Latest Review
“Watches, Stories, and Gear” is a roundup of our favorite content, watch or otherwise, from around the internet. Here, we support other creators, explore interesting content that inspires us, and put a spotlight on causes we believe in. Oh, and any gear we happen to be digging on this week. We love gear.
Share your story ideas or interesting finds with us by emailing [email protected].
Catching Up With AJ Weberman
Bob Dylan has been the focus of many a think piece over the last month or so as A Complete Unknown, the film covering his life in the mid 1960s starring Timothee Chalamet, has unspooled in theaters. Most of those pieces are appraisals of the film, or Dylan’s career, but this one caught our eye for its focus on AJ Weberman, a counterculture figure whose life has run parallel to Dylan in many ways. In the parlance of our times, you might call Weberman an obsessed fan, or even a stalker. He came to some small fame in the 60s and 70s for his unique brand of “Dylanology,” developing wildly detailed interpretations of Dylan’s sometimes inscrutable lyrics. He also, famously, picked through Dylan’s garbage looking for insight into his personal life. Totally normal stuff. Anyway, he’s still out there, he’s seen the movie, and he’s still a little too obsessed.
Were We Wrong about the Pono?
Remember the Pono music player? A decade ago, Neil Young helped launch the iPod competitor as an alternative to what he deemed a generation of portable music devices that were incapable of reproducing compressed audio files with a fidelity that met his standards. It’s true: iPods and iPhones (and many similar devices) have never really been audiophile favorites. When the Pono was launched, it was ridiculed by many for its price, it’s strange triangular design, and the notion that our audio files were inferior in the first place. Now, ten years later, the landscape has shifted. The leading streaming services offer lossless audio options that even an untrained ear can determine sound markedly better than highly compressed MP3s of yore, the democratization of high quality noise cancelling headphones has many listeners more interested in audio quality than ever before. This look back at the Pono in Stereogum is a fascinating snapshot of the brief Pono era, and has us thinking we might not have given it a fair shake.
Jesse Armstrong’s Next Project Revealed
If you’re anything like us, you continue to feel the void left by Succession when the hit HBO series ended nearly two years ago. There’s been a ton of speculation and just plain waiting around for an announcement regarding showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s next project, and we finally got news of what he’ll be up to this week. As Deadline and others report, Armstrong will be writing and executive producing a movie for HBO Films along with Frank Rich, also a Succession producer (both are under overall deals at HBO). The premise is described as covering a group of friends who meet up during an international financial crisis. So, not a lot to go on, but given Armstrong’s interests and the subject matter of Succession, there’s enough here to get excited.
