True enough, I could shop online — like much of America does these days — but I am more of the see-it, touch-it, feel-it, smell-it school of consumerism. And it's the smelling part that I wanted to share with you today.
Image via WikipediaWhen I was a kid I was always much too busy doing important things, like injecting vodka into oranges for the big New Year's fete, to do my Christmas shopping anytime prior to roughly 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve. That left me with very little latitude in the area of product selection. Generally, the only places remaining open at my selected shopping time were drugstores and Chinese restaurants.Being one who always wanted to opt for the gift that keeps on giving, I decided against the Egg Foo Yung for mom and a nice Moo Goo Gai Pan for dad. It left the drugstore. So, my dad always got a cellophane-wrapped Christmas edition of English Leather, and my mom a lovely half-gallon jug of whatever $10 perfume had just arrived from Paris that day.
They were both very kind. Our toilet smelled great for a couple of days after I had bestowed my mom's perfume upon her, and the neighbor's cat had that come-hither musky smell of English Leather for weeks.
So, when my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas this year it took me back.
"Just get me a bottle of cologne," I said.
Knowing that, were my wife to actually make that purchase, it would sit on my bathroom shelf like every other cologne that I have ever owned until it became distilled enough that I could guzzle it on the rocks with a touch of tonic water and a squeeze of lime.
It did, however, send me running to the Internet to see what this millennium's version of Old Spice and English Leather actually looked like. And, do you know what? It's just not your father's musk ox anymore.
Come to find out that men's colognes are reviewed — obviously, by people with noses the size of vacuum cleaners and a penchant for hyperbole never before seen outside the WWF.
Consider this review of Eau de LeCoste, the Blanc Edition: "The essence of tuberose, ylang-ylang and olibanum gives off a quietly dignified masculinity."
Who knew? My experience had always been mixing ylang-ylang with olibanum could give you warts. I say this wrapped securely in my quiet dignified masculinity.
It also seems that men's cologne is once again in the process of evolving. No longer is the "bold, craggy, masculine smell" of the '80s acceptable. As we all know, that gave way to the "dry, green, aromatic take on rose and leather — the animalic note" that fell from fashion in the '90s. We are now headlong into the "bold but far too poised to be read as brash or cross" era of male smellage.
So here — slashed from the pages of the latest reviews of what women want in wafting — are the good and bad of olfactory perception.
Jublilation XXV by Amouage: Apparently the gold standard of what women want their man to emit in 2011. It took XXIV tries before perfecting "a blend of patchouli-incense accord with opopnax cedar and a hint of oud. A perfect mixture between sensuality and masculinity."
I looked up "oud" — it is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument. But, apparently, it really smells great.
Compare that with one man's review of Acqua di Gio pour Homme by Giorgio Armani. "The most stomach-turning fragrance my nose has ever experienced."
Ouch, Giorgio — back to the musk ox, man.
That was a cruel review and blatantly obvious to me that the writer has never been in my son's room.
Armed with these facts, I am reporting back to my wife that I do not want cologne for Christmas. Just a simple order of Egg Foo Yung.
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