And how was your 4th?

80 - partly cloudy at 12:45pm.
above: Oldsmobile Park/Lansing, MI last night

Welcome to Thursday. Had a terrific 4th watching our local Lansing Lugnuts beat the South Bend SilverHawks 4-3 before a season-high crowd of 10,119.

A great game - followed by two (!) simultaneous firework displays: one in the ballpark - plus the city celebration just outside the park. Overwhelming.

Walking into the stadium at 6:30, the Lugnut crew was handing out miniature American flags. Very nice.

Later though - my 11-year old pointed out the words "Made in China" on the bottom corner of the flags. Yipes! Regardless - still another great Lugnut experience as I've written about before.

From the blogosphere:

Fred Jacobs writes here about a great promotion pulled off recently by KYYS/Kansas City. A promotion that involved few dollars but generated tons of attention. A must read.

Building Brand Equity. Alan Mason here with thoughts about sending messages that aren't core to your brand.

Local bands on HD2. From the Post-Gazette comes this piece on WRRK/Pittsburgh. The station is devoting one of its HD channels to the music of local bands. Pittsburgh did bring us Donnie Iris - love his music!

I've long been an advocate of building relationships with the local music community. Nice! Thanks to Radio Daily News for the tip.

Ted Nugent on "The Summer of Love". In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Ted Nugent writes: "Forty years ago, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to turn on, tune in and drop out".

Read Ted's entire opinion piece here. It's Ted - love him or not.