54-14 or Write: Another Back-to-Back Blog Anniversary and Birthday

May 17, 2026 By in Indiana, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
me doing jazz hands in front of a giant replica of Derpy the magic blue cat from "KPop Demon Hunters".

Derpy and Derpy, coming this fall to The CW! Taken the previous weekend at PopCon Indy 2026.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we have annual traditions ’round these parts! Two such occasions fall three weeks apart each year, often but not always receiving separate entries of incredulous self-congratulation. In this attention-deficit we once again offer two for the bandwidth of one, a pretty sweet deal in any economy, not just this one.

I launched this wee blog on April 28, 2012, three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process on my opinions of, enthusiasm for, offense at, and/or detailed nitpicking of various works of art, expression, humanity, inhumanity, glory, love, idolatry, inspiration, hollowness, geek lifestyles, food, and Deep Thoughts. MCC has also served as a digital scrapbook for our annual road trips, comic cons, birthday expeditions, and other modest travels. It’s a general repository for any other content that comes to mind and feels worth the time and effort to type up, proofread, and release unto a world-at-large that rarely visits websites anymore because social-media angst is the sole reading matter of choice among today’s average digital participant. The best part about entertaining myself here in my own little hermit shack is that I own the place and I don’t have to worry about moderators editing or deleting my posts, which is nice.

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Indianapolis Welcomes “Airplane! Live” With Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty

May 17, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Airplane logo backdrop behind Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, and just me doing jazz hands.

Robert Hays! Julie Hagerty! And in the middle, Leon is getting laaaarger!

Dateline: Friday, May 15, 2026 — Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife Anne and I do stuff for each other’s birthdays! Usually it’s a road trip somewhere outside our hometown of Indianapolis. This year for my birthday, we attended something completely different: the very same weekend, Indy would be the first stop on a repertory roadshow tour for Airplane!, that 1980 parody classic from the young directing team of Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams. I trust it needs no introduction regarding the incessant goofiness and wall-to-wall gags that cemented its legacy as a critical comedic ancestor to The Simpsons and all the works it influenced in turn, to say nothing of its mythic status as a touchstone to today’s retro Dad-Joke culture.

I rarely see old films in theaters — as I recall, the only other time I’ve done so in this blog’s 14-year existence was the 4K re-release of Die Hard — but this event sweetened the pot: following the screening would be a Q&A with stars Robert Hays and Julie Hagerty, who so wondrously brought to life the roles of disgraced war pilot Ted Striker and sweet-natured stewardess Elaine Dickinson. We said to each other, “Surely they can’t be serious.”

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“Fuze”: 4 Guys Walk Under a Bank

May 15, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Military man Aaron Taylor-Johnson lies on ground, stares at two snaking black wires.

“Wait, which do I snip first, the black wire or the blacker wire?”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Sometimes I go to the movies and write about it! After the dense Oscars season ran me ragged through early March, I was okay with taking a break. It wasn’t completely by choice, mind you. The April release calendar seemed sparse except for a trio of populist colossi that toppled all competitors at the box office and had nothing to do with me: two sequels to films I hadn’t seen yet, and a sugarcoated pop-music hagiography that was all its subject’s undiscerning superfans really wanted, the better to revivify the estate’s merchandise sales and back-catalog earnings. Theater owners shoveled plenty of money into their coffers without me thanks to…well, to the average crowds who almost never step inside theaters anymore, really. Cinema is back, baby! I guess!

Remember last century when folks would pick a night and time to go to the movies, show up, then see what’s showing and decide what they wanted to see? No, really, this was a common activity for friends, family, and dates. I tried it a few times — sometimes to happy surprise (My Best Friend’s Wedding!) and sometimes to deep hurting (Problem Child 2). I haven’t done that in ages, but I toyed with the modern equivalent: I kept checking the AMC app every week and waiting for something — anything — to jump out at me and whisper, “Don’t let your entire AMC Stubs monthly fee go to waste!” Exactly once in April, I spotted a listing with just enough pedigree to earn a “sure, why not” outing: a short, twisty British heist thriller called Fuze that hardly garnered any public notice. It didn’t crack the U.S. Top 10 in its first week and was yanked from all local screens the next weekend. It’ll be streaming at the end of May, and probably discounted before autumn, but its thoughtful approach to well-trodden ground deserves a mention.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: The Brave and the Bold Starring Batman and the Tick!

May 10, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
us doing jazz hands with Diedrich Bader, who's wearing glasses and awesome.

Hi, it’s Diedrich Bader! You might remember him from The Drew Carey Show, Office Space, and plenty more!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice. We attended their first three shows (2014-2016), but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics. Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”…

…not to mention “meet new faces” and “buy stuff”. For extra credit, we also attended a panel! Hopefully that makes up for us losing an entire letter grade by eating lunch at the convention center even though we know better.

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PopCon Indy 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Tiny Cosplay Gallery!

May 9, 2026 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
John Jones cosplayer with accurate detective clothing and very specific sunglasses, carrying cardboard replica of psychedelic Absolute Martian Manhunter

Detective John Jones and the psychedelic alien in his head from DC Comics’ deeply trippy Absolute Martian Manhunter.

This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of PopCon Indy, an entertainment convention locally owned and run here in our own hometown of Indianapolis. Their inaugural 2014 shindig (under the original moniker “Indy PopCon”) was a massive undertaking and a phenomenal experience, where we met actors from some of our favorite works and were pretty impressed at a first-time comic-con being so well-run. And we do love the convenience of events practically in our backyard so we can save on hotel costs and park for free at my workplace if the weather’s nice.

We also attended the next two years’ shows, but began feeling out-of-place as the guest lists began targeting much younger geek demographics — fewer actors under 50, far more anime voice actors, YouTubers, and other influencers and fields outside our Gen-X spheres. We can’t blame them for giving the people what they want, especially after 2015’s special guest Markiplier brought in, by my conservative estimate, 630 million fans dying to meet him and willing to wait the rest of their lives in line if necessary. Some of them may still be there to this day, perhaps a bit miffed that he took such a long break to go film Iron Lung for a while before he resumed signing. His lines were quite the rodeo to witness from the outside, but it wasn’t our rodeo.

IPC 2016 held a few highlights for us, such as the only YouTuber I’ve ever wanted to meet, one of the most awkward comics panels I’ve ever asked a question in, and the height of Deadpool variant cosplay mania. But we bowed out for a while after that. It’s not them, it’s us. (Well, mostly us. It also didn’t help that sometimes their biggest guests were actors we’d already met at other cons.) But hey! Ten years later, here we are again! We only attended Saturday, but we accomplished our modest goals, such as “have a blast”.

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Happy Free Comic Book Day 2026 and/or Comics Giveaway Day 2026!

May 3, 2026 By in Comics/Lit, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Twelve free comics, details below.

Once again putting the “fun” back in “Reading is fundamental!”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: the first Saturday of every May is Free Comic Book Day, an annual celebration when comic shops nationwide offer no-strings-attached goodies as a form of community outreach in honor of that time-honored medium where words and pictures dance in unison on the printed page, whether in the form of super-heroes, blood-soaked horror, all-ages cartoon characters, licensed merchandise, or what-have-you. It’s one of the best holidays ever for hobbyists like me who’ve been comics readers since the days when drugstores sold them for thirty-five cents each and comic-book movies were made on a budget of about $35 each.

Each year comic shops lure fans and curious onlookers inside their brick-and-mortar hideaways with a big batch of free new comics from all the major publishers and a bevy of smaller competitors deserving shelf space and consideration. I observe the holiday by getting up early, venturing to one or more comic shops as soon as they open for their occasion, picking up samples, and spending money on a few extra items as my way of thanking the proprietors for their service in the field of literacy.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #5 of 5: Graphic Storytelling Finale

May 2, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Five graphic novels, refer to capsules.

Category 1: creator-owned books!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…but at least the following OGNs and trades have been rescued from the unread pile and can move on to their next home, by which I mean the endless stacks in our library/Anne’s office, where they and the past several years’ other finished works wait for us to figure out which major appliance to get rid of so we can make room for a new bookshelf. I mean, do we really need a refrigerator?

Anyway, onward!

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #4: All the Prose That’s Left to Print

April 25, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
The first four books reviewed below.

First up: books with movie connections!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…unless we do as Heracles and Iolaus did with the Hydra: set everything on fire so it can’t regrow. We’re not doing that; consequently, the never-ending literary consumption continues. So far we’ve covered two critical tomes by a premier TV critic, the two comics creators who showed up in my 2025 stacks the most, and a selection of graphic novels and trades that were great and/or tall. Next up: nothing but prose! Novels, memoirs, short-story collections — all words and virtually no pictures, apart from some spot illustrations.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #3: Graphic Novel Highlights

April 19, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
6 Graphic Novels on brown kitchen table, refer to next six capsules.

Some of my favorite reads from last year…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…all of which I convince myself I’ll totally get to someday. Same holds true for writing about ’em. And now, more of the latter! It was nice to finish the second installment earlier, but we’ve dozens more to go before we sleep.

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My 2025 Reading Stacks #2: Two Graphic Novel MVPs

April 19, 2026 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
7 graphic novels written by Mark Russell, titles written about below.

2025: The Year I Began Tracking Down All the Mark Russell Works.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Welcome once again to our recurring MCC feature in which I scribble capsule reviews of everything I’ve read lately that was published in a physical format over a certain page count with a squarebound spine on it — novels, original graphic novels, trade paperbacks, infrequent nonfiction dalliances, and so on. Due to the way I structure my media-consumption time blocks, the list will always feature more graphic novels than works of prose and pure text, though I do try to diversify my literary diet as time and acquisitions permit.

Occasionally I’ll sneak in a contemporary review if I’ve gone out of my way to buy and read something brand new. Every so often I’ll borrow from my wife or from our local library. But the majority of our spotlighted works are presented years after the rest of the world already finished and moved on from them because I’m drawing from my vast unread pile that presently occupies four oversize shelves comprising thirty-three years of uncontrolled book shopping. I’ve occasionally pruned the pile, but as you can imagine, cut out one unread book and three more take its place…

…and the same holds true for my li’l ramshackle hobby-blog: cross one subject off my to-do list, five more get added to it. We’re long overdue to catch up and I’m tired of staring at all these stacks in our living room next to our PC desk. Let’s do some of this for the sake of spring cleaning! We’ll start with the two creators with more works in those stacks than any other.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #22: Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit

April 12, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Us in summer wear doing jazz hands in front of a giant prop can of Bush's Baked Beans, lying on its side in a visitor center.

Baked beans and jazz hands! Probably great together and totally not a volatile mix! What’s the worst that could happen?

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…

…though nearly every trip ends with return drives through states we’ve visited plenty of times. And yet, our neighboring states rarely run out of new misadventures, often involving foods and their manufacturing processes.

We’ve braked for beans before, including the Jelly Belly factory tour on our 2006 drive through Wisconsin and that time we saw real cacao beans in the South Bend Chocolate Company‘s delightfully fragrant backrooms in 2016. Sometimes beans are serious business and sometimes they’re comedy gold, depending on the context. Down in Tennessee we found a bit of both in the affable visitor center of another bean empire.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #21: The Andrew Johnson Fan Club

April 9, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Anne in sun hat posing neutrally next to a tall Andrew Johnson statue. Behind them are a beige brick building and a couple of thin trees.

Fun trivia: Andrew Johnson statues are nowhere near as common as Lincoln statues.

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.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…which we exited after breakfast on Day Six. We spent the rest of our last full day in Tennessee, where we checked off an item on another to-do list of ours. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of the Presidents of the United States of America with varying accommodations and budgets. As our sole long-distance driver and a part-time retro-gamer who’s a fan of side quests, I’ve enjoyed those little jaunts so much that we’ve been planning our recent vacations around them. We don’t know if we’ll get to every dead President, but it’s fun trying.

And that means every American President, not just your fan-favorites. We’ve seen James Buchanan’s in southern Pennsylvania, Chester A. Arthur’s in Albany, and even Warren Harding’s giant Greek temple in Ohio. They can’t all be Best Presidents Ever, and they’re all interred somewhere. Some are fancier than others, but nary a President has ended up in a potter’s field. So far, so good.

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Easter Sunday in the Park With a Kid Astronaut

April 5, 2026 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
25-foot statue of a Black boy wearing an astronaut helmet, sitting in a city park and gazing toward the sky.

Plainfield’s latest art installation The Dream Gazer, dedicated March 7th.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: in between our conventions and road trips, sometimes my wife Anne and I find new sights in our own Indianapolis backyard. On this very Easter morning we discovered a new park in nearby Plainfield that we’d heard nothing about until I looked it up just now. In light of the ongoing saga of the ambitious Artemis II Moon-orbiting mission that’s been a promising endeavor and a welcome distraction from everyday headline hysteria, it was fun to spend a few minutes with a super-sized astronaut of sorts.

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“Ready or Not 2: Here I Come”: Sisters Are Slayin’ It for Themselves

April 3, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two blond women tied in chairs in a mansion ballroom. One is dressed normally and confounded, the other is in a bloody wedding dress and screaming.

Movie Team-Ups present Ant-Man’s daughter AND Bill S. Preston, Esq.’s daughter!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Radio Silence is here for all your action-horror needs! The joint sobriquet for the directing duo of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bellinelli-Olpin, their slickly paced, tongue-in-cheek set-pieces — often flooded in literal gallons of blood — caught my attention with the fifth and sixth Screams and the vampire-kidnapping murder-mischief of Abigail even though rivers of carnage aren’t a go-to for me (…he said in an era when over half the films in theaters are fiscally modest horror flicks). Curious for more, I eventually went back and streamed their 2019 crowd-favorite Ready or Not, in which the impressively put-upon newlywed Samara Weaving learns the truth behind the old joke about how in-laws are the worst and is forced to survive “The Most Dangerous Game” by her new family’s regional variant rules, which include old-timey weapons, demonic rituals, and EXPLOSIONS. She survives to see dawn and overcomes one of modern America’s worst fears: spoiled one-percenters who were totally out to get her.

Weaving, the directors, and the first one’s writers R. Christopher Murphy and Guy Busick (who also worked on Silence’s last three films) are back with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, which naturally has to double and triple every quantity: higher stakes, more killers, more recognizable costars, and overall super-sized Hunger Games with larger industrial hoses hooked to those same chemical-factory-sized blood-vats.

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Mere Minutes of Magnificent Mile Mealtime: A C2E2 2026 Epilogue

April 2, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Nighttime view of multiple Chicago skyscrapers lit up.

The view from our hotel at night.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…and sometimes we even take a break from photographing cosplayers and leave some margin in our schedule so we can see at least a little of Chicago beyond McCormick Place. In all the times we’ve traveled out of our Indianapolis hometown, it’s the one city we’ve visited out-of-state more than any other. Obviously all those conventions are 90% of our incentives, but Chicago has other sights to see and it’s much closer than NYC.

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 2 of 2: Jessica Jones, The West Wing, and a Cavalcade of Comics

March 29, 2026 By in Comics/Lit, Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Dule Hill and Martin Sheen from "The West Wing" and two geeks wearing shirts that say "jazz hands enthusiasts".

Fun times with The West Wing stars Dule Hill and Martin Sheen, plus two operators from the Butterball Turkey hotline.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer…

…although we dragged our feet on committing to this year’s edition as we waited for them to invite actors that we hadn’t already met and who’ve performed in shows and/or movies we really enjoyed. Less than a month before showtime, we were finally feeling it and bought tickets. But we planned for a less epic adventure than usual. It was still fun! We have fewer anecdotes than usual, though. On the bright side, that means less typing for me and a shorter read for You, The Viewers At Home! (Not counting the next several paragraphs.)

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C2E2 2026 Photos, Part 1 of 2: Cosplay!

March 29, 2026 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
cosplay: Doctor Strange with impossibly huge head

“DORMAMMU, CHIBI DOCTOR STRANGE HAS COME TO BARGAIN!”

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the latest edition of the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Exposition (“C2E2″), a three-day extravaganza of comic books, actors, creators, toys, props, publishers, freebies, plush dolls, variant covers, anime we don’t recognize, and walking and walking and walking and walking. We missed the inaugural 2010 gala and presciently skipped the February 2020 pre-shutdown soiree, but more often than not, whenever they send out the call to convene, we’re happy to answer.

While we recuperate and wait for our feet to forgive us for their punishment, please enjoy this collection of cosplayers who brightened our day around the show floor. The jazz-hands photo ops and other details will be shared in the other chapter because everyone loves costumes. 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. We’re clearly not professional photographers, journalists, costume designers, or Oscars red carpet commentators. We’re just an aging geek couple doing what we can for happy sharing fun.

Enjoy! Please feel free to identify any characters we failed at recognizing!

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Yes, There Are Mission Patches After the “Project Hail Mary” End Credits

March 27, 2026 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ryan Gosling in red astronaut armor with a NASA logo, smiling and standing in a dark foil-lined tunnel.

IRON MAN IIIN SPAAACE!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Solo astronauts are our heroes! Sure, the full crews of Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff are fine, but ever since Stanley Kubrick’s visionary 2001: A Space Odyssey saw Keir “Dave” Dullea pull the plug on Richard Daystrom’s malfunctioning Ultimate Computer — a full year before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon pretty easily because no evil A.I. showed up to stop him — filmmakers have enjoyed pondering the scenario, “What if you had an entire massive spaceship all to yourself and you alone had to save the day or get killed?” In my case it would be a short film: the Dramamine I’d need to overcome my motion-sickness issues would probably get used up before reaching the first million-mile marker and I’d end up dead by dehydration due to nonstop vomiting.

The astro-lone-wolf tradition has come up in such recent sci-fi dramas as Moon, Gravity, Ad Astra, and The Martian. Andy Weir, whose novel was the foundation of the latter, apparently loved the concept so much that he reexamined it from a new angle in his most recent book Project Hail Mary: instead of stranding an astronaut on Mars and forcing him to survive till the scientists back home could rescue him…what if the stranded astronaut had to save the scientists back home? And everyone else back home? Also, what if he wasn’t even an astronaut?

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Our 2023 Road Trip #20: Appetites for Asheville

March 22, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Me doing jazz hands in front of Double D's Coffee and Desserts, housed in a red double-decker bus

Coffee shop jazz hands!

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.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…which are now crossed off our list. We enjoyed our stroll around downtown Asheville, North Carolina, though we had no idea of the dark events in its future. At the time, all we know is we had fun and found quite a few eateries to our liking — two local establishments and one eastern-U.S. chain we’d never encountered before. After Hurricane Helene hit in September 2024 their staffs scattered to the four winds as they had to seek refuge elsewhere until things got better. More than one of them had GoFundMe campaigns going for a time while they waited weeks for power and water to be reconnected. As of March 2026 I’m happy to see all three are still going strong today.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #19: Asheville Before Hurricane Helene

March 20, 2026 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Outdoor pavilion with Asheville Art Museum sign on a low, curved wall. In the middle is a sculpture of a light blue, ridged sphere atop a large, uneven rock.

The Asheville Art Museum as of June 2023.

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.

For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited…

…and with South Carolina behind us, at long last it was North Carolina’s turn for a visit. Our Tarheel State itinerary, not nearly as long as our Charleston checklist, began with spending a cozy Wednesday night in Asheville. Little did we know the catastrophe to come fifteen months later.

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