Few names are more closely associated with watch collecting than that of musician John Mayer. The seven-time Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and producer has been collecting high complication watches from makers like Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and Rolex since the very early days of his career. Recently, Mayer took a time out at Audemars Piguet's AP House Los Angeles, one of 20 luxury meeting spaces the brand has opened around the world, to chat with us about watches, time, and the meaning of everything. |
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The only thing better than a good head on your shoulders is a good bag. |
| Before House of the Dragon returns, it's time to do your History of Westeros homework. |
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Over the weekend, the editorial leadership of the Washington Post was decapitated and replaced by a virtual all-Brit roster, which has given me several levels of agita, including the journalistic and ethnic varieties. Over at Xwitter, David Folkenflik threads up most of the 411. Me? My agita aside, I'm hoping the new regime gets a little tougher on the kind of swill that occasionally turns up on the opinion pages. Come on down, Kathleen Parker. |
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Reading on a Kindle is already easy as can be. These accessories sweeten the deal. |
| When you need an all-consuming distraction, murder and mystery are key. |
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Is it a good thing that rap laced with misogyny is most popular? Hell no. My streaming it is without doubt part of the problem. Critical me, though, can't ignore that rap music was born as a response to systemic oppression, that it's part of a culture still shaped by those systems. Wouldn't significant changes in the culture of rap music demand significant changes in the circumstances of the people who are both its chief producers and its subjects? As bad as the misogyny is in rap—and it's almost impossible to imagine it worse—I know it's reflective of the me-against-the-world, survival-of-the-fittest codes that pervade the domains of the oppressed, rules that are never not also a battle of the sexes. |
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 The 25 Best Sports Documentaries of All Time |
For almost as long as cinema has existed, we've filmed sports. And why not? The beauty, courage, and determination of athletes are not only aesthetically compelling, but their struggles are inherently dramatic. So is the culture surrounding games and competitions. With the advent of televised sports—and, in recent decades, faster, more modern ways of documentation—sports documentaries have proliferated as a popular genre. The styles run the gamut—from cinema verité to the stately Ken Burns approach—and there are dozens of incredible works that you won't find on this list simply because there is too much great stuff to reduce to 25. So for those of you who sorely miss The Great American Cowboy (an Oscar winner), On Any Sunday, 16 Days of Glory, John McEnroe: In The Realm of Perfection, or any number of 30 for 30 segments, including The Two Escobars, well, we don't blame you. But this is our list, and we stand by it. After all, what is a sports list if it doesn't start an argument? |
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Why Are Debut Novels Failing to Launch? |
In December 2021, The New York Times called best-selling debut novels "the bald eagles of the book world." Of the fifteen that appeared on the newspaper's hardcover-fiction list that year, writer Elisabeth Egan wrote, "only five were by non-celebrity authors who had not been anointed by Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Jenna Bush, or the Good Morning America Book Club." Today, it's not enough to land a spot in one of these coveted book clubs. According to an editor at a venerable publishing imprint, debut novelists need three key publicity achievements to "break out": one, a major book club; two, a boost from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indie Next, and/or Book of the Month; and three, a major profile. A few times a year, one of these breakout debuts lands on everyone's reading list—think Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You, R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries, and Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter—but those are few and far between. There were roughly five hundred thousand books published in 2023, per BookScan (which captures only about 85 percent of industry data), and no one knows how many debuts are published each year. Most come and go without much fanfare. The vast majority of titles sell fewer than five thousand copies, but across the entire industry, book sales are up. In 2004, there were at least 648 million books sold in the United States, and in 2013, 620 million; last year, there were at least 767,360,000 books sold—a significant increase. If that's the case, then why does it seem like it's harder now for a debut writer to "break out"? |
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The Best Bars in America 2024 |
More bars these days seem to be a complete package, like a nightlife one-stop shop. They can be a club if you want—you know, the kind you dance in. They can be the place where you order a bottle of Champagne and endless oysters. They can be a jazz lounge. They can be the place where you think you've stumbled on a garage party attended by the city's coolest people (in a city you didn't know had cool people). They can be that dimly lit vault where you and everyone else become someone else. Bars have always been that third place, the spot where you hang outside work and home. But as we've discovered crisscrossing the country over the past twelve months to visit the new bars, they're doing that in more nuanced and varied ways than they have in a long time. It's not just about the drinks. Then again, it's never just about the drinks. |
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Bill Skarsgård Likes It Darker |
Before Skarsgård started filming It, the studio released a photo of him in costume to drum up excitement. Social-media feeds went wild, and fan blogs tore him apart. "I was so incredibly nervous to start this job, and then the Internet is having so many hateful opinions on the weird, strange look of the thing," he recalls. He couldn't sleep. The insults echoed through his mind all night long. "This looks so stupid." "Lame." "Boooo." But, in time, the haters forced him to make a decision that would change his approach to acting forever. "You can only make this performance to please yourself," he says of the new attitude. He made himself both the creator and the audience in his mind, and he figured out what he wanted to see. What he thought was cool. Unsettling. Terrifying. "It unlocked something in me," he admits. "And it gave me the confidence that I can take on any challenge." |
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12 Best Brands for Menswear Basics, According to a Style Editor |
As somebody who literally scours the Internet for the very best menswear out there for a living, I've seen it all. And over the years, I've come to know a few brands as the trusty, reliable ones, the ones I can always turn to for basics that are infallibly chic, enduringly cool, and infinitely high-quality. Really, having solid basics is the foundation of having a great wardrobe. I don't just mean "get a white tee that fits you well" (although you should have that)—I mean you should reach for brands that are producing garments you can wear and pair with anything, that are offering plenty of bang for your buck. As a style editor, the 12 brands below are the most reliable ones that I consistently turn to for menswear basics. |
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All 77 Stephen King Books, Ranked |
There will probably never be another author like Stephen King. I'm not sure there ever could be. Since the publication of his first novel, Carrie, fifty years ago, King has held dominion over the landscape of horror. He arrived during a resurgent interest in all things frightening–following the success of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby (1967) and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971)—and quickly set about reshaping the genre in his own image. King has regularly published two or three books per year, a stream of words flowing incessantly west toward Hollywood. Almost everything he has ever written has been optioned or adapted for the screen, in some cases several times. Such prolificacy has often led to sniffing criticism from those who consider him "merely" a horror writer (as if horror is anything "mere"). But for millions of readers and writers, he is our North Star, our Southern Cross. We navigate by him. I have interviewed hundreds of horror writers from all across the genre's wide spectrum, and when asked for their inspirations and their gateways to fearful fiction, so many leap immediately to King. Nat Cassidy, author of 2022's Mary: An Awakening of Terror, put it best, describing King as his "mother tongue." He is not just a writer; he is an industry, an aesthetic, a genre of one. |
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