The Strib booth again, in old slide form. I had a bit more to work with here. The original:

The Fair! The Fair! I went to the Fair! O happy day, o wondrous times, o such boon to be able to park in the free lot and take the free bus! Is what I’d say if the lot hadn’t been full. Parked at a meter. Today’s objective was the State Highway Patrol day, which had a demonstration of something called “Fatal Vision Goggles.” So, I put them on and see a bushy-headed hippie murder my family shouting “Acid is groovy, kill the pigs”? No, they simulate drunkenness.

So the brochure said. But they didn’t have any. Also no K-9s, but I must have missed it. The highlight was having an air bag shot in my face, and I was lucky to get a good shot and not completely flinch. Also the shot of the helicopter leaving worked out well.

It’s that time of the year when I stop thinking like a writer and start thinking like a videographer, inasmuch as I ever think about either, but I’m always looking for the good shot, the unusual shot. I have no training in this. There are the obvious basics - get the master shot, roll tape for natural sound you can use as a bed, but beyond that there are all these quirks and tricks you can invent on your own, and mine - at least at the paper; probably standard 101 class stuff in school - is the freeze-frame before the interview starts. It’s there for a practical reason: gives me four seconds to voice-over the introduction, and then when it starts it just gives the segment a little kick.

Anyway! The Fair! I ate nothing. I wanted something, but everything comes in hunks and chunks and you can’t buy just a little of something. But that’s Friday’s column, I suspect. It was hot, July hot, late June hot, the eternal heat of summer unvanquished . . . but on the way out, the sun having decided it had spoken its piece, the temps relaxed like soldiers after the general has left the base. You can feel autumn in the early evening, and it reminds you: August is a traitor.

From today’s trip: the marvelous old Television City neon from the KSTP booth. I don’t know if it was used elsewhere, but I suspect it had to be: no one would use that phrase when outfitting a studio in the 70s, would they? It was a piece of connective tissue to “Radio City,” and we had a Radio City downtown at the Minnesota Theater. I suspect the KSTP building on University Avenue had this sign, or perhaps a larger one. It’s a curious remnant now.

Fairchild in wood-stump form, in a backwater area between some stands. He’s like the rodent brother of the Frozen snowman.

Finally, the view from the street where I parked. This is the edge of the University of Minnesota - turn around and there are shiny new research buildings and offices and a massive stadium, but from this view it’s the rural past, a look 60 years back. The grain elevators rise along the spine of the railroad, a steel road that everything else must accommodate.

I wonder what used to be on these streets; houses, perhaps, shacks and shanties, drafty homes for the workers. All gone - fields of weeds - all waiting for the U to sprawl some more and claim another piece of industrial land for clean rooms and scientists peering at beakers.

No updates this week, but there's new Richie Rich - I think; I'm so far ahead I can't tell anymore - and of course the videos at Startribune.com. Go there! Give me hits. Thanks.