Monthly Archives: June 2025

Our 2023 Road Trip #9: From the Waterfront to the Rainbow

June 29, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Pineapple Fountain with water fountaining from the large pineapple sculpture on top. Harbor with palmettos on the horizon.

As I’m posting this two years later, temps have been in the 90s here all week. Right now Pineapple Fountain really looks like my kind of fruit.

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, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and after the history tour, Charleston offered lots more to explore. With time to spare between the ferry ride and our lunch reservation, we walked the varying areas along the edge of the Cooper River as it leads into Charleston Harbor, starting with Riley Waterfront Park. Once a bustling maritime commerce area in centuries past, by the ’80s the area was all weedy overgrowth and ruins until later that decade, when a project supported by longtime Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. (amid a record-setting 40-year run) converted the mess into an extremely pretty public space. Despite a touch of wreckage brought on by Hurricane Hugo in September 1989, the all-new park opened in May 1990 and remained inviting 33 years later.

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“The Life of Chuck”: A Celebration in Dance and Math

June 21, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tom Hiddleston as a four-eyed accountant looking wistful toward an offscreen sundown.

Has the day arrived when we can watch new Tom Hiddleston projects without joking about Loki variants?

Stephen King is large! He contains multitudes! Your elderly parents’ dismissal of him notwithstanding, he hasn’t been “just” The King of Horror since at least the mid-’80s, though it can be hard to keep in mind considering the King-based film majority. Whenever one of his 60,000 works are adapted into something other than a zero-budget splatterpunk B-movie or modestly funded “elevated horror” streamer-filler, the trailers will always caution, “No, hey, don’t make that face, it’s cool, we promise this isn’t the Stephen King of Sleepwalkers or Maximum Overdrive or The Lawnmower Man! This is the OTHER Stephen King! Y’know, the one who single-handedly kept the basic-cable industry alive with looping reruns of Stand by Me and The Shawshank Redemption!”

That Stephen King returns with a semi-fantasy of bittersweet lyricism in The Life of Chuck, whose box-office figures have been grim, yet might hopefully earn a home-video renaissance in its next medium, where it doesn’t have to compete against the bigger studios’ re-nuked kiddie leftovers. Alas, today’s theaters can only contain up to 1.5 multitudes at a time.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #8: The Fort Sumter Tour and Non-Confederate Flag-Raising Program

June 15, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
33-star US flag flies atop a tall, white flagpole on a stretch of grass. Background: tourists look out to sea over a wall. Foreground: tourists taking pics.

The 33-star U.S. flag flies over Fort Sumter, just as it did before the Confederates barged in.

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, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

…and here we were, one half-hour ferry ride later, at the star attraction atop our to-do list — the very place where the Civil War began, in the southeastern waters of Charleston Harbor in full view of the Atlantic Ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the island in 1829, using 50,000+ tons of granite to create a new base atop a stable sandbar — a project conceived in the wake of the War of 1812, when British invaders unhelpfully exploited our naval vulnerabilities. Little did the ACE know future attacks would be coming from inside the country.

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Our 2023 Road Trip #7: Across Charleston Harbor

June 13, 2025 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Us smiling into my phone on a sunny day, Anne in her sun hat. Guy behind us wears a Kappa Alpha Order T-shirt in homage to the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign.

Gratuitous vacation boat ride selfie!

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, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…

Longtime MCC readers may recall our past stops at assorted forts and battlefields at the behest of Anne the American history aficionado, who’d love to be called a professional historian if only someone would pay her to give the sort of lengthy, unprompted history speeches that I routinely hear for free here at home or on long car rides. Charleston offers tourists many reasons to drop in — the food! the beaches! the weather when it isn’t hurricane season! — but of course our primary objective was a tour of Fort Sumter, where the Civil War officially began. Whether you routinely read 100+ nonfiction books a year or struggle to name more than three Civil War battles without cheating, both sides can come together and enjoy the ferry ride across Charleston Harbor to the island where the fort stands.

Anne smiling in front of a Fort Sumter National Monument sign, which has a pretty garden in front of it.

Sure, South Carolina flowers are pretty, but Anne is here to for history!

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“Ballerina”: Hello! I Am Joan Wick! You Killed My Father! Prepare to Die!

June 8, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ana de Armas dressed in all black, having a swordfight with an angry man, but they're using big guns as their swords. The background is burning.

What other summer blockbuster offers FLAMING HOT DUELING FLAMETHROWERS! Your move, Minecraft.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: everybody loves John Wick! Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski turned a peculiar crime drama about one retired assassin’s vendetta against the whelps who killed his dog into a billion-dollar stunt-spectacular franchise. Naturally Lionsgate Films wants more of those sweet Wick-bucks, but they made the mistake of letting the team end John Wick: Chapter 4 on their own terms, in a manner both satisfying and dramatically inevitable, yet counterproductive to sequelizing with any real integrity. That means it’s time for inferior spinoffs with diminishing returns!

Setting aside a mostly forgotten comics miniseries, the first screen-shaped ancillary product off John Wick: The IP Assembly Line was the dreadful Peacock miniseries with the cumbersome title The Continental: From the World of John Wick, a prequel that gave Ian McShane’s dark hotelier Winston Scott an unnecessary secret origin and gave former star Mel Gibson another stop on his post-cancellation comeback tour. For some reason its showrunners thought Wickworld needed the longer, slower, duller streaming-era treatment set in the Blaxploitation days with none of their vibe, wit, or pulse. Having learned a lesson, the studio went back to the drawing board and thought: what if our next cash-in product had a protagonist who could actually fight their own gun battles?

Hence our next would-be successor: Ballerina! At least, that’s what theater marquees call it. Officially it’s From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, a wretched title concocted by some marketing orc who never had to alphabetize a movie shelf. Someone in charge really thinks “From the World of John Wick” is a catchphrase they should never let go. Who knows how many marginally less unsightly titles were discarded — John Wick Presents Ballerina or John Wick’s Gal Pal Ballerina or John Wick! Now That We Have Your Attention, Here’s Ballerina. So, for posterity shorthand, Ballerina it is.

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The Best of My Free Comic Book Day 2025

June 6, 2025 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments
15 Free Comic Book Day comics laid side-by-side on our kitchen table.

One-third of this year’s total complimentary offerings, in no particular order.

That time of year has come and gone again! Saturday, May 3rd was the 24nd Free Comic Book Day, that 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, monsters, cartoon all-stars, licensed merchandise, or in rare instances real-world protagonists. 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 shoddier than actual B-movies.

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 each shop for their service in the field of literacy.

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“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”…or IS IT?

June 1, 2025 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Ethan Hunt telling the President, "I need you to trust me one last time."

Will Ethan Hunt join James Bond in that great big top-secret spy base in the sky?

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: star/producer Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series reboot of the old TV espionage drama just keeps going and going and going and going and going. We were all assured the eighth entry Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning — delayed multiple times and with an ending price tag rivaling the GNP of most nations — would be the grand finale to end all grand finales and that this was totally it for IMF Agent Ethan Hunt, the stubborn jack-of-all-trades, honorary Olympic athlete, and indefatigable Chosen One whose rotating teams keep saving the world from every former spy turned evil mastermind — all sixteen million of them, whichever ones didn’t go after James Bond first.

Cruise, now 62 and eligible for discount-level Social Security, has prided himself on performing as many of his own stunts as possible, but cannot keep doing this forever, or so we all keep trying to tell him. Whether it’s his unconditional love of making blockbusters or the rewards of heading the Church of Scientology’s most effective outreach program, something’s fueled his deep desire to keep going bigger, faster, louder and jumpier. From the fifth one onward he’s synchronized with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie and all but buried the earlier, wobblier installments. The oft-thrilling conclusion to the saga (supposedly) doesn’t quite take the throne of Best Mission Ever, though it isn’t for lack of effort, ensemble, effects, or eagerness to excite.

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