nosy recommends: burt's bees baby bee multipurpose ointment

This smells so sweet! Not sweet like frosting, sweet like darling. Burt's Bees Baby Bee Multipurpose Ointment just smells adorable. It's light streaming in the open windows in the farmhouse bedroom where your white sheets were just air-dried the day before and the host, one of your oldest friends, left a little mason jar full of gummy bears on your bedside table (just the orange, yellow, and adhesive-colored ones). This tub's pudding is cuddly but not cloying, and comforting with a chewiness I associate with that tantalizing pull to bite the brand-new nub of pink eraser on a fresh yellow No. 2 pencil (it doesn't smell like that eraser, but like the feeling you imagine it will have between your molars). Even though I've learned that petitgrain is a bitter orange note, there's a homier smell I associate with the word petitgrain that comes to mind when I sniff this ointment. I would like to smell coumarin (one of the ingredients listed, along with shea butter, almond oil, beeswax, and coconut oil) and see whether the compound accounts for the dollop of countryside I'm getting, since its Wikipedia entry says coumarin is "readily recognized as the scent of new-mown hay," and is found in plants like tonka bean, vanilla grass, sweet woodruff, sweet grass, cassia cinnamon, Deers Tongue and sweet clover.

You can use this ointment, intended for babies' bums, however you might use Vaseline, and it's especially nice on rough heels (sandal season is officially over here in Cambridge) and dry elbows (the season for which is fast approaching). I mainly use it at night, but it's subtle enough that it doesn't interfere with perfume.

 "Mr. Autumn Man, enjoying a seasonal stroll." --The Onion 

Other things I recommend right now, from past Nosy Interviewees and from the planet: 

• Elisa has been doing some great perfume writing on her blog lately, on her new favorite leather, lilies, and underwear perfumes. I loved this line: "From a distance, the impression is not unlike my vintage Shalimar – a powdery floriental with a smoker's cough." Elisa and I disagree about Agent Provocateur, which she thinks goes from uptight to dirty, and I believe to be so raunchy in its opening that I leave a small grace period before leaving the house with it on. 
• Rebecca has a wonderful poem, "Self-Portrait at San Carlito," up at Verse Daily (and a book coming out in 2013!!!).
• Natalie wrote an excellent review of Zadie Smith's NW for Fiction Writers Review, and highlighted one of the book's best lines: "Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became."  
• FALL! I am definitely a shameless version of Ms. Autumn Woman, and if you encountered me on the street yesterday, you would have been subjected to a six-minute (minimum) reverie on how incredible fall smells and feels and looks. I like to celebrate its arrival with an annual reading of Colin Nissan's brilliant "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers," and suggest you do the same, whatever the weather where you are.

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."

Nosy Interview: Elisa Gabbert

Elisa pictured in the Cocoon Nebula, © Jean-Charles Cuillandre & Giovanni Anselmi  

I just met Elisa in real life (though I've been enjoying her writing for some time), and she's already taught me loads about perfume. You can learn about fragrance from her, too; she writes the "On the Scent" column for Open Letters Monthly.

What do you smell like?  

I must have some innate smell I’m not privy to – what John calls “that good Elisa smell” (which raises the question, does he like how I smell because he loves me, or does he love me because he likes how I smell?). But I generally cover that up – or enhance it, if you prefer – with perfume. I have many, and I subscribe to the marketing adage “Always be testing,” so there are always samples in the rotation. On any given day I might smell like lilies and amber (Donna Karan Gold), caramel leather (Cuir de Lancome), glossy geranium-rose (Rossy de  Palma), clove cigarettes (Tabac Aurea), peachy tuberose-jasmine (Carolina Herrera), rubber and vanilla (Bulgari Black), spicy sandalwood (Chanel Egoiste), lavender, heliotrope and patchouli (Belle en Rykiel), lily of the valley, hyacinth and lime popsicle (Gucci Envy), orange blossom and musk (Narciso Rodriguez for Her), laundry soap and baby powder (Flower by Kenzo) … you get the idea.

What do you like to smell?

San Diego. The smell of approaching rain in El Paso. My clothes, after I’ve worn them (lingering perfume traces create a kind of out-of-body, third-person experience). Barbecuing meat. Pizza. Fresh herbs (especially basil, mint, and cilantro). Limes. Grapefruit. Figs. Coffee beans. Roasted nuts. Roasting chiles. Anything baking. Rum. Tobacco shops. Patchouli. Roses. (If none are available, Perfumer’s Workshop Tea Rose will do.) Tuberoses. Apricots. Violet leaf. Labdanum. Leather. Woodsmoke. Blown out candles.