THOMASTON, Maine -- It stands to reason in this surf-and-turf world that if you can have a beefcake calendar, there must be room for a crustacean counterpart.
Made perfect sense to a Maine couple and their best friend a couple of years back. Little did they know that their venture would produce a cult item.
"Bachelor Lobstermen of Maine" and "Lobstering Women of Maine" will never be mistaken for Hugh Hefner productions. No-nonsense men in fleece and hearty women in sweat shirts stand before typical Down East landscapes of granite, pine trees and cobalt-blue water.
There are some gray hairs and no hairs and more than a few wrinkles in these calendar girls and boys, but that seems to be the allure.
"We're not taking pictures for the cover of Vogue here. It's a down-home, folksy thing," says Michael Mayo, who took over the business in January, when Will Cook and his wife, Joanne Gray, moved to Ireland. "It's got typos and stuff, but it's a real Maine thing."
About as racy as these calendars get is the inscription from Miss December 2002, The Hungry Ocean author and fisherman Linda Greenlaw: "Finally! A women's calendar where T and A stand for turbocharged and aftercooled."
At first the calendars were a $12.95 novelty on the shelves of independent Maine shops. Now, Mayo ships them out from his century-old farmhouse on the coast to some of the bigger book chains, and fills mail orders from around the country.
"It's just clicked with a portion of the population," says Mayo, 56, a teacher, social worker and part-time organic caterer. "We don't know why."
Cook and Gray got the idea about three years ago during a vacation in Ireland, where some small towns hold annual bachelor festivals to marry off their unattached men.
Once home, they borrowed a camera and began snapping pictures of lobstermen in their hometown of Rockland. The initial run of 2,000 copies of "Bachelor Lobstermen of Maine" sold out in less than two weeks. A second printing of 4,000 quickly disappeared, too.
Giddy with success, they produced a 2002 lobstermen calendar, then added the distaff version. All 6,000 copies flew off the shelves, aided by the inclusion of Greenlaw, made famous by The Perfect Storm, and Zoe "Survivor" Zanidakis.
That's not to say there hasn't been some criticism.
"Some women look and say, 'Why don't you show a little more skin in these calendars.' We never hear that from the men about the women," says Mayo, laughing.
For the 2003 editions, 8,000 copies of each style have been printed. Some bookstores in Maine already are sold out.
And though they've departed Maine, Cook and Gray have already established a calendar beachhead on the Emerald Isle. Their 2003 "Bachelor Pint-Pullers of Ireland" features a different pub and bartender each month.
They're distributing 5,000 calendars in Ireland and 5,000 more in the United States through Mayo.
"We've gone from a two-trick pony to a three-trick pony," cracks Mayo, who is already starting to pull together photos for the 2004 calendars.
"We're trying to pick a diverse group," he says. "You don't want all glamour pusses, and, believe me, you don't want all people who look like me."
Information about ordering calendars is available online, at http: / / home.earthlink. net / ~graycook.