Al Franken at the Minnesota State Fair.

I waited from 1:45 for the 2 pm appearance of Al Franken at his booth at the State Fair today. By 2:25 he finally showed up to an enthusiastic crowd.

He was very pleasant and shook many hands. He even agreed to pose for a picture take by one of his voolunteers. It is unfortunate that the guy couldn't handle my camera. Somehow he switched me to video, which would have been fine if anyone knew that.

Instead we get great audio ofmy conversation with Al and then two reporters, one from NPR and the other from Newsweek, all the while a jumpy shot of various crotches in the crowd.

There was this particular clip with a lengthy period where the camera is focussing - more or less- on a jeans clad butt. The audio is Al Franken answering a question from a member of the crowd about people not taking him seriously. The whole thing is a bit reminiscent of one of the SNL bits with him wearing a satelite transmitter and the picture fading in and out.

This section of audio has Al Franken expalining to us that he can not help but be himself and that a large part of that is that he is a funny guy. He adds that he also tries to be a thoughtful guy and that people don't appear to have a problem taking him seriously.

I regret that I am unable to post the photo of the two of us. I truly wanted to do that. But I got to meet Franni, Al's wife, and I got a great little "Team Franken" button with an image of a corndog on it.

Seeing this guy up close and hearing him speak candidly on the issues of the day-especially the war and Norm Coleman's lockstep-with-the-president position- makes we look forward to the day that Al Franken becomes Minnesota's newest senator.

Great clip from YouTube- one of my favorites

From Neil Diamond's "Hello Again" Special

Check out the pics from my new Neil Diamond Memorabilia room

Yeah, I am still here.

I saw the Democratic Presidential Candidate debate that aired tonight. I liked Kucinich but he got a bit shrill at the end. I was very disappointed at the imbalance of air time. We hardly heard at all from Governor Richardson. He is worth hearingon a wide variety of issues.