Every June, El O goes to “The Boogie” – some godforsaken rally in Southern Indiana where they camp and act foolish and then he regrets going because it’s hot and stanky and manky and he just wants to come home. But before he does all that, he stops (always) in Hooterville Indiana to buy supplies – bologna (always – which is weird, because he doesn’t much eat bologna at home), fixin’s (including some manky-assed ‘Murkan Cheeze’ bug spray and….body wash. Now…why he doesn’t pack these things in his dopp kit is a mystery (we have enough body wash in the cupboard to stock a small general store).
The bologna is Oscar Mayer. The ‘Murkan Cheeze’ is Kraft. The Bug Spray is Cutters. And this year….the Body Wash is Axe.
Yes, you read it: AXE!
Axes of Evil
I saw this black plastic bottle on the sink and my head started pounding. See, when my dad stopped showering daily, he started wearing two body sprays: Bod and Axe. Bod was an immediate headache inducer, with Axe running a close second. It took me ages to figure out why, every time I would walk past my pop, sitting in his chair in the little sitting area in his kitchen, my head would start pounding. Then his CNA said ‘honey, it ain’t you. It’s that damn BOD he sprays – it’ll knock you OUT!!” and she was right.
Death by BOD
El O…..I dunno…maybe it’s Midlife Crisis. But who would want to be a 14 yr old boy again? Or else he just grabbed it by accident. Whatever…OMG! that stuff is terrifying! This one is Axe Chill Black. I was talking to March about it – she has a teenaged boy so she knows alllll about it – and she said “it’s the Night Train of shower gels”. I love that girl. Y’all remember Night Train, right? When I was in High School it was what all the tough kids drank to get a buzz. I thought it tasted like cough syrup – and not the good cough syrup, either (when I was 7yrs old I drank an entire bottle of then-yummy Vicks 44 cough syrup, with the codeine! Hospital. Stomach pump. Good Times. ) We were laughing about the Axe names. The NAMES! You think this smell is bad? How ’bout”
Anarchy
Apollo
Dark Temptation
Deep Space (deep space?)
how does this work in tweens: “gee, Bobby, you smell GREAT! ” “Thanks! It’s Deep Space” “ooooh! Deep Space!”…..naah. They don’t talk like that…do they?
so…..have any of you smelled any of these?
Whatever. It all stinks. I can smell it in my sinuses still. Black Chill is going in the terlet. I’ll fill the bottle with Ivory.
I have two teenage boys. That means Axe. I buy Dark Temptations shampoo for them. I will buy any shampoo they ask for because if it means they will bathe, I am all for it. I also make sure they are stocked with Axe deodorant – same reason. Axe may smell terrible but it is better than teenage BO.
Love “Axes of evil.” I hear a story about Axe bombs where you take Axe deodorant spray and do something to nozzle so it sprays until is runs out. Apparently you can ruin all the furniture and the walls this way.
My son used to use the Dark Temptation shower gel which I really liked. NO BODY SPRAY EVER!!
Maybe it was just the shower gel this kid was using. It wasn’t overpowering, just a nice warm darkish woody thing, slightly gourmand.
Hi Musette, Your story made me laugh out loud! What a hoot. My nephew asked for Axe for Christmas once. We bought it for him. It was pretty awful. I can’t remember the name of the scent but it was sort of a chocolate patchouli. Ewwww.. I can still smell it.
Unrelated, I have a suggestion for you…. I use a sponge mop and a bucket when I wash ceilings. I just change the mop head before I begin… No ladder and a much happier neck. It works great!
Dark Temptation is that chocolate thingy. Smells horrible out of the bottle, but I have to admit that there was one band kid (marching band mom here – I spend a LOOOOOOT of time in the autumn on school buses with stinky teenagers) a couple of years ago who wore it, and it actually smelled nice on him.
Ahh, Axe body spray. More proof that teachers aren’t paid enough.
Good thing that my mother only bought Axe body once for my dad and it was instant migraine for everyone. Mom didn’t open the bottle before she sniffed and she thought it smelled fine. Sometimes you got to open the bottle before you buy this crap.
Your posts always make me LOL!!!
I know Axe shower gels and I think they don’t smell so bad, but rather cheap and first of all – strooooooong! That makes them unbearable. The man of my dreams is luckily using whatever I buy him and his choice of shower gels is more moderate smelling than Axe anyway. He doesn’t wear body sprays but perfume.
So funny and so true! I always knew the day the school nurse talked to the 5th graders about “BO”, because my boys (whenever they hit 5th grade and heard the speech) would hunt up some Axe and start using it that very afternoon. ACK! I finally took a class on making natural personal products and now I make their deodorant with baking soda, cornstarch, and some essential oils, though they prefer an aromachemical from Perfumer’s Apprentice called Ultrazur, which is sort of Calone-ish. Still, so much better than the Axes of Evil!
My brother used to wear LYNX (as pointed out above, the Aussie version) all the time. Made my eyes bleed, but I got used to it and if not sprayed in catastrophic levels there are a few that make me.nostalgic.
Here it is a class thing I think. Poorer, or country kids tend to wear it because the rest is outside their budget. At least they want to smell good, even if they don’t hav th means.
His first gf bought him some mini drug store colognes … not sure what was worse!
Ha! You are so funny Ms A 🙂 My experience with Axe…cashiering in a busy high school cafeteria ringing up an endless succession of teenage kid’s lunches – the girls all smelled like the latest Candy Crush Froot Loop mess and the sweaty boys reeked of Axe body spray….oy.
“Axes of Evil”!!! Funniest thing I’ve heard all day. I’m sooooooooo thankful I’ve never smelled this stuff. It’s odd, too because I spend a lot of time around college students. Maybe they outgrown it before they started college.
On behalf of migraineurs everywhere, I will one day hunt down the creator of Axe body spray and lock him in an elevator with my extremely gassy dog. I do not anticipate that he will survive.
I’ve not really had the pleasure of sniffing much Axe. My husband does use some Old Spice products and they are plenty strong, thank you. His under shirts smell strongly of deodorant even after multiple washes. He does use Axe hair pomade but it doesn’t really smell.
I do have to say that according to a reliable friend with teenagers, even Axe is preferable to the natural scent of warm adolescent boy. As I recall from my high school years, even Davidoff Cool Water was better than boy funk and that stuff made my eyes burn.
BTW, I can totally see why El O needs to shop on the way, I always need to hit a drugstore for cheap crap I won’t ever use again if I’m going on a trip, it’s part of the fun. Do you know how many $2 pairs of flip-flops I have purchased at Walgreens?! I don’t even wear them at home so I never think to pack them but I always need them if I’m away from home (walking barefoot on hotel floors, yick). Oh, and I always end up buying some cheap shampoo that I toss as soon as I’m home because it sucks. Last time we travelled I ended up with a huge (liter?) bottle of Dial blue body wash. It smells like fake blueberry and I will shamefully admit that I have kept it for scrubbing off waterproof sunscreen and am beginning to like the scent.
Someone once described the smell of the teenage boy as “goaty”, and that has stuck with me. I am about to visit relatives with a teenage boy and I hope he is now past using Lynx right before he leaves the house so you can still see the fog in the hallway…
Axe — ohhhh noooo!! Heaven help you, darling! Lucky for me, my DH only wears what I give him and my son is not into scent (and if he were to head in that direction I would straighten him out posthaste). It also might involve the “terlet” as well …
P.S. How goes it with the darling pups?
Heya Musette,
We have the same products by the same company but marketed under the name LYNX.
There was a great ad a couple of years ago where the LYNX wearers girlfriend sprays herself in desperation for some deodorant after a shower. All through the day she gets attention from other women and a couple of gay guys and when she gets home she slaps her boyfriends face and bins the LYNX.
It was a heaven commercial
Portia xx
It was probably on sale. 🙂
And I bet the whole buying of the specific supplies is just part of the ritual he enjoys. If he packed things up ahead of time, it wouldn’t be The Same.
I’m not sure I’ve ever smelled Axe, but men’s deodorant seems to be heavily scented these days..
I used to have a coworker who doused himself in Axe every time he took a cigarette break. I sure would have preferred the smell of cigarettes. I was so happy when he dated a girl who gave him a bottle of Acqua di Gío… Sadly he went back to the Axe after she broke up with him… :-/ Oh well, he was a nice kid!
You crack me up! Murkan cheeze. El O is like a big kid. Aren’t they all? Mine would stock up on pop tarts, peanut butter, and Doritos. He hasn’t come home with Axe anything yet. He has used the Old Spice body washes. I am going to make it a point to sniff these Axe ones the next time I’m at the store.
I like those Old Spice body washes – several of them, anyway.
Ha!! That is too funny. I recall our son using it once. I thought it smelled like a Whore’s Knickers……….
The terlet!!!! lol!