Cinemorphosis

Category: TV and Movies

  • Identifying and Coping with Neighborplexity

    Identifying and Coping with Neighborplexity

    My dear, respectable neighbors, the Pattersons have forced me to contend with Neighborplexity. Let me explain. For years, I lived in blissful harmony with these upstanding citizens—the kind of people who proudly displayed their New Yorker subscriptions and NPR tote bags like badges of intellectual honor. We had an unspoken pact, a mutual understanding that we were members of the Smart People’s Society, where the TV was reserved for documentaries, award-winning dramas, and the occasional indie film that required subtitles and a dictionary to understand.

    But then, one evening, as I casually glanced out my window—just a harmless peek, really—I saw something so grotesque, so utterly incomprehensible, that it shook me to my core. There, through the open window of my once-revered neighbors, I saw them glued to the screen—not just any screen, but one streaming a TV show so mind-numbingly lowbrow it made reality itself seem like a parody. My brain went into full-blown meltdown. Could it be? Were they actually watching Love Island?

    I blinked, hoping I’d misinterpreted the scene, but no—the horror was all too real. My neighbors, those paragons of taste and intellect, were indulging in what could only be described as televised garbage. I was struck down by a case of Neighborplexity: that gut-wrenching, mind-twisting moment when you realize you might not know the people next door at all. Suddenly, my world was flipped upside down. Had they always been this way? Were those book club meetings just a ruse, a clever cover-up for their secret love affair with trash TV? I felt like I’d just discovered that the Michelin-starred chef who lived down the block actually preferred dining on Spam straight out of the can.

    I thought we were united in our disdain for anything that wasn’t at least 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But now? Now, I wasn’t so sure. How could they betray me like this? Was every dinner party, every casual chat about the latest literary masterpiece, just a well-orchestrated charade? My mind spun as I tried to reconcile the image of these seemingly cultured, well-spoken people with the reality of them willingly watching—gasp—that show.

    What do I do now? How do I move forward? Can I ever look them in the eye again, or will I be forever haunted by this dark revelation, this unraveling of the fabric of my once-idyllic neighborhood? All because of one dreadful, unforgivable act of poor taste on TV. Love Island, of all things. The horror! The betrayal! The absolute audacity! 

    To get through this ordeal, I must have a clear definition of Neighborplexity and study the coping mechanisms to help me deal with this. So here we go.

    Neighborplexity (n.): The psychological whiplash that occurs when your carefully curated perception of your neighbors—those tote-bag-wielding, podcast-quoting, fair-trade-coffee-brewing intellectuals—is shattered by the revelation that they voluntarily watch garbage television. One moment you’re nodding in mutual disdain over a New Yorker cartoon; the next, you’re watching them binge Love Island with the hungry intensity of someone decoding the Dead Sea Scrolls. Neighborplexity induces spiritual vertigo, trust erosion, and the overwhelming sense that the social fabric of your ZIP code has been irreparably torn by sequins, fake tans, and manufactured drama. It is, in essence, a full-blown existential crisis brought on by a neighbor’s taste in television.

    7 Coping Mechanisms for Surviving Neighborplexity:

    1. Curated Amnesia – Tell yourself you didn’t see it. What open window? What TV screen? As far as you’re concerned, they were watching a Ken Burns documentary about soil.
    2. Projection Therapy – Assume it was ironic. They’re studying Love Island for a sociological thesis titled The Semiotics of Spray Tan.
    3. NPR Overdose – Immediately listen to four consecutive episodes of Fresh Air to flush out any lingering trash-TV toxins.
    4. Visual Recalibration – Replace your neighbor’s face with Tilda Swinton’s. At all times. It helps.
    5. Sarcastic Enlightenment – Convince yourself this is actually a deeper form of taste. Maybe Love Island is postmodern performance art and you’re the unsophisticated one.
    6. Emergency Sumatra Deployment – Brew the darkest, most self-righteous coffee you can find and sip it slowly while rereading Proust. This reminds you who you really are.
    7. Petty Book Club Coup – At the next meeting, accidentally bring up Love Island as a joke and watch their faces. Gauge their guilt. Proceed accordingly with social sanctions or passive-aggressive charcuterie.
  • Dante’s Divine Comedy: Cousteau’s Unholy Expedition

    Dante’s Divine Comedy: Cousteau’s Unholy Expedition


     As narrated by Jacques Cousteau, with field notes from his beleaguered underwater team.

    INFERNO: Into the Abyssal Trench of the Damned

    Jacques Cousteau, voice-over:
     Ah, my friends… today, we descend into the Mariana Trench of morality—the Inferno, a spiraling whirlpool of the damned, where sins marinate for eternity. The pressure here is unbearable—morally and literally. The descent begins at the rim of limbo, a calm zone of disappointed philosophers sipping lukewarm wine and complaining about being born pre-Christ. It is, how you say… le cocktail party from hell.

    Deeper still, through currents of wrath, greed, and heresy, the water grows thick with despair. Lust torpedoes past us—Paolo and Francesca spinning in endless romantic turbulence, like two sock puppets in a malfunctioning jacuzzi. Our cameraman, Jean-Luc, is nearly sucked into the Malebolge whirlpool of fraudulent bureaucrats—an eddy of corporate PowerPoints and forgotten passwords. We tether him to a line made from papal indulgences, which seem to work better here than rope.

    At the center, we find the frozen Lucifer, eternally gnawing Judas like a chew toy. A tragic, teeth-gnashing monument to betrayal, spinning in his own frigid tantrum like a toddler in a cryogenic time-out. We try to interview him. He screams. We leave. The ice is too thick for empathy.

    PURGATORIO: The Great Saltwater Stairmaster of Soul Rehab

    We ascend to warmer, brinier waters—where spirits paddle slowly toward salvation like ghostly otters with existential dread. This is Purgatory: less horror show, more bureaucratic sauna. It is the afterlife’s DMV, but with slightly better views. The sea teems with souls doing cardio for their sins. Slothful monks do underwater burpees. Gluttons run laps in kelp fields, chewing guilt instead of snacks.

    At the gate, the angelic customs officer stamps our passports with the seven-P tattoo—P for peccato, sin. The sinners scrub one off with each level, like exfoliating shame from their spectral pores. It is the spiritual equivalent of CrossFit, with more crying.

    We observe prideful kings carrying boulders of ego on their backs, hunched like philosophical hermit crabs. Further up, the envious have their eyelids sewn shut with wire—no more side-eye, mes amis. My assistant, Pierre, faints from secondhand humility.

    At the summit? Earthly Paradise. A surreal reef of forgotten innocence. There’s an inexplicable breeze, though we are still underwater. Beatrice appears—a celestial dive instructor with zero tolerance for emotional nonsense. She gives me a look that says, “Your flippers are on backward,” and I feel both judged and baptized.

    PARADISO: The Effervescent Champagne Bubble of the Just

    Now we rise through pearlescent thermoclines of virtue—Paradiso, where water becomes light and light becomes choir music with a side of algebra. We are weightless in intellect and awe. My team, reduced to blinking toddlers, floats in spiritual helium.

    We ping upward through nine concentric orbits of moral excellence. The souls here don’t paddle. They vibrate. Saint Thomas Aquinas delivers a lecture on divine justice while juggling galaxies. My microphone melts.

    Each sphere is a graduate seminar in cosmic ethics. Martyrs, mystics, and medieval astronomers buzz like philosophical plankton. Justice twirls with Wisdom in an eternal waltz choreographed by Kepler’s ghost. I try to ask a question, but a flaming eagle-shaped constellation silences me with a single blink.

    At the Empyrean apex, we meet the Divine, disguised as a living diffraction pattern. God is less a being than an epiphany you weren’t quite ready for. My goggles crack, my crew sobs, and I briefly become fluent in Latin before blacking out.

    When we awaken, we are back on our ship. Jean-Luc throws his camera overboard. Pierre writes a sonnet. I, Jacques Cousteau, conclude: the ocean is deep… but not as deep as the soul.

  • The Shop Foreman of My Own Dysfunction and Other Life Chapters

    The Shop Foreman of My Own Dysfunction and Other Life Chapters

    At 63, I now divide my life into chapters—not by achievements or milestones, but by bone density, hormone decay, and the gradual hardening of the frontal cortex. Think of it as an anatomical calendar, where each page curls with protein shakes, pretension, and the occasional existential crisis.

    Chapter One: The Barbara Eden Years.
    Childhood wasn’t about innocence—it was about Cap’n Crunch. Bowls of it. Oceans of sweetened corn rubble. I dreamed not of firetrucks or baseball cards but of living inside Barbara Eden’s genie bottle—a plush, velvet-lined fever dream of satin pillows and cleavage. If Barbara Eden wasn’t beaming into my imagination, there was always Raquel Welch in fur bikinis or Barbara Hershey smoldering her way across a screen. This was hormonal awakening served with a side of sugar coma.

    Chapter Two: The Strength Delusion.
    By twelve, I was slamming Bob Hoffman’s bulk-up protein like it was communion wine. At Earl Warren Junior High, I became a Junior Olympic Weightlifter—a gladiator-in-training who wanted pecs like dinner plates and the gravitas of a Marvel origin story. This was the age of iron worship and adolescent mythology: I wasn’t building muscle—I was forging armor.

    Chapter Three: The Intellectual Flex.
    In my late teens, I realized I had all the social charm of a wet gym sock. So I went cerebral. I buried myself in Kafka, Nabokov, and classical piano, amassing a CD library of Beethoven and Chopin that could rival the Library of Congress. I worked in a wine shop where I learned to pronounce “Bordeaux” with a nasal twang and described Chablis as “crisp with notes of existential regret.” I didn’t just want to be smart—I wanted to be the human embodiment of a New Yorker cartoon.

    Chapter Four: The Shop Foreman of My Own Dysfunction.
    Marriage and employment hit like a cold bucket of reality. Suddenly, I had to function around other human beings. My inner demons—once delightfully antisocial—were now liabilities. I had to manage them like a foreman supervising a warehouse of unruly toddlers armed with crowbars. Turns out, no one wants to be married to a psychological landfill. I had to self-regulate. I had to evolve. This wasn’t personal growth; it was preventative maintenance, or what other people simply call adulthood.

    Chapter Five: Diver Cosplay.
    In my forties, I had just enough disposable income and suburban ennui to start collecting dive watches. Not just one or two. A flotilla. I wanted to be the hero of my own fantasy—a rugged diver-explorer-adventurer who braved Costco parking lots with a Seiko strapped to his wrist. This was less about telling time and more about clinging to the idea that I was still dangerous, or at least interesting. Spoiler: I was neither.

    Chapter Six: The Age of Denial and Delusion.
    These days, the watches still gleam, but now I’m staring down the barrel of cholesterol, visceral fat, and the slow betrayal of my joints. I swing kettlebells five days a week like a garage-dwelling warlock trying to ward off decay. I track my protein like a Wall Street analyst and greet each new biomarker like a hostile corporate audit. Am I aging gracefully? Hardly. I’m white-knuckling my way through geriatric resistance and calling it “wellness.” If I’m Adonis, then somewhere in the attic there’s a Dorian Gray portrait of my pancreas in open revolt.

    I know what’s coming: Chapter Seven. The reckoning. The spiritual compost heap where I either make peace with my body’s betrayal or turn into a bitter relic that grunts through foam-rolling sessions like it’s trench warfare. It’ll be the chapter where I either ascend or unravel—or both.

    And while our chapters differ in flavor, I suspect we’re all reading from the same book. Different fonts, same plot twist: we start with fantasies, build identities, fight the entropy, and eventually, we all kneel before the mirror and ask, “Was that it?”

  • Smoke, Sheets, and the Spectacle of Faith

    Smoke, Sheets, and the Spectacle of Faith

    This morning, I was deep in the ritual of pre-cleaning for the cleaning ladies. Yes, the Marías—both of them named Maria, as if summoned from a 1960s sitcom or a Vatican registry. I was stripping beds, scrubbing dishes, and hoisting laundry baskets like I was auditioning for a domestic CrossFit competition. Because as every self-deluded homeowner knows: your house must be cleaned before the cleaners arrive, lest they judge you and your sloth.

    In the background, Larry Mantle’s AirTalk droned dutifully on LAist 89.3. Then, mid-sentence, the broadcast was interrupted—an old-school news bulletin, the kind that makes you expect a war or a celebrity scandal. But no. Something rarer: a new pope had been chosen. The signal? White smoke rising from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

    I had never heard of this protocol before. My first thought? Not theology. Not history. But the shared aesthetic DNA between this and the Golden Globes. The Oscars. The artificial wonder of Peter Pan’s Flight at Disneyland. If you want transcendence, baby, you’d better stage it.

    The Catholic Church, whatever its flaws, understands showmanship. They know airtight theological arguments are no match for spectacle. You don’t capture the masses with hermeneutics—you hook them with enchantment. Thus: white smoke. Bells. Angels singing in Dolby surround. The Vatican doesn’t inform you a pope’s been picked. They stage it like a cosmic halftime show.

    Religion, in its enduring wisdom, knows austerity is a losing brand. Dry dogma doesn’t sell. You need magic. Mystery. A sense that the universe has backstage lighting and a fog machine.

    Because man does not live on bread alone.

    No, man also lives on bells, incense, pageantry, and the theatrical flourish of divine appointment announced via rooftop smoke signals. What’s the metaphysical takeaway? That God, like Hollywood, knows how to build suspense.

  • Satan Wears Patek: The Couture Demons of Network TV

    Satan Wears Patek: The Couture Demons of Network TV

    After dinner, my wife and I collapsed onto the couch like two satiated lions, still riding the sugar high from a slice of chocolate cake so transcendent it could’ve been smuggled out of a Vatican vault. This wasn’t just dessert—it was a spiritual experience. Fudgy, rich, and topped with a ganache that whispered blasphemies in French, it left us in a state of chocolaty euphoria. And what better way to follow up divine confectionery than with a show called Evil—which, in tone and content, felt like dessert’s opposite number.

    Evil, for the uninitiated, is what happens when The X-Files and The Exorcist have a baby and then dress it in Prada. Our hero is David Acosta, a priest so genetically gifted he looks like he was sculpted during an abs day in Michelangelo’s studio. He partners with Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist with both supermodel cheekbones and a Rolodex of PhDs, and Ben Shakir, a tech bro turned ghostbuster, who handles the EMF detectors and keeps the Wi-Fi strong enough to livestream from hell. Together, they investigate cases of alleged possession, miracles, and demonic mischief—all lurking, naturally, in two-story suburban homes with open-concept kitchens.

    What really juices the narrative is the will-they-won’t-they tension between Kristen and Father Abs. Their chemistry crackles with forbidden longing, as if every exorcism could end in a kiss—had David not taken a vow of celibacy (and the producers not wanted to nuke the Catholic viewership). It’s less faith versus science and more eye contact versus self-control.

    And then there’s Leland Townsend, the show’s resident demon in Dockers. He’s less Prince of Darkness and more Assistant Manager of Darkness—slick, smug, and oily enough to deep-fry a turkey. He slinks into scenes oozing unearned confidence and pathological glee, like Satan’s regional sales director. You can practically smell the Axe body spray of evil.

    Let’s pause here for fashion. The wardrobe department on Evil deserves an Emmy, a Pulitzer, and possibly a fragrance line. Everyone’s rocking cinematic outerwear that belongs in the Louvre. Kristen’s coats are so tailored they could cut glass. Acosta’s wrist is adorned with a Patek Philippe that suggests his vows may include poverty of the soul, but not of the Swiss variety. Honestly, the outfits are so distracting you half expect Satan to comment on the stitching.

    In one late-night scene, Kristen’s daughters are using ghost-detecting iPad apps at 3 a.m., their faces bathed in eerie blue light. It’s a chilling tableau of children, tech, and probable demonic activity—basically a 2024 parenting blog. Just as the show was about to unravel the mystery, my wife hit pause and delivered a horror story of her own: teachers using AI to grade papers with personalized comments. Comments so perfectly tailored they could bring a tear to a parent’s eye—and yet, no human had written them.

    “What’s the point of teachers anymore?” she asked, already knowing the answer. I nodded solemnly, watching the paused image of Father David, his coat pristine, his watch immaculate. I had neither. And I live in Los Angeles, where “winter” is defined as turning off the ceiling fan.

    But something in that moment shifted. The show wasn’t just mocking the digital devil—it was embodying him. That wristwatch mocked me. The coat judged me. I wasn’t watching Evil; I was being possessed by it. By envy, by consumer lust, by the creeping suspicion that maybe—just maybe—I wasn’t living my best, most stylized demon-fighting life.

    It’s not the show’s demons that haunt me. It’s their wardrobe.

  • Flex, Regret, Repeat: My Midlife Crisis, Sponsored by Conor McGregor

    Flex, Regret, Repeat: My Midlife Crisis, Sponsored by Conor McGregor

    My life as an aspiring narcissist hit a new low when my wife and I got home, plopped down on the couch, and decided to indulge in the cinematic masterpiece Road House. This film, if you can call it that, stars a Jake Gyllenhaal so chiseled that he looks like Michelangelo got bored and decided to make an action hero. In this gripping tale, Gyllenhaal plays a tough-as-nails fighter scraping a living in a Key West bar, doing what any self-respecting muscle mountain would do—protecting the bar and its lovely owner, played by Jessica Williams, from corrupt mob bosses. Naturally, this leads to the inevitable showdown with their number-one heavy, played by none other than a bulked-up, foaming-at-the-mouth Conor McGregor, who looks like he’s been subsisting on a diet of raw meat and anabolic steroids.

    The plot is thinner than a strand of dental floss—a Western rehash where an outsider rides into town to clean up the mess. But let’s be real: the story is just window dressing for the film’s true agenda, which is to showcase sweaty, glistening muscles and fight montages that could double as a fitness competition highlight reel. The camera lingers on every bulging bicep and rock-hard ab like a love-struck teenager, turning what should be an action movie into a high-budget commercial for protein powder, creatine, and whatever the hell UFC fighters are injecting these days.

    As Gyllenhaal and McGregor flexed and fought their way through scene after scene, I found myself reaching for my phone, not to check the time—oh no—but to Google “What is Conor McGregor’s diet?” Because watching this movie is less about enjoying a plot and more about realizing you’re a gelatinous blob compared to the human marble statues parading around on screen. Road House isn’t so much a movie as it is a two-hour reminder that you’re one donut away from needing a forklift to get off the couch.

    When the credits finally rolled, and I managed to peel my eyes away from the testosterone-soaked spectacle, I turned to my wife, feeling more deflated than a balloon at a porcupine convention. “I wish I could lose forty pounds and look the way I did when I entered Mr. Teenage San Francisco,” I lamented as if my sad sack of a body was just a protein shake away from making a comeback. I had the muscle once, I swear! But now it’s hidden under layers of adiposity that could cushion a fall from a ten-story building. If they ever invented an advanced generation of Ozempic that came in a pill form, had no side effects, and was covered by my insurance, I’d be the first in line, elbowing grannies out of the way to get my hands on it.

    My wife, however, had zero interest in my nostalgic waxing about the “great body” of my youth. This was not her first rodeo. In fact, she could probably recite my entire “glory days” speech from memory, down to the last calorie of the diet I used to follow. Rolling her eyes with the practiced ease of a wife who’s heard it all before, she suggested we watch a rerun of Northern Exposure—her go-to escape from my never-ending lament about the “Greek god” I used to be. But the seafood restaurant ordeal had left me more drained than a used dishrag, and I waved the white flag of surrender. “Nope, I’m hitting the sack,” I muttered, retreating to the bedroom like a defeated warrior, leaving my wife to her beloved reruns while I dreamed of a time when I was ripped, instead of just ripping on myself.

  • I Need to Talk to You About Neighborplexity

    I Need to Talk to You About Neighborplexity

    Sumatra coffee is my bad boy of the coffee world—dark, mysterious, and utterly unapologetic. It doesn’t just wake me up; it smacks me across the face, throws me out of bed, and chases me down the street while I’m still in my pajamas. Imagine if a tropical thunderstorm decided to moonlight as a barista, bottling up its fury in a cup. That’s Sumatra—every sip as intense as being caught in a downpour while you’re half-asleep and regretting every life choice that led you to this point.

    Sure, I’m probably guzzling more Sumatra dark roast than is recommended by anyone with a functioning heart, but let’s be real: I’m an overworked college writing professor, buried under an Everest of student assignments that multiply like rabbits on caffeine. Add to that the never-ending demands of being an author of coffee table humor books—books that, according to my editors, need constant revision and expansion to “stay relevant” and “generate a healthy revenue stream.” Translation: “Jeff, we need you to keep churning out content until your fingers bleed and your soul shrivels up like a raisin.”

    But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with the self-pity party. I could give you a long-winded lecture about how the digital age was supposed to bring us more convenience and free time, only to morph into a merciless sociopath that steals our time faster than you can say “work-life balance.” But instead, let me start my story before the Sumatra kicks in too hard, and I start ranting like a madman on a caffeine bender. Buckle up, because this ride is about to get bumpy.

    My tale begins with the Pattersons, my dear, respectable neighbors. For years, I lived in blissful harmony with these upstanding citizens—the kind of people who proudly displayed their New Yorker subscriptions and NPR tote bags like badges of intellectual honor. We had an unspoken pact, a mutual understanding that we were members of the Smart People’s Society, where the TV was reserved for documentaries, award-winning dramas, and the occasional indie film that required subtitles and a dictionary to understand.

    But then, one evening, as I casually glanced out my window—just a harmless peek, really—I saw something so grotesque, so utterly incomprehensible, that it shook me to my core. There, through the open window of my once-revered neighbors, I saw them glued to the screen—not just any screen, but one streaming a TV show so mind-numbingly lowbrow it made reality itself seem like a parody. My brain went into full-blown meltdown. Could it be? Were they actually watching Love Island?

    I blinked, hoping I’d misinterpreted the scene, but no—the horror was all too real. My neighbors, those paragons of taste and intellect, were indulging in what could only be described as televised garbage. I was struck down by a case of Neighborplexity: that gut-wrenching, mind-twisting moment when you realize you might not know the people next door at all. Suddenly, my world was flipped upside down. Had they always been this way? Were those book club meetings just a ruse, a clever cover-up for their secret love affair with trash TV? I felt like I’d just discovered that the Michelin-starred chef who lived down the block actually preferred dining on Spam straight out of the can.

    I thought we were united in our disdain for anything that wasn’t at least 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. But now? Now, I wasn’t so sure. How could they betray me like this? Was every dinner party, every casual chat about the latest literary masterpiece, just a well-orchestrated charade? My mind spun as I tried to reconcile the image of these seemingly cultured, well-spoken people with the reality of them willingly watching—gasp—that show.

    What do I do now? How do I move forward? Can I ever look them in the eye again, or will I be forever haunted by this dark revelation, this unraveling of the fabric of my once-idyllic neighborhood? All because of one dreadful, unforgivable act of poor taste on TV. Love Island, of all things. The horror! The betrayal! The absolute audacity! I might need more Sumatra just to get through this.

  • Breaking Up with the Big Apple: Lena Dunham’s Urban Exorcism

    Breaking Up with the Big Apple: Lena Dunham’s Urban Exorcism

    Lena Dunham once burst onto the pop culture scene like a glitter bomb in a library—loud, impossible to ignore, and slightly out of place. As the wunderkind creator and star of Girls, she personified a certain species of early-2010s Brooklynite: neurotic, navel-gazing, and armed with a liberal arts degree and a vape pen. Her character, Hannah Horvath, declared herself the voice of her generation—or at least a voice of a generation—and we believed her, for better or worse. Adam Driver rode shotgun to stardom on the back of that HBO juggernaut, but Dunham, after a brief and blazing ascent, seemed to evaporate into a fog of personal crises, health issues, and public backlash.

    And then—poof—she was gone.

    Now, Dunham reappears in the pages of The New Yorker with a lyrical breakup letter to New York City, a place that once ran through her veins like overcaffeinated blood. Titled “Why I Broke Up With New York,” the essay chronicles her disillusionment with the urban cathedral she once helped mythologize. Born to an artsy Manhattan clan, she was baptized in brownstones and indie bookstore readings. But the signs of incompatibility showed early: by fourth grade, she needed therapy and anti-anxiety meds. The city wasn’t just fast—it was feral. The subway was a sensory mugging. Noise, chaos, and crowds ganged up on her nervous system. Her sanctuary was a loft bed, stacked high with books and lined with silence.

    That Dunham became the face of NYC hipsterdom is an irony she doesn’t miss. Girls was a love letter to New York in the same way a therapy session is a love letter to your absentee father. After the show ended, so did her patience. She fled to Los Angeles, then Wales—yes, Wales—and finally landed in London, which offered just enough cosmopolitan energy without the aggressive swagger of Manhattan. London was like New York after a long exhale.

    What Dunham’s essay ultimately embraces is self-acceptance. Breaking up with New York doesn’t mean she failed. It just means she outgrew a place that never really fit. And for those who see New York as a mythic proving ground for artists, she offers a bracing rebuttal: it’s also a place that can grind your soul into subway soot. There’s no shame in walking away from an abusive relationship—even if that relationship is with a city that other people treat like a religion.

  • Contagion of Fear: World War Z and the Collapse of Global Order: A College Essay Prompt

    Contagion of Fear: World War Z and the Collapse of Global Order: A College Essay Prompt

    Essay Prompt:

    In World War Z, a global pandemic rapidly spreads, unleashing chaos, institutional breakdown, and the fragmentation of global cooperation. Though fictional, the film can be read as an allegory for the very real dysfunction and distrust that characterized the COVID-19 pandemic. Using World War Z as a cultural lens, write an essay in which you argue how the film metaphorically captures the collapse of public trust, the dangers of misinformation, and the failure of collective action in a hyper-polarized world. Support your argument with at least three of the following sources: Jonathan Haidt’s “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” Ed Yong’s “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” Seyla Benhabib’s “The Return of the Sovereign,” and Zeynep Tufekci’s “We’re Asking the Wrong Questions of Facebook.”

    This essay invites you to write a 1,700-word argumentative essay in which you analyze World War Z as a metaphor for mass anxiety. Develop an argument that connects the film’s themes to contemporary global challenges such as:

    • The COVID-19 pandemic and fear of viral contagion
    • Global migration driven by war, poverty, and climate change
    • The dehumanization of “The Other” in politically polarized societies
    • The fragility of global cooperation in the face of crisis
    • The spread of weaponized misinformation and conspiracy

    Your thesis should not simply argue that World War Z is “about fear”—it should claim what kind of fear, why it matters, and what the film reveals about our modern condition. You may focus on one primary fear or compare multiple forms of crisis (e.g., pandemic vs. political polarization, or migration vs. misinformation).

    Use at least three of the following essays as research support:

    1. Jonathan Haidt, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” (The Atlantic)
      —A deep dive into how social media has fractured trust, created echo chambers, and undermined democratic cooperation.
    2. Ed Yong, “How the Pandemic Defeated America” (The Atlantic)
      —An autopsy of institutional failure and public distrust during COVID-19, including how the virus exposed deep structural weaknesses.
    3. Seyla Benhabib, “The Return of the Sovereign: Immigration and the Crisis of Globalization” (Project Syndicate)
      —Explores the backlash against global migration and the erosion of human rights amid rising nationalism.
    4. Zeynep Tufekci, “We’re Asking the Wrong Questions of Facebook” (The New York Times)
      —An analysis of how misinformation spreads virally, creating moral panics and damaging collective reasoning.

    Requirements:

    • Use MLA format
    • 1,700 words
    • Quote directly from World War Z (film dialogue, plot events, or visuals)
    • Integrate at least two sources above with citation
    • Present a counterargument and a rebuttal

    Here’s a 9-paragraph outline and three sample thesis statements to guide students toward deep, layered analysis of World War Z as metaphor.

    Three Sample Thesis Statements

    World War Z presents zombies not just as flesh-eating threats but as avatars of global panic—embodying fears of pandemics, mass migration, and social collapse. Through its globe-hopping narrative and relentless spread of infection, the film critiques a world increasingly unprepared to manage the fallout of interconnected crises, echoing Haidt’s concerns about fractured public trust and Yong’s analysis of institutional fragility.

    In World War Z, the zombie outbreak functions as a metaphor for weaponized misinformation and the breakdown of global cooperation, dramatizing how societies consumed by fear and tribalism respond not with solidarity, but with suspicion and violence. The film anticipates the moral failures detailed by Haidt and Tufekci, making it less about monsters than about our inability to face crisis without self-destructing.

    Far from a typical horror film, World War Z is a global parable of dehumanization and displacement, where zombies symbolize both contagious fear and the faceless masses of migration and poverty. As Benhabib argues, the return of nationalism and the fear of the “Other” has shattered international solidarity—anxiety the film visualizes through barricades, lockdowns, and apocalyptic border control.

    9-Paragraph Outline

    Paragraph 1 – Introduction

    • Hook: Use an arresting visual to frame our world’s current instability.
    • Context: Introduce World War Z as more than a thriller—it’s an allegory of global collapse.
    • Thesis: State your central argument about how the zombies symbolize a deeper, contemporary fear (e.g., pandemic panic, social polarization, migration anxiety, misinformation, etc.).

    Paragraph 2 – The Metaphorical Function of Zombies

    • Discuss the symbolic role of zombies in film generally (fear of the masses, disease, mindlessness).
    • Explain how World War Z updates the metaphor to reflect 21st-century global anxieties.

    Paragraph 3 – Global Crisis and Institutional Collapse

    • Analyze scenes showing governments falling apart, the UN being sidelined, the world reduced to reactive chaos.
    • Connect to Ed Yong’s argument about institutional failure during COVID-19.

    Paragraph 4 – Fear of Migration and the Dehumanized Other

    • Examine the treatment of human mobs, refugees, and zombies in border scenes (e.g., Jerusalem wall, flight panic).
    • Use Seyla Benhabib’s piece to discuss the rising fear of displacement and the collapse of asylum ethics.

    Paragraph 5 – The Spread of Misinformation and Breakdown of Truth

    • Point to the conspiracy theories and media confusion in the film’s early scenes.
    • Use Tufekci’s argument to show how misinformation spreads like a virus—and how that’s reflected in the zombie metaphor.

    Paragraph 6 – The Psychology of Polarization and Fear

    • Explore the emotional tone of the film: anxiety, distrust, hyper-individualism.
    • Connect to Haidt’s claim that polarization has eroded rational cooperation and heightened mass irrationality.

    Paragraph 7 – Counterargument

    • Some may argue that World War Z is just a fast-paced action flick with no real political message.
    • Rebut by showing how even its structure—a global chase from chaos to cure—mirrors real-world anxieties about global crisis management and ethical triage.

    Paragraph 8 – Deeper Implications of the Metaphor

    • Push the metaphor further: zombies as collapsed selves, media-driven mobs, people stripped of identity.
    • Reflect on how the film doesn’t just diagnose fear—it reflects our inability to reckon with complexity in a globalized age.

    Paragraph 9 – Conclusion

    • Reaffirm your thesis.
    • Leave the reader with a provocative final thought: maybe the zombies aren’t the dead—they’re us, stripped of cooperation, overwhelmed by fear, and marching blindly toward collapse.

  • Marriage as a Three-Headed Beast: A Review of The Four Seasons

    Marriage as a Three-Headed Beast: A Review of The Four Seasons

    I’ve worshipped at the altar of Tina Fey’s comedic brilliance for decades, so when The Four Seasons popped up on my Netflix feed, I was dismayed. This didn’t smell like Fey’s usual ambrosia of wit and subversion—it reeked of midlife schlock. I swatted it away like a pop-up ad and went back to Black Mirror Season 7, content to wallow in algorithmic despair. But then the critics on Larry Mantle’s AirTalk (KPCC 89.3, for the culturally literate) described the show as “a good hang.” That faint praise intrigued me. My wife and I hit play, expecting light entertainment. What we got was a surprise: not only was it watchable, it became quietly addictive—then, unsettlingly, admirable.

    In eight breezy half-hours, The Four Seasons somehow captures the slow psychic erosion of long-term marriage with unsettling accuracy. Tina Fey and Will Forte play Kate and Jack, a couple who seem… fine. Functional. Even affectionate. Until the cracks begin to spread like hairline fractures on a windshield. By episode three, they’re in the car, both shouting expletives at the realization they need couples therapy. Not because they’re broken, but because their marriage has mutated into an ungovernable third organism—a beast with its own moods, tantrums, and existential despair. Therapy is no longer optional. It’s marital chemo.

    And so they go. They learn the rules: de-escalation, boundary-setting, “I” statements. The fights stop, which sounds good—until they stop talking altogether. What remains is a dried-out husk of a relationship, padded with therapy-speak and mutual avoidance. Every conversation is a minefield of affirmations and self-soothing clichés. They’ve traded rage for beige. No more screaming matches, but no more real connection either. They look like two grad students in a toxic group project, just trying to pass the semester without killing each other.

    Yet somehow, this truce counts as a win. The marriage is stable. Homeostasis, if not happiness. It’s better than divorce, which they watch unfold in their friends’ lives with morbid fascination. Their pal Nick leaves his wife for a younger woman named Ginny, who speaks in TikTok euphemisms and bathes him in fresh-eyed adoration. Nick is euphoric, weeping with gratitude like a man who’s just discovered fire. But Kate and Jack look at him the way you’d watch someone dancing on the deck of the Titanic. They’ll take their muted misery over the exhausting ecstasy of dating a woman who thinks Kenny Loggins is a type of sourdough. And who can blame them?