Lemming Stampede!

So about a week or so ago, after Robin at NST announced on her blog that parfum1.com had Balmain Ambre Gris on their website, there was an MUA Lemming stampede to snag a bottle.  I mean, it’s called ambre gris, that just sounds pretty perfect right off the bat.  Did the little Lemming live up to the hype? 

Notes of pink pepper, cinnamon, tuberose, immortelle, myrrh, smoky gaà¯ac wood, benzoin, white musks, ambergris.  It starts off with this weirdish sort of gourmandy incense feel and… soapy?  I mean, not really literally, but a little like fresh-washed hair.  The immortelle is nowhere near the Annick Goutal Sables strength, but it’s definitely there, which holds my interest longer than it would have, but it doesn’t give me the fierceness that I’d like from it, and for me, the most interesting parts are early on when you get all that nutty incense, but the drydown is very smooth and lovely to wear.  It’s nicely done, and the price point couldn’t be better.   Call it your Cheap Thrill at $25 a bottle.

Robin at NST already did a great review on Bond No. 9’s new Warhol scent, Lexington Avenue, and I don’t have a lot to add to what she said.  Notes are blue cypress, fennel, cardamom, pink peony, iris, crà¨me brà»lée, pimento berry, patchouli and sandalwood.  It does have a Chinatown feel, but without that overpowering Chinatown clatter that makes my teeth ache.  It feels fresher than Chinatown, woodier, but there’s something about it that will have people comparing it, as I did as soon as I spritzed the bottle.  I did get a little sweat note that Robin talks about, which I think is a nice touch, adds interest and depth and keeps it from being just another patchy floral a la Flowerbomb and Chinatown.  It’s well done, it’s just not a bottle I’ll need to buy, I don’t think.  It’s lovely, but at that price point, I have similar things I like as much.

Okay, now let’s talk Wii Fit, a lemming we should all adopt and take home to live with us.  Wii Fit is the gaming system, and you get a little platform, the Wii Fit board.  Once in the game, you get your fit age after it weighs you and gives you your BMI, etc. I got a fit age 8 years younger than I am, which was a good start, but I’d like to get my fit age into my 30s.  You step on the board when instructed, and you can pick Yoga or aerobic games or strength training or balance games. One of the Aerobic games is Hula hoops. You stand on the board and start doing the hula hooping movement, and you have to go fast enough to keep your hoops up.  Running, you run in place off the board with the controller in hand, and the faster you go, the faster the little guy in front of you goes, and you try to better your time each time you do it.  The yoga is great because it measures how much balance you have.  The more stable you are, the higher your score is, so day over day, you can see improvement, plus you know when you’re actually doing the pose right by your balance.  So the feedback is instant and long-term.

The balance games are brutal.  The first one I tried was doing a tightrope walk.  Um… I fell.  The next one was trying to hit the soccer balls with my head as they were thrown at me.  Nope, that didn’t work either.   Need more work on balance.

Right now the Wii Fit is pretty hard to get ahold of, but eBay, as always, has plenty of them for a little more than normal price.  If you need your workouts to have some feedback from a gentle cartoon character, and you want to play it like a game, the Wii Fit is perfect.