Category Archives: Meta

The Story of One Geek Couple, Part 2 of 2

August 28, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments
wedding, happy couple

Don’t you hate it when a trailer or a comic-book cover give away the end of the story? Yeah, so do we. This remains among my favorites from our unnecessarily vast wedding photo collection, Star Trek red-alert lighting and all.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: representing the saga of How We First Met. Part One has the detailed intro that needs little paraphrasing. If you’ve stumbled across this half first, you’re doing it wrong. Click the link in the first sentence, catch up to this moment, then rejoin us with your Back button. Better reading that way, trust me.

Onward, then.

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The Story of One Geek Couple, Part 1 of 2

August 26, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , 4 Comments
Tim Rose, Star Wars Celebration II

Happy best friends hanging out at Star Wars Celebration II in May 2002, posing with puppeteer Tim Rose, who gave life to Admiral Ackbar in Return of the Jedi. Back then her glasses were as wide and as round as the moon, and so was I.

[The following two-part entry is a 2002 essay written tag-team style with the best friend who would later become my wife, originally composed for friends who’d wanted to know how we met. Original posting dates and authorship are appended to each chapter for reference, especially for those who’ve never read my wife’s writing.

Though these passages are now eleven years old and cry out for rewriting, I’ve decided to present this encore generously intact, albeit with mild elements of special-edition Lucas-izing. I deleted one pejorative, two bits of slander, two beyond-personal items, one misuse of “literally” my conscience wouldn’t abide, and a belabored Bloom County reference that made zero sense after the preceding edits.

I’m revisiting this for a reason. More about that at the end of Part Two.]

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Post-Convention Photo-Sick Blues

August 22, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Goldens, Wizard World Chicago 2013

The next time my wife and I decide to attend major geek conventions two weekends in a row, someone needs to remind me to sleep twice as much first.

Today at the comic shop, one of the owners confirmed they and the other customers have been suffering from “GenCon hangover week”. We don’t drink, but the effects are similar. We’ve been wiped out the last few days, soldiering on in our jobs, ignoring the lingering muscle strains, and lamenting that we’re no longer surrounded by those who Get It. That last part’s always the hardest to handle.

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Your Handy Spam Comment Inspection Checklist

August 16, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 12 Comments

MasterSpam Theatre

Random spammer, welcome to This is Your Life! And might I say, you have much to rethink.

Each day the ol’ Midlife Crisis Crossover spam filter catches a few would-be advertisers and funnels them into a gravity well for handy reevaluation and inevitable permanent disintegration. For my first depressing month on WordPress it was simple to discern spam comments from real, live comments: if it was a comment, it was a spammer. My undying gratitude remains perpetually owed to those longtime followers who wrote real, live comments in subsequent months so that I could eventually form a basis for comparison between sincerity and superficial salesmanship.

Nowadays my daily spam dosage tends to be the same few varieties over and over again. It’s quick to flush but boring to glance at. It’s rare to see one of their lowly kind be creative enough to merit more than four seconds of my time.

When one of them fails at their quote-unquote “job” in spectacular fashion, then they have my undivided attention for all of a minute, the equivalent of an eternity in their world.

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The Joy of Watching San Diego from the Sidelines

July 18, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

San Diego Comic ConI can always tell when the Greatest Spectacle in Entertainment News is revving its engines and approaching the starting line — the Facebook statuses for all my West Coast online cohorts begin chiming their location and awe in unison, letting those of us off in the distance know It Has Begun.

The unwieldy official name is Comic-Con International: San Diego. It’s been called the San Diego Comic Con since I was a kid, probably even longer than that. For as long as I’ve known comic book conventions were a thing, I’ve been aware that San Diego is America’s biggest and boldest, a four-day Shangri-La of heroes, creators, fans, dealers, publishers, cosplay, community, news, announcements, panels, and more. A four-day smorgasbord of four-color sensory overload unlike any other experience in the entirety of the hobby. And that was before Hollywood co-opted it years ago and raised the media’s attention level to new heights.

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Not Put Asunder, Nine Years and Counting

July 16, 2013 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

geek couple, Midlife Crisis Crossover

Taken out of context, this photo of a happily armed woman and some dork with a bowling ball could be misconstrued as a future submission to awkwardfamilyphotos.com with a caption questioning the decision to don summer wear in December.

At left in the 2012 Metropolis Superman Celebration T-shirt, my wife is holding a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. At right in the hard-to-see shirt sporting the periodic-table block for adamantium, that’s me toting the bowling ball given to Ralphie’s old man for Christmas. The backdrop is the living room from the original A Christmas Story House in Cleveland, open year-round for visitors like us.

Some vacationers might spend their time off getting drunk and sunburned on an exotic beach. That’s not who we are.

We’ve known each other for nearly twenty-six years, but Wednesday marks our ninth wedding anniversary. When the one you love is willing to pose with you without a whit of hesitation, surrounded by this much pop-culture ephemera, confident in the knowledge that we agree on the most important things in life while sharing a variety of commonalities in the Department of Ultimately Unimportant Things, you realize you’re ridiculously blessed beyond what you deserve. You also thank the Lord that He’s in charge and not Joss Whedon, or else something tragic would’ve happened five minutes after the photo was taken.

Happy Anniversary, m’lady. Can’t wait to see our vacation photos at age 70. 🙂

The Official MCC “Not About” Page

June 30, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Randall A. Golden, Midlife Crisis Crosssover

Shirt probably from Kohl’s; shorts probably from Wal-Mart. Wristwatch definitely from Wal-Mart. Most expensive item: ticket to visit Manhattan’s Top of the Rock. (2011 file photo.)

Consider this another hearty greeting to the continuing influx of new subscribers, real or otherwise, to this humble blog of mercurial intent. If you have no idea what we’re doing here on MCC, feel free to check out the official “About” page for a vague explanation festooned with a smattering of concrete details. Would-be MCC historians unaware of this site’s early days can check out the original, full-length version before I was overcome with a rare rewriting impulse and vaporized several hundred words.

For those who find both versions no help whatsoever, the following is a new companion piece to clarify the broad MCC mission statement by confirming some of my areas of weakness, insufficiency, disinterest, and/or mild anitpathy. It’s my hope that outlining the opposite of me should help manage expectations for future passersby who might be tempted to tap the “Follow” button with misguided hopes for the future of our reader/writer relationship.

For those tentative visitors, please be aware Midlife Crisis Crossover is 99.99% guaranteed to be not about:

* Fashion. No one wants wardrobe tips from a guy who flinches at a thirty-dollar price tag on a shirt. Occasionally I’ll feel a twinge of jealousy at those men who have the clothing budget to wear suave, name-brand outfits from classy outfitters whose newest offerings are featured in men’s-magazine pictorials before they reach upscale store racks. Even if I reconfigured my mindset and funneled all my comics/movie funding into a new monthly allowance for fabulous clothing, the best-looking items are never manufactured in my size anyway. The best you could possibly see from me here is a column called “New T-Shirt of the Month”. (For the record: my most recent acquisition was a Hawkguy T-shirt. See what I mean? And it’s even worse if I have to explain a joke.)

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An MCC Reader Survey for Every Man, Woman, and Spammer

June 25, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

Once again I’m reporting live from the Department of Trying Something Completely Different and extending this opportunity to YOU, the Viewers at Home, to share your feedback about your Midlife Crisis Crossover reading experience. This may be an imperfect structure (I’ve already encountered one unresolved bug), but I beg your forgiveness and your willingness to humor me in this flighty endeavor.

Assuming I didn’t break anything, embedded in this entry should be a simple survey — two pages, five questions in all — providing statistical info on the MCC readership at large to satisfy my curiosity, to help me think a little harder about what subjects to incorporate here in future entries, to show me whether or not the PollDaddy survey function is worth reusing, and to determine once and for all how many of you are real and how many of you are Matrix holo-henchmen.

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Minimal Notes from Inside Our Spoiler-Free Bunker

June 15, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Superman, Jason Todd, Dave Gibbons, DC Comics

Superman doesn’t like it when someone ruins his story. (Art by Dave Gibbons from 1985’s Superman Annual #11.)

If the lively debates on my social-media feeds are any indication, our family may well be the last people in America to see Man of Steel. I’m glad that’ll be rectified within the next eighteen hours. Unfortunately, in order for the film’s surprises to retain as much of their intended impact as possible, I’ve shifted myself into selective internet blindness this evening.

I’ve shunned Twitter’s outbreak of Man of Steel discussion groups. I’ve refused to read any reviews, whether they carry a courtesy spoiler alert or not. I’m even temporarily resisting the urge to read what I understand from several sources (while held at arm’s length, mind you) is a fascinating dissection of the movie by Superman: Birthright writer Mark Waid, a generally awesome comics creator who’s also one of the universe’s most devout Superman fans. Someday I’d love to read his thoughts, but it won’t be this moment.

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A Geek Guide to Small-Talk Parameter Adjustments

June 8, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Evan Dorkin, Eltingville Club

Talking hobbies amongst friends is cool. Sharing them with Grandma is generous of you, but will frighten and confuse her. (Pictured: “Eltingville Club” art from Evan Dorkin’s Dork .)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, I struggled to convey why I’ve recused myself from the tens of thousands of online symposia on the unsolved mystery of “What’s the difference between a geek and a nerd?” In defining my terms, I contrasted “geek” with “ordinary” in a brief, simplistic fashion:

From my own day-to-day standpoint, it’s as simple as this: if I talk about a given subject at either church, work, or family gatherings and receive nothing but blank stares or furrowed brows in return, those are the ordinary people. In those settings, I know that my version of “small talk” would wander too far past the geek boundary and I keep my mouth shut, except about the weather or whatever subjects they bring up first.

All of this sets aside the fact that I do embrace ordinary aspects about myself and my life as well, as longtime MCC readers should recognize by now, considering the number of past entries that were overtly not about geek-relevant topics, but were usually (hopefully?) informed in subtle ways by my interests and skill sets. (Tomorrow night’s entry will be one of those, in fact, 100% guaranteed.) Suffice it to say I’m not mocking anyone who’s 100% ordinary/0% geek — merely observing there are pronounced differences when those percentages fluctuate.

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