Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Grafting (a review of Boyfriend perfume)

Ah, spring.  The dirt smells great, both of renewal and remnants of decay, along with a suggestion of worms.  The trees here are finally starting to bud.  We're finally moving beyond daffodils in our blooms, though it's still pretty bulb heavy.  Hello, tulips.  Hello, crown imperials with your odd extra-terrestrial upside down-ness.

Lots of walks through the garden.  Where one can't see much, really, but the vision...the vision imagines what is here, and there.  Attention marks when the asparagus roots come up, and how quickly.  Rotates a few vegetables in the mental array and makes note of an adjustment of where to put the seeds and plants for this year.

Looks at the fruit trees, and allows the brain to do a little ruminating on the advantages of dwarf versus full size trees when one's back yard is not an orchard.  Thinks of the rigorous near torturing that is an espalier.  Cringes a bit at the Frankenstein that is a 5-in-1 apple available in one's favorite catalog.

Grafting.  Slice and suture.  Thank goodness it works in surgery.  And while I cringe in principle when it comes to Frankencrafting plant life, I have to admit to having a couple of roses that rely on it.  Not to mention how many of those dwarf fruit trees owe their presence in our gardens.

Heck, I've even tried it once myself.  For propogation of a species.  In my garden.

But that does bring me to a treasured Saturday afternoon horror flick memory.

And Kate Walsh's Boyfriend.


***

If it's perfume that brings you here to the Ledge, you've already read about Boyfriend.  "Why should I have to give up his scent?," or something like that, asked Kate Walsh apres relationship.  Keep the scent, ditch the dude.  But, since one still lives within one's own skin, put in one bottle that which you liked smelling on him...and then that which you liked smelling on you.

Grafting.

Which brings me to Ray Milland and Rosie Greer.  The first time I smelled Boyfriend, the citrus/cologne-y opening was clear.  And then it fell, rather than transitioned, into a pleasant woody vanilla.

The cleft graft is used for topworking older established apple and pear trees, either on the trunk of a small tree or on the side branches of a larger tree.  {...}  Cut the cleft (avoid splitting if possible) with a grafting chisel, large knife or hatchet. After a few trials you will learn the proper depth of cleft. {...} Open the cleft slightly with a grafting tool or screw driver. Insert a scion on each side, with the inner bark of stock and scion in contact.
- University of Minnesota/Extension

That there is a cut and paste from instructions on how to perform the cut and the union in a cleft graft.  A cut and then a union is of course symbolically (and literally) appropriate when it comes to surgery.

I'm not sure exactly how it worked for the chemists who worked on Boyfriend, but let's take a look at how it worked in The Thing With Two Heads.



You see, unlike in one of my other favorite horror flick memories involving heads and grafting.  I won't say the title here, but fans love quoting this exchange:
Girl's head in petri dish: Don't tell me, I've been in a terrible accident, and I've lost my legs. Mad Scientist Boyfriend:  No, it's worse; much, much worse.
But I digress.  In The Thing With Two Heads, Ray Milland's head (okay, his CHARACTER's head) gets grafted onto another body.  Rosie Greer's body.  In the ways of memory and time and mental processing, I forget all about the important civics lesson the movie intended to impart.  (Milland's character was an SOB bigot who wanted to live longer, and needed to learn to get along.)  Instead, sunny side of the street
child that I was, I ended up remembering only the image of the two as one.  In still frames, except for the moment when Milland first sees the other head growing in the mirror.  Somehow, I split off that movie (a sort of Twilight Zone episode in my weak mental sorting) from "the other" movie, the part that happens after Rosie's head becomes full size.  Which is a faint awareness stored way back behind The Defiant Ones, and has overtones of learning to get along.

I share this with you, because at some point in the history of this blog, I had to reveal just how faulty and meandering my collective awareness can be.  Mind you, there is a certain logic to be found, even when not obvious.  But, nonetheless, since I usually review/think of perfume in context and not as a series of notes in my nose, well...fair and complete disclosure.

Anyway, The Thing With Two Heads involves putting two personalities into one vessel, as it were.  Which is how I came to think of it when imagining how I would review Boyfriend.

What's that you say?  I have not yet reviewed Boyfriend?


Right.  Okay, first start with what I said up there about pleasant woody vanilla.  As it turns out, the "boyfriend" part doesn't always darken my doorway; sometimes, it's straight to the heart of the matter.  Whether or not the boyfriend appears, the girl with wood is a consistent thing, and once she arrives, that's what you've got until it's over.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Sometimes I get a hint of chemical-ness (this is where I suspect the affordability comes in), and nothing about the vanilla or the wood is notable.  BUT.  Hey.  It's okay.  And given that I prefer my vanilla not too sweet, when I'm wanting to wear some, I appreciate the woody aspect.

It is about here that I believe it is appropriate to note that it would seem Kate didn't really need that boyfriend after all.  Just a reminder that she had one/could have one.  And then go use her own wood.

Ba DUM bum!

By the way, the body butter is quite nice.  Works pretty darn well as a product, and has the nicest parts of the vanilla wood without the hint of chemical.

It is here that I will say that on the Thing With Two Heads scale, this one works in reverse motion.  The one head disappears, instead of growing.

**
By the way, the body butter is quite nice.  Works pretty darn well as a product, and has the nicest parts of the vanilla wood without the hint of chemical.

*
Also by the way, if you want a real mash-up, where both heads have equal weight, that would be Jose Eisenberg J'ose.  No, not Jai J'Ose.  Eisenberg J'ose.  I talked about it here.  Turns out, in retrospect, it was ahead of its time.  (Get it?  It was aHEAD of it's time???  Ahhhhhhhhhhahaha.)



image of grafting for asexual reproduction from TutorVista dot com.


image of Rosie Grier and Ray Milland challenging even the tailors at Men's Big & Tall from Badass Reviews, which proved itself to be just where I should borrow my image because not only did I entirely enjoy discovering the blog in general, this particular entry includes the movie poster (totally awesome, please go see) but the Burt Reynolds Cosmo centerfold which caused one of the longest threads of discussion I've ever seen among some perfume-loving Facebook friends recently.  In fact, I so enjoyed finding this level-headed review of the movie and its director that I forgive them for clearing the cobwebs in my mind and reminding me what the film really was.  Because that scene on the motorcycle with the mannequin head was worth remembering, and it came back full chortle, erm, throttle.

4 comments:

Vanessa said...

"Frankencrafting" - or was it "Frankengrafting" is excellent. I don't get any such feelings of fecund potential when I wander in our garden. Every time I go out I seem to remove another dead stump (two hebes last time - or at least I think they were hebes - they were so very dead it was hard to tell).

I am most keen to try Boyfriend, however olfactorially schizoid it may prove to be. Woody vanilla sounds nice to me, and I will bear the body butter in mind...

ScentScelf said...

It was indeed "Frankencrafting," to construct with the mad scientist twist. Though now that "fecund" has been associated with "Frankencrafting" by proximity, I am going to feel like Madeline Kahn next time I wander into the garden, and oddly compelled to break into song. ("Ah, sweet dream of life, at last I've found you...") Which will seem perhaps odder to me even than to the neighbors. Or the roses.

Naw. The roses won't flinch. I talk to 'em already.


You've edjumacated me in something today; previously, had we played word association, you would have said "hebe," I would have said "jeebie." As in "x gives me the heebie jeebies." Now I know it as plant life. Of course, I look at those pictures I found online, and get a little itchy.

Boyfriend is fine. As it happens, I'm wearing YR Voile d'Ambre right now, and feel an odd association between them--not olfactory, per se, but both are in that category of warm deeper note non-floral wallpaper scent. If that makes sense.

Mind you, I don't expect much of anything in this particular post to make sense for any length of time... ;)

Vanessa said...

I completely get the Voile d'Ambre parallel, which in turn reminds me a wee bit of Puredistance 1 in terms of "textural density", for want of a better phrase.

And I can confirm that hebes are indeed itchy, which is yet another good reason to get them gone!

Tommasina said...

S: all makes sense to me - whatever that may mean! Love Young Frankenstein (will you kill me if I point out that it's "Ah, sweet *mystery* of life"? Link below)
Agree on Boyfriend body butter and am even contemplating using a credit note at Sephora to purchase same; thing is, being Libran, I can't choose. Ever.
About that Voile d'Ambre: need more?

Vanessa: love hebes but can't grow 'em here: boo hiss! Had several in my Irish garden, one of which was grown from a 'slip' yanked off a wild one on Howth Head by my ex-MIL (who wasn't ex at the time~). Glorious rich, deep purple, it was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWrCf7rAytc
http://www.operanews.com/Opera_News_Magazine/2010/7/Features/Sweet_Mystery.html