Thursday, July 28, 2011

bad smell, good news

         via (I have chosen some well-manicured toes here, but can't recommend
        that you get too deep into google image results for foot cheese.) 

It's not every day bad smells get good press, but did you read the news of how the odor of stinky feet might be used to fight malaria? Fifteen years ago, a Dutch scientist discovered, by standing naked in a dark room and recording where he got bit by mosquitoes, that the bloodsuckers loved his stinky feet. Now Dr. Okumu, a Kenyan scientist working in Tanzania, has built on that discovery by developing the most effective footstinky blend of chemicals to lure mosquitoes, and he's working on incorporating the stench into an affordable trap.

I can imagine what this device might smell like (clipped big toenail times two thousand?), but will freely reveal the extent of my interest in stink and say that I would also be curious to actually smell one of the traps. In the meantime, if you're inclined to do something other than sniff your gym socks and toenail cheese, might I direct you towards Nothing But Nets? According to the Gates Foundation (one of the groups funding Okumu's research) a child under the age of 5 dies from malaria--a preventable, treatable disease--every thirty seconds. If you buy a net and let me know your address, I'll send you something that smells good in the mail.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

crotch bottles [nsfw]

Sex in perfume ads is nothing new, but this crotch bottle trend is nuts (not enough nuts pictured/obscured for the pun to be intended). An incomplete introduction:

Flowers and crotches are old friends:


Marc Jacobs knows this to be true:


But prefers a more masculine metallic bottle for his own crotch shield:

Not strictly a crotch bottle, but this lion couldn't care less:


Tom Ford: King of crotch bottles!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Nosy Interview: Kate Lebo

Kate is in A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants, © NASA 

The jury is out on whether Kate and I have met in real life, though chances are good that we at least attended some of the same literary events when I lived in Seattle. (Though I regret to report that I have not yet had the chance to taste her award-winning pie.) Kate is a poet and a pie queen, and you can learn more about both roles by visiting her blog, Good Egg, and purchasing her zine, A Commonplace Book of Pie. Read more of Kate's poetry on Ink Node.
 
What do you smell like?
I love this question. Usually it goes the other way--I ask you what I smell like, probably because I’m worried about BO. Asked from this direction, it reminds me of driving through the Peach Arch Gate from Blaine, WA, on the way to some dingy Gastown bar or all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Vancouver. The border guards would lean out their little tinted booths and ask me where I was born as if they were curious to know something about me that wouldn’t be apparent unless they asked, the way you do when you’re getting past small talk with a new friend. I knew they were just doing their jobs, and that they didn’t care what I answered as long as I had ID and wasn’t bringing fruit or explosives into the country, but, like your questions, they made me feel like the miscellaneous personal data I’ve collected about myself over the years might have some empirical use after all.

After exercising, I smell like honey. The scent sours as soon as my sweat cools, and since it’s rude to ask someone to smell your armpit after a half hour on the elliptical, no one has ever confirmed that I really do smell like honey. I also like the way my underwear smells during my period, all coppery and briny and organic, which makes me think that as long as the smell comes from me, I’ll like it. Perfumes and lotions all start to make my skin smell like mosquito repellent or dusty potpourri after a half hour, especially on a hot day, so I stay away from them. I’d rather smell me, even if I smell bad. It’s a way to love how my body does its job.

What do you like to smell?
Jason, my partner of five years, wears Old Spice. When I think about what he smells like, I think of the warmth and texture of his t-shirt. Trying to describe that scent is like trying to describe what an orange smells like--the best description is orange, and Jason just smells like Jason. Most of my boyfriends have worn Old Spice, so it’s a scent that feels both safe and dangerous, like nostalgia. A whiff from under their arms as they raised them to hug me made me want to burrow into their chests.  

Monday, July 25, 2011

summerfester

 [image via]

I'd hoped to kick off Pie Week around these parts, as tomorrow's Nosy Interview is a pie wizard (and the smell of pie in the oven, particularly my mom's rhubarb pie, is one of my favorite food smells for sure), but it has been too hot in Boston to bake pies. It's not just the foolhardy notion of further heating up an already sweltering apartment, it's also the fact that pie crust and I share a reaction to humidity: it brings out the worst in us.

Also keeping me from my kitchen is a sink/dishwasher issue so disgusting that the repairman who came this morning told me that this was one of the "top worst smells" he'd ever encountered, and that he was surprised he didn't "toss" (tossing is underutilized as far as synonyms for vomiting go, no?). This is a man who, as he explained to me in perhaps slightly too rich detail, once lost an entire entertainment system to rogue fecal water that had come up through his bathtub. Needless to say, I'm writing from a secure location. But I trust that your kitchen smells much better than mine at the moment, and that, as far as your visits to the nosy blog go, you'll bear with me through the bad smells, too.

Friday, July 22, 2011

nose of one's own

[image via]

"...who shall measure the heat and violence of a poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body?" Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Thursday, July 21, 2011

excessive heat warning

[via Thessaly]

My popsicles melted completely on the one-block walk home from the store (they're reforming themselves now, filling the puffed tubes of their containers). I'm starting to think the acrid smell is the air itself. So thick! When I'm complaining after weeks of slush and ice this winter, feel free to point me in the direction of this post and tell me to suck it up, that thin air, that barely-there air. 

stray smells

 Unleaded, Unleaded, Premium Unleaded by Eric Graham

Today on my bike I smelled violet and rice, together, in a hot blast. I don't think I would have noticed this combination were it not for Katie Puckrik's recent review of Love, Chloé (a perfume I'd hoped would smell a little bit more like what I smelled on the street today). I was riding past a Chinese restaurant and a flower shop, but it can't be as simple as that, can it? On the corner near these two stores there's a gas station that has the faintest odor of any gas station I've ever sniffed; it's a real letdown. Another gas station in my neighborhood was mysteriously abandoned today, cordoned off by a big tornado fence and bright orange construction tape. It looked like a crime scene, a diorama of a suburban ghost town. Off my bike, an oddly sour smell seemed to follow me all evening, but I refused to accept I was its origin. I can be stubborn that way.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

britta bonus

[click here to enlarge]

Look what happens when you feature science smarties on the blog! You get some straight-up aromatic chemical compounds, drawn and annotated by Britta.  

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Nosy Interview: Britta Ameel

Britta pictured in "The Comet and the Galaxy," © J.C. Casado

Britta and I first met at a party. She was a prospective student at the University of Michigan, and I (already a student) remember hoping she'd decide to attend. Lucky me, she did (and the rest is ongoing, rather than history). Internet haunts where you might encounter Britta include Oh, the World is Very Big and Tavern Books.

What do you smell like?
My mother will tell you I smell like garlic. I’m not as embarrassed as I used to be, my breath an identifiable record of a good meal. And it helps that the person with whom I spend most my time smells equally sweet/strange/noxious/earthy. My mother is convinced I have a particular intolerance to it, that garlic smells more intensely on me than anyone else she knows. Physiologically, I can understand how this may be possible, but I’m not yet willing to admit I might be one of them.

(This compound, allyl methyl sulfide, is a byproduct of garlic digestion and is directly aerated through your skin and lungs a few hours after eating your favorite spaghetti sauce. In 1936, doctors proved it was the GI tract and not the mouth’s responsibility: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,756476,00.htm)

I read somewhere that, although our sweat is mostly water and trace minerals, some ridiculously small percentage is a laundry list of less-abundant and not-always-identifiable odiferous compounds that vary much more between people than in an individual’s lifetime. We sense these on each other as our individual scents but not on ourselves because we are so used to them. I am always amazed by this, that even rolling over on his pillow in the deepest sleep tells me that it’s his pillow, distinctly him, even if we just did the laundry.

I can smell myself after skiing, brewing beer, cooking, and working on a motorcycle with my husband (read: holding greasy parts). I am also keenly aware of smelling like Burt’s Bees classic lipbalm. When Elizabeth and I are in the same room, building, hell—even city, she always notices when I reapply.

I would have told you in college that I smelled like Pikaki, an oil I bought at the local perfume shop. I was intensely proud of wearing what I thought was a rare scent, picking it out myself, being known for smelling as such. So when my roommate came back from winter break with another Pikaki perfume, I was, as any idiotic, self-obsessed adolescent is wont to be, pissed. I got over my frustration—it did smell good on her—but the obsession is still there. In looking up pikaki, I learn it is Jasminum sambac, closely related to the jasmine in my new favorite perfume. Some desires never die, I suppose.

Perfumes don’t last long me. I am intoxicated with my jacket cuffs for days after the rare spritz. It might have been Kiehl’s Musk layered with their Coriander or Grapefruit oils, Le Labo’s Jasmin 17, Stella McCartney’s Stella. I used to smell like Acqua di Gio, but now the bottle won’t spray anymore and I’ve forgotten its scent. Recently I’ve been into Kate Walsh’s Boyfriend—Elizabeth is right in that it smells a little pineapple, a little benzoin, a little beastly. But I love that it also smells like pencil shavings.

What do you like to smell?
Pencil shavings.

Fresh hops. Sawdust. Sage, rosemary, lavender, spearmint, basil, cilantro. Hyacinths. Jasmine. Grapefruit. Buddha’s hand. Honeycrisp apples. Ginger. Coffee. Lumber yards and pine forests and peaty scotch.

Wet sweat when I take off my ski jacket at lunch. Wet wool. Wet leather (car interior—my first car, drowning in the winters of Oregon and refusing to start all spring). Wet grass. Wet soil. Bark. Moss. Snow.

Heating the cast iron pan for dinner. Regardless of its last dish, it smells like my favorite chana masala recipe by Madhur Jaffrey (thanks Charlotte, for introducing me).

I loved the headiness of smelling the distilled compounds in the otherwise tedious organic chemistry labs. These absolutes, though you might know what they are, never smell like what you think. Linalool smells incredible: spice and floral and chemistry heaven (side note: in looking up the ingredients to Acqua di Gio, I spot linalool among plenty of other smells mentioned here). Once we made methyl salicylate, the “wintergreen” gum smell, and my lab partner had to pinch my nostrils to get the collecting beaker away for disposal (into the organic waste bucket—good god, that’s a smell I hope never to whiff again). It was like sugar and lavender and mint times a million, but all wrapped up in a smell that only smells of itself, so pure your brain can’t even really understand it, grasps at straws for comparisons. Another time we made limonene, serious orange—perhaps the only time I’ve come close to synesthesia. I sniffed and my brain flashed orange, orange, orange like the time I fell off my bike days after moving to San Francisco and ended up concussed and peeing in a plastic basin in the hospital. (My man knew to call the ambulance when I told him everything looked orange, that I had dreamt of this.) I love the smell of clementines. I discovered them for myself when I lived in France and ate clementines, Nutella, bread, tomatoes, Babybel cheese and wine for just under a year. I must have smelled delicious then.

I love the smell of my husband and his closest boys smoking cigars on a porch. Bourbon, clove, cinnamon, and lemon steeping for his hot toddies. The added honey. The hatband inside his driver’s cap that we bought together in Sweden one afternoon when it rained so hard my purse filled with water. The apartment of the poet we went to visit reminded me how much I love the smell of old pianos. And books. Bookstores, good lord, bookstores. I could sleep in that smell, and I can smell it on my husband when he comes home from Portland, hours spent in Powell’s blue room. Or Ken Sanders here in Salt Lake—it smells like covered wagons and desert dust.

I absolutely cannot stand the smell of synthetic fruits—my gag reflex gets the best of me, likely because I inhaled all the scented ink out of those awful fruity markers in fourth grade and went home sick. I also do not like perfumes that smell like something you should eat for dessert. But I love dessert.

I love the smell of metals, particularly silver and copper—Gilt, in Portland, smells incredible, especially if Jessie is behind the counter and wearing Kiehl’s Imperial Body Balm.

I love smelling the women in my life. I get teary thinking about leaning in for the hug that prompts wrist-sniffing and rifling through our purses or dresser drawers for the new perfume we’re into. I live too far away from the women I love. I spent an evening with a woman in Stockholm who wore Acqua di Parma and had real Picasso sketches on her wall. That perfume, almost more than any other scent, reminds me of the incredible, strong, intelligent, elegant, light-giving women who inspire me to smell, look, think, smell again. And then tell them about it.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

giveaway day

Happy giveaway-results day! Double giveaway day for me, it turns out, as I learned this morning that I also won an online giveaway celebrating perfumer Andy Tauer's sixth anniversary of blogging. I am deep in the throes of decision-making, and very excited to have one of his beautiful bottles on my dresser. 

 [image via we♥it]

As for the results of Nosy's own more modest giveaway, the winner is: Lucky #7! That's JOCIE (the 7th to comment, chosen using random.org). Hooray, Jocie! May Rose À Saïgon tickle your nose. Please e-mail me your mailing address and I'll get your crazy stick in the mail right away. Thanks to all for entering and spreading the nosy word! I'll do my best to make giving stuff away a not-too-irregular feature around these parts.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Nosy Interview: Rodolfo Perez

Rodolfo in Messier 106, © R Jay Gabany 

Rodolfo and Sarah are making Nosy Girl history by being the first married couple to appear on the site. As the R in Sarah's S & R blog, he makes frequent appearances around those parts if you're itching for a Rodolfo-fix after reading his interview.

What do you smell like? 
It is hard for me to think about my own smell, I don’t know if I ever done so. Still, maybe due to the extent of my olfactory organ, I do think a lot about smells; I feel quite animalistic about them; a pleasant smell makes me happy and welcome, whereas the wrong smell in the wrong place puts me in a defensive mood, as if I were attacked by it and whatever puts it in my nose.  

Assuming some sort of cologne-dependency in my smell, then I smell like Dolce & Gabbana for men. I got it as a Christmas present back in 2008 (my mom used to give me a cologne every December 25th), began using it around mid 2009 (After I finished the Tommy Hilfiger, gotten on 12/25/2007), but taking a big hiatus from it on 2010. It was too big to bring it in a backpacking trip, or passing it as carry-on in a flight… which brings me to my second smell: Playboy cologne. Back in late 2009, my wife Sarah and I realized, while doing some random shopping in Target, that we needed a small and cheap (~$10) cologne bottle for travel purposes. Playboy won our best smelling award, shining over stinky competitors. Comparing both aromas, Playboy feels earthy, definitely heavier than D&G, and lacking any of the fresh and subtle citrusy aromas that I've realized I like in cologne. Still, after any of those shower-less, stink-inducing displacements such as overnight flights or long rides in dusty roads, Playboy feels to me like a blessing, with its highly charged battery of tequila, vanilla, and coffee smells. 

About my body smell, I guess it’s quite neutral as far as I smell, excepting those hours when onion goes from my mouth to my pores, when even I have trouble standing myself. My wife Sarah says she likes my natural smell, good for me. And stealing her Aveda shampoo doesn't hurt either.

What do you like to smell?
I love to smell any spice I can find, as well as herbs. I register the smell, finding a compartment in my brain’s spice rack for a potential meal in dreamland. My other half disconnects from any cognitive process, just getting into the thing, happily wondering and begging for an extra sniff. Recently, I found myself in a fixation for rosemary, specially when added to a freshly made tomato-based broth. For some reason, tomatoness kicks rosemary to another dimension. I guess that’s the only thing I cook for purely smell purposes, although I love the taste as well. Feeling the rosemary explode in the mouth, releasing an aroma that somehow manages to go to the nose and from there… pure happiness. 

Walking through the streets of Stone Town in Zanzibar was one of the most memorable nosy times in my life. The spices come out of everywhere, sneaking in the nose in the most unexpected combinations. 

There is a bunch of other smells, usually involving a mix of fried food and some sort of earth (even dust), that feel just right in places such as street markets around the world. It can be a flea market, a county fair or an semi-established informal market. I don’t know if I can say they are always pleasant, but they smell so authentic that make me feel that the place is alive, filled with real people. I still remember walking in a very non-touristy part of Baltimore and suddenly feeling transported directly to my favorite flea market in Santiago, Chile, courtesy of my nose.

Back into the food… I love to smell coffee! There is nothing like the steam coming from a fresh made coffee cup. I guess this is why I love cozy coffee shops and I love to treat my guests with an espresso; maybe they’re not the best in town but I’m giving them a smell I really like, my nosy salute. 

Monday, July 11, 2011

smell in school

 Barbery-Coulon & her bookshelf of bottles via Into the Gloss 

Into the Gloss's Top Shelf interview series is a treat for nosy folks like me, who like to peek into people's medicine cabinets (and kitchen cupboards and bedroom closets--invite me over!). In the latest installment, Lili Barbery-Coulon talks a lot about fragrance, perfumers, and smell. An excerpt: 
I love opening the bottles and just smelling them, and I make my daughter smell them too, because it’s very important to get trained because we’re not used to using our nose anymore. It used to be one of the most efficient senses of all the senses. It used to enable you to be able to say, ‘Is this food going to make me sick?’ Or, ‘Is there danger somewhere?’ Or, ‘Am I attracted to this person?’ You would be driven by your nose all the time. And now, we’ve shot our connections to fragrances, to skin—like, skin has to smell fresh and clean all the time. We’re covered with products that don’t let us smell the original skin, like, no odor—our fragrance, our scent. I think it’s very important that we all train ourselves to smell because it makes you feel better when you have food. For my kid, I mean, I think parfum should be taught in school. It would be so great, to be able to read, to smell, you know? To read, smell, write—just part of everything. But of course, it’s not something that people think is important. I try to let her smell.
What would it be like to learn to smell in school? I hardly remember talking about smell in the classroom at all, except in the context of lessons about the five senses (in fifth grade, we ate an apple and a potato with our eyes blindfolded and our noses clothespinned), or when we would receive a scratch n' sniff sticker with certain hot lunches (a dill pickle sticker is nearly reason enough to endure 'barf on a rock' and other school lunch specialties). If you have children, how do you teach them to smell? About smell?

Thursday, July 7, 2011

nosy recommends: muggy-weather scents


My friend Charlotte urged me to make more recommendations on the site. Charlotte is a great encourager, and my first recommendation is to befriend her if given the chance. In terms of scent suggestions, I've been thinking lately of what I reach for now that the muggy-monster is among us. Boston is humid as all get out, and these are the fragrances that have served me best during my least-favorite weather:

I'm a jerk for recommending this (though I recommend it without reservation for all seasons) because it's impossible to track down. But maybe we could rally enough nosy demand to inspire D.S. & Durga to re-release this beauty? (This worked for me once with a seasonal flavor at an ice cream shop in Madison, Wisconsin). I didn't discover East MidEast until it was already on clearance at Anthropologie, and though I was able to manage to hoard a couple of small bottles, I still wear it less than I'd like to for fear of running out. I mention it despite this scarcity because its notes ("saffron, Indian cardamom, Russian roses, & red mandarins") would have, at one time, seemed to me to make it a big no-go for the summer months. In our haste to subsist on watermelon and ice-cold margaritas in the summertime, we forget how excellent spicy foods taste when it's hot. I think the same goes for perfume--though the natural inclination might be to reach for your sheerest citruses, the right big rose thrives rather than cloys in the heat.

Recommended for: Anyone who likes to smell really good, people who can't stand being told what to do, and Katie Puckrik.

Nuit de Tubereuse may be my favorite muggy-weather scent; I rarely wear it when it's not crazy-humid. I bought a bottle, somewhat impulsively, on a super-hot day in New York last summer, and I'm not sure I would have had the weather been milder. Something about this peppery, dirty, juicy-fruity, sexy, incensey stunner just heats up so right. Reviews point to the abundance of white florals (though are quick to correctly note that you won't get your creamy-tuberose fix here), but this smells so green to me. NdT almost (almost!) makes me look forward to muggy weather, and this makes me believe the ad copy claiming narcotic qualities isn't just fluff. I've also noticed that I get more compliments on NdT than on any other fragrance I wear. This could be due in part to the odor-amplifying days on which I tend to wear it, but it also speaks to the tenacity of the scent (especially notable since people's biggest beef with L'Artisan seems to be that their scents fade too quickly).

Recommended for: Women wearing backless dresses, glamorous outdoorsy types, and people who like to flirt on the bus.

I've mentioned this mellow fruit-bomb on the site before, and while it can be a bit too sweet for me, it's perfect for those muggy days when all I want to do is eat popsicles and read the kinds of magazines generally reserved for waiting rooms and long flights. 

Recommended for: Lemonade stand salespeople, freckled stoners, and teenagers attending their first spring formals.

If you have other sweaty-weather favorites, please share them in the comments!

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

nosy's first giveaway

Inspired by Aimee's mention of Crazylibellule and the Poppies, I'm holding the first nosy giveaway! One Rose À Saïgon "Crazy Stick"/solid perfume is up for offer, and all you must do to enter is share the link to Nosy Girl via facebook, twitter, your blog &/or e-mail. Or you can just tell someone out loud, in person. Let me know how/where you shared in the comments, and I'll enter your name in the drawing (it's all honor system here at Nosy HQ).

The stick has been opened to test the smell (very pretty, fruity & flowery) and the twist mechanism (sound). The perfume was purchased by me in a bit of a frenzy on one of those flash sale sites, so it's possible you'll see future crazylilubelle giveaways around these parts, depending on how this one goes. Thank you for spreading the nosy word!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Nosy Interview: Aimee Nezhukumatathil

 Aimee & Jasper in Pleiades and Stardust, ©Tony Hallas

Aimee is one of my very favorite former teachers. We met when she was a fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and her class was one that made me want to write for real, and she was--is--the kind of teacher who is still inspiring me ten years later. I credit her with supercharging my love for sensory details; in her classroom we honored and elevated the sensory. (I even wrote a (stinky) praise poem about an ex-boyfriend's aroma.) We sniffed and savored and touched and felt. Aimee's latest book of poems is Lucky Fish, and you can learn more about that collection and her other work on her web site

What do you smell like? 
I’m certain I smell different in different seasons, so today, on this summer day right in the middle of strawberry season here in western NY, I smell of cardinal song and a faint trace of potting soil with notes of cracked sidewalk chalk. I had a cherry Popsicle this afternoon and I love to gnaw on the finished popsicle stick so I probably have that on me too. My youngest son had Greek yogurt and blueberries for dessert so a bit of that is on my plaid, spaghetti-strapped summer dress I’m wearing right now, along with a trace of sunscreen. 

When I leave the house, I usually wear this nifty little solid perfume (super nifty TSA-friendly too, for airports): Crazylibellule and the Poppies' Shanghaijava Blue Orchidee. I I know it sounds like some sort of joke, right? Like a J-pop all-girls’ band? But I should mention its top notes are bergamot, mandarin, orange; heart notes of jasmine, rose, ylang; and it has a base note of sandalwood. The packaging claims that Blue Orchidee is “a luck charm, an amulet, a love-reminder, a moment of poetry, a minute of grace, an outward sign of refinement, a garden in the pocket.” Yep, that sounds about right. Jeepers, I’m such a corn ball. 

What do you like to smell?
My sons’ freshly towel-dried hair after their baths. Shaved gyro meat from one of those twirly-ma-bobs. The way ice smells after a good zamboni-ing. Strawberries picked from my garden. Sharp #2 pencils. A good lemon shandy. The gift of tomatoes freshly picked from my yard in October even when there should be no more fruit, just wind and corn husk and sweaters. And when I visit my relatives on the other side of the planet, there is a smell that also feels like home in the calm swell-surge of typhoon where baby octopus the size of rice first learn of wiggle and pulse-lights just under their supple skin. That would be my ideal way to signal good-bye at evening’s end: my skin would light up as I leave you. Curry powder. Bee balm. What construction paper smells like when you cut it. Honey beer. Orange blossoms from my parents’ yard in Florida. Jell-O. The air around the grill on an early summer evening when my husband, aka The Grill Master, works his magic on various cuts
of meat and peppers and pineapple. Oil of Olay and Wrigley’s spearmint gum--that combo always reminds me of my mom, Chicago, the 70s.

Friday, July 1, 2011

hot stinky links


 photo by clemmac

Nosy readers whose olfactory interests extend beyond the reach of my vacations and what my friends smell like may be interested in some of these stinky links:
  • "The Smelliest Block in New York" shares cover space with Ryan Gosling's torso in this week's New York magazine: "It’s a mystery, the stretch of Broome Street between Allen and Eldridge—a quiet little block that smells like high meat and old squeegees."
  • Like Elisa, I marveled at this notion of "high meat." So immediately evocative--but what does it mean? Speaking of Elisa, her latest On the Scent column just went up, and I could listen to her talk about labdanum all day.
  • Smell-O-Vision in our homes (or on our cell phones?!?). My preferred smell in any movie theatre is hot popcorn (it's half the reason I go), but I'd still like to get a whiff of this device. I can't imagine how much more successful/invasive an advertisement for food would be if you could actually smell it.
  • A companion piece to the case of the stinky block has Chandler Burr giving an olfactory tour of Manhattan that includes a description of birthday cake-infected sidewalks, insight as to why Coppertone smells so good, and one mention of "really, really, really upscale hot dog."