Smell Check 2011

Xmas is just around the corner and Jesus may be the reason for the season, but so are massive purchases made on alcohol and men’s colognes. Next to Father’s Day no other time of the year inspires more panicky runs to the men’s cologne counter at the department store. As a result, this time of year there are more cologne testers in magazines and department store mailers than ever, so it’s time to review the prime candidates vying for your attention. In other words, welcome to the 4th Annual Edition of Smell Check. Let’s get started:

Guess Seductive: Touting itself as “an alluring oriental woody fougere”, the first thing I want to ask is what’s a “fougere”? And can a fougere have the capacity to be alluring? At any rate, it didn’t smell very woody to me, but rather talcum-like and too faint to leave a lingering, let alone alluring memory. So, fougere to all that!

I Am King (Sean John): I’m confused, does this cologne aspire to make me worship Puffy Combs and say, “Yes, your Highness, yea verily, you are King” for making this cologne, or is the cologne supposed to make me say, “Yes, I AM KING!” for wearing this swill that smells like dried grape soda. Quelle ghetto.

Eau De Lacoste (Lacoste): Yes, the polo shirt kings have entered the fragrance fray with three different tones: Pure, Powerful and Relaxed (sounds like me). Pure was okay but had a generic drug store scent to it, Powerful smelled a little sportier, and Relaxed smelled kind of woodsy. At least none of them smelled like an old alligator.

1 Million (Paco Rabanne): Designed like a bar of gold, this came with high hopes because Paco always makes great colognes. This tester made me go back over and over again with its insane conglomeration of bubblegum meets musky sex odors. Whoah! I’m losing my mind, we have a winner here.

John Varvatos USA: Nice bottle, shaped like a chemistry test tube for all you “Breaking Bad” fans out there. Usually Varvatos doesn’t disappoint but this one just smelled very citrus-like with no real standout olfactory pleasures. Back to the old chemistry set for you.

Armani Code Sport (Giorgio Armani): The ad for this cologne shows a naked guy in a swimming pool standing before a rich woman wearing a backless formal. That might be the only interesting thing about this scent. On a separate note, I used to enjoy wearing Armani Code until I found out the surly janitor in my building wore Code, too. Thanks for nothing.

Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens): You’ll never catch Lutens hawking testers in Esquire Magazine, and it’s just as well. He’s way too cool. Ambre Sultan is an explosive symphony of coriander, amber, oregano, bay leaf, myrtle, angelica root, sandalwood, patchouli, benzoin, and the ubiquitous stench of vanilla. Lutens’ publicity team describe it as “a trip to a Bedouin tent in a desert far away, thick incense burning on coal with spices filling the air, mysterious eyes flashing and pierced female slaves succumbing to your BLAH BLAH BLAH”. For once the scent is actually better than the Yul Brynner hype. Etcetera, etcetera.

One thing to bear in mind when you buy a cologne is what makes one special and what doesn't? A men's cologne is a lot like a night club. One year it's pretty cool, but once the d-bags know about it and use it the coolness factor's long gone. A scent like Acqua Di Gio or YSL Homme had a coolness factor when it first hit the scene, but now it's the kind of slobber your aunt buys you for Xmas or the swill you smell on some oily hip-hop bastard. That's when you go for the more private clubs in town, like Serge Lutens or the more exotic Rabanne stuff. Happy buying!

Happy Birthday Louise Brooks and Veronica Lake

Somehow the idea of wishing someone a happy birthday who’s deceased is kind of like showing up to a party thirty minutes after its ended, but there has never been two actresses more unorthodox than Louise Brooks and Veronica Lake, this year’s Scorpio birthdays. On first glance they don’t seem to have much in common, but upon closer inspection are very similar.

Both Ms. Brooks and Lake share the same birthday, November 14 – different years, of course, but their lives were very closely alike. Professionally both actresses were as adept at doing comedy as they were in drama, work was hard to come by, and their careers were heavily battered by studio systems that were too simple-minded to utilize them properly. The negligence that damaged their careers culminated in serious bouts of alcoholism and misanthropy that would make a riot grrl run home to Momma.

Still and all, the fact that Brooks and Lake are now regarded as major glamour icons of the cinema is highly ironic, an irony definitely not lost on them. As Veronica Lake once said, “I’m not a sex symbol, I’m a sex zombie”.

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Although Brooks was recognized by French cinephiles in the 1950’s for her amazing screen presence she was widely forgotten worldwide until she published her memoirs, “Lulu In Hollywood”, in 1981. Her candid account of Hollywood’s golden age and working relationships with legends like Fatty Arbuckle, W.C. Fields and John Wayne were off-beat, revealing and occasionally shocking.

Her early career includes some cool comedy turns from her with W.C. Fields in “The Old Army Game” and “Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em” (both 1926) where she plays the roommate from hell, stealing her friend’s boyfriends and snaking all their dresses. It’s kind of a slapstick “Single White Female”. In 1928 she made a fine drama for neorealist director William Wellman called “Beggars of Life”, which also starred Noah Beery and Richard Arlen. A year later she went to Germany and starred in her two greatest films, “Pandora’s Box” and “Diary Of A Lost Girl”, both available on DVD.

A typical Louise Brooks performance showed a woman who effortlessly vascillated between acting like a frenetic little girl, sexy vamp, and illuminated angel all in a matter of seconds, like some enchanted flicker ring. This could either be attributed to great acting or as the product of a personality scarred by a childhood episode of being molested by a neighbor and receiving no sympathy from her mother.

After turning down the James Cagney classic “The Public Enemy” (which eventually went to Jean Harlow), Brooks had trouble finding work, eventually opening up an unsuccessful dance studio, a stab at writing a novel (never finished), a Saks Fifth Avenue counter girl, and unfortunately ending up as a pilled-up Manhattan call girl. Several marriages failed, but through it all she was always close to her brother, her only friend until her death in 1985 from a heart attack due to emphysema.

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While Veronica Lake didn’t earn the enmity of the entire state of Kansas like Brooks did, she just about pissed off everybody else. Married four times to Louise Brooks’ two, she turned off every leading man in her films, with the sole exception of Alan Ladd. Lake made four films with Ladd because she was shorter than him – she stood at 4’11 ½”. Like Brooks, her comedy chops are underrated, based upon her great performances in “Sullivan’s Travels” and “I Married A Witch”, the O.G. “Bewitched”. She even has some excellent deadpan humor lines in “The Blue Dahlia”, thanks to Raymond Chandler’s screenplay. (Chandler allegedly hated her, too. You just can’t win!) Just about the only guy on her side in Hollywood was Preston Sturges, who fought the studios to cast her in “Sullivan’s Travels”, her first major movie role. She was pregnant during filming, posing a serious undercover challenge for designer Edith Head.

The public loved Lake until the late Forties, when Paramount passed on renewing her contract. She had to file for bankruptcy on the heels of her mother suing her for “support payments”. Her mother later wrote an awful biography on her daughter which pulled in a tiny chunk of change. Lake wrote a slapdash autobiography a few years later as a rebuttal to her mother’s tawdry book.

Lake, like her predecessor Brooks went through a downward spiral in New York, living in fleabag hotels and getting arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct. Her beautiful long locks now long gone, she found work as a barmaid at a downtown hotel. Busted by reporters who found her working there, she garnered sporadic TV and theater gigs from all the attention, even appearing on “What’s My Line”.

Veronica Lake died in Vermont at the age of 50 from hepatitis and acute renal failure as a result of her alcoholism. Her ashes were scattered over The Virgin Islands per her request. A memorial service was held in New York which her son Michael attended, her three daughters long estranged from her.

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I hate tired Hollywood clichés but there is one that sometimes rings true, and that’s when someone says “The camera loves her”, and it was definitely hypnotized by these two ladies. Whatever Louise Brooks and Veronica Lake’s faults were, there are few actresses that can rival their ability to illuminate the movie screen. That means when Louise Brooks celebrates Christmas in a cold cellar in “Pandora’s Box” we forget how hard her situation is because the warmth of her beauty is enough. That means whenever Veronica Lake is on screen in “The Blue Dahlia” or “This Gun For Hire” everyone else disappears because she commands your absolute attention. That’s no small accomplishment for a dame that can’t even clear 5 feet.

Whether these ladies got along with the car crash we call civilization or not almost seems unimportant. Aspiring actresses, clothes designers, filmmakers, models, and even artists can tell you what Louise Brooks looks like or what Veronica Lake looks like. Their hypnotic beauty is immortalized by the silver screen, and for that we will always revere them.

"American Yodeling"

Everybody likes to brag about the great deal they got from downloading music, but there has never been a deal as amazing as the one I got early this summer. For a mere $11.98 I downloaded a 100-song, 2-disc set of incredible sounds called “American Yodeling”. You will never find a deal as truly phenomenal as this.

“American Yodeling”, as you can assume is a compilation of songs featuring singers yodeling their hearts out, but the compilation itself is so sprawling and sweeping in its scope that it covers an endless panorama of genres. The first assumption is made that you’re going to hear nothing but country music, but alas, you’re wrong. Sure, there’s tons of cowboy music, great stuff, too, but there’s also Cajun music, cowgirls singing, folk, bluegrass, polka, blues, western swing, Swiss mountaineer jive, and even Black hot twenties jazz yodeling. Everybody’s covered and get to twirl their tonsils out.

There’s something bizarrely athletic in the way these crooners go into their yodeling pyrotechnics. Tracks like “She Taught Me How To Yodel” by Kenny Roberts are almost surreal in the way he can make his voice bend at supersonic speed that has to be heard to be believed. Legendary faves like Bill Monroe’s badass “Muleskinner Blues” get represented here, too. Some guys really tear it up with several tracks on here like Yodeling Slim Clark with his “I Miss My Swiss” who has a classic Swiss mountaineer tone to his yodeling. Elton Britt’s pretty awesome with “Chime Bells”.

The cowgirls like to put a nature slant in their yodeling, making wild bird noises, purring like kittens and scatting in their vocals. My favorites include Carolina Cotton with “Mockingbird Yodel” and the demented Dezurik Sisters with their insanely bitchen “The Arizona Yodeler”. Their harmonies are so perfectly synchronized it would put an army of talent show losers to shame. Other range fillies include Patsy Montana, Girls of the Golden West, Rosalie Allen, and Texas Kitty Prins, to name a few.

A lot of the perennials are on here, too, like Rex Allen, Gene Autry, Patti Page (!), Hank Snow, Roy Rogers, and Gene Autry, who all sound incredible here. But the obscure names are the real finds, like a rail-riding hobo named Goebel Reeves who really swings his dirty panhandling pie-hole. Sweet!

When the crooning’s not about riding the range there’s a whole lotta jive about romance in the Swiss Alps: songs with titles like Visit Me In My Swiss Chalet, Swiss Echo Yodel, My Swiss Moonlight Baby. The girls have some pretty sexy songs, too, with titles like Salt Bush Sue and I’m Gonna Straddle My Saddle. Woof!

If you want the Cajun stuff there’s Paul Brunelle’s “Le Boogie Woogie De Prairies”, The Guidry Brothers’ “La Valse De Marriage” and a couple of other crazies.

“American Yodeling” never gets boring and almost sounds quaint in its depiction of a world that’s virtually vanished from the American landscape. It sounds like radio broadcasts from a parallel planet that’s saner and happier than anything we’ve ever created. And what’s better, it makes everyone smile real wide whenever they hear it.

Slacks For Slackers

Unfortunately there won't be a big blog this week because I sliced my thumb open last Sunday. It's amazing how much power your thumb wields over the rest of your hand, especially your right one. The thumb is basically the boss of your fist, and the boss is severly injured, so once my six stitches have been removed and I'm back to normal I'll be back to type in more cool stuff. In the meantime here's a picture of a great new belt I created before the accident. The cool Frankenstein buckle was made by Lucky 13 Belt Buckles.

One thing I haven't exhibited much of are the dress slacks I've created. Dress slacks aren't terribly sexy, but pretty crucial. You need to wear them to work or the worshiping place of your choice. I tend to lean towards striped material myself because it means you mean business. A good, lean pinstripe should do the job, preferably with a black or dark brown background. In the pair shown below we have a dark brown pair with gold pinstripes in narrow, fine lines. Fat lines would look too comical, like a bad Ralph Bakshi cartoon.

In order to break the monotony of wearing something traditional like striped pants throw a few kinks here and there, so I designed a leather waistband with belt loops to this particular pair. It makes the slacks stand out a bit from the pack. The leather shouldn't be too tough or it'll fight the rest of the material, so a soft leather like lamb or suede will work best. By the way, I don't like to discuss politics, but I don't think West Hollywood's proposed ban on fur vending will succeed, given the poor economic situation in the country. Now isn't the time to place restrictions on what vendors can sell to improve the city's economy and raise sales tax revenue that can only benefit the idiots that run the City of West Hollywood.

The next pair is a cool black cotton material with solid purple stripes running through it. This material was so flash that even the cutter at Mood drooled over it. "Where did you find this???" His eyes were greener than the money I pulled out to pay for them. Needless to say, he's probably making a pair of his own slacks out of this awesome fabric. Now, normally, I would model these great pants as I always do, but I was a little torn about posing in them with my stitched up Frankenstein thumb. Then again, what could be more in the Halloween spirit?

BY THE WAY....that cool steak bag I posted pics of in my blog "Accessories Bought And Made" is now available at Etsy. Click here to buy if you're interested: http://www.etsy.com/listing/84890911/meaty-steak-bag

Baboon Dooley and the Hardcore Hall Monitors

One of the inevitable things to emerge in any pop culture phenomenon is the proliferation of serious scholars and experts, and even something as low-rent as hardcore punk was not immune. By the early 1980’s you couldn’t crack open a punk fanzine without a self-appointed expert running down their version of history of punk. Even worse, they would force their yardstick criteria of what was admissible as punk and what wasn’t allowed, so an entire subculture that encouraged anarchy now had these hall monitors throwing down restrictive rules.

The fun was squeezed out by these Nimrods, always espousing clichés about supporting “The Scene”, whether it be by living a straight edge lifestyle, sharing everything you had to uphold some imaginary Socialist punk wonderland, or even worse, doing everything for free.

One of the few blasts of fresh air during this dark period were an indefatigable series of cartoons from a guy named John Crawford who mercilessly cut through all the punk rock double-talk and hardcore bullshit courtesy of a Neanderthal character named Baboon Dooley. According to ZineWiki, the punk fanzine Wikipedia, Mr. Crawford’s comic strip ran in over two hundred different fanzines, like Forced Exposure, Flipside, and Maximum Rock ‘N Roll, who eventually tired of his attack of said fanzine.

A typical Dooley comic strip would be titled a “Scene Report” and then satirize what was going down in Berkeley, D.C., Orange County, or any other hardcore hotbed. Dooley would come down there trying to freeload on free records, food, beer (unless he was fronting straight edge), or even a place to crash. Gimme gimme gimme, as Darby would say.

Other Dooley strips would flat out spoof popular figures on the published music scene, whether it be the self-titled Dean of Rock Critics, Robert Christgau, Bob Guccione, Jr., publisher of Spin Magazine, or even Mordam Records chief Ruth Schwartz.

Some strips simply showed a pair of simian-faced punks spouting inane rhetoric of punk rock principle in the most pedestrian form of didacticism possible. Needles to say, neither one bothered to listen to what the other one said. Speaking and not discussing, hearing but not listening.

Crawford's artwork was reminiscent of Edwin Pouncey aka Savage Pencil’s distinctive scrawly penciling style with a heavy-handed ink brush and screaming lettering. It definitely grabbed your attention in between the dull Homestead and SST Records ads.

While some of the humor may have gone overboard from time to time, I found a lot of these comics to be very funny and, dare I say it, punk rock in their efforts to burst the balloon of crushing self-importance and stuffiness that frankly ruined a “scene” that previously thrived on outrage and spontaneity.