BREAKING ANALYSIS OF MLB ALL-STAR GAME SNUBS!: Monday Open Thread

Just kidding! No one over the age of 10 gives two dead rats’ asses about the All-Star Game except the players (contract incentives) and middle-aged men with a persecution complex and/or gambling addiction.

Proposal: if you try to place a bet on anything ASG-related, the bloodsucking gambling app should be statutorily required to forward you to the 1800BetsOff website. If you attempt to gamble on the Little League World Series, they should just forward you to the two remaining guys at the FBI who aren’t busy doing surveillance on college professors who put the word “diverse” in a grant application once.

ANYWAY: The big NBA free agent flurry is over, which is a shame. The amount of money being thrown around is truly staggering, and I have to bow in respect to any league that can construct such an intricate and byzantine salary cap system that makes patent litigation look simple. So there are two aprons? Why would you wear two aprons? That’s like wearing three pairs of pants. Profligate.

Seriously: I have incredible respect for the fitness and dedication required of even the lowliest NBA journeyman. However, to the intensely average 5’9 (177 cm, for the godless among you) guy that I am, this looks very much like a welfare scheme for anyone over 6’8. I know being Exceptionally Tall is not easy: basic things like air travel and buying pants are a pain, not to mention the fact that your joints are not made to support that frame over the course of 60-80 years. But as far as I can tell, roughly $177 million of Ben Simmons’ $200 million career earnings are due solely to his continued excellence at being 6’10.

Anyway.

Nothing of particular interest in the NFL newsbeat. I hate everyone and everything, because the Bills are going to piss away another year of Prime Josh Allen.

WATCHTALK:

Reminder: if you want an incredible interactive explanation of how mechanical watches work, building up from first principles, check this out.

Types of Watches:

There is only one hard-and-fast distinction that can be made for mechanical watches- how is it wound? Manual watches are exactly that: they depend on the power of your hand to wind the spring up, and then it runs down over a given period of time called the power reserve (generally 38-80 hours, although a few can go over a month). Then it stops and you wind it up again.

An automatic includes some sort of mechanism (usually a weighted rotor) that re-winds the watch as it is worn. In its most common form, the rotor spins as you move your arm naturally over the course of a day, providing continuous replenishment of spring tension until you take it off. Automatics also have a power reserve, indicating how long it will run once it is off your wrist.

Manual watches are often slimmer (stick out out from your wrist less) than an equivalent automatic, but may stop while you wear them.

Beyond that, there are a hella bunch of different broad categories (more styles, really) of watches, and at this point the lines have been so blurred that they more hint than define.

Example:

The bezel (thing with the numbers around the outside) rotates in one direction and its water resistence is billed as 300m- both indicate a dive watch. Its size (42mm across) borders on normal pilot-watch territory, though, and the simplicity of both the dial (no numbers) and the hands are generally signs of a dress watch.

Like beer styles, the most successful watches (to my mind) either blend styles with intent or do their absolute best to be the platonic ideal of their type.

This week’s featured type: the Dress Watch

Clean. Smaller. Thinner. Classic elegance at their best, expensive boredom at their worst. But I am a sucker for them, because they are (to me) the purest expression of the art.

Pictured above is the Orient Bambino. A not-inconsiderable portion of watchfolk will tell you this was their gateway drug. It comes in a bunch of variations (indices instead of numbers, roman numerals, openings so you can see the workings through the dial, etc.) and it’s relatively inexpensive (street value around $150, depending on variation). It works very well and it looks very nice. Is it as beautiful, nice to wear or accurate long-term (accuracy is measured in seconds lost or gained per day in this arena) as some really expensive watches? No. But it illustrates the concept of Value nicely.

Like a nice suit, quality is usually shown subtlely- materials, proportions, and construction. Since most people can’t judge these any better for a watch than for a suit, a lot of people default to cost or brand name as a proxy.

Don’t do that.

For any of these categories, don’t do that. But it’s particularly problematic for dress watches; with relatively little to outwardly distinguish between equally pretty plain-ish watches, things get Stupid and Expensive real quick for no good reason.

Three watches:

Externally, relatively little to distinguish between them. All made of stainless steel, all automatics with dates, all with adequate (38-50 hour) power reserves.

Top one (another Bambino) can be had for $175 new. Middle one (a lovely Longines Heritage Flagship) will run you $1000-1200 on the street, if you are patient. Last one (a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master UltraThin) retails for a hair under $10k.

To me, the difference in quality (and there is one, though the Orient will be nigh bulletproof for most people and the Longines will keep ticking for generations) cannot justify a price difference expressed in common logarithm. However, some people will genuinely get 100x the joy out of the JLC, and that’s Fine. Just make sure you are judging any watch’s worth based on its value to you, not some perceived social cachet that you think a watch will give you.

NEXT WEEK: Dive Watches!

RANDOM RANKINGS: INDIANA JONES MOVIES

1. Last Crusade
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Temple of Doom
4. There were no other Indiana Jones movies.