Happy Halloween From Not Another New England Sports Blog!

Well, this certainly has the feel of a Halloween unlike any other. Whether travel plans included flying across the country or trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, the recent snowstorm has thrown the travel plans of millions into complete disarray.

Whatever your Halloween plans are, here's hoping that you're able to stay safe and warm. If you're travelling any distance, be especially careful.

And Halloween just wouldn't be Halloween without attractive women wearing not very much, wouldn't it? Even though there's technically no costume involved, one can't help but admire this Elvgren girl proudly displaying the fruits of her labor.

This is from a 1962 Gil Elvgren piece titled All Smiles (or Glamorous) in which the charming, scantily clad brunette still has the foresight to keep pumpkin guts off of her.

The Blogosphere is All A-Twitter With the News.

Start spreading the news- now you can follow me on Twitter as I bitch, snark and somehow remain even LESS productive than usual! Simply look for the Twitter handle Fenway_Nation and watch the irreverent 140 character or less goodness flow like water over Niagara Falls.

Actually- can I let you in on a little secret? I've actually been on Twitter for a few months now- since at least when Osama Bin Laden was alive and watching porn in his Pakistani compound and Fukushima-Daiichi was a nondescript, fully functional nuclear power plant in northern Japan. In fact, there's a little sidebar that contains my 10 most recent messages on Twitter off to the left- that's been there for awhile as well.

"So why bother following you?" you may be asking. Fair question; even if you don't like what I'm saying, Twitter requires that I keep it pretty short and sweet. But probably the most compelling argument is so that you can follow the same people that are following me or that I'm following. There's alot of good ones- many of them part of my blogroll or online communities like Correspondence Committee or Table 9.


This also is a very flimsy pretext to toss out some more eye candy in the form of yet another vintage Gil Elvgren piece. This one is from 1955 and is called Well Built (not to be confused with a later piece titled A Well Bult R-R-R-R-Roof) and features what could very well be the forebears to the Twitter logo.

Since many of Elvgren's pieces also served as templates for advertisements, the companies name, logo and phone number would often be displayed where you see the blueprints draped across the sawhorse.

Happy Anniversary Correspondence Committee! Oh...and It's Election Day.

One of the C2 Admins getting all civic-minded.

Today marks the one year anniversary of one of my favorite places on the whole intrawebs, the Correspondence Committee. Like Not Another New England Sports Blog!, they got off to their start in September 2009 before moving to their new and improved digs on November 2nd.

The one year anniversary of C2 'graduating' to their current location falling on the same day as this year's pivotal midterm elections just happened to be a serendipitous coincidence.

[Video Courtesy Republican Governor's Association; Hat Tip Lonely Conservative]

For those of you who are registered to vote, I wholeheartedly encourage you to do just that today.....with one caveat. For those of you who think things are just fine the way they are right now, I prefer that you stay home. You did enough damage back in 2008.

But I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Littleoldlady, Paladin Phil and Erik the Red for extending the invite to me and Running Bare, Realwest, Design Czar JCM and all the others for doing a bang-up job of running the place. I'm looking forward to seeing what the next couple of years will bring.

And for those of you wondering, the civic-minded bombshell drawing bipartisan attention depicted above is from none other than the incomparable Gil Elvgren, a 1958 piece titled It's Up to You.

Not Another New England Sports Blog! Wishes you a Model Halloween

Ah- Halloween, when the kiddies are out trick-or-treating and the adults sometimes get to play dress-up too. It's been awhile since I got to do that, but that doesn't stop me from appreciating the end results of others and their costumes.

While some are unfortunate and others are nothing short of complete disasters, others work out quite well, even when they don't work out as intended.

Not too long ago, I was working nights at a sports bar when we were invited to a party afterwards. To my surprise, I saw one of the attractive-but-painfully-shy waitresses there in a costume with fishnet stockings and a pseudo-tuxedo top along with a top hat. To say it was a good look for her would've been the understatement of this relatively young century [unfortunately this all took place before I ever got myself a digital camera or cameraphone- NANESB!].

So, finally after some guesswork on my part, I simply asked her 'Magician's assistant?'

'No...' she replied rather sheepishly and began to explain. 'I was trying for the female Penguin look, but I couldn't get my hands on a monacle or one of those cigarette holders at the last minute'

'The Penguin? From Batman?' I asked

'Yeah'

'But you're not hideously deformed or anything' I replied, with Danny Devito's waddling, hooked nosed antagonist from Batman Returns being the only incarnation of the Penguin I could think of off the top of my head.

'Um- thanks?' she said, arching an eyebrow at my gaffe. 'As you can see, things didn't work out. I couldn't even get an umbrella- do you think anyone will notice?'

'Yes...they're all pointing and laughing at you behind your back. Nah.' I said, trying to be nonchalant. 'As long as you don't go around advertising that you're missing a bunch of stuff, I think you'll be just fine.'

It was kind of funny to hear her stressing over whether or not anybody would notice her costume was incomplete. It would be a little like the raven-tressed bruja pictured above fretting over her costume being incomplete because she left the stuffed black kitty at home.

Speaking of which, the title of this 1959 image by the incomprable Gil Elvgren is 'Riding High'.

While Elvgren, like many other pin-up artists of the day, used live models for much of his work, there doesn't seem to be nearly as many photos of them posing for other pieces are there are of this one model for Riding High, which I thought I'd include....you know...in the interest of being thorough.

So happy halloween and for the love of god, stay away from the candied corn....why do they even still make that stuff?