Ever since our favorite NYTimes perfume critic disappeared from sight (as of today, his last review for The Moment’s Scent Notes was on July 31st, 2009), curious fragrance hounds jonesing for Burr’s peculiar brand of Harlequin Romance + MOMA via My First Chemistry Kit mashup review style have been asking, “Where’s Chandler?”
Even our intrepid, no-nonsense, Saint of the Art of Snark and all-around demolisher of pretentious prose Dr. Avery Gilbert has been mourning the absence of hits to his brand spankin’ new Burrometer, the metaphorical device he uses to measure the soaring flights of, erm, “fancy” which Burr regularly employs when writing about fragrance: “We sank a lot of capital into a top-of-the-line model and only used it twice. Going to have a hard time justifying that expense at the next board of directors meeting.”
Recessions are hard on research and development.
So we queried into the void for a Google map to Burr’s precise location, but the void did not answer — which is, all in all, a general trait of voids the universe over, so really, what were we expecting? I mean, the man did release his first novel this summer and spent months busily greeting, meeting and reading to promote the darn thing, so perhaps a little time off from the grueling rigors of sniffing at patented molecules was in order (the financial cutbacks at the NYTimes aside).
Chandler talks about his novel in a video clip below:
But Gilbert’s Burrometer must be spiking again because there have been some recent Burr sightings, and the word on the street is that he’s about to surface and blow.
First, a Scent Dinner is announced, then fragrance blog Now Smell This sees the Burrster parachute into the comments section for some long-winded damage control over a bit of overheated PR speak on the part of The Four Seasons’ copy editors:
I’d quote Burr’s rambling reply, but I’d like you all to stay awake long enough to at least finish reading today’s post. I’m considerate that way.
I will, however, offer up this relevant tidbit of info that Mr. Burr passed on to Now Smell This readers: “We are now in the process of getting Scent Notes back up and running, and my editors are dutifully working on it, but given what they’re going through it’s taking a bit more time than we thought. Fingers crossed we should be back in action in a few weeks.”
Fingers crossed!
Then today, I read this on the Street Insider, buried in a quarterly report for Live Current Media:
“Live Current’s health and beauty business continues to deliver on plan with higher margins, highly engaging content and unique user tools that allow perfume fans to select a scent that matches the occasion or their personalities. We have also entered into a partnership with Chandler Burr, the famed New York Times perfume critic and author, to provide exclusive content for perfume.com,” continued Hampson. “We believe that the focus on creating a single source for relevant information, recommendations and a platform for perfume lovers is the differentiating strategy that is driving the improved margins associated with our business. We believe that perfume.com, with its new strategy, is well positioned to take advantage of these market trends.”
So our dear (famed) Chandler really *has* been busy, and rightly so. Why put all his nesty little eggs in The Moment‘s Scent Notes basket when The NYTimes is tossing employees off the plank left and right?
But The Moment’s potential loss could very well be Perfume.com’s traffic gain — and we can all go back to breathing easy, knowing when and where to find our Magnificent Burr and His Traveling Perfume Sideshow anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
Avery Gilbert can start dusting off that Burrometer of his. I have a hunch it’s gonna see some heavy use.
