Make mine hair tonic with juniper berries. Makes you smell like you got a new haircut and close straight razor shave in some gin mill. I'd think any of the Kennedys would favor such a scent.

I like turpentine and have always been fond of diesel smoke.

Motor oil is distinctive, yet not overpowering. Mixed with GoJo, it's a manly yet clean scent. I don't know who could promote it though.

I do not consider myself a "gun nut" but, the smell of gun powder (cordite), that's a smell, maybe put out by Wayne LaPierre or Ted Nugent.

How about the way gasoline use to smell before unleaded, it actually smelled good, maybe that was the problem.

I went to one of those places where you can mix your own perfume... I picked three oils that seemed (to me) to say "Suzy." They were cinnamon, coffee and cloves... All warm and spicy, mysterious and sexy.

When I got home, I asked the children how they liked my new perfume, and they loved it! "Mmmm, mmm, Mama, you smell like Red Hots Candy!"

OK, I can live with that, too.

Suzy, the Red Hot Mama

PS: My husband wears Old Spouse... er, Spice.

Credo quia absurdum.

The smell of decomposing paper pulp, as found in yellowing paperback books.

Honestly, someone once commented (oddly) on how good one of my novels smelled. I asked the publisher (Jim Baen) about it, and he replied, "Ink made from recycled deep fat fryer oil, redolent of french fries."

$50 bills

Diesel, old varnish, and sweat is very essence of manliness.

Oh that someone would bottle the sharp, dusty, languid smell of broiling sidewalks hit by a snicking sprinkler.

"when I was tending bar in a college joint, half the guys appeared to have exchanged their blood for Drakkar Noir, and now that’s out"

I still use the stuff (actually, a fake version much less expensive cologne that's "inspired" by Drakkar), and I haven't yet had anyone tell my that my scent was outdated. ;-)

And "3121" is a recent Prince CD (you probably knew that already, since it was mentioned in the article...but it would've spoiled your PIN joke, which I liked).

Whadja think Prince would manufacture, salad dressing?

Yes, he's weird, and thank the Lord for that. Not violent or drug abusing or terrorizing or kidnapping or misogynistic or drunk or law evading. Just quirky. Deeply quirky, perhaps, but daggone it! It's kinda interesting!

If I want to smell musky, I just let my pet ferrets use my shirts for bedding for a couple of weeks, cheap too.

referring to the post about

Ward Two Council Member Cam Gordon & # 0 3 9 ; s monthly newsletter

that is your/our computers choking on a badly expressed apostrophe. most computer character sets barf on special text directions to ordinary punctuation. but they show what was thought to be the keystrokes, in this case & # 0 3 9 ; .

common choke in BrowserLand. read all these things that look like the power went out on the other end as an apostrophe, or a question mark if that makes more sense. as proof, in previewing this thing, it kept coming up in the "will post as" box as an apostrophe.

I don't think the council member was deleted, expletives or otherwise. that gets its own news story around here. which might raise some reader expletives.

I'm so old I can remember when the halls of my high school reeked of Hi Karate.

In the "Local headlines Column to the right, I hope that is bad html code otherwise Cam Gordon has an "expletive deleted" news letter, if he does well, @&#$%, back at you councilman!

(update, that seems to be the correct special character code for an apostrophe, also shows up in MN Quartet headline at right)

nothing like taking a wiff of Chloramphenicol in the morning. Some people say it just smells like ethanol but I think it has a distinct odor.

Play-Doh? Much like the fried chicken pizza thing, you should do a little Google search before you wish for something.

There is a place to get perfume that smells like Play-doh and other odd things. It's called Demeter Fragrance. They make and sell perfumes including Play-Doh, Popcorn, Dirt, New Leaf, various cocktails, foods, flowers, Paperback, Snow, Sawdust, Thunderstorm, Glue, Humidor, Earthworm, Laundromat and others. You can find them at http://www.demeterfragrance.com/. Can't imagine why anyone would want to smell like an earthworm but to each his own.

Oh man, can't get through a Monday at work without a hit from the blue one. It's tricky to not look like you have just snorted a line of Smurfs though. I mean, umm, drugs are bad, mmkay.

Who remembers the white board markers that were designed to smell like various fruits? Talk about a terrible idea. Let's hook the kiddies at a young age!! Watch their nostrils turn fun colors!

Vinyl chloride, apparently. I might be the only person on the face of the earth that loves it. (My chemist husband has often questioned the amount of brain damage I might have sustained.) But when I unwrap a new shower curtain it takes me back to my childhood, when nothing was more special than receiving a Barbie doll at Christmas time. Or that first weekend of Summer when the wading pool was inflated, and the smell of the beach ball after it had been in the sun all day...
~Fae
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-:¦:- Bling Blog -:¦:-

You need to check out this guy in Brooklyn and the perfumes he makes - he's already done a Play-Doh one, one called "Winter 1970", and one called "Doll Head" that smells just like an old plastic doll's head.

My husband likes the smell of a tire store. He would probably enjoy a perfume called "Firestone." Also, there is a real perfume out there that smells like fresh play-doh. I'm a stay at home mom, so I can just roll in the stuff when I feel like it.

Maybe it was the vinyl chloride - but I'm especially partial to the smell that I call "new bookbag"... Did anyone else get a new bookbag each year for back-to-school. (No. It wasn't a backpack!) It had buckles that held the top closed, a shoulder strap... So kewl!

Someone already has come up with a Play-Doh fragrance! http://www.demeterfragrance.com/Product.aspx?ProductID=1025

BlueFaeMoon, I completely agree with you on the new Barbie smell...that takes me immediately back to being 6 years old, when I got the Barbie swimming pool for my birthday.

There are lots of expensive perfumes that I like, but I'm too cheap to buy them. I pick up the Bath & Body Works $10 "body splash" or something like that. They have lots of differents scents, so you can switch around. Some of them smell like food, though, which is a little weird to me. I used to work with a girl who smelled like cookies all winter because of one their fragrances.

I love the smell of napalm in...make that fireworks. I love the smell of freshly lit fireworks.

I would love to see Clint Howard come out with a fragrance. a) He seems like he needs a little freshening up and b) I'd call it A Hint of Clint.

Who can forget that strangely alluring smell from freshly copied handouts in school back in, say, the 1970s? I mean that blue ink used in the mimeograph process (whatever exactly that was) in the days before modern photocopiers were ubiquitous. I can smell it now! I wasn't the only one who'd take the quiz I just got handed and bury my face into it for a good inhale.

It reminded me of biscuits. It didn't actually SMELL like biscuits, it just reminded me of biscuits in some strange way I never consciously understood.

Create a Play-Doh cologne? Demeter already has. Along with scents such as "Grass", "Leather", "Bonfire", "Salt Air", "Saw Dust", and "Wet Garden". And believe me, they smell exactly like those things. They've hundreds of non-traditional scents that smell really good and make for a nice change of pace from the more ordinary perfumes.

Sawdust would be a fine scent on a man. Gives the impression of making an honest buck.

I think fresh-mown grass would make a fine scent, but the "heifer" connotations would make it impractical.

Of course, there should be a "new car" smell cologne, however, there should definitely not be a new fragrance by local (well, local for you) celebrity Kevin McHale.

Combining hints of parquet floorshine, leather and rubbing up against Cornbread Maxwell for 48 minutes, its the scent that Larry Bird has described as "comforting, yet sweaty"

Didn't the Gap or someplace sell a fragrance that smelled of freshly mown grass?

I was thinking of the pleasant "rain on hot pavement" smell on the 4th, when the storms came through D.C. It takes you right straight back to childhood.

However, for some reason, I like the smell of Russian gunpowder better than the domestic blends. That exotic foreign aroma, I suppose.

OTOH, I've never been around enough French ammunition to be very familiar with the scent. Would it smell like surrender and submission? (Hmmmmmm. We may be on to something here!)

Then again, there's nothing that smells quite as good as Hoppes #9 Solvent. If my wife soaked herself in that, I'd be impressed. But I doubt that it'd do the skin much good, so we'd better hope someone duplicates the scent without the solvents.

Joe Soucherey ("Garage Logic") has had an official cologne for years: WD40.

http://www.am1500.com/gl/lexicon.shtml

but not together!

James,

For old-school scents, I have two more colognes you can add to your tonsorial repertoire:

Geo. F. Trumper's Eucris is straight outta London and is the only cologne worn by James Bond in the Ian Fleming novels. The smell? I call it "liquid grandpa."

Knize Ten is also remarkable. Created in the '20s, it was James Dean's col-ogg-nee of choice. Kind of a mix of crisp, floral, and spice with a little diesel fuel added in. My missus called the scent "intimidating" which made my day. (It's one thing for cologne to woo the ladies; when it scares 'em, you got a keeper.)

Jon, ExurbanLeague.com

I was going to add Mimeograph paper. Except we had it in the '50s and '60s (So I'm sure ours was stronger, they didn't regulate ANYTHING yet).
The teacher always said 'Take one and pass it down.' And without exception, everyone who grabbed a sheet took a big whiff. Heaven.

The Demeter perfumes are pretty interesting. The Play-doh is great. My all-time favorite is one that smells like a tomato plant. If you are into perfumes and like to read about top notes and dry downs, DSH Perfumes is a good website to peruse. You can order tons of samples from her that come in teensy, tiny tubes.

My crusty old grandpa wore it in his later years.

Perfumes = memories galore, don't they?

If someone could package the smell of the little hardware store that would be great. They could sell it right off the counter as you were paying for your stuff. Yup, new hardware - it's a guy thing.

Pork fat. Real, honest-to-goodness corn-fed pork fat.

I'd hit it.

Like Proust, some aromas put me in another world. The smell of hair tonic, axle grease and Winstons transports me back to when I was a kid, working with my grandfather on various cars and motorcycles in his garage. Any of those three smells is like seeing a movie of us, busting knuckles under his '62 Fairlane while we listened to baseball on the radio. He's been gone 30 years now, and the garage is too.

I'd spend my last dollar on a just a small bottle of "Grandpa's Garage".

I'm with Lileks; I use Bay Rum. Likely it's because my dad always has, although he still uses the cheap stuff. I prefer the kind you get via mail order from Vermont Country Store ($12 for a big bottle--dad pays $4 for his). It's a subtle smell, a little old-fashioned, and doesn't scream out "perfume!"

I remember the first time I put some on, when I was on my way to church choir practice at the age of 13 and wanted to impress a girl. I splashed the stuff on the way you see guys in the movies do it, and walked downstairs. What did my dad say?

"What did you do? You smell like a French whore!"

Good old dad. He was never one for subtlety.

Anytime I get a new book/magazine/other printed media I have to take a big whiff. Or even if it's not new. There's just someting about all the different types of ink and paper that smells so good! Every type smells so different yet still so good. And no two kinds of magazines seem to smell the same. People tend to look at me funny, though.

Oh, and this is going to sound really strange, but... Zebra Finches. They smell SO GOOD to me! Yes, I have some as pets. I don't get to sniff them very often, being as they're flitty little birds, but the chances I get... Mmm, they smell like fresh seeds and warm feathers. <3

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Obligatory link to my webpage! C'mooon... You know you wanna see my bad anime art.

Apparently that meant something to the 1940's consumers of hair tonic. Take a look at this gallery from the halcion days of liquid hair care.

I have actually used a whole bottle of Avon's Forest Lily perfume. The first time I smelled it, I actually drooled. So, of course, they've discontinued it, and I have to buy my replacements on Ebay. Sigh. I don't wear it though, except for very occasionally. I spray it on my pillow and sleep with it. LOL

Perfumes I'd like to see (smell?):

Crayons. Nothing like cracking a new box of Crayolas!

Old Library Book.

I have to agree with Mimeograph ink too, but ours always looked purple to me, rather than blue.

Puppy Breath.

Thanksgiving Turkey. I love the first whiff you get when you walk into your aunt's house on T-giving Day.

Burned Match.

I don't know if you've been in a Bloomingdale's recently, but if you go in one, you'll see, quite prominently displayed, a poster for "Fleur du Male" cologne. Now my french ain't the best, but I believe "male" is not a french word, and what it sounds like, "Fleur du Mal" translates as "Flower of evil" or "flower of rottenness." In fact, I believe there was recently a bad movie by that name, "Le fleur du mal." That's it, Rotten Flower cologne! For the real man!

I'd buy a cologne that smelled like the inside of a little fruit stand. I've frequented two fruit stands on opposite sides of the country and they both smelled the same. I don't know if it's the fruit itself, or the pesticides, or what.

> "What did you do? You smell like a French whore!"

So these two guys are at the barbers and the barber asks if the one guy wants tonic. "Sure thing," he says. Other guy says, "Tonic? Never use it. Every time I do my wife says I smell like a French cat house." "Go ahead," first guy says, "my wife's never been in a French cat house."