Need to check if you’re late to your Bilderberg meeting? What better way than to wear the Bye Bye Euro watch, a timepiece that celebrates the death of Europe’s last great financial hope.

Our old, crazy buddies at ArtyA made the watch in their “crushed” case – a case that’s zapped with wild amounts of electricity – and then stuffed shredded euro behind the dial. Sure it’s a little pretentious, but for 5900 CHF you, too, can celebrate the sorrow of the 99% in style!

The creative Brand ArtyA launches a tribute to “the sommet de Bruxelles
2011” to announce the end of the Euro currency.
This unique Watch called “Bye Bye Euro” has a hand manufactured dial using real Euros passed in a shredder, the case as well has gone through an exclusive crushing process in the ArtyA Art & Workshop in Geneva, Switzerland.
The ArtyA 1/1 “Bye Bye Euro” is powered by a high end Swiss automatic movement and the strap is braided kevlar to better absorb shocks.
Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Papandreou and Merkel are invited to buy one in order to remember their dreams.

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Product placement FTW! Swarovski is apparently trying to flog watches more actively so they hired some time in a music video. How did I learn this information? From Brit’s violence-filled Criminal intro video where some American dude punches out a poncy Englishman and then rides off on his Harley while examining the Japanese-made watch on his wrist, Britney strapped to his back like a howler monkey.

The watch looks to be bog standard with plenty of crystal around the edge. It’s probably the Octea but it looks like a black-on-black model.

Ariel got some hot video of Ke$shaha talking about her sexy new Baby-G line! They come in red, white, and blue! And animal print! She wants Dave Grohl to wear her watch! Also Obama! What a great spokesperson!

The Welder K 29; the Beast of San Marino

53 millimeters of steaming hot steel from San Marino. It’s massive, it’s sexy, it’s red and black, it’s got three movements, and it’s from the coolest little country noone’s ever heard of.

With a chrono and two other time displays, this beast from the mountains surrounded by Italy is awesome. The movements are Miyota, it also comes in a silver dial with black hands and an all black model, and it comes in a heavy duty, air tight, carrying case. With the cut-outs on the dial and exposed allen screw heads, this watch has the whole heavy industrial look like nobody else, which is really ironic from a quaint little nation that you could walk across in a morning (in good mountain boots).

Prices are around $1600-1900, and more information is available from Welder America, or from their offices in the Republic of San Marino, at welder.sm.

That this thing comes from a country that has 39 km of borders, all with Italy, and about 61 square km of area (a third of Washington D.C.), and a population of about 30,000 just makes it so much cooler.

Van

I love to smell nice as much as the next guy but this is too much. It’s Omega’s Aqua Terra for men. I guess it’s a cologne that smells like that mixture of sweat and leather you get when you wear the same watch all summer.

Here’s a description:

The new Omega Aqua Terra for men belongs to the woody aromatic family. On the top, the fragrance opens on a blend of citrus (bergamot, grapefruit, tangerine) and herbs (clary, sage). They bring a fresh and natural sensation to this perfume. After a few minutes, the heart of the creation reveals a spicy freshness and an elegant floral note thanks to the aromatic herbs, jasmine, red pepper and violet leaves. Finally, the drydown unveils its mysterious facets: a trail of sensual and luxurious woods, refined oak moss, patchouli, vetiver and musk, that rounds the perfume out harmoniously.

Mmmhmm…

I’m going to apologize in advance for this review. There are some who may be offended by its content in that I am discussing, in relative depth, an erotic watch of the type made popular by randy potentates in the 18th and 19th centuries along with one aspect that I find utterly vile and revolting. It is important to state that I do not condone this aspect of the watch and I find it highly offensive to boot.

The bile is rising even as I write this, friends, for this $34 watch from eBay advertises itself as a tourbillon yet is as far from a tourbillon as humanly possible. If tourbillon were the sun and this watch were a meteorite, the meteorite would be five million light years from the sun. And exploded already. And in little pieces in some distant star field. That’s how distant this is from a tourbillon.

Note: This is kind of NSFW.

A man expects a few things in life – a lollipop in his mouth, for example – and when he is thwarted so viciously by a Chinese manufacturer of erotic jewelry he finds himself at an impasse. Should he go on? Should he keep writing? I will, friends, keep writing. I am a man and that’s what men do.

First, the presentation. The watch arrived from China in a wrapped black box with a small card that said something like “Do to not wind so much this watch or it will break!” Not much in the way of instruction. The watch has a manual wind movement with two registers that both essentially tell the same thing. The register at three o’clock shows the hour in 24-hour time while the moonphase shows the approximate amount of brightness outside. If the sun is up, it’s daytime. If the moon is up it’s night. It is, for all intents and purposes, an AM/PM indicator.

But what of that finely wrote and delicately beautiful balance wheel and bridge? Certainly that piece of metal hides a tourbillon!

It does not. It’s just an exposed balance wheel. Cute if you’ve never seen a watch before but when it says Tourbillon in poorly printed lettering under the AM/PM indicator, a body comes to expect a tourbillon. There is no tourbillon here. The tourbillon is a lie.

The watch, branded AOMEI WATCH, is not unhandsome. It has a nice etched face, silver numerals, and a steel-ish case. The crown would befit a more expensive watch. But what ho! Like a mullet, this watch is business sup front and party in the back.

Picture this, friends: You’re at a classy dinner party. You sidle up to one of your tipsy drinking buddies and unstrap your watch, elbowing him gently in the ribs.

“Mr. Magundus, I do say, care for a bit of the old wobbly wobbly?” you mutter into your Pimm’s Cup.

“By jove, I do feel a palpitation that would suggest to me that my nether quarters are in need of a good jostle. Do you have something for it?”

“Why yes, dear Mr. Magundus. A lass so fine and fair that butting a goat up agin her would be an insult to the horn, if you catch my indirect meaning. It is, Mr. Magundus, a clockwork device from the Shades of the Orient.”

“Heaven forefend! Produce this item at once posthaste afore my lady wife returns from the loo!”

And so you produce… this (click to embiggen):

That’s right: little figures copulating on a field of vaguely drawn nudity. If this does not define the gilded age of science, exploration, and sport, I don’t know what does. It’s not difficult to understand what’s going on here and uploading video of it will get us banned from YouTube but you generally see what’s up. The little man is giving the little woman a good rogering.

This type of watch has a long, long tradition and many famous watchmakers created watches of this type. However, AMOEI is not a famous watchmaker. This is, sadly, a novelty.

That said, I can’t report on the quality of this watch. I wore it a few times and, given my experience with Chinese watches, this will last maybe a week before the young couple is stopped in mid-stroke. However, for $34.99 you can definitely have a bit of a chuckle.

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Before the Internet, when a gentleman wanted to polish the brass knobs of his dear mum’s armoire he would depend on his internal spank bank which, potentially, included nudes he had seen in postcards and museums as well as racy lines about breasts he may have read in the Bible. However, barring a visit to the local establishment of vice, there was little way to view two people giving it the old Charles and Diana, if you catch my meaning.

Thus they had to resort to horological erotic automata. These were watch movements featuring two or more figures giving each other a good, filling Hardee’s breakfast either on command or at a set time. These things appear in all sorts of watches including clocks, pocket-watches, and even modern wristwatches.

Most of these automata are hidden behind little flaps, thereby allowing the gentleman to consult his watch of an evening and, when he is ready to ride the Peace Train to Gravy Town he can flip open the watch and trim his rose bush, if you catch my meaning.

These are not be confused with the 1970s digital models made famous by Willem Defoe in Autofocus. These are much classier, and feature scenes such as two monks visiting the velvet underground of a milkmaid as well as a piece by Breguet that features a man giving it the old Hoosier try in a more dignified manner, less outdoorsy manner.

I encourage you to head over to Watchismo to see them all but I’ve taken the liberty of removing the kitten on the Breguet, just for a taste of the magic that awaits.

You can also buy this sort of thing on eBay if you’re so inclined.

Man, come on. What the heck is this Audemars Piguet abomination? It’s named after the Montauk Highway on Long Island and is apparently aimed at folks who summer at the Hamptons. But wait a minute: shouldn’t those folks be paying for their house shares and not dumping $20K for one of these limited edition preppy-themed monstrosities?

Fratello doesn’t mind it but he doesn’t quite get the baggage that this watch invokes. He notes:

Whatever. Just another lame excuse to create a great looking watch in only a limited production number. The watch is (or was..) only available through London Jewelers in East Hampton and South Hampton and at the Audemars Piguet boutiques in both New York and Bal Harbour.

Reader Arman bought a Candino C4372_5, a “Swiss-Made” quartz with a bit of a problem. Can you spot it?

The model seems to be a few years old which clearly gives the company a bit of leeway in what kind of garbage it can sell its customers. Arman hasn’t heard back from Candino and I doubt he will.

The watch probably costs about $100 and for that kind of scratch he could probably find a quartz Tissot PR50, one of my favorite watches. At least all the numbers would be in the right place.

A world class timepiece? A photoframe? Why didn’t I think of this!

Bonus to the readers – In which William Gibson book did someone see a sarariman with a holographic vagina on his watch. I, for the life of me, can’t find that passage.