Thanksgiving is nigh again! Time for gratitude toward those wonderful people who endure us, another round of overeating, more complaints about What the First Thanksgiving Was Really Like in Case You Haven’t Heard That One Before, and both budgets and self-control thrown out the window for the sake of the longest Friday of the year.
Animation so accomplished, even the characters can’t help staring at each other in awe.
One of my long-standing rules here on Midlife Crisis Crossover is that every movie I watch in theaters gets its own entry. The results aren’t a formal review so much as they’re a brick-by-brick deconstruction to cherry-pick which parts I’m interesting in recording my thoughts about for my own future archival purposes, stitched together with just enough exposition and summation for any MCC readers interested in following along even if they haven’t seen the movie in question.
Said subsection of readers isn’t what it used to be. I realize the format is odd and amateurish in some respects, and it’s not lost on me that the movie entries receive far fewer Likes from other WordPress users than our travel photo galleries do. But part of the grand MCC experiment is facilitating my itch to write and express myself, hoping anyone else out there finds kernels of usefulness in my indulgences, and not wallowing in self-loathing second-guessing whenever they don’t. It’s been one of the tougher aspects of the blogging process to grapple, and I think I’m thiiiiis close to nailing it.
I saw Kubo and the Two Strings over a month ago but kept procrastinating its entry because I worried the results would be a 1000-word stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session of every complimentary adjective Roget ever catalogued. And if there’s one opinion above all that I’ve acquired after 4½ years of writing about theatrical releases, it’s that I’ve grown to hate adjectives as a word class. Rather than risk abolishing the long-standing rule mentioned in paragraph one, I can either stick to my commitment or find something else to write about between travel entries.
Soooo who wants to see me typing lots about the week in politics?
…
…okay, then: Kubo!
Baked goodie courtesy of the upstanding citizens at Max & Benny’s in Northbrook, IL.
If you were of a certain age in the ’90s, you watched Full House the sitcom on ABC’s TGIF. You dreamed of Full House: the Reunion Special. You binged on Netflix’s Fuller House, the sequel. And if you attended Wizard World Chicago 2016, you could eat Full House: the cookie! If the studio has their way, you’ll just never quit Full House for the rest of your life!
At every convention my wife and I attend, we’re bombarded on all sides by dealers and collectors trying to convince us to buy their new or used merchandise because it contains familiar faces and images, trying to jack into our childhood memories via colorful collectible Pavlovian tokens not unlike the above cookie, which would make a fine Golden Gate Bridge road-trip treat if you deleted that obtrusive corporate logo.
Merchandise is the bait, and our own nostalgia is meant to be the fishing line, reeling ourselves in to be netted and financially filleted.
The week of recovery after our three-day Wizard World Chicago experience has been filled with work stress, illness, and the usual post-convention depression that strikes so many geeks once we’ve disconnected from our peers and returned to the mundane world where fewer people get us. I’ve been dedicating little spare time to rest and recuperation, and more time to uploading photos and sharing anecdotes and memories from the experience so I can prolong the magic for as long as possible, but here at the new weekend it’s left me drained and inattentive and sloppy. I’ve made stupid miscalculations, I spilled drinks twice today, and I’ve used up all the really good non-drowsy sinus medicine in the house. At this point, if I could get Calgon to take me away and get Ronald McDonald to affirm I deserve a break today, their combined corporate forgiveness might just be enough to make me feel well again.
In reviewing my files the other night, I realized I overlooked a photo that belonged in our shiny happy Wizard World Chicago jazz hands assortment that kicked off the current MCC miniseries. I’m still working on the concluding chapter, the extra-length wrap-up with notes from the panels we attended, name-checks for the comic book creators we met, and various notes about the pros and cons, and about the pros at the con. It won’t be done tonight for excuses stated above, but the least I can do is share our accidental outtake.
It’s rare to open the garage first thing in the morning and walk right into a sign that says, “It’s okay to leave the house today.” And yet there I was, face to face with this surprise rainbow. Perfect timing. I needed a rainbow this week.
The writer with his primary collaborator, his #1 fan, and his most vocal fact-checker.
Usually we’re out of town on one of our road trips when our anniversary passes, but today was the first time in years that we were in-state for the occasion. We appreciate the inventors of the calendar finally working out the timing in our favor. It was nice to mark the occasion with a nice meal and greeting cards exchanged on our own turf for a change.
Maybe not really. Anne and I do have our sing-a-long moments, whether we’re busting out hymns in the same church service or indulging secret nostalgia on road trips passing through towns where ’80s Top-40 still lives, which describes nearly every small town today outside Footlooseburg. I’m not convinced we could carry our own Broadway show, off-Broadway vanity production, or community performance-art stunt, but if we tried, it would look like this except you could see our jazz hands better on stage. Also, it might be nice if we found a talented stylist to hide all that stately gray that’s overtaking my beard. Nagging aging defects like that can lead to bouts of vain grumpiness and haunting incidents like the time we went to a Red Lobster and the waitress asked me non-jokingly if my daughter would like a children’s menu. True, unfair story.
Right this way for a quick note on another MCC blogging milestone!
Shortbread biscuit, big scoop of vanilla ice cream, generous serving of strawberries drenched in juice that spilled onto both hands and one shoe, and dollop of whipped cream that the top of the box flattened and made slightly less photogenic. This seven-dollar fundraiser dessert was fine by me.
I realize the popular thing for bloggers looking to commiserate with other bloggers is to participate in the popular #WeekendCoffeeShare, in which everyone pretends they’re drinking coffee while rambling about personal goings-on and this interaction eventually translates into superstar writing careers for one and all. I’ve never tried it because I’m not great at blogging according to a calendar (mine or anyone else’s), it’s established fact that I’m terrible at networking and will therefore toil in obscurity till I die satisfied with my choices, I never go to the kind of coffeehouses that serve coffee worth photographing, and I tend to avoid topics that would necessitate resorting to stock photos unless my brain refuses to let such a topic go. But I have new photos from a special occasion today, and a busy night ahead of me before an even busier weekend after that, so I ask your forgiveness for stream-of-consciousness multitasking a smidge outside the box.
Fun trivia: if you try to pay Facebook to “boost” one of your posts so more than five followers will see it, they’ll refuse your money and deny the request if the post has no images, or if its primary image contains more text than picture. I learned that one firsthand in August 2014. Y’know, for science.
I launched Midlife Crisis Crossover on April 28, 2012, three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process and this fallen world’s degrading standards on my impressions of, reactions against, and general experiences with various works of art, commerce, wonder, majesty, and shamelessness. It’s my way of keeping the writing part of my brain alive and active, rather than let it atrophy and die. If you’ve read my “About” page, you know this part already.
With four years and 1,277 entries racked up, I’ve now spent more time and enthusiasm on this long-term project than I did in college, both attempts combined. I’ve learned a few things along the way. Sometimes I put one or more of those lessons to good use. Other days, I just gotta be me, and hope that’s good enough for anyone else outside my own head.
From the pre-MCC archives: Anne and I as a very different dynamic duo at Wizard World Chicago 2010.
Welcome to Midlife Crisis Crossover! If you’re only recently discovering the site, tonight we present a quick overview of what we’re frequently about when we’re left to our own devices. If you’re an occasional visitor, you might see a tidbit or entry you missed the first time around. If you’re a longtime follower who reads the site so devotedly that you could win trivia contests about us, please enjoy the above photo as a random bonus never before shared here.
Our view of church this morning at 8 a.m., remembering and worshiping before the crowds who’ll be flocking in for the 9:15 and 11 a.m. services. We sat in the back with Anne’s grandmother and enjoyed the message, in which our lead pastor skillfully worked in a brief but topical detour to refute Lex Luthor’s flawed theology in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Apt timing.
Happy Easter to you ‘n’ yours from Midlife Crisis Crossover, and may you have a truly blessed day.
I guarantee this spaghetti dinner was not made by photographing someone else’s spaghetti dinner and then cranking out a replica on a 3-D printer.
Last night my lovely wife made spaghetti for dinner because it’s a thing we like. Buried inside the sauce are meatballs she made using a recipe online. It’s slowly becoming one of my favorite home-cooked meals. I’m sure Chopped judges would probably have copious disappointed notes about what they would do differently. They wouldn’t mix two different kinds of pasta just to use up a nearly empty box in the pantry. They’d make fresh sauce from scratch rather than rely on a national jarred brand. Their meatballs might be more consistently colored and stuffed with fifteen extra ingredients. They’d serve it on a set of plates that cost more than we spend on one week’s groceries, with a side of fresh bread bought that same morning from a renowned Italian baker. And so on.
Their level of pasta craft doesn’t invalidate our meal. But at the same time, Anne didn’t claim to create her own sauce recipe, or make her own pasta from the flour up. She’s not gunning for the position of Prego family matriarch. It’s just supper at home. I reiterate: to this biased reviewer, A-plus.
I was reminded of our evening meal plans earlier in the day when a friend of mine retweeted the following clever joke:
One of the twelve million “It’s funny because it’s true!” wisecracks that pop up on Twitter during any given day. Some go no further than a single circle of friends. Some might be shared with friends-of-friends. Some go “viral”, a word I’ve grown to detest. But you get the picture.
Then I was reminded of something else: I’d seen this joke before from another user. Possibly from more than one.
You can click him now and be teleported somewhere inside MCC’s timeline, or you can read this entry first and then take the plunge. YOU make the call!
If you’re like my wife, sometimes you’ll flip through your TV channels, find everything new is boring, and instead go paging through the lesser networks and stations for amusing episodes of defunct series that were once beloved by ancient civilizations. In recent months she and/or I have found ourselves inexplicably, temporarily mesmerized at times by the likes of Doctor Who, Supernatural, Grace Under Fire, The Facts of Life, Amen, 227 (we found an episode guest-starring Pee-Wee Herman!), Columbo, Adam West’s OG Batman, and more. When you’re not in the mood to choose your own specific entertainment, sometimes it’s relaxing to turn to your TV, yell “HIT ME!” and see what happens.
And now, you can do the same with Midlife Crisis Crossover!
Author file photo, taken at an uncertain theme park circa 2006-2008, the years I used the Kodak EasyShare you see dangling from my lanyard. I ultimately decided not to buy the crown.
Welcome to Midlife Crisis Crossover’s 1200th entry! In the grand tradition of 20th century comic books and sitcoms that ran five seasons too long, every 100 entries we mark the occasion as a sort of accomplishment and sometimes celebrate it. Not all those 1200 moments have been winners, but they’re integral components in the comprehensive mosaic of the last few years inside my head — the distractions, the fancies, the traumas, the endless parade of lists.
Before I launched MCC on April 28, 2012, I’d already been writing here and there online for years. My early efforts at self-expression and public entertainment comprise a couple thousand Usenet posts (a few longform pieces in the bunch, mostly irretrievable and irrelevant now), several thousand message-board posts (much easier to sort through, a few of them previously transferred and preserved here), and a LiveJournal I kept for a few years but can barely stand to skim now. In 2006 the longtime message board that Anne and I call home received a software upgrade that added blogging functionality for any member who wanted their own little playground contained within the site itself. Between April 2006 and March 2012 I penned 110 intermittent entries before I decided to stake my own separate claim here among the WordPress territories. That virtually invisible blog was good practice in a number of ways, most of them involving some balance of creativity and humility in the face of a mostly empty studio, so to speak.
As part of this MCC celebration that I just realized could technically double as a “Throwback Thursday” nod, we present the following flashback to an essay originally published May 16, 2006. This oddity, which I’ve lightly edited for a broader audience, represents my very first “meta” post about the odd act of blogging. It was written within and for the confines of the internet equivalent of a shed with a single skylight, but I’m a little surprised how much of my nascent impressions still ring a bell today. Please enjoy, and thanks for being here.
Happy New Year, internet! Here’s hoping everyone’s 2016 is a vast improvement over the unbelievably tragicomic 2015, just like the genetically superior Star Wars: The Force Awakens helped everyone put Revenge of the Sith behind them for good.
As in years past, those all-knowing stats overseers at WordPress.com have compiled an automated 2015 Annual Report for each and every blogger on their roster, complete with vaguely art-deco New Year’s fireworks that you can use for Twitter Profile wallpaper or whatever.
In addition to revealing the 148 countries that visited us last year, as well as the identities of MCC’s five greatest commenters of the year who deserve cash awards, there’s also this sample statistic that you can use for comparing where we stand against millions of other, actually popular sites:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 49,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 18 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report! It’s short and they made pictures an’ stuff.
But wait! There’s more!
Right this way for a rundown of MCC’s memorable 2015 moments that you may have missed!
The most intimidating command issued to me all year: General Leia Organa Solo yelling, “COME HERE, PHOTOGRAPHER.” What happened next was one of my most memorable moments of 2015.
Hey-hey, folks! Welcome to the fourth annual Midlife Crisis Crossover year-in-review! This modest site was launched on April 28, 2012, as a cathartic experiment in writing whatever came to mind without waiting for other people to start my conversations for me, and so far it’s successfully kept me busy enough to avoid 98% of all toxic social media hubs. Sometime this winter we’ll reach our 1,200th entry, look back on these hundreds of thousands of words generated to date, and thank the Lord my fingers and brain haven’t gone numb yet.
Right this way for our rundown of MCC’s best and worst of 2015!
Me at seven months old. My grandma’s caption written on the back of the photo begins, “Mommie had to take him. Daddy was in too big a hurry + didn’t give him time to look at him first.”
The annual MCC year-in-review clipfest and stats party will be coming later this week, but before we get to the fun stuff, perhaps a separate epilogue is due for one of the most (ostensibly) significant events that happened within any of my circles in 2015.
Back in September my father passed away after years of illness and decades of questionable choices. The week that followed was unlike any I’d experienced before — leaving me at a loss for words for a few days, engendering a wellspring of condolences from family and friends, creating no small number of moments both heartfelt and awkward and rife with flawed, generous assumptions.
That name again: Star Wars! Official merchandise and irrelevant products of marketing synergy are now available in literally every Walmart department! Star Wars: It’s Not Just for Toy Aisles anymore!
From time to time, the Star Wars saga crosses our minds here at Midlife Crisis Crossover. Occasionally it’s a serious thinkpiece; usually it’s poking fun; either way, it’s coming from a longtime affectionate immersion in that phenomenal universe. In honor of the upcoming release of The Force Awakens, the seventh chapter in the live-action film canon as rendered by director JJ Abrams and a cast of whippersnappers and old folks alike, we present the following suggested reading list of essays and gags from MCC’s past. These entries may be undiscovered experiences for new followers, pleasant reruns for our longtime associates, or the perfect drugs for anyone who’s fiending for any form of consumable entertainment with the words “Star Wars” in or on it.
For a virtually complete revue of every major Star Wars entry we’ve ever posted, you can follow MCC’s “Star Wars” tag and, among other omissions, take a tour of every convention and event we’ve ever attended that drew a large turnout of Star Wars cosplayers, including our experiences at Star Wars Celebrations II and III. And don’t forget we were just talking about it a few days ago, though that entry’s far too new for the “archives” label and is therefore disqualified from inclusion. Maybe if we do this again for Episode VIII.
Enjoy, rest assured this list contains no real spoilers for The Force Awakens, and MTFBWY!
Plan A for me tonight was to write about either of the two new movies I’ve seen in theaters over the past week. I have a few Plan B’s stored up in case of mental short-circuit. Tonight, I just…can’t. Nothing I want to enjoy sharing is working.
Ever since I got home, I’ve found it impossible to concentrate on writing because I first had to spend a while catching up with online anguish over the San Bernardino shootings. And, bringing up the rear in all news roundups, the smaller shooting in Savannah, dwarfed and nearly invisible next to San Bernardino, like that time The Love Letter opened the same weekend as The Phantom Menace. That’s a horrible, boorish comparison, to say the least. But that’s where we seem to be headed, into a future in which so many are growing up to become disgruntled, corrupted, fundamentally broken, spiritually deformed gunslingers that the career track has become overcrowded and they’re now vying for public attention like some lethal breed of fame-starved pop idols. Soon they’ll have to start hiring black-market publicists to coordinate their outbursts with each other so none of them overlap and each shooter can have a chance to dominate the news cycle for a minimum number of hours before the next shooter steps up to the range.
Art by an anonymous Hallmark staffer, probably.
Every year I receive exactly one (1) greeting card wishing me Happy Thanksgiving. A fellow who works for my company in another state used to need my help on assorted requests several years ago, and I’ve been on his Thanksgiving card list ever since. Nowadays he needs my help only sporadically — if we have contact more than twice a year, I’d be surprised. But he keeps me in his thoughts. Above and beyond the pre-printed, mass-produced, well-wishing boilerplate, he writes a note of personalized appreciation inside each card, much more than just “Hi!” and a name. It’s always wordier than 90% of the Christmas cards we receive, the closest I ever get to an old-fashioned letter. It’s a tradition that used to strike me as odd, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to appreciate it as a kind touch that adds a modest, welcome flourish to the proceedings. Also, this year’s model looks niftier than ever.
To MCC’s longtime readers: thank you for being you. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks very much for the comments and the encouraging feedback, whether one-click or multi-paragraph. Thanks for your acts, great or small, that go a long way toward making this peculiar labor of love an enriching experience. Special thanks to anyone who’s ever recommended or just mentioned the site to any other human. Thanks to all of you for being there at every level.
Our family wishes a happy, blessed Thanksgiving to you frequent visitors and newcomers alike. May your holiday and your weekend be filled to overflowing with a continual parade of kindnesses, from the largest favors to the smallest gestures. And may you find yourselves pleasantly surprised at which moments come to mean the most.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 