Scentology: Self-branding by fragrances
Monday, July 20 by Drew Pickard
I’ve become more interested in fragrances recently – at least, more interested than when I used to inherit old cologne from my dad via my mom in junior high and high school. (Drakkar Noir, Old Spice, etc)
I mostly wore Hugo Boss BOSS a few years ago and was content with that mainstream scent: syrupy, sweet club-sweat ‘flavor’. It had never really crossed my mind that there were darker and more eclectic options out there until I started spending more time browsing scents at our local “apothecary” at Blackbird.
They carry just a couple higher-end scents (Comme Des Garçons, Dyptique), and an indie clean scents (Malin & Goetze).
When they brought in CDG’s Synthetic Series 6 scents, my interest was piqued.
I liked the idea of smelling like a natural re-creation of an artificial product. We tend to smell artificial smells as much or more as natural – well, at least us city-folk.
I think that ’scent’ branding is an important component to one’s fashion. As important as clothing, hair & makeup. (makeup is for the ladies and KISS, not the common or uncommon man!) Men tend to spend little to no thought on it – just grabbing the Axe or Brut deodorant, aftershave, cologne or soap available at their local supermarket or drugstore. Most of these are designed to smell similarly – saccharine sweet, maybe a little woodsy, sporty but always weighed down by a syrupy after-smell. Many are musky, thick, cloudy – simple, dumb and one-sided.
The introduction and growth of Axe has definitely proved that men are interested in fragrance, however motivated by sexual response from women. But everyone has access to Axe. Everyone can instantly imagine what Axe smells like – it’s a product tied to a marketing campaign first and foremost, not a scent tied to a person or feeling. It’s not really ‘ownable’ because everyone can smell like that . . .
More interesting is rarity, strangeness, masculinity and complexity.
CDG Synthetic are a series of very avant garde fake scents that mimic several hisotrically ‘unpleasant’ odors:
Garage smells like your dad’s oil and gas soaked garage, mixed with some leather, wood and vetiver.
Skai smells, literally, like faux leather with some coal, sandalwood, etc to round it out.
Soda smells like . . . a chemical-tainted Sprite.
Tar, like fresh black top, cigarettes, bergamot (south american citrus fruit), styrax (south american flowered shrub)
Trust me, they smell better than they sound.
My favorite, by far, was Garage. Manly, stinky but . . . pleasant. Just like a man should smell.
But I hadn’t yet convinced my wife that it’d be a good new ’standard’ for me and she was already biased toward Malin + Goetze’s Rum fragrance.
I wanted to try some other options, some leather, some wood – so upon recommendations from StyleZeitgeist users, I ordered a few samples from LuckyScent.com. Sadly, they weren’t free ($3-$4 each) but the vials contained enough to try em out for a few days and get a better idea of how they wear.
I remain utterly convinced that cologne reacts much differently on my body than most people. Seems like my body dissolves or breaks down scents faster than anyone else I know. So I think something heavier and more complex was right up my alley, beyond or in addition to a standard lighter, sweeter M+G Rum.
(After several months of usage, I’m pretty sure M+G Lime is instantly absorbed or dissipated by my sweati-ness)
So without further ado, the samples I ordered and my and Shannon’s impressions of them, and then noted below each -the actual description from LuckyScent.
Comme Des Garçons – Odeur 53
Almost cinnamony, soda, light woodsy, spicy, sharp
Smells like a lot of other colognes. Not my style at all. Too sharp and prickly.
Shannon: Yuck.
Manufacturer Description: oxygen, flash of metal, fire energy, washing drying in the wind, mineral carbon, sand dunes, nail polish, cellulose, pure air of the high mountains, ultimate fusion, burnt rubber, flaming rock
Lucky Scent: New Car
Rating: 7.0
Olivier Durbano – Black Tourmaline
Very avant garde, smokey, gassy, leathery but with a sweet end. Very similar to garage but with a kind of patina to smooth out the gassy/tar/oil saturation but with a slight touch of anise?
This one smelled very different when we first smelled it – lighter and airy. Now smells darker, heavier and more gassy and leathery.
Shannon: Liked it at first, then it changed a bit after airing out and she thought it smelled a lot different – more like Garage.
Manufacturer Description: Cardamom, coriander, cumin, frankincense, pepper, smoked wood, oud, leather, precious woods, musk, amber, moss, patchouli
Lucky Scent: Burned wood, sweet smoke, rich oud and dried spice
Rating: 9.0
M. Micallef – Avant Garde
Firstly smells strongly of alcohol – much moreso than the others.
Then a bright and light chemical flowery leather smell, some lime, the most flowery of all of them, but still not feminine. Smells similar to CDG Soda, if I remember correctly but with more naturalistic flavor, less chemical stank.
Shannon: Her favorite by far.
Manufacturer Description: bergamot, grapefruit, cocoa bean, tobacco, incense, Russian leather, tonka bean, grey amber
Lucky Scent: tobacco mixed with cocoa balances the striking freshness of the citrusy top notes
Rating: 8.9
Miller Harris – L’air de Rien
Powdery, cat litter, grassy. Pretty gross. The worst by far.
Shannon: Thought it smelled like her mom, or an old lady or baby powder.
Manufacturer Description: French oak moss, Tunisian neroli, sweet musk, amber and vanilla
Lucky Scent: smells of father’s pipe, floor polish, empty chest of drawers, old forgotten houses, the scent creates an atmospheric effect, ambery-vanillic, quirky
Rating: 2.7
Boudicca – Wode
Smells exactly like OFF! bug spray. I had a momentary flashback to going to camp as a child.
Strong and distinct,woodsy, bug sprayish with with some grassy notes and soda tinge.
Shannon: Yuck.
Manufacturer Description: Juniper, Cardamon, Nutmeg, Clary Sage, Corriander, Angelica Root, Saffron, Tonka Bean, Styrax, Amber, Treemoss, Musk, Leather
Lucky Scent: A stroll in the woods becomes a trek through a primeval forest with a few glowing yellow eyes peering at you from the shadows. A dark and ethereal swirl of resins and animalic notes dances around a heart of leather and musk and there is an intriguing undercurrent of something raw and untamed, softened by a soft whisper of sweetly narcotic tuberose.
Rating: 6.7
Comme Des Garçons – Garage
Still my favorite. Smells like all of the best parts of a garage without being too overwhelming.
It sounds very strange, smells strange but yet remains inoffensive and almost comforting in its familiarity.
Manufacturer Description: oakmoss, animal musk, leather, ambery-vanillic, quirky
Lucky Scent: tobacco mixed with cocoa balances the striking freshness of the citrusy top notes
Rating: 9.0
I’m still leaning toward CDG’s Garage, but Olivier Durbano’s Black Tourmaline is giving it a solid run for it’s money.
I’ll probably test them out a little over the next week or two and make a decision then.
It might seem a little freakish to go to these lengths – but definitely think more men should consider the idea of ’scent branding’. There are more than enough colognes out there for any guy to claim his own ’smell’.
(However, any scent similar to my DL&Co’s Modern Alchemy Salem candle would automatically trump all of above options. The idea of smelling like burning books, wood and brackish seawater is vastly more attractive to me. Pirates before mechanics. Come on DL&Co, make it happen!)
Star Trek
Friday, June 12 by Drew Pickard
Star Trek remains my favorite franchise in all of entertainment – fmor the wild-eyed idealism of Star Trek, the future-pointed brilliance of The Next Generation to the dark, war-tones of Deep Space Nine – the series in unmatched in depth and breadth of ideas and tones.
The franchise has definitely had its pitfalls with the odd-numbered films, horribly directed combat in most series, some poor special effects, awkward writing and masturbatory self-reference . . .
And not every Trek series was as strong . . . Voyager suffered from a severe lack of lasting story consquences, despite the edge of space setting. Enterprise, terribly casted, defaulted to rehashing old plots or reintroducing enemies from other series. There were rumors of a TNG follow-up series being developed, focusing on Riker and Troi during the collapse of the Federation, but basing a new series on two of the worst characters in the previous (one of which has not aged well) was folly.
With the final two Trek shows being canceled and fans signing petitions to have the franchise’s helmsmen banished from Trek forever, it seemed that Trek would have to go into cold storage for a while . . .
And then JJ Abrams signed on to direct a new Trek film, and the fanboys rejoiced.
But when it was announced that he would ‘reboot’ the original characters . . . there was much fear.
JJ Abrams Star Trek is not Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. It’s more hyped, more hyper-active, more aggressive, less introspective. The characters retain their basic threads but have been woven into a new, shinier tapestry. And there are not Shakespeare quoting Klingons in this one . . .
The Good
JJ managed dodged canon-heralding trekkies by creating an alternate timeline in which to play and reinterpret original Trek elements. His properties are not new to time-travel subterfuge, if you’ve been keeping up with LOST . . .
Fans are already lobbying to see Abram-ized Klingons or, strangely, Gorn.
The villian, Nero, is the opposite of the previous Star Trek villians. He is not secretive, intelligent nor dramatic. He does not wield an expansive vocabulary and an English accent. He is not an unfathomable floating-head space being, nor a murderous race of robotic hive-logic automatons.
He is a man who has lost his family and his planet, and he wants the perceived perpetrators to experience the same.
The ship is fantastically rendered, battles are less chess and more dodgeball. Just think, it’ll make sense.
There’s a real sense of scale and position in space. While space in older Star Trek films felt formless and without scale (why do you think so many battles happened in orbit of a planet?), JJ Abrams uses nebula, camera work and movement to create dynamic movement.
The GUI and design work on the Trek interior is fantastic and balances realism between the 60’s Trek’s bo-beep knobs and 90’s Trek’s featureless, personality-less touch pads.
It helps that the actors were interacting with actual real Adobe AIR applications designed by OOOiii. (also responsible for the heralded Minority Report virtual interfaces)
Chris Pine as Kirk was pretty much note-perfect. He had enough touches of Shatner’s Kirk to link the two – but also is a bit more believable as a rebel and a brilliant prodigy. Overly confident, cocky, and yet charismatic.
The ‘root’ story of the film is a bit fuzzy in the end. It’s about destiny, and the past and future fueling the now . . . but it was more a setup movie for future films more than anything. And that’s what’s most exciting and also risky – bringing this shined up, ‘modern’ Star Trek into the classic root of what Star Trek really was about – ideas and hope.
That’s what I’m more excited about – seeing where JJ will take them and what else he’ll do in the Trek World.
WWDC + iPhone 3GS
Tuesday, June 9 by Drew Pickard
Gruber pretty much nailed every point of the Keynote on Sunday night. Spoilerz!
Keynote . . . notes
- Macbook Pro price reductions were a big hit with the crowd
- Safari tabs noticeably absent from the presentation . . .
- Apple OS X VP, Craig Federighi, looks like a super-nerd Steve Martin.
- Bing ads popped up all over nytimes.com as Federighi was demoing the Dock Exposé. Well played, MS, well played.
- 30 Rock clip was a perfect lead-in to ‘Find my iPhone’. Great security support couple with the remote wipe command.
- Wayne Grant from Pasco played off his bugged presentation off very well. Funny guy – and I’d believe he’s a great science teacher.
Macbook Pro
Decent updates to their notebooks. The inclusion of an SD card is definitely interesting and a good move by Apple. However, not EVERY digital camera has moved to SD. Higher end DSLR cameras are still using CompactFlash.
The price drops may be a simultaneous nod to the state of the economy and also a lean towards market share at the expense of a slight hit to Apple’s healthy profit margin. It’s also possible that their increasing sales are netting them a better price-per-unit.
Safari 4
Using it as I type. UI seems faster than the beta. Page rendering seems the
It still apparently likes to hang on ONLY the root of ebay.com, any other URL on ebay works perfectly. Works again if I clear my cookies.
Most interesting thing is that the poorly-designed top-tabs have reverted to the pre-existing placement but retain some of the new finish (curved edges, rollover square close button, etc).
The top tabs were not working as designed and Apple realized it . . . sheepishly, as they didn’t even mention it in the keynote.
AT&T’s missteps
Pricing
Now that the standard subsidizations have kicked in, people are realizing that they can’t get the iPhone for the advertised price. This has been an unfortunate standard practice by all wireless carriers for years, but there never really has been a phone as popular as the iPhone, so their long-standing questionable practices are put into even keener focus.
Existing iPhone owners who bought the iPhone 3G and signed up for the 2 year contract now may be paying up to $499 for a new iPhone.
MMS & Tethering Support
Most shocking and possibly surprising is that iPhone 3GS’ newest features, MMS and tethering will not be available at launch for customers in Apple’s own home country on the very first provider for iPhone.
AT&T has been quoted as targeting ‘late summer’ for MMS and currently has ‘no announcements’ about tethering. In other words, they’re still figuring out how to reasonably gouge existing and new customers for even more money per month.
I would not be surprised if they attempted to shoehorn in an MMS limitation into the contracts when it’s launched.
The positive spin is that it it weren’t for Apple, AT&T probably would never have gotten around to upgrading their cell networks to support MMS. Foolish.
But will Apple leave AT&T?
This is a recurring rumor whenever the exclusivity expiration date is brought up.
I find this doubtful. Most likely, they’ll pull a Pixar, put their feelers out this winter before the contract expires, let the rumors float and use it as leverage to AT&T to make some concessions. Possibly: faster adoption in advance of iPhone updates (avoiding embarrassments such as lack of MMS) and possibly asking AT&T to remove the probably impending tethering surcharge. Better rates for sure.
Surrogates
Tuesday, May 26 by Drew Pickard
This movie looks like a mashup of every single sci-fi action film of the past 20 years. Every single good and bad idea all rolled into one film.
Every once and a while, the Hollywood Movie Machine accidently makes a ridiculously-contrived film for the ages. This just might be that film.
Terminator, V, 5th Element, Minority Report, AI, I Robot, X-men 3 (de-aging effects), The Matrix, I Am Legend, The Jackal (Bruce Willis’ hairpiece), Demolition Man
“We can change the world and now you want to destroy it?!”
Epic.
Wolverine
Thursday, May 14 by Drew Pickard
Wolverine: The Good, the bad, and The Studio.
(warning, contains spoilers!)
The Good
Hugh jackman still stands as solid casting. No, he’s not short, wildebeast hairy, crotchety or ugly enough – but get real, it’s a movie.
But he is believable, genuine, and has the veins and the coif for it.
Liev Schriber is great as the re-booted Sabretooth, cleverly, née ‘Victor Creed’ rather than his callsign already tarnished by Taylor Mane in X-Men 1.
Deadpool pt.1 – Perfect and obvious casting of Ryan Reynolds. Everyone smelled a spin-off from the get-go . . .more on that later.
Blob. Solid casting. Best fatsuit I’ve ever seen in film – narrowly beats out Fat Bastard from Austin Powers.
The Bad
The plot is razor thin, contrived and frankly, inefficient. With all the technology Stryker had, you’d think he could come up with a more streamlined plan to create some mutant-bots. Like say, the plot of the second X-men film? His son already has the juice to control an army of mutants, and yet he apparenlty used Jason’s ‘juice’ to link Deadpool to a computer? Activated by command line?
While it was cool to see Gambit realized on film – I could have waited for a better first appearance that gives him more to do than fly a plane. (?!)
Also – Victor’s turn against his brother is unbelievable and ridiculous given the credit-introduction scenes of decades of their friendship and camaraderie.
And finally, one of the greatest travesty’s of the film is the utter destruction of one of the most popular and devlishly-likable characters in comic nerd-dom – Wade Wilson. Turning him into a cesspool of stolen mutant powers, none of which are surprising, all of which ridiculous and ineptly used.
Add to it the insane decision to remove the source of the charisma of the character – his mouth. He’s the ‘merc with a mouth’! Not ‘the merc with lazer eye beams, teleporting, healing, and sword arms which he instantly knows how to control better than the original owners’.
(And most of which they ‘cleverly’ set up with blatantly contrived exposition in his first scene)
At least they added the scene at the end where he puts his head back on . . . right?! Yuck.
The Studio
Fox is very obviously playing the hail-mary with all of their potential Marvel properties right now. Pumping and dumping as many X-Men/Wolverine/Deadpool movies out as they can until the properties revert back to the newly-studio-ized Marvel.
(responsible for the excellent Iron Man, satisfactory Hulk of last summer)
Their attitude started when Bryan Singer wanted to delay the promised X3 to do Superman – the studio got pissed, pulled him off the project and handed it to Brett ‘The Ratt’ Rattner with the agreement that X3 would beat Superman to theaters. (Turns out they had little to fear, X3 beat out Superman in BoxOffice despite a thinned plot and facepalm-ing direction)
They blew it by leaking the workprint, and blew it even further by basically obfuscating the fact that the workprint was, by and large, the final cut – sans final effects & sound. The alleged ‘pick up shooting’ and was nothing more than a total of 10 mins of ‘bonus’ footage shot for the alternate surprise endings.
One as a last-minute apology/appetizer for the next film which will inevitably be set in Japan and be focused on the Yakuza love interest storyline ( or some bastardized version of it where Gambit saves the day at the last minute by decapitating some Yakuza-sent mutant-ninja-robots)
Lest we mention the much-talked-about Storm shot from the trailer that mysteriously was cut from the film? Early advertisement for the DVD bonus material, anyone?
What could have been . . .
With so many themes of brothers, fathers (both real and false) this could have easily become a strong and meaningful theme in this film. The ideas were lightly touched upon: Logan’s post-murderous realization of his father’s true identity, the revealing of Victor as his half-brother and their following lengths of time together, Stryker’s half-step towards being a surrogate father, the X-team’s kinship, the girl’s pseudo-betrayal, and then Styker and Victor’s betrayal of Logan at the end . . . truly leaving Logan as an outsider, broken, betrayed, destroyed.
Maybe much more willing to have his mind erased as a side effect of Adamantium injection . . .
The Shark’s Own Private Reunion
Saturday, April 18 by Drew Pickard
Rumors abound that seminal Indie band, Sunny Day Real Estate, has reformed with original members and is currently practicing somewhere in Seattle, preparing for a potential tour.
To me, it sounded too good to be true. Afterall, when my other beloved band, The Smashing Pumpkins reformed 2 years ago, I figured it was a lucky fluke. (Maybe not so lucky given Billy’s bitter tirades against fans and now Jimmy Chamberlein’s recent departure)
But this rumor started from a random Twitter sounded more and more plausible once put in the light of more recent comments made by Jeremy about a reunion. Sunny Day (in various forms) has broken up and reformed twice now once as SDRE, and a second time with all but Dan as The Fire Theft. Add to it the Foo Fighters indefinite hiatus . . . and a perfect storm of timing is brewing . . . and then add to it this rumor from the only respectable radio jockey in history, 107.7’s former in-crowd-dude Marco Collins.
So I checked in with a very reliable source who is very close to Jeremy. The result?
A ‘no comment *wink wink*’ response. In other words, another confirmation that Sunny Day is, indeed, back.
Hopefully we will hear official word soon.
EDIT:
More confirmation
Past-forward.
Thursday, April 16 by Drew Pickard
My grandfather’s prescient note on the increasing commercialization of Accounting, leading the way to enmeshed relationships with corporations . . . which of course paved the way for things like Enron and created a firm platform of poor accounting ethics for the current housing loan & bank crisis.
“It seems that the effects of the phenomenal growth in the profession and competitive pressures have created in some CPAs attitudes that are intensely commercial and nearly devoid of the high-principled conduct that we have come to expect of a true professional. It is sad that we seem to have become a breed of highly skilled technicians and businessmen, but have subordinated courtesy, mutual respect, self-restraint, and fairness for a quest for firm growth and a preoccupation with the bottom line.”
Taken from a speech in 1980 as the outgoing Board Chairman of the American Institute of CPAs a year before his death from cancer.
JCVD
Sunday, March 29 by Drew Pickard
JCVD is a strange yet endearing movie. French/Belgian in it’s characterization, awkwardness, conflict and style, the film is Jean-Claude Van Damme playing . . . Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film trashes his the real Jean Claude’s name as the JCVD character is mistakenly blamed for holding up a Brussels Post, loses his daughter in a custody battle (she is humiliated for having a washed up action star father), shot, and ultimately jailed for extortion.
The opening scene is a several-minute single-take action shot that includes every single 90’s action movie cliché all rolled into one fantastically awesome fight scene.
As we move between multiple viewpoints of the film – Jean Claude enters a bank to retrieve a cash wire and is caught up in a robbery & hostage situation and mistaken by some of his own fans as the perpetrator. Police, family and fans alike join in the standoff.
But the centerpiece of the film is a strange reverie where JCVD rises on a lift to the rack lights on the soundstage and delivers a single-shot gut-wrenching monologue. He tearfully details his own rise and fall as a Hollywood action star, his failures, custody battle, failing career, near bankruptcy and drug addiction. He pleads to be taken seriously again – after all, he is just a man, an actor.
It’s the most convincing scene in the film, perfectly acted, emotional. JCVD is torn apart as an invincible Hollywood action star but rebuilt as a pitiable, even likeable person . . . yet he is impersonating himself. An actor playing a caricature of himself. Charlie Kaufman would be proud.
Fashion Obsession: Luxury Sneakers
Saturday, March 28 by Drew Pickard
Leather ultra-high-top sneakers by Rick Owens, Diesel, Diet Butcher Slim Skin
$1200, $200, $600
iPhone OS 3.0
Wednesday, March 18 by Drew Pickard
Apple revealed the details of the upcoming iPhone OS 3.0 today and released the coinciding SDK to developers.
Definitely a few great additions to the consumer side of things (Search, MMS & Cut/Copy/Paste) but I think that the detailed developer APIs were possibly more exciting than the impending and obvious consumer updates. Everyone was screaming about Cut/Copy/Paste but it will be immediately taken for granted. It’s not so much a killer feature as it is a basic function people were missing.
Among the hilighted new APIs and features for developers are In-App Purchase, Peer to Peer, Push, Maps, Turn-by-Turn GPS support, VoiceOver, the External Accessory framework and iPod Library Access.
(Let this mark the beginning of the gradual decline of GPS stand-alone units as the iPhone and other cell phones erode their business . . .)
The In-App purchase is going to be huge. I cannot overstate it. Huge.
Paid content expansion for games has been wildly successful on PC/Mac, platforms (Xbox/PS3/Wii) and platform games such as Rock Band and will greatly expand the potential revenue stream for game developers.
Additional levels for arcade-style games, added weapons and abilities for RPGs, added clothing/accessory/fashion models for simulation games and added music tracks for pattern-recognition games. (I wouldn’t be surprised to see Activision & Harmonix jump in on this immediately with additional mobile versions of their franchises)
It will be interesting to see how out-of-app paid content purchases are handled, if they’re handled at all. It will obviously require a hefty update of iTunes to handle the (yet another) additional content type.
I wonder how many developers are up right now brainstorming on what additional ‘paid content’ they’ll add to their apps . . .