Keeping Time: My Adored and My Enemy

Image site, see item #1.

Since time is my enemy today, this post will be about it, or rather, timepieces. I know there is at least one reader who will enjoy this as much as I- talk about niche marketing.

1) I've always been a fan of fine watches, if less from an engineering standpoint than an aesthetic one. On of my favorite styles is the tonneu. Here's a history of the famous Longines' tonneaus, including the sensational one worn by Bogart from 1941 on. However, I did not know, and I am also her fan, that Audrey Hepburn has a long association with Longines.

In an update to their advertising, in 2003, they looked for a modern Bogart to advertise the line. Well, good luck. Today, even Bogart wouldn't be Bogart. Twenty and thirty something marketing reps would have rejected his high waist and occasionally hunched stature which always needed the aid of good tailoring as an elegant man's form may. They'd toss out his eye-bags and chimney-smoking. Most likely, they tried to get a pillow-lipped twenty-two year old to smolder in two dimensions, and that's why I don't remember anyone. The current line of pretty coeds never project the self-possesion, strength, and manliness of a more tarnished and tested man. When was the last time you saw a saggy or craggy film star projected as something other than comic relief? But I'd sure like a couple of them just to liven up the joint with some style and sophistication.

2) Stanford University gets back an important Patek Phillippe which was once sold off by the founder's wife to raise operating funds for the struggling library.

3) The most expensive pocket watch sold at auction, is- no surprise- also a Patek Phillippe. The Grand Complication, which has 12 different functions, will be going to a Swiss Museum that bid almost 2 million U.S. for the privilege.

4) Here are the results from National Jeweler of the fifth annual Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genéve.

5) This has nothing to do with watches for those anti-chrono types, but it's so weird and depressing, my master plan is that it will turn you to the beauty of timepieces as an antidote. A poor woman in India has died in the hospital after having her eye eaten by ants.

Got to RUN!