★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno!♥~★~★~♥
December 9, 2014

★~ Today’s Quote: When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water. Anonymous

★~Pastries Day:

Pastries have been around forever. In 2600 B.C., the Egyptians were making doughnut-like pastries out of crude flour and honey, and dipping them in wine.

In the 7th century, pastry making developed as a culinary art form in the Middle East. It spread to Europe after the Crusades, and French and Italian chefs developed their own version of the recipes and experimented with new techniques.

Do you have a favorite pastry?

French Napoleons

★~ Christmas Card Day:

Sir Henry Cole hired painter and illustrator John Calcott Horsley to create a seasonal greeting to send to his friends and family. The lithograph edition of 1,000 depicted a scene of a merry family drinking at the dinner table. Only 20 of the original postcards were thought to have survived and the original proof was auctioned in 2005 for $16,000 according to USA Today. It’s considered the world’s first known Christmas card, according to the Greeting Card Association. Puritans objected to the picture showing people raising a glass to Christmas,” according to the BBC, but the sentiment behind the card, “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to You” has became a  Christmas tradition.. Christmas is the No. 1 card-sending holiday in the U.S. according to the greeting card industry.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1854 – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s noted poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” was published in England.

♥~ 1965 – The Peanuts gang made its TV debut this day. A Charlie Brown Christmas ran for the first time on CBS.

♥~ 1988 – According to a poll released in the US, the music of Neil Diamond was the best background music for sex, Beethoven was the second choice and Luther Vandross was voted third.

★~ Born Today:

♥~ 1906 –  Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (inspired by an actual moth removed from the computer). Owing to the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace”. The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named for her, as was the Cray XE6 “Hopper” supercomputer at NERSC. Google Doodle honors her birthday.

♥~ 1916 – Kirk Douglas actor: Greedy, The Secret, Oscar, Queenie, Tough Guys, The Final Countdown, The Chosen, A Gunfight, There was a Crooked Man, The Arrangement, The Brotherhood, In Harm’s Way, Seven Days in May, Spartacus, Lonely are the Brave, Paths of Glory, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Lust for Life, Ulysses, Young Man with a Horn, Champion, The Bad and the Beautiful; father of actor Mike Douglas

♥~ 1928 – Dick Van Patten actor: Eight is Enough, When Things Were Rotten, WIOU, The Partners, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Mama, A Dangerous Place, Spaceballs,Westworld, Superdad, Son of Blob

♥~ 1934 – Judi Dench Academy Award-winning actress [Shakespeare in Love (1999)]; The Corrections, Casino Royale, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride and Prejudice,The Chronicles of Riddick, Die Another Day, Mrs. Brown, Chocolat, Iris

♥~ 1942 – Dick Butkus College and Pro Football Hall of Famer: Chicago Bears: middle linebacker: NFL Defensive Player of the Year [1969, 1970]; actor: Rich Man, Poor Man, Half Nelson

♥~ 1957 – Donny Osmond singer: Go Away Little Girl, Puppy Love; [w/sister, Marie]: I’m Leaving It All Up to You; group: Osmond Brothers: One Bad Apple; TV host:Donny and Marie; actor: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; dance champ: Dancing with the Stars [2009]

♥~ 1962 – Felicity Huffman actress: Desperate Housewives, Transamerica, Christmas with the Kranks, Raising Helen, Path to War, Snap Decision, Magnolia, Harrison: Cry of the City

★~ Vegetable Peeler Gallimaufry:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NGOjFhKeLiU[/youtube]

For the better part of two decades — well into his 70s — Joe Ades followed the same routine. He’d get up early, typically before dawn, and get dressed in his $1,000 suit with high-end shirts and ties. He’d leave his Manhattan apartment (and, toward the end of his career, that was a three-bedroom one on Park Avenue) and make his way to work. Like his millionaire neighbors, Ades probably pulled down well north of $100,000 a year. But unlike his neighbors, he wasn’t off to a job on Wall Street or at any other typical six-figure income job. He was off to a street corner to sell $5 potato peelers.

Yep. Potato peelers. To be fair, they could peel carrots, too.

Born in Manchester, England in 1934, Ades was a street vendor at an early age, dropping out of school to earn money selling comic books.  Over the years, he’d sell virtually anything that there was a market for, honing his sales pitches over time. He came to the United States in the late 1980s or early 1990s and by 1993 had settled in Manhattan, focusing his sales acumen on potato peelers he imported from Switzerland.

Why the peeler? Ades explained his product choice to Vanity Fair

Joe loves the peeler, which he sells for $5. “I love it for several reasons,” he says. “It’s portable; it works; I never get a complaint. Never ever. When people first see it they don’t believe it. They buy it skeptically, cynically. They can’t believe it’s going to do what I say it’ll do, but they take a chance and they buy it. And during the course of the sale, somebody will walk past—always do—and say, ‘I got one of those. They’re great!’ And it’s true—they’re not shills. You don’t need a shill with something like this.”

But the product didn’t sell itself. Ades had a well-rehearsed sales show which drew in a crowd with a comic’s wit: “When you peel a potato, it doesn’t matter whether you’re right-handed, left-handed, or, like a politician, underhanded. All you take off that potato is a thin layer of skin. You’ve got no waste; you do it in record time. When you come to an eye, you scoop it out—there’s the scoop,” he’d say. And with all eyes on him, as seen below, he demonstrated the product with the deft of a surgeon or perhaps a magician. Here’s a video of his whole routine:

He’d repeat this six days a week, a dozen or two times a day, weather and law enforcement-permitting — Ades never obtained a license to sell on the sidewalks, and wasn’t allowed to sell within the farmer’s markets he often set up shop near. (That said, most often, police officers turned their heads.) And as you saw above, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to sell around 15 to 20 peelers during his minute pitch. By some estimates, depending on his margins, Ades pulled in $250,000 or so a year, all $5 at a time.

Unfortunately, you can’t see his potato-and-carrot peeling show live any more. Ades passed away in early 2009, at age 75.

The Swiss Rex Vegetable Peeler ($2.05) is a fun stocking stuffer especially if you included the story of Joe Ades.

#

It’s Tuesday! Our day to head out to Prairie Wolf dog park for the morning. I was gifted a snazzy red knit hat with ear flaps and a large red pom pom on top and fingerless gloves with a mitten cover (perfect for snapping pictures)—Watch out cold here I come!

Yesterday, we noticed a small leak in one of the pipes under the sink  (of-course, we did) so the under the sink cabinet installation was slowed. However, I made a phone call to my new best friend, our plumber, and he promised to show up today. Hopefully this morning when VIckie, our friend and camp helper, is in charge. Once the leak is fixed installation can continue. My teen made his first cuts in the wood and so far, so good.

I’m off! Hope your Tuesday is terrific, but it it falls short of your expectations feel free to rant – It’s RANT TUESDAY.

Odd Loves Company,