Celebrity Watches

It seems I'm a little bit behind the times. A few years ago, when I stopped watching videos about celebrities' watch collections, "celebrity" meant "a person with too much money who has only heard of one watch brand." I got tired of seeing another Rolex, and another Rolex, and another Rolex, and so I started watching other things. 

 

But the situation has completely changed! Today, "celebrity" means "person with too much money who may have heard of as many as five different watch brands"! Today, although the next watch will probably still be a Rolex, there's a chance that it may be a Patek Philippe, a Richard Mille, a Cartier or an Audemars Piguet.

I don't know whether these brands are giving watches to celebrities, offering deep discounts, or whether the chumps are actually paying regular-people prices -- and I also don't care!

Now, there are blogs and YouTube channels and books which are each only about one brand of watch, and that's okay, if the author or creator knows a lot about that brand.

And to me, knowing which movie and music stars wear which of those five brands, does not constitute knowing a lot about those brands. I know that some people disagree. 

For example, some prominent men's magazines have full-time, high-paid staffers whom they call "watch experts," who don't know anything about watches except which movie stars or music stars wear Rolex, Patek, Richard Mille, Cartier or Audemars Piguet. 

At least -- they never SAY, or write, anything else about watches. Not even to mention Vacheron Constantine, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breguet, Zenith, Omega, Grand Seiko, G-Shock, Hublot, A Lange & Soehne, Nomos, Glashuette Original, IWC, Piaget, Longines, Bell & Ross, Panerai, Parmigiani Fleurier, Vostok, Breitling, Citizen, Orient, TAG Heuer, Tudor or any one of the many, many other watch brands which are worth mentioning for some reason or other besides being worn by movie stars and music stars. 

You know what? When I want to know something about movies or music, I don't confine myself to asking watch aficionados about them. Call me crazy.

Celebrities and Rolex

Just because you have a wonderful talent for acting or singing, or playing the baritone sax, or cooking while talking to cameras about cooking, or even all of the above, there's no guarantee that you will know much at all about any other given thing. Luxury watches, for example. Ask the average person to list as many brands of luxury watches as they can, and they'll say: "Rolex... Uhhhh... Ummmm..."

And celebrities seem to be pretty average when it comes to watches. Over and over again, a headline about some celebrity's watch collection leads to a story about a collection of Rolexes (also known as "the genuine fake Timexes"), or a collection of mostly Rolexes. Over and over again, some person whose talents apart from the world of watches impresses me very much, has disappointed me in this way. I'm just about all out of hope. 

I don't have a lot of room to complain here. Faithful readers of this blog may recall that after suddenly developing a fascination with watches around 2010, and before reaching a certain level of sophistication in my knowledge of watches more recently, I myself, for a couple of years, was fascinated by, indeed, somewhat obsessed with, a certain Rolex model, the platinum Daytona on a platinum bracelet:

Which is a perfectly fine watch. All Rolexes are very high-quality, very dependable and accurate timepieces. Rolex is also an extremely conservative brand, to the point of being boring, with very slight changes in styling and function coming only once in a great while. Also, a Rolex typically will cost about twice as much as an Omega made from comparable materials, with comparable function and quality.

And some might argue that Omegas, too, are somewhat overpriced, because, although, as I mentioned above, Rolex is the only luxury watch brand of which many people have heard, if they've heard of two, there's a good chance that the second brand is Omega, so that their prices may be due more to marketing than to any inherent quality in their products.

Now let's compare this to the point of view of someone who actually knows a bit about luxury watches. Among real connoisseurs, there are three Swiss brands which for decades have been considered the pinnacle of watchmaking: Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantine. Apart from things like very small specialty brands who turn out one custom-made hand-made watch every several years at a price of several million dollars, these three brands have widely been considered to be the very best there is. Although recently, some would say that a fourth Swiss brand, Jaeger-LeCoultre, should be considered alongside or even above the Holy Trinity, and some would say that the German manufacturer A Lange & Soehne is right up there, and others would say Grand Seiko, which recently split off from the Japanese brand Seiko.

All of the brands mentioned so far are relatively conservative in styling. Two Swiss brands which are definitely outside the box with their designs, but which still don't seem to offend the snobs, are MB&F and Urwerk. Two brands which are way outside of the box, which definitely DO offend snobs, are Hublot and Richard Mille. In my opinion, with watches as with anything else, I think that if you give any weight to the opinions and nasty remarks of snobs, it's a real shame. 

But anyway, Rolex is just not in that upper echelon. Someone who really knows about all of those other brands may sneer at you for wearing a Rolex, or make some nasty remark about Rolex being God's way of marking fools who until recently had too much money. Or, if they're nice, they might say that if you're sure you can afford it, and you're sure that it's really really the watch you want, then a Rolex is a fine watch. (And they wouldn't be lying.) But they also might urge you to shop around a little in the other brands I've mentioned, and there are still others that could be mentioned, dozens of brands which are just as good as, if not better than Rolex.

So, why is Rolex so much more well-known? It's rather mysterious. It's as if Mercedes-Benz were the only luxury auto brand people had ever heard of -- unless maybe they'd also heard of BMW (in analogy to Omega).

Many watch brands, including Rolex, have what are known as "brand ambassadors," famous people who wear their watches in public in exchanges for free watches, or money, or both. Rolex has brand ambassadors -- perhaps it won't shock you to learn that Jack Nicklaus is one -- and they have ads in fancy magazines. But not enough of either one to explain their complete world domination. Not enough to explain why there are waiting lists years long for the choicest Rolex models.

I just had a sinister idea. The fact that most celebrities who collect watches, collect Rolexes and not much else, is tremendous advertising for Rolex. Maybe Rolex has many more brand ambassadors than they admit. Maybe they have shadowy agents everywhere in the world of fame. Whenever a performer or athlete seems about to break through into fame, perhaps the anonymous Rolex guy appears and says, "Hey, Rolex admires what you do. And we'd like you to have a Rolex on us -- Hell, take two, they're small! Heh heh heh. Yeah, there are some vintage watches in there with the new ones. You could mix it up. New is interesting. Old is interesting in a different way. We'd just ask one favor: don't tell anybody that Rolex gave these watches to you. Let people think that you bought them. And then maybe I'll come around to visit you on a regular basis."

Yes, that's a rather extreme speculation of mendacity. But Rolex has a rather extreme position in the watch market. It's extremely difficult to explain.

Dream Log: Driver of Tragic Celeb

 I dreamed that a celebrity, no one I recognized from real life, a former Olympic athlete turned occasional actress, had had a severe accident during an attempted acrobatic publicity stunt. She had severe wounds to several abdominal muscles. Doctors told her that it was unlikely that she would heal soon, or that she would ever heal completely. 

She left the hospital against medical advice, stole a big bag of cocaine, and this was when she met me on the street. She said she was in trouble and needed a driver. I didn't recognize her in the dream, although she was very famous. She said she needed help, so I helped her.

 She was being searched for by a lot of people. Law enforcement wanted to arrest her because she was in possession of a large amount of cocaine. A crime organization was looking for her, because it was their cocaine she had stolen. And news media were going crazy, because their "this is a private tragedy and nobody else's business"-button broke decades ago and apparently cannot be repaired.

While we were driving, she asked me to turn on the radio news, and I noticed her taking the bag of cocaine out of her purse and applying cocaine directly to the stitches on her abdomen (I don't know whether this would actually result in pain relief in real life), and that's how I put two and two together and figured out who she was. It wasn't long after that when she asked me to put on some music instead of the news.

She told me that when the cocaine ran out, or when she was about to get caught, whichever came first, she was going to kill herself. "Do you judge me for that?" she asked.

"No," I said. "Because nobody knows exactly what it's like to be anybody else."

 "That's right," she said. "You'd be amazed at how people judge celebrities."

"I've noticed the way a lot of people do it," I said. "Maybe most people. Not me. I also don't watch so-called 'reality' TV. Not that I assume you've been on it."

"Not knowingly," she said. "Not willingly."

"So possibly you're in the background in a couple of shots."

"It's possible," she said, and we laughed.

"I try not to judge people," I said. "But I do try to help them. If I could help you -- if someone could help, somehow, so that things got better, and you didn't want to kill yourself anymore --"

She interrupted me, saying, "You're starting to come close to judging me." We were both quiet for a while.

We came to Fargo, North Dakota, and suddenly, instead of the year 2020, everything was the 1950's: our car, other vehicles, road signs, storefronts, everything. Then I woke up.  

Dream Log: Top Apps For Celebrities Only

Last night's dream was strange on several levels. For one thing, it had to do with some celebrities, such as Jessica Simpson, about whom I rarely think except to wonder why they're celebrities. Some people might say about Jessica Simpson that, talented or not, she's gorgeous. The thing is that, to me, she's not even particularly interesting-looking. I can understand when someone who's not particularly talented is a superstar if I think they're gorgeous, like, for instance, Raquel Welch in the 1970's,

but then there are others where I just don't get it. And last night's dream was about celebrities about whom I just don't get it. In fact, they are celebrities who are so uninteresting to me that I can't even remember, now that I'm awake, who they are, other than Jessica Simpson. There were about a half dozen of them, both genders, most, I guess about as old as Ms Simpson (39 years old) and with careers which peaked about the same time as hers (late 1990's and early 2000's).

Another thing which was strange about the dream is that I was acting like a celebrity-hater, which I'm not. I've never been able to understand why people go to the trouble of commenting that this or that celebrity, in their opinion, is hideous is some way or another. For example, above, I gave my opinion that Jessica Simpson is not gorgeous. I only said that to try to express how strange I found it that I was dreaming about her, and not because I think anybody has the slightest reason to care that I don't find her to be gorgeous, Jessica Simpson herself least of all, among other reasons because, of course, many people DO think she's absolutely gorgeous.

Anyway -- in this dream, I was wasting my time intensely disliking Jessica Simpson and some other celebrities for some reason or reasons I can't fathom now that I'm awake. And in this dream, there was a certain kind of app which was offered only to celebrities. Billionaires couldn't buy these apps, unless they had managed to make themselves into celebrities as well as billionaires, like -- Mark Cuban. These apps would transform the celebrities in some way. It was sort of like plastic surgery without the wait and the physical pain. There were lists of these celebrity apps on websites: for each celebrity associated with the apps program, there was a list of apps, each one with a picture of the celebrity showing what the app did.

And what exactly the apps did, is not clear to me. I mentioned plastic surgery because it's the closest real-world example I can think of. All that's clear about these apps is that they were exclusive, and that a wide public was envious of the celebs for having the apps -- envy of celebrities: there's another thing, liking hating celebrities, which I can't understand -- and that the celebrities were sort of addicted to the apps. A lot of celebrities steered clear of this sort of thing the way they steered clear of alcohol or recreational drugs.

For some reason, I was put in charge of the apps having to do with these half-dozen or so celebrities. And with gleeful hatred, I discontinued some of the apps which had been offered to Jessica Simpson and the half-dozen others. When I made the changes in the apps, the pictures in the online lists of apps, instead of simply disappearing, changed into other pictures of the celebs.

Jessica Simpson got very angry at me and complained, publicly, wearing a long, tight sequined dress, with an elaborate hairdo with her hair piled up high and with strands of diamonds holding her hair in place. It was not clear whether she was physically near me and we both were being filmed at the same time, or if we were communicating with some sort of Internet video-phone setup, like Skype except more elaborate. Either way, we were top news on shows like "Entertainment Tonight," which showed video of her complaining in the sequined dress with the elaborate hairdo, and me sitting at my computer and smirking like the weasel and jerk I was acting like.

I just want to say that, in real waking life, I have absolutely no reason to even say something mean to Jessica Simpson, and that my behavior in this dream seems very unlike myself. The apps seem like something (some completely fictional thing) which might have been dangerous, but to take them away from someone out of sheer spite is really completely unlike me.