Sports Illustrated On LeBron James

"LeBron never owed Cleveland a debt, yet he repaid it anyway -- with backbreaking interest."

Yeah, the safety pin is good. I don't know him personally, but from some things I hear, LeBron James may be a Truly Nice Person.

The part about LeBron repaying a debt he never owed, "with backbreaking interest" -- excuse me, but you must give me a moment to look away and roll my eyes. The Cavs are paying him over $30 million a year. That's $30 million a year just from the Cavs. That's before we get to Audemars Piguet (a top-end Swiss watchmaker. The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak is available in many different configurations and materials. I believe LeBron's wearing a Royal Oak on that Sports Illustrated cover. Wonder whether Audemars Piguet paid him for that. Ari Gold, the fictional character on "Entourage," could sometimes be seen wearing a Royal Oak with a gold case and a leather strap. The heaviest one you can get, with 18k gold case, band and bezel, is reputed to be one of the very heaviest wristwatches on the market. Almost one pound. About $60,000, unless you know a guy),

Coca-Cola, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, Nike, State Farm Insurance, Samsung and other companies whose products James promotes. I don't begrudge him the cheddar. My point is only that he's hardly a self-sacrificing hero along the lines of, say, Joan of Arc. And the strange institution known as the salary cap means that other players are paying part of LeBron's salary, and isn't it interesting how sports teams' owners don't get their finances in the headlines as if it were actually someone's business? Great scam they've got going, the team owner billionaires, distracting people from their wealth by publicizing millionaire players, without whom they wouldn't have their lucrative sports business.

To be honest with you, I got completely sidetracked thinking about watches I can't afford. To be perfectly honest, I don't care all that much about anything to do with sports or Sports Illustrated. Not the way that I care about fine men's watches. An all-gold, almost-one-pound Audemars Piguet Royal Oak is not the one single wristwatch I would most like to have -- that would still be the platinum Rolex Daytona with the ice-blue dial, in case you're thinking of going all-out when you get me a Christmas present this year --

-- but the all-gold, heavy-as-possible Royal Oak would also be very, very nice. I'm approximately... let's see... I'm about $60,000 short of being able to get a Royal Oak like that for myself. The Rolex costs about the same.

Hey, an Omega would be very nice. They're much less expensive than Rolexes and Audemars Piguets and Patek Phillippes of comparable quality and material.

Patek Phillippe, Bell & Ross and Tissot all make very nice pocket watches which I can't afford. I definitely prefer open-face pocket watches to the kind with a metal lid which snaps closed, making the watch unreadable. A new top-end pocket watch -- top-end -- will have a crystal made of sapphire which is very tough, in addition to the watch's movement being very accurate and precise (they're two different things) and reliable and tough, which is especially nice for a butterfingers like me.

No pressure!

Daydreaming About Extremely Expensive Watches

Lately I've been looking at pictures of expensive mechanical (that is: wind-up, no battery) watches and daydreaming about being rich enough to afford one. Just today I was looking at some of these pictures, looking at the ways some of these watches have of showing the time in more than 1 time zone at once. Looking at these pictures on my laptop.

And it occurred to me that a mechanical, no-electricity computer wouldn't be able to do very much. At all. Certainly wouldn't be able to show me pictures of watches costing more than I've ever made in a year. Gross. And my laptop, about as simple as new ones come, can show me the time in all time zones, and that's just a teeny-tiny part of a small fraction of what it can do. And then it occurred to me: the most advanced current mechanical computers: that's more or less what extremely-expensive watches are. Plus a lot of gold or platinum in many cases.

As regular readers of this blog know: I'm a pocket watch enthusiast. Not particularly interested in putting a watch on my wrist. I have an automatic (self-winding, no battery) Timex that I bought at a yard sale for 2 bucks, and I've occasionally worn that on my wrist, but never for as long as a day all day long. It's just uncomfortable to me. I don't know whether this is a neurological issue related to my autism. I also don't wear rings.

Not very long ago, all the extra features which often come with expensive watches, like multiple dials and stopwatches and whatnot, didn't interest me much. I just wanted big Arabic numerals, 12 of them on one dial and no Roman numerals or dashes or dots referring to numbers, and of course I wanted extremely accurate and precise and durable and rugged timekeeping. Basically, I wanted a Hamilton 992B,

but as far as I know, no 992B's have been made in the past 45 years. I started researching expensive new pocket watches, and I haven't been able to find many new high-end ones. Patek Philippe offers a couple of gold pocket watches in the $30,000 - $40,000 price range, and Bell & Ross

makes a few that sell for around $2000-$4000, and other than that, I don't know of any really good new pocket watches. The selection of good new ones, as far as I know, isn't vast. There is a vast selection of other new pocket watches, and in the case of some of those I'm not at all sure how well they're made, and in the cases of many others, I'm quite sure that they're cheap crap. It seems that there is this thing called steampunk, whose adherents often carry hideous-looking cheap wind-up watches which are meant to evoke the Victorian ("steam-powered") era. They don't evoke it for me. Generally speaking, watches which were actually made in the Victorian era look much better to me, and a lot of them are still running and keep better time than a lot of this new stuff. Anyway, because of steampunk and maybe because of other factors too, suddenly there are many new wind-up pocket watches for sale, some in the grotesque steampunk style and some which much more closely resemble regular watches. Some have a few superficial resemblances in appearance to things like the 992B, but they gain or lose more than 30 seconds a day. (That's not good. Less than 30 seconds every 6 months, when we spring forward or fall back, would be more like it.)

I must underscore that I'm not really well-informed about all of the new inexpensive ($10 to $500 dollars or so, that's not a typo, it's 10 with 1 zero) watches. I don't know whether there is inexpensive quality stuff somewhere in there amongst the dreck. One can only hope. [PS, 2017: Among other quality low-priced watches, there is the Seiko 5, widely regarded as the most watch per dollar or Euro that a person can get these days.]

Back to me daydreaming about being rich and able to afford a top-notch new gold or platinum watch.

Since there are so few high-end new pocket watches, I've been looking at high-end wristwatches. And I've actually begun to grow intrigued by all the fancy stuff which didn't appeal to me not long ago. Fancy stuff referred to as "complications" by the makers of extremely-expensive watches. Lately, to my own surprise, the complications and offbeat designs have begun to intrigue me. Accuracy, precision and reliability continue to be what I want most, but I'm changing to an attitude where I might actually like some complications too.

And more recently than that it occurred to me that just because a big heavy gold or platinum wristwatch has a band, it doesn't mean that I would have to wear it on my wrist instead of carrying it in my pocket. Of course I could carry a big heavy hunk of precious metal and precision horology in my pocket if I felt like it, even if it came with a big glorious heavy precious-metal band usually used to wear it on one's wrist.

If I could afford such a thing, that is. So let's keep talking me up for that Nobel Prize, everyone, shall we? Thank you! You know, once I'm a Nobel Prize winner, and able to actually buy a gold Omega watch (or platinum? Does Omega make platinum watches? I'm having trouble finding them if they do), I might not have to buy one. Because of the Tom Petty Ab.So.Lute.Ly Backwards Law of Microeconomics, winning a Nobel Prize might actually make me rich and famous enough that Omega would give me a new gold or platinum watch.

And wouldn't that be cool beans with awesome sauce.