Category Archives: Meta

Seven Handy Tips for Winning at Live-Tweeting

April 7, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch...

If Twitter ever needs TV ads, its theme should be “Birdhouse in Your Soul”.

Thanks to the invention of the internet, the convenience of the smartphone, and the rise of Twitter as the premier social-media beachhead for You Are There instant commentary, now billions of internet users worldwide have the tools at their disposal to pay homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000 anytime they want. The process is simple: watch something on TV; type every single thought you have while watching; stand by for accolades.

Sadly, the number of Twitter users who’ve parlayed their live-tweeting habits into fame and fortune without benefit of preexisting conditions is in the single digits. You might ask, how can this be? You’re using the internet, you’re saying what you think everyone is really thinking, and tens of people told you how special you were when you were in elementary school. Why aren’t your witticisms slaying all the other viewers? Why aren’t entire cities retweeting or Favoriting your bon mots? Why aren’t agents sending you offers? Why even bother paying for internet access if no one will pay attention to everything you do?

Calm down. Don’t throw a tantrum for the paparazzi. Someone out there still loves you. But you can’t tweet everything that pops into your head. Wait, no: actually, you can tweet it all. Really bad idea, though.

This way for Twitter tips that will change your life! I’m guessing!

Top 10 April 1st Headlines to Skip for Your Own Good

April 1, 2014 By in Meta, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Grumpy Cat Hates Being Your Punchline

The unwilling special guest from our April Fools 2013 entry is still not amused.

Yes, Americans, it’s that time of year again. April Fools Day is back and still not abolished. That special day you’ll spend trusting no one, suspecting every good deed, indulging every paranoia, checking every inanimate object twice for spring-loaded traps, fasting to avoid surprise hot sauce or rat poison, narrowing your eyes at every internet headline and wondering which spawn of The Onion will be the one to catch you off-guard, damage your calm, and embarrass you in front of cute people. We here at MCC tried to warn you last year, and yet here you are again, trying to live through April Fools like a stubborn mule. I just don’t get you.

But would you at least take some precautions? You’ll feel much better about your day if you quash someone else’s pranks, dodge a few attempted pratfalls, and skip over your favorite news site’s fake headlines. With your sanity in check and your anxieties unprovoked, you’ll be cackling and preening while those annoying little rascals starve without the site traffic. Someone ought to teach them a lesson, so I’m dumping all the burden on you.

This way for your not-reading scorecard!

Dear Event Promoters: Please Don’t Make Us Pick Your Twitter Hashtag for You

March 15, 2014 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

#ICC2014 #failtag

Ugh. Just…UGH. No, this won’t do at all. #ICC2014 #failtag

Midlife Crisis Crossover is coming to you live this evening from my living room while I’m in the middle of planning for our big day at the inaugural Indiana Comic Con on Saturday. (I’ve written about it here and here, so loyal MCC followers are well aware and waiting for it to be over with already.)

As part of my prepping, I thought I’d check in on the Twitter scene and gather impressions from the three-day attendees who edged ahead of us in joining the fray. I saw a fair amount of evidence that my sincere hopes for everyone to enjoy themselves are largely being realized. I’m looking forward to joining the discussion tomorrow myself.

That’s assuming I can figure out where the discussion is. Continue reading →

MCC Q&A #6: Captains Courageous or Otherwise

March 1, 2014 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp

Captain Jack Sparrow. Just because a reader asked.

I rarely trumpet this service, but Midlife Crisis Crossover maintains an open policy of Ask Almost Anything, which extends not only to regular readers and commenters, but also to constant Likers, silent Followers, and fleeting passersby. If you have a question, a suggestion, a comment that’s constructive or Dadaist, or a listicle request that the mainstream media refuses to attempt, simple reply here or to any other post of the vaguest tangential relevance, and our trusty MCC staff will be happy to escalate it into a Main Topic for a future entry and explore the subject further in depth. Or I might just reply to your comment, who knows.

Every so often we also review queries and curious sentence fragments from passing search engine users, because even the silent, fleeting passersby deserve to be heard, even if they’re no longer around to find the answer they needed. Because I need a break from movies and I’m working six days this week, a quick dive into the ol’ mailbag feels like a nice way to relax for a few minutes.

* the real life of capatian jack sparrow/ not the movie

Few moviegoers realize the character of Captain Jack Sparrow is based on the exploits of real-life pirate Jakub Sperovicz, a pirate from Warsaw who was renowned for his lifelong battle with rum addiction, his eventual arrest on multiple counts of boatjacking, and his CG monkey. During his heyday Sperowicz was in his mid-60s and suffered from chronic psoriasis. His story was tweaked a tad for typical Hollywood purposes.

More questions, more answers…

Because Not Every Movie Should Be Turned into Joyless Homework

January 25, 2014 By in Meta, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments

film reel canisters, Underground Vaults and Storage, Hutchinson, Kansas

Movies are fun to look at, even when they’re boxed up and stacked on shelves. I enjoy writing down my thoughts about them — whether inspired or incredulous, amazed or aggravated — before too much time passes and the details vanish (if not the entire movie, in some cases). But I’ve grown to despise my self-imposed assignments of constructing an English-class essay every time I come home from the theater.

When something that’s supposed to be fun isn’t, then something needs to be done differently to rediscover the fun in it.

This way for an announcement/experiment…

WordPress.com Magic Elves Offer Colorful Second Opinion of My 2013

December 31, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Happy New Year, readers and skimmers alike! Here’s hoping 2014 proves to be the Greatest Year of All Time. At the very least, maybe it’ll help us forget the parts where 2013 let us down and still has a lot to answer for.

For MCC’s second New Year, the happy-go-lucky stats wranglers at WordPress.com have compiled an automated 2013 Annual Report for each and every blogger on their roster, complete with fireworks and eye-popping design work and a world map in case you prefer practical gifts. In addition to the facts and figures I already reported yesterday with my own manually culled year-end review, this report also helpfully confirms which WordPress bloggers left me the most comments last year and therefore deserve innumerable treasures in Heaven and possibly also baked goods. You should subscribe to all of them so they can rise to fame and I can write entries about how I’m one of the Little People who knew them way back when.

For the intensely curious, WordPress’ report also reveals which of my 2012 entries absolutely refuses to die. It didn’t exactly go viral or receive attention from any major online sources I’m aware of, but passersby just keep clicking it and clicking it and clicking it and now the report thinks I ought to consider churning out more daily posts exactly like it, despite how impractical this would be on multiple levels.

Have some sample artwork as an additional incentive. Ya like colors? It has colors.

The weirdest statistic it reveals:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 80,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the report in all its scintillating wonder!

That most important part, once more with emphasis:

Happy New Year!

Midlife Crisis Crossover 2013 in Review, Including Last-Minute Posts Seen Only in NYC and LA

December 30, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

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.

Boston Public Garden, Boston vacation

Continue here for MCC’s own best and worst of 2013!

The MCC Christmas Archive!

December 19, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Christmas with Morgan Freeman

Remember when putting words in the mouth of Academy Award Winner Morgan Freeman was a thing? Did that ever stop happening?

Before the Christmas season is too far gone and everyone turns off their internet for the rest of the year, the following guide to Christmas entries from the Midlife Crisis Crossover back catalog is provided here as a value-added holiday gift for any new MCC followers who joined us in 2013, for longtime MCC readers who love themed compilations, or for incorrigible MCC spammers who need new pages to infiltrate. If you’re running low on online reading matter or are interested in seeing the state of MCC ’round this time last year, these free samples are just what the MCC programming department ordered.

PLEASE NOTE: the presentation of this clipfest does not mean I’m going on hiatus until January like a network TV show. I’m still allowing for a day off each week, as I’ve been doing for the past several months, but I expect to stick around and do my part to fill the void left behind by other bloggers jetting off to Grandma’s or Antigua or whatever. To me, holidays don’t seem like a time for not writing. Also, if I take more than one day off per week, site traffic paranoia kicks in and I have to breathe into a paper bag for a few hours, until enough internet wanderers click on that one undying, year-old Wreck-It Ralph entry to make me feel useful again.

Enjoy! And if I don’t see you before then: Merry Christmas!

* * * * *

* “What Christmas is All About: an Imaginary Dramatic Reading” — The meat of this entry is shown above, but the link contains a couple more notes for temporal context.

More MCC Christmas stocking stuffers from last year!

Retreating from Pop Culture with Oswald Chambers

November 25, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments

Oswald Chambers Brunch, Panera BreadAs much as I post about the entertainment options around me, I can’t immerse myself in them 24/7. Sometimes they disappoint or frustrate me. Sometimes they demand more of my time and attention than I care to give. Sometimes the idols among them remind me how their previous versions guided me through childhood. While I grew up and improved in a way or two, too many of those idols lost their luster, descended into mediocrity, or had their Reset buttons punched to turn them into different creatures with the same names. Ultimately they’re undependable as worldview building materials.

Hence my weekly one-man retreat. Every Sunday morning after church I isolate myself from my loved ones and collections, hole up in a local chain eatery that has plenty of loitering space (it’s not too hard to identify if you know the place), clear my mind, and spend an hour-plus with caffeine, snack, Bible, spiral-bound notebook, and a copy of the late Oswald Chambers’ devotional collection My Utmost for His Highest.

For those newer readers who’ve been wondering to themselves for months: I assure you the “faith” mentioned in the site subtitle isn’t a typo.

More about my weekly habit…

Star Wars Episode VII and the Joy of Arbitrary Deadlines

November 8, 2013 By in Meta, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

C-3PO, Star Wars, exhibit

One of the many lessons we learned from the Prequels Trilogy: C-3PO wasn’t built in a day. (Photo taken at the “Star Wars: Where Science Meets the Imagination” traveling exhibit, which my wife and I saw during its stop in Indianapolis last spring. That exhibit wasn’t built in a day, either.)

Thus the head honchos at The Walt Disney Company have decreed, and thus it is written: Star Wars Episode VII shall be released to theaters on December 18, 2015. Despite pleas from director J.J. Abrams and hopefully any level-headed supporter in earshot, Disney has set this date in stone and insists that, come what may, there will be Star Wars product on the big screen no matter what.

(As a side experiment along this vein, I’m experimenting here with a timed entry. I have sixty minutes to crank out this entry from start to finish, and whatever state it’s in when minute #60 strikes, I hit “Publish” and there will be an entry about this subject no matter what. Fortunately my special effects needs are minimal and rarely outsourced.)

How many thoughts did I complete? Let’s find out!