Chandler Burr: MIA at NYT

We noticed a piteous, mewling noise recently. It was coming from a part of the blogosphere we seldom visit—the drafty, empty rooms of “The Moment” at the New York Times website.

There, beneath Chandler Burr’s last perfume review—dated July 31, 2009—we found these mournful comments:

September 8, 2009 10:06 am
I hope you will soon review more fragrances :o) Thanks.
Kindest,
Anette

September 18, 2009 1:13 pm
Hey, is this blog on hiatus?
I’m looking forward to more reviews!
— Pedro D’Ardis

October 23, 2009 7:04 am

What’s happening with this blog? i loved it…
— michael

Such sad Mouseketeers (Anette! Pedro! Michael!). Could it already be the end of the show? (“Now it’s time to say goodbye to all our company . . .”) We decided to look around a bit more.

On September 4, Sandra Ballentine wrote about the new Daphne Guinness fragrance. Her commenters weren’t interested.

September 4, 2009 7:16 pm

Where’s Scent Notes by Chandler Burr? He doesn’t seem to have published a review in over a month.
— Guy Bannis

September 15, 2009 4:10 pm

Seconded! I miss Chandler! Is he on an extended vacation, or is Scent Notes no more?
— ac

September 25, 2009 3:50 pm

Where is Chandler Burr? I miss Scent Notes. Is this feature gone for good?
— Gerri

Uh oh. More disaffected Mouseketeers (Guy! AC! Gerri!). If the unrest spreads to another Times style column it would (by NYT editorial standards) constitute a “trend.”

On October 5, Monica Khemsurov wrote about fragrances by designers and architects. Here’s what her readers said:

October 6, 2009 12:59 am

I’ve got to assume that Chandler Burr is no longer writing Scent Notes for NY Times. He has been AWOL for two months now.
— Guy

October 10, 2009 12:18 pm

Yes, where is Chandler? Anyone know? I miss his Scent Notes column.
— Randy

October 19, 2009 9:58 am

Chandler Burr’s writing was the best thing about T magazine. Did his reviews offend the perfume companies or what?
— Jane Harlan-Simmons

Call the Trend Desk! It’s a veritable chorus of lamentation.

But hold on, Mouseketeers (Guy! Randy! Jane!). There’s a Burr by-line in the 5th Anniversary Issue of Women’s Fall Fashion. It ran on August 16 under the ominous headline “Eau de Woe: What Does The Recession Smell Like? Chandler Burr Inhales The Void.”

Inhales the void? Sweet Jesus! Has he been sucking on the tailpipe of Aunt Mabel’s Gran Torino? Thought we took the battery out of that fucker.

The 819-word style piece is full of unsettling imagery:

recession . . . emptiness . . . absence of people . . . fragrance sales have fallen . . . my investment statements [. . .] convey the smell of nothing . . . everyone is depressed . . . we’re edging into the olfactory void again . . .

Could this be his valedictory to perfume reviewing?

We were looking for the phone number of the Aromatherapy Prevention Hotline when we found this communication from Mouseketeer Mike on Basenotes. It’s allegedly from the NYT Void Huffer himself:

I went on a hiatus . . .
The blog column should be coming back when I stop drowning in stuff.

Again with the imagery! You’re making everyone in the clubhouse very nervous. Jean-Claude Ellena's publicist just passed out. Frédéric Malle is even more, how you say, triste than usual. Plus the First Nerve technical staff is getting a little twitchy. Their livelihood depends on the BurrOmeter. We sank a lot of capital into a top-of-the-line model and only used it twice. Going to have a hard time justifying that expense at the next board of directors meeting.

Hurry back.

First Nerve on Air: The Faith Middleton Show

Wow. Taped this interview with Faith Middleton a looong time back and almost forgot about it. Aired a couple of days ago. You can listen or download here.

When Worlds Collide: Hipster Clubs and the Smell of Death

The Uncle Fester-like fans of our monthly ISDP feature know that an obsession with the Dark Side of smell has an upside: it opens new perspectives on social behavior and local manners.

This week the disagreeable smell of bodily decay intersected with another disagreeable trend: the infestation of Lower Manhattan by urban hipsters. Gawker has the big picture while Curbed.com zooms in closer.

But the ultimate source of the story is an excellent first-person narrative on CloudyProject.com. Cloudy’s blog post is even titled “I Smell Dead People.”

Imitation is the sincerest yadda yadda. Our nostrils flare with pride!

[Image brazenly appropriated from Mr. Cloudy.]

Cranking the Bubble Machine: “The Smell of Virtue”, Pt. 2

In reviewing Katie Liljenquist’s study of Windex and “the smell of virtue”, I pointed out some of its weaker points—the lack of control conditions using other odors, and its glib treatment of moral concepts. Other aspects of the study had the alarm on FirstNerve Bogosity Meter bleating like an angry goat, but I thought it unseemly for my critique to run longer than her entire scientific article. So I scrawled a few notes on my copy of the manuscript and set it aside. 

(Yes, manuscript. Although news stories based on a BYU press release are fully dispersed on the Internet, an electronic pre-print is not yet available from Psychological Science. Dr. Liljenquist was kind enough to send me the manuscript. It is also available here.)

One of my marginal notes was “What does it smell like?” The description of “citrus-scented Windex” puzzled me—I still think of Windex as the blue liquid in the spray bottle, the Glass Cleaner with Ammonia-D®. One thing we’ve learned at great cost over the years in the study of smell is that you have to be specific about the scents you use, if for no other reason than it allows others to replicate your work. Another lesson: any one scientist’s description of a test smell doesn’t cut it. For example, in the Liljenquist study there is no independent evidence that volunteers found the Windex product to smell “clean” or “citrus-like”.

What sent me back to my notes were comments on my post by Minette, who blogs at Scentsignals.com. Minette also takes issue with the study and in doing so riffs on the olfactory character of Windex. She challenges Liljenquist’s characterization of it as “unobtrusive” and asks why other types of cleanser odors weren’t used. She also said she couldn’t find the product on the Windex website.

Well, that did it: time to sniff for myself. I drove over to the A&P and checked out the chemical aisle. There was the blue stuff: Original Windex With Streak Free Shine! Next to it was Windex Antibacterial Multi-Surface cleanser: Kills 99.9% of Bacteria in Seconds! Windex AMS is a yellow liquid and has a sliced lemon on the label. This, evidently, is what was used in the Liljenquist study.

I brought the yellow AMS home and rummaged around under the sink for my bottle of Original. Spraying each on a blotter card—the preferred method of fragrance evaluation for household cleaning products—I could now compare the two. Windex Original has that familiar soapy note that takes the edge off the ammonia smell. Windex AMS smells like lemons: there’s a sweet, lemon gum drop note but also something harsher and terpenic beneath it. It’s no wonder it doesn’t smell like ammonia: the label proclaims it Ammonia Free!

So if you—like Minette—were imagining the iconic ammonia smell of Original Windex and having a hard time squaring it with the smell of virtue—well, the problem isn’t with you. 

But where could we have gotten the idea that the Windex in question was a glass cleaner and not a hard-surface cleanser?

Oh, that’s right. From the BYU press release:

Exit question: Shouldn’t three business school professors respect the difference between product segments, brand extensions, and flankers?

P.S. An academic buddy of mine told me I should send a link of my post to the editors at Psychological Science. Nice idea. When I looked up the journal’s masthead who did I find on the editorial board? Why, Adam D. Galinsky, one of the authors.

As the Church Lady used to say, “How conveeeeeenient.”

P.P.S. Full disclosure: S.C. Johnson is a former client of mine; I belong to the Association for Psychological Science and subscribe to its journal; and I think Dr. Liljenquist has great squeegee technique.

UPDATE November 16, 2009

Looks like I'm not the only one who’s wearing his cranky pants.

UPDATE November 19, 2009

Michael O’Brien at Human Resource Executive Online uses the First Nerve critique to nicely balance his story on the Liljenquist study.

Mercy!

Okay, this is just plain sad.

Although I’m surprised Yoko Ono didn’t think of it first . . .