Rihanna PR Fail: Parlux Drools, Lets It All Hang Out

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2012 — In the news release, Chart-Topping Songstress, Rihanna, Takes It All Off With New Scent, issued 16-Nov-2012 by Parlux Ltd. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the first paragraph, first sentence, should read “...Nude by Rihanna, on Black Friday at Macy’s” rather than “...Nude by Rihanna, this November 2012” as originally issued inadvertently.

Good. Glad we cleared that up.

Meanwhile, “chart-topping songstress”? I understand her ditties are the bee’s knees, penned by Tin Pan Alley’s finest. But is this 2012 or 1922?

Let’s join Beavis and Butthead and read some more of the press release:

Nude by Rihanna is sensual and provocative. It is an uninhibited scent [Nude, uninhibited, get it? Get it?] that captures a stripped down essence. [Hey Butthead, drop trou and show me your “stripped down essence.”] The fragrance allows her fans, to experience something very personal, [“I’m experiencing something very personal right now, Beavis. In my pants.”] a true embodiment of the singer. [Heh. Em-BODY-ment! Heh-heh.] Nude by Rihanna joins Reb’l Fleur and Rebelle, two dark [Rihanna, dark! Heh. Heh-heh. Heh-heh-heh!] and rebellious scents created by Rihanna in years past, in her uninhibited fragrance lineup.

Wait. Did they mention that Nude is uninhibited? [Yes, twice in the same paragraph.—Ed.]

We hear FN readers saying, “Alright, Mr. Critical. But sex sells, so Nude by Rihanna is genius PR.”

Really? Try googling “rihanna nude.” You have to go to the fourth screen to find a link to the perfume (it’s the 38th search item). The rest of the search items are about Rihanna being, uh . . . nude. She seems to be famous for taking off her clothes. Or as Fred Purches, chairman and CEO of Parlux Ltd., puts it, she “perfectly balances strength and femininity.”

Schwing!

Speed Smells: CSI Molecular Edition

From a late February edition of the Evansville Courier & Press:

Chemical smell leads deputies to meth lab.

Two Mount Vernon, Ind. residents are facing numerous charges after police traced a chemical smell to a meth lab in their yard barn . . .

Last week the action moved to Mississippi:

Authorities say a foul smell on Lovers Lane in Vicksburg led police to a methamphetamine lab.

As we’ve pointed out more than once, no matter how well-disguised the lab it’s always the smell that gives away the location.

But what exactly does a meth lab smell like? Local press accounts are maddeningly vague when it comes to describing the telltale aroma. It’s clearly unpleasant, but in what sort of way: Skunky? Barfy? Smoky?

Driven by a intellectual need to pin culturally important odors to specific molecules—plus an annoying bloated feeling from watching too many CSI reruns recently—First Nerve did a little googelizing and discovered “The Meth Lab Menace: What responders should know about these dangerous environments.” Written by Doug Hanson, PhD, this harrowing account originally appeared in EMS Magazine and is more compelling than any TV cop show.

Among other things, Hanson lays out the classes of chemicals likely to be found in a makeshift meth lab—the ingredients vary by recipe and by whether the final product is powder, rock or crystal. Common to all variations of the procedure, however, are powerful solvents and acids, gases, metallic salts, and a handful of other inorganic compounds.

From an olfactory POV the solvents are major contributors. According to Hanson these might include:

acetone, methanol, isopropanol, benzene, toluene, Freon and ether. These can come from common sources like nail polish remover (acetone), fuel additives like HEET (methanol), rubbing alcohol (isopropanol), scientific supply houses (benzene, toluene, diethyl ether) and old air conditioners (Freon). Other solvents that might be present include kerosene, petroleum ether and chloroform.

This covers a fat slice of the olfactory spectrum: from the sweetness of ether and benzene, to the harsher impact of isopropanol and methanol, to the engine room ambience of kerosene.

Add to these the gases such anhydrous ammonia and methylamine, and acids such as sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid, and you have an olfactory hammer waiting to drop on the unwary intruder. No wonder the neighbors notice. And no wonder local reporters have a hard time describing it.

Speed Smells: Road Warrior Edition

This report in the Chicago Sun-Times is an eye-opener: rather than build a lab at home and risk having their house or trailer seized by police, some meth cooks set up overnight operations in a motel room. In by 10 p.m., out by 8 a.m., often leaving a hazardous and foul smelling mess behind. Since the restriction on sales of OTC cold meds, the number of in-room meth lab busts has decreased; but it still averages about 120 a year.

Here’s a tip from a professional decontamination guy: be wary of using the coffee maker in your hotel room—the meth cooks may have used the glassware and it could contain toxic residue.

Speed Smells: Eustis, FL edition

Deputies respond to a guy threatening someone with a gun in the town of Eustis, Florida, northwest of Orlando. They notice empty Sudafed containers and “the foul odor of a meth lab” on the guy’s property. Closer inspection reveals the meth lab is concealed in a silo ten feet below ground.

Pretty clever setup, but the smell gives you away every time.

Channel 9 WFTV has the video.

Speed Smells: Sikeston, MO edition

Police officers “investigating a foul odor” last Saturday in Sikeston, Missouri tracked it to a trailer home.  They knocked on the door and when a man opened it they could see behind him “a plume of white smoke” rising from a meth-cooking setup.

So busted.

Speed Smells

In many states, the legal doctrine of “in plain smell” allows a police officer who smells pot smoke during a traffic stop to search the vehicle for marijuana. Pot smoke is strong and distinctive—it doesn’t take much training to recognize and it can be detected at quite a distance. But, as I describe in What the Nose Knows, identifying the faint, vaguely vegetative scent of a fresh marijuana plant is a different matter. Scientists have recreated the conditions of actual criminal arrests, and find that it’s unlikely police could, as claimed, pick up the scent of pot plants in a distant grow house, or of bricks of marijuana wrapped in plastic and hidden in the trunk of a car.

Smell can be an early clue in drug busts of another kind. Yesterday, for example, neighbors in Hartselle, Alabama, called the sheriff’s department to complain of a bad smell coming from a nearby home. According to News Channel 19 in Huntsville, officers discovered a methamphetamine lab in the house. They arrested the three occupants (pictured above) and charged them with unlawful manufacturing of methamphetamine.

There was a bumper crop of stinky meth lab stories in the media this summer. In July, in suburban Houston, neighbors reported a foul odor.  Firefighters tracked it to the detached garage of a nearby house where they found a big meth lab.

Around the same time, a lady living on Pine Island, near Ft. Myers, Florida, thought she had been smelling burning garbage for the past week. Then sheriff’s deputies busted a couple living two doors down from her for having a meth-making operation in their living room.

Also in July, a lady in Mitchell, Illinois—across the river from St. Louis, Missouri—found a smell from down the block so offensive that she couldn’t stand to stay outdoors and barbecue. A month later U.S. Marshals and the Illinois State Police raided three adjacent houses in the neighborhood and found meth labs in each.

And then there were the folks in Casa Grande, Arizon, just south of Phoenix, who told a reporter how bad-smelling houses with blacked out windows were making people in the neighborhood very nervous.

Cooking meth in a makeshift lab generates lots of intense, unpleasant odor. I’ve been told, by a person whose family lived downwind from a rural meth house, that it resembles burning insulation or plastic. Other people describe it as smelling like ammonia, which can lead to some unexpected results. Again in July, police got a call from residents of an apartment complex in Charlotte, North Carolina complaining of a bad smell from an empty apartment. A haz mat crew arrived expecting to dismantle a meth lab—instead they found boxes of kitty litter soaked with cat urine and feces.

Oh well.  Better safe than sorry.