Cinemorphosis

Category: culture

  • Too Old for the Peacock Parade: Notes from a Miami Beach Exile

    Too Old for the Peacock Parade: Notes from a Miami Beach Exile

    From our apartment wedged beside a Hampton Inn in Miami Beach, the morning soundtrack is a symphony of honking horns—angry, insistent, and deeply personal, as if each driver believes their rage will somehow part the traffic like the Red Sea. I’m grateful we didn’t rent a car. Instead, we’ll wander on foot like civilized tourists and hop a trolley to today’s grand event: a five-hour tour of Miami’s greatest hits—its islands, its excess, and its curated chaos. Dinner and a boat ride are promised, which sounds either romantic or like a timeshare presentation with ocean views.

    For my family, it’s all new—the pastel Art Deco, the swampy opulence, the omnipresent scent of tanning oil and ambition. But for me, a native Floridian, this is a strange pilgrimage, a nostalgia trip filtered through Botox and Beats headphones. Miami hasn’t changed—it’s just doubled down. This isn’t a city. It’s a humid runway where the rich and surgically sculpted flex their flesh like currency. I feel like I’m attending a party I wasn’t invited to, wearing the wrong shoes and ten years too late.

    This morning, my wife and I walked the edge of the Atlantic, and I was struck by how different it smells from the Pacific. The Pacific has that cold, salty hush. The Atlantic? It smells lush—warm, sweet, almost suggestive. Like a pineapple cocktail is about to glide down from the clouds and whisper, “Welcome, darling.” There’s something in the air here that makes you believe life is one long poolside flirtation—until you check your bank account or your blood pressure.

    Still, I’m looking forward to going home. Say what you will about Los Angeles—it’s neurotic, performative, and addicted to traffic—but compared to Miami Beach, it’s practically Amish.

  • Johnny Carson Was Prozac Before Big Pharma Perfected the Formula

    Johnny Carson Was Prozac Before Big Pharma Perfected the Formula

    I’m listening to Carson the Magnificent on Audible, Bill Zehme’s lush tribute to the King of Late Night. Zehme is a skilled writer, no doubt—but he suffers from an affliction familiar to many stylists: chronic purple prose. His descriptions don’t sparkle; they sprawl. Reading him is like eating an entire wedding cake when a slice would have sufficed. He’s so enamored with his own flourishes that Johnny Carson occasionally vanishes behind the velvet curtain of Zehme’s adjectives.

    Still, what he lacks in restraint, he makes up for in ardor. Zehme clearly loves his subject, and his affection pulses through the pages. Carson emerges as a sort of secular priest of television, delivering nightly benedictions of laughter for thirty years. He wasn’t edgy or groundbreaking—he was dependable, a soothing presence at 11:30 PM, like a warm bath or a glass of room-temperature white wine. He was comfort food for the collective American psyche, Prozac before Big Pharma perfected the formula. A totem from a time when a single man in a suit could stand at the crossroads of politics, culture, and showbiz and crack wise to a nation that hadn’t yet shattered into a million niche audiences.

    I was never much of a Carson acolyte myself. Dick Cavett had the brain. Letterman had the bite. Carson? He had commercials. What I remember most is that the show seemed designed to lull you into a trance of polite chuckles and bland banter. It wasn’t bad, exactly—it was just relentlessly there. Watching The Tonight Show felt less like a choice and more like a ritual, a nightly genuflection before the glow of the TV set. People tuned in not out of excitement, but out of habit. He was the head caveman, murmuring jokes by firelight, while the rest of us nodded and laughed, grateful to not be alone in the dark.

    To skip Carson was to risk social exile. You didn’t want to be the one who missed what the country’s collective subconscious had passively absorbed.

    As I listen to Carson the Magnificent, I find myself pining—not for Carson, but for the era he ruled. A time when a singular voice could still cut through the noise and hold the country’s wandering attention. That cultural unity is gone now, and maybe for the best, but I can’t help mourning it a little.

    Zehme will, I’m sure, delve into the darker recesses of Carson’s psyche—and I’m ready for it. I’ve already mainlined The Larry Sanders Show three times, with a fourth round likely on the way. That show remains the gold standard for peeling back the sequined curtain to reveal the neurotic, solipsistic soul of late-night television. If Zehme gets even halfway there, I’ll consider the audiobook time well spent—even if I have to wade through another paragraph that reads like a thesaurus suffered a head injury.

  • 12 Essential Lexicon Terms for Understanding Social Media-Spawned Pathologies

    12 Essential Lexicon Terms for Understanding Social Media-Spawned Pathologies

    #1: Doppelganger Effect

    When your online double becomes hotter, louder, meaner—and more successful than you.

    #2 Likelepsy

    A convulsive need for validation triggered by spikes in engagement and followed by a crushing dopamine crash.

    #3 Privacide

    The voluntary and cheerful execution of your privacy in exchange for predictive weather, curated playlists, and targeted ads for pants you only thought about.

    #4 TMI-rrhea

    An unstoppable stream of personal disclosures that nobody asked for and everyone wishes they could unsee.

    #5 Confessistan

    A nation where every citizen is legally required to document their feelings, bowel movements, and brunch choices for public consumption.

    #6 Cringe Fatigue

    A pang of cringe, sadness, and vicarious embarrassment experienced mid-scroll as you witness your friend’s dignity dissolve into hashtags and hot takes.

    #7 Narrativitis

    The chronic compulsion to turn real life into a curated, melodramatic storyline, complete with mood lighting and sad indie music.

    #8 FOMOblivion

    A cognitive blackout where the fear of missing out completely eclipses the joy of being present, addressing your real needs, and the real needs of others because you’re constantly seething in envy and anxiety over hyped-up trifles.

    #9 Scrolloticism

    The act of finding emotional pleasure in self-inflicted torment via outrage consumption and doomscrolling and compensatory self-aggrandizing content posing.

    #10 The Narrative Trap

    When your life becomes a story written by everyone else, and the only thing you can’t do is rewrite your part.

    #11 Feedgret

    A soul-curdling regret triggered by the realization that you’ve been publicly cosplaying as your best self while quietly decaying inside.

    #12 InstaShame Spiral

    A violent emotional plunge brought on by rereading your old captions and realizing you’ve been subtweeting your own dignity for years.

  • Case Studies in Performatosis: Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” and “Nosedive”

    Case Studies in Performatosis: Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” and “Nosedive”

    In the grand medical theater of Black Mirror, few disorders are as virulent and tragically funny as Performatosis—the compulsive need to live life as if constantly auditioning for an invisible panel of social media judges. Two episodes in particular, “Joan Is Awful” and “Nosedive,” offer prime case studies in this terminal condition. Both protagonists—Joan and Lacie—aren’t just victims of technological dystopia; they’re emotionally exhausted performers collapsing under the weight of their own curated identities. And like all great tragicomedies, they bring it on themselves with a smile, a filter, and a legally binding Terms of Service they definitely didn’t read.

    “Joan Is Awful” is what happens when you outsource your entire identity to an algorithm and then act surprised when it turns on you. Joan, a blandly competent tech middle-manager with questionable morals and a perpetual expression of secondhand guilt, becomes a literal character in a TV show about her own life. But this isn’t just surveillance—it’s a forced performance, one she never auditioned for but can’t stop starring in. Her daily decisions are reinterpreted, exaggerated, and broadcast to a global audience craving content, not character. The real tragedy? Joan begins modifying her behavior to match the awful version of herself the algorithm is producing, proving that once Performatosis sets in, the line between self and spectacle evaporates faster than a TikTok trend.

    Meanwhile, in “Nosedive,” Lacie lives in a pastel-colored prison of positivity, where smiles are currency and emotional repression is a public service. Her entire life is a performance designed to earn ratings—every cup of overpriced coffee, every chirpy interaction, every dead-eyed compliment is another step up the social ladder. But like all performances, hers eventually cracks, and when it does, it’s not just a fall—it’s a nosedive into social exile. Her descent is more than a narrative arc; it’s a diagnosis. She’s suffering from terminal Performatosis, unable to stop performing even as her audience turns on her. The episode’s final, cathartic scream-off in jail is less an act of rebellion and more a final gasp of unscripted truth.

    What links Joan and Lacie is not just the technology that invades their lives, but the deep, internalized need to be seen—and more dangerously, to be liked. They are not characters living in dystopias; they are mirrors of us, the perfectly average user who has confused validation with identity. The systems they’re trapped in are just more honest versions of the ones we already use—systems that reward curated personas, punish messiness, and encourage self-policing with a faux-empowering smile. In both cases, the platforms don’t just reflect reality; they rewrite it, edit it, and package it for mass consumption—leaving the person behind feeling like a glitch in their own story.

    Performatosis, as diagnosed through these episodes, is not about ego. It’s about survival in a world where being real is risky, but being performative is profitable. Joan and Lacie suffer not just because they’re being watched, but because they’ve handed over their stories to people—and systems—that care more about ratings than reality. Their eventual breakdowns are not mental collapses; they’re acts of resistance. Unscripted, unbeautiful, and gloriously human. And if we’re smart, we’ll take the hint: stop performing before you forget the script was never yours to begin with.

  • Ozempification and DeBrandification in Black Mirror

    Ozempification and DeBrandification in Black Mirror

    In the dystopian funhouse mirror that is Black Mirror, two episodes—”Joan Is Awful” and “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too”—serve as cautionary tales about the perils of Ozempification and the arduous journey toward DeBrandification. These narratives dissect how individuals relinquish their identities to external forces, only to embark on a tumultuous quest to reclaim them.

    Ozempification, much like the quick-fix weight loss drug it’s named after, represents the seductive allure of outsourcing personal agency for immediate gratification. In “Joan Is Awful,” Joan’s passive acceptance of Streamberry’s invasive terms leads to her life being broadcasted without consent, morphing her into a grotesque caricature for public consumption. Similarly, in “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too,” Ashley O’s acquiescence to her aunt’s overbearing control transforms her into a commodified pop puppet, her authentic self suppressed beneath layers of marketable artifice.

    The consequences of Ozempification are stark. Joan becomes a prisoner of her own life, scrutinized and vilified by an audience oblivious to her reality. Ashley O’s existence is hijacked, her consciousness commodified into AI dolls like Ashley Too, symbolizing the extreme exploitation of her identity. Both women find themselves trapped in narratives dictated by others, their true selves obscured by the demands of an insatiable audience.

    Enter DeBrandification: the messy, rebellious process of dismantling the curated personas imposed upon them. Joan’s revolt against Streamberry’s AI-driven exploitation and Ashley O’s defiance against her aunt’s manipulative machinations epitomize this struggle. Their battles underscore the difficulty of reclaiming authenticity in a world that thrives on manufactured images.

    However, DeBrandification is not a seamless endeavor. Joan’s attempt to obliterate the quantum computer orchestrating her televised torment results in legal repercussions, highlighting the societal resistance to such acts of defiance. Ashley O’s liberation, while cathartic, leaves her navigating an industry that may still view her as a product rather than a person. Their stories illuminate the complexities and potential fallout of shedding a commodified identity.

    Black Mirror masterfully illustrates that while Ozempification offers the tantalizing ease of relinquishing control, it leads to an existence dictated by external forces. Conversely, DeBrandification, though fraught with challenges, paves the path toward genuine selfhood. Joan and Ashley O’s journeys serve as stark reminders that in the age of digital commodification, reclaiming one’s identity is not just an act of rebellion, but a necessary step toward true autonomy.

  • Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Elaine Pagels and the Search for a Transformative Truth

    Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? Elaine Pagels and the Search for a Transformative Truth

    In Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus, Elaine Pagels—now in her eighties—recounts her lifelong obsession with the figure of Jesus, not as a doctrine, but as a presence: a message of love and transformation in a world saturated with darkness. From a young age, she noticed a glaring contradiction. The Jesus of her local Methodist church was soft-edged and suburban, tailored to soothe middle-class anxieties. Meanwhile, the Catholic church she visited with a friend introduced her to a far more shadowy vision—one where sin reigned, and a priest, cloaked in mystery, handed out judgment like grades on a cosmic report card.

    Hungry for something real, she threw herself into faith. She attended a Billy Graham “Crusade for Christ” at Candlestick Park and, in a moment of tearful surrender, accepted Jesus as her savior and joined an evangelical church. But the honeymoon didn’t last. When her Jewish friend died in a car accident, she turned to her church community in anguish—only to be met with a chilling theological shrug. Was he saved? they asked. When she answered no, they calmly consigned him to hell. That moment of smug certainty shattered something in her. She walked away from the church—and never looked back.

    But the ache didn’t go away. Instead, it deepened into a lifelong question: Why did the story of Jesus strike me so deeply? Was it about Jesus himself? Or was it something broader—something in the architecture of religious experience that opened people up to realities they couldn’t explain?

    That question led her to Harvard’s Study of Religion, where she discovered a Christianity far more fractured, contested, and diverse than the one she’d been taught. The four canonical gospels were only a sliver of the story. Written decades after Jesus’ death, by authors who retrofitted their names to evoke apostolic authority, these texts were shaped by literary tropes and cultural myths of the Greco-Roman world. Beyond them were the apocryphal books and the Gnostic gospels, each offering competing visions of who Jesus was. Even after Constantine made Christianity the state religion and tried to enforce orthodoxy, believers couldn’t agree on what “true” Christianity actually meant.

    Still, Pagels returns to the core question: What kind of person was Jesus? Why did he endure when gods like Zeus faded into mythology? Why are there so many versions of him—prophet, rebel, savior, mystic, divine son?

    As she peels back the layers of history and doctrine, Pagels isn’t looking for the “correct” Jesus. She’s looking for the one that moved her, the one that cracked open the world with possibility. And in this, her search feels less like an academic pursuit and more like a human longing—to believe that, in spite of the noise and contradiction, there is still something true at the heart of the story.

    Like the old game show To Tell the Truth, we’re all watching the contestants declare, “I am Jesus.” And the question still echoes: Will the real Jesus please stand up?

    ***

    As usual, Pagels’ book is engaging. As I read about Matthew and Luke’s different accounts of the virgin birth and church people blithely telling Pagels that her Jewish friend is in hell, it occurs to me that I despise piety; but moral debauchery and smug nihilism are just as odious. 

  • Radio Reclaimed: The Proxy Friendship That Saves Your Sanity

    Radio Reclaimed: The Proxy Friendship That Saves Your Sanity

    A couple of months ago, as the Los Angeles wildfires raged, I found myself glued to a radio for live reports. A thought struck me like a lightning bolt: I had missed the radio. This ancient relic had been eclipsed by streaming devices, which, over the past decade, had somehow become my personal cocoon—a space where I meticulously curated my music and podcasts like a hyper-intelligent hermit with a PhD in self-isolation. I was alone, yes, but at least I had the comforting hum of algorithmically chosen tunes to keep me company. Then I realized: this wasn’t comfort. This was madness in a cocoon. My little silo, built to keep out the noise of the world, was also keeping out everything else that made me feel connected. I was losing my grip on reality, like the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” who could only see the world through the eyes of her claustrophobic madness.

    So, I did what any self-respecting, slightly paranoid adult would do: I bought a batch of high-performance radios, like the Tecsun PL-990, and I tuned back into the real world. I started listening to Larry Mantle’s voice again on LAist, to KJAZZ and KUSC—the classical music station that claims to be the most popular in the country. And after a few months of basking in their sonic embrace, I understood why KUSC is so beloved. It’s not just music; it’s a friend. The DJs don’t just announce the next piece; they drop in casual nuggets of composer trivia like old pals who just happen to know a lot about Bach’s temper. They are personal, conversational, and soothing, like a club of soundwave whisperers gently easing you into a state of calm with “your nightly lullaby” or music to “start your day.”

    KUSC doesn’t just play classical music. It plays the role of a companion—your anti-anxiety, anti-depression, virtual hug in the form of a radio signal. These aren’t just voices on the air; they’re voices that make you feel like you’re not alone, that someone is there to guide you through the chaos of your day. It’s the kind of subtle emotional manipulation you don’t mind because it’s just so comforting. If radio is going to survive the onslaught of streaming, it could do worse than to study KUSC’s Proxy Friendship model. There’s a lesson in that calm, gentle routine that could help even the most chaotic station become a lifeline in a world that feels like it’s constantly spinning off its axis.

  • Facebook, Bigfoot, and the Digital Swamp of the Reptilian Mind

    Facebook, Bigfoot, and the Digital Swamp of the Reptilian Mind

    When I was a child, going to the grocery store with my mother was a mundane errand—until we reached the checkout line. There, stacked beside the gum and glossy TV guides, was a fever swamp in newsprint: tabloids. They screamed in all-caps about alien babies, Bigfoot sightings in Milwaukee, swamp druids kidnapping hikers, and celebrities melting in real-time under the cruel lens of long-range zoom. I remember wincing. Even at that age, I sensed these were not harmless distractions but invitations to devolve—open doors to the primitive brainstem, the part Phil Stutz calls the “lower channel,” where we stop being people and start becoming lizards with opposable thumbs and credit cards.

    What I didn’t realize then was that these headlines—designed to hijack the amygdala and pump cortisol like candy—were just the analog prototype. The final form? Facebook. Facebook is the digital version of that tabloid aisle, now algorithmically juiced and weaponized to deliver an intravenous drip of the grotesque. My feed, once a sleepy scroll through family birthdays and vacation humblebrags, has transformed into a daily assault of schadenfreude, scandal, and shameless clickbait. Like a bored demon trying to stir chaos in the marketplace of thought, Facebook now mimics TikTok in its race to grab you by the reptilian brain and shake.

    I stay on Facebook for one reason: radios. I’m a radio hobbyist (listen to FM mostly) and belong to a clutch of charmingly niche radio groups where grown adults argue about antenna angles and trade photos of 1980s Japanese receivers like they’re Monet originals. I also use it to message my wife. But every time I log on, I feel like a sober man walking into a dive bar filled with uncouth drunks swinging pool cues at shadows.

    Facebook isn’t just a swamp. It’s a bubbling cauldron of cultural sludge, stirred hourly by algorithms that mistake engagement for intelligence and outrage for insight. It’s a symptom of our collective cognitive degradation—and a primary contributor. It’s an empire built on the backs of half-truths, low-resolution thinking, and viral tantrums. And yet, here I am—wading in, knee-deep, every time I want to tell someone about a new DSP radio chip or the joy of a clean AM signal at midnight.

    This is the curse of the modern enthusiast: to live in a digital kingdom that is both a community center and a cognitive landfill. I stay for the signal, but God help me, I’m choking on the noise.

  • Devotion and Deliverance: Frederick Douglass as Prophet of the Sunken Place

    Devotion and Deliverance: Frederick Douglass as Prophet of the Sunken Place

    Frederick Douglass was the first great American voice to name what Jordan Peele would later visualize as the Sunken Place—that paralyzing state of voicelessness, invisibility, and psychological captivity experienced by African Americans. Though Peele dramatizes the horror of this condition in his film Get Out, Douglass lived it. As an enslaved child denied literacy and identity, Douglass endured what he later described as a living death, a soul frozen beneath the surface of white supremacy’s illusion of order. His fight to reclaim his voice, his mind, and his humanity was nothing less than a jailbreak from the original Sunken Place—and once free, Douglass didn’t just climb out. He turned around and lit the way for others.

    Douglass’s genius wasn’t just in naming the horror but in refusing to let his people be forgotten. In his Narrative, he writes not only for white readers’ moral awakening but for Black readers’ spiritual survival. He wants them to know: I see you. I know what you’re going through. I made it out—and you can, too. His commitment was not just to truth-telling, but to emotional rescue. He becomes the voice for the voiceless, and more importantly, a memory for the disappeared. In every speech, every book, Douglass is saying to his people: You are not crazy. You are not alone. You are not invisible. I love you.

    This radical love—this refusal to forget or abandon the oppressed—is not only the essence of Douglass’s mission but the throughline of the African-American church and the great soul artists who emerged from its sanctuary. Aretha Franklin’s demand for “Respect” is not merely about gender or music—it is about soul-level recognition, the same Douglass demanded when he taught himself to read and stood before an audience to declare, I am a man. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” is a lament and a prayer, echoing Douglass’s own grief at watching America devour its conscience while pretending to be virtuous.

    Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “Devotion” is a gospel-soaked anthem of uplift, a promise to stay true, stay grounded, and stay together. That’s the same spiritual contract Douglass wrote with his people: no matter how far he rose—dining with Lincoln, traveling to Europe—he never abandoned the struggle, never stopped fighting for those still trapped in the Sunken Place. The Commodores’ “Zoom” imagines flight from pain and confinement, a kind of cosmic exodus—but not a selfish escape. The dream is to rise and return with wisdom, strength, and hope. This is Douglass in every sense.

    Jordan Peele gave us the Sunken Place in high-definition horror, but Frederick Douglass mapped it out with ink and fire long before the screen could flicker. He understood that the greatest tragedy of oppression is not physical bondage but spiritual erasure. And he devoted every breath of his free life to pulling others out—through rhetoric, through writing, through relentless love.

    In the voices of Aretha, Marvin, Maurice White, and Lionel Richie, we hear Douglass’s echo: not just survival, not just resistance, but a deeply rooted refusal to abandon anyone to silence. These aren’t just songs. They are gospel calls to rise, to remember, and to remain devoted. In that sacred tradition, Douglass stands as the first great prophet of the Sunken Place—and the first to vow, with soul-deep conviction, I will not leave you there.

  • Popularity Is So 2018 (and Other Truths My Teen Daughters Taught Me)

    Popularity Is So 2018 (and Other Truths My Teen Daughters Taught Me)

    When I ask my fifteen-year-old daughters if someone is popular at their high school, they look at me like I’ve just asked if the fax machine is working. “No one cares about that anymore,” they say, with the weary detachment of two Gen Z philosophers sipping iced boba through eco-friendly straws. I get the same vibe from my college students. I bring up social media stars, expecting at least a flicker of interest. Instead, I get shrugs and the damning indictment: “Being popular on social media is so 2018.”

    So there it is: popularity is dead. Not just the experience, but the entire concept. Dead, buried, and apparently embalmed in the same mausoleum as MySpace and LiveJournal.

    And honestly? Good. If a generation has finally grown numb to the cheap dopamine hits of follower counts and algorithmic clout, that’s a kind of evolutionary win. The whole business of self-branding on social media now feels as outdated as a glamor shot from 1997. Narcissism wrapped in filters is no longer aspirational—it’s cringe.

    But here’s the catch: human nature abhors a vacuum. If popularity is out, something else must rise to take its place. So I asked one of my daughters what really matters now. Her answer was disarmingly simple: “Having a small group of friends you trust and can hang out with.” No influencer deals, no follower counts, no “likes.” Just intimacy, safety, presence.

    That answer stuck with me. Maybe this is the backlash we didn’t see coming: a return to analog friendship in a digital age, a quiet rebellion against the curated fakery of online performance. Maybe they’re not disengaged—they’re detoxing.

    This reminds me of a student I had over a decade ago. Back in the heyday of car-model websites (yes, those existed), she was a minor online celebrity at sixteen—long legs, smoky eyeliner, thousands of fans. Then she got pregnant, gained weight, and her adoring public turned on her like piranhas. She told me, with the grim clarity of someone who’d seen the inside of the circus tent, “It was all fake.”

    By twenty, she was a single mother in my class—cynical, guarded, distrustful, and utterly magnetic in her quiet, unsmiling wisdom. I found her honesty refreshing. Had she come in chirping about TikTok fame and lip gloss sponsorships, I would’ve tuned her out. But her brokenness made her real, and real people are increasingly rare in this era of weaponized positivity.

    I told my current students about her last week. We agreed that she was better off post-fame. Sadder, yes—but also wiser, grounded, and free from the illusion that popularity equals value. The discussion turned to happiness, that other bloated American myth, and how it’s often peddled like a multivitamin you’re supposed to take daily.

    But maybe happiness—like popularity—is overrated. Maybe trust, wisdom, and genuine belonging are what matter. And maybe, just maybe, this generation is smart enough to know that already.