Normal Watches -- the ironic T-shirt of timepieces

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With the ironic-slogan T-shirt just about done to death, and message trucker hats so five minutes ago (unless you’re ’30 Rock’ cast member Judah Friedlander), is there any bodily real estate where your quirky, irreverently hip, of-the-moment bon mots can alight? How about the wrist?

That’s Normal Watches in a nutshell. Launched in April 2008 by friends and co-owners Matthew Newell and Shayne Ivy (who also serves as creative director) and based out of Normal, Ill., the line of 14 different brightly colored plastic watches, which sell for $18 to $32 each (depending on where you buy ‘em), are emblazoned with slogans like ‘Yes We Did’ (with a picture of President Obama), ‘Golden Girls Fan’ and ‘I Want Candy.’

Sure, at first glance they remind you of Swatch watches -- but with three times the snark and at half the price. My favorite is the ‘Social Media Watch,’ the face of

which is festooned with the icons that clutter our online lives including ones representing Facebook, Flickr and RSS.

‘We kind of wanted to do what Ikea and H&M have been doing,’ Newell told me on the phone earlier today. ‘Offer up something that was affordable, fun and contemporary. Nobody is buying those prestige watches and with cellphones and computers you don’t need one to tell time anymore.’

Newell says that he and Ivy thought about launching a T-shirt line but thought the message watches were

a ‘smaller and less obvious place’ to showcase hipster sentiments like ‘Rebellion Is Essential,’ ‘Love Is the New Hate,’ and ‘Facebook Ruined My Life.’

Although some of the styles can be ordered online through Amazon, less expensively from a site called Joe Rockhead (if you prefer old-fashioned bricks and mortar they’re in stock at the LF boutique at 106 S. Robertson Blvd. in Los Angeles) it’s worth the trip to the Normal Watches website to get a full list of retailers -- if for no other reason than to read the humorous faux back story (it includes robbing four banks, drinking 10 bottles of Jägermeister, driving 2,000 miles and reciting ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by memory -- in 36 hours).

If none of their wrist candy quite captures your aching need for self-expression, just hold on to your stingy brim fedora; Newell says they plan to add seven more styles in September.

-- Adam Tschorn

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