I find common lisp to be plenty practical, its libraries mostly satisfactory(restas/cl-redis/cl-closure-template make a good combo for playing with web development), and its community's frankness and no bullshit attitude are rather refreshing after spending some time in the land of the cool kids. Also these lists of success stories contain some impressive shit:
http://www.franz.com/success/ http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/ http://wiki.alu.org/Industry%20Application
PS Land of lisp is an awesome book.