Frederic Malle Lys Mediterannee and Cat Butt Love

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not Frederic Malle’s Lys Mediterannee that has anything to do with Cat Butt Love. That’s another story, after I snuggle up to Lys and get all happy.

Lys has been one of my top picks for years. I don’t always love lily scents, even though I adore the flower and its overpowering indolic fugue when you bring a big bouquet of it in the house. Lys is lily covered with dew sparkling in the morning sun. Crystalline, watery, slightly funky – really slightly – warmed into something more interesting by angelica, this is one of my favorite examples of the lily plucked out of a linearity that most lily scents wind up living in.

Trying it again when I haven’t worn it in a while, I’m reminded how much I love it still. Notes of water-lily, ginger-lily, lily of the valley, angelica root, orange and ambrette seeds. This thing is so perfect for spring.

Now the Cat Butt. I’m not saying the brand of these perfume samples yet because I’m trying to track down availability. But I’ll be a big ole tease, and you can hate me if you want. I opened a vial or two, sorta took my breath away by how super-funky-skanky they were, got a drop on my nose, felt like I needed to shower the rest of the day, then laid all the envelopes down on the coffee table.

About 20 minutes later, I notice my Toyger, Rex – not anything nearing a domesticated housecat -prowling over those envelopes full of skankalicious samples. sniffing, pausing, I could almost see the cat eyes, if they rolled back in the head, doing that. Then he would pause, sniff more, then LICK the envelopes the samples were in, hop down, only to find him back up there ten minutes later, repeating this until finally those drops I had spilled had dried up enough to stop their Cat Butt siren song.

You know, when your cat is stalking your perfume samples, you’ve got something interesting there. I’m not convinced it’s wearable, I’m trying to plot my approach to getting them on something other than the end of my nose and driving my cat wild thinking some strange cat butt has found its way into his house.  BTW, the cat butt in the picture is not of my cat.  He poses every now and then, but would never think of letting me photograph his butt, even though he’s happy to sit on my face with it while I sleep.

We haven’t done a giveaway in a while, so I’ll send out a sample set of some of these unnamed skank-monsters to a “lucky” commenter.

Leaving out Miller Harris L’Air de Rien, what is the most seriously funky perfume you’ve sniffed? Fan or not a fan of the barely bottled sex?

  • loverdoll78264 says:

    Love me some bottled sex! Please include me.

  • Finally, after all these years of collecting perfumes and reading blogs, I realize. . . I am no perfumista. I have no love for skank, indolics, sweaty pits, civets, or even heavy musks, cedars, or cantaloupe. And I’m picky. If I own it, I have to like it top note to fade away. Otherwise, I won’t buy it, I won’t wear it. So yes, I’ve sniffed MKK, and Jickey, and Diorling, and a few ELs, but when I do the whiplash thing on the paper strip, it never gets near my wrist. I don’t want to smell like I just got up from a roll in the hay, even if I had fun. If my cat sniffs me and opens his mouth to figure out what I’m wearing it’s scrubber time. So alas, nothing to add here.

  • CM says:

    Im so curious! I love pour le soir and am surprised to read that it classifies as skank. To me, it’s divine smoke and rwarrrr. I often wear dzing and love it- no barnyard for me. I have a precious bottle of vintage chanel #5 (pre1951) extrait and can smell the civit in it- divine, really. a few I couldnt handle: agent provocateur, rubj, and smell bent wolfman. Or was it lumberjack? Yowza! the Tubies are challenging, too. Fracas, the frederic Malle tuberose are both no’s for me.

  • Flora says:

    LOL, I love this thread ,and yes I want to try the skanky perfumes pleeeeeze!

    Why yes, I DO enjoy sex in a bottle, since you asked! The usual suspects of course – Bal, Absolue pour le Soir, Femme, vintage Jolie Madame, vintage Miss Dior. I have a little bottle of vintage My Sin parfum that really rocks the house. And I mean the house, literally – can’t wear it to work! Big indolic florals really do it for me – Lelong pour Femme, Le Nez Manoumalia, Nasomatto Narcotic Venus, etc., can’t get enough of those.

    I also like the kind of skanky frags that I don’t necessarily want to wear myself but that I would PAY a man to wear for me – MKK, Musc Ravageur, Timbuktu, La Via del Profumo Tcharas, and the glorious granddaddy of them all, Yatagan. That thing would give Don Knotts chest hair.

  • Ninara Poll says:

    Dearest Patty, I was laughing so loudly and so hard while reading this that my husband came to check on whether I was ok. My three furballs all seem to be rather oblivious to anything I wear (except if it has citrus, then one runs, one ignores it, one starts rubbing against me in an attempt to re-mark me and remove the ciuurs); heck, one of them is oblivious to catnip! He won’t eat it, sniff it, or even look at it if it’s offered. Another one loves stinky feet and will lick and nip them. The third loves my husband’s underarms and has been known to lick them. I can’t offhand think of anything exceptionally skanky with which I’ve had experience (I live in too poor and semi-rural an area for stores to sell anything but whatever the major brands are pushing for the season), but I have a faint memory from childhood of having experienced some Bal in EDC (when I lived in a larger city) and not knowing how to react to it beyond “Um…. ok?” Jasmine tends to go all weird and annoying on me… I need to try some proper skank, and am dying to know how my cats would react to The Skanky Mystery Samples, especially the one cat who insists on showing me his sir parts multiple times a day!

    NP

  • Matt says:

    I have yet to smell some real skank. MKK is very wearable to me.
    Sécrétions Magnifiques does smell weird, but I wouldn’t say skanky. Mor funny than funky.

    Oh!! Now that I think of it, that perfumer from Montreal Claude-André Hébert. His perfume named lumberjack… The cumin is too too much. As in not wearable.

    I suggest you guys try it anyway! Interesting stuff 😉

    Matt

  • tammy says:

    Oh, the new banner is awesome!

  • Musette says:

    LOVE THE NEW BANNNNNNNNNER!!!! :In-Love:

    • Patty says:

      Well, I got tired of waiting on you to make my drawing!!! Harry helped me. I Put the collage together, but he gave me Photoshop lessons (well, he did it while telling me what he was doing)

      I need to make the other STC banner smaller and put it somewhere else, I think. They two don’t go together. I need another photo shop lesson!

      • Musette says:

        Oh, for crap’s sake!!!! I forgot ALL about it! I am SO sorry!!! I got so caught up in ASTM specs and making sure handrails didn’t explode…..Dangit

        well, I can still work on it and when you get sick of this banner you can put that one up! How’s that?!

        (blushing) :Devil:

      • Lisa D says:

        I’m a dab hand at Photoshop, if you need some assistance (or lessons).

  • Elizabeth Watson says:

    Skank, cat-butt, adorable photo–what’s not to love? As someone who lives with four cats, I am very curious about your samples. I have my own cat-butt alarm clock which goes off about 5:30 every morning. As for my experience with seriously funky perfume, I would have to say vintage (50s) Femme. I also have vintage Tigress and Flambeau–they’re somewhat funky on me.

    • Patty says:

      Cats. I swear, I would recognize cat-butt smell anywhere I’ve lived with it so many years. And waking up with a cat draped all over you, smelling just awful because they came from the catbox a minute before isn’t really great.

  • Lisa D says:

    True story – I put a drop of Ava Luxe Shisa on the fuzzy mouse at the end of my Da’ Bird (cat toy) wand, and both of my cats go CRAZY for it.

    • Patty says:

      I never got my cats near X, which she doesn’t make anymore. I wonder, do you think her cats did the same thing?

  • fleurdelys says:

    I love the skank! Paco Rabanne La Nuit is some serious cat butt. Vintage Tigress is skanky too. And I totally agree with all the other Bal a Versailles lovers!

    • Patty says:

      Bal has no match, really. And in your Best Bang for a Buck – hahahahaha, literally! – category, it’s just outstanding.

  • HemlockSillage says:

    You know I luuurves me some skank! I’m the nut who sought out tincture of hyrax stone, for heaven’s sake. It smelled funky, musty, not bad. . .just can’t imagine it mixed in a perfume. This is why I am an admirer of perfumes and not an amateur perfumer.

    Most skank for me is Bal a Versailles. . .I’ve tried EdT, EdP (favorite) and parfum, and the parfum makes my cat give a weird yowl, and bounce around. MKK is soft and sweet to me, and I only get about 2-3 minutes of really weird skank up top. I still admire Tom (or was it Lee?) for wearing it for a week solid in our ‘Posse challenge a while back 😀 MH’s L’Air de Rien is one of my top favorite scents, and it might be my first choice if I could have only one scent for life.

    I’ll also quietly say I love Petite Mort, and all its overblown skank, too. If my pocketbook would stretch, I’d own it in a moment. The cost is silly, and the ad copy repellent, but the scent is weirdly warm animalic and cuddly all at once. All this said, Miz Musette, thanks for the chance to win whatever set off your cat. It’s hilarious that we all want to try it! Be well.

    • HemlockSillage says:

      I’m a dork! Patty, this was *your* post, not Musette’s. Thanks for making me laugh with your kitty’s antics 🙂

    • Patty says:

      Oh, that Mort thing? You are abolustely right. Everything about it repulses me, the price, tne exclusivity, the ad copy. But damn, that smell. It’s Bertrand Duchafour animalic growling at a furious pace. And warm,exactly. But I find some of the most animalic things to be the most cuddly.

      Rex may wind up inside the envelopes. He’s not going to let go of his new friend easily. I think I’m going to put another drop on it so I can get a picture of him pawing it.

  • ElizabethC says:

    Skanky scents turn elegant and powdery on my skin, (Tubereuse 3 L’Animale was a light, powdery scent on me – the review you folks did on that one had me falling over with laughter). What does NOT work is anything with cumin – sweaty and very icky.

    • Patty says:

      When Starla cooks, sometimes it starts off with just cumin in a hot pan. And every time she does that, I can hear all the perfumistas groaning because it’s the even more amped up smell of MKK all through my house for about ten minutes.

  • Meg says:

    The honey-skank of Serge Lutens’ Miel de Bois fairly knocks me over. I submit happily. Like others who have already named it above, I also find Absolue Pour le Soir extremely skanktastic… as does my cat Newman, who follows me around with his tail all a-twitch whenever I wear it. 🙂

    • Patty says:

      I can believe that about PlS. That one shocked me. I’d smelled the rest of the line, and nothing prepared me for that thing. I admire it, but wowser, it is annihilating.

  • Illdone says:

    What about some very yeasted ( English anyone??) Schocking?
    Some rippened La Nuit?
    Douzing in Aromatics Elixir?

    Do tell what is on your table Patty, I might spray it on the neighbours terrace so they’ll get all the stray-cats..

    :Angel:

    • Patty says:

      I will reveal eventually! I know, I really am a tease, but part of it is that if you can’t buy it anywhere, it’s just horrible, and they are working on distribution.

      It’s like when we had to have that Juozas thing, and I swear we were working every angle we could manage to get that thing from a beauty shop in some German town. It was ridiculous.

  • Disteza says:

    Anyone remember the first iteration of TDC’s Rose Poivre? The one that smelled like you rubbed a big plummy rose right down the middle of some schwetty man-ass?

  • Disteza says:

    Anyone remember the first iteration of TDC’s Rose Poivre? The one that smelled like you rubbed a big plummy rose right down the some schwetty man-ass?

  • LindaB says:

    I need to try Lys…lily is quickly becoming a favorite scent of mine (and NOTHING beats bringing a big ol bunch of them in the house – I actually leave them out after they’ve died a little. I know, sick.)

    I do love skank – most recent experience was TF’s Black Violet. It was almost too much to wear all day long – it was suffocating with all it’s musky, mushroomy stuff. lol

    Would love to be entered in the draw…thank you!!

  • tammy says:

    I like indolic jasmines and I like a little cat butt, but I prefer it to be a tidy cat, and not a la Tidy Cat. (Forgive me for that)

    Untitled by the Smell Bent guy was…..not something I care to smell again. That went well beyond butt; that right there was ass territory and it was a nasty one at that. I believe I sent it to a budding perfumista I had just met on another type of blog who said she liked musks. I believe I never heard from her again.

    I think I’m anosmic to lady-skank. TPIM is my HG. (I had to get my last bottle from Escentuals If anyone here speaks enough Italian to help me navigate the Party website, please let me know; I am dying to try Party in Paris) Jubilation 25 reminds me of it, though it’s very aldy-heavy to me.

    I’d love to try Kingdom, but can’t find it. Does anyone know where some is? How does it compare to Femme?

    • Musette says:

      I get no connection between Kingdom and Femme – none at all. On me, Kingdom is pretty much straight up incense.

      xo :Devil:

    • Joanna says:

      I have a box for you that keeps growing and growing. I need your address again though. I will try to remember to add some Kingdom…but I’m not sure if the box is done growing yet.

      • tammy says:

        You are entirely too generous! Don’t be shorting yourself, or going to too much trouble, missy. A houseful of Gingers is a full time job! (I trust they’re all back to good health?)

    • Patty says:

      Party in Paris? Is that a new one from TPiM people? I’ve e-mailed them, I need those other fragrances!!!

      I need an Italian too for something else. Don’t any Italians read this blog? do I have to go to Italy myself? Crap, I can’t, I’m on my austerity plan for a few more months. :::sigh:::

      • tammy says:

        OMG, I will kiss all ten of your toes is you can get the TPIP. I don’t think it’s new-new, but no one here carries it. It’s rose based, though, may not be your thang. The hubs has given me the green light to buy it unsniffed, since I like TPIM and Frangipane so much.

        I am dying to try the Wistaria and Iris.

  • Nancy says:

    Now, this is just a personal thing but when Angel first came out a SA spritzed me and it did not sit nicely on me. I went to the shop I had purposed to go to and by the time I walked there the Angel smelled like a BAD case of B.O. on me, like weeks old B.O. The woman who was the manager and friend came over to say,”Hi,” and I warned her to sniff at her own risk. She did and went “EW” as did the other women who were there. They wanted to know what it was. Soooo, Angel did not smell heavenly on me and really was beyond skank. Ha ha. But I am always up for a skank that might ‘rank’ well on me 🙂

    • Patty says:

      Angel , skanky/ Wow. I have to think about that, that must have been a weird reaction on your skin. It’s overpowering and horrible if more than a drop is worn at a time, but that’s so cool!

  • Eldarwen22 says:

    I have a small decant of L’Air de Rein and it makes me want to run for the hills. It reminds me of unwashed panties/unwashed crotch. MKK is one of those I have to be in a certian mood for. But with MKK, I haven’t had the courage to wear it out of the house. Courtesan and Bal (in EDP form), I wear on a regular basis out of the house.

    • Patty says:

      Well, yeah! That’s skank!

      I love MKK, but my fear is like yours, what if after the first five minutes of having it on it doesn’t turn into the soft, warm skin scent *I* think it is, but is still that “i haven’t showed in four days” smell that it starts out as? I really need a smell-checker to sniff me close before I try it in public.

  • Style Spy says:

    Absolue Pour le Soir. Delicious, delirious, gorgeous skankfest. What I wear to say “$#@& you” to the rest of the world.

    Does anyone remember Dinner with (by?) Bobo? I remember trying that one years ago and resorting to a Mr. Clean Magic Scrubber sponge to get it off my skin. (Note: do NOT use Magic Scrubber sponges on your skin.)

  • Musette says:

    ps. on Lys. I was prepared to love this forever!!!

    Until that musk note showed up. Blearrrgh! I was soooo disappointed.

    xo :Devil:

  • Musette says:

    Current Femme is a little raunchy on me. I love it but have to dress in the opposite direction – starched white shirt, crisp suit, heels, etc. Hair must be smooth and coiffed. Otherwise I feel like I’m doing a 10-mile Walk of Shame – in 90degree heat.

    xo :Devil:

    • Patty says:

      That’s what I like about da skank – you do have to look respectable, then wear the most God-awful scents, just to see if people do a double-take!

  • Mrs.Honey says:

    I found Secretions Magnifique to be the most funky, in that it smelled like an alien with poor hygiene.

    Neither Femme nor l’Air de Rien nor Absolute Pour le Soir were skanky on me. I don’t tend to read cumin as skanky. It is civit that gives me the skankiness I seek. I get quite a bit out of Bal a Versailles and vintage Joy.

    • Patty says:

      SM smelled like a crime scent to me. Sex and blood and the smell of sharp knives.

      Okay, these ones are the skank you seek, civet heaven.

  • dremybluz says:

    Miel de Bois is my skank monster. Made the mistake of wearing it one hot summer day….OMG, thought i was going to choke to death..

  • Fernando says:

    I have trouble getting what Americans mean by “skank”, to be honest. Even after living here for over twenty years. But I do like several of the ones mentioned above: MKK, Absolue pour le Soir, Bal a Versailles…

    • To me, skank is sort of like the underpants that a clean, perfumed woman has been wearing for about 12 hours on a hot day. Does that give you an image?

      • Patty says:

        What Francesca said. Skank used to refer to women who were a little less than refined, had a slattern way about them, they looked easy, smelled a little cheap and like sex and had kissed a lot of boys… that day.

        • Musette says:

          My mom used to use the word ‘slattern’ to describe vaguely ‘nasty’ women – it always creeped me out!

          xo :Devil:

      • Fernando says:

        Indeed it does. Smells good, too.

  • tania says:

    Absolue Pour le Soir is my favourite, even though on first sniff I did recoil. And Smell Bent’s Commando, though that is so ‘days overdue for a shower’ that I’m not likely to wear it anywhere except to bed!

    Kingdom is a skank I’m happy to wear to the office. I’m brave that way 🙂 Also Femme, and the much-lamented late Alec Lawless’ Chypre. (I have garnered quite a few compliments on that one)

    I haven’t met a skank I didn’t at least like, if not love. Oh, wait – Olene. I like jasmine, but that one is too indolic for me It turns to halitosis on my skin. Apparently I don’t mind smelling like I need a post-coital shower, but I don’t want to smell like I don’t floss… 😉

    • Joanna says:

      tania,
      OMG I read your post and then went for a jog and couldn’t quit giggling for 2 blocks! I’m pretty sure I read a blog entry about Kingdom where someone described it as smelling like a vajayjay. I don’t get crotch funk when I wear it but that post-coital shower comment is going to stick in my mind whenever I wear it.

      • tania says:

        LOL! I hope you didn’t jog into any street furniture whilst giggling… 😉

        Kingdom’s funk is cumin and a bit of (what I think of as) curry powder. To me it smells like an Indian holiday I took with friends.

        Curry & cumin tend to come out through the pores. After about a week, we all smelled, as one of us described it, ‘currylicious’! Add in the Indian fondness for rosewater, and you get Kingdom, to my nose anyway. And not to be too indelicate, but underarms aren’t the only place people sweat out the aromatics in their food… 😉

        • Joanna says:

          Yes I wore it out bar hopping years ago and later on a drunk guy told me I smelled like a sexy immigrant. Offensive in that way only drunk people can be. There is a sex and curry thing going on with that scent though.

    • mals86 says:

      Yeah, Commando’s pretty much all Enormous Hairy Sweaty Man to my nose, too.

    • Patty says:

      Well, then you are going to love this new line of perfumes. I just don’t want to give out a name until I can figure out where a person could snag them!

      Totally hear you – smelling like sex – okay. smelling like you are lazy and allergic to soap and toothpaste – not okay

  • Marsha says:

    I guess my favorite skank monster is Jicky extrait. I’m so glad you posted again about Rex! I love hearing about the pets and I remember him from the last time you posted about him.

    • Patty says:

      Rex is a vicious animal. 🙂 Well, I love him dearly, but he’s still vicious, but I’ve run into other Toyger people, and they say their Toygers are just not other cat/dog kinds of critters, they just are only friendly when they want to be.

      It’s like living with a small version of a Cougar.

      Jicky extrait is amazing!

      • Jennifer says:

        I had a little umbrulla extrait bottle of that -it reminded me of the zoo’s herbivore exhibit (elephant and Antilope?) the poo specifically .I might have kept it but 1. a friend across the country loves it ;and 2. My male cat HATED it .Which meant two weeks of carpet scrubbing just for sniffing.

  • Ann says:

    Weenie alert: I run as far and as fast as I can from the skank monster! Having said that, the only even remotely skanky scent I can wear is MFK’s Absolue Pour le Soir.
    Someone above mentioned Kingdom — WHOA!! I had a sample of that at work one time, and six of us tried it. Let me tell you, not a pretty sight to see six women stampeding into the bathroom en masse to wash it off! My hat’s off to those of you who love it though …

    • Ann says:

      But I do love me some Frederic Malle’s Lys!

      • Patty says:

        Holy crap, Ann, I think MFK Absolue Pour le Soir is just a cesspool of sex!!! Seriously? I can’t wear it. I get anywhere near it, and I start ovulating.

        But this Kingdom, I really, really need to get some!

  • Rena says:

    Bottleneck Blues is the most animalic thing I own. Just sniffing it out of the bottle makes me happy. Wish I could wear it more often but it is not exactly work appropriate on me (especially since I’m a massage therapist)

  • Debbbie says:

    What made your toyger react like that? I must know! :o) I have cats here I’d like to test with it. You know. Just in the interest of science.

    I love skank fragrances: Femme, Bal d’Versaile, Musk de Kublai Khan (all other musks are too mild)…. I loved Felanilla until I went to a large cat sanctuary. Uh, it really does smell like large cat.

    • Patty says:

      Either civet or some good approximation of it. I assume nothing gets made with real civet anymore, but who knows? He’s still in love with the envelopes. I’m afraid to put some on, honestly. That cat scares me every now and then.

      he’s the only fixed male cat I’ve know that still sprays. And he does it when he’s pissed or jealous or just feeling froggy.

  • pam says:

    I have never smelled Kingdom or LdR, but they’re on my radar. So I guess that leaves me with Femme, which I love.
    And that cat photo is priceless.

    • Patty says:

      Did you know if you googled images for cat butt, the number of photos that come up is staggering? Really. I had no idea either!

  • March says:

    Oh my god, that photo. Uh … I’d love to smell these? What is wrong with me? I wore Bal EDC yesterday in the heat. I’m sure everyone around me was thrilled.

    • Patty says:

      You know they are coming your way, or will be tomorrow when I rip them from my Kitty-Kat’s paws and throw some in a vial.

      Hey, Bal is made for the close-in.

  • Marsi says:

    Lutens MKK is mine. It’s so glorious after about five hours, but till then, it smells like a demented old man rotting in an unchanged diaper in the world’s worst nursing home.

  • I’ve got a bit of skank wafting off my wrist right now–last night’s test-spritz of Fille d’Eve. Yum.

    For me, Secretions Magnifiques and L’Air de Rien are whiplash scents–that’s how fast I jerked my nose back upon sniffing them. So to me, that’s bad skank.

    My favorite good skankmonster is still The Party in Manhattan. Also like Femme (mine’s a fairly recent formulation, I believe) and Bal à Versailles.

    • Joanna says:

      Secretions Magnifiques is a serious funky chicken. Bad bad stuff that. But I sort of like Charogne’s, (Also from ELdO) funk. I was repelled by it at first and couldn’t get it off my skin despite scrubbing. A few hours later I became addicted to my wrist. I can only wear it in infinitesimal amounts but sometimes it’s just the sort of funk I’m looking for.

    • I forgot about The Party in Manhattan! That one is soooo gorgeous! Is it discontinued now? Its turn came up on the FB list a few months ago, but Luckyscent didn’t have it anymore.

    • Musette says:

      I get a little bit of that, too, in Fille d’Eve. Also Jubilation25. I think that’s what makes those scents so intriguing – it’s not overt, just a hint of human sexuality (NOT CAT SEXUALITY. I don’t want to have sex with cats, I promise! 😀

      xo :Devil:

    • Patty says:

      I agree about TPiM, that is elegant and straight-up sex.

  • Absolue Pour Le Soir is my favorite skank monster, hands down.

    Pampelune (do you consider that “skank” too, or is that another category?) is pure litter box and without redeeming quality in my book.

    The musky types like LdR I must not be able to smell. They are just kind of powdery and cuddly in a unisex way.

  • dinazad says:

    Vintage Diorling – I smelled the closed bottle when it arrived in the mail and went “WHOAAAA!” That is some serious funk. Pucci Zadig (vintage, naturally) is no shy violet either….. Love them both.

    And then there’s the ELd’O Secretions magnifiques, which – to me – is just vile…..

  • Brookesfca says:

    Brent Leonesio’s Untitled #8 (for Luckyscent?) is truly the most overwhelmingly animalic thing I have ever smelled from a bottle. I can’t wear it but it fascinates me.

    • Tom says:

      Second that. I have a full bottle that will last me until doomsday. I love it..

      • Patty White says:

        Oh, crap. I think I need this. I collect serious skank, even though I rarely wear it. The cat attacked the envelopes again today and licked them. He’s in looooooooove.

  • Joanna says:

    Alexander McQueen’s Kingdom. It’s a good funk. Wait wait…are you asking for good funk or bad funk?