Final Day at the Fair

The final day of the '07 Nebraska State Fair was a blast! We went there in the early afternoon and ended up watching a polka band which the boys loved. I haven't heard a live polka band in a long time and it was a lot of fun. We picked up our winnings from the SPAM contest and the cookies my wife baked, then we went and saw the Charlie Daniels Band perform. He was spectacular and we had a lot of fun. On the whole, and on each part, this year's State Fair was an excellent experience. Having won the SPAM contest I'm not eligible to compete next year, and that's why I'm going to start working on brewing beer and drawing... Hopefully one of those activities will produce something of good enough quality to enter next year.

Jars Of Clay

Ever since the summer before we started dating, my wife and I have gone to at least one concert at the Nebraska State Fair. This year we went to see Jars of Clay and I must say that it was one of the best concerts I've been to in a while. It was a bunch of guys, who were quite popular some time ago, on stage with just instruments playing and singing because they love it. They aren't quite as popular now, but that doesn't matter, I don't know that it mattered to them all that much back in the day either. They played some new stuff which I didn't recognize, and some old stuff that I did, and even a cover of the Cars (who played the following night). I enjoyed all of it. There wasn't a song that I didn't connect to the music, and that's kind of rare for me. Nothing seemed forced, and there weren't any distracting pyrotechnics or anything like that. We took my, nearly, four year old. He thought the music as too loud for the first song and a half, but then he started to get into it and by the end he was telling me that he wanted to go talk to 'that guy' (meaning the singer). We went up after the show, while they were tearing down (yeah, the band helped tear down their own set!) and the drummer talked to him a little bit and gave him a set list. He was so excited! I think bands like Jars of Clay are all too rare anymore. If more bands played sets like that and interacted with their fans on a personal level I think the pop music scene would be severely diminished, and the state of music would be that much better for it.

SPAM-a-lot

I made 寿司スパム and, with it, won the title of

2007 Nebraska State Fair SPAM Cookoff Chapmion

I'm rather proud of my little concoction, which is simply vinigared rice, nori, some fresh vegitables and, of course, SPAM. It was great to win this year because I really liked my entry last year (SPAM pot pie) but it didn't place. A friend also recently introduced me to 30 Days of SPAM which, in turn, let me to The Book of SPAM. Another friend of mine is going to see Monty Python's SPAM-A-Lot. So, everything is turning up SPAM! It turns out my son likes it quite a bit too, which is good because now we enjoy canned meat together. I hate to keep shamelessly plugging for Hormel here, but it has to be said at this point, plus this is a first for me winning something at the State Fair even though I did a lot of animal shows here when I was younger. I'll have more on the fair as it progresses.