November 2012 archive
It’s Black Friday, 2012. I was asked yesterday why it’s called “Black Friday” with the suggestion that such an ominous-sounding name seemed incongruous with the commercial aspirations of the day. Back before it was known to the public, store owners and manufacturers used to use this term; for many of them, the day after Thanksgiving, being the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season, marked the day their business would move “out of the red” (in other words, show a profit) for the year. The term was seized upon by the mega-big-box retailers like Walmart as a marketing gimmick, inverting its meaning to apply to the customers rather than the business owners.
Permanent link to this article: http://bluecollar-blacktie.com/black-friday-nope/
The opposite of “discount sushi” is “Rich Corinthian Leather.” If you’re an old coot like me, you may remember that back in the day, Ricardo Montalban used to peddle cars for Chrysler; he’d purr in his smooth accent about the “rich Corinthian leather” interior in the new Chrysler Cordoba. Ooooh! That sounds so expensive and stylish, doesn’t it? Have you ever wondered what the heck “Corinthian leather” is?
Permanent link to this article: http://bluecollar-blacktie.com/rich-corinthian-leather/
We had to get some car repair done this weekend. A tire blew out, and it turned out to be because the alignment was off. Normally we take our cars to Toshi at JAS in Monrovia (they are very good, extremely honest and charge reasonable rates), but that didn’t work out for us because our Saturday was taken up with archery classes and the shop is not open on Sundays. I suggested getting a tire from one of the hole-in-the-wall places in the sketchy area of town where they sell used tires and “factory seconds” for cheap. My bride responded “isn’t that discount sushi?”
Permanent link to this article: http://bluecollar-blacktie.com/no-discount-sushi/
