Monday, October 23, 2006
I got my latest issue of Maxim on Saturday, featuring the girls of One Tree Hill on the cover. Along with pseudo-erotic poses and advice for having better sex, the magazine always contains several advertisements for new colognes, complete with those little paper flaps you can open to smell them. You know what I'm talking about, right? They put these in women’s magazines too. You open the seal, unfold the paper flap, and take a whiff of whatever Calvin Klein wants you to smell. Good advertising.
With the last job I had, I was forced to travel every few months and I racked up quite a few frequent flyer miles in the process. I never earned quite enough miles for a free flight anywhere, so I put them all toward free magazines, rather than letting them expire. I now get twelve magazines every month, several of which are weeklies (Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Variety). As you can imagine, the stack of glossy pulp next to my bed grows pretty fast, so I'm forced to take some of the magazines into the bathroom to make the most of my time in there. Once a magazine enters the bathroom it becomes a biohazard and can't be taken back out, so I just start a mini stack in there. And that's where my latest Maxim ended up; on the bathroom floor, with the One Tree Hill girls staring up seductively at anyone who enters.
A while ago, I noticed a pleasing byproduct of having a mini stack of bathroom reading material. Because of the little cologne samples included in most of my magazines, the bathroom smelled good for the first time in history. This gave me an idea. If the magazines can make the bathroom smell good, then why not my car?
I had a big date several months ago and couldn't leave anything to chance, so before I left home, I ripped a fresh cologne sample from a magazine, opened the paper flap, and hid it under one of my car seats. How sneaky of me. I went and picked the girl up, and the first thing she said after placing her curvy buttocks squarely in my passenger seat was "It smells good in here." Success! I got a classy-smelling car for free, thanks to tag-team effort between United Airlines and Maxim. And since it's not just Maxim that puts the smelly ads in their publications, I now have an inexhaustible supply of them, thanks to Esquire, Blender, Stuff, and FHM.
I’ve never purchased cologne for myself, so the three kinds I have (Canoe, Lucky, and Preferred Stock) were all gifts either from ex-girlfriends or my grandma. I do have some Old Spice that my parents gave me one year for Christmas and some Brut in a green plastic bottle, but the first two cardinal rules of cologne wearing are:
1. Never wear a scent you can buy at a grocery store, and
2. Never wear anything that comes in a plastic bottle.
Both of those scents break a rule, so they’re only good for dates with girls I have no interest in and for wearing to work and church, where I have no one to impress and couldn't care less if someone thinks I’m cheap.
Because I get tired of wearing my same old scents, it wasn’t long before I took another step forward and tried using the samples on myself. It’s easy. You just rub the paper strip all over your shirt, arms, neck, or wherever else you want to smell good. Then, for a few brief hours, you smell like someone dumb enough to actually pay 65 bucks for a quarter ounce of the real stuff. That’s the problem with the samples. They don’t last long, because they’re just scented paper, not the precious oily liquids sold in fine stores. But paper can be quite satisfying. The girls from One Tree Hill are proof of that.
With the last job I had, I was forced to travel every few months and I racked up quite a few frequent flyer miles in the process. I never earned quite enough miles for a free flight anywhere, so I put them all toward free magazines, rather than letting them expire. I now get twelve magazines every month, several of which are weeklies (Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Variety). As you can imagine, the stack of glossy pulp next to my bed grows pretty fast, so I'm forced to take some of the magazines into the bathroom to make the most of my time in there. Once a magazine enters the bathroom it becomes a biohazard and can't be taken back out, so I just start a mini stack in there. And that's where my latest Maxim ended up; on the bathroom floor, with the One Tree Hill girls staring up seductively at anyone who enters.
A while ago, I noticed a pleasing byproduct of having a mini stack of bathroom reading material. Because of the little cologne samples included in most of my magazines, the bathroom smelled good for the first time in history. This gave me an idea. If the magazines can make the bathroom smell good, then why not my car?
I had a big date several months ago and couldn't leave anything to chance, so before I left home, I ripped a fresh cologne sample from a magazine, opened the paper flap, and hid it under one of my car seats. How sneaky of me. I went and picked the girl up, and the first thing she said after placing her curvy buttocks squarely in my passenger seat was "It smells good in here." Success! I got a classy-smelling car for free, thanks to tag-team effort between United Airlines and Maxim. And since it's not just Maxim that puts the smelly ads in their publications, I now have an inexhaustible supply of them, thanks to Esquire, Blender, Stuff, and FHM.
I’ve never purchased cologne for myself, so the three kinds I have (Canoe, Lucky, and Preferred Stock) were all gifts either from ex-girlfriends or my grandma. I do have some Old Spice that my parents gave me one year for Christmas and some Brut in a green plastic bottle, but the first two cardinal rules of cologne wearing are:
1. Never wear a scent you can buy at a grocery store, and
2. Never wear anything that comes in a plastic bottle.
Both of those scents break a rule, so they’re only good for dates with girls I have no interest in and for wearing to work and church, where I have no one to impress and couldn't care less if someone thinks I’m cheap.
Because I get tired of wearing my same old scents, it wasn’t long before I took another step forward and tried using the samples on myself. It’s easy. You just rub the paper strip all over your shirt, arms, neck, or wherever else you want to smell good. Then, for a few brief hours, you smell like someone dumb enough to actually pay 65 bucks for a quarter ounce of the real stuff. That’s the problem with the samples. They don’t last long, because they’re just scented paper, not the precious oily liquids sold in fine stores. But paper can be quite satisfying. The girls from One Tree Hill are proof of that.
# posted by RBW @ 3:43 PM 
