Chicago Photo Tribute #9: Architecture Potpourri

September 26, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

[This coming] weekend is the fourth annual Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (that “C2E2″ thing I won’t shut up about) at Chicago’s McCormick Place convention center, which my wife and I will be attending for our third time. As a tribute to this fascinating city, and an intro to C2E2 newcomers to provide ideas of what else Chicago has to offer while they’re in town, a few of this week’s posts will be dedicated to out experiences in the Windy City when we’re not gleefully clustered indoors with thousands of other comics and sci-fi fans.

That was written last April. To date we’ve visited Chicago for three C2E2s, five Wizard World Chicagos, one stopover on a previous family road trip, and one group outing with my employers. We’ve shared photos here from each of those trips in intermittent installments, either when they became relevant or when they popped into my head as a fun thing to revisit for an evening.

In this instance, my wife and I have another one-day Chicago trip planned for this weekend, so it’s at the forefront of my thoughts just now. Today’s presentation, then: parts of Chicago (and one related suburb) that were held back from previous installments for whatever reasons. The “architecture” category in the title covers the gamut well enough, including the realm of landscape architecture. Exhibit A: the flowers of Millennium Park. Look beyond them and you can see into the heart of the Loop, the Magnificent Mile’s significantly less glossy sibling.

Millennium Park flowers, Chicago

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“Revolution” 9/25/2013 (spoilers): Nevilles vs. Nukes

September 25, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Tom Neville, Giancarlo Esposito, Revolution, NBC

Tom Neville is back. And this time…he’s still mad.

Revolution is back! And this time, it’s sorry if it made you unhappy and it swears it can change!

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2013 Road Trip Photos #13: Adams Family Real Estate

September 24, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: the wonderful world of John Adams and his sequel, John Quincy Adams. We saw their family burial crypt and the church it’s beneath. Lest we appear fixated on Presidential death, today we see where the Adamses lived.

To a certain extent, anyway. The Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, MA, offers guided tours of the family’s original homesteads, but allows no photos inside any of them. From a travelog perspective, I can’t help being disappointed. I’m not one for rendering artists’ sketches, and what objets d^art we saw aren’t as meaningful if I just list them by name. Hence all the exterior shots.

Adams didn’t think his places were such a big deal, of course. History mostly thinks otherwise, even if he spent much of his life as either a runner-up or a dark horse.

John Adams quote

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“Sleepy Hollow” 9/23/2013 (spoilers): Donut Hole Tax Reform NOW!

September 24, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Tom Mison, Ichabod Crane, Sleepy Hollow

The gentleman doth protest his receipt. From tonight’s cute scene in which Crane learns about the pitfalls of taxation with representation.

The second episode of Fox’s new Monday night spooky-action series, Sleepy Hollow, understandably has to work with a fraction of the pilot’s budget, but scores best when it keeps the focus on our heroes, the time-displaced Ichabod Crane and present-day police Lieutenant Abbie Mills, whose chemistry compensates for this week’s villain, a dead witch who has no lines and hides in the shadows between jump-cuts. We also saw a couple of unexpected returns and a clever use of Post-It Notes as an educational tool that Memento‘s Leonard Shelby wishes he’d thought of first.

For those who missed out, my attempt to streamline the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers.

Tonight’s Sleepy Hollow was brought to you by Overtaxed Donut Holes. 8.25% government-levied, 100% delicious!

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An Old Man’s Poor Little Scorecard for the 2013 Emmys

September 23, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

Emmy Awards

It’s a major award! To some!

I’ve never watched a complete Emmy Awards ceremony. I follow several different TV shows each season, but I don’t watch nearly enough of the “right” shows to have a sizable stake in the proceedings. It’s with good reason that I don’t write about television seven days a week.

The preceding paragraph was copied-‘n’-pasted from last year’s Emmys entry. Not much has changed, so why reinvent the butter knife?

Back then, I thought it would be fun to sort through all the Emmy nominations just to see how many would actually matter to me. I’d committed to that night’s writing topic before I analyzed the list. My conclusion: it wasn’t fun after all.

This year I altered my approach. Instead of painstakingly scrutinizing every last nominee, I decided to wait until the ceremonies were finished and the results were posted online, then check off only the winners, disregarding any of my shows that were nominated but beaten down.

The results were slightly surprising…

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Obligatory “Freshly Pressed” Follow-Up Thank-You Ramble

September 22, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 5 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeIs it okay if I feel proud and sheepish at the same time?

The gracious editors at WordPress liked a post of mine from last week well enough to showcase it as “Freshly Pressed”, meaning a temporary spotlight in the WordPress commons area where thousands of other writers might give it and other folks’ recent “Freshly Pressed” posts a look. It’s extremely kind of them and thoroughly unexpected.

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The Curse of the “Follow” Button

September 21, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , 24 Comments

Follow Button Nightmare

Just so we’re clear, this haunting illustration is not intended as a superliminal message.

The Followers list of the average WordPress user is comprised largely of other WordPress users. The community is extremely supportive that way. On occasion I’ve even dug a little deeper into those notifications and discovered usernames popping in from Blogger, Tumblr, DeviantArt, YouTube, and other creative sites. If readers are attracted from outside the blogosphere altogether, that’s worth an elaborate victory dance in my book.

Some of that support is provisional, though — offered in hopeful accordance with the implied adage of “I’ll follow you if you follow me!” I’m not sure how many online communities this largely unspoken expectation pervades. When MCC first launched, I kept this guideline in mind, especially in the early era of single-digit daily traffic when any sort of response, human or otherwise, was a welcome change of pace from spending quality time with the Void.

The longer my resulting reading list grew from everyone I Followed in turn, the less I wanted to keep observing that adage. And yes, I mean “reading list”. I tried keeping up with all of them/you, even if the subject matter didn’t interest me in the slightest. It seemed the most honest response. I still read many, many blogs in any given day, but I’ve had to perform some serious triage for the sake of my free time and sanity. I’m unclear on when the “Follow” button became less a simple, literal statement for some users and more of a token to be swapped with passing strangers like marbles or pogs.

For some of my oldest followers…I think using the “Follow” button jinxed them.

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The Fun of Buying Two (and Only Two) Parts of a 90-Part Publishing Event

September 20, 2013 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Emi Lenox, Slub, Dial E, Forever Evil, DC Comics

The underordered Dial E one-shot will become a hot item once Slub locks in a WB movie deal. (Art by Emi Lenox.)

This year at DC Comics, the villains are taking over! (No, not the editors. Wrong verb tense.) Now in progress at comic shops nationwide, Forever Evil is the first major crossover event to march like General Sherman through the entire DC Universe since the New 52 initiative launched two years ago. The core is a seven-part miniseries buoyed by three months’ worth of tie-ins across five ongoing series, one issue apiece of two other series, three different six-part miniseries coming in October, and — last I heard — fifty-two different one-shots replacing most of DC’s ongoing series this month, all starring villains instead of heroes, all available with fancy 3-D covers for an added one-dollar upcharge. (All figures assume DC announces no surprise additions to the lineup, or any abrupt cancellations due to overextending themselves.)

For enraptured fans of DC’s New 52, it’s a veritable grand tapestry of drama. In a world where many of our rebooted heroes are presumed dead, all the rebooted villains have united and threaten to ruin everything everywhere for all time.

Or something like that. I think. I don’t really care.

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2013 Road Trip Photos #12: the Adams Family Church

September 18, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our highlight of Day Four was time spent in the family crypt of the second and sixth Presidents of the United States, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, along with their respective wives. I’d mentioned their crypt was in the basement of the United First Parish Church in Quincy, MA.

This, then, is that church. The body proper dates back to 1639, but the current building was erected in 1828, funded by President Adams himself.

United First Parish Church, Quincy, Massachusetts

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“Sleepy Hollow” 9/16/2013 (spoilers): Death Wields a Mean Shotgun

September 18, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
Nicole Beharie, Tom Mison, Sleepy Hollow

She’s a medium-town sheriff with FBI dreams. He’s a 250-year-old Minuteman. They fight crime!

With a swing of the axe and a shotgun blast into the air, Fox brazenly kicked off the 2013-2014 fall TV season Monday night with our first new series, Sleepy Hollow. From the early ads its simple but silly premise — Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horsemen, ripped from Washington Irving’s short story and transported to the World of Tomorrow (i.e., today) — felt to me like another uninspired Hollywood reboot, scraping the bottom of the public-domain intellectual-property barrel.

If you don’t mind the occasional hour of loony, far-fetched “popcorn TV”, you can do plenty of fun things with barrel scrapings.

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The Last Stand of the Drive-In Theater: Upgrade or Perish

September 16, 2013 By in Indiana, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , 80 Comments
Tibbs Drive-In, Indianapolis

The drive-in nearest our house is the Tibbs, still standing after 46 years. For now. (Photo from our 2008 personal archives. To date I’ve seen only two of these timeless non-classics…)

In my early childhood years, I had only two options for seeing movies: squinting at them on my family’s thirteen-inch black-‘n’-white TV (and I was rarely allowed to choose what channels we watched); or seeing them writ large on the giant-sized, outdoor screen down at the drive-in theater. In a world where limited technology narrowed our choices, this competition was a no-brainer to me.

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2013 Road Trip Photos #11: Inside the Adams Family Crypt

September 14, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Once we were safely and successfully on the road again after the morning’s mechanical failure, our Day Four officially commenced due south of Boston in the town of Quincy. (Official blending-in tip for outsiders: it’s pronounced “Quinzy” by the locals, because that’s how the eponymous family pronounced it.) In the basement of the United First Parish Church lies a very special room open to any and all visitors, though they do suggest a donation, and — based on the bizarre, unexplained incident we witnessed — will turn you away at the door if you prove yourself a local, recurring, foul-mouthed nuisance.

Inside that bunker-esque room lies the final resting places of four noteworthy historical figures: John Adams, second President of the United States; his wife/First Lady, Abigail; his son, John Quincy Adams, our sixth President; and his wife/First Lady, Louisa.

John Adams presidential crypt

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The Experiment

September 14, 2013 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

This year for my birthday, my wife and I visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art because I wanted to see the traveling Ai Weiwei exhibit while it was in town. Fascinating collection of provocative, disturbing, convicting works and images.

My wife captured this thought, one of several typeset on the museum walls for the occasion.

Study questions:

If the artist works hard but doesn’t change any aspect of the world, not even a minute tweak, is the result still art? How many tries should they be allowed?

If the artist has no definitive aspiration, can they still effect change? What sort of deadline should we give them?

(Mood: contemplative. Music: Bob Mould, Black Sheets of Rain.)

My Super Awesome Blockbuster Reboot of “E.T.”

September 12, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Those eyes are pretty in the right light, but the rest of this will have to go.

February 2014 will see The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman taking over for Peter Weller as the new Robocop. This fall Ironside returns to TV with Blair Underwood somehow replacing Raymond Burr. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, and the Green Hornet are but a few of the myriad characters to return from pop-culture limbo in overhauled guises. And this is the sentence I had set aside for DC Comics if I could narrow the possible examples down to less than four hundred.

At the rate our entertainment recyclers are plowing through their back catalogs, every intellectual property from the last fifty years will have been remade and/or rebooted before I’m fifty. Even if 90% of them flop, every producer, editor, or writer will convince themselves their attempt will be different from all the rest because they truly believe in themselves, if not their work. Maybe 10% of them will hit the jackpot, reap the rewards, and retire at forty.

Sounds like a sweet deal to me, even though I’m running dozens of laps behind the competition. If I’m to win, I need to move now. That’s why I’m calling dibs on E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial. It’s not taken, right? Excellent.

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MCC Annual Day of Stillness II

September 11, 2013 By in Indiana, Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Since Midlife Crisis Crossover has only been around for sixteen months, I haven’t had the chance to establish any creative annual traditions yet. I’d prefer 9/11 not be one of them, but I already expressed 99% of my thoughts on the subject last year — answering the burning questions of “Where were you when, y’know, that happened?” and “How do you spend that day each year?” Rather than rewrite it from a different perspective, or reboot the whole thing as a brand new version of me with a completely different sequence of events, instead the link is enclosed here for newer readers who weren’t with us at the time, or for any longtime fans who appreciate the value of an occasional rerun:

–> Waiting Patiently for My Annual Day of Stillness to End

Those who prefer all-new material are welcome to some local on-topic trivia: my hometown of Indianapolis has its very own 9/11 memorial downtown. The dual centerpieces are girders recovered from the actual site, together weighing eleven tons.

Indianapolis 9/11 Memorial

We visited too early in the day, at a time when other things overshadow it. I detect a metaphor in there I’d rather not explore.

The granite backdrop behind the girders reads like so.

Indianapolis 9/11 Memorial

Both photos by Anne Golden.

Last year I forgot we’d taken these, but they finally came to mind this evening. I’ve kept in slightly less introverted spirits this year, albeit with mixed results. As always, Lord willing, here’s to a much brighter tomorrow.

“THE Star Wars”: Fun Adaptation of Stuff Found in George Lucas’ File Cabinets

September 11, 2013 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Annikin Starkiller, Kane Starkiller, The Star Wars

Race into adventure with Kane Starkiller and his sons Annikin and Deak! Whoever they are!

In 1999 Dark Horse Comics published an intriguing experiment called Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Origin — a comic-book adaptation of Joss Whedon’s original script for the movie, hewing more closely to what he envisioned in his head before the director and producer meddled and warped everything. Although Dark Horse’s version didn’t contain nearly enough Paul Reubens, few Buffy fans would choose the movie over The Origin. It was a rare opportunity to see a writer’s lost draft technically restored and given life anew.

In that same vein, Dark Horse now brings us The Star Wars, an eight-issue miniseries promising to adapt George Lucas’ 1974 rough-draft screenplay that would later be rethought, rewritten, rearranged, and eventually filmed as merely Star Wars. Without the “The”. Because it looked cleaner.

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2013 Road Trip Photo #10: Counting the Blessings While the World Races Past

September 10, 2013 By in Meta, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I-93 South, Boston

Not every moment of the average vacation will lend itself to an attractive headline, a cheery anecdote, or a photogenic souvenir. Even the world’s greatest professional travelers have their share of failures, their horror stories, their occasional awkward faux pas, their incidental doldrums, their best laid plans gone awry. All of those not-shining moments are yadda-yadda’d from the eventual professional article, to the approval and applause of a hundred Likes, a dozen Follows, and a few cents’ worth of ad revenue generated by their hits. Selective anecdotal recounts can turn anyone with a travel budget into Hero of the Beach.

Full disclosure from this humbled amateur with complicated aspirations: Day Four of our road trip began not with entertaining travel heroism, but with ninety minutes of sitting off to the side of I-93 South during Boston’s mid-morning rush hour.

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The Walking Flag

September 8, 2013 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: a week ago Friday I shared thoughts and moments from an Indianapolis Indians game my wife and I attended, in which they eventually beat the Louisville Bats 4-3. As I mentioned in that entry, the tickets were a boon from my employer, in exchange for certain services rendered.

The service in question was performed during opening ceremonies from a most unusual POV — emerging from the tunnels beneath Victory Field, through double doors in the far corner beyond left field, marching out to center field as part of a walking flag.

Walking Flag

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How Far Would You Go to Meet Willie from “V”?

September 7, 2013 By in Conventions & Events, Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

My wife has always been a big fan of the 1983 TV miniseries V and its 1984 sequel, V: the Final Battle. She could take or leave the short-lived series that followed, and she had no interest in sampling the recent failed reboot.

Veterans of V are an extreme rarity at local geek conventions. Until tonight she’d only met its star, Marc Singer, several years ago at a Trek con that was generous enough to incorporate other sci-fi universes. While it was interesting for us to see the original Beastmaster up close, he was never her favorite V character. Whenever she waxes nostalgic about the show, her narrative sooner or later turns to the subplot of Willie, the humble alien Visitor who would betray his race, join the human resistance, provide comic relief, and lend the show some much-appreciated heart. He may not have been a he-man like Singer, but I’ll admit he stood out in every episode I saw when she introduced me to their world.

This weekend that particular actor is in town, headlining a convention that’s been around for a few years. We’ve never attended it before because its primary focus really isn’t our thing. After weeks of hemming and hawing over whether or not this was a suitable idea for us, ultimately we had to ask ourselves: how many other chances will she have to meet him?

It’s in that spirit, after no small amount of deliberation, that we endured wretched construction traffic and the world’s ickiest dealer booths to grant her not-dying wish of meeting the man who brought Willie to life.

Many of you know him better for his movie work, including one specific character ten thousand times more well-known than Willie.

Robert Englund, HorrorHound Indy 2013

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2013 Road Trip Photos #9: In the Green of the Boston Public Garden

September 5, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

After our long, exhaustive walk of Boston’s Freedom Trail, we capped Day Three with a quieter, shadier stroll through the Boston Public Garden, across the street from Boston Common (under which we’d parked for the day). Both the Common and the Garden comprise one large idyllic hangout the size of several square blocks, smack in the heart of the city. It’s their version of Central Park, except smaller and less frequently seen in movies.

Boston Public Garden

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