Cinemorphosis

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  • The One-Watch Monk Is Not Immune to a Relapse

    The One-Watch Monk Is Not Immune to a Relapse

    I know a few brave souls who have done the unthinkable. They’ve faced down the snarling beast of the Timekeeper’s Cavebrain—the primordial voice that whispers, “One more won’t hurt”—and emerged with nothing but a $79 G-Shock strapped to their wrist like a talisman of survival. These men are not collectors. They are survivors. Ex-chronoholics who now wear a single resin slab like a badge of sanity in a world overdosing on lume and limited editions.

    And yet—here’s the twist—they still linger in the digital temples of temptation. They haunt the forums, stalk the subreddit threads, and scroll the Instagram wrist shots like monks in a wine bar. They do not comment. They do not buy. They simply observe, living vicariously through the endless dopamine-chasing of others. Their presence is ghostly, detached, almost ethereal.

    These men have all, at some point, knelt before Father Time-Out, a shadowy ascetic who preaches from behind a cracked Casio:

    “You were once a sinner in the temple of timepieces. You must now enter permanent exile. Perhaps, in time, you may guide others out of their chrono-hell. Become a lighthouse of restraint. Point them toward the True Path.”

    And some do. These One-Watch Monks become minor saints of the community—offering cryptic encouragement, spartan wisdom, and the occasional photo of their battered DW-5600 glowing like a sacrament. They are revered not for what they wear, but for what they don’t. They symbolize what every timepiece addict secretly craves: freedom.

    But not all monks stay in the monastery.

    Sometimes, the Cavebrain resurfaces, soft-spoken but persuasive:
    “You’ve earned a second watch. Something modest. Something Swiss.”

    And just like that, a relapse: the purchase of an Omega Seamaster “as a test,” a way to prove their control. They become Two-Watch Semi-Monks—respected, yes, but no longer holy. The mystique is gone. Their resin-born purity has been tarnished by a splash of steel and hubris.

    They will say, “It’s just two watches.”
    But the Timekeeping Community knows better. It always starts with one exception.

    Still, we do not mock the fallen. We nod, we sigh, and we tighten our NATO straps. We know how easy it is to go from sage to sucker, from minimalist to maximalist, from monk to maniac—in just one click.

  • The Timekeeper’s Curse: Why You’ll Never Be Satisfied with Your Watch Collection

    The Timekeeper’s Curse: Why You’ll Never Be Satisfied with Your Watch Collection

    To understand the tortured psyche of the modern Timekeeper, you must first meet his most conniving organ: the Cavebrain. This primal relic, forged in an age of spear tips and saber-toothed tigers, was never designed for eBay, Instagram wrist shots, or limited-edition dive watches with meteorite dials. And yet, here he is in the 21st century, a man both blessed and cursed with opposable thumbs, a PayPal account, and a psychological need for existential renovation every time he clicks Buy It Now.

    A high-ticket watch purchase for the Timekeeper is not a simple act of consumer indulgence—it is a rite of passage, a narrative arc, a full-blown identity reboot. He isn’t just buying a watch; he’s staging a personal renaissance, performing emotional alchemy with brushed titanium and spring-drive movements. He craves the sensation of getting something done—and if he can’t change his life, he’ll change his wrist.

    But a new acquisition can’t simply squeeze into the old watch box like another hot dog in an overstuffed cooler. No, it demands sacrifice. One or more watches must be winnowed down, exiled like loyal but unremarkable lovers who just didn’t “spark joy.” There is drama here—drama more potent than remodeling a kitchen or repainting the bedroom a daring eggshell white. This is a domestic upheaval that matters. The arrival of a new timepiece—let’s call it “the new kid in town”—requires a realignment of the soul.

    Now, for those poor souls unacquainted with Timekeeper theology, let me explain: He cannot simply collect indiscriminately. He is bound by the Watch Potency Principle, a dogma revered by enthusiasts. This principle states that the more watches a man owns, the less any of them mean. Like watering down bourbon, or stretching a heartfelt apology into a TED Talk, the essence gets lost. The once-sacred grails—the unicorns he hunted with obsessive glee—go sour in the dilution of excess. Only by restricting the herd to five to eight carefully curated specimens can he maintain potency and fend off emotional ruin.

    Of course, there’s a devil in the details. The Timekeeper suffers from a chronic affliction known as Watch Curiosity. He’s always sniffing around the next shiny object, eyes darting at macro shots on forums, lurking on Reddit, and falling prey to influencers wearing NATO straps and faux humility. Inevitably, he pulls the trigger on yet another must-have diver, thus initiating the ritual purge. A watch he once swore eternal fidelity to must now be cast out—not because it’s inadequate, but because he has convinced himself that it is. This self-gaslighting feeds a demonic loop known as Watch Flipping Syndrome, wherein watches are bought, sold, and rebought with the desperation of a man trying to time-travel through retail therapy.

    If the Timekeeper is lucky, if he can wrestle his impulses into a coherent, lean collection, he may briefly find peace. But peace is not his natural state. Beneath his curated restraint lies a restlessness, a gnawing sense that time—his most feared adversary—is standing still. His desire for a new watch is not about telling time; it’s about rewriting it. When he buys a new watch, he isn’t updating his collection—he’s updating himself. He wants change, achievement, rebirth.

    Enter the Honeymoon Period—a temporary euphoria where the new watch becomes a talisman of transformation. He floats, rhapsodizes, posts gushing tributes on enthusiast forums. He becomes a preacher in the Church of the Chronograph, recruiting others to experience this miracle. The watch didn’t just change his wardrobe—it changed his life.

    But, as all honeymoons do, the enchantment fades. The novelty rusts. What was once a grail becomes just another object—another timestamp on the long and winding road of emotional substitution. He finds himself, once again, alone with his Cavebrain, who, ever the unreliable life coach, whispers, “Maybe there’s something better out there.”

    Thus, the cycle repeats—endless, compulsive, costly. The Timekeeper is not a collector. He is an evolutionary casualty. A caveman in a smartwatch world, still looking for meaning in a bezel.

  • Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict

    Cavebrain, Clickfinger: How Evolution Doomed the Watch Addict


    In the early 1990s, I saw comedian Rob Becker perform Defending the Caveman in San Francisco—a one-man anthropology class disguised as stand-up. His central thesis, stitched together from kitchen-table spats with his wife, was that men are hunters, women are gatherers, and this prehistoric wiring still runs our modern relationships like a bad operating system.

    His proof? Shopping.

    For the gatherer, shopping is a leisurely daydream. Wandering the mall for six hours and imagining buying things she can’t afford is an enriching sensory experience—like spiritual window-shopping. For the hunter, shopping is a surgical strike. He wants pants. He buys pants. He leaves. The suggestion to “just browse” makes his eye twitch.

    “Let’s get the hell out of here,” says the man. He has completed his mission. He has felled the beast.

    That moment—man as single-focus, tunnel-visioned, goal-oriented predator—explains a great deal about the pathology of watch addiction. We are still cavemen, just hairier and worse at squatting. And we don’t hunt food anymore. We hunt wristwear.

    We see a watch online and a brontosaurus steak lights up in our brain. Locked in. Target acquired. Our dopamine circuits spark like faulty Christmas lights. We must have it. There is no tranquility, no peace, until the object is in our possession.

    The problem? Our primitive instincts weren’t designed for the digital age. Back then, acquiring a new object meant trekking through wilderness, battling saber-toothed tigers, and earning your meal. Today, it’s clicking a “Buy Now” button while half-watching a YouTube review at your ergonomic standing desk, surrounded by a sea of unopened Amazon boxes.

    Our brains still think we’re walking 40 miles to spear a mammoth. In reality, we’re reclining in office chairs with lumbar support, ordering $2,000 divers like they’re takeout sushi. The hunt requires no sacrifice, no sweat, no real effort. And so it never satisfies.

    You get the watch. You admire it. You post a photo to Instagram. Then—you twitch. You fidget. Your brain says, “Good job. Now go get another.”

    We are not content in the cave. Evolution didn’t design us for stillness. It designed us to be hungry. To prepare. To hoard. So we keep hunting. And the cave fills with stainless steel trophies until the glint attracts low-flying pterodactyls that dive-bomb us in our sleep and try to pluck the Omega off our wrist.

    We are maladapted creatures. Our eyeballs evolved for survival. Now they doom us. We were built to scan the horizon for danger. Now we scan Hodinkee, Instagram, Reddit, eBay, WatchRecon, and Chrono24 until our dopamine is a wrung-out dishrag and our bank account is an obituary.

    We’re trapped in a glitch—stone-age instincts, 5G bandwidth. Our visual fixation, once essential to survival, now chains us to a cycle of desire and regret. Thousands of watches flood our screens in a single hour, and our brains are too old and too soft to resist. The only real solution is exile. But exile from what? Our jobs, our networks, our entire digital lives?

    There is no cave to retreat to. Just another tab open.

  • The Next One Is Always the One

    The Next One Is Always the One

    About eight years ago, I experienced the horological equivalent of speed dating. Two watches arrived on the same afternoon: a Seiko Sumo SBDC001 with a black dial and sapphire, and the sleeker SBDC051—a reissue of the classic 62MAS. I placed them side by side like two contestants in a Darwinian experiment, then strapped each one on as if I were auditioning them for the role of “forever watch.”

    It wasn’t even close.

    The 051 had the refinement and wrist presence of a watch that knew it belonged. Crisp finishing. Perfect proportions. Lume that could guide ships through fog. The Sumo? It felt cheap. It wasn’t worth half of the 051. I sold it before dinner. Brutal, but deserved.

    Fast-forward eight years. I’m hunting again—not for a grail, but for something that will sing when paired with my beloved orange Divecore strap, the one accessory that unlocks my inner Watch Beast. Naturally, I thought about giving the Sumo a redemption arc—maybe the gray-wave dial SBDC177? But my instincts flared. Once a dud, always a dud?

    Then I spotted the polygonal Seiko SBDC203 (SPB483), aka the “Coastline,” and something clicked. This one looks like it could go toe-to-toe with the 051. Sharp lines, killer specs, and the kind of tactile satisfaction you only get when Seiko decides to actually try.

    Two closing thoughts:

    First, nothing has made me feel more bonded to my watch obsession than the orange Divecore strap. It’s not just a strap—it’s a mood, an identity, a wrist-based mission statement.

    Second, I’ve come to believe the real addiction isn’t the watches. It’s the brain hijack you constantly crave. The way your brain lights up when The Next Thing to Get starts coming into focus. That little thrill of clarity when you think, Yes, this is the one. It’s the same buzz I get from customizing a Camry XSE in Heavy Metal Gray on Fletcher Toyota’s website and seeing it listed for “only” $38K—a car I may or may not buy but already love as if it’s parked in my soul’s garage.

    Humans are a deranged species. We crave imaginary ownership like it’s the secret to inner peace.

  • The Wind Stole My Midterm

    The Wind Stole My Midterm

    Last night I dreamed I was co-teaching a college course on health and mixed martial arts with Eliot—the bearded jazz musician who moonlights as a Trader Joe’s clerk. He was fired up like a preacher at a tent revival. I, on the other hand, had the enthusiasm of a dogwalker who’s just spotted a fresh pile and no bag.

    Eliot, bless his plaid soul, had prepped a morning exam for his students—neatly typed, stapled, and probably color-coded. Meanwhile, I forgot I was even supposed to give a test. My lectures were improvised jazz solos, long on flair and short on structure. I’d wander into class and riff about cholesterol, Muay Thai, or the history of granola, depending on my mood or what I’d eaten for breakfast.

    But here’s the kicker—I had better material. Buried under the kitchen of my imaginary mansion was a secret archive: white binders filled with decades of syllabi, obscure readings, quizzes, interviews, and errant genius. I never used them. Too lazy. Too proud. Too me.

    Eliot, the eager grasshopper, somehow discovered the hidden staircase that led to the front porch—don’t ask how dream architecture works—and climbed it with evangelical zeal. I watched from my perch in a bathrobe, coffee in hand, while he scaled those steps like a man training for the Tour de France. When he reached the door, breathless and bright-eyed, he begged for the archive.

    So I gave it to him—several white binders, edges fraying like the conscience of a plagiarist. He held them like sacred scrolls, eyes gleaming with the same reverence I once had before tenure made me soft and cynical. I felt a flicker of gratitude. At least someone would use them. At least the work would live on.

    Then came the twist.

    He informed me, with the officious glee of a parking enforcer, that according to some obscure clause in the college handbook, I’d have to sit for his early-morning exam to renew my credential. Me—the man who had literally written the test’s DNA. I considered studying, briefly. Then I took a nap instead.

    The exam was held in the middle of a chaotic street fair, somewhere between a kettle corn booth and a band playing off-key Fleetwood Mac covers. Wind tore through the papers like it was auditioning for a disaster movie. Test pages flew like startled pigeons, and students chased them in panic. It was academic absurdism, pure and uncut.

    And me? I was at peace. I knew—somehow, with prophetic clarity—that there would be no consequences. That the wind, the noise, the anarchy, would camouflage my ignorance. Eliot’s students would struggle. I’d bluff. The test would become performance art, and no one would remember the score.

    What separated me from Eliot wasn’t intelligence or experience. It was weariness. He was still playing to win. I was waiting for the buzzer. He taught with the fire of the newly converted. I taught like a man allergic to rubrics and enthusiasm. He saw a future. I saw a pension.

    And maybe, in that dream, I realized I had already started to retire—from effort, from purpose, from caring about the difference between good teaching and showing up with anecdotes and gumption. Eliot wanted to be me. I wanted to be gone.

  • Everyone Has an Origin Story. Here Is Mine

    Everyone Has an Origin Story. Here Is Mine

    The Road Trip That Made You Possible

    Everyone has an origin story. You are no exception. Yours begins with your father. Without your father’s sheer audacity and competitive determination, you wouldn’t even be here today. Long before you were a glint in his eye, your father was locked in a battle of epic proportions—an all-out, no-holds-barred contest for the affections of your eighteen-year-old mother. And this wasn’t just any competition. His rival? None other than John Shalikashvili, future United States General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Their battlefield? The smoky, beer-soaked bar scene of Anchorage, where the stakes were higher than a highball glass during happy hour.

    Their duel for your future mother’s heart took a brief Christmas ceasefire when Shalikashvili retreated to his tactical command center in Peoria, Illinois, while your father returned to Hollywood, Florida, to soak up some sunshine and plot his next move. But as he lounged by the pool, your father realized that victory in this romantic Cold War required swift and decisive action. So he cut his vacation short, crammed himself into a cream-colored 1959 Morris Minor—a vehicle that looked like it had been assembled from the Island of Misfit Toys, complete with a coat hanger for an antenna and door handles barely clinging on by the grace of duct tape—and embarked on the most high-stakes road trip of the 20th century.

    Halfway through this odyssey, the car’s fuel filter decided to go on strike, leaving your father stranded in the middle of nowhere. When the local auto parts store couldn’t supply a replacement, your father—who would later perform engineering miracles at IBM—pulled off a MacGyver-level feat of mechanical wizardry. Armed with nothing but a prophylactic and a paperclip, he fashioned a makeshift fuel filter that was equal parts creative desperation and mechanical blasphemy. This duct-taped miracle kept the fuel pump from either flooding the engine or abandoning ship entirely, depending on its mood.

    Driven by the urgency of love and the fear of losing ground to Shalikashvili’s brass-polished charm, your father powered through the journey, ignoring his growling stomach like a man possessed. Subsisting on loaves of bread devoured like a feral squirrel, he soldiered on, skipping meals because, who needs food when you’re racing against the clock to prevent a military coup over your future wife?

    After a ferry ride that probably felt like crossing the River Styx, your father finally arrived in Anchorage, a full forty-eight hours before Shalikashvili could swoop in with his military swagger and irresistible authority. Nine months later, you were born, the ultimate trophy in this love-struck arms race.

    Even before you took your first breath, your father’s victory over Shalikashvili imparted some crucial life lessons: The competition is fierce, and life is a zero-sum game where you’re either a winner or a nobody. To survive, you must find a competitive edge, and if you ever get complacent, rest assured, someone will move in on your turf faster than you can say “ranked second.”

    As a teenage bodybuilder obsessed with becoming Mr. Universe, opening a gym in the Bahamas, and silencing your critics, you often thought about bodybuilding great Ken Waller stealing Mike Katz’s shirt before a competition in the movie Pumping Iron. Something as trivial as a missing shirt could send your opponent into a tailspin, disrupt his focus, and rattle his confidence like a cheap shaker bottle. Like Mr. Universe Ken Waller, your father taught you that power is a road paved with relentless cunning, ruthless strategy, and a healthy dose of underhanded shenanigans. 

    But underneath the shenanigans and Machiavellian flair, your father taught you one core truth: sweat more than everyone else. Out-hustle, out-grind, outlast. In his gospel, sweat wasn’t just effort—it was currency. The person who left the biggest puddle won. 

  • Watch What Implodes: Andy Cohen’s Domestic Cinematic Universe

    Watch What Implodes: Andy Cohen’s Domestic Cinematic Universe

    As Stephen Colbert’s tenure winds down on CBS—another headstone in the graveyard of “Late Night”—one might conclude that the talk show format, with its recycled monologues and tepid celebrity banter, is quietly expiring in a corner somewhere, clutching its blue cards and mug. But while traditional television gasps for relevance, the Andy Cohen Empire on Bravo is not merely surviving—it’s reproducing. Rapidly. Like reality TV kudzu.

    Welcome to the Bravo Matrix, where the camera never blinks and no martini goes unslurped. This isn’t scripted television, not officially. But let’s not be naïve—these shows are engineered with the precision of a Swiss watch, albeit one dipped in rosé and glitter. The “reality” may be cooked, but it’s a soufflé audiences devour by the season.

    Each cast member, whether they’re a Botoxed real estate maven, a Charleston trust-fund Casanova, or a spiritual advisor with a skincare line, is cast not for depth but for maximum combustion. These people may or may not be exceptional, but they do one thing very well: live out their personal chaos on camera while clawing for love, status, clarity, and closet space. We watch, transfixed, as they spiral, rebound, or occasionally evolve—all in HD.

    And let’s not forget the ambiance. These shows are drenched in lifestyle pornography: rooftop bars, poolside lounges, candlelit dinners served with sizzling gossip and artisanal side-eye. If television is the new hearth, Bravo is the scented candle flickering at its center—equal parts relaxing and mildly toxic.

    The producers, ever mindful of narrative drag, inject chaos agents—new cast members with just enough lip filler and latent sociopathy to blow up the group chat. This keeps the plot moving and the blood-pressure elevated. If a character becomes too boring or too stable, they’re exiled with the same indifference one might apply to expired yogurt.

    But for the chosen few—those rare personalities who deliver madness with consistency—tenure is real. A Bravo veteran can live a decade on screen, morphing from wide-eyed ingenue to meme-fodder matriarch, all while cultivating their social media following like a side hustle with God-complex benefits. We watch them grow, or don’t. We root for them, or we don’t. Either way, we’re still watching.

    And then there’s Watch What Happens Live, where Cohen himself presides like a smirking Zeus on a pleather throne, guiding reunion specials, feuds, and audience thirst with a cocktail in hand. What started with The Real Housewives of Orange County in 2006 has mushroomed into 75 interwoven shows, with spin-offs, reunion shows, and cameos that make the Marvel Universe look like a provincial theater company.

    In the end, what Vince McMahon did for wrestling—turning it into a steroidal psychodrama of spectacle and tribal allegiance—Andy Cohen has done for domestic warfare. And if the ratings are any clue, Cohen’s steel-clad battalion of brunch brawlers and dinner-party divas is winning.

  • Flex Day: A Tragedy in Tube Socks

    Flex Day: A Tragedy in Tube Socks

    Another Flex Day had dawned—yet again a gaudy parade of icebreaker drivel, PowerPoint piety, and educational workshops led by people who looked like they’d been conjured by a bureaucratic séance. Against my better instincts—and with a flicker of masochistic hope I should’ve interrogated—I signed up for a session titled Exercise and Mental Wellness. It was being held in the Hobcallow campus gym, a crumbling monument to deferred maintenance and broken promises. If buildings could sigh, this one would’ve let out a long, exhausted groan. Everything about it screamed “run,” but I ignored the sirens blaring in my skull and walked straight in, armed with denial and a water bottle.

    The gym was a fluorescent-lit dungeon, the kind of place where even the light seemed desperate to escape. The air reeked of mildew, ancient sweat, and the crushed dreams of generations who’d suffered through dodgeball and underfunding. I could practically hear the scent—a low moan of institutional despair.

    Then the “fitness expert” took the stage. He looked like he subsisted on steamed kale and unprocessed anxiety. His limbs were pipe cleaners, and his tube socks rode high up his shins like he was waving tiny surrender flags. A whistle hung from his neck, though it clearly served more as costume than command. The guy had the aura of a substitute gym teacher in a 1979 after-school special—minus the charm. With the fervor of a man unveiling the cure for cancer, he launched into a sermon on the redemptive power of push-ups. According to him, daily push-ups could defeat depression, boost classroom charisma, and chisel us into statues Michelangelo would envy.

    I sat among fifty or so other professors, all of us bearing the glazed, shell-shocked expressions of people who’d just survived a bureaucratic earthquake. When the whistle-wielder asked for a volunteer to demonstrate the proper push-up, silence fell across the gym like a dropped curtain. Heavy. Suffocating. It was the sound of collective academic burnout, of souls ground into dust by budget cuts and endless committee meetings.

    Eventually, someone was nudged forward. “Volunteer” was a generous word. The man was more of a human offering. He shuffled onto the stage in a suit that draped off him like wet laundry. His glasses clung to his face like they were afraid to be part of what came next. He moved like a man who had made a series of increasingly regrettable choices that had all led here.

    Then he went down for the push-up—and the moment collapsed into slapstick tragedy. His arms gave out instantly, like a folding chair kicked from behind. His glasses launched from his face and slid across the gym floor, desperate for escape. He lay there wheezing like a deflating accordion, the very embodiment of what happens when the intellect thrives and the body is left for dead.

    You’d think someone might offer sympathy. A supportive chuckle. Maybe a smattering of ironic applause. Nope. The room was pure stone—emotionally fossilized. A few professors exchanged murmured postmortems. Most stared ahead with the blank-eyed stillness of DMV patrons or people deep into a hostage negotiation.

    And when it finally ended, I fled. I bolted, heart pounding, mind racing, lungs grateful just to be outside again. It wasn’t enlightenment I’d found that day. Just confirmation: some kinds of despair really do come with a whistle.

    After surviving thirty Flex Days—each one more spiritually numbing than the last—I’ve come to a grim conclusion: these spectacles aren’t designed to make us better instructors. No, they’re the bureaucratic equivalent of waterboarding. Their true purpose is to remind us, in the most humiliating way possible, that we are not free agents but indentured servants to a cabal of institutional overlords who wouldn’t recognize actual education if it bit them on their lanyards. The activities they concoct—team-building scavenger hunts, trust falls, and workshops on how to smile while grading—aren’t just irrelevant to higher learning. They are a brazen insult to critical thinking itself, proof that the people orchestrating these charades are not only disconnected from the classroom, but from basic cognitive function. Flex Days are not professional development; they’re intellectual purgatory dressed up in business casual.

  • How Your Flintstones Moment Made You Pursue Higher Education

    How Your Flintstones Moment Made You Pursue Higher Education

    Charlene’s office had been a shrine to immaculate control—gleaming surfaces, aligned papers that looked like they’d been measured with a laser level, and an air of clinical precision that could make a Swiss watchmaker weep tears of admiration. But that day, the outside world was doing its damnedest to breach her fortress. A dust storm had rolled into Hobcallow with all the subtlety of a biblical plague. It was mid-afternoon, but you wouldn’t have guessed it. The sky was choked in an apocalyptic shade of brown, casting the office in a bruised sepia tone. The overhead lights flickered like they’d given up hope. Dust smeared the windows like greasy fingerprints on a crime scene, and Charlene—who waged holy war against dirt—cringed at every grain that dared defile her glass.

    If anyone could stare down Mother Nature and win on points, it was Charlene. You’d have bet your last protein shake on it.

    She tried to tune it all out and focus on her latest mission: turning you into some kind of intellectual demigod for her next newspaper feature. She tapped her pen on her notepad with the kind of sharp, deliberate rhythm that could cut glass. Then she leaned in, smiling like a predator who’d just cornered a wounded animal. “Tell me,” she said, “what were the defining moments that led you to pursue higher education?”

    The wind screamed outside like a banshee in heat, but you leaned back and let yourself drift. “There was this bouncer gig I had at seventeen,” you began. “Maverick’s Disco in San Ramon. Three bucks an hour—ten cents above minimum wage. Free soda, free peanuts. I thought I was rich.”

    You could still picture it: a swirling disco inferno of polyester pantsuits, platform shoes, and hair sculpted into helmet-grade updos. The Bee Gees were on loop, the dry ice fog never cleared, and the lights pulsed like a migraine. It was paradise—until it wasn’t.

    “At first,” you said, “I thought I’d struck gold. I got to flex my lats and mingle. But after a while, it all started blending together. The same couples, the same fights, the same sweaty desperation. One night, mid-shift, I had this epiphany—Fred and Barney cruising in their Flintstone-mobile, but the background just repeated: tree, rock, house, tree, rock, house. That loop ruined the cartoon for me. And suddenly, it was ruining my life, too.”

    Charlene’s pen was flying. You could tell she was high on narrative gold.

    “Maverick’s became my Flintstones moment,” you said. “Week after week, the same loop: wide-eyed people chasing magic and leaving with hangovers and broken heels. And I realized I was part of it—punching the clock, buying into the monotony. I needed something more unpredictable. So I chose college. I needed to break the loop.”

    Charlene looked like she was about to levitate from her chair. The dust storm outside didn’t matter—she was in a state of pure journalistic ecstasy.

    And then you got honest.

    “But look at me now,” you said, and your voice had that creeping bitterness you couldn’t quite stifle. “Degrees? Check. Stable career in higher ed? Check. And what have I built? A life of structure and repetition. Same workouts, same egg whites, same damn protein shakes, same naps, same Angels game every night. I wrapped myself in the very loop I thought I’d escaped. The Flintstones background just changed colors.”

    Charlene’s pen froze mid-air. Her gaze snapped to you with a gleam of ice behind it. That calculating smile returned—sleek, practiced, a smile that had shut down board meetings and ended more than one marriage. “We won’t tell them that part,” she said sweetly. “That’s just between us.”

    You felt the temperature drop, despite the swirling storm outside. It was the smile of someone who took pleasure in control—over narrative, over outcomes, over people.

    You glanced toward the window. The storm was still there, clawing at the glass like a desperate thing. But Charlene’s smile? That was the real weather system in the room.

  • Finding Loopholes in Caloric Responsibility

    Finding Loopholes in Caloric Responsibility

    You remembered how Julian French and Charlene Janson were practically fused at the hip, two early-90s lovebirds marinating in chlorinated water and dietary delusion. They spent more time poolside than anywhere else, suckling from the sacred teat of the nonfat craze like it was divine revelation. If it had “nonfat” stamped on the box, it became part of their holy sacrament. SnackWell’s Chocolate Crème Sandwich Cookies, Devil’s Food Cakes, Entenmann’s nonfat fudge—every bite a loophole in caloric responsibility. And when they weren’t sprawled in the jacuzzi, they were waddling over to Penguin’s Frozen Yogurt, their temple of guilt-free indulgence.

    Julian, bless his misguided heart, believed himself a hero. You watched him parade across the pool deck in elastic-waisted shorts, clutching two towers of frozen yogurt like he’d just retrieved them from Mount Olympus. The froyo swirled skyward in absurd spirals of nonfat vanilla, trembling with anticipation. Then came the toppings—an avalanche of crushed Oreos, cookie dough boulders, syrupy strawberries, and sauces that flowed like molten sin. Fudge dripped in dark rivulets, caramel oozed like golden tar, and whipped cream sat proudly on top, crowned with rainbow sprinkles, the garnish of the damned.

    They cackled with every bite, believing they’d hacked the matrix—dessert without consequence, joy without cost. But consequences don’t wear warning labels. You watched the pounds creep up like a slow betrayal. One day, Julian hauled himself out of the hot tub, his belly sloshing like an overfilled water balloon, and just as he reached for his towel, he clutched his chest and folded like a cheap lawn chair.

    The doctor’s message was blunt: drop fifty pounds or drop dead.

    Charlene took the news as a divine calling. She transformed overnight into a wellness dictator, dragging Julian from snack god to penitential health monk. Veganism became the law of the land. Dinners were now grim platefuls of raw broccoli, quinoa, and tofu cubes that looked—and tasted—like packing foam. Julian, a former king of indulgence, was reduced to sneaking cheeseburgers in gas station parking lots. But Charlene could smell deception like a narcotics dog. The scent of trans fat sweat gave him away.

    Her response? More treadmill. More SlimFast. Less mercy.

    Their days of poolside romance were replaced by hikes, boot camps, and overpriced health retreats where fun went to die. Charlene found her calling in this tyranny of self-improvement. When you spotted them months later at Woody’s, the transformation was stunning. Charlene glowed like a fitness influencer on a juice cleanse, sipping Perrier with the smug serenity of a cult leader. Julian looked like a prisoner of war in gym clothes—gaunt, glassy-eyed, and blinking out Morse code from behind his herbal tea.

    His lips said, “I’m fine,” but his eyes whispered, “Save me.”