ISDP: Special Earth Day Edition

“Earth Day co-founder killed, composted girlfriend”

I collected a lot of material about the Ira Einhorn/Helen Maddux case for What the Nose Knows, but ended up not using it.

Via Instapundit.

Another Milestone in Olfactory Cinema

Charles Band is a past master of cheeseball horror films and to us that’s a good thing. We like nothing better than to sink into a Barcalounger in the FirstNerve screening room and watch House of 1000 Corpses, or Bride of Chucky. (We have a major thing for Jennifer Tilly.)

Also among Band’s credits are Evil Bong (2006) and Evil Bong II: King Bong (2009), stoner comedies “with a little horror mixed in.” Stoner movies, with the possible exception of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, don’t do much for us. So the release this week of Evil Bong 3-D: The Wrath of Bong didn’t sound like must-see cinema. But then we read the interview AV Club’s Mark Riechers did with Brand about his latest effort and found out that it features Sniff-O-Rama. Neato!

The movie achieves its 3-D effects with the old-fashioned red and blue glasses, and Sniff-O-Rama is eight odors on a scratch-and-sniff card. Sounds like about the right level of technology for the Bong series. Band likes to road show his films in stand-alone movie theaters instead of multiplexes, so he can be free to do a live show on stage and sell all kinds of tasteless film-related merchandise like the Monsterbra or Puppetmaster replicas. Either of which would look great in our screening room, come to think of it.

We particularly enjoyed this exchange from the AV Club interview:

AVC: How does “Sniff-O-Rama” make your job more complicated? Did you need to have a script supervisor to keep track of odors on set?

CB: [Laughs.] No, it’s really grafted into the script. The timing is always interesting—most people haven’t been to a movie with a scratch-and-sniff card. It’s pretty simple: Number will come up on the screen, and you scratch that number. It ties into an action happening in the film. But it takes a moment or two for people to get the card and recognize that, say, number three has come up. People are smelling something or are reacting to a good smell or a bad smell, and it’s a little tricky to time it so the gag still works. But other than that, it’s just about inventing moments that will amuse people.

We’ll definitely catch it if we can.

Quick Sniffs: A curated collection of smelly links

Wendy Zukerman, Asia Pacific reporter for NewScientist, blogs about a perfumery course she took. Can you spot the two glaring errors in her post? (Hint: You don’t have to be a scientist to play!)


Karl Lagerfeld is coming out with a bookish new fragrance. As usual, Marie-Helene Wagner at MimiFrouFrou is all over the details:

The fragrance will be sold encased within a hard-cover book entitled Paper Passion. The creators see the packaging concept as a throwback to the times when British aristocrats liked to hide their whiskey in hollowed books.

Wait . . . hasn’t this been done before? Yes, and yes.

The smellscapes of Arkansas memorialized: an entirely different way to think about chicken shit.

Peeuuw, it’s springtime in West Fargo, North Dakota. (Flush hard, it’s a long way to Bismarck.)

Busted! Sgt. Terry Waikel of the Noble County Sheriff’s Department in Indiana has a fine nose for police work.

Tom Ford launches ads for his new fragrance Neroli Portofino, and guess what they are full of nakedy people. Although not Ford himself, for a change. [NSFW]

Karyn Khoury talks about her seasonal preferences in perfume. I’m surprised this doesn’t get more attention; I’ve always thought it was a big factor in choosing what to wear.

Over at Forbes.com, Dorothy Pomerantz relays the 2010 celebrity fragrance sales numbers from Euromonitor International. The late Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds tops the charts with $54 million in the U.S. Driven, by Derek Jeter, slides into second with $27 million. (For real?)

Wear a VR headset, bite into a cookie, and we control your nose!

It's sooooo transgressive, yadda yadda.

Rochelle Bloom Strikes Again

As the New York Times sinks slowly out of sight behind its new, fee-based subscriber wall, this story caught my eye: “Fragrance spritzers hold their fire”. It’s a straight report on the industry’s move away from brand-sponsored salespeople and roaming spritzers, and toward advice-dispensing “fragrance advisors” who are on the store’s payroll. (This has been Sephora’s business model all along—any clerk is happy to sell you any brand.)

There are quotes aplenty from the usual suspects: Pam Vaile, Karen Grant, and Ann Gottleib. And then, like clockwork, appears this typically off-key quote from Rochelle Bloom:

“A lot of people avoid the [fragrance] department,” said Rochelle Bloom, the president of the Fragrance Foundation, which has a certification program to educate fragrance sales specialists. “It’s this kind of hustle.”

Ms. Bloom has a talent for sounding the negative note. She could have said “people were avoiding the fragrance department and reduced spritzing is a welcome change that will bring the customer back”. She could have said “customers offended by the old hustle will find the new emphasis on fragrance advice very appealing.” But no—she just smeared her own industry and waddled on.

Is the Fragrance Foundation’s board of directors even paying attention?

Restart the Countdown: Jackson Fragrance Launch Has a New Date

March 7, 2011, the initial launch date for the Joe Jackson-Julian Rouas Paris fragrances came and went. I noted the non-event here and figured the project had imploded. Today someone logging in from Las Vegas and signing herself “Cynthia Marven” left a comment on that previous post. Here it is in full:

FYI- The Exclusive Launch Party for the Jackson-JRP fragrances are still on. The reason it didn't occur in March, 2011 as was originally planned, was because Mr Jackson was tied up with other commitments overseas. We did finalize our meeting last night, i.e., Wednesday, April, 13, 2011 with Mr Jackson, business partners and associates. The official date for the launch is June 9, 2011, Lord willing. As of this moment, we are working on the official program and invitations/accreditations to our invited guests, sponsors, investors, distributors, press etc., etc.,. By God's grace, we can make it happen. Thanks for the blog! Cynthia Marven April 14, 2011 5:24 PM

So Julian Rouas, Joe Jackson and Ms. Marven have given themselves another two-month window in which to produce the product. Or have they?

Well, the FirstNerve comment jibes with what a Cynthia Marven has been posting on the Jackson Fragrance Facebook page. So we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and check back in June.

A bientôt!