Episode 78 - Vintage Inspired Watches

Published on Thu, 23 Apr 2020 17:32:00 -0700

Synopsis

This is a transcript of a podcast episode where the two hosts, Andrew and Everett, discuss vintage-inspired watches. They go through a list of watches recommended by listeners that fit into this category, such as the Baltic Aquascaf, Yema Navy Graf Heritage, Laurier Falcon 2.0, the "Chinese military chronograph family" from brands like HK ED and Seagull, the Q Timex, and the Hamilton Khaki Pilot Pioneer. They analyze these watches, their design inspirations from past eras, and whether they successfully capture a vintage aesthetic in a modern way.

The hosts also discuss the differences between vintage-inspired watches, reissues, homages, and continuations of classic models. They share their thoughts on topics like the evolution of watch design, frustrations with homeschooling during the pandemic, and book recommendations.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew See, that's the kind of shit that you do.
Everett We're still recording.
Andrew Okay. Hello, fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. This is the 40 in 20 podcast with your host, Andrew and my good friend Everett. Here, we talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett I'm not going to ask how are you just yet because I want to tell you every time I hear our theme song the first thing that comes to mind is Call of Duty Modern Warfare's nuketown map. Interesting. It just feels like a 50s. Everything is good. Everything is happy. And right now everything is good and happy because we're on the back porch in the sun drinking beers. So Everett How are you?
Everett I'm doing well. I'm gonna open this beer.
Andrew Hey! Look at us. That was quite the synchronization.
Everett Yeah, synchronicity. No, I'm well. Yeah, sitting in the backyard is fucking cool, right?
Andrew I'm glad that we're social distance drinking.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew And recording.
Everett Yeah, and the minimum social distance. I would say there's approximately 6.5 feet between our heads right now.
Andrew Between our mouths. Yeah. Which is the source of the virus, right? China. So every time I text China and or I write it basically forever and always, it's always going to be C-H-A-I hyphen N-U-H.
Everett China. Why?
Andrew Because that's how you say it. That's how DJ Trump says it.
Everett Oh yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Just taking orders from the commander in chief and have changed the way I spell China. It's a beautiful day though. And today I think it's supposed to be the last day of nice days. Is that right? I think we're supposed to start getting rain here in the next couple of days, which is good timing for us. But I was a little worried this morning when I woke up and saw how cloudy it was. I was going to say, I'm, I'm not going to sit outside and record in anything less than shade. Right. Like, like shade from direct sunlight.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is perfect. I mean, the sky is just as blue as it could be. Yeah. Uh, temperature is good. I'd say, what, 70?
Andrew It's about. That's what that, my car was reading 75 when I got into it after having been sitting in direct heat. So we might be high sixties, but yeah, neighborhood of 70 degrees. I'm in shorts. That's unusual for me.
Everett Yeah. And it's clearly the first time, the first time you've been in shorts in a minute.
Andrew This color is my year round color, but for the days following a fishing trip, where I'm more purple. Right. And then I returned to this color. You know, it looks like I have tube socks on.
Everett You know, when we went to Mexico, you were certain you were going to burn.
Andrew I mean, I did, but just not that much. And it's because I'm gingery, your wife's gingery. And both of our wives were there constantly checking in. Like it's been 30 minutes, get more sunblock on. Yeah. It was, it was really nice to have two handlers. Yeah.
Everett I'm just as bad as Kemp, too, with the sunblock. I'm like, put more sunblock on because, you know, it's just miserable when you get burned.
Andrew And I'm very prone to burning.
Everett Well, you know, I don't think anyone is at serious risk of burning today, although I suppose it could happen. But my backyard has a perfect amount of trees. We can thin it out just a touch. A canopy, I like to call it. I did thin it out. So when we set up the badminton net this week, I realized that We have, um, both a birch that was getting a little aggressive and, uh, one of these Doug firs that was, that was getting kind of low. Uh, so I trimmed those back. I actually got a ladder out and I trimmed the trees back. Um, nothing major, no major cutting. Uh, but yeah, opened up the badminton court. It's ready to go.
Andrew It is.
Everett It's ready to go. So sun hits that, but when you're on the, when you're on the, the, the What do you call this wooden thing? This is a patio or a deck. Yeah. When you're on the deck, you're, you're nice. You're in the shade. Yeah. I'm a fan, man. I love this backyard. This is the favorite, my favorite backyard I've ever had.
Andrew This is a good backyard. The only problem with it is it, it has that steep drop off.
Everett It's got the steep drop off and there's nowhere to pee where you're not in full view of a neighbor's window. Yeah. I mean, it's not like the houses are super close, but there's just no, um, There's just no place that's totally private back here.
Andrew It's because of the elevation change in your backyard. Yeah. Like you live on the side of a hill. So your neighbor's kitchen looks directly into your backyard. Right. It's, it's eye level with the penis exposed in the backyard.
Everett Uh, yeah. I mean at night I just off the deck and no one's any of the wiser, but yeah.
Andrew If you were my color, people would be the wiser. It's I glow. Right. We can go back to our loom conversation. I don't require charging. I just am always. When exposed to light.
Everett So again, we're drinking Croustache.
Andrew Yeah. I got a six pack of it for us.
Everett I appreciate you doing that. I do really, really love this stuff.
Andrew It's so good. I was drinking triceratops earlier today cause I'm, I made ribs. Well, I'm, I'm actually making ribs. They're in the oven right now. You are doing some ribs actively as we speak, doing some passively, some three, two, one action. So I had them over the, uh, over the fire for about three hours, like two hours and 50 minutes to make sure I could get over here in a reasonable time. And I'm still using chunks I cut from my apple tree in my backyard to smoke my ribs. So they're in the oven right now.
Everett Marco Polo. Marco Polo. If you guys don't know what this is, it's like a quick video chatting. It's like voice.
Andrew It's video texting.
Everett Anderson Mark sent me like a four minute Marco Polo all about is. About his giant pile of logs.
Andrew About his wood, yeah. He was so proud. He piled a bunch of twigs in his tricycle little trunk and was bragging about how much wood he was dragging around. Yeah. And it was not much. It was not much at all. It was a full load for his tricycle, but it was, it was like, it, yeah, it was not much.
Everett Yeah. That's okay. That's okay. He was proud of it. You? How are you doing?
Andrew You're good? Yeah, just hanging in there, living the dream. Just, you know, plugging away working. I, again, will reiterate how thankful I am to be an essential worker and get to leave my house to go to work. And number two, how thankful I am that I am not an early childhood educator because homeschooling kids sucks.
Everett Yeah. Yeah, it's tough. You know, it's tough. It's tough to do anything. that you normally do in a place from the house. You know, I think that a lot of people who say they would like to work remotely are going to, uh, renege on that, on that theory when this, when this is, is over with, uh, cause it's really hard. You know, I, I struggled to stay organized and the same goes for, for training kids. You know, they're, they're not in a place, right? Uh, so much of schooling is, dictated to being in a place, uh, dictated, connected to being in a place. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew So their behavior is dictated by the fact that they're in a room with a bunch of chairs and a person sitting at the head of the room and they're not sitting at the kitchen table.
Everett Yeah. So yeah, I feel you, man. It's tough. It's, it's tough. And you know, we've, we're getting weird stuff from the school district that says, you know, we can only do X amount of zoom meetings per week. And, um, you know, they're not, they're not giving, us all the information we need to understand their policy changes. They're just sort of giving us, you know, it's, it's frustrating. And Kim sort of PTO, you know, so she gets all these questions and she's like, I don't fucking know, man. Nobody tells me anything.
Andrew So we get a lesson plan like every third week. Right. The lesson plan is not like complete. It's, it's more like a stream of consciousness. Yeah. So we got one that was like, we're going to talk about life cycles of plants. And we're talking about stuff like that. But then it was, there was reading lists, like, like read aloud books. We don't have those fucking books. It was like, Hey, read these stories to your kids. So like, where do we, you want us to go to like the bookstore or come pick them up?
Everett How are we supposed to get this curriculum? So anyway, everything's interesting. Everything's weird. Um, but we're talking about watches.
Andrew Yeah, we're going to do that.
Everett What did you think? What did you think about prepping for this, this episode? Did you have, I mean, what, what were your thoughts on, so, so just spoiler alert, anybody who doesn't read the... Or isn't literate because they were homeschooled by Everett and I. Anybody who doesn't read the title of the episode, we're talking about, uh, vintage, uh, inspired watches. That was the, that was the cue. Vintage inspired watches, which is not necessarily any one thing. You know, well, I gave the question to you and then I talked over.
Andrew Yeah, you did. I'm sorry. It's not necessarily any one thing. So our interpretation of a vintage inspired watch is in that gray mushy area. I think of something that takes on design cues from an earlier era. So which is a lot of watches. I don't, and I think it's interesting that we, cause we took a mostly crowdsourced list of almost a hundred percent of vintage inspired watches. And I think you guys interpreted the cue really well insofar as we're not getting reissues. We're not getting homages. We're getting a list of watches that take these really classic kind of 70s, 80s design cues and have updated them in their own way and reinterpreted them in other ways to create a list of watches that is so money. You're so we're, I'm going to do a quick spoiler alert here. Uh, we're looking at the Aqua Scaf from Baltic and it is, can we agree that we'll call it the Aqua Scaf on the show? I like aquascaf. Aquasca-pah.
Everett Aquasca-pah. Yeah.
Andrew Yeah. Aquasca-pah.
Everett I'll go with that.
Andrew Okay. So we're looking at the aquasca-pah here. And this is a watch that won our, our objectively scientific scoring rubric. It's not a new watch. It's not a modern design watch, nor is it a vintage watch. It's, it is a watch that has taken those two worlds and smashed them together and been inspired by or a logical history to create a great modern design. So that's what we're looking for. Vintage inspired. We weren't looking for just, we're not looking for Monaco's because the Monaco is kind of just continuing Right? That's kind of my thinking.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's an interesting, I mean, cause we did have some direct questions about that, right? We had some questions about, well, are you guys going to talk about the difference between a vintage inspired and an homage? And are you going to talk about, you know, what companies do when they reissue historical releases? And, um, and maybe we'll get there at some point sort of natively, but, Uh, at the end of the day, um, you, you know, that stuff I think is less important holistically than it is as then it is the discussion of, of what sort of available if you want a thing right now, you know? And so I think that that's.
Andrew You have mosquitoes already.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew I just got a mosquito bite on my head.
Everett I'm sorry, man.
Andrew Why didn't you tell me that I was being eaten.
Everett Well, I didn't see it. You're like 10 feet away from me.
Andrew Like three feet from you.
Everett Six and a half.
Andrew You guys want to hear us kiss? We're close.
Everett Not close. I measured it. We're six feet in between the middles of our chairs.
Andrew Did you measure it off of the two by fours that are on there?
Everett No, I had a tape measure. I had a tape measure because I'm careful like that.
Andrew Look at you. So I think we should address that right up front. Let's, let's hit that issue right now. The difference between an homage, at least in our eyes, an homage, vintage inspired, and a vintage re-release. Let's hit them one at a time.
Everett Let's, let's hit the homage and why, and... Well, let's go, let's go the other direction because a vintage re-release is easy, right? Yeah. That's, that's a company releasing something from its archives.
Andrew Yeah, from their own catalog. They do some updates. They do some changes. They make, they use shittier movements, typically. They make it cheaper.
Everett A lot of times, yeah.
Andrew And move on.
Everett You know, the exception being Seiko, right? I think Seiko a lot of times goes the other direction. They're using better movements, more expensive materials, and they're really, you know, also it goes without saying Rolex or Omega has taken some of its historic watches and really turned them into fantastic modern pieces, right?
Andrew I think though, if you look at either of those two luxury brands, and I think Rolex and Omega are probably the best two examples of it because they have such a, they have this ubiquity, but also like the Speedmaster has been in existence for 50 years.
Everett More than that.
Andrew Like 60 years, right? I think 70, right? Just about. What year is it? Yeah, 60 or 70. Yeah. Nigh on 70 years. You get the Explorer that's coming up on 80 years, right? At what point can that watch ever be vintage inspired? Because it's received updates, but so much of it's still true to its original creation that it'll never be a re-release. There are vintage Explorers. They're not that far off from modern Explorers. And you Rolex folks will get kind of shitty with me about that, but let's be serious here. They're not that far off from the modern iterations. When will it ever become a reissue or when will it ever become a. Yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting thing. It's just such a long running. It hasn't changed the way like a Camry has. You look at 90s Camrys and they're wholly different than a modern Camry.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Well, I mean, I think it depends, right? I think that there's a difference between a catalog watch that's been upgraded through the years, right? So say the, the Submariner or even the Explorer. No, I agree completely. There's a difference between that. And, um, what's Omega's last Speedmaster release the, um, Oh, who was the astronaut that it's named after?
Andrew Kelly. Scott Kelly. Isn't it who dropped it? No, no, no, no. It was, um, it wasn't Scott Kelly. It was, um,
Everett whatever, it doesn't matter and we don't care about it anyway, right? But, you know, you have these reinterpretations of a distinctly classic watch. I had a conversation with the guys from, this is an online conversation, obviously not an in-person conversation, with the guys from Clockbait about that watch, you know, and I raised, you know, there's certain things about that watch that were distinctly modern and different. And then certain things that were sort of like, antiquated or anachronistic. And I thought, you know, why don't they either take the soul of the watch and modernize it or make it distinctly reminiscent of the existing model? You know, I don't know. It sort of seems like a bit of an identity crisis. A bit of an identity crisis. Yeah, that's right. But as far as that goes, right, I think a company has the right, certainly, and all of the prerogative they want to, to visit that catalog. So that's the first category. Second category being sort of homage, right? So this is an existing watch or perhaps a set of watches that are being homaged by somebody else, by somebody else. You know, It's no surprise to anybody that the Submariner frequently homaged.
Andrew Yeah. And I think so, so that, that raises the question. Can you really like, I'm thinking of Bernhardt and, and their sub homage lineup.
Everett It'll be all right. Technical difficulties. You know, I think I did a pretty good job with the logistics, moving our studio to the back porch.
Andrew You did. The studio is no longer in the guest room. It's on the back porch.
Everett But that was just... There will be logistical issues, like microphones falling out of their mic stands.
Andrew That was funny. Just because it was such a slow fall. It was like watching an ice cream dollop, scoop, fall out of the ice cream cone. But that begs the question, is Bernhardt's lineup a vintage-inspired homage, or is it just an homage to the sub, which is this kind of forever piece? So we're on to the homages. And I think you look at Monaco homages, or you look at the... The EMG Horizon, for instance.
Everett Yeah, the Horizon. Unapologetically a Monaco homage.
Andrew watch in and of itself, or the Porsche Orfina homages. I don't know why a tag's the only brand that's coming to mind in the way of... Well, it's Dan Henry 1972, right?
Everett Yeah.
Andrew But you've got these homages to a watch that existed and a different company's bringing it back.
Everett You know, I think the answer to the question lies in what people are going to tolerate. And I found that it's a little hard to put a finger on, on that in this homage question. Right. Um, you know, it seems at some point that there's some intangible, uh, some intangible feeling that has to be there. I think attention to detail, I think, that marketing all comes into it, you know, but Dan Henry largely, largely gets away with his homages in a way that, you know, maybe some other companies don't. I think Bernhardt's another good example. Bernhardt watches are, are almost all of them hearkening back to some other watch or watches. a We don't need to answer the question, right?
Andrew But it begs the question. But it does beg the question. As we approach this topic, I think it's a question worth pondering.
Everett Yeah. And we're done pondering. Yeah. They get a pass from us, you guys, right? Because they're awesome. You know, Invicta released their 1953 Submariner homage in the last six months, you know, perhaps even less than that, four or five months. You know, they did a bunch of things right, really right. They removed sort of the most offensive Invicta branding. It's not engraved on the case anymore. Yeah, that's right. That's right. They just generally took a watch that was pretty good, right? The Invicta Pro Diver's pretty good. Yeah. And they removed some of the most offensive stuff. But I guarantee you, there's still a bunch of people that would never consider that watch. And some of that just has to do with the Instigma.
Andrew Oh, it's all the stigma. Having worn.
Everett The Instigma.
Andrew Yeah.
Everett The Instigma.
Andrew You're right. Cause it is Insta-born. Invicta Instigma.
Unknown No?
Andrew Oh, I was thinking Instagram-born stigma. Cause a lot of that. Also true. Cause Invicta, I don't know how they do what they do. Generally they make pretty offensive watches. But if you can look past that, objectively on our scoring rubric, Invicta scores really well.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. It was one of the highest that Invicta 1953 was recommended by, you know, our crowdsourced question. Uh, and And it scored really well. I mean, I think top four or five.
Andrew The pro diver is one of our top three divers under 500. Yeah. For 70 bucks. Yeah. Right. Like they're doing something really unique and really special. But nobody likes to look at them. And because they're a big brand that does generally homages. I don't know if you could even call them homages. A lot of rips of Rolex.
Everett Well, I mean, really, it's just the Submariner, right?
Andrew Do they do other... That's what they're known for. But then they also do watches that are way too big. Yeah. And they have that whole pricing model where, you know, the MSRP on this thing is $40,000, but you can get it for 86 bucks on Amazon. Right. And that's something I'll never understand. And when we were in Mexico, I heard that guy, while I was sitting in the lobby, one of the hotel staff walked up and saw this guy's fucking 55 millimeter diver on his wrist. And he's like, Oh, that's a cool watch. He goes, Oh yeah, this is a really expensive watch. It's an Invicta, but I got a good deal on it. I was like, of course you got a good deal on it. Everybody gets good deals on Invictas. You go to the Invicta store and you're getting a good deal on Invicta.
Everett You know, I don't get it. Uh, it's a weird thing. I don't understand it. There must be some logic to it, right?
Andrew There's something because it works.
Everett It's that QVC pricing model. Yeah. But yeah. So, so, you know, bottom line, I don't think we're, we're not gonna, we're not gonna even attempt to answer the question for you beyond what we've provided, but there's something there, right? And I think that you have to, each person has to decide for themselves, if you love an Invicta ProDiver, not even the 1953, if you, if you just want an $80, no shit, automatic sub homage, I think you could, you're going to be happy with that watch. There's an officer I worked with in the National Guard for years. And he wasn't a, uh, he wasn't a watch guy. Right. But he had found a pro diver and he was like, I just can't believe how fucking cool this thing is. And I was like, man, I'm with you. Right. Cause it's cool. It is, it is cool. You know, it's automatic. It's the sake of movement. You know, he knew enough about the watch to know that it was an insanely good deal. And he knew not enough about the watch. to feel any sort of shame in wearing it. Uh, and I thought, I thought, gosh, that is so refreshing. You know, I'm not going to ever be able to recommend an Invicta to someone because of that stigma. I feel like, gosh, do I recommend this watch? That's going to make you look whatever, you know, when, because when people ask us, they say, well, what does a watch nerd want as a watch?
Andrew A watch nerd wants an Invicta pro diver.
Everett We just can't admit it to ourselves. That's right. And so am I, am I able to, in good faith, tell someone who's coming to me for my advice, uh, that that's a, that that's something they should consider because they could find that if they find it on their own though, how refreshing, right? Yeah. How refreshing, you know, but I'm, I'm, I'm loath to say, yeah, go get a fucking Invicta ProDiver because then they're going to say, you know, or if they ever find out, you know, this is this really stigmatized, watch, they might be like, well, maybe Everett didn't steer me right.
Andrew Or you just say, hey, go get an Invicta Pro Diver and get real watch nerdy. You also need to get yourself a Dremel.
Everett Right. So, you know, on that note, maybe we leave homage sort of there, right? Yeah. It is what it is, guys. It is what it is.
Andrew Some are well executed and some are not.
Everett Yeah. Which is not to say that it's not a question not a valuable question or a question worthy of discussion, because it is. It's just that I think for each person, the answer is so different that it's not particularly helpful to listen to us.
Andrew We could pontificate on this for the balance of our time.
Everett Right. So with that in mind, let's move on to the third category, which really encompasses both of the latter two categories, which is the vintage-inspired watch. But it also captures something else. So in terms of the Venn diagram, this grabs those other two, probably not totally, but partially. And then it's got a third category here, which is... Yeah, it's the little... the arch. Right. They can't see your fingers. Well, we'll do a video. I'll show you. But that is the watch that's vintage inspired. Perhaps not, perhaps not by any one watch or any one thing, but, but design cues from another time, another time. So for the, for the balance of today's episode, we won't be distinguishing between those three, except when it's necessary to say, you know, oh, the, you know, Q Timex comes from Timex's vintage catalog. It was their first, you know, That's important to the conversation, but we're not going to distinguish between those categories for the duration of the episode. Fair? Agreed. Okay. So let's talk, let's talk the list, right? Cause you guys recommended a shit load, a bucket load of watches. Hey guys, way too many. We have gotten to that inflection point where we reach out to y'all with a question
Andrew And we get overwhelmed with your answers.
Everett And we get overwhelmed. You know, in the olden days, it was like I could put a question on Instagram and I'd get like five or six really well thought out answers. And maybe two or three sort of nothing answers. And that was good. And we could really balance a show on those answers. Well, I think I had what, 115 responses?
Andrew I looked at it briefly and I was like, there's no way I'm going to deal with this right now. Yeah. Cause I was making ribs. So like I was really no way I was going to deal with that.
Everett So it's a bit overwhelming and we, we of course can't get to everything and I can't even give everybody credit. Suffice to say you guys are an embarrassment of riches right now, right? Suffice to say, you guys are awesome. We really appreciate the feedback. We were able to get into that list. pull some of the most, and there's no logic to what we pulled, right? I mean, not direct logic. You know, we looked at that. Oh, I've seen that. Yeah. Let's talk about that. But we've got about 20 watches here that we rated. Some of them did really well. Some of them didn't. We sort of argued, not argued, but sort of had a bit of a debate about what to do in terms of presentation. Do we do objectively best? You know, when we do a chronograph or we do a dive watch, the objective, you know, dive watch in particular, the objective standards are really designed to rate dive watches.
Andrew Oh yeah. We, we talked about how our rubric is designed to give the Nemo a perfect 77. Right.
Everett Right. You know, this is the purpose built watch is where the objective rubric is good. And, and really the purpose built tool watch, the objective rubric, starts to fall apart as you get away from those things.
Andrew So however... Full of functionalities. When you start to lose water resistance, when you start to get big or exceptionally small in the way of dress watches, when you lose loom in the way of dress watches, this is, our rubric is based on the go anywhere, do anything. The watch that folk like us are looking for.
Everett Sure. Sure. So on that note though, I mean, some of these watches did really well, right? Uh, you know, we pulled one Dan Henry watch, Because there was a couple of answers that were like, Dan Henry, anything. All. All. The whole catalog. So we pulled the 1970 because I think that's a cool watch and we don't talk about it very much. You know, sort of a super compressor, dual crown.
Andrew I think that could be a Skin Diver.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I think you're right. And he's got great colors on that now. It's money. You know, that thing scored high 50s, 57, which is a fantastic score. Um, you know, Timex MK1 came up a bunch of times and there's so much variety with the MK1. You've got these great anodized aluminum cases. Um, you know, and it's a really great, uh, vintage reissue as it were, you know, it harkens back to these 1980s throwaway disposable Marine watches that Timex made. Um, the Invicta 1953 did a super well 55. MK2 has a bunch of fantastic watches. Some of them are too big for our rubric to really do well, but the Paradive Gen 2 with the matte bezel or even the Gen 3 comes in at 58, which is just a fantastic score. Let's see, what else popped up here? EMG Horizon came up, the Boulevard Hack watch.
Andrew The whole EMG lineup. Yeah. The Boulevard Hack. Yeah. We looked, I mean, I looked at the Bulova A15, the Pilot's Watch. Yeah. The Bulova Devil Diver. Yeah. The Devil Diver. HK Ed's entire portfolio. Yep.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett So, so a lot of great watches. Those are the ones that are fantastic. Didn't quite make the cut for today's conversation, which doesn't mean they don't make the cut. They make the cut. Another one, Certina has their DSPH 200 meter watch, fantastic, vintage inspired, just a killer watch, did really well on the scoring. So, with that said, some watches did actually make the list. Some. Not all. Many. I'm going to have to unlock my computer because it went to sleep.
Andrew It's so weird to see that picture of you sans beard. I haven't seen you without a beard in quite some time and then to see that picture of you without a beard, I don't I don't know, with short hair, like... Everett's picture is the way he has looked the entire time I've known him. Well, I've been in the military, right? And short hair, and now you're looking all hippie with long hair and a beard.
Everett My hair is getting long too, right?
Andrew I think I like you better with long hair and a beard. It's just not how I remember you.
Everett Like you like my personality better?
Andrew Yeah, and you're objectively more attractive with more of your face covered.
Everett That's true. The less of my face showing the better. So the two winners on our objective rubric, we're going to blast through those because they're very cool watches, but they're not the watches we were most interested in. So the first was the Baltic Aqua Scaf. The second was the Aqua Scaffy?
Everett The second was the Yema.
Andrew If any of y'all have a Yema on your hands, we won't pay you for it, but we would really love to get our hands on one. Andrew might pay you. Yeah, we want to get a hold of this. So I have only recently become aware of this brand. Everyone only has recently become aware of this brand. We should maybe be embarrassed. I don't know. It's a French brand. French. I only, I started seeing ads for them on the instant gram a couple of weeks ago and because of the style of ads I was seeing and how good these watches look. Yeah. I was thinking I was looking at like a Chinese mushroom brand, like, like which, which not to disparage brands like Jack Mason or Triwa, but that's what I thought I was looking at or Triva, whatever. I don't know. It's Swedish.
Everett How mad do you think when people How mad do you think people get when we just mispronounce stuff? You know, sometimes we don't know how to pronounce it. Other times we know and we just fuck it up on purpose because... That's why we stopped getting hate mail about it.
Andrew Right. Because we just... People are like, yeah, there's... He must know it's not Bok Chok. Like, this is joke.
Everett So yeah, we picked this Yema Navy Graf heritage from the suggestions. It's not the only Yema that was... that was recommended, but this was the one that I think both of we were both sort of drawn to. It's a dive style watch, which is, which is part of the reason we're drawn to it. Cause we know it's going to score really well.
Andrew Um, but it's super, what's the size on it? It's got a like just 39. I was going to say like 39 to 41. It, it looks money and I'm like 39. I don't know how we've not, seen this watch brand before?
Everett You know, I think that they are a little bit off the beaten path. I think there's that other company, you know, I'm not even going to pronounce it. I'm not even going to try. It's Olick. I'm pretty sure about that word. But the second word has a J in the middle of it.
Andrew Olick and Woz. And there's like an umlaut over a couple of letters.
Everett You know, they're just sort of off the radar European dope looking watches that are just a little obscure for us. I think the other thing is price, right?
Andrew This is north of our, of our general discussion point.
Everett Yeah. And certainly these come in at under a thousand, 750 on this Navy graph with a fantastic automatic movement.
Andrew But when I see these Instagram ads, I think like, and it's like, Oh, 20% off. Yeah, my watches. I'm like, Oh, okay. So these are $200 watches that look really fucking cool, but they're going to be rocking like an 86 cent movement. And then, I saw it on our list today and I was like, okay, worth, worth looking at. And I, and we're looking at legit watches here. So if y'all have any open the other one, if y'all have one and are willing to share it with us, we'd love to see one in the metal. Cause Everett's already blown his, got hit by a car money on a watch.
Everett And I'm, these are the, these are the, The damages to recording outside. Someone's going to drag their recycling bin up the gravel drive.
Andrew A fucking quarter mile.
Everett It's so far away. I feel like it's rattling the microphone.
Andrew So if you have one and are willing to share it with us, or if Yemma, if y'all are listening, we'd love to get a couple in the middle.
Everett You think there's a chance that the folks at Yemma are listening?
Andrew I mean, the way they heard me pronounce a couple of things, they're going to assume that I need more refinement in my life. Um, but they're, they're all super cool. Vintage inspired watches. Yeah. Not with, not all fotina'd with the, with the brown loom, which as we learned a couple of weeks ago, loom won't turn brown anymore. Just radioactive loom turns brown. I've also stopped carrying tritium near my groin. Fuck it.
Everett Go with it, man. You don't need to make babies anymore.
Andrew Yeah. I stopped that though. I also, I also pushed my bedside table further away from the bed. We're going to continue.
Everett Uh, yeah, no, they're, they're very cool, man. I dig them. And I really liked this one. Uh, it's nothing going on here that is, uh, sort of overtly vintage, right? It's not like the, The Bull of a Devil Diver or something where you look at it and you say, eh, that'd be cool.
Andrew It's got that though, that really flat like tabletop design. It's got a flat bezel, a flush crystal, and it's almost like a, like cookie cuttered out, which I've, which still exists, but there's just no taper anywhere, which is such a, such a classic kind of seventies, eighties design cue. It does have the brown loom. But the fonts are right, the markers, like even with white loom, this would still be a very vintage inspired watch.
Everett Well, and this got a high movement score for me too. This is their, they say, entirely designed, developed, and assembled at our Morteau workshops in France. 28 at 8 movement. 45-hour power reserve. Now, I suspect that this is based on some other ebauche. I don't know that for sure. Ebauche. It may be. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's obviously lovingly crafted. It's a 31 jewel movement, which is just an insane amount of jewels to put in a movement of this quality. You know, this company reminds me a little bit of Locko in that they have some pretty expensive watches, right?
Andrew Yeah, their portfolio is vast. It's like the vastness of Seiko. The wideness, like the price gap.
Everett Yeah, perhaps. Yeah. I mean, yeah, because they definitely have watches that come in at many thousands of dollars. And this is what, seven and a half? $750. And they've got quartz watches. They've got quartz watches that come in at like $300, right? They're all over the place. You know, it's one of those brands that I think, the reason I, I think Locco, uh, is because Locco is this luxury brand. That's accessible. That's accessible. If you want to get a Locco, you can get a Locco, you know, versus Rolex, right? The, the entry point on Rolex is... You have to be hit by a car. That's right. It's unobtainium for, for most people. So I think that's cool. You know, I will say, uh, I was at a Bay Area watch group Hangout. Bay Area?
Andrew Bay Area, I think is the way you say that. What did I say? You said Bay Area, but I think we can mash up those words and call it Beria.
Everett Not Berio, Beria. I reject that. Okay. I was at a Bay Area watch group hangout recently and someone brought up, you know, tongue in cheek, but brought up Yemo with derision. And so it occurred to me that maybe some of the Um, higher end watch guys, uh, have some feeling about them. I don't know. That's as far as it went. I didn't ask the question, but, but that is a thing that happened. So I don't, I don't know enough about the company to know what, but I can tell you, this is pretty cool. And it's scored objectively high because, because of how cool the movement is.
Andrew In-house. The aesthetics are money. The stats are right on it. That's right. The size is right on it. It's, it's obviously got the water resistance.
Everett That loom is fucking brown though.
Andrew It's so brown. Okay. It's mustardy. It's like deli mustard. I know.
Everett So watch number two, second highest scoring, actually the tied with the Yema for highest scoring is the Baltic Aquascafe. Aquascafe. The Baltic Aqua Scaff. So we picked the white loomed version of this because for fuck's sake, that gave it like an extra three points just in terms of aesthetics. X-factor. Right. But golly, man.
Andrew This watch would look horrible with Fotina Lume and the white loomed markers on the bezel.
Everett You know, they do actually, they do a pretty good job with their Fotina matching.
Andrew It matches, but it's just not right. I'm coming on the rubber strap. The bezel appears to be about a millimeter wider than the case. It's got the domed crystal and is, is it, is it Sapphire or is it?
Everett Yeah, I think it's a Sapphire, um, I think it's a Sapphire, Sapphire, uh, bezel.
Andrew Doesn't matter because it's got the dome inside that bezel. This is so money. This, this is the skin diver that we're all looking for if we're willing to pay 600 money.
Everett And how about this crazy statement? I think in terms of, I think I got too close to the microphone.
Andrew You are always too close to the microphone.
Everett In terms of a Fotina execution, This is one of the better ones I've ever seen.
Andrew It's, it's, yeah. Cause it's not brown. It's just a light, light tan.
Everett And, and their, and their font is very thin. They're not maxi markers. I don't know. Maybe they're maxi markers, but the markers are very sort of, uh, diminutive in terms of the overall look. They've got those tiny little dots. Yep. The five minutes on the bezel. Uh, everything is just very sort of tastefully done. So it's not brown antique in your face.
Andrew There's a lot of loom, but it doesn't look like there's a lot of loom. And I think the black sucks a lot of it up. The domed crystal soaks a lot of it up. The really bright stainless hands soak a lot of it up. The finishing on the case soaks it up. And it's on rubber. It's on a tropic.
Everett And I love that. Yeah. You can get this on a beads of rice too.
Andrew Oh shit. That'd look even better on a beads of rice and feel even better too. So we should, we should move on to our next watch because as you stated just a few moments ago, we're running long and that's a function of, you know, I haven't seen you in weeks and we're onto the Laurier Falcon 2.0, the 36 millimeter release. Yeah. And I think this is especially exciting because this is finally a watch that I could, I would feel confident in buying my wife. And I know she would wear it often, but I would also wear it a lot. But you'd get to wear it. Yeah. It's a, it's a his and hers in the, like a shared his and hers. We don't need to buy a matching set because this thing is the Falcon. It's the Laurier Falcon that we fucking love. And I will, I will, forever and always be mad at the fact that I won 600 money in the lottery. And I said, you know what? I'm going to wait a week to buy a watch. I'm just going to, I'm going to stew on it. I'm going to let this simmer. And then I go back a week later and Oh, the Falcon's sold out there. They're 39 millimeter is sold out. 38 40 is always a 40 on the nuts there. So they're 40 on the nuts is sold out and seeming Like it might not come back. Kick myself in the bag.
Everett Yeah, I'm not sure. You know, you'd suspected that they're going to reintroduce the 40s with the 36s. I think they will. And I think that's possible. This is, I think, vintage inspired in the most generic sense of the term. This is not a direct homage to anything. Nope. This is not sort of religiously applying obscure details from another watch. Shit, maybe it is. I don't know.
Andrew It's not because it's a dress sport watch, flat bracelet, very classically styled. And I, and I think, I think it's got all the classic design cues of a Saab. A Saab is a modern watch. This is a vintage inspired watch. And I am having trouble, even as I, as I look at it, articulating exactly why.
Everett It just feels classic, right? And I think the size, I think being 36 millimeters, that in and of itself is sort of vintage inspired, right? That is not a popular size to market to a general audience right now.
Andrew I'm glad on the 2.0 they did away with the textured dial.
Everett Well, I think it's still there.
Andrew It looks, it's much more subtle if it's still there.
Unknown No.
Everett Yeah, it's still there. Is it? It's just we're looking at the white. We're looking at the white dialed version here. It's still there. It's still there. You know, some people don't like a broad arrow hour hand. And you know who I'm talking about if you're listening to this. Or maybe they like some of them, but they don't like others. And there's a certain proportion of head to shaft.
Andrew It's okay.
Everett I don't like Mercedes hands. You know, but I think they've just, the execution on this thing is really good. I do not love, I do not love those textured dials, but what Laurier has done is they've done their own thing. And I like that.
Andrew Yeah. They've done their own thing and they've captured the seventies design and they've made it a modern watch. What do you think about those loom plots? I hope that that means that they're super bright.
Everett It looks like a millimeter of loom.
Andrew Maybe more. They're just big, really precise globs of loom. And I think that'll add a really cool texture working against the textured dial, with the textured dial, not necessarily against. But I think that it'd add really cool depth to the dial.
Everett My favorite part about these watches, this watch in particular, is that flat bracelet. I love it. I wish they did more with the end link. The end link, to me, sort of looks like a throwaway Can I, can I say something about, about end links?
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Because it's, it's my show.
Andrew It's our show, but yeah, you asked my permission. I'm permission granted.
Everett It's mine and it's yours. It's mine.
Andrew You're my good friend Everett.
Everett So, uh, I don't understand. I don't understand why end links are all, uh, contoured to represent links. But the contour is half-assed. Instead of being a precise, sharp, geometric contour, like what you might find, like what you might find on a, um, on a modern sub, uh, oyster end link where that contour is very precise. It's still one piece of metal, but you've got a precise, Why are the end links on something like this so half-assed and foldy and curvy and flowy?
Andrew So I'm going to agree with that concern. I also don't understand why end links are never the same length as the fucking lug. They're always shorter. They're always longer. They're never the same length. And that bothers me.
Everett That bothers me less. But yeah, I don't get it.
Andrew Yeah. Why? End links are the forgotten detail.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. No, I think you're right. I mean, watches that are very, very well thought out still struggle to get the end links right.
Andrew Watches that are very, very expensive still struggle to get the end links right. They're the forgotten detail. They're the, they're the, Oh fuck, we need to find a way to attach this shit to the bracelet that we spent a year developing.
Everett So our next, our next sort of, uh, choice pick, this doesn't mean so. So like the Laurier Falcon, this didn't score particularly well. I mean, it didn't score poorly. Uh, but when, nor did the Falcon, the Falcon scored pretty well, but these, these are watches we chose cause we liked as opposed to the objective scoring metric. This is not a watch per se, but sort of a range of watches, a family of watches across a few different brands. a few different brands. Um, but this is the sort of 1963 Chinese military chronograph family. So we are on record, uh, we're on record as having recommended the HK ed ed 63 about 4 billion times, maybe 4 trillion prior to this moment right now. But there are also some iterations that come direct from the Siegel watch company, as well as EMG, who Ed, HK Ed, is a member of. The DL63 is EMG's version of this. So they come in a couple of different iterations, a 38 version and a 48. Coming from Ed at the 38. And from Siegel. Yeah. And then a 42 millimeter version also coming from Siegel and from EMG.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew And Ed.
Everett Ed does a 42.
Andrew Yeah, that's right. And so we picked this watch because it is such a classic. And this is one that we kind of falls into that. Is it just in a continuation of the original? Is it the 2020 Camry or is it the 1999 Camry? but we felt like this, this rises to the level of a vintage inspired watch because it's design cues have remained so true to the original while still updating and modernizing and, and making this watch current. And I, I love these chronographs.
Everett Yeah, me too.
Andrew They are not as versatile as I'd like. Yeah. in the way of I can't wear it to the pool. Right. Shouldn't, definitely don't wear it in the shower. Even consider washing your hands while wearing this watch. But this is a watch that you can wear with a t-shirt and jeans. This is a watch that you can wear in shorts. And this is a watch that you can wear under a sport coat. Yeah. And even to work.
Everett And I'm going to go out on a limb and say the 38 millimeter is perfect and the 42 is about four millimeters too big. Yeah. Maybe not four millimeters big, but at least two millimeters too big.
Andrew If you're a biggie, like if you're on the larger size, if you've got big wrists, if you're a large statured dude. An oversteer type. Yeah. If you typically wear larger watches, the 42 is going to be perfect. The 38 is the money zone for this watch. It's not diminutive. That's the thing. That's the one of the most impressive feats of this watch is that it doesn't look 38. It feels and wears like a 38. It's small, but it's not diminutive.
Everett Yeah, that's right. You know, and, and it's, it's vintage inspired in a way that's really attractive because it's not got any sort of anachronistic features plugged in to, to make it feel vintage. It just is, it just is retro perhaps.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Right. Um, you know, I rock my ed 63 on suede. Boof. So money. And it's just, it's just perfect.
Andrew You know, it's also money on a pass through. It's a money. It's, it's a strap monster. Not great on bracelets, but it's, it, it looks good all the time.
Unknown Yeah.
Everett Yeah. I think you could probably wear it on Crocs. Uh, because that polished case, uh, no, I think the DL 63 is, I think, I think some of the EMG versions incorporate some brushing into the case. And that might be your thing. Uh, the ed 63 versions are polished and you know, that's not going to be for everybody. For me, I mean, I really feel like I can wear my champagne dialed at 63, um, as a dress watch.
Andrew And maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's because there was that champagne option in across all the brands that do an iteration of this, uh, or an iteration of this watch. There's always a champagne dial and maybe that's it. Cause it, cause it's not quite gold, but it's really damn close. Sure. And it brings that gold, uh, aesthetic to the watch.
Everett And that, and you know, you, you've got plenty of options in terms of Panda, reverse Panda, um, blues, greens, that real classic red, blue and silver. I really like the seagull with the red star. Yeah. Yeah. So tons of options and just a very neat watch that we love very much. Uh, if you want, you know, if you want a vintage inspired watch, that's not going to break the bank too. These are all coming in under, under four bills. Yeah. Under three 50, I think, or right around there. So what's up next?
Andrew Uh, it looks like, Ooh, The Q Timex.
Everett Another 38 millimeter watch. Yeah. That wears bigger than 38 millimeters. It does.
Andrew And that's curious. Like really unusual, but it's also only 180 money and they're available right now. I've been wearing this watch a lot on the weekends. This is one of my like go-to weekend watch it. I, like I said, like I've said before, I, I didn't think I was going to like the, The mesh. I love the mesh. Once I got it adjusted right. Are we calling it mesh?
Everett I don't know what else you'd call it. Yeah. Fair enough. It's not mesh, but it is, it's got that really sort of thin, tiny diminutive link that, that acts like mesh.
Andrew But it also has a clasp like a mesh. Yeah. It's got that, that sliding adjustable. And again, I didn't think I was going to like it, but once I got it dialed in, which it, which took me, I don't know, 50 adjustments. Once I got it dialed in, I love it. It's super comfortable. It does kind of have a weird, I think the, the bezel is, uh, plastic. Oh, interesting. And they did not, uh, coat the, the Delta between the case and the top of the bezel. And you've seen it. It's got a black, It's a visible black line on the sides of the bezel, which is covered by everything on the top. But I think it's, I think it's a plastic bezel. Interesting. Right? You've seen it. You noted that. And I think that's the only, that's the only option that makes sense to me. Yeah. Which is, I mean, we're, we're talking to Timex and we're, and we're talking 180 money.
Everett I bet it's anodized aluminum or painted steel, one of the two.
Andrew Either way, the black is a weird choice, but I dig this watch.
Everett You know, I think that there's been a lot of QTimex, is it worth the hype? You know, YouTube videos. People paid $400 money for this watch.
Andrew Blog posts. I don't think it's worth $400 money. Right.
Everett Big picture, at $450 scalper price, it's not worth the hype. At $179, brand new from the Timex fucking website.
Andrew Because you can't buy it on the Amazon. You have to buy it through Timex.
Everett Yeah. It's worth every bit of $179. Every bit of it.
Andrew I love this watch. It's not my favorite watch, but I'll never get rid of it. I will replace the battery in it, and I will continue to wear this watch. And it's straight out of the 70s. They grabbed something from their catalog that was special. And they're using it to launch themselves into the gap that Seiko is creating right now.
Everett Yeah, a bit of a springboard. I think a very cool watch. I think that in the first place, it was just a well-designed watch. There's some problems with it, right? Uh, some, some pretty major problems. You know, in terms of functionality versus design cues, it's not a particularly, um, capable watch.
Andrew No. It has none water resistance, like 30 meters.
Everett I think maybe 50. Yeah. Um, that looks like a, that looks like a dive watch. It's got a GMT bezel. Which is weird.
Andrew With no GMT functionality. Also in the way of QC, my date wheel intermittently works.
Everett Yeah. You, you know, those, you know, and I think this is a Seiko movement, so they, that may be a, um, that may be something that you could get, you could get looked at, uh, in terms of a, in terms of a return. But yeah, you, you know, they've got some, a very light, uh, aging on the loom. Um, It's more pronounced in person, I think, than it is on the pictures on the Timex website. Agreed. But still pretty subtle. Yeah. You know, in terms of vintage inspired watches, I think in the affordable scene right now, you can sort of start here.
Andrew Yeah. I love the angles on the case. We should move on. Short lugs. Hooded lugs.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. It's good, man. It's a good watch. So our last watch for the day, this is the Hamilton Khaki Pilot Pioneer, which I think is a terrible name.
Andrew Yeah. It's a bummer. This watch kind of, you can touch on it, but then I want to raise something.
Everett Well, so this is a really sort of, uh, purposefully designed vintage watch. It harkens back to the W-10 watches. Um, these, these sort of storied military W-10 watches, uh, you know, this watch is not going to be for everybody. And in fact, it's probably not even going to be for all that many people who want to casually wear a watch. And the reason for that is it's a 33 millimeter, a 33 millimeter case. A cushion case, but still 33 by 36. He's a little. He's a little guy.
Andrew And if you don't like this one, you can get a Bertucci. Right. That's right. Virtually identically shaped, but appropriately sized.
Everett And with less sort of Bonafide and more of a modern feel. I'll tell you, I think this thing is just cool because They didn't fuck with it. They were like, this is a great watch from our catalog. And it was great when we released it. And yeah, you know, and they made some changes. I don't think it's a totally, uh, a totally faithful throwback, um, really limit on, on those classic military design cues. However, what they haven't done is they haven't done any sort of. Silly modernizing bullshit sans the, the sand colored loom, which is terrible. It's not great. It's not great. If this watch was just white on white on white, it would be a hundred times better in my mind, in my opinion, right? My not so humble opinion.
Andrew I mean, it's our show. We get to make our opinions and they are gospel. Right. What do you think? What are your thoughts? I feel the same way. I think if they were going to go with a tan loom, they needed to go with tan markers. The problem that I have is that all the numerals are white, which, really make the tan loom spots stand out, which is why white on white on white would be money. It's diminutive. This isn't a watch I would ever wear because 33 millimeters is just, it's, it's just too small. 35 would have been perfect, but they're pulling out of their catalog. It's got that very, very H shaped case, but it's a money shaped case. Like you should scale this up a tiny bit. And this is, phenomenal watch as it stands. It's a great watch to look at. It's a super simple, super simple like military slash field watch dial with just the one to 12. I, there, there's no weird flourishes. It just has the minute ring and it's there. This is as basic a watch as they come, but My guess is that this is 500 money?
Everett Yeah, ish. I think that's about right. You know, it's, it's, it's in the affordable range, uh, without being, without being cheap. My one sort of draw, my, my one sort of, um, caveat to that is this, this watch when it was originally released came with an acrylic crystal and this modern version comes with a mineral crystal.
Andrew It seems like, why not? Just do an acrylic if you're already there.
Everett One or the other, right? Do acrylic or do sapphire.
Andrew I also kind of hate the hour hand.
Unknown Okay. All right.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. I kind of hate the hour hand.
Everett Yeah. Definitely classic. Definitely a vintage inspired, but yeah. So. That's it. You know, I think this is a tough, I think that perhaps this was a tough topic because it was so broad, super broad, super broad. I think that, that we could revisit this in a more targeted fashion. And if you have ideas for that, we'd be happy to hear them. Um, you know, the problem with vintage inspired watches is how much, how many of the watches being released today, that aren't in the Invicta catalog aren't vintage-inspired, right? Everything's vintage-inspired. And so it was a little tricky in terms of sort of drawing the line. You know, there was a couple of the recommendations that we looked at, and we're like, eh, no. That doesn't work. That doesn't work for the prompt. But yeah.
Andrew But that raises the question, and it's a question we kind of always ask. Where's the evolution of watch design going? Is the evolution of watch design going to the Richard meals where they're just bonkers crazy looking, or is it drawing on the history of watchmaking and the history of, of watch design and making it just a touch more modern? Sure. Cause we, I mean, that's a question we've raised, but I don't know, 74 times.
Everett Yeah. Yeah, perhaps. Well, you know, it's, it's a good exercise to sort of see what's out there and to be thoughtful about it. And we hope you enjoyed. Um, but I guess we move on at that point, Andrew, other things go.
Andrew My other thing this week is I just, I want to thank educators and people who do what I am failing to do for a living. I'm trying to teach a four year old to read.
Everett Which is like, which is like the hardest thing.
Andrew Right? I show him a word and I read him books every night and I show him a word and he tells me the letters and then he says some bullshit. He saw has last night. Has? Has. H-A-S. And he looked at, He looked at it and he goes, H-A-S. I was like, all right, you know the letters. I'm killing it as a parent. Way to go. Now let's sound it out. No. Those were made up noises. And I get so frustrated so fast. I'm like, no, motherfucker. H-A-S is not... It's not Apple.
Unknown Yeah.
Andrew It's has the patience of the of the folks that do this is so for any of you out there who are educators or are married to an educator. I just want to say thank you because number one you're way better at that. I am because I suck at trying to teach a kid how to do shit and number two My hat's off to you for choosing to do that because that is fucking insane. You're a saint. And the number three is, is I've been, I've been doing a lot of reading on how to homeschool your kid because that's the world I live in right now. And that's the world we all live in. And the, the majority of Google responses at this point are, based on the world that we live in. They're not like the normal results that you'd have gotten six months ago for how to homeschool a kid. They are shelter in place responses. And I have drawn some encouragement out of like, this shit is not normal. You didn't choose to homeschool your kid, but you're trying anyway. And you're trying is what matters. So I'm going to celebrate the fact that my trying is what matters and the generation of kids that are learning to read right now are going to be about 10 years behind where I was. And that's totally okay because we are living in a changed world. So for everyone out there listening, who's trying to figure out how to homeschool your kids, we're all in this bullshit together. And let's cross our fingers that they can all go back to school in September.
Everett Yeah. And thanks to and thank you to our educators who are managing and doing the best they can with districts and directed curriculum and limitations on methods. And yeah. Yeah. Tough times. You're the real heroes. Yeah. That's right. That's right. I've got another thing. Do me. So there is a series of novellas. A series of novellas that I have dipped my toes into. Telenovelas or regular novellas? Written word. Okay. Written word. So there's an author called Martha Wells. She's a sci-fi author and she's written a whole bunch of shit. But she's got a series of novellas called The Murderbot Diaries.
Andrew That doesn't sound very romantic.
Everett It's oddly more romantic than you might think. All right, I'm ready. Considering The protagonist is a sexless, uh, murder bot who actually doesn't understand sex. It's more romantic than you might think knowing that thing.
Andrew The fact that you added doesn't understand sex makes it kind of a romantic.
Everett It is indeed that. So it is this non-human sort of, uh, uh, uh, quasi-human, uh, mostly robot with some organic parts that's finding its humanity by way of completing robot tasks in a robot way. Anyway, it's totally, totally wonderful. These books are short. They're novellas, right? So they're short. You know, I got through the first one in about four hours sitting on my couch reading after everybody had gone to bed and I got to the end and I was like, Oh fuck, that's it. You know, uh, type of deal. So it's a, I think that there is a full length novel on its way in this series. Um, but Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells, holy shit. It's very, very cool. We've got a couple of listeners. I would say about 10 listeners who I converse with on a very regular basis about, uh, sci-fi novels and this and that. And, you know, we've recommended, Uh, books on the show before, and, you know, people hit me up and be like, holy shit, what'd you think about this thing? And, uh, and so that's been fun for those of you, for those 10 of you. Uh, this is a must read. I think this is a must read. If you haven't already read it, I'd say get the first one on your phone right now, read it tonight and make a decision because I do not think you're going to be able to stop. Uh, really, really fantastic. Totally sci-fi. Some people that doesn't work for. For me, it's like the ultimate genre.
Unknown Okay.
Everett Yeah. Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells. Go.
Andrew I haven't read it yet, so I can't go.
Everett Well, considering we're at like an hour and 57 minutes. No, we're not. No, we're not. Andrew, my friend. 115, right? 115, yeah. Good job. Andrew, my friend, do you have anything else that you'd like to add today before we get out of here? Thanks for listening, y'all. And I miss you, Everett. I miss you too, buddy. I'm so glad you're here.
Unknown We're going to finish these beers, right?
Everett Yeah. All right, good. Thank you. Thank you sitting at home or maybe in your car for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20. Check us out on Instagram at 40 in 20. That's where we post all our news about the show, et cetera, et cetera. Check us out on patreon.com slash 40 and 20. That's where we get the support for the show. Again, that's how we pay for hosting microphones. The things we do. If every single one of you contributes $1 this month, we may get close to recouping everything we've spent on the show thus far, but probably not. Don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Bye bye.
Unknown you