~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
April 11, 2011

★~ Today’s Quote: I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.  ~Lily Tomlin

★~8-Track Cassette Tape Day: Nostalgia never dies, and neither will the ’60s and ’70s as long as 8-Track Day plays on. Not so very long ago, music was recorded on magnetic tape and rolled up in a bulky plastic cartridge. It got tangled, and mangled, and was sensitive to dust and temperature—it was the 8-track tape, the precursor to the cassette tape, the CD and the MP3. Its chunkiness was rivaled only by that of the VHS tape. Today might be the perfect day to celebrate the music of the ’60s and ’70s.

The perfect food pairing to the 8-track songs of Olivia Newton John, the Beatles, or Billy Joel is cheese fondue . . . and as luck would have it, today we also celebrate Cheese Fondue day!  Simply melt a big ol’ pot of your favorite cheese and serve with bread, veggies and skewers.

★~ Today in History

♥-1938 – Barber Shop Quartet singing was founded on this day by 26 singing, striped-shirted gentlemen.

♥~1956 – Elvis Presley reached the top spot on the Billboard music chart with his first double-sided hit. The disk featured Heartbreak Hotel and I Was the One. The RCA Victor record stayed at number one for eight weeks. Elvis also made the country and R&B charts, as well

♥~1961 – Bob Dylan made his professional singing debut in Greenwich Village. He sang Blowin’ in the Wind.

♥~1962 – The New York Mets played their first regular season game. The team, managed by Casey Stengel, lost its first ten games. The St. Louis Cardinals won by a score of 11-4 — prompting Stengel to say, before a group of reporters and players, “Can anyone here play this game?”

♥~1970 – Apollo 13 blasted off on a mission to the moon with crew James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John Swigert. The mission was aborted after an oxygen tank in the service module exploded into space and crippled the spacecraft. The astronauts aborted their lunar landing attempt and managed to return safely to Earth.

♥~1981 – Wedding bells chimed for guitarist, Eddie Van Halen and actress, Valerie Bertinelli of One Day at a Time (CBS-TV). The lovely couple was married in Los Angeles, California.

★~Born Today:

♥~1935~Richard Berry ,singer, songwriter of Louie Louie.  The song Louie Louie has been has been called best party song of all time, and has been recorded more times than any other rock song in history.

♥~1939 – Louise Lasser actress: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex [But Were Afraid to Ask], Frankenhooker, Rude Awakening, The Night We Never Met, Slither

♥~1950 – Bill Irwin, actor: Stepping Out, Scenes from a Mall, Hot Shots!, My Blue Heaven, Eight Men Out, Popeye; choreographer: The Regard of Flight

♥~1961– Vincent Gallo model, songwriter, actor: Get Well Soon, Buffalo ’66, Hollywood Shalome, Palookaville, Goodfellas, The Way It Is

★~ Did You Know:

♥~ The 8-Track tape player was commonly used in Movie Theaters in the 1920’s through 60’s

♥~William Powell Lear, the man behind LearJet, was also the inventor of the 8-track cartridge tape system

♥~ Both the four-track and eight track tape were made popular by the Ford Motor Company, In 1965 Ford introduced factory-installed eight track tape players options on three of its 1966 models—The Mustang, Thunderbird and Lincoln.

♥~ Home players for the 8 track tapes were introduced in 1966 this was the first time music could be shared between homes and portable systems. The boombox became popular around this time.

♥~ The last commercial 8 track cassette released by a major label, was Fleetwood Mac‘s Greatest Hits in November 1988.

♥~ Fondue was invented by the Swiss in the 18th century as a way to make stale bread more tasty.

♥~ Fond du Lac holds the world’s largest working fondue pot record. The pot is 8 feet in diameter, weighs, about 2,000 pounds and is capable of holding 2,500 pounds of melted cheese.

♥~ Since we are talking cheese fondue, did you know that Wisconsin still holds the 1964 Worlds Fairs record for the world’s largest cheese . The Cheddary cheese measured a 14 1/2 x 6 1/2 x 5 1/2 feet and weighed a cheesy 34,591 pounds

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Almost bald man : Why do you always charge me double? I should pay less since I hardly have any hair!

Barber : No, no! We don’t charge for cutting the hair! we charge for having to search for it

Ok, I know. EL Morno was not exactly riveting today. I admit it coming up with fascinating facts about how to celebrate 8 track cassette day and cheese fondue was a real challenge.  There was also the option to celebrate submarines (not the sandwich–would have been FUN)  but I passed.

Has anything exciting happened to you in the past on April 11th? Anything at all–Did you lose your first tooth? Talk a walk, once? Change a toilet paper roll?  If you can do anything to make this day more exciting please do share–April 11th needs our help! Drop me a comment if you have the time and if you don’t have the time there is always tomorrow which we can only hope has a little more to offer. Odd Loves Company! 

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