Steven Helmer Publications

Her elementary school had its concert this week (I snapped a photo of the empty stage before it started) so, instead of being able to stay home last night, my wife and I attended that. Her third grade class did a good job. I especially liked their kazoo version of the Nutcracker and they were probably the only class that acted like they wanted to be there. Most of the other kids honestly looked like they were being punished or something.

They were the band playing at the county fair tonight and my wife and I were able to see them as part of our paid admission. It's the second time we've seen them in concert. We watched them in Wisconsin Dells a few years ago and, even though I'm not a huge fan, I do think they put on a decent performance. If anything, I think they were better than last year's rock performer, Brett Michaels. We were looking forward to that concert last year (well, my wife was at least) only to discover he's becoming nothing more than an expensive cover band (and, yes, I'm including his performance of Poison songs in that. What's the point of going on a solo career if you don't have your own original solo music?). .38 Special at least played their own songs. We didn't stay for the whole concert because we were getting hungry and wanted to leave before the traffic got bad. But, we stayed through Hang on Loosely. They were performing it as we were walking to the...