Cinemorphosis

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  • The Weight of the System: Rethinking Willpower, Obesity, and the Economics of Weight Loss

    The Weight of the System: Rethinking Willpower, Obesity, and the Economics of Weight Loss

    Here is the first essay prompt for my critical thinking class:

    The Weight of the System: Rethinking Willpower, Obesity, and the Economics of Weight Loss

    For decades, society has preached the same mantra: weight loss is a matter of willpower, personal responsibility, and discipline. But what if that narrative is flawed, oversimplified, or even deliberately misleading? In reality, obesity is not just about individual choices—it is shaped by biology, economics, corporate interests, and healthcare disparities. The diet industry thrives on promising easy fixes, while the pharmaceutical industry profits from expensive weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. Meanwhile, processed foods—engineered for addiction—ensure that millions remain locked in an endless cycle of weight gain and dieting.

    For this 1,700-word argumentative essay (MLA format required), analyze the misconceptions surrounding weight loss and explore the deeper forces at play. Use the following sources to challenge the idea that weight management is simply about eating less and exercising more:

    • Rebecca Johns – “A Diet Writer’s Regrets”
    • Johann Hari – “A Year on Ozempic Taught Me We’re Thinking About Obesity All Wrong”
    • Harriet Brown – “The Weight of the Evidence”
    • Sandra Aamodt – “Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet”

    Key Questions to Consider:

    • Is personal responsibility a fair framework for understanding obesity, or does it obscure the role of systemic barriers?
    • How do economic privilege and the availability of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic create a divide between those who can afford to manage their weight and those who cannot?
    • What role does the food industry play in promoting processed, addictive foods while pharmaceutical companies profit from treating the consequences?
    • Does the concept of “self-discipline” in dieting ignore scientific realities about metabolism, set points, and the long-term difficulty of maintaining weight loss?

    Focus Areas for Analysis:

    1. Personal Responsibility vs. Systemic Barriers – Johns and Hari challenge the traditional belief that dieting is a matter of willpower, exposing the emotional and physical toll of long-term weight struggles.
    2. Economic Disparity in Weight Loss Solutions – Hari’s critique of Ozempic highlights the ethical concerns surrounding healthcare access and the commercialization of weight loss.
    3. The Science of Set Points and Metabolism – Aamodt and Brown explain how biology resists sustained weight loss, complicating the simplistic “calories in, calories out” narrative.
    4. Capitalism and the Food Industry – Examine how the Industrial Food Complex profits from processed foods while the pharmaceutical industry monetizes weight-related health conditions.

    Conclusion:

    Is the weight-loss narrative fed to the public based on reality, or is it a distraction from larger economic and corporate interests? Consider how acknowledging these systemic influences could reshape our understanding of obesity and lead to more effective and compassionate solutions.

  • The Cost of Constant Approval: Lacie Pound’s Breakdown in a Social Media-Obsessed World

    The Cost of Constant Approval: Lacie Pound’s Breakdown in a Social Media-Obsessed World

    This is the third prompt in my freshman composition class:

    The Cost of Constant Approval: Lacie Pound’s Breakdown in a Social Media-Obsessed World

    In the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” Lacie Pound lives in a world where every social interaction is rated, and one’s digital reputation dictates real-world success. As she obsessively chases approval, her life unravels spectacularly. But what truly caused Lacie’s downfall? Was it the suffocating influence of social media, or did her collapse expose deeper psychological fragilities that existed long before the ratings system amplified them?

    For this 1,700-word essay (MLA format required), analyze Lacie’s psychological and emotional breakdown, evaluating whether social media directly caused her downfall or merely revealed an inevitable unraveling. Use insights from:

    • The Social Dilemma (Netflix documentary)
    • Jonathan Haidt’s essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”
    • Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk “Connected But Not Alone”
    • The Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” (as a primary reference)

    Key Focus Areas for Analysis:

    1. The Role of Social Media in Shaping Identity – How does Lacie’s obsession with external validation mirror real-world patterns of social media influence, as explored in The Social Dilemma?
    2. Mental Health and the Validation Culture – Use Haidt’s analysis to examine how constant ranking, comparison, and digital pressure contribute to anxiety and emotional distress.
    3. Authenticity vs. Performance – Discuss Turkle’s argument that technology fosters curated personas rather than genuine connection. How does this performative pressure accelerate Lacie’s mental decline?
    4. The Inevitability of Lacie’s Breakdown – Was her collapse truly caused by the rating system, or did social media merely amplify existing insecurities and psychological struggles?

    Essay Requirements:

    • Length: 1,700 words
    • Format: MLA (Modern Language Association)
    • Sources: Minimum of 4, cited in MLA format
    • Required Texts:
      • The Social Dilemma (Netflix documentary)
      • Jonathan Haidt’s “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”
      • Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk “Connected But Not Alone”
      • Black Mirror: “Nosedive” (episode reference)

    Conclusion:

    What does Lacie’s downfall reveal about our relationship with digital validation? Is her story a cautionary tale about social media’s psychological grip, or does it expose a deeper human vulnerability that would exist with or without technology? Through this analysis, explore whether Nosedive serves as a critique of social media itself—or if it’s ultimately a reflection of something far more personal and timeless: the human craving for approval.

  • Teaching History Without Erasure: Frederick Douglass, Germany’s Reckoning, and the Power of Truth

    Teaching History Without Erasure: Frederick Douglass, Germany’s Reckoning, and the Power of Truth

    This is my second essay prompt in my freshman composition class:

    Teaching History Without Erasure: Frederick Douglass, Germany’s Reckoning, and the Power of Truth

    In recent years, fierce debates have erupted over how slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racial injustice should be taught in American classrooms. Some critics argue that these lessons have become excessively politicized, accusing educators of pushing a divisive narrative that portrays America as fundamentally irredeemable. They claim that such an approach fosters victimhood, undermines critical thinking, and turns education into a vehicle for ideological indoctrination.

    Others push back, arguing that this resistance is itself a form of historical distortion—an attempt to silence African-American voices and obscure painful but essential truths. They assert that teaching racial injustice is not about politics but about moral, psychological, and historical reckoning. Frederick Douglass’ writings offer a powerful counterpoint, illustrating how truth-telling about oppression is not an act of condemnation but one of empowerment. Much like Jordan Peele’s The Sunken Place concept, Douglass’ life reveals how acknowledging injustice can lead to personal agency, resistance, and the pursuit of justice. Similarly, Germany’s post-Holocaust reckoning provides a framework for confronting historical atrocities without fostering helplessness or national self-loathing.

    For this 1,700-word argumentative essay (MLA format required), analyze how Frederick Douglass’ personal fight against slavery and Germany’s effort to memorialize the Holocaust offer crucial lessons on addressing historical injustice. Drawing on Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave and Clint Smith’s essay “Monuments to the Unthinkable,” explore how bearing witness to historical truths can foster accountability, self-agency, and resilience. Consider how both examples highlight the importance of acknowledging past wrongs while also promoting national and individual growth.

    Essay Requirements:

    • Length: 1,700 words
    • Format: MLA (Modern Language Association)
    • Sources: Minimum of 4, cited in MLA format
    • Required Texts:
      • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (available online as a PDF)
      • Clint Smith’s “Monuments to the Unthinkable”
      • PBS NewsHour YouTube video “Why Americans Are So Divided Over Teaching Critical Race Theory”
      • David Pilgrim’s YouTube video “The Jim Crow Museum”
      • Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” (Optional for thematic analysis)

    Key Focus Areas for Analysis:

    • How Douglass’ narrative challenges oppression and promotes self-agency
    • How Germany’s post-Holocaust reforms serve as a model for confronting historical injustice
    • The moral responsibility of societies to acknowledge past atrocities and ensure they are not repeated
    • How historical awareness empowers future generations to break cycles of injustice
    • Strategies for teaching history in a way that fosters accountability, growth, and resilience—without promoting victimhood or division

    This essay invites you to step beyond the surface of modern political debates and examine how history, when taught truthfully, can serve as a tool for both personal and societal transformation. How should we reckon with our past, and what can we learn from those who have done it well?

  • Essay Prompt: Should You Follow Your Bliss?

    Essay Prompt: Should You Follow Your Bliss?

    The following is my freshman composition class’ first essay:

    Prompt Title: Passion or Pragmatism? Debunking the Myth of “Do What You Love”

    We’ve all heard the advice: Follow your passion, and success will follow. It’s the rallying cry of commencement speeches, self-help gurus, and LinkedIn influencers. But what if this well-intentioned mantra is actually terrible career advice? Computer science professor and bestselling author Cal Newport argues that blindly chasing passion can lead to frustration, stagnation, and even failure. Instead, he champions an approach based on deliberate skill-building, deep work, and career craftsmanship.

    For this 1,700-word argumentative essay (MLA format required), your task is to evaluate Newport’s critique of passion-driven career advice by drawing from the following sources:

    • Newport’s YouTube video: “Core Idea: Don’t Follow Your Passion”
    • His article: “The Passion Trap”
    • His manifesto: “The Career Craftsman Manifesto”
    • Ali Abdaal’s counterpoint video: “Follow Your Passion Is Bad Advice. Here’s Why.”

    Do you side with Newport’s pragmatic, skill-first approach, or do you believe passion still plays a crucial role in career success? Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between—requiring a more nuanced perspective that accounts for economic realities, job market trends, and personal fulfillment.

    Your essay should defend, refute, or complicate Newport’s claim by incorporating evidence from the provided sources, applying logical reasoning, and considering real-world implications. This is your opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom, sharpen your analytical skills, and weigh in on one of the most persistent debates in career development.

    So, should we follow our hearts, or should we master our craft and let passion emerge along the way? Make your case.

  • First Love in Leningrad, Circa 1984

    First Love in Leningrad, Circa 1984

    The following evening found me slouched in a Leningrad discotheque, still nursing the kind of sore backside only a Soviet bus seat could deliver. I was stationed at a high-top table, reading A Clockwork Orange, trying to project an air of literary detachment while simultaneously avoiding eye contact with the throng of dancers twisting under the flickering neon lights.

    Then she appeared.

    Short, elfin, bespectacled—like an intellectual sprite who had wandered in from some parallel universe where bookish charm trumped disco fever. Her sandy-blonde hair framed a delicate face, and her gaze, sharp and assessing, landed squarely on me. “A very famous book,” she observed, nodding toward my well-worn copy.

    She introduced herself as Tula, a Finn on vacation, and without hesitation, slid into the seat across from me. We launched into a conversation that flowed as naturally as vodka at a Russian wedding—literature, music, the intoxicating allure of Russian novelists who knew how to suffer properly. I rattled off every book I had read, every philosophical revelation I had gleaned, and, with the reckless bravado of a twenty-something, confessed my grand ambition to write a novel.

    “You will be famous,” she declared with absolute certainty, as if she had peered through the murky fog of the future and spotted my name emblazoned on book covers. “I can feel it. You must visit me at Lake Saimaa. We will celebrate. Who knows. Perhaps I too will be a published novelist again. We can live together and be each other’s muse.”

    Flattered, I let my guard down. For two hours, we spoke like old friends who had simply taken too long to meet. Our mutual love for Russian literature, the music of Rachmaninoff, and the strange magnetic pull of doomed genius bound us together in a bubble of conversation. Then, as if she had been waiting for just the right moment, she reached into her purse, retrieved a small scrap of paper, and wrote down a title.

    “This,” she said, sliding it toward me, “is the book you must read.”

    I picked it up and saw the name—The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.

    She looked at me with the intensity of a woman who had just handed over a sacred text. 

    As we conversed under the glittering gold disco ball, the Bee Gees’ “Too Much Heaven” blared across the club. It became apparent through our self-revelations that neither of us had any romantic experience.  Tula At one point, she said, “I will never marry. I have, what do you say in English? Melancholy. Yes, I have melancholy. You know this word?”

    “Yes, I am no stranger to melancholy.”

    “I am so much like that,” she said.

    “That explains your love of Rachmaninoff.”

    She clasped her hands and almost became teary-eyed. “How I love Rachmaninoff. Just utter his name, and I will break down weeping.”

    I thought I was a depressive, but in the presence of Tula, I had the perkiness of Richard Simmons leading an aerobics class. 

    She asked me what I was doing in Russia. I explained that my grandfather was a card-carrying communist, a friend of Fidel Castro, and a supporter of the Soviet Union. He used a shortwave radio in his San Pedro house to communicate with Soviet sailors in nearby ships and submarines. He visited Cuba as often as he could to bring medical supplies that were in need there. One of his friends, a Hollywood writer, lived in exile in Nicaragua after being arrested in France by Interpol for driving a Peugeot station wagon filled with illegal weapons. My grandfather wanted me to fall in love with the Soviet Union and become a champion of its utopian vision, so he paid for me to go on a peace tour. Had I fallen in love with Russia as my grandfather had hoped? Not really. So far, I had been approached at the Moscow Zoo by a striking woman dressed in black and pearls who my tour guide Natasha warned me was a KGB agent trying to have me arrested for soliciting a prostitute. I was washing my hands at the newly built Olympic Hotel in Moscow when the bathroom sink fell out of the wall and against my torso, causing a bloody cut on my abdomen. I got a fever in Novgorod prompting a beautiful female doctor with a severe face to come into my hotel and give me a shot in the butt.  I was, as my fellow traveler Jerry Gold warned me, approached by young men on the subway who wanted to know if I had any American blue jeans to sell as a way of having me arrested for illicit black-market trading.  Everywhere I went in Russia–hotels, trains, restaurants–there were speakers playing grim chamber music as if the authorities were saying, “Try not to be too happy during your stay here.”

    Tula listened to me talk for a couple of hours with a wide gaze while touching my shoulder. “I need to see you again,” she said.

    We agreed to meet the next day at the Peterhof Royal Palace by the Samson Fountain. There is this giant garden the size of several football fields with monuments, gold statues, and fountains shooting streams of water straight into the blue sky. We sat on concrete steps around the fountains. It was close to ninety degrees as statues of gold naked bodies stood in various poses next to jets of erupting water in a spectacle called The Grand Cascade. Tula wore a short white dress and we sat on the steps. In the heat, we decided I would get us some ice cream.

    While I was walking toward the ice cream bar, a gypsy tried to hand off a baby to me the way a quarterback would hand off a football to a running back. It all happened so quickly. Before the baby was cradled in my chest, a fast-acting Russian police officer grabbed the baby, returned the baby to the gypsy, and shouted at her. I thought she would be arrested, but the officer appeared content with scolding her. She withered at his remarks and slumped away with the child in her arms.  

    I returned with the ice cream and told Tula about the incident with the gypsy. She said things like that happen all the time here.

    “But what was I supposed to do with the baby?”

    “Perhaps adopt it? Buy it? Save it from a life of misery? There is so much tragedy here.”

    “So I was supposed to fly back to the States with a baby? Go through customs and everything else?”

    “I know. It’s crazy.”

    “I don’t think I could be a parent. I don’t have the hardwiring for it.”

    “Me either. I’m too sad to be a parent. Sadness is a full-time job that leaves me with little energy for much else.”

    She finished her ice cream and smiled at me, then said, “You and I are like two kindred spirits meeting each other in this strange world.”

    “It’s hotter than hell out here.”

    “So will you marry someday?”

    I shrugged, then said, “I doubt anyone will take me.”

    “Don’t be so hard on yourself. If I were the marrying type, I would come to America and spend my life with you. We could live in California and be sad together. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

    It actually sounded rather appealing. Tula and I living a life of sadness, writing novels together, marinating in Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony while discussing the existential torment of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. What other kind of life was there?

    She stood up and said she had to catch her plane back to Finland and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek.

    “I really hope you find happiness. You are such an outstanding person.”

    “Outstanding?”

    That adjective used to describe me was a bit hard to take. It was like a real estate agent trying to describe a decrepit property by the train tracks as palatial. I repeated the word outstanding with perhaps a trace of sarcasm and said goodbye to her. I never saw her again, but I still remember the vanilla ice cream–the best I’ve ever tasted. 

    Nine months later while back in my routine of working out, playing piano, and doing my college studies in the Bay Area, I received a letter from Tula. I was living with my mother and standing by our front yard’s loquat tree while holding the envelope and staring with fascination at the Finnish return address. Nearby some Mexican parrots were making a ruckus in a neighbor’s dogwood tree. It was a warm May. I walked under the porch light by the front door entrance and read Tula’s letter.

    Dear Jeff,

    So much has happened since I met you. I took your recommendation and read A Confederacy of Dunces. I laughed my ass off, but the book was so sad. I keep the book on my shelf and always think of you when I see it. Now for some big news. Brace yourself. You won’t believe this. I’m getting married! I have you to thank for this. I never thought I was the marrying type, but those two days I spent with you in Russia changed me. When I got back to Finland, I was restless, I thought about you constantly, and even at one time I had this mad idea that I should arrange to visit you, but a high school friend Oliver came into my life, and we began seeing each other, not as friends but as lovers. I have you to thank for this. Meeting you awakened a part of my soul that I had never known before. I hope that you don’t forsake love, as I had planned to do, that you too will find someone special in your life. You deserve it. You are an amazing man!

    Love Always,

    Tula

    I stood at the entryway and listened to the shrill cackles of the nearby parrots. 

    So I was the guy who had helped a sweet-souled depressive fall in love. No, I wasn’t the recipient of that love. But I was the lighter fluid to get the grill going. I was the spark, the catalyst, and the kindling to get Tula on the road to Loveville. I had made a difference.

    I went inside the house, walked into the living room, and played something sad at my ebony Yamaha upright.  I tried to imagine Tula as my sole audience, but she was replaced by the Russian Commander and I could see him mocking me. 

    “You are a charlatan,” I could imagine him saying. “You are an American charlatan in Russia. You must always be put in your place. You must drink warm beer till you puke your guts out. Only then can you find redemption for your vain self.”

    Over the years, I attempted to channel the absurdities of the totalitarian police state into my fiction, convinced I could capture its paranoia and bureaucratic lunacy in novel form. Herculodge depicted a dystopia where physical fitness was the highest moral virtue—where to be svelte was to be righteous, and to carry an extra pound was to invite public shaming and possible exile. Gym-Nauseam imagined a society where citizens willingly surrendered their freedom, not to a dictator, but to the tyranny of endless, punishing workouts, their lives consumed by squats, protein intake calculations, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive “goal weight.”

    As short stories, they worked—a sharp jab of satire, a bitter laugh at the madness of it all. But as novels? They were so catastrophically bad, they deserved their own show trial. Any competent literary tribunal would have sentenced me to hard labor in a Siberian gulag, where I could atone for my crimes against narrative structure by stacking bricks in the permafrost and reconsidering my life choices.

  • The Day My Piano Playing Annoyed a Russian Commander

    The Day My Piano Playing Annoyed a Russian Commander

    After breakfast inside the newly-constructed Moscow Olympic Hotel, I spotted a grand piano in the lobby, and I began to play a sad piece that I had composed myself. My fellow tourists surrounded me and when I was done with my short piece, they asked me to play another song. Being a ham with an insatiable appetite for attention, I was happy to oblige.

    I could tell by my audience’s response that they were impressed, but to be honest, I am technically a subpar pianist, and worse I compensate for my lack of technical prowess by playing my compositions in a style that tends to be mawkish, self-indulgent, and lugubrious. 

    As my fellow tourists and other hotel guests surrounded me, there were at a distant table several Soviet military men sitting down to breakfast and room-temperature beer. They were watching me with curiosity. Most notably, the Commander, a tall husky man in his forties with thick eyebrows, dark hair, and a broad chin, was staring at me. I turned from him and continued to play my drawn-out piano ballade.

    In the middle of the piece, I saw out of the corner of my eye the same woman from the Moscow zoo, and like the day before she was dressed in the same elegant black outfit. She was standing over the piano’s soundboard and smiling at me. I was thinking of cutting my piece short so I could converse with her, but before I could do so, the slack-jawed Commander, his uniform festooned with medals and epaulets, approached the woman and gave her a lurid stare. His presence seemed to spook her. She abruptly exited the hotel, and the Commander was now staring at me with an amused smile. To make sure I knew that he was mocking me for my ham performance, he puckered his lips and placed his hand next to his chest, and waved his hand up and down while wiggling his fingers in an exaggerated fashion. His military subordinates at the nearby table were laughing. 

    When I was finished playing my composition, he invited me to sit with him and his fellow soldiers at the distant table. Listening to his heavy black military boots squeak as he walked, I followed him to the table and scanned the faces of jeering soldiers. The commander outstretched his arm toward an empty chair, his way of ordering me to sit. He then poured me a tall glass of warm beer. I was trying to construct a polite way of telling him that I didn’t care for any type of beer, especially warm beer, but before I could get out the words, the Commander shouted, “Drink!”

    Noticing my reluctance to take the warm beer, he repeated this command two more times. I could see now that I was being punished for being a piano dandy. I am convinced that the Commander knew that my piano playing was both vulgar and inferior. I say this because I know enough about musicianship to know that I am more of a piano poseur than a true musician. I also know that in Russia many children are forced to take rigorous piano and violin lessons with strict supervision so that the average Russian eight-year-old has better technical acquisition than I do. So I am convinced the officer and his fellow soldiers knew that I was a musical fraud. Also because I was deeply immersed in the novels and essays of Russian emigre Vladimir Nabokov, I knew that in Russia there was the concept of poshlost, the affectations and vulgarities of a charlatan who aspires to be grand but merely flops and reveals himself to be crass and pretentious. In other words, I was an American charlatan in Russia, and I would have to pay the penalty. The price I would pay would be to be forced to drink a pint of Russian warm beer at the behest of the Soviet military. The Commander surely knew that as an American I was accustomed to ice-cold beverages and that warm beer in the morning would not be to my liking. 

    I forced the entire glass of bitter hoppy beer down my throat. My grimacing sour face and my being overcome by nausea elated the soldiers who engaged in thigh-slapping laughter. Witnessing the American Charlatan reduced to size was cause for triumph and celebration. 

    After I was done with my beer, I thanked them for the refreshment and returned to my hotel room. I undressed, showered, then prepared to brush my teeth. When I twisted the cold-water knob, the entire sink came out of the wall and the sink’s sharp edge cut me in the chest so that I had a three-inch-long vertical cut down my torso. I was bleeding. A sink from a newly-constructed hotel in Moscow had just fallen out of the wall and cut me. 

    The cut wasn’t that deep, but I was angry that I had missed two opportunities with the mysterious Russian woman and that the Russian Commander and his soldiers had mocked me, so I spent the rest of the day lifting my shirt and showing my fellow travelers the “ugly cut” I had received as a way of venting my resentment at my perceived adversaries.

    That wasn’t the last I saw of the Commander and his coterie of soldiers. They were in a nearby cabin on the train to Novgorod. When the Commander was putting his duffel bag above his cabin bunk bed, he saw me, gave me a familiar nod, and laughed as if still feeding off my humiliation from drinking warm beer at the Moscow Olympic Hotel. Part of me was grateful that he found me to be a source of joyful entertainment because I could imagine worse alternatives. 

    Inside my own cabin, which I was sharing with Jerry Gold, I told him the Commander was nearby. 

    “He’s probably trailing us,” Jerry said.

    “Why?”

    “We’re on their radar. Or it just might be the protocol for them to keep close tabs on us.”

    “We’re just American tourists.”

    “That’s not what they think. For all they know, we’re CIA. Not to mention they saw you with a copy of A Clockwork Orange at the airport. Thanks to you, we’re all being followed.”

    “You’re paranoid.”

    “We’ll see.”

    By the time we got to Novgorod and Jerry and I were settled in our hotel room by Lake Ilmen, I had what felt like either a cold or the flu. Natasha came in to ask if I felt good enough to go on the tour of the museum. 

    “I’m not sure,” I said while lying on the bed.

    “We’ll get you a doctor,” Natasha said. 

    “I don’t need one,” I said.

    “But I insist.”

    Barely a half-hour had passed when a beautiful doctor with her light brown hair in a bun and a white medical coat came into my hotel. She was accompanied by two nurses holding leather apothecary bags. My fellow travelers, all twelve of them, were so curious they inched their way into the small hotel room to watch my examination.

    The unsmiling doctor had me sit in a chair and take off my shirt. She listened to my chest, looked inside my mouth, and proclaimed that I had a cold. 

    “Just a cold,” I announced to everyone standing in the room.

    But at that very moment, the doctor ordered me to lie face down on the bed and to pull down my pants. I was going to get a shot in the ass. 

    “In my country, we don’t get shots for the common cold,” I protested.

    “Shut up and do as you’re told,” Natasha said. 

    “If you insist.”

    No one cleared out. Watching me get a shot in the right butt cheek was apparently something everyone felt entitled to see. A Soviet-style shot in the ass was too good of an opportunity to miss, I guess. The shot hurt like hell as if some thick viscous molasses was being injected into my flesh.  

    Afterward, I went to the museum, and for some reason, we were standing in a barn surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds and Natasha was giving us a lecture about farming and trade routes in Russia. It was close to a hundred degrees, we were miserable, hungry, and impatient for Natasha to end her lecture. That’s when the Commander and his subordinates approached. They stood next to Natasha and watched us. The message was clear. We were to listen attentively to our tour guide.

    As Natasha walked around the barn and found a place that was in the shade, Jerry Gold found a long stalk of dried hay and positioned himself behind the Commander. Slyly, Jerry brushed the dry straw against the back of the Commander’s neck causing the officer to think he was besieged by a mosquito, and he gave his neck a mighty slap. After Jerry performed the prank three times successfully unnoticed by the Commander, about a half dozen of my fellow tourists had caught on and we were doing our best to stifle our laughter. 

    On one hand, I was terrified that Jerry would get caught. On the other, I was enjoying the spectacle of the Commander’s vexation.

    My good spirits were gone the next day when I woke up with a bruised ass from the mysterious “cold” shot. The pain and swelling were so bad that I had to walk with a severe limp. My fellow travelers said I walked like a Soviet soldier with a war injury.   

    Part of our itinerary that day was to visit a toy factory, which was located on the edge of a forest. I don’t know why it was so important to walk around a factory full of cheap plastic figurines. The factory was uninhabited by employees except for the attendant, but I looked out the factory window and saw several buses full of children between the ages of ten and fourteen. Some of the children were getting out of the buses and approaching the factory. I asked Natasha if the children were about to start a work shift at the factory. She consulted with the factory attendant and he whispered something into the ear of the security guard. The guard, a silver-haired man in his fifties, rushed outside and shepherded the children back into the buses. I even saw the guard give one boy a kick in the rear. It was clear to me and some of the others that Natasha and her cohorts didn’t want to create the impression that the Soviet Union violated child labor laws. 

    We returned to the hotel by the lake and had dinner in an affixed dining area that was crowded with other tour groups. The staff was so busy they had to stagger us inside the restaurant based on our status. We were at the bottom. The first tier was a group of North Korean children and teenagers dressed in blue uniforms with hats. They looked happy and confident that in the Soviet Union they were special and belonged. Their meals came first, were larger, and served by the staff with more enthusiasm. 

    We on the other hand were looked at as a painful obligation. Our portions were smaller, our food colder, and our service more perfunctory. They were throwing scraps to dogs. I was ready to leave Novgorod and go to Leningrad.

  • The Mysterious Woman at the Moscow Zoo

    The Mysterious Woman at the Moscow Zoo

    The morning after landing in Moscow—still basking in the relief that no grim-faced customs officer had pried A Clockwork Orange from my hands—I found myself standing with a dozen other jet-lagged Americans at the Moscow Zoo, led by our perpetually chipper tour guide, Natasha. The air was thick with a mix of animal musk and cigarette smoke, and somewhere in the distance, a public speaker crooned a heart-wrenching Rachmaninoff piano piece, as if the entire city were in a state of elegant despair.

    I stood transfixed before the silverback gorilla, watching as he pounded his enormous, muscle-corded chest inside his moated enclosure, the very embodiment of brute strength and existential boredom. That’s when she appeared—an elegant woman in a black dress so perfectly tailored it looked painted onto her body, a matching black hat perched at a rakish angle, and a string of pearls glistening like a final touch of old-world sophistication. She moved toward me with an effortless grace, her dark eyes alight with something between mischief and intrigue.

    Not only was she stunning—she was smiling. At me. As if we were long-lost confidantes about to dive into a tête-à-tête of world-altering significance. My sleep-deprived, jet-lagged brain struggled to process this impossible scenario: a beautiful Russian woman, dressed for a rendezvous at Café Pushkin rather than a casual afternoon at the zoo, suddenly deciding that I was worth her time. I had come to Moscow expecting bureaucracy, bad food, and a surplus of dour expressions—not this. It was as if I had stumbled into the first act of a Cold War spy thriller, and I had absolutely no idea what my lines were supposed to be.

    “I can tell you’re American,” she said with a sharp accent that sent chills down my spine, “but you look very Russian.”

    This was true. My mother’s family was from Poland and Belarus, and I had dramatic Eastern European features. Even the other tourists on our tour said I looked Russian.

    “Russian men are very strong,” she said. “And you are a weightlifter, of course.”

    Indeed, I was. In fact, before I pivoted to bodybuilding in my mid-teens, I was an award-winning Olympic Weightlifter, and I was very fond of the great Soviet world record breaker Vasily Alekseyev. 

    “Russian women love strong men,” she said, smiling at me.

    I was too flattered by her attention to be suspicious of her ulterior motives, but Natasha saw what was going on, and the goody-two-shoes tour guide with thick spectacles grabbed me by the arm with her strong grip, walked me to some nearby bushes, and warned me that the woman was probably KGB attempting to ensnare me into some kind of kompromat or other. What the trap was Natasha did not say, so it was left to my prurient imagination. 

    While the reality was that Natasha had probably saved me from a lot of grief, I was too enticed by this elegant woman to get her out of my mind. In college, I was too socially awkward and absorbed by my bodybuilding, piano playing, and reading of “dark literature” to date or have what people considered normal socializing, but thousands of miles away from my mundane environment in the San Francisco Bay Area and now in the forbidden Soviet Union, I found myself feeling emboldened around the opposite sex, and I was hungry for a memorable encounter of some kind. What I’m trying to say is that I found myself feeling unusually lusty. My desires compelled me to believe that I had a grand opportunity with this lovely Russian woman at the zoo, and the fact that Natasha had ruined my chances pissed me off in ways that got me in touch with my Inner Silverback. Contrary to Natasha’s warnings, there may have been an outside chance that this mysterious woman simply found me attractive and wanted to get to know me, but her opportunity, and mine, had been repelled by my no-nonsense busy-body tour guide. 

  • Reading A Clockwork Orange in Russia

    Reading A Clockwork Orange in Russia

    In my early twenties, I was holding a copy of A Clockwork Orange on an Aeroflot flight from New York to Moscow, and I was fairly certain I’d be arrested before I even touched Soviet soil. This was not the book I was supposed to be reading. My grandfather, a proud, card-carrying Communist, had made it clear that my in-flight reading should be Cities Without Crisis: The Soviet Union Through the Eyes of an American by Mike Davidow—a glowing, uncritical love letter to the USSR. According to Davidow, the Soviet Union was well on its way to utopia, a land where happy, apple-cheeked children played in clean, orderly cities, miraculously untouched by the crime, chaos, and moral decay of capitalist America.

    I had every intention of honoring my grandfather’s wishes. He had, after all, funded my spot on this Sputnik Peace Tour, a Cold War-era cultural exchange designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s superiority and convince impressionable American university students that their homeland was little more than a dilapidated shack compared to the Soviet skyscraper. My grandfather, who spent his golden years vacationing in Russia and Cuba and had personally befriended Fidel Castro, hoped I’d return to the States ready to sing the Soviet anthem on command, with a crimson hammer-and-sickle tattoo stretched across my chest.

    But try as I might, I couldn’t stomach Davidow’s propaganda. It read like an overlong infomercial scripted by a particularly humorless bureaucrat. Every page was predictable, every assertion dripping with a blind, almost devotional reverence for the Soviet system. By chapter three, my eyelids were growing heavier than a Soviet cement block. That’s when I ditched it for A Clockwork Orange, a novel that, in its satirical depiction of authoritarianism and mindless conformity, was just about the worst reading material one could bring on a goodwill trip to the USSR. My grandfather would have called it “reactionary,” but I wasn’t worried about him.

    No, my real concern was the Soviet customs officers waiting for us on the tarmac. They’d be rummaging through our luggage, sniffing out any hint of anti-Soviet subversion. And there I was, gripping a book that, if noticed, might earn me an all-expenses-paid trip to the kind of re-education program I had no interest in attending.

    When one of my fellow tourists, Jerry Gold, who was studying law at Brown University, saw me reading the subversive novel while sitting next to me on the plane, he warned me that the Soviet police would probably confiscate it when we got to the airport. “Not only will they take your book,” he said, “they will mark you as a troublemaker and keep tags on you throughout the entire trip. You must now constantly look over your shoulder for spies, my friend. And remember, if anyone wants to offer you good money for your jeans, it’s probably KGB. Selling Western commodities for the black market is a crime that could get you sent to a Soviet prison.”

    I’ll admit, I was a little anxious about some stern-faced Soviet officer confiscating A Clockwork Orange from my hands, but that concern quickly took a backseat to a far more immediate crisis: the inedible horrors being passed off as food on the Aeroflot flight. The demure flight attendants, clad in their stiff, no-nonsense uniforms, moved through the cabin with a grim efficiency, depositing onto our trays what could only be described as Cold War rations—waxy cheese triangles entombed in foil, anemic cold cuts that looked like they had lost a war of their own, limp lettuce gasping for dignity, and carrot slices so soggy they seemed to be pre-chewed. It was a meal that could single-handedly refute Mike Davidow’s utopian vision in Cities Without Crisis. His thesis—that the Soviet Union was building thriving cities free of strife—collapsed under the weight of this culinary travesty. Because if a nation’s food is a reflection of its prosperity, then a country that serves despair on a tray is, in fact, in crisis. And a man who fails to acknowledge that crisis is a fraud.

    Across the aisle, Jerry Gold, the kind of guy who exuded the unshakable self-assurance of someone who spent his summers at debate camp and his winters skiing in Vermont, curled his lip in disgust. A mop of reddish-brown hair and a constellation of freckles gave him the air of a scholarly leprechaun. He peeled back the foil on his cheese triangle with surgical precision, examined its plasticky surface like a jeweler appraising a fake diamond, and let out a slow, deliberate sigh. Then, in a display of Ivy League pragmatism, he took the industrial-grade brown napkin from his tray, folded it with the care of a man preparing for a high-stakes origami competition, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat. “You might want to do the same,” he advised me in a tone that suggested this was less a suggestion and more a survival strategy. I nodded, following suit, because when faced with Soviet airline cuisine, you learned to take advice from the man with a backup plan.

    “This could be the only toilet paper you’re going to have on this trip,” he said. “You would be wise to save all your napkins. They’re worth their weight in gold around here.”

    “That’s disgusting.”

    “Have you ever used an Eastern European toilet?”

    I shook my head.

    “A hole in the ground. An invitation to the deep knee bend. It’s a free Jack Lalanne workout every time you go to the shitter. Things can be rather primitive.”

    “For someone so hellbent on horrifying me on every aspect of this tour, can you please tell me why you decided to go on this trip?”

    “It’s college credit. It’s exotic. How many Americans can boast of having been inside the Soviet Union?” He forced down a bite of cheese and asked me why I was going on the tour. 

    “My grandfather is a card-carrying communist,” I said. “He’s trying to convert me.”

    “So he sent you to paradise.” He laughed, then pinched a cold cut, lifted it before his face, and scrutinized it carefully.

    “The food isn’t a winning argument,” I said. “Nor is the absence of toilet paper.”

    “There is a saying in the Soviet Union,” he said while tossing the uneaten cold cut on his tray. “If you see people standing in line, make sure you stand in it. People are always waiting in line for something.”

    His statement proved to be true. A week later when we were in a sweltering market in Kyiv, we saw forlorn citizens, mostly stoic-faced babushkas, standing in a long line to buy wrinkled room-temperature chickens with flies swarming over them. I kept thinking to myself, “Cities without crisis? Bullshit.” Little did I know, I was standing 62 miles from Chernobyl and that two years later the nuclear reactor would explode causing worldwide radioactive contamination. Cities without crisis indeed.

    But in 1984 as I witnessed long lines, food shortages, nonexistent toilet paper, and primitive toilets, I found something about the Soviet Union that struck me as almost admirable: Everywhere we went, markets, train stations, parks, and museums, there were government speakers playing classical music, much of it from Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. I wanted to believe, as my grandfather would want me to, that the violin chamber pieces and piano sonatas were the Soviet Union’s idea of music for the masses based on the government cultivating sophisticated taste in its citizens. But a darker motive was that the music was part of the Soviet Union’s propaganda: Classical music from Russian composers was a way of rebuking the vulgarity and corruption of the West. 

  • In the 1970s, Books Were Sacred Texts

    In the 1970s, Books Were Sacred Texts

    In the 1970s—when books weren’t just books; they were sacred texts, maps to enlightenment, portals to a better world. Back then, the right book could change everything. And no place embodied this belief more than the Co-Op grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area, a socialist utopia disguised as a supermarket.

    Co-Op wasn’t just a store—it was a temple of countercultural righteousness, a fluorescent-lit commune where food was political, capitalism was the enemy, and books were the gospel of enlightenment and revolution. The employees, mostly bearded men in survivalist gear and women in flowing skirts, looked like they had just emerged from a transcendental meditation retreat in Big Sur. The store carried everything necessary for the well-intentioned ascetic: wheat germ, carob honey ice cream, tofu, Japanese yams, granola by the truckload. In one corner, you could buy an alfalfa sprout home-growing kit; in another, you could pick up a well-worn copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book section—small, but potent—was a who’s who of 70s countercultural essentials: The Secret Life of Plants, Chariots of the Gods, The Peter Principle, and the vegetarian bible of all vegetarian bibles, Frances Moore Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet.

    Shopping at Co-Op was an act of ideological purification. You weren’t just filling your pantry—you were waging war against The Man. Your grocery list was a manifesto. Brown rice instead of white? A stance against industrial food tyranny. Organic honey? A protest against corporate sugar slavery. Granola? The fuel of the revolution.

    But here’s the problem with turning your diet into a moral crusade—it comes with unintended consequences. Specifically, Granola Belly.

    The self-styled revolutionaries of the Co-Op era, those brave warriors against the forces of corporate food oppression, were inadvertently overeating their way to oblivion. Granola, wheat germ, and honey—pure, untainted by corporate greed—were caloric landmines. Yet they shoveled it down in righteous indignation, their burgeoning bellies a testament to their dietary zealotry. They waddled through the aisles, draped in North Face survival gear, looking ready to disappear into the Alaskan wilderness at any moment—if only they weren’t weighed down by their own moral superiority.

    Granola enthusiasts of the 70s were, in essence, a contradiction wrapped in a paradox and coated in raw honey. They raged against consumerism, yet consumed with a ferocity that would make a glutton blush. They preached self-discipline while mainlining carbohydrate ecstasy. They railed against corporate food tyranny, but the only thing expanding faster than their political righteousness was their waistlines.

    But Co-Op wasn’t just about the food—it was about the books. If the aisles were the body of the revolution, the books were its soul. They were blueprints for enlightenment, roadmaps to utopia. Talk to plants, replace animal protein with soy, meditate your way to cosmic awareness, learn the wisdom of the ancient aliens—everything you needed to build a new world was right there, tucked between the sacks of lentils and jars of miso paste.

    Which brings me back to my writing demon.

    Just as the Co-Op faithful believed books could transform civilization, I have spent my life believing the same about my own writing. The demon isn’t just some compulsive need to write—it’s the insatiable hunger for literary immortality, the delusion that one book—one perfectly crafted book—could define me, complete me, redeem me.

    It’s the same old obsession, wrapped in different packaging. My granola bowl is now a manuscript, my utopian blueprint now a satirical screed. I am still that wide-eyed Co-Op kid, convinced that books can reshape the world. But instead of reading the gospel, I am trying—foolishly, obsessively—to write it.

  • It’s Never Been a Worse Time to Write a Book

    It’s Never Been a Worse Time to Write a Book

    Looking at Paul’s literary success—a man whose brief collection of letters has been on history’s all-time best-seller list—I can’t help but feel I bet on the wrong horse. Here I was, grinding away at novels, when I should have been an epistle-wielding scrivener, maybe even the founder of my own religion. Paul understood something I clearly did not: the world wasn’t clamoring for door stopper novels the size of The Count of Monte Cristo—it wanted sharp, incendiary tracts that could shake the foundations of belief. His instincts were dead-on, and two millennia later, his work is still in print, while my manuscripts remain in purgatory.

    And let’s be honest—there’s never been a worse time to write a book. We inhabit a post-literate wasteland, where the next generation’s idea of reading is squinting at subtitles while scrolling TikTok. The written word is being replaced by 15-second dopamine jolts, and syntax is being butchered faster than a hog in a slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, AI-generated prose is turning human creativity into an optional relic—why agonize over writing when you can plug a prompt into ChatGPT and get a grammatically competent, if soulless, 2,000-word essay faster than it takes to microwave a Hot Pocket? Argument structure, rhetorical flourish, actual thought? Who needs those when the algorithm can produce a sterile, citation-laden monstrosity with all the passion of an instruction manual? Paul saw the writing on the wall—literally. And I? I spent five decades wrestling with novels that no one wanted to read. Maybe it’s time to rethink my approach before I, too, become just another artifact of a bygone literary era.

    And yet, when you’re possessed by the writing demon, as I am, none of this matters. Reality bends around the obsession. Practical concerns slide off me like water off a duck’s back—or more accurately, like rejection letters into my trash bin. The demon doesn’t care about markets, trends, or the creeping irrelevance of books. No, the demon is hell-bent on proselytizing, convinced that I’ve stumbled upon the elixir of life, and that the world must hear my truth, whether it wants to or not. It’s not just enthusiasm—it’s derangement, the kind of fevered compulsion that outs you as a hopeless fanboy for your own ideas. People start calling you “touched” or “special,” which is just polite society’s way of saying, “You are utterly unhinged, and we wish you would stop.”

    You’re ashamed of your writing obsession, yet powerless to stop because the impulse isn’t tethered to reality—it’s pure pathology. You’re a self-appointed evangelist, convinced the world needs your message, your perspective, you. If only people would listen, if only your words took root in the collective consciousness, then maybe—just maybe—you’d finally feel the validation that’s eluded you your entire life.

    And yet, you’re no fool. You see the absurdity of your crusade. You know the odds, the futility, the sheer delusion of it all. But you’re a divided soul—the rational part watches in horror as the compulsive part keeps writing into the void, hoping someone, somewhere, will care.