Glass Shallot by Adam Baer

Believer Interview with a Big Sur Yurt Hotelier

Perhaps this Believer interview I conducted with the owner of Big Sur's Treebones Resort is worth reading for some context on community, wildfires, and responsible coastal living and architecture in California. He's also a volunteer firefighter, and well, yes, thorough.

"A Good Life in the Hollywood Hills"-- Holiday Magazine, April, 1970

 

An April, 1970 magazine article on life in the Hollwood Hills:

"The cliffdwellers cling precariously to the brush-covered slopes of the Hollywood hills, sharing the common perils of fire and flood. In the late fall, when the humidity drops and a warm wind whips through the canyons, the hills may suddenly explode with flame. In the rainy season, when the naked cliffs crack and slide, the mortgaged wickiups come tumbling down. But the true cliffdweller always returns to his wildlife refuge. He trades in his charred Porsche, patches his pool, rebuilds his house-with-a-view and again settles down to enjoy the comforts of his mountain lair." ...

"Laurel is Southern California’s semi-tropical version of Manhattan’s East Village. Mediter­ranean villas dating back to the first hoarse days of talking pictures are hemmed in by dilapidated shacks owned by absentee landlords. The can­yon’s natural fire hazards have been intensified of late by shaggy young nomads who turn on in the blackened ruins of burned-out mansions where Theda Bara may once have dined. The daily life of the community swirls around a small shopping center, “The Square,” which boasts the old-fashioned Canyon Country Store and a pleasant cafe, the Galleria."--1970 article from Holiday magazine on what it's like to live in the Hollywood Hills.

 

 

Related articles

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Good Morning by Gustav Mahler

Inside the Los Angeles castle built by a family's DIY empire

The Believer Interview with a Luthier (who makes guitars for Arcade Fire, The National, Beck, Cat Power, Fred Armisen) -- by Adam Baer

A number of years ago, well before this subject was written about elsewhere, I learned about, met, and began interviewing, the Silverlake-area guitar luthier and music-shop owner Reuben Cox who uses found materials to make equisite instruments that harken back to a period of American guitarmaking that has slipped away. Reuben, a photographer with credits from The New Yorker and New York Times, had opened a place called Old Style Guitars on the eastern/southern edge of the neighborhood -- before it had become hip. Still, bands like The National would drop by and play secret shows in his driveway. And quickly, the place became a node, a scene, for some of the best elite rock musicians in the country: You could see Richard Reed Parry from Arcade Fire there, Chan Marshall, Devandra B., Bobby Womack, Beck, Sufjan Stevens, Alexi Murdoch, Andrew Bird, tons of studio players, even Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. It was something like a micro Laurel Canyon for our time, inside a little box with lots of wires and wood. But it's hard to place significant articles about such esoteric subjects in the focused, news-oriented consumer magazines. So, I waited, and then an option to do something creative came up with one of my favorite magazines,  The Believer. Now, I have turned the piece, which at last ran in The Believer's 2014 Music Issue, into a multimedia digital thing, with videos of The National playing at the store, a fetishistic guitar slideshow, and even a video of Arcade Fire using one of Reuben's guitars in Helsinki. Check it out at this URL, where I hope that it will live for a long time. http://logger.believermag.com/post/100588053844/interview-with-a-luthier-i-e-someone-who-makes

My thanks for reading, watching, waiting, and listening.

Adam Baer

Related articles

Itzhak Perlman, an Honest Appreciation in the Los Angeles Times

Believer Interview with a Luthier (who makes guitars for Arcade Fire, The National, Beck, Cat Power, Fred Armisen) -- by Adam Baer

Coachella 2016: Sufjan Stevens and Gallant Perform Prince's "Purple Rain"

New Way to Read Music -- Not Especially Noteworthy

Recently, I published a VQR piece on the future of sheet music, including a bit on new apps and notation literacy. In related news bloggers are pointing out a new music notation system called Hummingbird (depicted above). I looked it over, tried it out. It borrows its method of displaying rhythm from piano rolls, showing us the amount of time a note should be held, like GarageBand and other music software. What's more, it points up for sharps and down for flats, which a demanding violin teacher might do with a pencil. Aside from that, it's deceptively complicated and requires learning different symbols. How much easier it would be for someone who has never learned music, or lacks a teacher, is questionable.

New systems (and apps) are best when they solve problems, but learning to read Western music notation isn't a problem that requires a solution. It's not easy. But like learning to read English, it's eminently doable, and fraught with fewer variables and exceptions. Reading Western notation—and there have of course been many precursors to what we use now, as well as many alternatives, including Braille and an integer-based system—has also proven to be good for your brain, and we don't need to simplify it. The current sharp and flat note symbols work fine; you just have to remember them.

Hummingbird appears to be a nicely designed dumbing-down, and not an especially noteworthy one in an age of design-fetish and how-to videos. Shortcuts—like guitar tablature—should really be shortcuts. This new system basically just makes reading music different, and it doesn't seem to allow for new ways to notate sounds that we cannot yet notate. I'm in favor of new music technologies and notation systems, but Hummingbird should first show me why Western music notation is a problem, and why Hummingbird is a necessary alternative. For now, especially given our abundance of online music-education resources, it's not.

For more information about alternative music notation systems that may solve what some perceive to be standard notation problems, check out The Music Notation Project.

 

Lautner Photography: At Home on Ice

 

John Lautner with Joanne Segel in Segel Residence; photo by Carla Larissa Fallberg (photo from Lautner Foundation site)

 

In the course of researching my recent VQR essay about architect John Lautner, I interviewed the Lautner scholar and architect Frank Escher, who Benedikt Taschen chose to restore the "Chemosphere" house displayed on the cover of the VQR winter 2013 edition. Escher, who wrote a book about Lautner and was present to chronicle the rebirth of love for the architect's work in the late 1990's*, gave me a great interview, and some of that conversation, of course, could not make it into the piece.

One of the more interesting bits that had to hit the cutting room floor concerned Lautner's apparent love for the act of photography. Sure, Julius Shulman and many other professional photographers shot gorgeous pictures of Lautner's work. But according to Escher, Lautner was a "great photographer himself." The architect apparently took thousands of photos over the course of his lifetime, which may not be unusual for an architect now but was not always the norm.

"He used the camera the way other architects use a sketchbook," said Escher.  "He constantly documented what was around him. There are thousands of studies of clouds, caves, rock formations, waves -- sometimes quite abstract. And if you look at those subjects and realize what he was looking at through a camera you start to read where his architectural forms come from."

"There's a very clear interest in the sort of natural biomorphic form in Lautner's work, and it comes from his really intense connection to nature," Escher continued. "This starts when Lautner is very young -- the way he's brought up, what he enjoys. Throughout his life, he traveled a great deal."

Escher told me about how one of Lautner's trips may surprise people who associate him with Southern California, heat. "Lautner once took a trip to Alaska and photographed glaciers, producing gorgeous images," Escher said. "These almost formal studies of ice formations, how glaciers melt, or how ice melts on water, or clouds, or those desert landscapes -- these are where he developed his formal interests."-- Adam Baer

 

 *And who generously shared his contacts in the Lautner world.

If You Were Cool, Rich, or Bad Enough to Live Here, You'd Be Home -- John Lautner in Hollywood

Very proud to have my John Lautner houses-in-film essay in the winter 2013 edition of VQR. If you'd like to read the text and see the great photos, most by Elizabeth Daniels, in full size, here's the PDF. You can also read the text more easily here. And be sure to catch other great pieces in the issue -- which, really, is a great print book to buy and hold -- by Mickey Rapkin, David Kipen, and many others. Here's how to subscribe.

I will be posting related material throughout the week. Please stay tuned! -- Adam Baer

Leasing Los Angeles

The piece in text form, here.--Adam Baer

Never Byrne-d Out

In the course of interviewing David Byrne for this short piece about his design work and music in May's Departures Culturewatch section, I realized that Shallot friend Hillman Curtis had done a really cool commercial (embedded above) for Byrne's joint album with Brian Eno "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today." For people who aren't in the know (which could have been me if I had not done this piece, sadly), the album has been freely streamable on the Web for some time. For those who like to hold amazing design in your hands and play with dice, you can still buy a Sagmeister-designed Deluxe (CD) Package that includes an original Hillman Curtis film about the album as well as a full book and other goodies (watch a video that explains the contents here). 

Byrne told me the following about why the duo decided to offer the album in these different forms. "We had both been thinking about the changes the music business has been going through," he said. "There are now many more ways that musicians can get their messages across than before, though the industry typically lags behind. We decided to try some of those out for ourselves by initially selling the record exclusively through our website and allowing people to stream the whole album if they simply wanted to hear what it was like.  It just seemed obvious. I wanted to sing these songs more, so I asked my booking agents to book some tours -- so that kind of gave the project an endpoint -- and the only way to get the music out to people before the tour started was to make it available online.  That said, there are many among us who still love a physical object. A well-designed package can enhance the experience. It used to be that an eye-catching package helped sell a record: it would shout at you like a box of laundry detergent. But I don't think CD package design is meant to do that anymore. Now it's more about adding another layer to the experience. I'd worked with Stefan (Sagmeister) many times before, so he was a natural choice."

Other questions broached in my interview included prompts about the joy of performing.  "At my age and situation, I don't need to tour simply for financial reasons (though I do make money touring)," Byrne said. "Though I would love to believe otherwise, I don't think touring sells many records either. I do it for two reasons: it's immensely pleasurable these days and because I can (immodestly, I can say that I do know how to perform and put on a show). The show we've created -- the band, crew, singers, dancers, choreographers, etc. -- is like nothing I've ever done before, so though half of the show consists of older material, it's been placed in a new context. At some point, performing changed from being a thing that I psychologically had to do into something that was actually pleasurable. Some edge in my demeanor might have been lost with those changes, but songs from that period remain, so the edginess can be dredged back up."

Byrne, as the article points out, also writes the music to the HBO show Big Love (coming back soon), which actually opens with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys's "God Only Knows," so I was curious as to how he might add music to such a thoroughly branded motion picture experience.  "It's an interesting show and doing a score like this allows one to exercise some musical muscles one doesn't always use," Byrne said. "It's good to stretch oneself sometimes, to get out of a comfort zone, which forces some kind of creative response. Initially I thought I'd try to base much of the music on Mormon hymns -- not use them but write in that style. Having seen the 1st season, I sensed that many of the characters felt that their behavior and decisions were based on deep spiritual beliefs -- as wacky and unusual as some of it might seem to us. I therefore imagined that hymn-type chord progressions and melodies would hint at this spiritual underpinning without saying it out loud. The hope was also that this music would also help one empathize with the characters, even, or maybe especially, with some of the more extreme ones. Music can hint at their motivations and justifications, where their hearts are despite what we see them doing. Well, in the end, that approach only worked a few times: it tended to draw attention to itself and to draw you out of the intimate scale of the drama. That music tended to pull you back to a God's eye view of things -- yes, music can do that. So, in the end I had to use other muscles and write some other material that was subtler, more character driven."

Intriguing, especially for film music buffs (of which there are few, apparently). More au courant, perhaps, was Byrne's answer to my question about how he and Eno both influence(d) each other.  He answered: "The process of using the recording studio as a writing tool was something a few of us learned from Brian. Not that he was the only one to do it, but they way he encouraged us in Talking Heads (and myself) to start from zero and create new tracks was something we were ready for...it was the right idea, the right nudge, at the right moment. It wasn't that strange, really, as it basically was taking the writing process, which usually goes on in one's head, hidden, invisible, or little my little with a guitar in hand and some notepaper in front, and it made it all -- the creative process -- explicit, visible, and most important for potential collaborators, available for others to enter into. How did Talking Heads and myself influence Brian? I think we encouraged him to be a little more funky, more groove oriented."

design within

At some point, a guy has to stop buying Eames chairs and thinking he has a superior sense of design. So I asked a few questions of Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan at Apartment Therapy, and his answers ended up in ReadyMade.

rotten bananas and working for a-holes

Ever since I first saw Charles Eames answer questions on design, I knew I wanted to know more about the people who follow at least some version of his career path (how hard is it to make a chair, right?). Anyway, filmmaker and designer Hillman Curtis 's recent film about artist-designer Stefan Sagmeister explains a little bit of the mystery (well, not about chairs, but about design; well, not about design, but about that little issue called life). It also could be Curtis's most illuminating designer film if only because it shows the work of a man who, among rotting bananas and inflatable gorillas, presented the texts: "Don't work with assholes," "Everyone thinks they are right," and "Worrying solves nothing." As for "Money does not make me happy," I can't exactly get behind that one given the current states of mag journalism and American healthcare. But I like the first sentiment, and I definitely get his drift in re: the greenbacks.

See the film.

my so-called stylish life

Whether it's riding a new electric bike, trying to get a better night's sleep at an extraordinary expense, or searching for tennis shorts that don't actually look silly with the help of Tom Ford, there's always time for an editorial contribution to The New York Times's T: Style Magazine.

Why Glass Shallot?
Because it's more fun to go window-shopping in the newspaper.

new goodness

Housing Projects, Good Magazine, September 2007.

Why Glass Shallot?

Because we are lucky to have a home.

My watch is gone, my watch is gone: The Mondaine Life

 

See this Mondaine watch? Like it? I do. 

I should. My wife bought it for me as an engagement present, and I adored it the minute it jumped out of its box.  Of course, it didn't really jump, but I like to think that it did. I like to think that this watch can do anything, because it can certainly disappear. 

Back in 2000, when I first found an image of this watch in Rome, it seemed unlike most of the watches around. Here was the anti-Swiss Army, the non-Swatch. The problem is that now the rest of the world loves Mondaine watches, too (although try to find the chronograph version of this one -- it's no longer made).

Watches and I, we've been lovers. As a kid, I read Esquire and GQ, cover-to-cover, paying close attention to the timepiece ads. I recall regularly borrowing the maximum amount of back issues from my local library, and gawking at the watch-faces. "I only read these for the articles," I once joked to the research librarian, who had seen me purposely photo-copying Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese. The irony isn't lost on me now as I write for style-oriented magazines (sometimes about gadgets), but I still love seeking out timepiece ads aside long-form journalism. They belong together.

As a kid who grew up in a town where many people lived beyond their means, the watch ads seemed realistic, sold images of a men's life that existed. Maybe, one day, I, too, might find myself wealthy and sport a historic Omega. The imagery of douchebaggery was couched so heavily in quality even during the early 90's that I didn't think about the virtues of many guys I'd seen with a version of my wrist-envy.

But I never got over my timepiece obsession. I didn't--and still don't--consider it superficial. "Time is the most valuable thing I could possess." I wrote that sentence in a childhood journal when I was 11 years old. 

Today, I don't like ostentatious watches, and I basically wear the same pants everywhere. I appreciate design, but things aren't as meaningful to me as an adult. Perhaps that's why I lose lots of them. Often things that represent important moments in my life. Things are just carbon, I rationalize. I can always make more money, replace them. Pieces of matter are just pieces of matter. Everything important is invisible. 

 

* * *

 

I  stayed away from watches for years--first, because I played the violin, and later, because I didn't like anything constricting my left wrist. More recently my reasons have been existential. Still, I've always felt somewhat naked without a watch--too casual or unadorned, childishly free. This is nice when I'm at the ocean, or hiking the hills, trying to work up a sweat, but it has not felt great in work situations.

Given this history with style, I'm now repulsed by watches that brag about one's bank account. But the scale has tipped in the former direction over the last few months. It has something to do with getting older, I think. It concerns wanting to get on a track, focus. Get a few objects--things you care about that you can feel with your hands--and hold onto them. Someone who will always be missed said that to me once.

So when family members offered to buy me a watch last winter, I became excited. Then, instantly, I couldn't decide on one. It seemed like nearly--just nearly--as big a commitment as something human--say, taking on a mate.  My watch would be my watch--at least that's how I would want it--and I would never attempt to purchase more than one. (How wasteful.)

Moreover, I wanted something that might make me look a little more respectable in selvage legs. That way, I could dress down to a lunch meeting and still seem somewhat serious. (LA, if you don't live here, is full of people who dress supercasually but usually wear one serious piece of something to remind you they're not homeless--or, on the other end of the spectrum, that they're fabulously rich. The fun, I think, is never completely knowing the difference.)

This sent me searching for a watch. And when I say searching, I mean hunting (like, with weapons and scopes and anxiety about accidentally shooting a living thing). I looked at the men's mags, I looked in J.C. Penny. I looked at men's wrists at restaurants, often receiving strange turn-glances I couldn't shake for an hour. (No: I didn't want wrist implants.)

I couldn't find anything I appreciated and admired. I was as turned off by the expensive heavy lifters as I was by the Citizens. The middle of the road pieces were equally boring. I wouldn't get a watch just to get a watch. Maybe all watches were inherently less than ideal. Who needs the time anyway?

Then I found it. The watch that I'd imagined even before making a conscious attempt to search for it.  The neatly designed guy at the top of this page. The Mondaine evo chrono. Based on Hans Hilfiker's 1940 design for the Swiss Railway, it wasn't a clunky diving watch that says, "I own a plane." Nor was it something too fancy or overpriced. I appreciated its utilitarian design. I loved the way its red second-hand jumped forward before each minute. I loved the stainless steel case, its circular solidity, its lack of jewelry, the straight lines, and those other little circles clicking around, making sense of the universe in ways I could not fathom.

I'm now told that the thing gets people into the London Design Museum for free, and that it's revered by watch-seekers, even those who throw down thousands to own an IWC that looks like a Timex.  I liked it before I knew any of this. I considered it indubitably clear, loved how light it felt on the wrist, its simple black band. This was a watch I could wear all the time. And it said just a little about me: That I appreciate good design. That I consider clarity an art.

Which is why I was floored when my fiance read my mind--after learning all about how nuts I am concerning what I put on my wrist--and actually gave me the watch I privately loved for our engagement. I hadn't expected an engagement gift. I didn't know prospective grooms received anything other than a story to tell others about buying The Ring. Maybe others don't; I do appreciate how lucky I am.

But I am also now saddened in the wake of what happened last Friday, when, at 300 Medical Plaza, Los Angeles, the building that houses the practice of a haughty UCLA doctor, in Westwood, my watch was lost. Maybe forever.

It might be of some significance that I had been nervous to see this doctor. Not because of what he might decree. But because he probably wouldn't have anything to say. These days, I get sent to lots of doctors because of some medical mysteries. This is an age when doctors don't have to ponder if the out-loud thinking could be used against them in a court of law. That doesn't apply to many of them, of course. I've had excellent doctors. But lest we forget, doctors, and there are a lot of them, are just people like you and me, and some of them, like many Americans, don't want to work very hard. Someone's either special--communicative, and willing to go the extra mile--or he's not. Humanity, insight, and accomplishment in our meritocratic culture often don't go hand in hand with anything else.

Pardon the tangent, but this is what was consuming me as I left my latest unproductive appointment with a world famous specialist: when I forgot to put my watch back on after the exam as I trodded out the room with loosely tied shoes.  I didn't realize I had left the watch there until an hour later as Lina and I ate lunch in a restaurant, calming our nerves with artisan cheese.

I nearly regurgitated the food when the thought hit me. My watch. Not here.  I spazzed. A wanna-be starlet at the outdoor cafe scoffed. I sipped some ice water and cleared my throat. I looked at Lina squarely. I gargled without trying, eggplant still in the throat.

"It's gone. My watch. I lost it."

"You lost it?"

"At the doctor's office. I left it there."

"Oh, god. You got me worried. I'm sure it's still there. Wait, are you sure you left it there? They probably have it. It's probably at the desk. Someone turned it in."

"I know I left it there," I said. "Remember how when I signed out, I didn't have it on my wrist to tell the time?"

"Yeah," said Lina. "And I also remember you having it to check the time on your way in."

"It's been so nice not to have to look at my phone to tell the time anymore."

"You lost your watch."

"I lost my watch."

"We'll go back."

"I'll call."

"You'll get it back, don't worry."

"Ok," I said, realizing only too well what the watch signified, how I'd feel if Lina had left her very expensive diamond ring anywhere but on her finger.

Did this seem like I didn't care about our engagement? About staying on the new path? That I took the whole thing all too lightly? Or worse, did it seem like I might not take it lightly but that I would drop it anytime some smug doctor with four important degrees on his wall would take the time to look me over? How could I have a family if I couldn't remember my watch after a doctor appointment? I was unhinged.

Then, in my wife's eye, I saw a tear.

I had lost the closest thing to an engagement ring I had ever received -- from the only woman I would ever want it from. I would get it back, though. Or would I?

Cut to: Driving hurriedly across Wilshire. Calling all kinds of automated machine-people at UCLA who couldn't, wouldn't connect me to a person. Checking the floor of my bag a million times to make sure I wasn't crazy. Racing around the medical campus' circular driveway, jumping out of the car and almost tripping into a closing elevator door.

 

* * *

 

[Note: The following change of tense must be accepted, because you're reading a blog...]

I'm in the basement of the building now, galloping into the doctor's office. I slow down, calm myself, so no one thinks I'm crazy (hah, this is neurology).

I explain the deal to the lady at the desk. She takes me to the room I used. The examination table flaunts fresh white starchy paper. The doctor is gone, the halls empty.

"It's not here," she says as she checks the floor. "It wasn't turned in."

"Who else was in here besides the doctor?"

"He saw you," she says, "then moved to another room."

"Who cleaned the room?" I ask.

"I actually cleaned the room," she says. "I didn't see it. And it would have been turned in if you left it here."

"I definitely left it here."

"Then it would have been turned in, or I would have found it," she said.

"Maybe the doctor has it?"

"Maybe. I'll have him call you when he returns. Maybe he took it and forgot to drop it off."

"Maybe..."

Was this a viable option, though? Could an Ivy League-educated chief of neurology have taken my beautifully utilitarian and artful watch/engagement gift?

I asked my friend Joe a couple days later, after repeated phone calls to the hospital and no results.

"Why couldn't he have taken it?" he said. "I bet there's a better chance he took it than the receptionist/room-cleaner. Those guys are meglomaniacs."

I agreed with him. My doctor had seemed meglomaniacal, no offense to other doctors I love.

But why would a Neurology Chief -- I imagined he led a tribe -- need a watch like mine? Didn't he earn a healthy six figures?

"It was a pretty nice watch," Joe said. "It wasn't fancy, but it was beautiful. Some people like to steal. Turns them on. Doesn't matter if they treat people with cancer or ALS."

"It was beautiful, wasn't it?" I said. Surely, a fancy doctor could also get off on stealing his patient's stuff. Or I could have just dropped it in the garbage pail. It's nice to fantasize.

I thought about my history with watches. How I never felt I was meant to have them, but simultaneously desired one. Not least some kid's yellow swatch in third grade, the one he could take into the pool his wealthy father had just christened.

I thought about how this one watch symbolized something about me I wanted to share. How my fiance had secretly known this without my having told her, and how she had found it for me. How I had slapped it onto my wrist before she had had a chance to engrave something on the back of it for me, stamping it mine forever.

Something about my impetuosity--my carelessless with objects; my deep reasoning for sometimes, randomly, challenging the world to take away what matters; my anger with people who don't take me seriously; my need to punish myself for continously seeking them out (even in a medical building), even when I know the right people are to be found elsewhere (perhaps a naturopath's house?)... Something like this had ripped this watch out of my reality.

I no longer had a reliable way of clocking time. I now had to take my spotty battery-dependent BlackBerry out of a pocket. I had to make an effort to get on the same wavelength with the rest of society, to now return to the out-of-it feeling I often walk around with; the half-there, half-gone attitude that always sees me nodding at others while I think about more pressing or bothersome concerns.

This was all somehow wrapped up in choosing a watch, wearing a watch, keeping a watch, and realizing that I had found the right person in my wife, confirmed the thousandth time when she had found the watch I had always wanted (i.e. when she had located for me the part of myself I'd always wanted to develop as I matured).

My friend Joe joked as he often does that this was yet another bad meta-sitcom script happening as my life. The rich doctor who has to steal your watch.

"Yeah," I said. "In the bad meta-sitcom, I'd return six months later, and he'd be wearing the watch. I'd ask him where he got it, and he'd say his wife had given it to him for his 25th wedding anniversary, how he'd always hated watches until this one, had never wanted to know the time if he didn't have to, had never liked wearing something on his wrist. Then I'd stare at him and he'd stare back with a smirk. A lone clarinet would play. Nothing would be said, and I'd cut to another scene with me driving home and arriving at my next meeting, an interview with a watch designer, late."

"That's exactly what it'd be like on a bad meta-sitcom!" Joe said.

"Yep," I agreed. Then I looked at the oven clock, a digital readout, across my kitchen to see what time it was. I had a men's magazine article due. A piece about some object for a periodical rife with ads for objects.

"Can you buy yourself another?" Joe asked.

"I can," I said. "Thankfully, the thing didn't cost 10 grand. And I didn't have the one Lina bought me for soooo long, right? I could get another now, re-write my memory like a hard-disk or flash memory, and in twenty years never even remember this mess. In the end, it's just something you wear on your wrist. It doesn't mean anything, right?"

"Sure," he said.

"Sure," I repeated.

Then I realized my oven clock was late. I had fifteen minutes to write an ode to another piece of matter that someone else could fetishize. The bad meta-sitcoms lack satisfying conclusions. Here was something I could count on.

 

Update (January, 1, 2011): The replacement watch my wife purchased for me after losing this one (!) was lost today in New York City, possibly in the garage below my brother's apartment. Mondaine no longer makes this specific model. My wife forgives me, and I wear a $30 Timex that receives compliments daily.

Update (January, 1, 2014): We found another one of these watches in Europe. You can't have it!

--Adam Baer