As It Turns Out . . . . .

After our day at UMC we had a few extra cookies and thought; hummmmn; What do we do with these? As it turns out. . . . .the Ronald McDonald House was just down the road, so we stopped by and gave them a Big Fat surprise.

Cookie Weasel's !

 "Uhhuuummm........ Did someone say cookie?"  

A Rare Moment Caught On Camera !

Be very still and speak in hushed tones . . . . you are observing a My Big Fat Cookie Classic Chocolate Chip cookie in its natural habitat. Typically these cookies don't last long enough to get a good photograph. If you look closely you will notice the tell - tell crescent shaped void. These marks show up shortly before the cookie disappears. Our thanks to the Florence family for catching one of our cookies in the wild! 

WOW!

        I am proud to announce that we had our inaugural event yesterday at Sunset Park.  It was billed as "Sunset Park'd" and it was pretty much a food truck festival.  If I had to define the day with only one word, it would be; "WOW!"  The event ran from noon to 10:00pm and it was a blockbuster from the moment the gates opened.

Baby Fat without the awning as we got her ready for her debut.

        Because it was our first event, we wanted to have Baby Fat looking her best, so we made sure she was all decked out in her new uniform.  We started the week by applying new graphics and giving the truck the; "look".  Donna (who is a graphic artist by trade) designed the look and feel of the truck.  From the beginning she has planned that Baby Fat would have a style and livery that would honor the product we sell.  She designed everything you see on the truck; from the graphic decals to the awning.  Even the shade of pink (because it had to be "just right") is a custom color which she had mixed.  (She almost drove me and the Home Depot guy crazy.) 
        We could not have picked a better "first event".  Sunset Park is pretty much in the center of Las Vegas and it was a great venue for a food truck festival.  The team at the park had their act together.  They were organized, and you could tell that this wasn't their first rodeo.  The Sunset Park team, had arranged for a classic car show adjacent to the food trucks, and between the draw of the trucks combined with the car nuts, this event attracted about 7000 people.  There was a central pavilion which hosted great bands throughout the day, and the feel of the event was, family oriented, festive, and electric. 


That's Donna applying the cookie graphic.

        We opened in conjunction with the gates at noon, and we offered four flavors of our most popular cookies; Chocolate Chip/Pecan, Oatmeal/Raisin, Peanut Butter/Pretzel, and Double Chocolate with Reese's peanut butter cups.  By 2:00pm we were sold out of our Chocolate Chip and by 3:00pm we were out of the other three flavors.  Because we have to pre-bake and pre-wrap the cookies, once we ran out  . . . . . . we were out.  We thought we had planned well, and with Donna's mom and sister helping us the day before, we had baked and wrapped 40 dozen cookies  and we were sold-out by 3:00pm.  Donna's mother; Doris was our back up, and we had called her early.  She had baked up another 20 dozen, but they weren't due to arrive until 5:00pm.  We had no choice but to close our doors for the next two hours. 
        Donna and I hung a closed sign and we had to leave the truck.  The word had spread about My Big Fat Cookie and it was just too depressing dealing with the disappointed customers who walked all the way across the park, only to find us and Baby Fat empty handed.  We hung our closed sign, which indicated we would be back at 5:00pm, and we went and sat on a park bench.


That's my wonderful wife with her
 wonderful cookie truck!

     Donna's dad; John and her sister Dana were on the delivery detail and according to plan they showed up with 20 dozen cookies right at 5 minutes to 5:00pm.  Donna and I were waiting for them on the street, and we grabbed the cases of cookies and made the trek back to Baby Fat.  When we showed up, there was a crowed of people waiting for our cookies. 
       
We had pulled the curtains together when we closed at 3:00pm and while we were getting ready to reopen, I teased the crowed by peeking out at them.  I was trying to make it fun, and there was some laughter, but then I pictured them with angry faces and torches (like something from a Frankenstein movie) and I left the curtain alone until we were ready.
        We opened back up at 5:05pm and guess what?  By 5:30pm we were sold out completely!  20 dozen Big Fat Cookies in 25 minutes.  We had to close again.  We left Baby Fat to handle the disappointed masses. and we walked around the festival, until 10:00pm, when the event closed.
   

There's the Frankenstein mob when we reopened.

It was thrilling to see Donna and her cookies so popular, and it is beyond my ability to describe how proud of her I am.  This is all her, and I am thankful I get to go along for the ride.  There is not a doubt in my mind that this is her calling and unless you have children or a life-partner like mine  you will never experience this kind of pride. 

Do you need a Big Fat Cookie?
         

Work Is A Four Letter Word!

        Yesterday we added more paint to Baby Fat.  We are working on the white part of the body, and it is coming along very well.  Next weekend I will paint the detail on the front grill.  We received some great news this week, regarding our licensing and permitting.  We will be on the road sooner than we first thought.  I think the maintenance and upkeep of our little truck is going to be a weekly chore.  It seems there is always something to do, and for now at least, we're having a ball. 
        This cookie venture of ours is a cross between a hobby and a business, and I think as long as we can keep it that way, it will continue to be fun and enjoyable.  It seems to me that once a project like this loses the "hobby" and is all about the "business" then it becomes "work" and that's a four letter word.
        All in all this was a great holiday weekend.  I was a little dismayed to discover that a mainstay of my childhood and of the Labor Day holiday was missing.  The MDA telethon was only on for a two hour period this year and I think that is a shame. 
        The telethon speaks to a younger time a more innocent time and the nostalgic side of me missis it.  When I was a kid I would stay up and watch it all weekend long.  My sister and I would try to stay up for all 21+ hours of it with the goal being to watch as Jerry closed the show with You'll Never Walk Alone.  We only managed the full 21 hours maybe a couple of times, but it somehow became a tradition when we were little, and the telethon never really left me. 
        As a young adult I would watch it off and on throughout the weekend, and in later years I would tune in just often enough to spot check the tote board.   The MDA telethon was on in our house every labor day weekend for as long as I can remember, and now in what feels like a flash, it is pretty much just gone.  Don't think for a moment that I don't recognize that it was a giant pitch to get donations but somehow that didn't matter.  It didn't matter that Jerry and all the other stars would go on hokey, mushy, rants to tug at my heart.  It didn't matter that most of the guests were has-beens or b-list performers; it was just fun to get caught up in it, and through the power of television feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself for one long weekend every year. 
        Don't get me wrong.  I wish there had never been a need for the MDA telethon.  I wish that at some point, it would have finally met it's goal and eradicated all neuromuscular diseases - - - but - - - since there continues to be a need for funds, and a need to help those with these types of health issues, it seems a shame that such an institution appears to have fallen apart. 
        Below I have posted a Time Magazine article about the MDA Telethon, and the end of Jerry Lewis as it's host.
Do you need a Big Fat Cookie?

Why Did Jerry Lewis Leave the Telethon?

The star’s sudden departure last year from his Labor Day showcase has still not been explained. But it’s not a pretty story

By Richard Zoglin

Not since, oh, Martin and Lewis has there been a showbiz breakup as sudden and inexplicable. Last year the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced that Jerry Lewis was stepping down as host of its annual Labor Day telethon, the marathon TV event he had made his personal showcase, soap box and sentimental journey for 45 years. With the show cut from 21.5 hours to just 6, Lewis was being replaced by a quartet of hosts, the MDA said, and would make an appearance only at the end of the show, to say goodbye and sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” one last time.
Then what seemed the sad but inevitable end of an era became something uglier. A few weeks before the show, the MDA issued a curt announcement that Jerry Lewis would not be making a goodbye appearance after all  — and was resigning from his post as MDA national chairman. The telethon went on without him (raising $61.5 million, more than the previous year with Lewis, according to the MDA) and included a filmed tribute to him and warm words of thanks from various participants during the show. But no Jerry.

A year later, Lewis has been all but erased from the telethon’s memory. This year’s show, airing the Sunday night before Labor Day, has been further downsized, to just three hours, with no named host and a smattering of B-list guest stars (Carrie Underwood, Will.i.am, Khloe Kardashian). It is no longer called a telethon, but simply an “entertainment special,” and there will be no tote board tallying the donations. In the press announcement of the event, Jerry Lewis’s name is nowhere mentioned.
The story behind Lewis’s departure remains untold. But a few things have become clear in the year since the awkward public breakup. Jerry Lewis was dumped by the MDA, the charity he had been identified with since the 1950s. He’s still bitter about it. And the telethon is withering without him.

Lewis still won’t talk about what happened. “That’s not a place I want to go. Because if I go there, you’ll never get me back,” he said when I raised the subject with him recently in Nashville, where he’s directing a new stage musical, The Nutty Professor. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it. But I have already ingested all that I want from that whole f—ing adventure.”
The pain is not hard to discern. “This was a hurt man,” says Richard Belzer, the stand-up comic and Law and Order co-star, who has developed a close, almost father-son relationship with Lewis. Jerry’s goodbye appearance was scrapped after he and the charity could not agree on its format and length. Lewis wanted to do it live; the MDA floated several pre-taped options  — “all insulting,” Belzer claims. “It’s as if they were trying to provoke him to leave.” In the end, he did. “It was a moral outrage, a PR nightmare and a sad commentary on this incredible philanthropic career,” says Belzer.

To be sure, dealing with Lewis, now 86, has never been a walk in the park. His annual Labor Day orgy of sentiment, self-regard and showbiz schmaltz was for many years something of a punch line. (“You know why they love Jerry Lewis in France,” a comedian told me not long ago. “In France, they don’t get the telethon.”) Still, he raised an estimated $2 billion for “Jerry’s kids” over more than a half-century with the MDA, and a well-orchestrated, celebrity-studded farewell to him on the telethon might have been a fundraising bonanza.
MDA officials continue to maintain that Lewis simply retired. “We honor Jerry Lewis, we admire the work he’s done for us, and we respect his decision to retire,” says Valerie Cwik, the MDA’s interim president. (She replaced Gerald Weinberg, who was reportedly behind Lewis’s ouster and who stepped down as president last December, after 54 years with the organization.) And she insists that the changes in the telethon are part of a necessary evolution in fundraising strategy, to put less emphasis on the once-a-year event. “It has to change because the American audience has changed,” says Cwik. “A 21.5-hour show doesn’t fit in a 140-character world.”
Neither, apparently, does Jerry Lewis.

We haven't even started yet!

     This past Saturday we went to the DMV and got tags for Baby Fat.  We have registered her as a Classic Vehicle, which allowed us to avoid the smog inspection.  I kind of like that "classic vehicle" designation.  This truck has a history.  You can feel it when you look at it sitting on the road, or when you step inside, or when you're driving it.  It is only fitting then, that we recognize the heritage of this truck, that has traveled well over 232,000 miles.  I am proud to drive our cookie truck, not only because it represents our dream and our business, but because I am one of many in a long line of drivers and owners. 
     We are working on putting our plan together for the Clark County Health District.  Soon I will install the three compartment sink, we'll get our health and fire inspections and then we'll be on the road.  It's been a great run so far and we haven't even started yet. 
     This weekend, Donna and I are going to paint the body.  We have decided (since the roll-on Krylon worked so well) that we are going to paint the whole body white.  (With the exception of the pink accents of course).  I am still working on the gauges so we have plenty to keep us busy until our grand opening.  I also plan to install that sink and give her an oil change and lube before we hit the road for real.  So if its the weekend and you're looking for me, I'm the guy under the 1984 step van with the cool license plate.
 

What Is The Thrill?

        As you know; a couple of weeks ago we brought Baby Fat home and started painting the outside.  Part of the theme includes pink and white stripes on the lower half of the body. 
        When we pick the truck up from the storage center, I always check the fluids and do a walk around to make sure no one has tampered with the generator.  I also look the body over to make sure there has been no damage, etc. (we always bring the truck to our house to perform maintenance, etc.) Today when I picked up the truck I noticed that someone had keyed the side, right over our new paint . . . .   It's difficult to see in the picture, but that scratch goes from the white stripe into the freshly painted pink stripe. 
        You know; in the scheme of things this isn't huge right?  We have more pink paint and we can easily retouch the scratch. We haven't even painted the white sections yet, so that will get covered later.  So it shouldn't be a big deal.  Right?  Well you know, it is a big deal.  Why do people do this?  Why is it that people just cant leave others alone?  There is another scratch up higher also and it appears these were done on purpose.  I sit here trying to think of what kind of satisfaction does someone get from doing this?  Nothing comes to mind.  I cant even begin to get my arms around what must go through a person's mind as they pull the key from their pocket and dig it into a freshly painted body panel.  What is the thrill?  Do they tell their friends about it?  Do they take a photo and text it?  Were they showing off for a friend?  I may never know the motivation, and in a way I am grateful that I can't get my mind to go to that place which makes something like this "fun".
        We all work hard to get to wherever we're going in this life.  While it will be easy to repaint the pink stripe, that really is not the point.  I am insulted and angry for two reasons.  First; it is an affront to decency and decent people.  This was clearly a deliberate act of a person who wanted to harm someone else's property.  The second reason; this was an act of disrespect.  I watched my wife paint each of those stripes.  It was 108 degrees that day and yet she was out there painting away, one stripe at a time.  In fact it was so hot, I set up a fan to blow on her to try to keep her cool.  This was more than just vandalism, this was a rude and thoughtless gesture which was an insult to my wife and her hard work.  I hope karma kicks in on this one, and ten-fold.
         This weekend I didn't get too much work done.  I am trying to track down the problem with my gauges.  Since I installed the new starter switch two weeks ago, my gauges stopped working. This isn't a huge problem but it is an annoying problem.  There is a certain amount of anxiety which comes from not knowing how much fuel is in the tank, or what the engine temperature is.  I thought the issue might be a ground wire problem, but I was wrong.  I still have some work to do with the gauges, and hopefully next weekend I will be able to track down the problem. 
        Do you need a Big Fat Cookie?