Tag: fiction

Pleasure Island with Humidity: My Obsession with It’s Florida, Man

I find myself embarrassingly smitten with It’s Florida, Man on HBO Max, a six-episode documentary romp that most critics dismiss with a shrug. The Hollywood Reporter’s Daniel Fienberg summed it up with clinical indifference: “The premise is very straightforward. Each half-hour recounts a real-life mishap of the kind that helped Florida develop its national reputation as a meme in state form . . .”

Fienberg is right about the meme, but he undersells the spectacle. Florida isn’t just weird—it’s a hallucinatory soup pot where the heat never turns down. A bubbling Bouillabaisse of runaways, con artists, half-baked dreamers, and humidity-pickled misfits; the broth gets richer, stranger, and more intoxicating by the hour. Novelists like Carl Hiaasen dip their ladles in and remind us with glee: “You couldn’t write this if you tried.” Comedian Marc Maron, who has roamed the continental madhouse, concurs: there is no asylum wing quite as deranged as the Sunshine State.

The final episode, “Mugshot,” is my favorite. A wanted man from Pensacola turns into a social-media celebrity after his mugshot detonates across Instagram. The local police, suddenly auditioning for daytime television, turn their manhunt into a Jerry Springer-style circus, complete with suspect-shaming and moral squalor masquerading as civic duty. You couldn’t script it unless you were drunk, desperate, and willing to risk being fired by HBO for turning in satire disguised as reportage.

As a college writing instructor, I confess I watch shows like this with an ulterior motive: I’m always looking for essay prompts hidden in the wreckage. It’s Florida, Man practically delivers one to my desk, gift-wrapped in neon: “Freedom and its Discontents.” Not the noble kind of freedom—what philosophers used to call “freedom for”—where self-discipline leads to self-agency, flourishing, and mastery, the Cal Newport variety of cultivated freedom. No, Florida, Man wallows in the basement: “freedom from.” Freedom from the Id, from restraint, from consequence, from sobriety. It’s Pleasure Island on a peninsula, and the longer you stay the faster your ears sprout into donkey ears, your voice degenerates into animal brays, and your dreams curdle into swamp gas.

It’s Florida, Man isn’t just entertainment. It’s anthropology of the grotesque, a front-row ticket to America’s most unruly carnival, where freedom is mistaken for license and the monsters are very much real.

September 19, 2025
Exit Stage Left: A Teacher’s Final Act

I’m fewer than four semesters away from retirement—June 2027, the final curtain—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. For nearly forty years I’ve worn the armor of a college classroom persona: bigger, bolder, more disciplined than the fragile, fumbling man who hides inside. Teaching gave me a stage and a referee’s whistle. Without it, who am I? Just the broken man-child without a supervisor, left to his own devices.

During the pandemic, when colleagues were clawing to get out, I puffed out my chest and declared I was born ready for retirement. I pictured myself a disciplined Renaissance man: mornings at the piano, afternoons writing, evenings lifting kettlebells in the garage, book in hand before bed. A gilded schedule, as though I were independently wealthy. Now those boasts feel like hot air. Structure is one thing. The man animating that structure is another. In the classroom, the stakes were high: thirty pairs of eyes asking, Are you boring? Do you know what you’re talking about? The pressure kept me sharp, funny, and, occasionally, wise. No one lets you coast when you’re trapped under fluorescent lights for two hours with judgmental twenty-year-olds.

Bitter irony: I’m leaving just as I finally got it right. It took me decades to balance theater with approachability, to drop the drill-sergeant persona that once scared students into silence, to actually build a classroom where people learned and laughed. Now I can scaffold essays like an architect and coax timid students into crafting arguments brick by brick. And just as the machinery is humming, I’m stepping offstage. Melancholy doesn’t begin to cover it.

And then retirement makes you pay with loads of endless paperwork. Work forms that warn you that you cannot rescind your decision. Medicare forms with their cryptic alphabet soup (A, B, C, D), switching to my wife’s insurance, navigating private plans that read like IKEA instructions translated from Martian. I’ve joked I’d rather do faculty assessment reports than wrestle with retirement forms, and I meant it.

Meanwhile, time itself heckles me. I’ll be sixty-four in six weeks. At my cousin’s seventy-fifth birthday, the guests—all seventysomethings—mingled like ghosts of futures to come. One cousin, seventy-eight, told me that old age makes you invisible. You still occupy space, but people’s eyes skip over you, as if you’re furniture. Old age is rude like that: the world resents you for hogging resources after your best years are spent. You should apologize for existing. Step aside, old man.

So here I am, staring down a three-headed monster: paperwork, invisibility, and the slow evaporation of the job that kept me sane. What’s the plan? At six years old, I invented a companion—James, my imaginary friend. I’d knock on the apartment wall and tell my parents James wanted to play. They laughed, which only confirmed that James and I were onto something.

Now, on the cusp of retirement, I feel his absence. Because when I think of retirement, I think of loneliness, and when I think of loneliness, I think of Gollum—squatting in the cave, muttering “precious” as he caresses the ring. Only for me, the ring isn’t a piece of jewelry. It’s youth. Precious, lost youth. I stroke it with nostalgia and curse it with bitterness. How dare people treat me like I’m invisible, when old age has taught me more than their Google searches ever will? And yet—I know this bitterness is the opposite of wisdom.

So maybe I do need James back. But not the sweet, knock-on-the-wall James of childhood. I need James 2.0: a drill-sergeant life coach who will slap me across the face and bark: Stop whining. You’ve got love. You’ve got lights on in the house. You’re walking into retirement with more than most people ever dream of. Be grateful. And don’t you dare let this next chapter kick your ass.

September 17, 2025
How Soon Is Theft?

In 1990, I was in my late twenties, a newly minted college writing instructor drifting through life with the ethereal soundtrack of The Smiths, the Cocteau Twins, The Trash Can Sinatras, and The Sundays rattling in my head. One afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard with my girlfriend, I did what any self-respecting young melancholic would do: I bought Smiths T-shirts and posters like sacred relics. The crown jewel was my “How Soon Is Now” poster, a portrait of an angst-drenched youth in a gray cable-knit sweater, gazing downward as if staring into the abyss. I taped it proudly to my office door, a shrine to my tribe. Within a week, it was gone—stolen.

The theft still smolders decades later. It wasn’t just the insult of having something ripped from my door; it was the betrayal of the faith I placed in The Smiths’ congregation. Their music was heartbreak bottled into beauty, sadness transmuted into community. To love The Smiths, I believed, was to be incapable of theft. Fans were supposed to be fellow pilgrims on the same road to melancholy salvation. You don’t rob your brother of his relics. You light a candle with him and hum “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.”

But there it was: my poster ripped away not by a barbarian from the outside, but by a fellow initiate. The irony was unbearable. If The Smiths could not protect us from base impulses, if their music could not ennoble even their most ardent listeners, then what was art worth? Wasn’t it supposed to make us better, kinder, less brutish? The theft of that poster wasn’t just petty larceny. It was the murder of a principle.

To this day, I remember the empty rectangle of tape marks left on my office door, staring back at me like a smirk from the abyss. The thief didn’t just pocket a poster; they handed me a lesson in nihilism, gift-wrapped in Morrissey’s sorrowful croon. And I’ve been suspicious of beauty ever since, knowing it can inspire devotion and betrayal in the same breath.

September 13, 2025
The Bodybuilding Gollum of Shepherd College

In Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man, paranoia has a name: Harold, a disgruntled English professor who stalks the halls of Shepherd College convinced his masculinity is shriveling under fluorescent lights and academic jargon. The place is no sanctuary of learning but a mausoleum of joyless theory—an institution where semiotics and power structures reign supreme, while Harold dreams of biceps, protein macros, and shredded abs. To him, the Priests of the Intellect are laughable scarecrows, their bodies soft as tomatoes skewered on toothpicks, their credibility dissolving with every Oreo they dunk between papers on Derrida.

Banished to a basement classroom without sunlight, Harold becomes a musclebound Gollum snarling at his colleagues above, who bask in daylight and collegial belonging. Faculty meetings are his personal hell: an ordeal as odious as wisdom-teeth extractions performed by a dentist with no anesthetic and no soul. While his peers pontificate about “backward design” and “cohorts,” Harold visualizes his metabolism torching fat, each fiber of muscle flexing like a Renaissance sculpture coming alive.

What makes Harold truly unhinged is Shepherd College itself—a cult in mortar and brick, built on the deranged philosophy of the late R.K. Mort, who declared that architecture should “infect” and “haunt” its inhabitants. Mort’s disciples fawn over his absurdities as if he were an academic messiah, turning the college into a dehumanizing theme park of theory. It’s Severance with faculty ID cards.

As a lifelong bodybuilder trapped in academia myself, I relate to Harold’s plight more than I’d like to admit. Yet I nearly hurled the book across the room when Harold showed up to his interminable meeting without food. A man obsessed with protein who forgets to pack a meal? Unforgivable. In my forty years of teaching, I never once forgot to bring my Tupperware of chicken breast or Greek yogurt to the institutional trenches. I wanted to shout at the page: “Get in the game, Harold! Respect the gains!” Still, his misfit rage and comic pathos hook me. Harold may be a wreck, but he’s my kind of wreck.

I’m only two chapters in but eager to consume the entirety of this delicious satire.

September 13, 2025
The Shock Jock Who Forgot to Pivot

I still tune in to Howard Stern now and then, but most of what I hear these days sounds like a half-hearted reprise of his old shtick—sophomoric gags, body-function chatter, and adolescent innuendo that once jolted the airwaves but now just sag. In his prime, Stern was combustible: he blended pranks, irreverence, and enough genuine insight to keep his circus from collapsing. He earned his Radio Hall of Fame status by kicking down doors no one else dared touch.

Now, as rumors of his retirement bubble and I endure his weary, autopilot banter with Robin, three thoughts claw at me. First: they don’t sound like they’re having fun anymore. This is a zombie act, plodding through the motions. Second: filling three hours of airtime every single day is a Sisyphean curse—nobody has that much worth saying without stuffing the sausage with sawdust. Third: we all have a shelf life. Relevance expires, and dignity demands a graceful exit.

Stern’s curse is worse than most. His career persona—edgy, raunchy, forever pandering to prurience—has gone stale, but he’s trapped in it. The irony is brutal: a man smart enough to evolve chose to calcify. A decade ago, he could have pivoted, shed the shock-jock skin, and re-emerged as the wise veteran with conversations that mattered. Instead, while podcasts multiplied like caffeinated rabbits, he let himself be left behind.

But maybe it isn’t too late. Imagine Howard 2.0: no longer the carnival barker of Sirius, but the philosopher-in-residence of his own café, sipping coffee and musing about culture, mortality, and meaning. Not fifteen hours of filler a week, but four hours of distilled insight—an hour twice a week, sharp and substantive. Podcasting is radio’s heir, and radio is in his DNA. Reinvention is the only antidote to irrelevance, and if he can summon the nerve, Stern could still surprise us.

September 12, 2025
The Man Who Always Waved

When my twins were born in 2010, I spent years pacing the sidewalks of my Torrance neighborhood with them—first in a stroller, then a wagon, and eventually on their own unsteady feet. Along those same sidewalks shuffled old couples with dogs, walkers, and time to spare. Sometimes one half of a pair would vanish, leaving the other to walk alone, and soon enough that figure too disappeared from the neighborhood stage. I never knew most of their names, yet I felt tethered to them; they would smile at my daughters, wave with fragile hands, and in that exchange I saw the cycle of life laid bare: the beginning in my stroller, the ending in their absence.

One man I did know by name—Frank. I don’t recall how we met, but I remember the details: his beige Volvo station wagon, the clever mirror nailed to the tree behind his house so he could back out with precision. Frank looked to be in his late sixties in 2010. He walked the neighborhood with brisk efficiency, always in uniform—olive shorts, white T-shirt, glasses perched on his nose, a beige bucket hat shading his face, and a small wristwatch on a leather band, which he consulted like a man keeping an appointment with life itself.

He reminded me of a restrained Ned Ryerson from Groundhog Day: perhaps square at first glance, but steady, decent, reliable. No matter how intent he was on his route, he never failed to lift a hand in greeting. The wave was never exuberant, never perfunctory—it was graceful, automatic, the gesture of a man who seemed stitched together with quiet goodness. His wife matched him in cheer, and though I never learned her name, she radiated authenticity. They were a pair who seemed to exist outside of fashion, untouched by fads or pretensions.

Over time, I realized they had become more than neighbors to me. They were a balm against my cynicism, proof that stability, kindness, and simple decency still existed in a world that seemed allergic to all three. Which is why, six months ago, while lifting weights in my garage, I felt a chill: What happened to Frank? I hadn’t seen him in ages. He would be in his eighties now. Surely he hadn’t slipped away unnoticed?

Then, this morning, as I turned into my neighborhood after dropping my daughters at high school, I saw him. Frank, unchanged, same outfit, same bucket hat, same little watch. I raised my hand. He raised his. And before I knew it, a tear streaked my cheek.

September 11, 2025
Radical Boring: The Oatmeal-Based Lifestyle Brand No One Asked For

Next month I’ll be 64, which apparently means my taste buds have joined AARP. My diet is now narrower than my tolerance for small talk: buckwheat groats, oatmeal (rolled or steel-cut, because why not keep things spicy), Greek yogurt with berries and honey, and peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches on dark bread. While normal humans dream of steak and champagne on a Paris-bound jet, I fantasize about oatmeal for dinner. Forget first class—I’m on the Oatmeal Express, and my only beverage service is dark roast coffee, soy milk, and sparkling water, which is just soda pretending it went to finishing school.

I know what’s happening. I’m regressing. I crave mush, porridge, pablum—the kind of food that comes in jars with smiling cartoon fruit. My kettlebell workouts, five days a week, are my only defense. I sweat buckets, swing heavy weights, and imagine I look like a Viking—but in truth, it’s just a grown man clinging to his giant metal pacifier. Exercise has become my lullaby. When I collapse afterward, I feel less like a warrior and more like a sedated infant.

Of course, at a family birthday party, one cousin reminded me that growth only happens when we leave our comfort zones. I nodded while thinking, No thanks, I’ve had enough character development for one lifetime. At this stage, I don’t want adventure. I want oatmeal. I don’t want novelty. I want predictability. I’m not only becoming a baby—I’m pioneering a whole new lifestyle brand called Radical Boring.

My big act of rebellion? When my twins turn sixteen in six months, they will take my wife’s 2014 Accord, she’ll inherit my 2018 Accord, and I’ll step into the future—so long as the future, a 2026 Accord that comes in “canyon river blue.” My wife begged me not to get silver or gray again, so this is me living dangerously. Of course, I’ll rarely drive it. I’ll open the garage, admire the shiny paint, then close the door and scuttle back inside for a soothing bowl of oatmeal.

My family laughs at me. They think I’m absurd, predictable, hopelessly domestic. But at least I’m consistent. And if authenticity means being true to yourself, then yes—I am authentically a 64-year-old content with my porridge, my pacifier workouts, and my canyon river blue Honda. Call it returning to the womb if you want. I call it destiny.

And now, having confessed this ridiculous self-revelation, I find myself thinking of my literary kindred Ariel Levy and her An Abbreviated Life—a memoir I clearly need to revisit, if only to confirm that my brand of absurdity has precedents.

September 8, 2025
Words of Wisdom in a World of Publishing Hallucinations

Last night I dreamed I was at the Aspen Institute, where I took the stage as a guest speaker while snowflakes pirouetted past the classroom windows like bored ballerinas. Dozens of young writers—already published, already duped—sat before me, waiting to be enlightened. I told them the truth their publishers had concealed with a smile and a contract: the marketing promises were fairy dust, the royalty checks were jokes, and their “book deals” were little more than elaborate scams. They would earn a pittance, and the betrayal would sting worse than any bad review.

Some of them glared at me like I’d just blasphemed against their gods, but others—emboldened by rage—shouted the names of their novels and memoirs into the snowy air. A nineteen-year-old tech billionaire from India cried out the title of his memoir: The Gunther Effect. I made him repeat it three times, as if conjuring a spell, so the words wouldn’t slip away. Against my better judgment, I was intrigued.

By popular demand, I returned for a second sermon. This time, I was flanked by professors and “established” writers who knew the game as well as I did. Their lectures weren’t brilliant, but they didn’t have to be. For me, just focusing on one speaker, narrowing the scattered kaleidoscope of my mind into a single lens, felt like mental hygiene—a purging of the Internet’s endless distractions. I thought, This is what I miss: the monastic joy of being a student, concentrating on one voice instead of chasing dopamine scraps.

And slowly, the room shifted. The students began to understand that my colleagues and I weren’t cynics but keepers of the ugly gospel. We had the keys to the vault, the passwords to real power. We were the Priests and Priestesses of Light and Success, consecrated by disillusion. Hands shot up like candles in a vigil, their questions burning against the snowfall outside, and we were exalted, gratified, almost holy in the glow of their hunger.

September 8, 2025
C.Crane Solar Radio: Attention to Details Makes It a Winner

The C. Crane Solar Radio, paired with the optional AC adapter, arrived on Day 9 of the Los Angeles fires—perfect timing for some disaster preparedness. My first impression? Surprisingly compact and, dare I say, stylish. Its buttons and controls are refreshingly intuitive, a rare quality in emergency gadgets that usually look like they were cobbled together by paranoid survivalists.

Then I met the battery door—a stubborn slab of plastic that wouldn’t budge. My fingers failed, so out came the Swiss Army knife, turning what should’ve been a simple battery swap into minor surgery.

Once powered up (on batteries, to avoid interference), I tested FM reception. Not bad. It’s sensitive, though slightly weaker than my Sangean PR-D12 when pulling in 89.3, a notoriously tricky station here in Torrance. Still, it handled it well. KUSC 91.5, though, was a lost cause—same as the PR-D12. Odd, since during my obsessive radio blogging days in the mid-2000s, 91.5 was crystal clear. Maybe it’s not the radios. Maybe it’s today’s electromagnetic smog choking the airwaves.

Later that evening, as I tackled the dishes, the FM sound impressed me. 89.3 came through loud and clear, delivering crisp voices on the news.

AM performance? Initially disappointing—distant, hollow, like voices echoing from a well. My friend Mark reminded me that modern homes are electronic war zones. Between Wi-Fi routers, smart devices, and God knows what else, AM hardly stands a chance.

But then I tweaked the settings. Switching the bandwidth filter from 2.5kHz to 4kHz transformed the AM performance. Suddenly, it shined.

The speaker is pleasant but modest. This is a small radio, after all. Luckily, the hidden High Power Audio Mode (press buttons 1 and 5) gives it a subtle boost—not exactly concert hall quality, but enough to rise above kitchen noise.

Where the C. Crane Solar Radio really excels is in its power versatility—two battery types, a solar panel, and a hand crank. Practical, yet it doesn’t scream apocalypse gear.

So, where does it fit in my collection? The PR-D12 stays in the garage for kettlebell workouts. The Solar Radio earns a spot over the kitchen sink, likely becoming my wife’s go-to. With solid FM performance, customizable AM tuning, and thoughtful design, the C. Crane Solar Radio gets the details right—and comes out a winner.

September 6, 2025
A Nostalgic Ode to the Tecsun PL-660

Against every shred of common sense I possess, I’ve joined several Tecsun radio forums—a decision akin to a sugar addict moving into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and sleeping under the chocolate river. It’s not just unwise; it’s a slow, delicious path to ruin. Within minutes, the forum zealots were chanting in unison: “You must own a PL-660 or PL-680! These are relics from the Pre-DSP Glory Era, back when Tecsun radios were free from the infernal chuffing, muting, and choppy tuning that plague DSP models. Think smooth analog cruising versus a hyper-caffeinated, turbocharged sports car.” Naturally, I bit the bait.

The timing was serendipitous—or dangerous, depending on your perspective. During the height of my radio obsession, circa 2008, I owned a black Tecsun PL-660, and it was the crown jewel of my collection. But, as is the curse of all obsessions, I sold it during a fleeting moment of sanity, a decision that haunted me. When the January 2025 Los Angeles Fires reignited my passion for radios—because what better time to tinker with antennas than during a climate apocalypse?—the one radio I truly mourned was the PL-660.

Enter eBay, the Pandora’s box of impulse purchases. I tracked down a silver PL-660 from a seller in Canada. At $68, it felt like a steal. Add $30 for shipping, tax, a Tecsun adapter from Anon-Co, and four AA rechargeable batteries, and suddenly my “steal” was a $140 splurge. But what’s money when you’re reuniting with a long-lost love?

When the silver PL-660 arrived, it was nearly pristine, as if frozen in time. The box, manual, and accessories were all there, minus the adapter. I tested its AM and FM performance and, unsurprisingly, found it nearly indistinguishable from my PL-880—a radio I’d been coddling like a newborn in my bedroom. Sure, the 880’s speaker has a richer timbre, but the 660 holds its own. AM reception? The 660 might edge out the 880, but given the ever-shifting electrical interference in my house, testing it felt like comparing snowflakes in a blizzard. FM? Practically identical.

And yet, here’s the kicker: I prefer the PL-660. Why? Nostalgia, for starters. It’s been 15 years since I last held one, and its reunion felt like meeting an old friend who hasn’t aged a day. But it’s more than sentimentality. The PL-660 exudes Pre-DSP mystique, wearing its analog pedigree like a hero’s badge of honor. Add to that the rumors swirling on the forums about the PL-680 taking its final lap before extinction, and I developed a textbook case of FOMO.

Aesthetically, the 660 is a triumph. The PL-880, while a solid performer, looks like it was designed by two committees: one in charge of the radio chassis, the other tasked with slapping on an oversized speaker as an afterthought. In contrast, the PL-660 feels like it was forged from a single, unified block of silver (or black, if you’re lucky enough to find one). It’s monolithic, almost talismanic, with a heft that whispers, “This is not a toy.” Holding it feels like gripping a miniature obelisk of radio perfection.

Naturally, I’m already scheming to buy a second PL-660 or perhaps its sibling, the PL-680, to keep as a “backup”—because if you love a radio enough, redundancy becomes an art form. And, because I can never leave well enough alone, I know I’ll spend the coming weeks obsessively swapping locations, putting the 660 in the bedroom, then the kitchen, then back again, until my brain short-circuits. Who needs stability when you can have perpetual indecision?

In fact, I barely made it to my office to write this without feeling pangs of longing for the 660, which I’d left momentarily in the kitchen. Thirty minutes apart, and I was already waxing poetic about its brilliance, muttering, “Dude, you really love radios.” And it’s true—I do. Probably too much. But that’s the magic of radios: they’re not just devices; they’re companions, time machines, and portals to a world that feels more tactile and real than anything on your smartphone.

Do I still love my PL-880? Of course. It’s a marvel of engineering, a steady presence in my life. But the PL-660? That’s my muse, my reminder of why I fell in love with radios in the first place. The 660 isn’t just a radio; it’s a reflection of who I am—an overthinking, signal-chasing, nostalgia-driven mess. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

September 6, 2025