Odd Jobs

Somebody's gotta do it -- and somebody does. Here, our second annual roundup.

FISH TALES
Several nights a week at the Coral Room, a Manhattan nightclub, Julie Atlas Muz climbs 12 feet up a hidden ladder to don her mermaid's tail. Fin first, she eases into the 10,000-gallon saltwater aquarium. For 10-minute intervals every half-hour, the 31-year-old performance artist swims and shimmers, and the hip clientele ogles as she mingles with puffers and angelfish. "Not everyone can hack this," she says. "But it's a beautiful job to have, and I love it." And, needless to say, she's the best-looking fish in the tank.

JUST DESSERTS
It sounds like a kid's fantasy: "When I grow up, I want to be a chocolate engineer." But that's David Bolton's actual job. As the guy in charge of sweet stuff at Lake Champlain Chocolates in Burlington, Vermont, he spends his days inventing, tasting and supervising candy production. It's, well, a consuming occupation -- the recipe for the Five Star Fruit & Nut Bar, a madcap mix of dark chocolate, hazelnut and milk chocolate, raisins, pecans and cherries, came to him in his sleep one night. Does a chocolate engineer ever get sick of the stuff? "Sometimes," he says, "I have to go eat a head of cauliflower."

GOOD FORTUNE
At 23, Lisa Yang may be one of America's most widely read writers -- and one of the most anonymous. For four years she's been composing 100 pearls of wisdom a month for her father's company, the M&Y Trading Service Co. in San Francisco, which supplies 90 percent of the fortunes used by fortune-cookie manufacturers in this country. Yang says she gets her inspiration from poems, friends, her classes at San Jose State and, yes, the writings of Confucius. She has no aspirations to write longer works, by the way. She's studying finance.

LIP SERVICE
Talk about whistling while you work. Though he was once in the advertising business, Steve Herbst puckers his lips professionally with a repertoire that includes everything from "Danny Boy" to the Beatles, from jazz to classical. The 58-year-old New Yorker has taken the International Whistling Entertainer of the Year Award for two years running, and performed for New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His real bread and butter, though, is entertaining at weddings, fairs and other venues. He's made a CD showcasing his unique interpretations of Broadway show tunes.

CHILLY RECIPE
If anyone knows how to keep his cool, it's Les Hendler, distribution manager of Arctic Glacier of New York. Hendler has worked with ice for nearly three decades, making, storing and shipping the really cold stuff to hotels, caterers, convenience stores, even ice sculptors. Just get him talking about the finer points of ice making: "Clear ice is what you want. It's the cleanest, purest ice. It's what the sculptors use." Fifteen employees deliver the impressive 300-pound blocks, and on Saturdays in summer the factory does a brisk walk-in business with smaller chunks. Very cool.

PET PEEVES
Nothing bothers Kat Albrecht of Clovis, California, more than a pet that goes missing. That, and one more thing: "It's mind-boggling to me that we have a better system for finding lost and stolen cars in this country than we do for our lost pets." Given her passion, it's no surprise that Albrecht left full-time police work and became an investigative pet detective. With her specially trained tracking dogs, including Chase, Kody and Susie, she has helped locate more than 1,800 dogs, cats, ferrets, snakes and turtles. Albrecht trains others in her techniques and shares them in her new book, The Lost Pet Chronicles.

CHILD'S PLAY
Millions of kids have grown up watching the Muppets on TV and in movies. But Bill Barretta of Southern California actually grew up and became a Muppet -- several, in fact. After working as an actor, he got a job in the early '90s with the TV series "Dinosaurs." He helped out with puppet characters created by the Jim Henson Company and then developed his own. Today he's the puppeteer (and voice) behind the Spanish-born, wisecracking Pepe the King Prawn as well as other characters. "Pepe," he says, "is based on my wife's aunt."

From Reader's Digest - August 2004

 

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