Cinemorphosis

Tag: mental-health

  • Magical Thinking #3: If You Throw Enough Money at a Problem, It’ll Solve Itself

    Magical Thinking #3: If You Throw Enough Money at a Problem, It’ll Solve Itself

    (or, The Fine Art of Buying Your Own Delusion)

    There exists a special kind of self-deception in which people believe that spending money is the same as putting in effort. The logic is simple: if you’re financially invested, you must also be emotionally and physically committed—right? Wrong.

    Take the personal trainers I know—college students making $80 an hour babysitting wealthy clients who stumble into the gym reeking of whiskey and bad decisions. These people don’t actually work out so much as they appear to be working out. They halfheartedly swing a kettlebell, grimace into a mirror, and assume their credit card transactions will magically convert to muscle mass. When their bodies remain flabby monuments to their bad habits, they’re baffled. But I paid for a trainer!

    Then there are the yoga tourists—the ones who drop thousands of dollars on high-end mats, designer leggings, and a Himalayan singing bowl, yet still can’t touch their toes. Their bank accounts scream “devoted yogi,” but their flexibility suggests otherwise.

    And let’s not forget the gym membership martyrs—the ones who proudly drop a cool hundred bucks a month on a premium fitness club, never show up, and yet still expect their abs to materialize via direct deposit.

    Academia isn’t immune to this madness, either. Some students believe that spending two grand on textbooks will guarantee academic success, as if the mere presence of unread knowledge on their bookshelf will seep into their brains through osmosis. The books stay pristine, their spines uncracked, while their owners continue to bomb midterms.

    This is the grand illusion of transactional self-improvement—the belief that writing the check is the same as doing the work. It’s not. No amount of money, gear, or overpriced green juice will ever replace the ugly, necessary grind of actually putting in effort.

  • 30 Years of Teaching College Writing in the Greatest City in the World

    30 Years of Teaching College Writing in the Greatest City in the World

    Yesterday, in my college critical thinking class, I played a clip from Liza Treyger’s Night Owls set, where she spirals into a monologue about her addiction to animal videos. The class erupted in recognition—Treyger’s bit was less comedy, more collective confession. We then compared the insidious grip of food addiction to the death grip of smartphones, two habits nearly impossible to break because, unlike more glamorous vices, they’re baked into the daily human experience. You have to eat. You have to communicate. And thanks to Pavlovian conditioning, the mere buzz of a notification or the scent of a cheeseburger can hijack your willpower before you even know what hit you.

    At one point, I noticed one of my students—a professional surfer—had a can of Celsius energy drink perched on his desk like a talisman of modern endurance. I mentioned that my daughters practically mainline the stuff, to which he casually replied that he was transitioning to Accelerator, as if he were upgrading his addiction to something with a more explosive name. This led us down a delightful rabbit hole about the marketing committee responsible for naming that monstrosity, the raw aggression of Costco shoppers jostling for bulk energy drinks, and how smartphones are turning my students into exhausted zombies. They shared their chosen comfort foods, each confession tinged with equal parts nostalgia and shame.

    The discussion was sharp, lively, and deeply engaging. And yet, in a moment of brutal self-awareness, I admitted to them that I felt pathetic. Here I was, sitting among the chillest students in the world, having a profound conversation about addiction—and all I could think about was ditching class to speed down to Costco and buy a case of Accelerator. They cracked up, and we carried on dissecting addiction for their essay on weight management and free will.

    After thirty years of teaching in Los Angeles, I’m convinced I’ve won the academic lottery. There’s no better place to teach, no better students to challenge my tomfoolery, and no better city to fuel my own ridiculous, completely relatable compulsions.

  • TEACHING COLLEGE WRITING IN THE AGE OF OZEMPIFICATION

    TEACHING COLLEGE WRITING IN THE AGE OF OZEMPIFICATION

    The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, 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.

    The fires didn’t just torch the city—they laid bare the fault lines in my craving for connection. Nostalgia hit like a sucker punch, sending me down an online rabbit hole in search of a high-performance radio, convinced it could resurrect the magic of my youth. Deep down, a sardonic voice heckled me: was this really about better reception, or just another pitiful attempt by a sixty-something man trying to outrun mortality? Did I honestly believe a turbo-charged radio could beam me back to those transistor nights and warm kitchen conversations, or was I just tuning into the static of my own existential despair?

    Streaming had wrecked my relationship with music, plain and simple. The irony wasn’t lost on me either. While I warned my college students not to let ChatGPT lull them into embracing mediocre writing, I had let technology seduce me into a lazy, soulless listening experience. Hypocrisy alert: I had become the very cautionary tale I preached against.

    Enter what I now call “Ozempification,” inspired by that magical little injection, Ozempic, which promises a sleek body with zero effort. It’s the tech-age fantasy in full force: the belief that convenience can deliver instant gratification without any downside. Spoiler alert—it doesn’t. The price of that fantasy is steep: convenience kills effort, and with it, the things that actually make life rich and rewarding. Bit by bit, it hollows you out like a bad remix, leaving you a hollow shell of passive consumption.

    Over time, you become an emotionally numb, passive tech junkie—a glorified NPC on autopilot, scrolling endlessly through algorithms that decide your taste for you. The worst part? You stop noticing. The soundtrack to your life is reduced to background noise, and you can’t even remember when you lost control of the plot.

    But not all Ozempification is a one-way ticket to spiritual bankruptcy. Sometimes, it’s a lifeline. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic can literally save lives, keeping people with severe diabetes from joining the ranks of organ donors earlier than planned. Meanwhile, overworked doctors are using AI to diagnose patients with an accuracy that beats the pre-AI days of frantic guesswork and “Let’s Google that rash.” That’s Necessary Ozempification—the kind that keeps you alive or at least keeps your doctor from prescribing antidepressants instead of antibiotics.

    The true menace isn’t just technology—it’s Mindless Ozempification, where convenience turns into a full-blown addiction. Everything—your work, your relationships, even your emotional life—gets flattened into a cheap, prepackaged blur of instant gratification and hollow accomplishment. Suddenly, you’re just a background NPC in your own narrative, endlessly scrolling for a dopamine hit like a lab rat stuck in a particularly bleak Skinner box experiment.

    As the fires in L.A. fizzled out, I had a few weeks to prep my writing courses. While crafting my syllabus and essay prompts, Mindless Ozempification loomed large in my mind. Why? Because I was facing the greatest challenge of my teaching career: staying relevant when my students had a genie—otherwise known as ChatGPT—at their beck and call, ready to crank out essays faster than you can nuke a frozen burrito.

  • An Essay Is Born of Conversation

    An Essay Is Born of Conversation

    One morning, I found myself performing the sacred rites of domesticity—washing dishes, chugging my second cup of dark roast like it was holy water, and catching snippets of Howard Stern’s radio show in between the clatter of silverware. Stern, the man who’s built an empire on the backs of potty humor and shock jocks, suddenly ditched his juvenile antics for something more personal. What followed nearly made me spit out my coffee. The King of All Media, a man who’s made millions by talking non-stop, admitted that he has no friends. Let that sink in—a professional chatterbox with zero pals. My immediate thought? Here’s a guy so wrapped up in his own celebrity bubble, buried under endless meetings, and tucked away in his cozy cocoon with his family, that he’s practically marinating in his own solitude. 

    Stern’s confession hit me like a cattle prod straight to my existential crisis, jolting me through the cobwebbed back alleys of my own past. Thirty-five years ago, when I was a baby-faced college writing instructor with more hair and less cynicism, my landline phone wasn’t just a device; it was an extra limb, surgically attached to my ear. I wasn’t just talking to friends—I was engaged in marathon sessions of verbal gladiator battles, the kind of conversations where we didn’t just solve world problems, we dissected the universe down to its subatomic particles.

    We’d exchange stories so absurd that Kafka himself would rise from the dead, throw his manuscript in the trash, and declare, “I can’t compete with this!” We laughed like it was an Olympic sport, the kind of laughter that made your ribs ache, your eyes tear up, and your bladder question its loyalty. These were the days when human connection wasn’t just a handshake and a nod; it was full-contact rugby for the soul, complete with head injuries and emotional bruises.

    Back then, phones had cords—literal leashes that tied you to the landline, forcing you to stay in one place for hours, committed to the conversation like it was a prison sentence with your best friend as the warden. Every call was a saga, a never-ending odyssey through every absurd thought, half-baked philosophy, and stupid joke that popped into our heads. There were no text messages to hide behind, no quick emojis to slap onto an awkward silence. You had to talk, and by God, we talked. Hours on end, as if the fate of the cosmos depended on our ability to debate the merits of Star Wars versus Star Trek for the thousandth time.

    Nowadays, those conversations are as dead as pay phones. And my phone? It’s just a sad rectangle of glass and regret, used more for doom-scrolling and sending passive-aggressive emails than for any real human connection. I’ve traded in deep conversations for shallow interactions, where “likes” and emojis have replaced belly laughs and epiphanies. It’s like swapping out a gourmet meal for a microwaved hot dog—and not the good kind.

    Now, fast forward to this glittering dystopia we call the present, where I’ve amassed a veritable army of so-called “friends” across social media platforms—each one just a pixelated speck in the vast, soulless void of the internet. Sure, I might occasionally lob a carefully filtered photo of a family vacation into the void, fishing for a few paltry likes and insincere comments. But once I’ve collected my meager dopamine hits, I retreat right back into my hermit cave, where human interaction is about as rare as a unicorn on a skateboard.

    Despite being fully aware that friendship is as vital to mental health as oxygen is to a scuba diver, many of us somehow marooned ourselves in what I now dub the Howard Stern Condition. This self-imposed exile didn’t happen in a single, dramatic twist of fate. It was a slow, insidious descent into madness, like slipping into a warm bath that turns out to be full of piranhas. 

    One of the dangers of losing real conversations is that our writing is a reflection of the quality of our interactions with others. Spontaneous conversations with surprising twists and turns make for a kind of writing that is vital and engaging. But half-baked conversations degraded into mindless likes and comments creates a kind of algorithmic writing that is anodyne, soulless, and even soul-crushing. Therefore, writing instructors must teach their students how to create essays born of real conversation. The question is how is this done? 

    As I wrestle with ways to create assignments that are born of meaningful conversations, I turn to Sherry Turkle, my oracle in a wilderness dominated by endless scrolling and dopamine hits. For over a decade, Turkle in her books Reclaiming Conversation and Alone Together has sounded alarms on “always-connected lives,” describing a “flight from conversation” and warning us that “we have come to expect more from technology and less from each other.” Now, more than ever, we are “satisfied with less,” content to trade meaningful exchanges for a digital mirage of connection. Turkle’s message is clear: don’t be so mesmerized by the flashing lights and instant feedback of tech, because, eventually, we have to confront the dark side of a life filled with shortcuts, plagued by a shrinking attention span, crumbling conversation skills, and the hollowing out of genuine relationships.

    So what do we call a generation content with a life that’s “good enough”—an existence that leaves us lonely and anxious, yet just distracted enough to stay docile? Maybe zombification fits the bill: living in a deadened state, either oblivious to it or too indifferent to do anything about it. Turkle is holding up a mirror, showing us our zombified selves as we expect more from our devices and less from each other, and urging us to make “course corrections” before we drift any further.

    To make these corrections, Turkle isn’t suggesting we toss our devices out the window. Instead, she wants us to dig deeper, examining how our tech dependence erodes essential qualities like empathy, social cues, and basic human decency. In this screen-saturated stupor, we risk becoming shut-ins, devoid of social skills, and isolated from genuine connection. In bypassing the trial and error of real-world interactions, we lose the etiquette and resilience necessary for life in a cooperative society. With this in mind, I developed a writing assignment that is AI-resistant in that it requires autobiographical content that defies AI generation. It is designed to explore the necessity of face-to-face interactions: 

    Writing Prompt: Lessons in Manners and Etiquette Beyond the Screen

    Think back to a time when you found yourself in a social situation where the importance of manners, etiquette, or unspoken social rules became clear to you in a way that only a real, in-person experience could reveal. In today’s world, where so many interactions are mediated by screens, we can miss out on learning the nuances of human interaction—the kind of lessons that can’t be taught through text messages, social media, or YouTube tutorials. Your task is to recount a time when an in-person interaction left you with a memorable lesson about behavior, respect, or common sense that changed the way you see social dynamics.

    The purpose of this writing prompt is to encourage you to reflect on the unique, irreplaceable lessons that come from real-world social interactions, highlighting the limitations of digital communication. In an age where much of our interaction occurs online, screen-based communication often lacks the depth, nuance, and immediate feedback that face-to-face experiences provide. By recalling a memorable in-person situation where manners or etiquette were essential, you can recognize the invaluable role of direct human contact in developing social skills that can’t be honed through social media alone. This reflection serves as a foundation for understanding how the overuse or misuse of social media might erode these essential skills, weakening our ability to navigate complex social landscapes with sensitivity and respect.

    Assignment Instructions:

    1. Setting the Scene: Start by describing the situation, the location, and the people involved. What was the environment like? Was it a structured setting (like a school or job) or something more informal (a family gathering, gym, party, etc.)? Explain your initial feelings or expectations as you entered the situation. Did you feel comfortable, nervous, or completely out of your element?

    2. The Faux Pas or Mistake: Describe the specific moment or behavior where things started to go sideways. Did you accidentally break an unspoken rule or do something that, in hindsight, seemed awkward or inappropriate? How did people around you respond? Were there direct consequences, or did someone pull you aside to “educate” you on what was expected?

    3. The Lesson Learned: Reflect on what this situation taught you about manners, etiquette, or respect. How did this experience shape your understanding of appropriate behavior? In what ways did it reveal social rules that you hadn’t fully appreciated before? Why do you think this lesson could only have been learned face-to-face, rather than through a screen?

    4. Impact on Your Future Behavior: How has this experience influenced you since? Are you more aware of how you interact in similar situations now? Describe any changes in your approach to social settings and why this particular incident left a lasting impression on you.

    In your response, use specific details and a vivid description of the moment to help the reader experience the lesson with you. Think about why in-person experiences teach us lessons that screen-based interactions often cannot, and consider how this knowledge shapes who you are today. Aim for approximately 500 words, and remember to highlight why this lesson is one that could only be learned through direct, human interaction.

  • The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much

    The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much

    Last night, I was in my kitchen, casually sharing shrimp, cocktail sauce, and champagne with public intellectuals Andrew Sullivan and Reihan Salam. As one does. We dove headfirst into the big topics: public policy, identitarianism, the collapse of critical thinking in echo chambers, and the shaky health of democracy. Between bites of shrimp and sips of champagne, we reveled in our status as lifelong learners, trading stories about childhood, lost pets, first crushes, and bouts of existential despair. The shrimp bowl magically replenished itself, and the champagne glasses never emptied. It was glorious—three intellectual heavyweights, solving the world’s problems, toasting to friendship and intellectual curiosity. For a fleeting moment, I felt like I’d reached peak existence: camaraderie, enlightenment, and a deeply inflated sense of self-worth, all in one glorious, shrimp-fueled evening.

    Only it didn’t happen.

    I was dreaming, my subconscious hijacked by The Dishcast. This is my nocturnal routine: When I go to bed at night, I fall asleep to a podcast and, before long, I’m the star guest. There I am, delivering profound manifestos about the human condition, my opinions urgently needed and universally admired.

    When I woke up, the camaraderie still lingered, as if Andrew and Reihan had just slipped out the back door, leaving only a faint echo of laughter.

    This happens all the time. In my dreams, I’m not just a listener—I’m part of the podcast universe, slapping backs, sipping champagne, and dropping truths no one dared to utter. Reality, by comparison, is disappointingly quiet.

    Clearly, podcasts are taking too much bandwidth in my brain. I’m not alone. Like millions of others, I’ve practically taken up residence in the world of podcasts. My life runs on a steady soundtrack of conversations and monologues, piped directly into my ears while I swing kettlebells, pedal my exercise bike, grade uninspired writing assignments, cook, eat, and scrub the kitchen into submission. Podcasts are my companions for post-workout naps, my co-pilots on the commute, and my salvation during middle-of-the-night insomnia—the kind where you wake up at 2 a.m., stare at the ceiling, and hope a familiar voice can lull you back to sleep before dawn.

    In total, I must rack up over a hundred hours of podcast listening every week. I spend more time in the podcast multiverse than in the real one, and inevitably, these voices have taken up permanent residency in my brain. Some of these parasocial relationships I welcome with open arms; others, I tolerate with the resigned grumbling of a bad roommate. And then there are the hosts who commit unforgivable sins—becoming smug, tedious, or worse, preachy—earning themselves a one-way ticket to oblivion. In this universe, the delete button is my only weapon, and I wield it without mercy.

    Living in the podcast world as I do—where most of my waking and sleeping hours are dominated by disembodied voices—I’ve started asking some uncomfortable questions. Have I, like millions of others, surrendered my brain to the podcasters, letting them hijack my mental real estate to my own detriment? Am I so immersed in podcast life that I’ve lost all perspective, like a fish in water, oblivious to how wet it is?

    What am I really after here? Entertainment? Wisdom? A surrogate friend? Or just noise to drown out the endless chatter in my own head? Why do some podcasts stick while others fall by the wayside? Are my favorites truly brilliant, or just slightly less irritating than their competition? Is it their buttery voices, sharp wit, or the fact that they don’t seem to realize they’ve become permanent fixtures in my inner monologue?

    Could I live without podcasts? Would the silence reveal things about myself I’m not ready to confront? What do I call that blissful, cozy state when I’m wrapped in the warmth of a trusted voice? Podcastopia? Earbud Nirvana? Sonic Solace? And is it possible to “love” a podcaster too much, like when I know their pet’s name but can’t remember my sibling’s birthday?

    Am I escaping something? Is this obsession a creative pursuit or an elaborate scheme to avoid existential dread? And most importantly, does this insatiable consumption mean something is deeply, hilariously wrong with me? Or does it point to something more profound—a need for a new word to describe the bottomless, soul-deep immersion of chasing episode after episode like a digital hunter-gatherer?

    Yeah, I’ve got questions. But it might be too late. I may already be The Man Who Loved Podcasts Too Much.

    After waking up from my dream of hanging out with Andrew Sullivan and Reihan Salam, I crept into the kitchen for breakfast–a self-inflicted atrocity of overnight oats. Not just any overnight oats, mind you, but a Trader Joe’s variety touting “ancient grains,” as if the endorsement of long-dead civilizations could somehow redeem the experience. Spoiler: it didn’t. Despite my best attempts at culinary CPR—vanilla protein powder, a smattering of berries, and a dusting of pumpkin spice—the result was still cold, gluey sludge, the breakfast equivalent of a wet handshake.

    Each spoonful felt like a personal affront, a betrayal by my own hands, as though I had willingly prepared the kind of gruel Dickensian orphans would revolt over. The texture was an abominable mix of paste and gravel, and the cold temperature screamed “punishment” rather than “sustenance.” By the end, I wasn’t just eating; I was enduring. Mental note: next time, boil this nonsense into something remotely edible—or toss it and make a proper breakfast for a self-respecting adult. 

  • LARRY SANDERS: WHEN YOUR ONLY MEASURE OF SELF-WORTH IS THE NIELSEN RATING

    LARRY SANDERS: WHEN YOUR ONLY MEASURE OF SELF-WORTH IS THE NIELSEN RATING

    The Larry Sanders Show is, at its core, a study in impoverishment—not financial, mind you, but emotional, existential, and spiritual. It’s a bleak yet hilarious portrait of men so starved for validation that their only measure of self-worth is the Nielsen rating. Without it, they might as well not exist. The three principals—Larry Sanders, Hank Kingsley, and Artie the producer—are all flailing in different shades of desperation, their egos so fragile they make pre-teen TikTok influencers look well-adjusted.

    What’s astonishing is that these men are emotional dumpster fires in a pre-social media era. Had they been forced to navigate Instagram, they’d have suffered full mental collapse long before season six. Larry, in particular, embodies this fragile insecurity perfectly: there he is, night after night, lying in bed with some beautiful woman, but his true lover is the TV screen, where he watches his own performance with a mix of self-loathing and obsessive scrutiny. His actual partner—flesh, blood, and pleading for his attention—might as well be a houseplant.

    Hank Kingsley, meanwhile, is a slow-motion trainwreck of envy and delusion. He loathes Larry with the fire of a thousand suns, seeing his role as sidekick as a cosmic insult to a man of his alleged grandeur. His existence is a never-ending, one-man King Lear, with far more Rogaine and far less dignity.

    Then there’s Artie, the producer, the closest thing the show has to a functional adult. He wrangles chaos with a cigarette in one hand and a whiskey in the other, managing to keep the circus running even as its ringleader is in freefall. But Artie, too, is an emotional casualty. He can juggle Larry’s neuroses and Hank’s tantrums with military precision, yet his own life is a shipwreck, his ability to maintain order confined strictly to the world of late-night television.

    Yet for all its cynicism, the show doesn’t just leave us gawking at these wrecked souls—it makes us care. We want them to wake up, to claw their way out of their vanity-driven stupor, to abandon the mirage of celebrity and seek something real. But they won’t. They can’t. They are too drunk on the high of public approval, too lost in the spectacle of show business, too incapable of self-awareness to change course. And so we watch them burn out in real time, laughing through the tragedy, absorbing its lessons like a cautionary tale wrapped in razor-sharp wit.

    In the end, The Larry Sanders Show is the perfect showbiz fable: hilarious, cutting, deeply sad, and just self-aware enough to let us laugh at the madness while secretly wondering if we, too, are addicted to the same empty validation.