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.

Bay State Brewers Hit With Untenable '50% Local' Rule by Commonwealth

Massachusetts- Harshing the mellow of Oktoberfest 2011 before it even gets started.

Small breweries in the Bay State were shocked and dismayed to learn last week that the Massachusetts alcohol commission announced a new rule mandating 'farmer-brewers' in the Commonwealth must grow at least 50% of their beer's hops and grains themselves or contract with an in-state farm for such a purpose.



According to Massachusetts Brewers Association president Rob Martin, the new mandate is unsustainable. Martin, who also owns the Ipswich Ale Brewery said that while he buys pumpkins and blueberries locally for for seasonal ales and gives spent grains to a cattle farmer for free, it would be impossible to find enough local hops and grains to produce his beer.

Grains used to make beer need to be malted first, and there is currently only one malting facility in Massachusetts. Andrea Stanley, who owns Valley Malt in Hadley with her husband, says that her business is running at capacity and the new "50 percent" rule would not be sustainable.



The regulation change came as a shock to many in the craft beer industry. Jeremy Goldberg of Cape Ann Brewing in Gloucester called the decision an "arbitrary rules change." He, like many, use the license as a way to produce, pour, and distribute beer on site. Without the farmer-brewer license, brewers would need to acquire separate licenses from the state to manufacture and distribute their own beer.



The alcohol commission says that small breweries who have trouble meeting its criteria for farmer-brewer licenses are "on notice" that they will face scrutiny when their licenses come up for renewal. Those brewers who fall short "are welcome to apply for a manufacturer's license," the commission says.

The new rule will affect at least 24 breweries across Massachusetts. Martin says the Brewers Association will challenge the Massachusetts Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission on the ruling.

Back After Some Technical Difficulties That I Had No Part in Either Creating (or Solving)

Seems as though there was some sort of technical problems with Blogger the other day where one could view the pages on any given blogger or blogspot page, but visitors could not post comments and blogmasters couldn't log in to update, edit or add new posts. After some independent tinkering, I think I managed to isolate the source of the recent problems with Blogger, as shown here:
Still, reliable sources who also maintained their blogs on blogger were telling me that posts were disappearing and they had been unable to log in since yesterday afternoon.

But what better way to offset my cluelessness than to throw down some vintage eye candy featuring a girl who looks like she knows what she's doing.

This one comes from the late George Petty and was part of the Ridge tool company's (aka Rigid) 1956 calendar. According to the Pin Up Files, one critic opined 'When you touch the wrist of a Petty girl, you almost expect to feel a pulse'.

Wrenches and lugnits are one thing, but imagine being the artist comissioned to draw up similar ads for software or IT services.

Yeah....tough sell.

Dark Knight Kids in The Hall?

Ever get that feeling of deja-vu? Of course, in this epoch of sequels, remakes and movies based on TV series, that's not so unusual.

However, when I saw the opening bank robbery scene in Christopher Nolan's 2008 The Dark Night, I had a feeling that I had seen this somewhere before.

Not only that, but I could've sworn that it somehow involved bank robbers shooting their cohorts during the robbery to demonstrate their seriousness (or cunning) was being played for laughs.


Then it hit me- this skit from the 1993 season of Kids in the Hall.


The crux of the skit seemed to be the man with the list (Kevin McDonald) and his cluelessness about the dire situation he suddenly found himself in as much as the robber's (David Foley) ability to casually gun down his acomplices mid-crime to demonstrate a fairly unimportant point.

I'm not saying Nolan actually plaigerized the Canadian comedy troupe's skit line by line. Rather it almost seems like somebody challenged Nolan to incorporate a scene with a similar premise for Dark Knight, only to play it straight (and embellish it by having it be a mob bank complete with mafioso on the premesis).

Granted i'm nowhere near as well versed in matters of pop culture as some of the visitors to this blog, but what do you think? Am I imagining things?

UPDATE: Thanks to Pi Guy for showing me a (literally) side-by-side comparison of the two:

YouTube Doubler

Grounded Mexicana Stewardesses Raise Funds by Debuting Sultry Calendar

Aeromozas Mexicana Facebook

Flight attendants from a bankrupt Mexican airline have chipped in to produce a calendar featuring themselves clad in bikinis or skimpy versions of airline uniforms.

After 89 years in business, Mexicana Airlines suspended service in August of this year after competition from newer low-cost regional carriers, disputes with labor unions and a US$125 million debt caused it to file for a Comercia Concurso (the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy). Negotiations are underway to resume limited service and bring back about 30% of the Mexicana employees next month.

10-year Mexicana veteran Coral Perez came up with the idea of the calendar in the hopes that the publicity would help revive the grounded carrier (one of the world's oldest international airlines) and cover their expenses since Mexicana ceased operations at the end of August. She and nine other former co-workers posed for pictures and planned to release about 1000 copies of the Calendar. The first run had sold out even before they were released last week, prompting the 'aeromozas' (flight attendants) to release a 2nd edition of 3000 additional calendars.

The high-flying Latina calendar girls have even set up their own Facebook page (in Spanish) as well.

"We're not models, we don't have perfect bodies, but we want to keep going," said Rozy Arcos, one of the stewardesses who presented the calendar late Thursday.

Despite Sra. Arcos' insistence that she wasn't a model with a perfect body, I wasn't exactly cringing and averting my eyes upon first glance at the calendar.

I'll let you be the judge, however.

[Hat tip: Wyatt Earp]

The Lonely Planet Blonde Guide To Latvia

Well....this could modify my future travel plans somewhat.

From the country that brought us the Blonde Parade comes word that a gender imbalance that skews 8% towards the women has left the Baltic former Soviet republic of Latvia short of men.

While more boys are born in Latvia than girls, the balance shifts dramatically in adulthood.

A high early male mortality rate means that there are 8% more women than men in the country

In the busy entry hall of the University of Latvia, Riga, the gender imbalance is visible.

According to sociologist and lecturer Baiba Bela, there are 50% more women enrolled there than men.

She says this means that women often find it harder to find a partner with an equal level of education.

And by the time women want to settle down, men are dying younger and are four times more likely to commit suicide.

"The first time the gender imbalance appears is between 30 and 40," Baiba explains.

"In this age group the mortality for men is three times higher than the same age group for women."

"Car driving, alcoholism and accidents in the workplace are mainly riskier for men than for women," she adds.

Among the under-30s, there are almost 9,000 more men than women. But between the ages of 30-39, there are almost 3,000 more women than men.

A couple of facts about Latvia- it covers roughly 25,000 square miles and is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, the Baltic sea to the west and Russia and Belarus to the east. The unit of currency is the Lat and although it is supposed to be integrated into the Euro-zone, the economic crisis of the last two years have put those plans off until at least sometime in 2012. Latvia's official language, unsurprisingly, is Latvian. Citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand and most EU countries do not require visas for stays of up to 90 days.

Included among Latvia's exports, mezzo-soprano opera singer Elina Garanca (appropriately enough, the blonde in the duet):

On a 100% completely unrelated note, my passport expired nearly three years ago, yet I somehow feel the driving need to get a new one as soon as possible.