Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” End Credits

September 6, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Murderer wearing white jumpsuit and black box on head stands with spear at attention like a soldier

Little Death is watching you watching them!

Hats off to writer/director Jane Schoenbrun for contributing to one of the most convoluted entry titles in MCC history! Not that I’m complaining — tortured syntax is among my numerous writing vices, and I’ll take whatever unwitting aiding and abetting I can get in my syntactical torturing. To clarify: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is the full name of Schoenbrun’s third film, after We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and I Saw the TV Glow. I’m a big fan of creative film-titling and increasingly unimpressed by one-word titles that tell you absolutely nothing distinctive about the work, especially if six other unrelated films had that name first.

This is also only the second time in our 14-year run that the word “sex” has appeared in an entry title. (The first was, shall we say, not about “sex positivity”.) As a self-admitted prude, I’ve been pretty okay with that particular dearth. But after reading a few reviews of this most unusual film — one part meta-horror satire of slasher-flick revivals, one part slippery-reality self-discovery vision quest — I was curious to experience it for myself. I correctly guessed parts of it would be Not My Thing, but Camp Miasma‘s blood-soaked, mind-bending campground has plenty to unpack.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 9 of 9: The Year in Everything Else

September 1, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
cheese sculpture behind glass in temperature-controlled enclosure. Imagery includes cows, baseball, and self-portrait of the artist.

The annual cheese sculpture from Sarah Kaufmann, “the Cheese Lady” — another 1500 pounds of temporary art, later donated to charity.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and it all comes down to this: all the other pics fit to print. Obviously we had to lead off with the cheese sculpture.

Next up: the entrants in the annual CANstruction contest! The charitable organization holds eponymous events nationwide in which engineers and other clever planners compete against each other to build the best sculpture made entirely from canned goods, preferably in recognizable shapes and not ordinary stacks with boring titles like “Oh No, We Overordered Mushroom Soup Again”. After the judging and the public displaying are over, all those meticulously planned figures are torn down and the components are donated to local hunger relief charities, who in turn forward them to needy families. Thus these temporary installations live on only if everyone takes pictures of them.

Rather than the fair’s official theme of The Year of Baseball, the CANstruction competitors celebrated the Harvest Pavilion’s headline exhibit, “Rewind: A VHS Revival”. So this year, the cans are all about the movies!

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 8: Morning Midway Meandering

August 30, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Purple caterpillar roller coaster for kids on green track, no people around.

Possibly the world’s fastest caterpillar, relatively speaking.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

When I was a kid, the Midway was the only part of the fair that mattered. The food was a nice change of pace, but was more of a necessity than a highlight, at least until I discovered elephant ears. The adults wanted to see the exhibits and didn’t care if I was bored stiff. I liked animals, but our family never adapted to toxic barn stench. Sometimes the special events and scheduled entertainment were okay, but I didn’t scour their schedule for appointments and never attended a concert there until I was 29. No, far as I was concerned, the Midway was the be-all-end-all of the State Fair experience — the rides, the games, the fun houses, and especially the video arcade they added in the mid-’80s.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 7: The Year in Antiques

August 29, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A booze flask, a moonshine jar, and a Mortimer Snerd whiskey bottle.

BOOZE! Now that I have your attention, here’s a trio of old-time containers, including one based on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s other dummy, Mortimer Snerd.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

One of the fair’s regular features is the antiques competition, chiefly displayed on the second floor of the Indiana Arts Building. No one’s ever posted the rules, criteria, rankings, or anything expository beyond signage implying, “Here are some antiques not for sale.” Contestants bring in ancient items they unearthed somewhere, a secret council convenes far from inquisitive eyes, prize ribbons are placed next to some of them, yadda yadda yadda, they’re at your Indiana State Fair.

Amid the quilts and ’50s baby dolls and blue-and-white dishware, a few items with historical value and/or pop culture cachet will catch our attention, especially comic books published before I was born. We congratulate the winners of this year’s Antiques We Noticed Most Contest!

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 6: The Year in Art

August 28, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
red dragon sculpture with at least a five-foot wingspan.

Red dragon!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Anne and I are at that age when we’re more interested in visiting the exhibit halls than in rattling our bones on the Midway rides. We enjoy seeing what new works of paint, photography, building blocks, and 4-H instructional posters have been offered up for the various competitions. The State Fair holds its massive celebrations on behalf of our farmers, but Indiana has no shortage of artists, either. Whether adults or kids, the illustrators, sculptors, clothing designers, doll-makers and other artisans come from all demographics, work in multiple media, and bring ideas from pop culture as well as from their own influences and home lives. They each contribute in their own ways to the Hoosier State creative legacy.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 5: The Year in Lego

August 27, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Lego Thomas the Tank Engine bursting through an occupied Lego living room.

Lego Thomas the Tank Engine recreates the classic moment from Thomas Comes to Breakfast that taught us why nobody invites trains over for pancakes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

Lego is a frequent sight at our State Fair. 4-H kids and competitors in other art contests routinely turn in works of Lego as their favorite sculpting medium. Some submissions are store-bought kits; some are original creations. There’s nothing emphatically Hoosier about them. To my knowledge we have no Lego factory and no Legoland theme park. Indiana was not a beachhead for Danish explorers. Not even the old Lego Indiana Jones set have anything to do with Indiana per se, much as we might wish to contrive otherwise. But at our State Fair there’s always room for Lego.

This year we attended the fair so late into its run — the last day was this past Sunday — that the rest of this miniseries is now a retrospective instead of a concurrent update. Figuring in advance that that’d happen, I tried to convince myself to take fewer photos so I could wrap up our short-term State Fair memories as quickly as possible and I could get back to all the other pending posts I’ve been procrastinating. I even thought to myself going in, “You do not have to snap pics of every Lego ever.” Here we wound up anyway, having once again accumulated enough Lego works for a standalone gallery. Behold the power of bright building blocks!

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 4: The Year in Cakes

August 25, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Giant cake shaped like a small burger, fries, hot dog, chocolate ice cream bar, and caramel apple all stacked on one massive burger.

No, this isn’t a Taste of the Fair dish or a Man v. Food eating challenge. This is a single cake.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…such as cakes! Back in 2019 we discovered for the first time in our entire fair-attending lives that the main 4-H Building wasn’t their only exhibit hall. Next door Centennial Hall was formerly a dormitory — and is still inaccurately and unhelpfully labeled as such — and contained entire competitive categories that we’d never seen before. The cakes in particular were awesome sights to behold.

Then the State Fair went on hiatus in 2020, because 2020. Without that annual reinforcement of the lesson we’d learned, we totally forgot about Centennial Hall until this year. We were only pointed toward it because the contents of the main 4-H Building were restructured, rearranged, and/or relocated elsewhere. For some reason the entire second floor appeared to have been converted into an indoor driving range for 4-H golfers. Thankfully we were redirected to Centennial Hall and discovered the joy of 4-H cakes all over again — the results of hours of effort, imagination and concentration on the part of whoever was blessed with these amazing colossal talents. A shame we couldn’t eat any of their works, merely behold them. Call it the Great Hoosier Bake-Off.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 3: The Year of America’s 250th

August 23, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
White cake with icing picture of bald eagle wearing sunglasses and a US flag bandanna on its head. Next to it is written "'Merica" in red icing.

Meet the radical new Sam the Eagle from Mark Millar’s Ultimate Muppets reboot.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and one splashy theme recurred throughout the various exhibits of arts, crafts, cookery, and antiquing across all participating buildings: the 250th anniversary of July 4th, 1776, generally considered the date of birth of the United States of America. Granted, not all citizens observed the only semiquincetennial party our nation will ever have, particularly among a statistically significant percentage of the terminally online. No, America isn’t perfect and never will be, which is kind of the point, no matter who’s in charge. If you only love people, places, or things that are perfect, then how many absolutely perfect people, places, or things do you genuinely love? If you count more than one, you’ve gotten it wrong.

As it happens, our road trip this year began over the Independence Day weekend and showed us evidence of folks proud to celebrate offline, about which I’ll get to post about here someday when I get caught up on sharing our travelogues, Lord willing. Anne, for one, was excited to see America cross that milestone without preemption by the Second Coming, collapsing under a giant meteor, or being conquered by a conspiratorial Canada/Mexico tag-team invasion. She braked at every roadside attraction that acknowledged its happening and was overjoyed to see that same enthusiasm here at the fair.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 2: The Year in VHS

August 23, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Simulated video rental store with shelves devoted to the 1990s Disney VHS releases in the white cases. Movie candy lines the bottom shelf.

Remember when Disney released its movies on home video in those oversized white cases that were incompatible with VHS racks?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context…

…and once again the most interesting exhibit was hosted in the Harvest Pavilion: “Rewind: A VHS Revival”. Same as last year’s tribute to LP cover art, the curators started with a simple premise — in this case, “Remember movies on videotape? Those were awesome!” — and didn’t tailor everything to Indiana specifically, so much as it hearkened toward ye olde American entertainment monoculture. They assembled a collection of simulated video-rental store shelves, videotape boxes, movie posters, painted recreations of posters and iconic images, a few educational sections about filmmaking, and so on. Their contributors offered some offbeat choices, so it wasn’t all just Spielberg and Star Wars.

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Indiana State Fair 2026 Photos, Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour, Worst to Best

August 20, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Me holding a snack shaped like a corn dog with green sauce drizzled on it. I seem unimpressed.

Ceci n’est pas une corn dog.

It’s that time again! The Indiana State Fair is an annual celebration of Hoosier pride, farming, food, and 4-H, with amusement park rides, cooking demos, concerts by musicians either nearly or formerly popular, and farm animals competing for cash prizes without their knowledge. My wife Anne and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.

Most years, we’re all about the food. Each time our favorite part is the “Taste of the Fair” competition, in which vendors showcase ostensibly new dishes in hopes of enticing foodies and/or impressing attendees who seek more to fair-life than eating the same tenderloin again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!) The TotF lineup is announced weeks in advance so everyone can plan their meals and experiments accordingly.

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Fan Expo Chicago 2026 Photos, Part 5 of 5: Everything Else!

August 20, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sculpture of icky monster from "The Thing" on a cart in the middle of a convention center.

Fans of John Carpenter’s The Thing were thrilled to meet its director and stars Kurt Russell and Keith David. Tribute sculpture by One Eyed Fat Man Studios.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike…

…and it all comes down to this: one last photo gallery touring what else we saw beyond the cosplay, besides the celebs, past Artists Alley, and even outside the convention center’s walls. The con was large; it contained multitudes.

One thing our weekend contained much less of than expected: severe thunderstorms. Our local feeds showed us countless photos and stories from the destructive floods that too many consecutive rainy days had brought to Indiana — surpassing all expectations, overwhelming meager precautions, overtaking numerous areas and forcing more than a few evacuations. Our hearts go out to those affected, the families who’ve lost loved ones in the resulting calamities, and the communities struggling to recover.

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Fan Expo Chicago 2026 Photos, Part 4 of 5: Comics!

August 17, 2026 By in Comics/Lit, Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
five publications and a Little Cheese sketch arranged on a table.

My comics-related haul this year.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike…

…and for this longtime comics collector, that means keeping an eye out for favorite creators and/or new reading material. Pictured above are the graphic novels I picked up in this year’s Artists Alley, plus a sketch of a character from my childhood. As for the creators who sold me those items…

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Fan Expo Chicago 2026 Photos, Part 3 of 5: Celebrities and Catastrophes

August 17, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Us doing jazz hands with Kurt Russell, who's wearing all black, seated, doing light jazz hands and smiling like a congenial movie star.

Hi, it’s Kurt Russell! You’ve seen him in such films!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike…

…and for us it meant another round of photo ops with actors from movies and TV shows we’ve enjoyed. Longtime MCC readers know jazz hands are our thing, if we feel it’s worth a shot to ask, and if the stars are amenable. Sometimes they don’t, and that’s fine! They’re adults, we’re adults, and we accept it — their image, their choice. But it’s a lot cooler when they do. Overall we enjoyed ourselves, but this year FEC was crippled by the worst photo-op complications we’ve ever experienced for a show of its size within the past fifteen years.

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Fan Expo Chicago 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 5: Slightly More Cosplay!

August 17, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Fan in Ghostbuster jumpsuit and Admiral Ackbar mask holds up a ghost trap.

A Mon Calamari Ghostbuster confirms, “IT’S A TRAP!”

[Content warning! The following entry is rated ‘S’ for spoilers for season two of X-Men ’97, which just concluded August 12th. Reader discretion is advised.]

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike.

As is the MCC procedure, let’s start with mandatory cosplay photos! The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply of costumes, and appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend, especially from cons like this where we spent far more time waiting in lengthy lines that ate up precious time we could’ve spent taking more pics. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun…

…so here’re all the cosplayers we photographed on Saturday when we weren’t trapped in lines, crushed in crowds, or fussing with two straight days of catastrophic photo-op failure. (More on that next time.) Enjoy again!

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Fan Expo Chicago 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 5: A Little Cosplay!

August 16, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Peacemaker cosplayer lets Anne borrow his prop gun, who aims it at me!

Our pal Peacemaker (yes, we’ve met! More than once! In other costumes!) gives Anne tips on how to fight for peace with prop guns.

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the fifth edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. In 2022 they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times, and have expended tremendous efforts to maintain the previous showrunners’ geek-marketed traditions to keep luring in longtime fans and newcomers alike.

As is the MCC procedure, let’s start with mandatory cosplay photos! The humble duo here at MCC enjoys the panoply of costumes, and appreciates the makers and wearers who enliven every comic-con with their talents and their exaltation of various fandoms. We regret we can only represent a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the total cosplay wonderment that was on display this weekend, especially from cons like this where we spent far more time waiting in lengthy lines that ate up precious time we could’ve spent taking more pics. We’re just an aging couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun.

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Welcome to Buc-ee’s, America’s Best Beaver-Hosted Gas Superstation

August 7, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments
Anne smiling and pointing next to an employee in a furry Buc-eee suit. Behind them are gas station snack displays.

IT’S BUC-EE! IT’S BUC-EE! I KNOW HIM!

When I was a kid, gas fill-ups were just another ordinary errand, like buying groceries or refilling your parents’ prescription or suffering at the dentist: they had to be done, but nobody ever giggled with anticipation or clapped their hands at the sight of those establishments. Sure, groceries got less tedious after WWII when the FDA legalized flavor, but nobody rational ever thought gas stations were fun…least of all during the 1970s energy crisis, when America’s last hundred gallons had to be split 100 million ways. Getting gas was expensive and dispiriting and, worst of all, it was really boring.

Here in the 21st century, everything must be fun now. Any human activity or business that doesn’t entertain us is ignored or shamed, which might explain why so many people in our neighborhood don’t mow their lawns anymore. Gas stations aren’t exempt: we can’t just pull up, pump, pay, and proceed. We’d fall asleep with the nozzle in our hand and spray gas everywhere. We need at least one (1) thrilling moment while we’re there. At some chains, the pumps have little screens showing ads, or music piping through speakers, or apps encouraging customers to come inside for all the snacks and bargains. Years ago, somewhere in Texas, a brilliant entrepreneur figured out a new angle: what if you crossed a gas station with a Walmart and a Disney World gift shop? Because everything’s better with cartoon animals!

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Yes, There’s Barely a Scene After the “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” End Credits

August 2, 2026 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Tom Holland as Spidey standing in front of prison bars. Face is battered, eyes have turned totally black.

Are you ready for…DARK SPIDER-MAN? (No, not Venom.)

Previously on Spider-Man: Five years ago as the pandemic trended downward — been a while! — No Way Home capped off Tom Holland’s first trilogy by ruining Peter Parker’s life even more depressingly than usual. The This Is Your Life fan-service parade of Spideys and Spider-villains from Spider-cinema past were a delight despite the Major Character Death casting a pall, though The Battle of the Spider-Stars fizzled out in its showdown letdown, a blurry mishmash of scaffolds and weightless automata typifying the rushed VFX of many a post-Endgame superhero blockbuster. But the deepest problem was the story structure itself, a betrayal of “With great power comes great responsibility”, the very heart of every version of the Spider-mythos: taking “great responsibility” began with Peter asking Dr. Strange to fix all his problems for him, and ended with him asking Strange to fix all his new problems that “fixing” his old problems caused in the first place. As I wrote in irritation afterward: “Having a fairy godfather wish your problems away isn’t taking Great Responsibility. That’s weaseling out.” That goes for both times.

Any subsequent Spider-film had two options to get unstuck from that morass: either pretend it never happened and reboot the franchise again with yet another new cast; or spend the entire next film climbing out of that hole. Praise be, then, to director Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi, Wonder Man) and returning Spider-writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers for committing to option B in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Spidey’s ninth solo film and the 38th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s still obligated to invite non-Spider guests and set up future Marvel projects, but within those corporate restraints, Cretton and crew bring back the Spider-basics of comics yore: no multiverse, no intergalactic space travel, nothing otherdimensional or mystical or meta, it’s an intensely metropolitan adventure that returns to Homecoming‘s street-level superheroics, invests time and energy in repairing shattered relationships, whips up a flurry of fun along the way, and lets that Major Character Death count for something besides shock value.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #29 of 29: Southern Outtakes

July 26, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
us harbor selfie!

DAY THREE: The two of us on the Fort Sumter ferry.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

…and it all comes down to this, at long long last, per our tradition for every MCC road trip story: one final collection of alternate scenes, extra details, and surplus attractions along the way to Charleston, South Carolina, and back again that were squeezed out of the main narrative. Over half are from that particular destination simply because the city was so photogenic that we just kept clicking and clicking. Enjoy!

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Our 2023 Road Trip #28: Daniel Boone’s Final Frontier

July 25, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Daniel Boone grave viewed through a midsize iron fence.

The frontiersman, the frontiersmyth, the frontierslegend.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

As our vacation began with a visit to a Kentucky dignitary’s final resting place, so would it end with one. The focus of our occasional cemetery visits is usually Presidential burial sites, but sometimes we’ll learn of the graves and crypts of other famous personae that Anne would like to see in her capacity as a lifelong history aficionado. Frankfort hosted one such figure, which worked out since we were in town anyway.

(Well, at least, they’re pretty sure they host him. Some Missourians have disagreed for nearly a couple centuries now.)

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Our 2023 Road Trip #27: Frolicking in Frankfort

July 24, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
mural with flowery title Welcome to Historic Frankfort with images of Old State Capitol, Kentucky River, and a stone pedestal.

Welcome to Historic Frankfort! One of several murals around town by artist Carla Canonero Phillips.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do…

We were dying to get home on the last day of our vacation, but while we were in Frankfort visiting the Kentucky State Capitol anyway, we allowed for a small walk and, of course, lunchtime. We were lucky to find a particular block that surrounded us with art on every side.

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