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: me finally wrapping this up two months late. For starters, enjoy a few pics that didn’t slot perfectly into the categories of the first six chapters.

We took so many photos in the fascinating “Soundtrack of Summer” exhibit that I couldn’t possibly have stuffed them into a single gallery without boring myself. Enjoy a fraction of the numerous outtakes!

In years past we’ve taken pics of posters entered in the 4-H Club’s various serious-minded competitions, which can teach visitors a thing or two about the sciences and, if you’re lucky, might have titles with cheesy puns that stand out to me. Alas, this year’s pun-game didn’t quite hit the “par” in “particleboard”.

We took far, far too many pics of all the various paintings, sculptures, sewing projects and other works of art we saw in the 4-H Building and the Indiana Arts Building. I posted fewer than half our total haul, but we can add a few more. Why not? No one’s stopping me. And there’s still more where this came from! But I’d rather stop after this!

…and that’ll do. We left around 4 p.m. that Thursday with a sack full of souvenirs — some from the Indiana Grown store inside the AgHort Building, some from the “Soundtrack of Summer” exhibit’s pop-up store sponsored by Indy CD & Vinyl.

I haven’t bought any vinyl since the ’80s. As a kid most 45s worked fine, but every single time I got a new LP, the first track was always made of skips and scratches. And I mean ALWAYS. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Rare are the full-sized records that reached my hands 100% skip-free from beginning to end on both sides. But I enjoyed the exhibit and tried to get into the spirit of the proceedings. I’d already bought Bob Mould’s 2012 Silver Age on CD the very week it was released, but I was shocked to find it in the pop-up bins and figured it’d be keen to add a different format to my collection.

A few days later, I spun it for the first time, freshly extruded from the factory shrink-wrap, still with a tiny card inside advertising Merge Records’ website. Sure enough: track 1, “Star Machine” — again, this is a copy entirely unheard and untouched by open air ever before — was made entirely of skips. The rest of it played perfectly fine, including the entirety of side two. But still: I never, ever had this problem with brand new cassettes.

So it might be another thirty years till the next time I waste money on vinyl. But hey, cool State Fair souvenir.

In closing, here’s a selfie Anne took while we rode around on one of the free shuttles. It’s my understanding we might be more beloved online and become the idols of dozens if I posted selfies more often. And, y’know, if we were thirty years younger, and thin, and cool, and spewed political tantrums after too much doomscrolling. We do what we can with what we were given. Whatever happens next is up to You, The Viewers at Home.

The End. Thanks for reading! Lord willing, we’ll see you at next year’s Indiana State Fair.

Other chapters in this very special MCC miniseries:

Part 1: Our “Taste of the Fair” Tour
Part 2: The Soundtrack of Summer
Part 3: The Year in Food, “Look But Don’t Taste” Division
Part 4: The Year in Lego
Part 5: The Year in Art
Part 6: The Year in Antiques