Cinemorphosis

Tag: life

  • Radio Reclaimed: The Proxy Friendship That Saves Your Sanity

    Radio Reclaimed: The Proxy Friendship That Saves Your Sanity

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

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

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

  • Confessions of a Washed-Up Watchfluencer: Dreaming of Leaving YouTube and Instagram

    Confessions of a Washed-Up Watchfluencer: Dreaming of Leaving YouTube and Instagram

    For the better part of a decade, I’ve been a talking head on YouTube—waxing unpoetic about dive watches, flipping Seikos like pancakes, and freefalling into endless spirals of horological self-loathing. My channel was never slick. No fancy cuts, no drone shots over crashing waves, no ominous music swelling over macro shots of ceramic bezels. Just me: a man, a camera, and the slow erosion of his dignity.

    I didn’t edit. I didn’t storyboard. I didn’t build a brand. I just rambled into the void, a kind of wristwatch confessional booth where I shared my joy, my shame, and my madness with an audience of fellow obsessives. For a while, it was exhilarating. Like catching your own reflection in a funhouse mirror and mistaking it for truth.

    At my pathological peak, I owned sixty-three “TV-brand” watches—any brand that looked good on camera and bad for your soul. I knew I had a problem when I started hiding watches in drawers and pretending I hadn’t bought another diver. Getting the collection down to five felt like detox. Like crawling out of a swamp in ripped jeans, clutching a G-Shock and whispering, never again.

    And now? I haven’t filmed in a month. The idea of making another video fills me with dread. My subscriber count has flatlined around 10,000. I’m not growing. I’m not evolving. I’m the guy in the garage band who still thinks the right lighting will disguise the fact that he’s 63, wearing a wig, and flexing in a tank top with a fake tan and a borrowed swagger.

    More than stagnation, it’s the cost of content creation that’s choking me. Every video drags me deeper into the watch swamp. I obsess. I fantasize. I compare. I scroll forums at 2 a.m. and start building mental spreadsheets of specs I’ll forget by morning. The longer I film, the more I think about watches, and the more I think about watches, the less I think about anything else.

    Then there’s Instagram—my other digital vice. The cigarette break I take between grading student essays and questioning my life choices. One minute I’m watching a documentary; the next I’m styling a wrist shot, spreading digital envy like cologne. Watch porn. FOMO fuel. I’m not sharing insight. I’m spreading existential rot disguised as lifestyle content.

    The breaking point came last week when two Instagram friends—good guys, honest guys—messaged me with admiration-tinged despair. They loved my collection but felt ashamed of their own modest $300 watches. That’s when I saw it: I wasn’t inspiring anyone. I was curating a highlight reel of hollow indulgence, turning craftsmanship into competition. I don’t want to be that guy. The one whose joy costs others their peace.

    So yes—I’ve been dreaming of leaving. Leaving YouTube. Leaving Instagram. Leaving the digital masquerade where likes masquerade as affection and comments stand in for connection. But here’s the kicker: I don’t want to announce my departure. I don’t want to post some faux-epic “farewell” video where I stare off into the middle distance like a monk who’s just discovered minimalism. That’s not liberation—that’s branding.

    And yet, here I am. Writing this.

    The irony is suffocating.

    What’s my future on YouTube and Instagram? I honestly don’t know. But I’ve caught the scent of something better—something that smells like freedom, like sanity, like the first breath of fresh air after crawling out of a sealed vault.

    In the meantime, there’s the blog. Nine subscribers. Twenty hits a day. Basically the sound of a tree falling in the woods while everyone’s at brunch. But unlike video, writing helps me think. It gives shape to the noise in my head. Like kettlebell workouts or noodling on a keyboard, it’s therapy with fewer side effects and no recurring subscription fee.

    So no, I don’t care about metrics. Not anymore. I just want to be true to myself, however unmarketable that truth might be.

    And if you’re still reading this—thanks. I’m guessing you get it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Holy Flex: When Arnold Was a God and Comedy Was Salvation

    Holy Flex: When Arnold Was a God and Comedy Was Salvation

    I spent five different decades writing novels not out of some noble artistic calling but out of sheer ego, self-aggrandizement, and the desperate hope of achieving wholeness. My faith wasn’t in literature—it was in the idea of a book, a symbol of permanence, a self-mythologizing gospel that would ensure my immortality. The writing demon that drove me wasn’t interested in craft or connection—it was fueled by compulsion, blind ambition, and existential terror. The kind of fear that makes a person scramble to ward off the specter of death by chasing a “Moment Fixed in Time”—to borrow therapist Phil Stutz’s phrase—is the kind of fear that guarantees bad writing. Too much desperation, not enough strategic detachment and self-critique.

    The ego has a singular focus: obsession at the expense of reason. This can’t be emphasized enough. Every self-improvement book touting the virtues of discipline, daily writing habits, and relentless perseverance should include a bold disclaimer: If you don’t regularly stop to scrutinize, revise, and—when necessary—abandon ship, you’re not being disciplined; you’re being delusional. But here’s the problem: the ego does not like reality checks. The moment it invests time and energy into a project, it refuses to let go, clinging to the wreckage with all the grace of a drowning man hugging an anvil.

    The most terrifying realization I’ve had in writing this book is that my ego craved something impossible—not just to create a book, but to create a book so earth-shattering it transcended art itself, becoming a kind of religion. A work so revelatory that it would stop people in their tracks and change their lives forever. And why did I believe such a thing was possible? Because I had seen it happen before.

    When I was fifteen, I was a competitive Olympic weightlifter, fully convinced of my athletic destiny. And then, in 1977, I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger in Pumping Iron, and my resolve crumbled faster than a poorly made protein bar. I had seen Arnold before, but this was different. Watching him on screen was like witnessing the second coming of Hercules—except with a better tan and an Austrian accent. And I wasn’t alone. Arnold wasn’t just a bodybuilder; he was a messiah, and we were his disciples.

    One afternoon, at Walt’s Gym, I worked out with a firefighter who had recently been a finalist in the Mr. California bodybuilding contest. He was a walking relic of 1970s masculinity—tall, tanned, blond, with a thick mustache that could have doubled as a broom, and black horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a muscle-bound Clark Kent. After casually repping 300 pounds on the bench press, he stood up, flexed, and stared at himself in the mirror with the reverence of a man gazing upon a religious icon. “When I first saw Arnold,” he said, “I felt I was in the presence of the Lord. ‘There stands the Messiah,’ I said to myself. ‘There stands God Almighty come to bring good cheer to this world.’”

    He wasn’t just speaking for himself—he was speaking for all of us. Arnold was our savior, our Pied Piper of Pecs, leading us to the promised land of biceps, triceps, and quads capable of crushing watermelons. Bodybuilding stopped being a hobby and became a movement, spreading through gyms like a protein-fueled religious awakening. The only cure? More reps, more protein shakes, more flexing, more relentless, never-ending pursuit of physical perfection.

    But then I went to college, and something shifted. I read Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Nabokov, studied classical piano, and discovered that intellectualism had its own form of flexing. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to be physically powerful—one had to be smart, profound, an artist. And then came A Confederacy of Dunces, right when David Letterman was ushering irony into the cultural bloodstream, and I realized that the ultimate flex wasn’t just intelligence—it was humor.

    Reading Dunces was a punch to my pompous, self-regarding gut. I was Ignatius J. Reilly in my own way—socially awkward, excessively self-serious, painfully convinced of my own importance. And then, suddenly, a comic novel liberated me. It didn’t just make me laugh—it pointed me in a new direction. My life’s mission was clear: I would carry the torch of John Kennedy Toole, Philip Roth, David Letterman, and George Carlin, making people laugh their way to salvation.

    I would write comedy as a religious experience.

    It was a fool’s errand, and only someone with a pathological ego would embark on something so misguided.

  • Geekee and the Alligator: A Tragedy in Silk

    Geekee and the Alligator: A Tragedy in Silk

    When I was a toddler, I had an unhealthy attachment to a raggedy white blanket I’d christened Geekee—a silken square of heaven that clung to me like a second epidermis. Geekee was not merely a blanket. Geekee was a lifestyle. Tattered, stained, and reeking of a distinct sour-milk-meets-armpit funk, Geekee looked like it had been rescued from the wreckage of a shipwreck and then dragged behind a Greyhound bus. But to me, Geekee was spun moonlight. Its frayed corners were my talismans, which I rubbed obsessively against my cheek like a junkie chasing the next dopamine hit. The soft tickle of that threadbare fabric was my lullaby, my Xanax, my spiritual compass.

    To my parents, however, Geekee was a public disgrace—a dingy square of shame that broadcast to the world that they were too cheap or too neglectful to buy their son a clean blanket. “It smells,” they complained, pinching their noses. “It’s disgusting.” They said I was too old to drag Geekee around like Linus with a trust fund. At four, I was allegedly a grown man in preschool years, and Geekee, they insisted, was holding me back like an emotional parasite in silk form.

    Thus began the war: child versus parental regime. I defended Geekee’s honor with the righteous fury of a mother bear protecting her cubs. I refused to eat unless Geekee was in my lap. I screamed during bath time if Geekee wasn’t nearby, watching like a guardian angel woven by machinery. I slept only under the comforting weight of its matted threads.

    My parents, of course, resorted to psychological warfare.

    Then came the infamous cross-country move—from Florida to California, land of palm trees, broken dreams, and emotional betrayals. Somewhere in the swamplands of Louisiana or perhaps the desolate asphalt wasteland of Texas, my father, who I now believe was channeling Machiavelli, pulled the ultimate con.

    “Look!” he said, pointing out the opposite car window. “A baby alligator!”

    I took the bait. Like the sucker I was, I turned my head. In that moment, my father performed the sleight of hand that would make a Vegas illusionist weep with envy. With the dexterity of a pickpocket, he yanked Geekee from my clutches and flung it out his open window like yesterday’s trash.

    The wind, he told me with faux solemnity, had sucked Geekee away. My cries reached operatic levels. I screamed, sobbed, demanded we stop the car, mount a rescue operation, conduct a blanket-recovery SWAT mission.

    But my father kept driving. “We can’t stop,” he said flatly, as though reading from a war manual. “Besides, Geekee is now keeping the baby alligator warm.”

    A lesser con artist would’ve stopped there, but my father gilded the lily. “The poor little guy has no mother. Geekee’s keeping him company now.”

    And just like that, my grief was hijacked by empathy. The idea of a lonely orphaned reptile swaddled in my beloved Geekee soothed me in a way no logic could. I imagined the baby alligator curled beneath Geekee’s filthy folds, comforted by the scent of my skin, the ghost of my touch. Geekee had found a higher calling.

    It was a lie so cunning, so diabolically effective, that it’s now family lore.

    That was the day I learned that grief, properly manipulated, could be repurposed into myth. And that sometimes, the only thing crueler than losing your favorite blanket is realizing your dad could have written propaganda for a dictatorship.

  • Worst College Student Ever

    Worst College Student Ever

    I was the worst college student ever. But before we get to that, let’s roll back to the fall of 1979 when I began my illustriously doomed university career. I was seventeen, an Olympic weightlifting champ and a competitive bodybuilder, laser-focused on my singular dream: win Mr. Universe, crush Mr. Olympia, and then ride that shredded glory to a personal gym empire in the Bahamas. My priorities were crystalline: achieve a beautiful body, maintain that body in a setting conducive to permanent oil-and-Speedo living, and ensure that the only clothes I wore for the rest of my life were posing trunks.

    This goal, as impractical as it was narcissistically vivid, never impressed my recently divorced mother. She called me a nincompoop every time I talked about opening a tropical gym. When I insisted my friends — Frank Zane, Tom Platz, Robbie Robinson, and the rest of the pantheon I knew only from the glossy pages of Muscle & Fitness — would come visit, she replied, “Those aren’t your friends. They’re from your magazines. I’m not stupid.”

    Contrary to the meathead stereotype, I graduated high school with straight A’s. But that was less a testament to my intellect and more an indictment of a system that funneled students through a bureaucratic sleepwalk. One of my classes was called “Money Matters.” We learned how to write checks and keep a budget. This was first-grade math masquerading as life skills. Another gem was “Popular Lit,” in which we read any three books of our choosing and wrote one-page reports so lax, you could submit a fever dream scrawled in pencil and receive an A. Our teacher looked like she lived under a freeway overpass and had the hygiene regimen to match. I never saw her do anything other than read People magazine and clip her nails with industrial wire cutters.

    It was abundantly clear that we weren’t being educated. We were being warehoused until adulthood. A teacher once muttered to a colleague in the hallway, “We’re training them to flip burgers.” And I believed him.

    But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to flip burgers or go to college. I was going to sculpt my body into a Greek god, win a shelf of trophies, and retire to an island where protein shakes flowed like wine. And I had evidence of my imminent glory: I trained at The Weight Room in Hayward alongside John Matuszak, a defensive end built like a mythological beast and known for body-slamming offensive linemen and the occasional jukebox. We bonded over T-Bar rows and cheesy radio duets. Once, during a particularly syrupy ballad, Matuszak curled his lip in disgust, growled, “Bullshit,” and rep-pounded 400 pounds like he was hammering nails into sentimentality’s coffin.

    Then there was Joe Corsi, local supplement tycoon and aged bodybuilder with a Dracula-meets-Jack-LaLanne aesthetic. Jet-black hair, dyed eyebrows, and a sleeveless jumpsuit that gave off the vibe of an aging lounge lizard hawking protein powder. He praised my “exceptional structure” and called me the next big thing. I waited for the sponsorship that never came.

    Mother, skeptical of the steak delivery sponsorship I kept promising her, finally cornered me in the kitchen where she was butchering a raw chicken like it had committed a felony. “College,” she said. “It’s your only option.”

    “What about Joe Corsi?”

    “What about him? Unless he’s showing up with T-bones, you’ve got nothing.”

    So I swallowed my Speedo-clad pride and applied to Cal State. Tuition was seventy-eight dollars a quarter. Cheaper than buying meat from Louie Corsi, Joe’s brother, who had offered me a pyramid scheme disguised as an entrepreneurial opportunity.

    I entered college with all the enthusiasm of a man being marched to the gallows. I had no respect for my professors. They were walking, talking resumes with gourmet cookware fetishes and tales of their African safaris. My Ethics professor — the Dean of Philosophy — had recently left his wife for his secretary and cruised into the parking lot in a Porsche convertible, his toupee flapping like a bat out of hell. I despised him on sight.

    Despite my straight A’s in high school, the university diagnosed me as an academic disgrace. I was unfit even for “Bonehead English” and was relegated to “Pre-Bonehead,” held in a boiler room next to maintenance. Janitors poked their heads in to laugh at us. And I deserved it.

    I lacked academic skill, yes, but I also lacked common sense. One day, a neighbor’s Siberian Husky licked me on the mouth. Panicked about AIDS, I called a local radio station and asked a doctor if canine kisses could transmit the disease. The doctor assured me I was safe. My mother, emerging from her bedroom after hearing the broadcast, said, “Was that you on the radio? You thought dog spit gave you AIDS? Cool it, buster.”

    It was a humbling moment. But not humbling enough to help me pick a major.

    Criminal justice bored me. The legalese read like a Choose Your Own Adventure designed by Kafka. Sociology and psychology books were impenetrable clouds of jargon. Reading them felt like slashing through kudzu with a machete. History had the narrative flair of a warehouse inventory list. Oceanography was fine until I developed a Pavlovian twitch to the professor’s favorite words: “viscosity,” “liminal zone,” and “denitrification.”

    Accounting nearly broke me. Ten minutes in, I walked out. The professor asked for my name. I said, “That won’t be necessary. You’ll never see me again.”

    I was failing, flailing, and officially on academic probation by spring. The university handed me a letter saying, in essence, “Shape up or ship out.”

    So I turned to my father.

    He invited me over for steaks. On the patio, he asked how school was going. I confessed everything. He listened, chewed, and finally said, “You can’t be a garbage man.”

    “Why not?”

    “You’re too vain. Imagine telling people at a party you’re a sanitation engineer. You’ll crack under the weight of social disapproval.”

    He was right. My ego wouldn’t allow me to collect trash. I needed a title with cachet. So I returned to campus, hat in hand, to pick a major. English it was. Why? Because the prose in other fields made me want to fling myself into traffic. Because I longed for writing that didn’t sound like it was composed by a committee of caffeinated consultants.

    And because I couldn’t learn in a room full of thirty-five people. My mind jittered like a squirrel on espresso. I taught myself grammar from a handbook. Syntax became my sanctuary. Grammar gave me what life hadn’t: structure, coherence, and rules that actually worked.

    Nietzsche once said we haven’t gotten rid of God because we still believe in grammar. He had a point. Grammar was my personal theology. It saved me.

    My grades rose. My confidence grew. The tutoring center hired me. Then I was offered a teaching gig.

    The university that once tried to boot me now wanted me at the helm.

    I had become, with astonishing irony, the worst college professor ever.

  • The Effort Mandate: Why Your Milkshake Scene Matters More Than Your Netflix Queue

    The Effort Mandate: Why Your Milkshake Scene Matters More Than Your Netflix Queue

    My students read Cal Newport, who argues—rightly—that happiness has less to do with basking in self-care rituals and more to do with rolling up your sleeves and pursuing a life of relentless, purpose-driven work. Newport, like a modern-day monk with a MacBook, insists that true contentment doesn’t come from “finding your passion” or retiring to some fantasy Airbnb with pizza in one hand and a remote in the other. Instead, happiness is built the old-fashioned way: through grit, sweat, and enough existential gumption to brave the storms of effort.

    Alex Hutchinson, in “The Paradox of Hard Work,” asks why we pursue brutal, bone-crunching tasks when our evolutionary wiring is supposedly set to “energy-saving mode.” He calls it puzzling. I don’t. The so-called “Effort Paradox” isn’t a mystery; it’s a truth so obvious we dress it up in academic hand-wringing to avoid confronting it: people crave hard things because without them, we rot.

    Whether it’s Peter Gabriel locking himself in a farmhouse to claw So into existence, or Isabel Wilkerson spending fifteen years writing The Warmth of Other Suns, meaningful work demands blood. Even weekend warriors know this. Ask a suburbanite about their yearlong bathroom renovation—listen to them swell with the pride of a soldier recounting a siege.

    And then there’s art. Cheap, glossy, instant-gratification art that evaporates from your mind before you reach the parking lot. You didn’t watch a movie—you consumed a content burrito and forgot the taste. Contrast that with There Will Be Blood: a cinematic ordeal so dense and punishing that it leaves claw marks on your psyche. I think of that milkshake scene more than I think of most people I went to college with. That’s not paradox. That’s payoff.

    So let’s stop calling it a paradox and start calling it what it is: The Effort Mandate. Meaning isn’t a gift; it’s a byproduct of voluntary suffering. You want happiness? Go earn it.

  • Fear, Fat, and the Fickle Gods of Appetite: A Diet Writer’s Tale

    Fear, Fat, and the Fickle Gods of Appetite: A Diet Writer’s Tale

    Rebecca Johns spent decades whispering sweet, slimming nothings into the ears of women’s magazine readers—low-fat gospel by day, seductive chocolate cake recipes by night. In her Atlantic essay, “A Diet Writer’s Regrets,” she confesses the irony that while readers gobbled up her diet advice like SnackWell’s cookies, she was losing the battle against her own body. At twenty-three, fresh out of college and desperate to shrink her waistline, Johns eagerly volunteered for the magazine’s diet beat. She got the gig—and with it, a front-row seat to her own unraveling.

    As her writing career expanded, so did she. The more she advised others on portion control, the more food tightened its psychological grip on her. She became the oracle of thinness while secretly bingeing and self-loathing. And her audience? They were just as eager to read about lemon-water detoxes as they were molten lava cakes for their next dinner party. The entire racket, she realized, was built on contradiction and fantasy.

    By 2017, she weighed 298 pounds, with a BMI in “Call the doctor” territory. She had tried every acronym on the dieting menu—WW, keto, IF, CICO—but none of them stuck. Then, like a miracle in an injector pen, came Mounjaro. Prescribed in 2023, this GLP-1 wonder drug rewired her hunger like a tech support call for the brain. No more food noise. No more gnawing obsession. Eighty pounds evaporated. At last, she became the kind of person she had written about for thirty years but never met—herself, only thinner.

    But here’s the twist: now that she’s tasted liberation, she’s terrified. Insurance may soon ghost her, and Mounjaro, priced like a luxury car lease, will slip from reach. She knows too much to let herself go back, and not enough to know how to stay the course without her miracle molecule. The horror? She might have to white-knuckle her way through celery sticks and willpower.

    Johns doesn’t mince words when she calls body acceptance a euphemism for surrender. “If skinny were truly optional,” she writes, “we’d all choose it.” And she’s not wrong. If college is driven by fear of poverty, maybe dieting is driven by fear of dying too soon—or worse, returning to a body you fought so hard to escape.

    If fear gets the job done, Johns suggests, then let it. After all, if love won’t keep you away from the donuts, maybe dread will.

  • The Great, on Hulu, is your TV Mount Everest

    The Great, on Hulu, is your TV Mount Everest

    So, you’ve just finished watching the complete 3 seasons of The Great on Hulu, and now you’re a broken shell of a human being. This “anti-historical” comedy about Empress Catherine the Great, penned by the devilishly talented Tony McNamara, is hands-down the best thing you’ve ever seen on television. And now, you’re plunged into a depression so deep that not even Elle Fanning’s radiant smirk or Nicholas Hoult’s glorious, sociopathic wit can pull you out of it. Why? Because you know, deep in your soul, that you’ll never see a script with such biting humor, impeccable cadence, and penetrating insight again. Ever.

    The Great is your TV Mount Everest, and the air up there is so thin that coming back down to the ground feels like an existential freefall. Desperate for solace, you decide to drown your sorrows in another “costume comedy,” because clearly, nothing soothes the soul like more ruffles and wigs.

    Enter The Decameron on Netflix—a comedy about the bubonic plague in 14th Century Italy. Yes, someone thought it would be a good idea to wring laughs out of a pandemic that killed a third of Europe. And the shocking part? They actually pulled it off. You’re impressed. Sort of. But at the same time, let’s not kid ourselves—the writing is not even in the same universe as The Great. It’s like comparing a Michelin-starred meal to the tastiest TV dinner you’ve ever had. Sure, it’s good, but come on—it’s not The Great. But here’s the kicker: you can’t trust your judgment anymore. You’ve entered a full-blown Post-Masterpiece Meltdown. On one hand, you’re bending over backward to be generous toward The Decameron, because you know deep down it’s unfair to compare anything to the sheer brilliance of The Great. On the other hand, you’re haunted by the suspicion that your generosity might be blinding you to the show’s actual merits—or lack thereof. You’re like someone who’s just lost the love of their life and is now attempting to date again by swiping right on Tinder with tears streaming down their face.

    Can you really trust your post-Great heart to judge anything properly? To make matters worse, The Decameron features the enigma that is Tanya Reynolds, an actress whose face is a bafflingly delightful conundrum—one moment goofy, the next serenely beautiful, as if she’s somehow tapped into a facial time machine that can travel between awkward adolescence and timeless beauty at will. Her intoxicating, elastic pulchritude is the final nail in the coffin of your short-circuited judgment. Your critical faculties, once sharp as a chef’s knife, now resemble a spoon trying to slice through steak. And you used to take pride in your TV criticism! Now you’re floundering in a sea of existential doubt, questioning everything—your taste, your standards, your very identity as a TV aficionado. So here you are, a once-confident critic, now reduced to a quivering mass of uncertainty, all because you stumbled upon Tony McNamara’s masterpiece, The Great. It’s like finding out you’ve been living in Plato’s cave all along, and now you’ve seen the light, you’re doomed to spend the rest of your days in the shadows, longing for the brilliance you can never unsee. Welcome to your new life in the Post-Masterpiece Meltdown. Enjoy the view—such as it is.

  • The Los Angeles Wildfires Reconnected Me to Radio

    The Los Angeles Wildfires Reconnected Me to Radio

    The Los Angeles fires, blazing with apocalyptic fury, prompted me to do something I hadn’t done in years: dust off one of my radios and tune into live local news. The live broadcast brought with it not just updates but an epiphany. Two things, in fact. First, I realized that deep down, I despise my streaming devices—their algorithm-driven content is like an endless conveyor belt of lukewarm leftovers, a numbing backdrop of music and chatter that feels canned, impersonal, and incurably distant. Worst of all, these devices have pushed me into a solipsistic bubble, a navel-gazing universe where I am the sole inhabitant. Streaming has turned my listening into an isolating, insidious form of solitary confinement, and I haven’t even noticed.

    When I flipped on the radio in my kitchen, the warmth of its live immediacy hit me like a long-lost friend. My heart ached as memories of radio’s golden touch from my youth came flooding back. As a nine-year-old, after watching Diahann Carroll in Julia and Sally Field in The Flying Nun, I’d crawl into bed, armed with my trusty transistor radio and earbuds, ready for the night to truly begin. Tuned to KFRC 610 AM, I’d be transported into the shimmering world of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crystal Blue Persuasion,” and The Friends of Distinction’s “Grazing in the Grass.” The knowledge that thousands of others in my community were swaying to the same beats made the experience electric, communal, alive—so unlike the deadening isolation of my curated streaming playlists.

    And then there was talk radio. Live conversations on KGO 810 AM with Jim Eason and Ronn Owens held a spellbinding charm. In the 70s, my mother and I would sit in the kitchen, enraptured, as they dissected controversies and gossip with the vigor of philosophers at a cocktail party. It was conversation as an art form, communal and vital, like cavemen telling stories around the fire. Contrast that with my podcasts: cherry-picked for my biases, carefully calibrated to affirm my tastes, locking me in an echo chamber so snug it could double as a straightjacket.

    The fires aren’t just devastating to the city—they’ve exposed the cracks in my own longing for connection. The nostalgic ache sent me down a rabbit hole of online research, hunting for a high-performance radio, convinced that it might resurrect the magic of my youth. But even as I clicked through reviews of antennas and AM clarity, a voice nagged at me: was this really about finding a better radio, or was it just another futile errand from a man in his sixties trying to outrun time? Could a supercharged radio transport me back to those transistor nights and kitchen conversations, or was I just tuning into the static of my own melancholia?