“Superman/Batman” vs. “Batman/Superman”: Can This Odd Couple Be Saved?

July 26, 2013 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Batman, Superman

They’ve worked well together before, but never in live-action. Can two super-heroes share a tentpole film without driving each other crazy?

Despite my previously expressed skepticism, I wouldn’t say the announced Superman sequel with Batman in it — or vice versa — is guaranteed to fail. I’m sure much deliberation and debate will occur behind the scenes as the filmmakers work together for the common goal of creating the best possible superhero moneymaking machine. If it’s bearable to watch more than once, then hey, bonus points.

What could possibly happen? I can imagine several outcomes, not all of them great.

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ABC Family Consigns “Bunheads” to One-Season-Wonder Status

July 25, 2013 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments
Bunheads, ABC Family

One last Bunheads pic for the road: Bailey Buntain, Kaitlyn Jenkins, Emma Dumont, and Julia Goldani Telles.

It’s never easy when one of your favorite shows ends prematurely without a chance for a tidy series finale.

After months of stalling on a decision, ABC Family finally revealed on Monday that Bunheads has been officially canceled. Despite internet buzz among select circles that now qualify for collective relabeling as a “cult following”, ratings among the Nielsen commoners were never great, especially compared to the performance of the rest of ABC Family’s mostly teen-soap lineup.

As created by Gilmore Girls mastermind Amy Sherman-Palladino and a talented staff working with minimal resources, Bunheads was a literate, tragicomic fusion of ballet, Broadway, a female-majority cast, Sorkin-speed dialogue, showtunes, obscure entertainment punchlines from previous decades, dexterous back-and-forth rhythms, and musical numbers not set to the tune of current Top-40 hits or overplayed ’80s oldies. On a broadcast network, a show containing any two of these elements would’ve been lucky to reach episode three, even on the CW.

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2013 Road Trip Photos #2: Punxsutawney, Part 1 of 2: All Hail Phil

July 23, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The first half of Day One was spent rocketing across the wide expansive of big fat Ohio as quickly as possible so we could spend the evening in Pennsylvania. Before we settled in at our hotel, we detoured for one exploratory stop in the famous li’l town of Punxsutawney, annual Party Central for the American celebration known as Groundhog Day.

Punxsutawney sign, Pennsylvania

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San Diego Comic Con 2013: the Best and Least-Best News as Seen from the Cheap Seats

July 23, 2013 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Godzilla movie teaser poster, America, 2014Anyone who followed the entertainment news as it flooded out of 2013’s San Diego Comic Con found themselves shocked and surprised by two or more bombshells dropped from above, as the movie and comic book companies kept trying to top each other with the Greatest Announcement of All.

My general impressions follow of what stood out to me most, whether good, bad, or both.

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“Turbo”: Routine Underdog Learns Lessons about Perseverance, Self-Promotion

July 22, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ryan Reynolds, Paul Giamatti, Turbo, DreamWorks

Reynolds. Giamatti. Turbo.

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Turbo the Best Indianapolis Tourism Ad of the Year!

That was my first impression, anyway. It’s rare that Hollywood sets a big-budget motion picture in my hometown. The last film to use us, Eagle Eye for a single action scene, couldn’t be bothered to research our geography on Google Maps and pretended that 72 West 56th Street is a crowded financial district like downtown Boston. Local pro tip for future filmmakers: 72 West 56th puts you in a highly tree-filled residential area between the wooded Butler University campus and the trendy bars of Broad Ripple.

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2013 Road Trip Photos #1: the First of Two Springfields

July 20, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Each year our family embarks on an American road trip in a different direction. My wife and I snap photos of all things pretty and peculiar. I create a travelogue partly for fun and partly for my own future reference when my memory fails in my twilight years. Someone needs to remind future-me of the good ol’ days. It might as well be present-me.

This year’s journey was a nine-day trip from Indianapolis to Boston and back again, with a few stops in each direction. Regular MCC followers were previously privy to photo-a-day highlights while we were on the road. In a series of non-consecutive entries, I’ll be sharing a plethora of photos from each of our major stopovers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and upstate New York. Our experience wasn’t always sweetness and smiles, but we did our best to capture the sights and souls of our immediate surroundings.

The links to the full series, including the nine on-the-go entries, will be collected on a new main page shortly, same as was done for our 2012 road trip. Anyone who missed a chapter, joins in progress, or Googles their way here a year from now will be more than welcome to hop aboard. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

[SPECIAL NOTE: The following entry was lightly remastered September 4, 2023, at the request of sculptor Mike Majors, whose works featured prominently in our visit to Springfield, OH.]

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So There’s a Scene During the “Pacific Rim” End Credits

July 19, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Gipsy Danger, Pacific Rim

Midlife Crisis Crossover calls Pacific Rim the Best Men’s-Adventure Film of the Year!

So far, anyway. I’ll admit my opinion is skewed because I don’t watch every theatrical release. I certainly didn’t see 6 Fast 6 Furious, which might or might not be a five-star men’s-adventure flick for all I know, but the 6F6F trailers showed a sign of weakness: two female characters sharing a scene, even though it was a scene of angry pummeling. Not counting extras or one-line background fillers, I counted four female characters in all of Pacific Rim: two robot drivers; one of those drivers as a young girl; and, with 95% certainty, at least one of the monsters. None are onscreen at the same time, spaced apart by several men and minutes, just as you’d expect from an awesome boys-club tale of manly-man heroics.

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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. 🙂

“Sharknado” Watched on a Dare

July 16, 2013 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
Aubrey Peeples, Sharknado, Syfy

Shark from above!

Last week during our vacation, all the chatter from our usual signals was about two different travesties. One was covered on a dozen different TV channels and therefore lost me on oversaturation principle. The other was the latest Syfy Original Movie, Sharknado. It’s not often that my wife and I watch something on TV simply because other people won’t shut up about it, but we were curious as to why this particular cheesy production received more attention than Syfy’s last fifty slapdash offerings. I can report with a straight face that it met my exact expectations, by which I mean UGH.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 9: Back to Our Cells

July 15, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

cell block, Ohio State Reformatory, Mansfield

The last day of vacation is always the worst. Our trips are spent living several days outside the confines of the everyday rat race, determining our own itinerary, making up our meal schedule as we go, enjoying the activities of our choosing in faraway places where our normal responsibilities can’t follow us. Inevitably the time arrives for transitioning from the freedom of the open road to the confines of our ordinary lives and the cubicle jobs that fund these expeditions.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 8: Pink Nightmare Family

July 13, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

A Christmas Story, pink bunny suits, Cleveland

This merchandise display is the perfect illustration for my new sitcom idea, Pink Nightmare Family. Two sons and two daughters are forced to fend for themselves after they’re abandoned by their intolerant parents, who don’t understand why their kids insist on living every moment of their lives inside four matching pink bunny suits. They never notice the strange stares from everyone around them. To pay the bills, they open a novelty lamp shop. They never take the suits off, but they never smell disgusting because of TV magic. All the plots will be recycled from every other sitcom ever, but with bunny suits, which will hopefully become the Next Big Thing. I, for one, think the world is ready for a cross between Party of Five and Full House, plus bunny suits, minus Dave Coulier’s Bullwinkle impressions.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 7: Signs of Life Before the Internet

July 12, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Marconi radio tower, Binghamton, Massachusetts

Some roadside attractions don’t look like attractions unless you arrive properly informed and prepared to conduct an exhaustive, block-by-block search for the attraction in question, sometimes navigating around unexpected special events, poor road signage, streets that change name every 2-3 blocks, unwelcome construction zones, major Mapquest malfunctions, or our own distracting misconceptions. The way of the road-trip warrior can be a daily obstacle course whose reward is valuable only if you think it’s valuable.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 6: Though the Hakken-Kraks Howl

July 11, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dr Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden, Springfield, Massachusetts

On Day One of our vacation we stopped briefly to view statues in Springfield, Ohio. Today we stopped to view statues in Springfield, Massachusetts. Together they make interesting bookends, particularly since one of today’s attractions was a sculpture of a book.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 5: Cape Cod Cloudburst a-Comin’

July 10, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

whale watching, Cape Cod, bad weather

Weatherman have been threatening us the last few days with the slight possibility of our vacation enduring some rainfall. Until today nary a drop had affected our plans. Their hedged predictions at long last came true as the showers were unleashed upon us and several other lucky vacationers while we were out to sea. Once again we found ourselves the targets of God’s funny sense of timing.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 4: Refuge in a Gated Community

July 9, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Chinatown Gate, Boston

We hail from one of seventeen states that has never had a Chinatown to call its own. When we visited Manhattan in 2011, we spent hours walking through their Chinatown and immersing ourselves in surroundings resembling absolutely nothing back home. When we assembled our Boston to-do list, we considered their Chinatown was an obvious must-see. I wouldn’t call myself a travel authority by any means, but I imagine every great Chinatown needs a giant-sized gate like theirs.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 3: Garden of the Ducks

July 8, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

ducks, Swan Boats, Public Garden, Boston

Today’s main event was a few miles’ worth of walking through the heart of downtown Boston. Part of our journey was structured according to the thoughtfully organized recommendations of The City of Boston. Part of it was freeform whim-based wandering. Once we were done having it both ways and had checked off the highest ranking items on our to-do list, we made a point of concluding the day’s tourism with a few minutes of natural tranquility.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 2: Square Pegs in a Roundhouse

July 7, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

On the outside, our Boston accommodations sport a unique architectural design. This 185-year-old brick roundhouse was originally a fuel depository, left an empty husk for decades until it was snatched up and overhauled by one of the major chains over a decade ago. The front doors are easy to miss, recessed into one wall with minimal ornamentation. If you ignore the signage, from a distance it resembles an odd factory or a super-villain’s designer warehouse.

On the inside, it’s as modern, elegant, and packed with extra flourishes as one would hope to find in a big-city hotel, though some big cities have disappointed us in that department. (Orlando, I’m looking in the direction of your refrigerator boxes cleverly disguised as “suites”.) Our room has more furniture and appliances than we expected, plus its own anteroom and plenty of space if we were the kind of weird family who exercised as a group. In terms of amenities and interior decoration, it’s easily in the top ten all-time overnight experiences.

Our surroundings tell a very different story, one that I’m not sure would entice the average vacationing suburbanite.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 1: Surprise Groundhog Festival

July 6, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Groundhog Festival, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania

Before we left home, my wife and I were lamenting how we arrive at our locations each year with a knack for missing all the local celebrations and festivities. This year we’ll be arriving in Boston the week after Independence Day (which I’m sure Boston commemorates with revolutionary pizzazz) and three weeks before the Boston Comic Con. We’ve lost count of how many special events in years past that we missed in other cities by arriving one week late or leaving a day too early.

Imagine our surprise when we found a full-blown town carnival awaiting us when we arrived in the tiny, famous town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, home of the latest bearer of the title Punxsutawney Phil, the world’s most renowned and wildly inaccurate weather prognosticator.

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2013 Road Trip Notes, Day 0: the Master of Last-Minute Cramming

July 5, 2013 By in Travel Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

road trip supplies

All the essential supplies: maps, guidebooks, drinks, containers, summer reading, tunes, pens ‘n’ notebook.

Our 2013 road trip is upon us! After several months of brainstorming, research, mapping, reserving, debating, and whittling down our wish lists, I can say with some confidence that my readiness level for this year’s excursion to the faraway land of Boston now stands at 20%.

(Ha! Little joke. I wish I could see my wife’s face right now as she reads this. Hopefully I’m still in bed and well out of striking distance.)

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