Check out this article from the Boston Globe: “Wakefield, Looney Tunes helping out kids.”

Sweet.

If you said Bud Light, you would have been right, two years ago.

But not today. Today it’s Snow beer (who?) from China (oh!).

According to beer research firm Plato Logic in 2008 the world’s leading beer brands are (in million of hectoliters):

1. Snow – 61.0
2. Bud Light – 55.6
3. Budweiser – 43.4
4. Skol (Brazil) – 35.4
5. Corona – 32.7
6. Heineken – 29.1

A hectoliter, by the way, is 100 liters, or 26.4 US gallons, or since we’re talking beer, 211.33 pints.

Anyway, I took it upon myself this morning to Photoshop a few more screens for BP. Hope they like them:

But they just picked one. Here it is:

Oddly the symbol won’t show up on currency notes or coins, at least, according to the article I read, but that’ll probably change as time goes on.

The two teams playing are Sporting Clube de Portugal from the Portuguese Liga and Celtic FC of the Scottish Premier League.

So which team do you think Bostonians will root for – “Sporting” or “Celtic”?

Those poor Portuguese …

Apparently they play fast and loose with the whole “international” aspect of the festival; three of the films were produced in the United States. But they were flicks that would be tough to see in the real world, so it worked.

Here’s a list of what we saw, with the descriptions from the website. All were interesting, but I think 3 Idiots was our favorite. And with the genius of the iTunes Store we were able to download two of the songs from the soundtrack, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago.

The Silent Enemy (1930) USA
From the early sound era comes a striking film shot amongst the Native American tribes still living on the land in southern Quebec, near the Maine border, some 80 years ago, and presented at MIFF in an amazing 35mm print. A unique and now unrecreatable record of a lost way of life – even though itself a somewhat romanticized fiction – The Silent Enemy was seen as that even at the time of its release, as witness this review from the day in Time Magazine: “Every schoolboy knows that the Indian has not yet quite vanished from the forests of the continent that was his. But no schoolbook, museum or government bureau will ever preserve the vestigial red man as this picture does…. The cast was recruited from the Ojibwas of upper Ontario…The time is before Columbus. A famine year is upon the forest. Baluk, the tribe’s big-muscled hunter, reports to Chetoga, the old chief, that their people should go “many moccasins” north without delay to the crossing place of the caribou. Dagwan, the malicious medicine man, makes it a condition of the plan that if game is not found, Baluk must die. The north wind and great snows meet the Ojibwas on their march. The Great Canoe (Death) comes for Chetoga. “The land of the little sticks” (Hudson Bay barrens) is reached…”

3 Idiots (2009) India
There’s a reason why 3 Idiots has become the biggest Bollywood film ever. Actually there’s several. First, there’s a complex and charismatic lead performance by Aamir Khan (who MIFF audiences saw last year in a different Bollywood film, the intense psychological thriller Ghajini), now easily the biggest Bollywood star on the planet. There’s an intriguing and involving story: Two friends embark on a quest for a lost buddy. On this journey, they encounter a long forgotten bet, a wedding they must crash, and a funeral that goes impossibly out of control. And there’s a winning mix of the comic, the dramatic and yes, even a fine musical number or two. “A superstar for more than two decades, Aamir Khan has never been more popular than he is today, in his mid-forties. In writer-director Rajkumar Hirani’s tuneful, enjoyable college comedy, 3 Idiots, Khan plays “Rancho,” an engineering student so brilliant that he barely has to break a sweat to place first in his class. Rancho always has plenty of energy left over to wage a guerrilla war against the institution’s emphasis on rote memorization…. In the ingenious extended finale, Rancho serves as a deus ex machina guru/savior to the ordinary mortals he has befriended along the way. Hirani embraces melodramatic convention with open arms, but he is also a crafty entertainer who smoothly choreographs his overpopulated storyline” – David Chute, Village Voice.

Ahead of Time (2009) USA – AFI Project: 20/20
An inspiration not only for her ground-breaking career, but for her vitality and humor at 98 years old, Ruth Gruber has led a life almost impossible to believe. Born in Brooklyn in 1911, she became the youngest PhD in the world before going on to become an international foreign correspondent and photojournalist at the age of 24. With her love of adventure, fearlessness and powerful intellect, Ruth defied tradition in an extraordinary career that has spanned more than seven decades. The first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic in 1935, Ruth also traveled to Alaska as a member of the Roosevelt administration in 1942, escorted Holocaust refugees to America in 1944, covered the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and documented the Haganah ship Exodus in 1947. Her relationships with world leaders including Eleanor Roosevelt, President Harry Truman, and David Ben Gurion gave her unique access and insight into the modern history of the Jewish people. The film interweaves verite scenes with never-seen-before archival footage, and is an unforgettable portrait of an unforgettable woman.

Cell 211 (2009) Spain
Nominated for no less than 16 Goyas (Spanish Oscar equivalents), this tough as nails, absolutely riveting prison drama won eight, including Best Film of the Year this year. The story of two men on different sides of a prison riot—the inmate leading the rebellion and the young guard trapped in the revolt, who poses as a prisoner in a desperate attempt to survive the ordeal – Cell 211 is a tension-filled drama with complex characters, a tight focus and real integrity. Its Goya winning lead acting performance by Luis Tosar is unforgettable.

Sita Sings the Blues (2008) USA
Not for nothing does this utterly wonderful and utterly unique film come trailing universal raves like Roger Ebert’s: “Astonishingly original. I am enchanted! I am swept away!” Or the Boston Globe’s: “An almost indescribable pleasure, delightful!” Sita Sings the Blues is flat out the most fun you’ll have in ages. Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

And I’m not even being facetious.

Did you see how “Apple Offers Free Cases to Address iPhone Issue” and that Apple even admitted “iPhone 4 Drops More Calls Than iPhone 3GS“?

Yep, I’m waiting for iPhone 5.0. Well that, and a job.

I never really though about it, but the Portland–Montreal Pipe Line runs through town on its way to Montreal. Apparently there’s also a pumping station there (along with the one in Raymond at the mouth of Plains Road).

Here’s the story from July 18, 1960’s Lewiston Daily Sun:

A break in the Portland Pipe Line a short distance from the pumping station at North Waterford made that area of Waterford a potential powder keg early Sunday morning. The pipe carrying crude oil broke on the hill above the Waterford pumping station and a brook of oil came rushing down the hillside and across the highway and into a small brook where it put an eight inch coating of oil over the water.

The Oxford County Sheriff’s Department and State Police were alerted and road blocks were set up to keep spectators away from the area.

Dee C. Hutchins, superintendent of the Waterford station said that the crude oil was highly combustible.

The Norway, Paris and Oxford Fire Departments were called to the scene to be ready in case something should happen to ignite the fumes which filled the area.

All available bulldozers from the area were rushed to the scene to build earth dams in the brook to keep the oil from getting into Crooked River. Hutchins estimated that over 1,000 barrels of oil spread over the area.

Authorities confronted with the hazard decided to burn the accumulated substance, later Sunday. This was done in the brook which the bulldozers had turned onto a series of pools separated by earth dams.

With an abundance of fire equipment standing by, the oil was burned one pool at a time. The smokey fire drew much attention from motorists in the vicinity.

It’s no Deepwater Horizon, but still, it’s something for a little town like North Waterford …

On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened in Anaheim, California.

After 55 years, I think it’s safe to say to truly is a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.