Hublot Big Bang Tourbillon Ferrari: Chrono Rosso

The newest chronograph was launched at this year's Guangzhou International Auto Show on 20 November, but can be considered as a sort of exclusive 'preview' for the full range of Hublot/Ferrari watches which will be revealed at the 2012 Baselworld fair.

The case is a classic 44mm 'Big Bang' design and contains a Hublot HUB 6300 Column-wheel chronograph movement complete with a clutch Tourbillon escapement coupled directly to the cage. A power-reserve indicator sits on the side of the dial.

And endowing the new watch with that indefinable element of Ferrari magic, the sapphire crystal is tinted red (a difficult process) and the Prorosus crocodile strap carries red stitching: a true 'Chrono Rosso'.

Beattitudes: On Ann Beattie

Let's imagine Ann Beattie in the early 1970s. She was a thin young woman, bucktoothed, with an open, vulnerable face and long straight hair in the period style. She was a little waiflike, maybe, a little mournful, a little recessive. She was surely not a confident person—she'd been depressed a lot in high school, and finished near the bottom of her class. Her childhood had been ordinary, and she had been even more ordinary. Now she was treading water in graduate school, still not much of a student, bored, buying time. The last thing she wanted was to have to get a job. She shared a place with a bunch of other people, more or less aimless like herself, no doubt, mourning the '60s and waiting for something to happen. We can imagine her sipping tea on cloudy winter afternoons, listening to people's problems. There must have been a lot of pot, as people drifted in and out (did she smoke herself, or did she prefer to keep a clear head?), a lot of empty talk of plans and dreams.

She had a secret life though, late at night, up alone with her typewriter. It was very cold where she lived. She'd put a pillow on the floor in front of the radiator, get an extension cord, sit as close to the heat as she could and write all night. It was just a hobby. She never thought that anything would come of it. Did she write to fill the hours of insomnia? To laugh at her friends behind their backs? To keep at bay the chaos she must have felt, the sense of emptiness, anxiety, free fall? Was the writing just the manic backlash of the day's depression, or did she feel a growing strength of craft, something she was finally good at?

She showed some stories to a friend. Without telling her, he sent one to The New Yorker. A reader pulled it out of the slush pile and passed it on to the fiction editor. The editor sent her a note: in the future, please address your submissions directly to me. The magazine rejected the first seventeen she sent. Then, in the spring of 1974—she was 26—they published one, “A Platonic Relationship.” Over the next three years, they published fourteen more, and another eighteen in the six years after that.

A generation, it was felt, had found its chronicler in fiction. Beattiesque, Beattieland, the Beattie generation: these terms were soon coined. No one had written about these kinds of lives before: children of the counterculture set down, with a thud, in adulthood. Self-involved stoners, serial wives, absentee parents, would-be hippies, women trapped not in domesticity but outside it—stunted, stunned, impulsive, lost; hungry for love but unable to give it. People without families, without contexts, without enduring relationships, without anything at all to hold them in place. People yearning to escape, then yearning to escape their escape. People who needed to feel unique and ended up making themselves completely typical. People who couldn't grasp what was happening to them, even though they were the ones who were doing it. “What am I trying to think about,” one of them wonders. “I'd like to care,” another tells his wife (she's talking about the daughter he's abandoned), “but what you just said didn't make any impression on me.”

HAUTE LIVING MAGAZINE

Luxury Swiss watch manufacturer Hublot partnered with a new ambassador and

living legend Usain Bolt to celebrate the opening of their Beverly Hills

Boutique with a rather unique event.

The luxury timepiece atelier and the fastest man in the world came

together for the Hublot Race Challenge. Taking place at the Greystone

Mansion and hosted by sports personality Neil Everett, the race raised

$10,000 for every child that finished the race before the Jamaican sprint

star.

Not only the reigning running of the 200-meter dash, Bolt is also widely

involved in philanthropy, namely STAR Education, a non profit that focuses

on educational after school programs. The event was not only to raise

money for these cultural projects and after school programs, but also to

raise awareness about the importance of a healthy lifestyle, eating and

physical activity.

A new program, the Hublot and STAR "Games," was also announced at the

race, another collaboration between the Swiss timepiece maker and Bolt.

"For Hublot, it is hugely symbolic for watchmaker to see his watch worn

by the fastest man in the world," said Hublot Managing Director Ricardo

Guadalupe. "Like Hublot, Usain has set himself apart from the rest of the

world through his unique abilities. But on this day, we seek to unite the

community in a common principle of sharing."

After the event, a special evening took place at the recently opened Mr.

C's, where watch aficionados were able to view the latest collection of

Hublot timepieces. Bolt even put on a surprise DJ performance. Now that's

what we call a Renaissance man.

eWatches Announces Their Black Friday Sale on Top Brand Name Watches!

eWatches Announces Their Black Friday Sale on Top Brand Name Watches! Incredible once-a-year Deals Guaranteed

So they strove to think big when it came to their Black Friday sale scheduled for November 25, 2011, the day after Thanksgiving. Prices on watches, including Invicta, Tag Heuer and Breitling, are already heavily discounted on the site. However, the Black Friday holiday promotion on the site will provide consumers with further incentives by providing additional discounts.

The eWatches Black Friday sale will offer consumers exclusive pricing on their extensive watch inventory. For one day only, eWatches consumers will be able to buy watches at discounted prices--sometimes by as much as 93%!

The Black Friday sale will also offer consumers guaranteed holiday shipping. The site offers consumers free ground shipping on all watches, which they can upgrade to second-day air for just $5. What's more, the discounted watch retailer is offering an extended holiday return period this year--through to February 2012.

Some of the most sought after watches for men will be offered during the Black Friday sale. They will include such brands as Invicta, Seiko, Swiss Legend, , I by Invicta, Technomarine, Breitling, Tag Heuer and many more. Sports watches such as dive watches and chronograph watches will also be part of the promotion.

In addition to the watches for men, eWatches.com is offering the same discounts on their top selling women’s watches. Brands such as Glam Rock, Activa, Swiss Legend, Invicta, Seiko, Technomarine can be found at bargain basement prices.

With the holidays just around the corner, it is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of these remarkable discounts offered by eWatches on the biggest shopping day of the year. And be sure to stay tuned for additional seasonal sales.

Easton Garden Club's Festival of Trees begins Nov. 25

If shopping on Black Friday isn't your idea of fun, the Easton Garden Club has a festive alternative.

Beginning Friday, and running through Dec. 3, the club will host its first Festival of Trees, a display of 25 decorated trees at Queset House at 51 Main St.

Each tree will be decorated according to a theme, such as a giving tree adorned with gift cards valued at $1,000 from local merchants. A money tree will have Lottery tickets hanging from its branches and a sports tree will be decorated with items from Boston's professional sports teams, including a replica of the Stanley Cup.

A transportation tree decorated by Garden Club member Nancy Coheno, has ornaments and decorations ranging from police cars, fire trucks and tow trucks to motorcycles and pontoon boats.

"I've never seen anything like it. It's just a phenomenal tree," Garden Club publicity chairwoman Dede Ames said.

Ames said club members attended similar events in Methuen and Wellesley and wanted to start a new tradition in Easton.

"To watch children and parents was magical. The children saw all these lighted trees and their eyes lit up," Ames said. "I have to say the adults enjoyed the trees every bit as much as any child."

Visitors to the festival can pay for a chance to win a tree and donate to organizations including My Brother's Keeper, a volunteer Christian ministry that delivers furniture and food to families in need, by putting money into buckets placed in front of trees.

All other proceeds will pay for the Garden Club's beautification projects in town including the window boxes in North Easton Village as well as a scholarship that is given to a graduating senior from Oliver Ames High School each year.

Bulova Watches, Timed to Perfection Find Use in Tennis Courts

Sponsoring the first most important tennis sport event in the U.S., the official timekeepers of the BNP Paribas Open, Bulova watches have caught enough public attention. Featuring the most brilliantly shining stars in the tennis world like Federer, Nadal, Clijsters, and Wozniacki, Bulova Watches continued to rule the roost in the event.

Bulova’s presence in the form of digital clocks of the stadium and on the radar speed guns that track the serves exceeding one-hundred miles in an hour, bring popularity at its doorsteps, giving it worldwide admiration. Fans answering simple questions on tennis related talk by Bud Collins take home Bulova watches as prizes. Nonetheless, a lot of fans get chances to win Bulova watches just by attending the tournament.

Proudly commemorating its next subsequent year as the authorized sponsor for the BNP Paribas Open at India Wells Tennis Garden, Bulova is building upon its legacy of innovativeness in sports, like, for example, the promotion of the Bulova’s Phototimer, the first sports timing device with automatic functionality. Entitled officially as the Timekeeper of the US Olympic team for the games held in Calgary and Seoul, Bulova rightfully deserves the honour and distinction of bringing forth the most acclaimed or well-liked watches in the world.

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Favwatch.com plays a crucial role in highlighting Bulova Watches open to the challenges that future will undoubtedly bring forth with it. Bulova Watches promise to persistently endeavour and come off triumphant directing itself to a future that is even more up-and-coming for both the retailers and consumers. Bulova Watches, as a company is ready to explore new horizons and be a dominant factor in the transforming people’s way of leading life.

A Season For Gratitude

Once upon a time, in high school, I wrote a three-page short story in longhand. My teacher handed it back with a note in red ink across the top.

"This is good," he wrote. "Have you ever thought about being a writer?"

After that, it was what I always wanted to be.

For years, life happened. I fell in love with a handsome, freckled-faced Yankee boy, graduated from college, married the boy, found a job, had beautiful blonde babies, changed diapers, bought groceries, drove carpools, and managed a small business. No complaints. Life was good: a kind husband, two adorable daughters, plenty of hugs and a comfortable home in a"Leave It To Beaver” town.

Yet, in spite of the occasional night class, I wasn't a writer. It never made it high enough on my daily"To Do” list.

Then one fateful night at a neighborhood party, I fell into conversation with my neighbor, Bridget, who loved to write. She told me about a woman in Alameda who held writing classes around her dining room table.

The time was right. It was one of those messages delivered over my head by a two-by-four from the universe, and I took a gamble. On a warm summer day, I picked up two of my favorite black gel pens and a brand new spiral notebook and drove past rusty downspouts, boarded windows and neglected yards to the old officer's house on the old navy base where the teacher and her family lived at the time.

I was nervous, feeling like a total poser. I wondered what the"real” writers at the table would think of me. I resisted the impulse to bolt back to my car, screwed my courage to the sticking place and walked in past the scent of burning sage to meet Laurie Wagner.

It was one of the best decisions I ever made. I am now, four years later,"a regular” at Laurie's Wednesday table.

Laurie begins class by reading a poem aloud to the group, and then suggests a jump off line or two as a starting point. In two hours, we write for three 15-minute sessions as fast as we can without letting our pens leave the page.

She encourages us to write badly. It's not about sentence structure, punctuation or grammar. It's about forcing the internal editor to flee the scene. Laurie says the point of writing this way is to bypass the parts of us that want to look"clever and good.”

It works. Those times I tried to look"clever and good” to the other writers around the table, I wrote nothing worth keeping. The times I abandoned control to the process and got out of my own way, I stumbled into territory where my conscious mind might never go and often wound up with something authentic and much, much better.

After we write, we read our work out loud to the group. This is the part that might scare people off, but believe me — it's worth it. Not only is it therapeutic to spill your soul onto the table in front of kindred spirits, but some of my best writing started as rough scribbles from Wagner's wild write class. (Some of it is crap, too. But it's like that joke about the little boy smiling in a barn full of manure. There's got to be a pony in that barn somewhere.)

You write fast, and if you get stuck, you use the phrase,"What I really want to say…” and it gets you going again. Works like a charm.

So what I really want to say is because of a few words of praise from a respected teacher, I set a life goal. What I really want to say is that because of Laurie Wagner, I started writing on a regular basis, made time for myself every week and accumulated a large stack of notebooks filled with barely legible scribbles. And what I really want to say is because of Laurie I met my editor, classmate Eve Pearlman, who asked me to write for Alameda Patch.

What I really want to say is how many people get to be what they wanted to be when they were teenagers? I am a published writer.

I wish that my high school English teacher, John Hall, were alive to read this. He died from something that was probably AIDS-related, back in the days when no one knew what the initials"HIV” stood for.

What I really want to say to all the high school teachers out there, red pens in hand, is choose your words carefully when writing on the top of someone's homework assignment. You never know who might save it for 35 years in a manila file in a steel cabinet next to their water heater.

Watch football in person to understand

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the NFL will not release to the public "All-22" game video -- high-angle shots that show all players on the field. The A22 views are so super-secret, the Journal maintained, that only NFL coaches and a few network insiders are allowed to glimpse them.

Psssssst, buddy -- wanna see what all 22 players are doing? Attend a game.

In this era of wall-sized high-def plasma televisions, watching football on the tube has never been better. But to understand what's really happening, you must trek to a stadium and plunk into a seat.

Television shows the little tetragon around the football, but TMQ's law holds that Ninety Percent of Football Action Occurs Away From the Ball. How the defense lines up, how receivers move through the secondary: television doesn't really convey this, nor does highlight film that focuses on the ballcarrier. That's why NFL coaches want the coveted A22 video. It shows everything about a play, including a team's tendencies far from the ball.

At games, your columnist rarely watches the ball. Attend a game and force yourself to take your eyes away from the ball. Watch the line play or the secondary -- you'll see football in a whole new light. You may be able to point to who will catch the pass before the pass leaves the quarterback's hands. With practice, you may be able to point to who the ball with go to even before the snap, simply by seeing the All-22 perspective on how both sides line up.

In Sunday action, TV viewers got a shot of tight end Jimmy Graham of New Orleans standing all alone in the end zone for a 21-yard touchdown catch. But how did he get by his lonesome? Graham lined up as a slotback, inside a wideout. He ran a down-out-and-up, an unusual pattern for a tight end. The Atlanta linebacker on his side did not jam him, then chased him for a moment then let him go, because Graham was headed straight toward big-bucks cornerback Dunta Robinson. But Robinson never moved a muscle, letting Graham roar past, Robinson stood guarding no one. Was he in Cover 2? Something was amiss because the Atlanta safeties were both in the short middle. If you'd been at the game watching all 22 players, you'd have known it would be a touchdown to Graham (unless he dropped the ball) the instant the tight end cut up the field past a stationary cornerback.

Consider the second Dallas touchdown against Buffalo. It was third-and-goal for the Cowboys on the Bills 5. Buffalo blitzed six, which for someone at the game is a cue to move your eyes downfield -- a big blitz often means a big play for the offense. Tony Romo spun away from a blitzer and rolled into the left flat. If you'd been at the game, you would have seen the Buffalo corner on that side move toward the center of the field, because he thought Romo would spin the opposite way. That meant the Buffalo corner on the left failed to guard his man, totally ignoring Dallas wide receiver Laurent Robinson. From the all-22 perspective available only at the game, you would have cried "touchdown!" before the ball left Romo's hand -- because you would have seen a Dallas receiver all by himself, exactly in the place Romo was headed.

Elle’s Accessories Editor Boldly Divulges His Weekend Spending

Now's a tricky time to talk about money, which makes it all the more interesting when someone is willing to do so in detail and in a public forum like this here Internet. Daily Front Row's latest spending diary chronicles all the money Elle accessories editor Kyle Anderson spent over the weekend. Like every New Yorker, there are the trivial indulgences, like the $3.35 morning Starbucks order: "My usual order at Starbucks is a tall iced coffee with one Splenda and skim milk. Every intern in the history of Elle for the past six years knows this ... But in the autumn, I like an iced chai latte."

There are the $250 beauty treatments from Dr. Perricone: "I used to go tanning back in the high school days, 365 days a year. I was black slash glow-in-the-dark for most of the nineties." And the requisite splurge, Anderson's being a $12,956.13 watch from Hublot, which sounds like it was a gift for someone special: "It’s a watch with all of the words of the Declaration of Independence inside it. It’s perfect since my boyfriend just got his green card." And before dinner at the Standard, there's the personal booze shopping, which was a $630 champagne-and-flute set from Astor Wines. Also, the taxis, more coffee, magazines, Sunday night desserts. What New York expense did he miss? Yoga class? A flea market find? Drinks for other people purchased in a state of selfless drunkenness? Seems like he covered most of his bases, even without those things.

タグ：Weekend Spending

Look to kids' passions for perfect gifts

NEW YORK — To the uninitiated, buying gifts for kids can feel like a treasure hunt without a map through store aisles and websites packed for the holidays. But sussing out clues may not be as difficult as it looks.

Has the young recipient ever offered you one of his homemade cupcakes? Have you seen her tear around on a little ride-on bike? Is the living room often strewn with building bricks or stacking blocks?

Casual buyers looking for presents for children they don't know well need only focus on general interests. Mom and dad will likely take on the "it" gift of the season, or farm it out to grandma, leaving lots of room for other shoppers, whether the giftee is a builder, baker or bookish.

If that sounds too complicated, reach for the classics — in books, apparel or toys, said Rachel Jarrett, general manager of the children's department for the sale site Gilt Groupe. A sweater with room for size variation, or mittens or hats, for example. Try toys in wood, including eco-friendly bamboo.

"We do incredibly well with wooden toys," Jarrett said.

Anne Keane, fashion director for Lucky magazine, suggests keeping it simple. "Generally, staying with moderately classic, small gifts is the easiest route to take for all age groups," she said. "Especially if you don't know the kids that well."

タグ：perfect gifts