The Royce Files

It is the dead of winter and what should one do? Grab a fine winter ale while they are to be had (such as Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale .) and read a bit about what signs of beer I have found in my varied travels. The entry today takes us back to late summer and the Minnesota State Fair. O'Gara's has quite the setup now at the fairgrounds. What used to be the St. Bernard's dining hall has been transformed into pub-like beer hall with plenty of wood trimmings and signage. While on my stop there I had breakfast and not beer. Not sure what Phil would say about that. Our sign however is not of the Smithwicks or Guinness or eve the Finegan's kind. Instead it comes from the brewery known as Schell's- that claims to be the 2nd oldest family owned brewery and is the largest brewery in Minnesota. You can read the details here . Over a 150 years of brewing- surviving prohibition and the big beer aquisition era. I have sampled some Schell's but have not really set

We've been seeing it for over 3 years now. The head turning online sidebar advertisement that has some outlandish unrelated image hawking everything from diet things to life insurance to online education. Below I follow the evolution of one them- the siren flasher lady. It actually began with the Super Hero Mrs. Obama image but slowly digressed or regressed or something. First they decided that the flashing police light would be cool. Next they altered the woman to be less nerdy and more model like. The flasher also became more orange than red and the hand moved to make one thing this character had a secret or is gasping at the ridiculousness of the ad. Finally they just cropped the head of another image we've seen online (but not reviewed here), cartoonized it and parody the position of what that image was like and keep the flasher red. And there you have it! Added 4/17/2012: Another evolution has occurred. This one is more of a Frankenstein on

Took some time off to find snow and go cross country skiing with my mostly Finnish wife at Mapelag Resport . We had an incredible time in this snowy place. We skied something like 30 miles in 3 days. And my wonderfully mostly Finnish darling took an icy plunge into the lake after a sauna. We had any enjoyable time and had some delicious food too! 

The ad agencies are still churning out head turners online in 2012. Let's look at few recent releases to the nets that will make you gasp or ponder "is this a little weird for advertising a mortgage?" Well, it looks like the market is really booming for unkept facial hair. The bearded guy here has a twinge of friendly creep vibe. This could be Brad Pitt in a few years if he kept his crazy beard going. But wait! We could be getting ripped off because we don't do the ridiculously easy trick! I have wondered how long they can keep using that line. They are selling just about everything by referring to this one trick which solves all our health, mortgage, and insurance problems. In our next ad we have a fine moustache a la Sam Elliott . This is another one of those changing image to pencil illustration ones so it gets kind of creepy. And of note, the Government is actually providing some relief to homeowners- in the form of a settlement with "Big Banks"