Hey, that was my face while watching, too! We can totes share the same emoji!
MCC 2014 Pilot Binge #2: “Selfie”
2014 Road Trip Photos #1: Welcome to the Kingdom of Cheese
Once we were beyond the Indiana border and free from Chicago gridlock, then we knew our next road trip had begun.
Each year from 2003 to 2013 my wife, my son, and your humble writer headed out on a long road trip to anywhere but here. My wife and I like to seek out new lifeforms and civilizations, and then we photograph them into submission. I create a travelogue partly for fun, partly for writing exercise, and partly for personal future reference in those hopefully distant years when my aging brain begins deleting memory files without warning. My wife keeps meticulous scrapbooks in her own fashion, but retaining my own impressions is kind of important to me, too. Someday I’ll look back on this and think, “Ah, yes, I remember when I used to be able to type, before arthritis turned my hands into insensate stumps.”
Our 2014 road trip represented a milestone of sorts: our first vacation in over a decade without my son tagging along for the ride. He’s now an official adult and a sophomore in college who’s developed his own ideas about how he prefers to spend his downtime between semesters, and he’s by no means under direct orders to attend our outings. By the end of one particularly serious discussion over dinner in Jamestown, NY, we all knew and agreed our 2013 road trip would be his farewell tour with us. We were cool with that, if a bit emotional in our respective ways.
I’m finding it tough to follow that delicately phrased paragraph with a declaration of “2014 EMPTY-NESTER PARTY! WOOOOOOO!” But. Well. There it is and there we were. When the summer of 2014 arrived we were fully prepared to shift gears from “family vacation” to “romantic getaway”. Without gloating too loudly, of course, and in our own jointly unique fashion.
At my wife’s prodding, I examined our vacation options and decided we ought to make this year a milestone in another way — our first sequel vacation. This year’s objective, then: a return to Wisconsin and Minnesota. In my mind, our 2006 road trip was a good start, but in some ways a surface-skimming of what each state has to offer. Something about the atmosphere, creativity, and Midwest nuances spoke to me in ways that are hard to articulate. I don’t want to say “like Indiana, but smarter” or “like Illinois, but kinder”. There’s some proper analogy a few millimeters beyond my grasp. All I knew for sure was, I wanted a do-over.
To shake things up a bit, because every sequel has to be different and bigger in some way, we added an overnight detour into one state we’d never visited before. In yet another milestone for the occasion, this was also our first vacation in I-don’t-know-how-long that included zero stops at McDonald’s.
Sure, many couples with this sort of freedom would make a beeline for the nearest beach, book passage on a cruise, or max out their credit cards on a Paris dream trip. We have our own agenda. Finding creative ways to spend quality time together. Searching for tourism options that wouldn’t occur to our peers. Digging for gems in unusual places — sometimes geek-related, sometimes peculiar, sometimes normal yet above average.
We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.
The MCC 2014 Pilot Binge: Kickoff and First Down
Not a codeword for the new fall TV lineup.
And now for something completely regrettable:
I have a short list of TV shows I follow every year, but I don’t watch nearly as much TV as the average internet user my age. I don’t connect with what many of today’s sitcoms consider “humor”. The Wire ruined all ordinary police shows for me for all time. We don’t subscribe to any premium cable channels. I’m not remotely interested in any show that describes itself as “sexy”. My list of disqualifiers goes on and on.
This year I’ve decided against my better judgment to dare myself to do something different. I spent time this weekend reading the official annual “Fall TV Preview” cover features in the latest issues of Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide, and compiled a list of the new shows that merited full articles or capsule previews. I omitted a few premium-cable shows for the one reason mentioned above (the pirating option is off the table) and a few online-only streaming shows for assorted logistical reasons. That left me with a list of twenty-six TV shows in all.
President Obama’s Top 10 Secret Winning ISIL Strategies
Our Commander-in-Chief gears up for conflict as part of Operation: Desert Suavé.
Depending on where you stand with him and/or this escalating conflict, the speech was either too long, too short, too detailed, too vague, too overdue, or too Obama and you’re not listening no matter what LALALALALALALALA. Rest assured, our President and his speechwriters know better than to provide sensitive information to all listeners equally. We three hundred million onlookers will never know the full story behind all the extensive plans being concocted and implemented by our top officials, officers, politicians, diplomats, advisers, think-tankers, and other various hangers-on with useful knowledge or arsenals at the ready. Whatever they’re coming up with, the best we can do is hope it doesn’t blow up in our faces like an explosive cigar from a third-world novelty factory.
This realization, then, begs a question. Given that his speech was merely a superficial overview to assure Americans that they do indeed have concrete plans afoot, even if they can’t share blueprints or instruction booklets with us; assuming they aren’t just trying to save face and feign confidence in the face of roiling international controversy; knowing that the U.S. hasn’t exactly been scoring A-pluses in overseas negotiations over the past several years; I ask, then, because I can’t possibly be the only one who wants to know: What does Obama really have in mind here? How much is he not allowed to tell us, either to withhold info from enemy hands or to forestall embarrassment at the parts that might not work?
Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 3: The Great Local-Celeb Milking Contest
The winner’s cup. MILK: what it’s all about.
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 and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.
In our previous episode I touched on the variety of shows and competitions happening around the fairgrounds. One of the events we usually miss is the annual Celebrity Milking Contest. In this context the “celebrities” are local personalities unfamiliar to anyone living outside Indianapolis and to some of us lifelong citizens. We’d only watched the contest once before, a few years ago when the winner was the then-governor’s wife. Sure, they may not be movie stars or even YouTube headliners, but how often do we have the chance to watch cow-milking competitions? Besides, it was free.
Apple’s 9/9/14 Superinfomercial and the New U2 Album, Track by Track
Ready and waiting for its future home on a Starbucks spinner rack.
But I’ve never owned an Apple product, bearing in mind that digital downloads barely count as “ownership” in my mind, and my iTunes “library” so far is more like a Hot Wheels bookmobile. Apple’s ostentatious new-product announcements are usually outside my fields of interest. I’m not an early adopter in any tech-related areas. At all.
New iPhone? Pass. My phone is a Samsung S2 that accomplishes my simple daily needs as long as I remember to reboot once a week. (Longtime MCC readers may recall I was once staunchly anti-smartphone in general, until life gave me reasons not to be.) My phone isn’t broken, and once survived a ten-foot drop onto a metal catwalk with zero damage. I’m good for now.
New smartwatch with triple-digit price tag? Pass. I can’t function away from home without wearing a watch (see: “old”), but I rarely need to shop for a new one because any given fifteen-dollar waterproof department-store digital watch with a lithium battery will last me years. They’re arguably one of Walmart’s most durable products, and it’s faster for me to glance at my wrist than it is to pocket and unpocket any other time-telling gizmo, including my phone. And that lithium battery drains ten thousand times more slowly than any phone battery will.
But then Apple went in an unexpected direction with their third platform plank: a new U2 album. For free. Finally, a product in my price range and tangential to my personal interests. Sold!
There’s Nothing Wrong with Your Internet Connection. For Now.
90% of the following message was provided as an unpaid courtesy by Battle For The Net. The other 10% is value-added MCC editing and reformatting.
* * * * *
If you woke up tomorrow and your internet looked like this, what would you do?
Imagine all your favorite websites taking forever to load, while you get annoying notifications from your ISP suggesting you switch to one of their approved “Fast Lane” sites. Think about what we would lose: all the weird, alternative, interesting, and enlightening stuff that makes the Internet so much cooler than mainstream cable TV. What if the only news sites you could reliably connect to were the ones that had deals with companies like Comcast and Verizon?
On September 10th, just a few days before the FCC’s comment deadline, public interest organizations are issuing an open, international call for websites and internet users to unite for an “Internet Slowdown” to show the world what the web would be like if Team Cable gets their way and trashes net neutrality. Net neutrality is hard to explain, so our hope is that this action will help show the world what’s really at stake if we lose the open Internet.
If you’ve got a website, blog or Tumblr, get the code to join the #InternetSlowdown at the official site. The Internet Slowdown official Tumblr also has a quick list of other things you can do to help spread the word about the slowdown.
Get creative! Don’t let us tell you what to do. See you on the net September 10th!
* * * * *
Special thanks to Automattic, the talented minds behind WordPress, for supporting this effort all the way. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen them advocating from the front lines of the internet battlefield. If I could hug or high-five each of their employees personally, I totally would.
Our 2006 Road Trip Photos, Part 17: the Season Finale and the Lost Outtakes
Outtake #1 of 5: baby piggies napping at the Minnesota Zoo. When we arrived home late at the end of our drive, this is how peacefully we slept that night.
[The very special miniseries concludes! See Part One for the official intro and context to this MCC remastered edition.
Fun trivia: the original 2006 version of this entry was posted entirely without visuals because neither of us took a single photo on Day 7. As a special bonus to break up the monotony for today’s readers, especially for anyone who craves photos but couldn’t care less about my writing, this evening my wife and I delved into the deep end of our closet and disinterred the rest of her 35mm hard-copy photos from 2006. Previous entries used a combination of excerpts from her scrapbooks and saved files from my first year as a digital camera owner. The five unrelated photos seen here, each of which reference activities from previous chapters, have never been scanned or shared online until now. Nothing fancy or disappointing about them; we basically forgot they existed.]
Our Annual Family Reunion Adventure
For fifty-seven years my wife’s family has held their annual reunions at Turkey Run State Park, a ninety-minute drive from our suburban HQ and well outside the range of my phone carrier’s disappointing 4G coverage. For the space of one Sunday afternoon it’s an opportunity to unplug from the internet and all its problems, experience fresh air, enjoy good weather live and in person (Lord willing), catch up with loved ones that we’ve been too preoccupied to visit, exchange pleasantries with distant relatives whose names we’ll never remember, test which family members will still commit to a long drive for any of these purposes, and remember how to mingle in large, awkward groups without access to Words with Friends as our consolation playmate.
Or, while everyone else is talking, you can escape the shindig for a while and go explore the best part of Turkey Run, the beautiful forests crisscrossed with several miles of nature-trail adventure.
Indiana State Fair 2014 Photos, Part 2: Normal-Gator vs. Manasaurus
Steel wading pool exhibition match. Two vertebrates enter; two vertebrates leave.
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 and big-ticket concerts by musicians that other people love. My wife and I attend each year as a date-day to seek new forms of creativity and imagination within a local context.
The State Fair also brings in entertainers from around the globe at various levels. Top-40 musicians play at the Coliseum; former Top-40 musicians play the large, free main stage; local acts play an even smaller stage; and a few touring entertainers perform in the farm-equipment areas, around the animal-education section, or near the 4-H Building. The latter charge no admission, earning only the intake from whatever merchandise they sell after their performance.
One of this year’s freebies was a traveling roadshow called “Kachunga and the Alligator”. The basic premise was several minutes of stage patter about swampland conservation and animal rights, followed by a few minutes of a man tussling with a modest alligator.
The Hunger Boxers
Photo by a cheerful Gleaners representative. They strongly encouraged social media sharing. Consider it done!
No, that’s not a photo of my interim reign as CEO of the Box Factory. But I can dream.
Last week my employer tried something new: they gave several hundred of us the opportunity to spend half a workday (on the clock!) participating in scheduled acts of service at various charities throughout Indianapolis — charitable synergy courtesy of United Way.
I signed up and went forth to serve last Thursday morning at Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, one of the most prominent resources in local hunger relief efforts. Oddly, my shift happened a full week before our local media declared today as Hunger Action Day. My coworkers and I may have missed that holiday, but I should hope our efforts were useful regardless of timing.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 16: Another Hick in the Mall
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context…]
Day 6: Thursday, July 27th
By the third day of our stay at the same Bloomington hotel, we were finding it difficult to make the same breakfast buffet seem novel and appetizing. We ate much less than usual, contenting ourselves with watching in amusement as a whole new line of hotel guests each found their own way to screw up the waffle-making process. The instructions were right there on the wall, but we were amazed at the damage to be done by forgetting to use cooking spray, by pouring in the wrong amounts of batter, by pouring the batter unevenly on one side, by neglecting to turn the waffle-maker to the ON position and thereby negating the timer, and so on. As former longtime restaurant employees, Anne and I are elitist like that.
Our objective was the one and only Mall of America. Our family and friends back home were more excited about this stop than we were. When Anne and I first traveled together in 1999, one of the first and unhappiest lessons we learned was that chain retail stores, with extremely few exceptions, carry the exact same merchandise from state to state. Walmarts in Kentucky have the same Star Wars figures as those in Indiana. Toys-R-Us-es in Missouri line their shelves with the same clearance worst-sellers as those back home. By logical extension, we assumed even the Mall of America would be subject to this guideline. We figured we had to try it anyway, on behalf of our friends and family demanding their vicarious thrills after the fact. Besides, when in Rome, and all that.
My Labor Day Weekend 2014 TV Marathon Report
Tyrion Lannister wishes you would go away.
I’m grateful every day to have a job that observes the largely superfluous privilege of Labor Day. I spent most of the weekend recovering from “con crud” and saving up energy and money for future chores and exploits. It was nice to have the time and excuse to make headway into my infinite viewing pile — with my wife’s blessing, no less. I’ll make a point of mowing the lawn some other week, just for her.
The weekend’s results, in no particular order:
* The Station Agent (Netflix): Before Game of Thrones, and slightly before his winning scene in Elf, Peter Dinklage starred in this 2003 indie, a low-key character piece about a railroad enthusiast who retreats to small-town New Jersey after his best friend dies and his model-train hobby shop is sold off. His attempts at hermitage are thwarted daily as life pushes other people into his path — a happy-go-lucky food-truck runner (Bobby Cannavale), a separated wife and grieving mother (Patricia Clarkson), a teen librarian with a secret (frequent Oscar nominee Michelle Williams), an unassuming young black girl, the backwater citizens who mock his stature, and Mad Men‘s John Slattery in a bit part as a disgruntled husband. Dinklage barely talks, letting his doleful gaze speak or deflect for him, but he slowly emerges from inner captivity as the tracks are laid for new connections to new friends, each overlooking the others’ outward differences and recognizing their inner wounds.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 7 of 7: the Geek Stuff
Rocket Raccoon: the Cookie! Northbrook bakery Max and Benny’s had a booth selling cookies shaped like numerous characters and personalities. My wife and I split a cookie shaped like Star-Lord’s head. It was great and I wish we’d bought a few dozen more.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries…
…blah blah blah blah blah. And now it all comes down to this, Part Seven, the not-really-grand finale: non-living objects and items that caught our eyes on the premises.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 6 of 7: People We Met
Yowza!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries…
…and so on. Part Six, then: the actors we met, along with a few folks from the wonderful world of comics.
We saved up for months to bankroll this outing. The guest list blew our minds. Some of them were the the highest-ranking names on my wife’s long-standing autograph want list. A few were people you’d never expect to fly out to the Midwest for pretty much any reason. So we made it work. Costs were cut in other areas of life. Discounts were researched and implemented. We ate cheaply for a while, and we’ll likely continue doing so while we’re catching up after the fact.
Honestly: unless you live in New York, L.A., London, or San Diego, how often in your lifetime will a genuine Doctor of recent vintage appear anywhere within 200 miles of your hometown? So yeah, we took the plunge and met former Doctor Who star Matt Smith for a jolly, five-second photo op. To be honest, the photo-op price was a better deal than his autograph prices.
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 5 of 7: Last Call for Costumes
Who ya gonna call? GROOTBUSTERS!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Later we determined the correct number is seven entries in all. Part Five is two smaller subsets combined. Half of these photos are “pot luck” miscellaneous characters. The rest each contain at least one mystery character that defied my knowledge base and all research attempts, both personal and outsourced. The MCC standing plea of thumb as always is: if you recognize someone I don’t, pretty-please feel free to chime in and teach this old guy something new. (Prime example: at far right in the above photo is an original character named Kattosha. That was new learning for me. See the comments below for more of her story.)
Right this way for our last, best hopes for Wizard World Chicago 2014 heroes of cosplay!…
Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry
I had no idea how to illustrate this entry. After 28 months I still have no site branding to showcase. I’m not in the mood for anything prideful. Please randomly enjoy this outtake from our 2013 road trip — me eating a sundae at the Witch’s Brew Cafe in Salem, MA. Why not.
Neither writer’s block nor Hollywood’s siren call nor reckless abandon nor typing-finger tumors have stayed me from my appointed fixation yet. If and when MCC crashes and burns someday, I hope I can think of reasons to blame anyone and everything except myself.
From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Ways I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:
10. 10,000-word all-star salute to me, myself, and I
9. Have a WordPress “Freshly Pressed” banner tattooed across my chest
8. Reprint a past entry no one else liked except me; grovel for pity-Likes
7. Eight-hour scenes-after-end-credits marathon
6. Saccharine love letter to my wife that makes all other readers nauseous
5. Write epic fanfic crossover “Bunheads Go to Sleepy Hollow”
4. Buy a PS4 and one game; play until my gamer-cred upticks; then go settle every Quinn/Sarkeesian rage-war single-handedly
3. Prize drawing to get rid of all my unwanted DC New 52 comics
2. Live-tweet a Dog with a Blog rerun
And the number one Way I’ll Be Celebrating MCC’s 800th Entry:
1. Family road trip to Ferguson!
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 4 of 7: Animation Costumes!
Jesse and James fire Meowth, welcome new sidekick Ash. Meet the all-new, all-different Team Rocket!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
I’ve been dealing with con crud all week long and struggling to reactivate all portions of my brain, but the math finally came together for me: we’re looking at seven entries in all for the WWC 2014 photo parade. Part four of those, then: characters from cartoons and anime. Enjoy!
Right this way for your favorites from Japan and/or Saturday morning…
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 3: Marvel and Dark Horse Costumes!
The Avengers! Classic lineup, different take.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Part three, then: representatives from the Marvel Universe, along with a few folks from other comic-book companies. Enjoy!
Wizard World Chicago 2014 Photos, Part 2: DC Comics Costumes!
…BECAUSE I’M BATMAN!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
This weekend was that time again: our annual excursion to Rosemont, IL, for Wizard World Chicago. My wife and I took plenty of photos as usual, many of them usable. We’ll be sharing those over the next several entries, but I’m still too fatigued from the experience to figure out how many entries these will take.
Part two, then: the amazing world of DC Comics. Enjoy!
Right this way for heroes and villains from the Distinguished Competition…
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 