Hi-dee-hoo, fans and visitors! Welcome to the second annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review for this humble site, launched on April 28, 2012, as an excuse for one guy to do things, try stuff, and think whatever aloud. Next week will mark MCC’s 600th post, but that’ll be in an entirely different year and is therefore ineligible for celebration at the moment, so forget I mentioned it till next week.

This occasionally purposeful experiment has lasted a full twenty months without crashing and burning yet, though we’ve seen some excitement, some tears, some discomfort, some joy, some serious stress, and some much-needed days off. And that was all just over Christmas break. 2013 was a year of successes and failures, of triumphs and tragedies, of records and horrors. MCC’s own fortunes have ebbed and flowed depending on which subjects caught my attention at the right time, which times I was utterly out of step with the rest of the world, and what moments of synchronicity were the most unexpected of all.

Of all the nouns to frequent the site this year, none had a deeper effect than Boston.

Longtime MCC readers may recall that photo from our ongoing 2013 road trip series, taken from Boston’s Public Garden. We pinned Boston last winter as this year’s summer destination of choice because my wife’s a history buff, my son likes large cities, and I’m generally game for whatever. We brainstormed our sightseeing to-do list, we made our reservations, and we looked forward to what we hoped would be a fun time for all and another photo collection to share here in installments.

Then, three months before our trip, the Boston Marathon bombing happened.

I trust no full recount is necessary. In the midst of this unthinkable Event That Should Not Be, I spent the evening poring over stories, reactions, and updates, helpless and dumbstruck at once. The result was a mostly harmless entry called “‘Revolution’ 4/15/2013: Pre-Empted on Account of Evil“, quickly slapped together when NBC announced less than three hours before showtime that it was pulling that night’s new episode of the ongoing sci-fi series about a ragtag team of rebel protagonists whose antihero toolbox included occasional bombings. I decided to pass word along to anyone who’d been following along with my Revolution recaps. Rather than settle for a fifty-word entry, I added some of my own superficial thoughts and linked to a few reading selections on the topic.

That post resulted in the highest single-day traffic in MCC history to date.

It’s not as though I did anything especially poignant. It was no tribute to my writing skills or a sudden groundswell of fandom. Nope. Puzzled Revolution fans were frightened and confused and wanted to know why their Monday night was one TV show short.

There was nothing to celebrate about the occasion on any level whatsoever, but for purposes of Best Single-Day Traffic of the Year…there it is, just for the record. Other significant single-day traffic boosts could be attributed at various times to GenCon 2013, drive-ins, Monsters University, the Ro’kenhrontyes, and MCC’s 2012 in Review (a Freshly Pressed selection!), but all of them had to bow down before the hypnotic allure of WHERE MY FUTURE STORIES AT.

…

Onward to the other categories, then. 2013 otherwise looked like so:

MCC 2013 POSTS WITH THE MOST OVERALL CUMULATIVE HITS:

1. Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Monsters University” End Credits
2. Yes, There’s a Scene After the “Django Unchained” End Credits
3. “Revolution” 4/15/2013: Pre-Empted on Account of Evil
4. Yes, There’s a Scene After “The Croods” End Credits
5. “Now You See Me”: When Magic Loses Its Magic

In conclusion: people like new movies, but hate sitting through end credits. I’m happy to oblige, though I should hope what I do with this vital information is at least readable. Times like this make me feel more like a phone app than a writer.

MOST SHARED MCC POSTS OF 2013:

1. The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish
2. Cartoon Network to Showrunners: Sell Toys or Perish
3. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”: Thoughts on Old Friends, Orc Stats, and End Credits
4. C2E2 2013 Photos, Part 2 of 6: Costumes from Screens Big and Small
5. “Bunheads” 2/25/2013: Secrets Not for Everyone

“Drive-In” was a WordPress.com Freshly Pressed entry (for non-WP users, that basically means “featured article”) that struck a chord in the name of fond childhood moviegoing memories. The issue about Cartoon Network’s programming strategies that favor merchandise sales over Nielsen ratings came out in a candid interview with animator Bruce Timm that blew fans’ minds (fellow WB animation veteran Paul Dini has also spoken on this subject recently). I have no idea why my Hobbit Season 1 review or that particular C2E2 gallery stand out from others of their respective kinds. The Bunheads recap covered the “winter finale” that retroactively became the series finale — yet another victim of maladjusted basic-cable programming priorities. (And yet…see below for more Bunheads notes.)

MOST COMMENTED POSTS OF 2013:

1. The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish
2. Fountains of Wayne, Soul Asylum, Evan Dando: My Personal One-Night Mini-Lollapalooza
3. The Curse of the “Follow” Button
4. Welcome, New Bloggers! Your Default “About” Page is Showing.
5. PBJ, Doritos, and Milk by Candlelight

Comments are an awesome, always appreciated sign that someone besides overseas spammers are visiting. Freshly Pressed posts typically spark conversation with newcomers, but “Drive-In” set a new site record for Most Comments Ever. I’m not the only person my age with fond memories of outdoor movie nights and regret for the loss of the communal experience.

#3 and #4 prove there’s a viable, lovable audience of other WordPress users with whom I truly enjoy discussing the ins and outs of the blogging experience. I’m not sure how much that appeals to my other readers, but it’s all I can do to resist making every entry meta, just for the sake of audience participation.

#2 turned into a rare conversation about shared musical tastes, which virtually never, ever, ever, ever happens to me. #5 was written shortly after tornadoes swept through areas several miles north of here and storms altered our plans for the evening in benign, poignant ways.

MOST “LIKED” POSTS OF 2013:

1. The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish
2. Chicago Photo Tribute #1: Up and Up and Up
3. A Photo Salute to Vacation Illumination
4. Fleeting Moments on Graduation Day
5. Welcome, New Bloggers! Your Default “About” Page is Showing.

“Drive-In” set another all-time MCC record here. #2, #3, and #4 were all responses to WordPress.com Weekly Photo Challenges, which can be fun community experiences, though in reviewing some of my other rankings further down the chart it’s frustrating to see posts that have more “Likes” than actual traffic hits. Either WordPress’ stats mechanisms are tragically flawed or numerous guests are tapping “Like” without reading a single thing I wrote. I really don’t take that as a compliment.

#4 also doubled as joyful coverage of my son’s high school graduation, one of my real-life highlights of 2013. #5 was, again, a blogger-to-blogger continuing-education seminar about how not to look like a spammer.

Speaking of lessons to be learned:

LEAST LOVED MCC POSTS OF 2013:

Six 2013 posts elicited only a single Like apiece. I’m neither world-famous nor influential, but my traffic has reached a level at which I can usually count on two or three spammers to Like even the most unlikeable detritus and help me pretend that my writing success rate is 100%. For six lonely posts, even the spammers spat on me and turned their backs.

1. MCC Q&A #3: How “Kill Bill Vol. 1″ Ruined Revenge Flicks for Me

Exactly one scene ruined the entirety of that movie for me and absolutely no one else on Earth. My personal history factors into it to an extent that I’m unwilling to overlook. That’s the neat thing about having no obligation to objectivity here, but this was one of those instances where idiosyncrasy begat isolation.

2. Oscars Blow-by-Blow 2013

Long ago on another site, annual Oscar minute-by-minute recaps used to be my thing. After crafting into the wee hours of the night what became the longest entry in MCC history, the resulting silence and traffic flatline has forced me to reconsider my thing. Live-tweeting has pretty much destroyed the already-teeny specialty market for us obsessive weirdos who try to compose our event recaps as singular, overlong pieces. Unless any old friends really, truly still look forward to these, my Oscars 2014 recap will probably be one-tenth the length and contain one-twentieth the enthusiasm.

3. “Bunheads” 2/11/2013: No One Expects the TAFT-POKI-RIP Inquisition
4. “Bunheads” 2/4/2013: Millicent Stone Presents “Sleeping Beauty and the Seven Dwarves”
5. “Bunheads” 1/28/2013: the Brother from Another Musical

I get the impression I’m the only hardcore Bunheads fan ’round these parts. Regardless, every recap saw a traffic uptick, and I had one dedicated follower I could count on for responses and helpful lessons about the Broadway references that flew over my head. Seriously, though, you guys, Bunheads was intelligent and hilarious and heartfelt and sometimes contained more arcane pop-culture references than an MST3K short. I can’t believe 300 million Americans stood there and watched my favorite show of 2013 just keel over and DIE. You’re the reason I can’t have nice things and ABC Family execs get to justify funding a vapid lobotomizer like Spell-Mageddon.

6. My 2012 Movies in Retrospect, #15-8

This entry was part two of a trilogy. Many movie fans like reading positive reviews. Even more are drawn to negative reviews. Not too many readers care for reviews where the writer typed with one hand while making that teeter-totter “meh” motion with the other.

…

So, 2013, then. It seemed like such a fun, invigorating year in my head before I sat down to remember all of it. Perhaps I should’ve found excuses to mention more about C2E2, Wizard World Chicago, my son’s paintings, Sleepy Hollow, the beginning of our empty-nest years, Robert Englund, or some of my own favorite entries of the year. Submitted for your reconsideration in that regard:

* The Idiot’s Guide to Not Sexually Harassing Women (because some people need practical advice)
* The Bitter Little Cable Car (one of only two fiction pieces I wrote this year)
* …Every Word Handwritten (which gave me the most Reddit referrals I’ve seen to date)
* 2013 Road Trip Photos #17: Open Sea, Infinite Horizon (my first experience on an ocean)
* Retreating from Pop Culture with Oswald Chambers (a rare moment of writing about my faith)
* BREAKING NEWS: Cumberbatch to Play Sir Johan in “Smurfs 3″ (This year, “news” sites desperate to outscoop each other became the bane of my online existence)

A 2013 photo retrospective will also be coming soon in a separate entry, and will include never-before-shared pics — outtakes from previously covered events and souvenirs from our 2013 experiences that never received a proper MCC writeup. In the meantime, please do let me know in the comments if your favorite 2013 MCC entry wasn’t mentioned above. I’m always on the lookout for input, chatter, and ideas for which entries might serve as springboards for sequels or unnecessary reboots.

Thanks for reading! See you in 2014.