The Hold Steady @ First Ave.

The Hold Steady, “Constructive Summer” from the new album Stay Positive.

Something Anything - Travis video

“Ode to J. Smith” - the new Travis album out in September.

As the vacation ends

For the last week I have pretty much done nothing in particular. From catching up on DVDs to watching the Olympics, I finally got around to spending a week of doing very little.

To say that I haven’t done anything really isn’t accurate. Here is a short list of things I did do this week in no particular order.

• Saw “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” in the theater. Great flick but a few flaws here and there. If you dig Star Wars, you’ll probably dig this Star Wars flick. More on this later.
• Started playing BioShock after picking it up new for $20 on clearance. I’ve been wanting to play this game for a while and it really does hold up. Shaping to be one of my favorite 360 games.
• Watched a boat load of DVDs. From most the first season of “Felicity” to “Superman II” and so on, I made my way through a number of DVD discs.
• Slept, a pretty good amount. I think I’ll do some more of that here in a few minutes.
• Pre-ordered the special edition of the new Oasis album, “Dig Out Your Soul” out in early October. Joy.

That’s the short list of what I’ve done. Congrats to Michael Phelps, amazing job man.

The Verve - “Love is Noise” video

The Verve are back, the world is right again.

Farmfest is for politics

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of covering the first public debate between U.S. Senate candidates Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn. and challenger Al Franken, D-Minn. at Farmfest. You can read my story at Marshallindependent.com. It was interesting, but unfortunately not a lot of new things were said.

This was the first time I’ve been at Farmfest on day one. I’m usually there for the last two days, covering a county board during the first day. Luckily this time around I was able to make it to this major debate. If you’ve been following the ad campaigns for both candidates, you likely know what was said during the forum.

I was glad to see forum participants throughout the week talking about the importance of high speed Internet access to rural Minnesota. I’ve been preaching this for years and it’s good to see it finally reaching the decision makers.