortality looms. Meaning feels slippery. Silence becomes unbearable. So he reaches for distraction—baubles, upgrades, shiny mechanical companions that promise significance if only he can tighten one more screw or polish one more bezel.

    Call this Pascalian Gadget Panic: the modern expression of Pascal’s insight that when faced with the vague terror of existence, a man will anesthetize himself with objects. Radios. Cameras. Knives. Mechanical divers. G-Shocks. The object rotates through the years like a carousel horse, but the agitation underneath remains faithfully employed.

    Consider a suburban man in reasonably good health who nonetheless struggles with discipline, boundaries, and the mild chaos of his inner life. Spiritual philosophy eludes him. Self-knowledge feels slippery. Relationships are uneven terrain. Faced with this fog, he does what many modern men do.

    He buys toys.

    In his case, the toys are watches.

    For twenty years he labors happily in the vineyards of mechanical divers—Seikos mostly—fine steel contraptions that tick like tiny diesel engines beneath sapphire glass. The collection eventually reaches a comfortable plateau: curated, restrained, almost dignified.

    And then, inexplicably, he loses interest.

    The mechanical divers are quietly retired to their watch box like aging prizefighters. In their place emerges a new obsession: G-Shocks, but only of a very specific species—digital, solar-powered, atomic-synchronized, strapped in rubber armor like tiny tanks.

    Four commandments define the new religion:
    Tough Solar.
    Multiband 6 Atomic.
    Digital-only display.
    Rubber straps.

    One madness has been replaced with another, though the patient insists this is progress.

    To maintain psychological order, he compartmentalizes. The mechanical divers remain sealed in their box like museum artifacts. The G-Shocks, however, require their own ecosystem.

    Enter the Industrial Pipe Shrine.

    This object began life as a two-tier industrial pipe jewelry stand, the sort of thing normally used to hang headphones or necklaces. But in this household it has been promoted to sacred architecture. It sits reverently on a windowsill each night so the watches may commune with the atomic time signal emanating from Fort Collins, Colorado.

    To the uninitiated, it looks like plumbing hardware assembled by a bored welder.

    To the devotee, it is a receiving station of cosmic precision.

    Each night the G-Shocks dangle from the steel arms like metallic fruit awaiting revelation. Somewhere in Colorado a radio transmitter hums. Somewhere in the suburban night a man sleeps. And somewhere between them invisible time signals pass through drywall and glass until they arrive inside the tiny ferrite antenna hidden in a digital watch.

    When the signal locks in, the man experiences what can only be called the Multiband-6 Salvation Fantasy.

    For a brief moment the universe feels orderly. Accurate. Aligned. The watch has synchronized itself with atomic time. Solar cells sip daylight. Precision has been achieved.

    The feeling of control is intoxicating.

    Unfortunately, it lasts about as long as the next YouTube review.

    When members of the G-Shock community encounter this newly converted soul, they greet him with cheerful recognition.

    “Congratulations,” they say. “You’ve been G-Shocked.”

    The phrase functions like a baptism. The initiate is welcomed into a brotherhood of people who understand the deep satisfaction of armored watches, radio synchronization, and the quiet glow of solar charging indicators.

    At this moment the man realizes something unsettling: his geekdom has intensified

    Part of him embraces the absurdity. The watches are inexpensive. The hobby is harmless. Why not laugh at himself and enjoy the ride?

    But another part of him wonders whether something darker is unfolding.

    Is this, perhaps, the arrival of the Jungian Shadow—the neglected, obsessive part of the psyche now expressing itself through tactical wristwear?

    Will the Shadow politely stop at three G-Shocks?

    Or will it grow ambitious—multiplying into a monstrous collection that colonizes dresser drawers, nightstands, gym bags, glove compartments, and every horizontal surface in the home?

    Disturbed by these questions, the man attempts a strategic retreat. He throws himself into his other pursuits: bodybuilding, physical culture, literature, television, film.

    These distractions provide temporary relief.

    But the G-Shock Shadow is patient.

    Soon he is back on YouTube watching reviews of obscure Japanese models. He is compiling wish lists. He is studying signal reception strategies.

    Late at night he imagines the watches hanging from the steel arms of his T-bone pipe stand.

    And in darker moments he sees them differently.

    Not as tools.

    But as vampire bats—black, armored creatures dangling upside down, waiting for him to drift into sleep so they can descend silently and drink his blood.

    When he wakes in the morning, they will still be there on the windowsill.

    Perfectly synchronized.

    And waiting.

  • The Signal Hunter: From Vintage Radios to Atomic G-Shocks

    The Signal Hunter: From Vintage Radios to Atomic G-Shocks

    For a long time before I became a watch obsessive, I was a radio obsessive. This was the early 2000s, when my idea of a thrilling evening involved testing AM sensitivity and comparing FM clarity the way sommeliers compare Burgundy. I developed an unhealthy admiration for 1960s and 70s Sony and Panasonic radios—machines that looked as if NASA engineers had been given permission to design living-room furniture.

    That obsession never really left. I still keep half a dozen high-end Tecsun radios scattered around the house like electronic houseplants. One in the kitchen. One in the bedroom. One in the garage. Each quietly sipping signals from the air.

    Over the next two decades my attention drifted from radios to watches, and not modest watches either. I assembled a small stable of Seiko mechanical divers, some pushing well north of three thousand dollars. They were beautiful machines—tiny brass orchestras ticking away beneath sapphire glass.

    Then, about a month ago, something strange happened. I unplugged emotionally from the mechanicals and wandered into the strange, glowing world of G-Shock Multiband-6 atomic watches.

    And to my surprise, I’m having more fun with this hobby than I ever did before.

    These watches cost a fraction of my mechanical divers. Yet I’m connecting with them more deeply. That should bother me. It doesn’t.

    But let’s not dramatize this as some kind of betrayal of my mechanical diver heritage. This is not treason. It’s zoning.

    Think of it like Jay Leno’s Big Dog Garage near the Burbank airport. Leno divides his collection between vintage machines and modern ones. Two different eras. Two different moods.

    My watch world now works the same way.

    On one side of the garage sit my mechanical divers. They’re the horological equivalent of a 1959 BMW 507 convertible with a four-speed manual. When I strap one on, it’s like taking a country drive through nostalgia. The wind is loud. The ride is bumpy. The engine chatters like a coffee grinder full of marbles.

    And occasionally, that experience is glorious.

    But as the years pile up, those drives become less frequent. The wind noise, the rattling, the mechanical fussiness—eventually the romance demands a bit more patience than my bones want to give.

    Now walk across the garage.

    Here you’ll find the modern fleet: my Multiband-6 G-Shocks.

    These are the Honda, Lexus, and BMW sedans of the watch world. Smooth handling. Effortless precision. A cabin so insulated from chaos that time itself arrives wirelessly in the middle of the night.

    Moving between a G-Shock and a mechanical diver is like stepping from a luxury sedan into a vintage convertible. Two different universes. Neither one replaces the other. You simply choose which universe you feel like visiting.

    And as my eyes grow older and slightly crankier, I can already see where I may end up parking more often: something like the G-Shock Mudman GW-9500 with a big positive display.

    Positive display only, mind you. Negative displays are pure muscle-flex cosplay. I already get plenty of testosterone from the armored tank aesthetic of G-Shock design. I don’t need the digits hiding in a cave as well.

    But here’s the deeper truth.

    My attraction to Multiband-6 watches has quietly returned me to my radio roots.

    The vintage radio hobby and the atomic watch hobby attract the same personality type. They scratch the same itch.

    Both revolve around the quiet thrill of pulling invisible signals out of the air.

    In that sense, I am what I like to call a Signal Hunter.

    A signal hunter doesn’t simply collect equipment. He collects moments of reception. The tiny surge of satisfaction when a device—a Sony shortwave radio or a G-Shock atomic watch—locks onto something traveling through the ether.

    The world is whispering signals constantly. Most people never notice.

    But if you have the right instrument, the air suddenly comes alive.

    To improve my odds of catching those signals, I recently ordered an industrial pipe jewelry and headphone stand. Apparently many G-Shock owners swear that letting the watch rest overnight on a piece of metal—like a pipe or curtain rod—helps the antenna catch the atomic time signal more reliably.

    The moment I read this, resistance was futile. I ordered the stand immediately.

    Because suddenly I was six years old again.

    I had my Batman Bat-Signal flashlight. I had my decoder ring. And the universe was sending secret messages again.

    Syncing my G-Shocks has become a nightly ritual.

    And rituals are my natural habitat.

    Coffee. Oatmeal. Protein powder. Kettlebells. Mechanical watch winding. Atomic watch syncing.

    Different objects.

    Same impulse.

    Order the world. Listen closely. Catch the signal.

  • The Day the G-Shock Frogman Hired Security

    The Day the G-Shock Frogman Hired Security

    Owning a single G-Shock—the mighty Frogman GWF-1000, no less—has taught me several humbling lessons about the realities of atomic timekeeping and solar-powered heroism.

    Lesson one: one Multiband-6 watch, even a legendary one, is not enough.

    I learned this during the night of Daylight Saving Time, when my Frogman—strapped proudly to my wrist—failed to synchronize with the atomic signal from Colorado. The problem, as I later realized, was strategic error. The watch should have been resting nobly on the windowsill, antenna pointed toward the Rocky Mountains, quietly listening for the midnight radio whisper from the WWVB tower. Instead, it was trapped on my wrist like a submarine trying to receive satellite signals from inside a cave.

    Lesson two: the Frogman occasionally deserves a night off.

    The solar battery is hardy, but I have a habit of activating the backlight like a man signaling aircraft during a blackout. Letting the watch rest on the windowsill overnight gives it two gifts: sunlight recharge during the day and atomic calibration during the night.

    Lesson three: there are places where wearing the Frogman is unnecessarily risky. Airports. Crowded cities. Questionable neighborhoods. Situations where theft, damage, or simple bad luck might separate a man from his amphibious masterpiece.

    These revelations led to an unavoidable conclusion: the Frogman needed protection.

    Enter the G-Shock GW-7900, acquired for the almost suspiciously reasonable price of $110. A watch this loyal and hardworking cannot remain nameless, so I have given it a title worthy of its mission: The Protector.

    Now the system is simple. Frogman and Protector—a tag team.

    The Protector belongs to a broader category I call Bodyguard Watches: rugged backup watches deployed when the owner wishes to preserve the dignity, resale value, or physical safety of a more expensive timepiece. The bodyguard absorbs scratches, suspicion, and general abuse while the principal remains comfortably out of harm’s way.

    I briefly considered naming the GW-7900 “The Bodyguard,” but that sounded less like a watch and more like a brand of anti-perspirant.

    So the name stands.

    The Frogman commands.
    The Protector takes the hits.

  • The Day Grief Turned Into Courage at Canyon High School

    The Day Grief Turned Into Courage at Canyon High School

    This happened about fifty years ago, so forgive me if some of the details have softened around the edges. Memory fades, but certain moments burn themselves into the mind so deeply that time cannot erase them. This is one of those moments.

    I was fourteen, a freshman at Canyon High School. It was during PE, just before lunch, and we were on the outdoor basketball courts. The courts sat beside a grassy field that sloped down into a steep canyon. A narrow trail zigzagged up the canyon wall toward a quiet residential neighborhood above us.

    The trail had its regular occupants: the self-appointed tough guys who preferred ditching PE to playing sports. They would lean on the canyon tiers like spectators in cheap seats, laughing at the rest of us for following the rules.

    One of them was a loudmouth whose name I’ve forgotten. Let’s call him Jeremy.

    That day Jeremy and his friends stood above us on the canyon trail, tossing dirt clods down onto the courts. Most of them missed, but one landed close enough to sting the air around my friend Mark Redman.

    Mark stood out among us. He was over six feet tall, lean and muscular, with long black wavy hair that brushed his shoulders. He ran track and threw the javelin. Quiet, mostly to himself. My friends had recently told me that Mark had just lost a parent. I don’t remember whether it was his mother or father, but I remember the grief in his eyes when I offered my condolences.

    When the dirt clod nearly struck him, Mark looked up and calmly told Jeremy to cut it out.

    Jeremy grinned and shouted something cruel back down. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was the kind of remark meant to wound—something low and cheap.

    Then something changed.

    Mark went perfectly still. His eyes locked onto Jeremy. The expression on his face shifted into something I will never forget: fury mixed with resolve, the kind of cold certainty that comes when a man has decided exactly what must happen next.

    Without a word he tore off his tank top, balled it up, and started climbing the canyon.

    The transformation stunned everyone.

    But it wasn’t only Mark who transformed. So did Jeremy. His grin vanished. His mouth hung open as he watched Mark coming toward him. In that instant he understood the situation perfectly. He could run, but Mark was faster. He could fight, but Mark was animated by a courage Jeremy would never have. So Jeremy did the only thing left to him.

    He stood there and waited.

    When Mark reached him, Jeremy made a weak attempt to defend himself—more out of pride than hope. It lasted only seconds. Mark pummeled Jeremy to the ground, delivered the message clearly, and told him never to treat him that way again.

    Then, without celebration or swagger, Mark walked back down the canyon, disappeared into the locker room, and left the rest of us standing there in stunned silence.

    Over the years I’ve thought about that moment often. Watching a grieving young man summon that kind of conviction gives me a kind of moral clarity that has stayed with me. In a world that often feels confused and chaotic, I remember the look on Mark’s face that day.

    Mark, wherever you are, I have never forgotten you.

  • Why My Neighbors Saw a Man in Pajamas Pointing a G-Shock Frogman at the Heavens

    Why My Neighbors Saw a Man in Pajamas Pointing a G-Shock Frogman at the Heavens

    Last night I went to bed wearing my trusty G-Shock Frogman GWF-1000, fully expecting it to perform its quiet nightly miracle: synchronize itself with the atomic clock in Colorado and glide effortlessly into Daylight Saving Time. The watch is, after all, marketed as a technological marvel—solar-powered, radio-controlled, and rugged enough to survive the Mariana Trench. Surely a modest seasonal time change would present no difficulty.

    At three in the morning I woke up for my traditional pilgrimage to the bathroom. Alexa informed me it was 3:00 a.m. My Frogman, however, insisted it was 2:00. The great amphibian had failed. The atomic signal from Colorado had apparently skipped my wrist entirely. When I woke up again at six for breakfast, the Frogman still clung stubbornly to 5:00. My heart sank. The watch I had imagined as a cybernetic superhero was, in fact, a mere mortal—another electronic device at the mercy of radio reception.

    After breakfast I decided to intervene. I confirmed the watch was set to receive the signal automatically and then attempted four manual syncs. Each attempt ended in humiliation: ERR. The signal indicator stubbornly displayed L1, the horological equivalent of a whisper. I tried the front patio. I tried the backyard. Still L1. At that point the situation escalated from casual troubleshooting to full-scale field operation.

    With the Frogman draped ceremoniously over my daughter’s oversized yellow duck squishy, dressed in blue plaid pajama bottoms and a grey T-shirt, I marched into the middle of the street like a man conducting an amateur radio experiment. I walked slow circles, rotating the watch like a sacred artifact, watching the signal meter with the concentration of a NASA engineer awaiting telemetry. At last the screen flickered: L3. Full signal. While a group of worm-eating crows nearby cackled at the spectacle, I wondered if my neighbors were peering through their curtains thinking, “I knew he was crazy all along. This confirms it.”

    Five minutes later the watch synchronized. Atomic time flowed once again from Colorado to my wrist, and the harmony of the cosmos was restored.

    Still, the episode leaves me with questions. Would the Frogman have corrected itself within a day or two if I had simply left it alone? Or was my early-morning expedition into the street the necessary act that secured the precious L3 signal?

    Another thought occurs to me. This operation was manageable with a single G-Shock. But what if I owned half a dozen Multiband-6 models? Twice a year I might find myself conducting a small civic ceremony in the middle of the road, rotating watches toward the northeast like a priest consulting celestial omens. The ritual would deserve a proper name: The Atomic Pilgrimage—the journey undertaken by the devoted G-Shock owner who abandons the domestic safety of patios and kitchens in search of the elusive WWVB signal.

    The experience has made me reconsider expanding my G-Shock collection. And yet, if I’m honest, a small part of my inner child found the whole adventure glorious—like standing in the backyard with a toy rocketship, waiting for mission control at NASA to say, “Signal acquired.”

  • Frogman Monstrosity Acceptance

    Frogman Monstrosity Acceptance

    I’ve tried to be candid about where my watch hobby is headed. For years I lived in the land of mechanical divers—those charming little machines that require winding, adjusting, and periodic visits to a watchmaker who looks at you the way a veterinarian looks at a sick horse. Lately, however, I seem to be drifting toward a different ecosystem: Multiband 6 atomic time delivered by my G-Shock Frogman, a watch that feeds on sunlight and quietly synchronizes itself with atomic clocks while I sleep. It is difficult to compete with a device that performs its duties with the calm efficiency of a Swiss train conductor who never needs coffee. The responses to this confession have been varied. Some readers nod knowingly and say they went through the same conversion. Their mechanical watches now sit motionless in drawers like retired prizefighters who once thrilled crowds but now spend their days remembering the old days. One friend is currently wandering around Thailand with a GW-5000U on his wrist and reports a level of contentment normally associated with Buddhist monks. Others have taken the opposite path and begun collecting Frogman models the way medieval villagers stockpiled shields before a siege, as if surrounding themselves with these massive amphibious contraptions might repel the chaos of modern life.

    And then there are the critics. They inform me—sometimes gently, sometimes with theatrical alarm—that I have lost my mind, contracted a disease, and strapped a grotesque monstrosity to my wrist. I concede every point. I am indeed crazed with enthusiasm, and the Frogman is unquestionably a monstrosity. But it is the most magnificent monstrosity I have ever encountered. I appear to have entered what might be called Frogman Monstrosity Acceptance: the psychological stage in which the owner stops apologizing for the watch’s outrageous proportions and instead embraces them with pride. Yes, it is enormous. Yes, it looks like a small amphibious armored vehicle designed by engineers who distrust gravity. But once you surrender to its scale, the Frogman ceases to be embarrassing and becomes something far better—a gleefully excessive titan among polite timepieces.